Product Startup Podcast Episode 058: How to Pitch Your Product to Retail Buyers

00:00:01 Kevin Mako: Hey, everyone. You're listening to the product startup podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting the successful inventors, product designers, and other hardware industry professionals. I'm Kevin

00:00:12 Narrator: Mako, your host. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a physical product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.

00:00:29 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today, I'm very excited to introduce Mark. Seanahan to the show. He worked for Staples for over 25 years, starting as a junior product buyer, then running entire product categories, then a vice president. Today, Mark is going to share

00:00:43 Kevin Mako: some extremely valuable knowledge on how inventors, product startups, and small manufacturers can both get in the door of major retail stores, but also how to sell your product once

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: you're actually in the door. Also, the product startup podcast has some great news. Starting next month, January 2021, we'll be increasing the show frequency now to twice per month.

00:01:05 Kevin Mako: The show will be airing starting first thing in the morning every other Tuesday. And with that, on to today's episode.

00:01:13 Kevin Mako: Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me, Kevin. Yeah, we're really excited to have you. You know, it's funny.

00:01:20 Mark Shanahan: I remember we met quite a while ago, many years ago. We were both on a judging panel for Sage. Yeah, it was a real interesting time. It's so nice to see those people that right at the starting of their career.

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: when they're just kind of fresh out of university or in university having a great time with the idea of driving a business. Yeah. I mean, you've been a part of kind of the entrepreneurial world

00:01:40 Mark Shanahan: and helping with a lot of these things like judging panels for quite a while as well. Yeah, but you know what I was thinking earlier today was that in my daytime job, in my real life,

00:01:50 Mark Shanahan: I have been in thousands of pitches. You know, it's either one or multiple pitches a week

00:01:56 Kevin Mako: and seen a lot over my time. And I'm interested to share some of that with the folks today. Very exciting. Very exciting. Yeah.

00:02:05 Kevin Mako: Just to see that kind of breath and be able to condense it into some kind of nuggets for our audience today is something we're quite looking forward to.

00:02:13 Mark Shanahan: So it's very exciting to have you on the show. Just give us a bit of a background. Mark, I know I gave kind of a quick summary, but let's walk back 25 years till now. Yeah. I won't bore you with all the

00:02:24 Mark Shanahan: details all the way through, but I spent the majority of my time, my career so far with the Staples organization in Canada, but also in various places in Europe. And I've really enjoyed my time

00:02:37 Mark Shanahan: at Staples. I was left there as the head of the merchandising for technology and business machines products. But through my time, during my time with Staples, I've always considered myself a little bit of an entrepreneur, entrepreneur,

00:02:51 Mark Shanahan: along the way. And I've dabbled in different things and tried to help out different organizations and different startups, try to be a little bit better, a little bit more efficient. And so I really enjoy that side of the business. But the position I had throughout my

00:03:05 Kevin Mako: career at Staples really allowed me to have lots of exposure to people at various stages in the production cycle. And it was fascinating for me to see how they would operate. Yeah, that's great. I mean,

00:03:18 Kevin Mako: this is where you mentioned a thousand pitches, right? I imagine a lot of these were here within the Staples organization, people pitching their product. You were a category manager for quite a while and then moved

00:03:28 Mark Shanahan: your way up to, you know, VP and all that. So talk about the category manager role. That's quite interesting, right? Essentially, you were in charge of an entire category and what would be on the shelf. Yeah, you know, it was really interesting. The experience at Staples

00:03:42 Mark Shanahan: allowed me to really cement how to spot a good product and to figure out what a product offering had to compose of. It really had to hone in on what different aspects would make a product

00:03:56 Mark Shanahan: successful. And you know what, at the starting, I definitely didn't have an eye for what was successful or not. And fortunately, there was a lot of safeguards in place from the buyer's side to

00:04:06 Mark Shanahan: protect me around that. But as a junior buyer, I would be allowed to buy a little bit of products or what they would call rebuy products. But as you gain more seniority and become a category

00:04:17 Mark Shanahan: manager, you're really left to make some significant decisions on your own. In fact, I can remember the day that I made my first million-dollar decision.

00:04:25 Kevin Mako: And I was pretty proud of myself that day. But I have to be honest, it didn't go so well at the end of the day, at the end of the life cycle of that product. We didn't make nearly as much money as I was anticipating, but it was a great ride and lots of excitement.

00:04:40 Kevin Mako: Wow. And I imagine, you know, through all those pitches,

00:04:43 Mark Shanahan: you start to see, you know, what's the difference between the winning pitches and just, you know, another Me Too or another person just trying to make a buck? I think that's what we're going to talk about today.

00:04:54 Mark Shanahan: But that's a, I think, a really big, incredible depth of experience that you have, especially to bring to our listeners today. Yeah, you know, you don't shoot a thousand. Sometimes you think you've run into the best product and then you find out later on you have it.

00:05:08 Kevin Mako: And then sometimes, you know, you see somebody with a little bit of an idea, a little twinkle in their eye, and then it really flourishes into something. So it's always fun in trying to really get to know the inventor or, or the manufacturing company

00:05:23 Kevin Mako: and to really try to figure out what they're trying to accomplish. So let's get into it. We've got, from listeners on the show, you know, we've got people in product development in the corporate setting, a lot of obviously hardware startups, a lot of innovators, people just thinking about their product idea or other professionals

00:05:38 Kevin Mako: that are just in the product development field.

00:05:41 Mark Shanahan: And I think everybody here is going to be quite interested to hear like what is from your perspective the strategy to actually get into a retailer, not just to get your foot in the door, But then how do you crack that open and actually do what you can to sell?

00:05:55 Mark Shanahan: Obviously, there's a product, but what are the things that they can do with their product to give them the best chance of success with these major retailers? Yeah, there's lots of steps in that. But I think that hopefully through our conversation today,

00:06:07 Mark Shanahan: I'll be able to give a little bit of tips and tricks and maybe some kind of insiders view around how to approach it for as best success as you can possibly get. And I think I'll start off just by saying,

00:06:18 Mark Shanahan: And the people that are inventing products that have an idea or concept for a product, they really believe that the product is worth it, that it's got something. Either it saves the end user some time, it saves them some money, or maybe it just brings them

00:06:33 Mark Shanahan: some joy. And that's usually inherent in the inventor and they live by it. That's what helps them to get up in the morning and keep cracking on their product. The key is to try to figure out how to get that passion instilled in the buyer.

00:06:47 Mark Shanahan: And the buyer may not ultimately be the person that's going to enjoy the product, but the buyer gets trained to really have a lens for those customers, those end users that may use the product.

00:06:58 Kevin Mako: So the first job that you'll always want to keep in mind as an inventor or as a product purveyor is how do I transfer that passion into the buyer so that he or she can get really excited about it

00:07:11 Kevin Mako: and become the ambassador for you. So you always got to go through with that lens. How am I going to do that elevator pitch to make sure that they kind of light up as much as I do around the product? I love that perspective.

00:07:24 Kevin Mako: And we see a lot of that too because we're a much earlier stage in the process at our product design firm. We're looking at people who are starting to develop or somewhat into the development field themselves.

00:07:36 Kevin Mako: And they've got this passion and this drive and this energy. And they can see where this is going to improve the world and improve lives.

00:07:44 Mark Shanahan: So then it's kind of our job to actually translate that into an actual product that solves those features. But then we look one step further. When they talk to the retailers, now they have to transfer that energy, the beauty of this product. How is it changing the world?

00:08:00 Mark Shanahan: And look at it from their lens. It's hard to actually get caught up a lot of the time looking at it from your lens. So I think that's a really interesting point. How do you actually step into the shoes of the buyer and make them love it the same way that you love it? So how do you do that?

00:08:14 Mark Shanahan: Yeah, so let me just caution you. Some buyers you're going to run into will get captivated by the product so much so that they forget about the rudimentary buying skills and it doesn't have market viability and things like that.

00:08:26 Mark Shanahan: They'll probably leave a meeting and go, oh, wow, I love that product for myself, but I forgot to do the right thing for the company and they may have to regroup. But the biggest thing is to keep in mind is that you do have to display that passion.

00:08:39 Mark Shanahan: The buyer won't always show it, but you have to and you have to make sure that the buyer think, Well,

00:08:45 Mark Shanahan: at the very least, the inventor, the person that's pushing the products is excited about it. So there must be some value for somebody. When I look at how to approach getting in the doors of a buyer, I like to bucket into three different things.

00:08:59 Mark Shanahan: And what I call is the hit process. I'll talk about the hit process and dissect what that acronym is in a second. But what I'm about to talk about is, you know, the buying, the selling basics that haven't changed that much.

00:09:12 Mark Shanahan: but they are applicable today just as much as they were. So whether it's brick and mortar sales, whether it's internet sales or brick and click and combining them both, the basic building blocks are still the same.

00:09:26 Mark Shanahan: And you have to keep them in mind. Of course, you'll have to augment them slightly for different scenarios. But what we're going to talk about today is really the meat and potatoes of it.

00:09:36 Mark Shanahan: It's what you kind of the very basics of around how to start conversations and keep a buyer's a attention. So the first one I said, this is the hit process and it's just a little acronym that I

00:09:47 Mark Shanahan: use more or less just to help me remember the steps. But the first one, the H, is homework. And it really

00:09:53 Kevin Mako: is all about getting to know, you know, the market that you want to play in, why you're there,

00:10:00 Mark Shanahan: why you're legitimate and what your value proposition is. So when eventually you get the opportunity to be in a room with a buyer, you want to make sure that you've done your homework.

00:10:12 Mark Shanahan: work. So there's no cheating of this. You have to kind of, they say live in the trenches. More than that, you have to make sure that you're looking at how you look at the product and

00:10:23 Mark Shanahan: then how the buyer will perceive it and how they'll be able to place it into their environment. Now, this is good. When you mean the buyer, are you talking about the end user or the buyer,

00:10:35 Kevin Mako: arguably both? Well, in this particular case, I'm talking about the buyer of a retail organization because in some respects, at least at this point in time, it'll be the responsibility of that buyer to see it through the lens of the end consumer too. Of course, as the inventor,

00:10:50 Kevin Mako: you have to try your best to look at it, not just through your own eyes,

00:10:53 Mark Shanahan: but through the market that you're trying ultimately to sell into. So that'll be one of the questions that the buyer will ask you and you need to have your homework around is, what is the market that you're trying to address? How big is that market?

00:11:06 Mark Shanahan: You know, it could be how much will that market be willing to pay for your product?

00:11:12 Mark Shanahan: What are the other products? Yeah, especially you get to retail. And for them, it's if it doesn't make it big, it's not interesting. Now, you've got in the door. So you're

00:11:22 Mark Shanahan: having the big conversations. These are the big buyers, right? These are the big volumes. So it's interesting when you talk about market, you can see why a user is going to use it. But you have to

00:11:33 Mark Shanahan: take that one step further and say, how is this product going to be big? Yeah. One of the The interesting questions that a buyer will ask them, in many cases, I've seen an inventor or

00:11:42 Mark Shanahan: seller be stymied by. So I encourage you to prepare yourself for this. A buyer can simply ask, where do you see this product in my store? And that physically, yeah. Where is it sitting?

00:11:54 Mark Shanahan: Yeah. So this isn't much different than if you're at a job interview and they say, have you ever been into one of our stores? You know, the right answer is yes. In fact, I've been in several times. And so when a buyer is asking you about where do you see the product, you should be able to

00:12:08 Mark Shanahan: to say, well, you know what, I think it fits nicely in this category, which is in this section of your store. And I see it because they will ask who the competition is.

00:12:16 Kevin Mako: And it's not always great to say, oh, we don't have any competition because that makes it difficult for a buyer to frame up the product and to figure out where it would go

00:12:25 Mark Shanahan: and how they would sell it. They ultimately want to kind of put it in a good, better, best strategy or as a better than this product type of scenario.

00:12:33 Mark Shanahan: And so for an inventor to come in and say, well, there's no products in this category, that may be true.

00:12:41 Mark Shanahan: But by and large, you still want to frame it up as a, you know, this is an innovation or this is suiting this need for this customer against other products. So you got to keep that in mind. And you can't be afraid to compare yourself against some other products.

00:12:55 Mark Shanahan: You just have to say why we're different and what we're better at, what we're more suited for. Buyer appreciates that. So, and this is all within that homework bracket. This is the first of essentially three parts of this hit.

00:13:08 Mark Shanahan: Yeah, so again, the homework could be anything from, you know, you have to do your homework and finding out who your competitors are. Do you have a distribution model in the marketplace? How are you going to get your product to market?

00:13:21 Mark Shanahan: And these don't have to be all solved by you.

00:13:24 Kevin Mako: There's lots of people out there that can help you through these steps. You have to do your work in the trenches, calling buyers. had a gentleman that called me week after week after week. I think for more than two or three

00:13:37 Kevin Mako: years he would call me. And I used to always joke Friday morning, he's going to call me. And he was, at the time, I was a computer buyer, but I was buying memory and like the old sticks

00:13:48 Kevin Mako: of memory and things like that. And he would call me trying to sell memory. And I go, no, I've got my suppliers. I've got my suppliers. And he would go and do his little sales pitch, but he'd only keep me for a couple minutes. It went on and on. Well, you know what? Eventually, I need

00:14:01 Kevin Mako: memory. And he had been calling me so regularly that I had a good healthy discussion with

00:14:07 Mark Shanahan: them and we did some business. So you have to do your homework ahead of time and you shouldn't expect that you're going to get the buyer's attention right away. I think that's a good point

00:14:16 Mark Shanahan: there too. And I've done a ton of public speaking on innovation and entrepreneurship and one of the number one things. Probably the number one thing. I've actually had it just in a huge

00:14:28 Mark Shanahan: One word behind me on the stage is hustle. It's not a buzzword. It's not a fad. It's the opposite of procrastination.

00:14:40 Mark Shanahan: And the hustlers do win. Grant Cardone has a book called The 10X rule. And his whole model is take whatever you plan to do and put 10 times the effort in and you will succeed. And that example, that's key right there.

00:14:54 Mark Shanahan: He continued to hit you up, be top of your mind.

00:14:58 Kevin Mako: So when that tiny little market gap opened up, boom.

00:15:02 Kevin Mako: You have to remember, like you should be going to trade fairs. You should be going into places that you think may be a viable place for you to sell. You need to try to get in the circles of people that will play with those buyers that may know those buyers

00:15:16 Kevin Mako: so that you're networking and networking networking. You have to look at every opportunity as a possible networking. Not everybody's the greatest that public speaking or mix and mingling with folks they don't know. then get a buddy. Get somebody that can help you through that.

00:15:31 Kevin Mako: Get an ambassador, a chief evangelist. It could be your husband, your wife, it could be a friend, but find somebody that can do that for you

00:15:39 Mark Shanahan: if you don't think you're well suited to do that. But by and large, they're going to want to hear from you. You're the inventor. You're the genesis of why this is going on, and you'll probably be the best one eventually to speak to it as you grow more comfortable with it.

00:15:52 Mark Shanahan: Yeah, the best one to speak to it, that's very key. Because I think, you know, a lot of inventors, especially that this is their first time going to market with the product, there is a fear. And that's natural in all kind of business ventures.

00:16:07 Mark Shanahan: But as an innovator, there's a fear as well. And a lot of that fear comes into, well, am I going to be able to sell this? Like, I'm not a salesperson. I'm not a business executive. I'm not whatever. Insert word here, right?

00:16:19 Mark Shanahan: The reality is the buyers don't really care that much about your business savvy. when it comes to your pitch. They care about the product, your passion. Have you done your homework? Do you understand your market? Is this thing going to sell?

00:16:33 Kevin Mako: That's what they care about. Not, you know, did you come up with the smoothest pitch we've ever heard? No, the buyers have a lot of tolerance for people that are stumbling through the pitch and nervous. That's natural. As I said before, as good to hear.

00:16:46 Kevin Mako: As a buyer, I had thousands of pitch situations and they varied. Some people were overconfident. Some people were not as confident as they should be. but it does focus around the product and the product viability. So first and foremost,

00:17:00 Kevin Mako: if you can just talk to the viability of the product in the situation, and you know what,

00:17:04 Mark Shanahan: not every product needs to have huge market. It needs to serve a purpose. And if it can, then you have a conversation with a buyer. They want to fill that gap. You know, they have a duty to their leadership to solve problems for customers or provide amusement

00:17:19 Mark Shanahan: or whatever it may be, whatever reason they're in business. So they don't always need to have, have these huge, colossally big products. They need to have ones that provide differentiation or that provide some subtlety that's slightly different than the rest of the products on

00:17:34 Mark Shanahan: their shelves. Yeah.

00:17:36 Mark Shanahan: It's good to hear from your perspective that there is a bit of a tolerance for the different pitching styles and whatnot. You know, I think about one of our clients came up with a new type of toilet plunger. It's called the Triplunger. It's great, great, better

00:17:50 Mark Shanahan: Toilet plundry design. All he did was kept walking into retailers to the point where he finally found a retailer that had just a manager of one retail store that had authority to buy a handful of

00:18:03 Mark Shanahan: local goods. You know what? And he got in. And then from there just spread like wildfire and they're in all these retailers. You know what? That is a great place to start for some people. You know,

00:18:14 Mark Shanahan: part of homework is to try to analyze where you're best suited to go first. Maybe you can't handle the biggest retailer because their volumes would be way too high if they wanted. Maybe you should start off

00:18:24 Mark Shanahan: with an independent and work your way up and build your confidence and build your little bit of a runway. Some folks, depending on what product you're building, can get right into the big box

00:18:35 Mark Shanahan: retailers or the behemists right away. It depends the situation. But you know, you have to be honest about where you're at right now and then move forward around what your plan is. So maybe we can just move

00:18:49 Mark Shanahan: to, you know, the eye in hit. And that's really a little bit about the in-person, the introductory meeting with the buyer. So, you know, you've done your homework. You have called on the buyer or you've

00:19:02 Mark Shanahan: found a friend who knows a guy who knows a girl who's going to get you in to see the buyer. And you're now preparing for that buying meeting. I got a few things to talk about in there to try

00:19:12 Mark Shanahan: to set you up for success. And really, I think the first thing is, if you have the opportunity to have a meeting with a buyer,

00:19:20 Mark Shanahan: quickly identify the amount of time you wish to have with them and keep it short. To me, 15 minutes, if it's a one product conversation, 15 minutes to 30 minutes

00:19:30 Mark Shanahan: is more than you need. You have to remember the buyer has a lot of things to do. They get it. Their mind is trained around a good product and they'll just kind of flip through and put you

00:19:40 Mark Shanahan: through your paces in a short amount of time. And if you just say you need 15 minutes, they're more likely to give it to you. I would strongly urge you to define how much time you want and then to

00:19:52 Mark Shanahan: clarify that. Before the meeting the day before or so, make sure you're either emailing or calling that buyer and just confirming that it's going to happen, that there hasn't been a change of plans.

00:20:03 Kevin Mako: You know, if you need to have a screen or a projector or something on hand that you've asked, hey, is it available there or should I bring it myself? You know, is there any other nuances to the building, get the address correct, you know, all that kind of stuff.

00:20:16 Kevin Mako: show up early but not too early just a few minutes you don't want to be waiting in the lobby for hours it puts pressure on the buyer to come down early and they're probably busy so just a few

00:20:24 Mark Shanahan: minutes right so wait in the car if you're early yeah yeah and then you have to when you get in in front of the buyer you have to reiterate you know what you've given me 15 minutes thank you very

00:20:37 Mark Shanahan: much I will be done in 15 minutes and you have to make sure that you pretty much get up and leave at the 15 minutes mark unless they're really pushing you for information you know the The best thing you can do is to get another invite back.

00:20:50 Mark Shanahan: And if you tax their time and don't get out of their way, there would be a little bit less likely for that second conversation. But if you're very interesting, very respectful of their time, a buyer really appreciates that. That's the same when you get them on the phone.

00:21:03 Mark Shanahan: If you just keep them for a minute, say you're going to be on the phone for a minute, and then you say thank you very much for your time. It goes so far. It's incredible how often I would pick up the phone because I knew that person wouldn't keep me on the phone forever. It would be absolutely brief.

00:21:18 Mark Shanahan: Now, let's dissect that a bit because that's really good intel. Maybe not kind of the first thing you think about. But if we looked at you got your 15 minutes slot, let's break that down. Within that 15 minutes, how much time do you actually pitch?

00:21:33 Mark Shanahan: You walk in and as you said, the first thing you do is you mentioned it will be brief. You will be out in 15 minutes. Then you jump into your pitch. What do you like to see in that pitch in that very short period of time?

00:21:43 Mark Shanahan: Yeah. So just before the pitch, if you know somebody, you know, a mutual person, a friend or whatever like that, you may want to throw that in. I wouldn't try to get too

00:21:52 Mark Shanahan: personal with the buyer. The buyer meets a lot of people all day long and every day and probably doesn't want to get personal with you right away. They have to keep it professional.

00:21:59 Mark Shanahan: If they don't like your product, they don't want to be emotionally tied to it. If they like it, they'll get emotionally tied to it eventually. But you don't want to accomplish too much. And you have to keep in mind that you're there just to make, in my words, an

00:22:13 Mark Shanahan: invite back. You're not necessarily going to close anything in that very first meeting or the

00:22:17 Kevin Mako: first 15 minutes. You really want to plant the seat. So you jump to the pitch. It is fantastic if you have a sample or a prototype of the product. It would be wonderful if you had the finished

00:22:29 Kevin Mako: packaged product. That would be awesome. But if you're not there yet, then you just need to explain it. This is a prototype. This product is going to do this, this, this and this. But today it only does this and this.

00:22:41 Kevin Mako: And, you know, the packaging is going to look like this and here's some drawings or renderings of it or here is the finished packaging. But whatever you have there, and I strongly encourage you to have something, some visual eye candy, because they love that and it shows that

00:22:55 Kevin Mako: you're further along in the process. But you call it out, you say this is a finished product or this isn't and you work through that and you be honest. They will have their opinions around the

00:23:06 Mark Shanahan: product and they'll deliver them. I encourage you not to get personal around it. They are very good at giving critiquing products and they'll do it without much emotion from them and you shouldn't

00:23:17 Mark Shanahan: take it like that. Treat the meeting as a learning process, digest the information, write it down. A buyer can get very frustrated if they say something that they think is a value and you don't write it

00:23:28 Mark Shanahan: down. If you happen not to think it's valuable, it just write something down. But you really should be taking notes. You've got this time. It's extremely valuable. You should be feeding off it. I'm glad you brought up that prototype angle because we get thousands of inquires a year for people

00:23:43 Mark Shanahan: looking to develop their products. One of the first thing that we're asked is, okay, I want to go to market. I want to be in Staples or Walmart or Best Buy or whatever else.

00:23:52 Mark Shanahan: Great. Like, well, let's go together. Well, hold on a second. You can't go to them with an idea. In fact, you probably won't get into that meeting. You won't get in there probably with a design, even good design.

00:24:03 Mark Shanahan: not even engineering, likely not even a rough prototype, but maybe if you've got a decent prototype, but ideally a production unit,

00:24:11 Mark Shanahan: like essentially the further you go, the higher probability of getting the meeting, and of course, the higher probability that that meeting goes well.

00:24:19 Mark Shanahan: You know, it's interesting you brought that up. Like you really need to see that tangible thing. We've heard it many times over. Like the prototype is gold, or at least the production sample is gold. And I think that's really, really important when we're talking to big retail because these

00:24:31 Mark Shanahan: are serious buyers. And that's what you can't forget. And if at all possible, you have to be able to leave a prototype or a product behind. They aren't necessarily always the expert on the product you're showing them. They may have some people they want to show it to. They want to gauge

00:24:46 Kevin Mako: their enthusiasm level against other people. So it's awesome if you can leave a prototype behind. Even if you have to pick it up again, say, can I leave it for a week? I have to show it to some other people that, oh, that's in a little bit of sense of urgency sometimes. Oh, they're going to

00:24:59 Kevin Mako: show it to my competitor next. I better keep it and try to keep it for as long as possible. Or, you know, they may play a little bit of a game with you on that. But it just shows that you're a little bit in business around that. And I know that one of the things that we often talk about

00:25:13 Kevin Mako: as we're prototyping is going with, you know, the minimum viable product. And it keeps the conversation, The first conversation is simple, but it also does one other thing.

00:25:24 Mark Shanahan: The buyer likes to be flattered or feel that they've come up with an additive for your product that maybe, you know, they think's novel to them. Hey, have you thought about this? My advice to you is say, oh, yeah, that's a really good idea.

00:25:39 Mark Shanahan: I'll take that down. Maybe we can work that into the next run or something like that, even though you could have full well been intending to do that. But give the buyer the privilege of thinking they came up with that product. You'll endear them a little bit to them.

00:25:52 Mark Shanahan: And also, it allows you to progress on your product. One of the best ways you can get continued marketing from a product is by having innovations and additives built on to it. So you want to have a life cycle.

00:26:04 Mark Shanahan: You want to be able to introduce new things that the buyer will be able to talk about and advertisements and things later on. So it is wonderful if you start off of the good quality product that works and then build off it.

00:26:15 Mark Shanahan: Very interesting to say that because me, I've been a huge person that touts MVP. for first product development, right? Start with your core product offering first,

00:26:26 Mark Shanahan: then think about your platinum version, your version 2.0, your full feature version down the road. So I want to ask this question back to you specifically about that. Have you been in a situation where you have the MVP product,

00:26:40 Mark Shanahan: but there's an angle or a different spin or something like that that you think could improve the product for your market? Have you told that to a customer? They've gone off and months later, they come back and say, okay, I've done it.

00:26:53 Mark Shanahan: We've now got this handle you want, this piece you want, this new way of doing it that you wanted, that then push them over that hurdle to actually make the sale. Yeah, the way that conversation usually goes is, first of all, I'll say, okay, you know,

00:27:06 Mark Shanahan: if you get to a part of the conversation, which you should be ready for, how much do you think this product should retail for? You may get the reaction back from the buyer that's too expensive, take some cost out of it. So then you have to go back and kind of figure out how you're going to,

00:27:19 Mark Shanahan: lighten the load and get to a cheaper price point.

00:27:23 Kevin Mako: That's some of the conversations. Sometimes it's about, you know, for the buyer, we'll say, for our customer base, from our experience,

00:27:31 Mark Shanahan: we've really felt that the product should kind of go this way or that way, just something simple. And if you're able to do it, then, you know, you have to get used to the saying in a meeting with a buyer. Yeah, we could probably do that. Yeah, let me get back to you on that.

00:27:45 Mark Shanahan: You know, you don't want to say no in a meeting if you can with a buyer. You want to find a way to say yes or yes if. And it's okay to say, yeah, with the minimum product run of X, we could do that for you.

00:27:58 Mark Shanahan: And they are probably going to follow up with, can we have that exclusive? You have to be prepared for. Okay, I see how this goes. How are you going to be able to give them some exclusive, some feather in their cap, and go with that? So there's lots of ways the conversation could go.

00:28:12 Mark Shanahan: You try to keep it positive and you take lots of notes. And, you know, if you're going to be really nervous in a meeting with the buyer, then bring a sidekick along to take the notes for you. That allows you to keep your eye contact as much as you can with the buyer and grow a relationship.

00:28:27 Mark Shanahan: And the buyer is certain that somebody's taking notes. So it's okay to have a couple people in the meeting. I wouldn't bring your whole production team for everybody. That's a little bit daunting. But it's okay to do that. So, yes, there's lots of opportunities.

00:28:41 Mark Shanahan: And the other thing you have to be concerned about is you can't go in with a whole bunch of different. iteratives of the product. It'll confuse the buyer. It splits up to sales and it's called skew proliferation and that's not a great way to start

00:28:56 Mark Shanahan: the relationship. You can definitely say we have lots of different things that'll come down the road with this, but I wouldn't confuse the initial conversation with that. I guess that comes along with the keep it short, keep it sweet, focus, present your MVP,

00:29:09 Mark Shanahan: present something of quality, have done your homework. Now, that's fantastic. So, Mark, what's the team?

00:29:15 Mark Shanahan: Yeah. The third one, and this is vital. It's vital in all walks of life and everything you're doing, but it's about trust. The T is for trust. You have to be honest. You

00:29:27 Kevin Mako: have to be, you know, really transparent around your product, what you can afford to do for the retailer, what timeframes you're working under, what volume

00:29:38 Kevin Mako: you can, you know, come up with in short order or the timeframes of roadmap around that. You have to come up and you have to be, you know, you know, honest around what the deficiencies or what the product won't do.

00:29:50 Kevin Mako: The buyer's perfectly aware that your product isn't going to do everything in the world. So you can't kind of, you know, creep your way around it. It's just not great. And you have to keep in mind the buyer has to make commitments to somebody.

00:30:03 Kevin Mako: They have to make commitments to the advertising team. They have to make commitments to finance around spending money. They have to make commitments to the store planner exactly where the product is going to go.

00:30:13 Kevin Mako: And if you, you know, you promise it's going to arrive, your product's going to arrive at a certain time or that it's going to come through at this price, and you've got to

00:30:21 Mark Shanahan: be able to live by that. So if you don't know an answer, say I don't know it right now, but I'll get back to you. We've had some conversations internally. We're not there

00:30:29 Mark Shanahan: yet on this or that or the time frame, but be transparent. They'll quickly, you know, ask you to come back, you know, within three days, let me know on that or it's not important right now. But you can't get in a situation where you've kind of fibbed your way through.

00:30:43 Mark Shanahan: through it, you know, catch you on it and you won't get a return phone call. You have to be trustful. You have to build it.

00:30:50 Mark Shanahan: You know, the buyer has a probably has a group of other buyers that he sits with, he or she sits with. And, you know, if you get, if you, if you buy into a product and it doesn't show up or whatever, you better believe just like in life, they're going

00:31:03 Mark Shanahan: to be ribbing you. And they're going to be ribbing that buyer. And, you know, they're going to have

00:31:07 Kevin Mako: a little bit of, what do they call it, egg on the face. And they want to avoid that. So don't put them in a position where they have to be concerned with that. I can tell you, the design firm appreciates that advice too, because we've had so many different clients, work with so many different retailers.

00:31:22 Kevin Mako: And the very worst thing that can happen to a design firm is when our customer comes back to us and says, you know what? We just landed Walmart. But we had this caveat. We told them we're going to ship in the next three weeks and it's going to have all these changes.

00:31:37 Kevin Mako: And you guys got that, though, right? And we just look at it and say, the laws of physical. account for this particular problem, this promise you've created, which all circles back to this

00:31:47 Kevin Mako: concept that we've both been talking about of MVP and keep it simple. You don't have to have all

00:31:53 Mark Shanahan: the answers that day. Keep your pitch simple. Keep your products simple. And if you do get into those questions that you don't know, or if you are looking at options, you don't have to answer then. In fact,

00:32:05 Mark Shanahan: some of the things you've said to me, it sounds like you've queued up that person, in that inventor for another meeting, right? If the buyer says, hey, can you do this? Perfect, I'll get back to you. Now you've got your excuse to make that second phone call. Exactly.

00:32:18 Mark Shanahan: It's okay to say I don't know, but I'll get back to it. At our next meeting, I will tell you about this. I will have that information for you. At our next meeting, set yourself up for success around that. You know what? It really is a little bit of a dance.

00:32:32 Kevin Mako: You should have fun out of it. Keep in mind you're going in there with the passion of the product. And if you can land it, if you can have a conversation with somebody who appreciates it, it's a lot of fun.

00:32:43 Kevin Mako: And you're not going to be the best at selling their, pitching the product the first time through with the buyer. They're certainly going to know what they're doing and they're going to step you through their paces. But take it as a learning process. Don't get your back up or your shoulders up around their comments.

00:32:58 Kevin Mako: Don't take it personally.

00:32:59 Mark Shanahan: Just make sure you take it and take it and act on it and learn from it. Yeah. Right. Oh, that's incredible. And Mark, there's so many things that we could actually dissect out of this.

00:33:09 Mark Shanahan: We've got to have you back on again to go a bit further into, you know, if you get into that door, how do we sell more? How do we expand and all that sort of stuff as well as, you know, breaking down these elements?

00:33:21 Kevin Mako: But I think it's most important. We've got three major things to remember here, right? It's the hits model, H-I-T, right? Do your homework, right?

00:33:31 Kevin Mako: That's absolutely, I mean, absolutely paramount, right? And I think that's how you kick it off. And that goes true for even going into design and development. Like as we're looking at our clients, looking at the very start of the product,

00:33:46 Kevin Mako: you know, collectively we need to do our homework to actually build that vision, that kind of goal, make it really come alive, right? Yeah. When you're in the moment, when you're in the eye, when you're in the introduction and you're going through that with the buyer,

00:34:00 Kevin Mako: that's not the time to learn more about your, internal things, your processes or the marketplace, you invariably will learn something from the buyer, hopefully you do, but you have to do your homework and you just have to be concise

00:34:14 Mark Shanahan: and efficient in the meeting. And then at the 15 minute mark, you have to say, thank you very much for your time. I know our time is up now. I'm going to leave.

00:34:23 Mark Shanahan: And, you know, if they really want you, they'll sit you back down. If they don't, then you kind of be on your way. And that's not necessarily an inclination that they didn't like your product. It just means they got something else to do and they got to move along right that's a good thing to keep in mind yeah that's a good thing

00:34:37 Mark Shanahan: to keep in mind right just because they said something you know a comment that you may not have liked or just because you know they've cut you off short it doesn't mean that the deal is done there is

00:34:47 Mark Shanahan: possibility for it in the future but also come back to the element of hustle this is one buyer you should not be relying on this is your only buyer or your only retailer or your only source right

00:34:57 Kevin Mako: you should be hustling for your business as going back to that age right the homework and as we get to the final letter again, just to reiterate the T and trust, if they ask you if you're

00:35:08 Kevin Mako: shopping this product around, if you're going to another retailer, say yes, if you are. Yes, I have seen these other retailers or yes, I intend to take it to here or there. That's okay. That means you've done your homework. You know who the other retailers are and you are aggressively

00:35:21 Kevin Mako: pursuing your goal. Nothing wrong with that. Well, because you mentioned about the buyer and one of the elements that, you know, they want to look good in front of their co-workers, right? You talked about

00:35:32 Kevin Mako: the water cooler. So if we're looking at that, one of the things that's very important to a buyer

00:35:38 Mark Shanahan: that I think a lot of inventors forget about is those buyers are competing with other buyers in the organization, but also even more so with other retailers. So if you've got that hot,

00:35:51 Mark Shanahan: new, innovative product, and if you've designed this from scratch, this is your invention, it is new. It is proprietary in some way. You've developed this for a reason. You do have some

00:36:02 Mark Shanahan: cards stacked in your favor as well. And I think a lot of inventors forget that, that it's not

00:36:07 Kevin Mako: entirely one-sided. You should treat it like it's one-sided, you know, back to your eye, the second one in person, but also know that you are the one with that new proprietary kind of invention that's going

00:36:18 Mark Shanahan: to sell units and make that retailer look better than maybe the other one that either didn't take it or turned it down or hasn't seen it. The buyer is eager to find new products. One of the reasons why is

00:36:29 Mark Shanahan: Not only does it get attention and all that, but usually the most profit you can get out of a product is at the starting of the life cycle where there's still margin. You're not promoting it to, you know, down, down, down.

00:36:42 Mark Shanahan: You're really enjoying hopefully a healthy margin at the starting. So every new innovative product that they get to add into their assortment probably helps their bottom line immensely.

00:36:52 Mark Shanahan: So it's very important for them to show innovation, to show that they've been out in the market and found new things. they're very much, you know, wanting to get new products. So it's not like they're an adversary with you.

00:37:04 Mark Shanahan: They are definitely on the same team trying to drive innovation in their environment. Right. Mark, I'd say that's one of my takeaways from this conversation is it's quite interesting how warming you help us understand the experience.

00:37:19 Mark Shanahan: Because I've obviously been in those meetings quite a bit.

00:37:21 Kevin Mako: You've been over a thousand. But for somebody who's never been in those meetings before, or it's really not something to be feared. You're playing a volume game. You're doing something amazing. You're doing something with your product, right? Don't be afraid that they may say no.

00:37:34 Kevin Mako: That's a very real unlikely possibility in many situations. But this is also not something to be feared. And that's really interesting.

00:37:41 Mark Shanahan: Many of the things that you said really are highlighting that element that it is and should be a positive relationship. Even if they're giving you hard news, they're giving you that news for good reason, right? And you know what? You're not alone in your journey. There's people out there that can help you.

00:37:55 Mark Shanahan: I've been in lots of situations where there's somebody with a good idea or that wants to get in the door at a different retailer and they're very fearful or they don't know how to do it.

00:38:04 Kevin Mako: There's people out there to help. I've helped numerous people along the way, you know, prepare them for those meetings and you can't think of it as you're alone. You are certainly the driver. You're the captain of the ship around your product, as you should be, but there's support structure there for you.

00:38:20 Kevin Mako: Talk about that a bit, Mark, because I know now you're doing, you've been talking to us about some of the parts.

00:38:25 Mark Shanahan: clients and whatnot, you're helping people more as a consultant role at this point in time. So talked about what you're doing now and today because I think a lot of people find that quite interesting. Yeah, you know what? I'm having the time of my life, helping people out at

00:38:39 Mark Shanahan: various different steps in the supply chain, in the product life cycles, and helping them try to be a little bit more efficient or a little bit more process driven or just helping them get in the

00:38:50 Kevin Mako: door to certain retailers or distributors,

00:38:55 Kevin Mako: or you know what, even just building up some social marketing around what their product is to try to get a ground swell of followers around it. And it's been a great time for me from anywhere from, you know,

00:39:08 Kevin Mako: off supplies, of course, and technology products for my prior life, but doing work with some toy retailers and different things like that. There's a lot of different product manufacturers

00:39:18 Kevin Mako: and they need help along the way, some very early on in their manufacturing stage and then other ones that are just trying to pivot during interesting times. So I'm having a real good time around helping other people

00:39:30 Kevin Mako: and trying to sit on the other side of the table with them instead of the buyer's side and help them make sure they can answer the questions they need to when they're faced with a buyer that wants to get at their product. That's very valuable. And that helps with that first part. That's the big age, right?

00:39:45 Kevin Mako: Homework. Yeah. And that's a very, very valuable service. I know from being in the industry for 20 years, that that can be a very daunting task for somebody. So it's great to see that you're out there kind of helping.

00:39:59 Kevin Mako: Yeah, it doesn't come naturally both established and emerging. Yeah, some people, they can do it with each that's part of their inner being. Other ones, that is the least thing they'd like to invent and make a better product, but they shy away from it.

00:40:12 Kevin Mako: And you'd hate to think that a great product doesn't get invented or doesn't come to market because an inventor was bashful around bringing in their product or going to see somebody. There's people there to help you. Right. That's solid.

00:40:26 Kevin Mako: So, you know, key summer here. One, do your homework. Two, you know, focus on that in person, quick to the point, be very respectful of their time. And three, trust, build that trust and come back. Mark, that's a fantastic episode.

00:40:41 Kevin Mako: Very much appreciate you taking the time to be on the show. What's the easiest way for people to get in contact with you? if they want to reach out about your help. Yeah, probably the easiest way is I'm on LinkedIn and Mark Shanahan just to look me up

00:40:53 Kevin Mako: and I'm running a little shop as you shed called to identify consulting and that's, I'm sure you can find me on there. I'd be happy to talk to you about whatever portion of the process you're going through and trying to give you some tips and tricks. So thank you very much for having me.

00:41:07 Kevin Mako: I've really enjoyed myself here and I hope I've imparted a little bit of knowledge to the listeners. definitely and we will for sure be talking about having you back on the show again to go in some

00:41:18 Kevin Mako: more depth on some of these topics mark thanks again must appreciate it see you next time thank you take care

00:41:25 Narrator: thanks for tuning into this episode of the product startup podcast a show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success this podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent the first firm in north america to provide

00:41:39 Narrator: global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups inventors and small product business clients. If you're looking for product development, help on your invention,

00:41:49 Narrator: head over to MakoDesign.com. That's m-a-o-o-design.com for a free consultation from one of Mako Design's four design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.