Selling Beyond the Farm Gate

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How do buyers decide whether to buy your product? In previous modules, you have developed a message and materials. You have probably had an initial contact with buyers, and now it is time to seal the deals. You will be moving from launch to maintaining good communications over a regular order cycle, if everything goes as planned. First the launch. By now you should have:

• Product available to ship

• Clear plan for shipping or transferring product from production to buyer

• Pricing and plans for launch discounts, demos or sale options if any

• Schedule for production, ordering, and shipping

• Realistic idea of growth rate (how many new customers or volume you can handle each week)

• Contingency plans

You have many sales opportunities for your launch; a new product makes an exciting story to be told on social media, in demos, through promotional cards and sell sheets, etc. The branding (appearance, logo, message)  should be consistent across all the materials; in many cases, you can use the same text and graphics or with slight variations and this will make your brand familiar to the buyers whenever they see it. Each item should say clearly what the product is, why it is great (your story and the key attributes) and how it can be purchased (you can list all your distributors if you have more than one).

Sell sheets tend to contain several kinds of information for buyers such as pack size and associated codes (SKU, PLU or UPC codes). Pricing is often included, as well as any sale information or volume discounts. You can find many good examples and suggestions on the internet.

Resources

Worksheets