6 Tips for planning the perfect customer Brand Kick-Off Meeting

As you head into Q4 I’m sure that many of you will be booking in Brand kick-off meetings with your customers.  This meeting represents an excellent opportunitiy to excite your buyers by revealing your NPD for the following year.

This is arguably one of your most pivotal meetings of the year.  If you impress the customer and they are bought into your plans, this increases the likelihood of having a successful 2024.  If the meeting goes poorly then you will be on the back foot for the whole of the next year.

With that being said, here are my 6 tips for planning the perfect Brand kick-off meeting.

Build the best team for the day.

Make sure that you book the meeting ideally at least three months in advance with your customer to give you the necessary time to prepare.  A big part of this preparation is going to involve assembling a crack team for the job.

You want to make sure that the best Category Managers, Brand Managers and Customer Marketing Managers are there to present on the day.  Depending on who is attending from your customer’s side you may also need the support of more senior stakeholders at the meeting, e.g. your Sales or Commercial Director.

It might sound obvious, but the best way to ensure this outcome is to get the available dates of all your internal attendees BEFORE reaching out to the customer to arrange the meeting.  Doing this will guarantee that the people you want at the meeting will block out their diaries in advance.  Remember that all the other Account Managers in the business will be competing for their time – make sure that they prioritize you!

Be ruthless with the range you present to your customer.

Prior to booking this Brand kick-off meeting, the Marketing Team will have showcased every single NPD SKU to you and the other Account Managers.  I have no doubt that you will be under pressure from Brand Managers and the wider business to present as much of the new range to your customer as possible. 

You know your Buyer and customer better than anyone else in the business, which means that you should have the conviction to make decisions on which products to show the customer and which products to omit on the day.

Your buyers will have dozens of these meetings to attend with other suppliers.  Make sure that your meeting is focussed and not bloated.  YOU know your customer’s strategy.

If your customer wants to grow their category by driving value through premium products, then don’t show them the cheapest entry level SKUs more suited to Discounters. 

Alternatively, if their main objective is to compete with and steal share from the Discounters, then don’t bother showing them the high price point, limited edition board game which retails for £59.99.

And if your customer only wants to list single serve products then don’t include slides on multi-packs.

There will be a voice in the back of your mind, which says “if you include everything MAYBE the Buyer will agree to list a SKU that you don’t expect…” Mute this voice, since showing irrelevant products will have the opposite effect of disengaging your Buyer.  It will make you look incompetent and the last thing they want to do is have to reiterate their corporate strategy in this meeting.

REHEARSE and stick to timings in the agenda.

As much as I admire Brand Managers, I have never encountered one who uses an appropriate number of slides for their allotted time at a Brand Kick-Off Meeting!  If they have a 30-minute slot on the agenda, they will almost always have 50-60 slides, and if you give them an hour, they will come with more than 100 slides!

I’m not trying to knock or discredit Brand Managers, but for these meetings you, as the Account Manager, must lead the project so that it sticks to timings.  I’ve been in these meetings where we have been running over time by up to 90-minutes, which has meant we’ve had to rush other sections, or in the worst case, cut out important parts of the presentation.

A couple of rehearsals of the presentation will increase the odds of everyone running to time.  Whilst it is highly unlikely that you’ll be able to do a rehearsal of the presentation, you can sit down with each Brand or Category Manager to run through their content.

Of course, as per the previous point, if you have been ruthless with the range you want to present, then this should also help to reduce the content that is presented on the day.

Bring as many physical samples as possible and make the process of sampling new products interactive, fun and memorable.

This is probably the most important aspect of executing a successful Brand Kick-Off Meeting.  The best analogy to illustrate the significance of samples, is how we purchase cars.  We don’t buy a car based just on analysing the specifications and price.  Big purchases are made on emotion.  We make the decision to buy the car when we test drive it.  The new car smell and the feel of the steering wheel in your hands triggers the powerful desire to buy – you make your mind up there and then and use the data (i.e. the specifications and price) to validate the purchase afterwards.

In Positive Intelligence® this phenomenon is referred to as selling via the PQ Channel vs the Data Channel.  The PQ Channel the part of the brain where the powerful positive emotions, feelings and energies live, whilst the Data Channel deals with data, facts, and details.  Wherever possible you should be selling to your customer by appealing to their PQ Channel.

This is precisely why having physical samples is so critical.  When the Buyer can feel the product in their hands or taste the new snack of beverage it triggers their desire to buy.  They can visualise your NPD on their shelves of their stores.

Due to the challenges of COVID and factory/ office closures, I’ve conducted several Brand Kick-Off Meetings where the business has not been able to create or ship physical samples and this has resulted in flat, lacklustre affairs where the buyers were non-committal.  And this is totally understandable since they can’t be expected to make multi-million-pound decisions by just looking at digital images.

Once you have the samples, try to make the experience for the buyers as memorable as possible.  If you are selling a new make-up product, bring in a make-up artist to give your buyer a makeover.  Or if you are selling a new beverage, let your buyers do blind taste-testing.  Pulling out all the stops will leave a visceral lasting impression with your customer and your creativity will pay dividends in the 2024 Range Reviews!

Understand ahead of time which products can and can’t be offered as exclusives.

If you are looking after one of your company’s top 3 customers, it is highly likely that the Brand Teams will have planned exclusives for you to present at the Kick-Off meeting.  However, if this is unclear, then you should gain alignment with the Brand and Sales teams as to which products could be presented as possible exclusives to your customer ahead of time.

Another option to consider is whether any of the NPD presented can be offered to your customer as a “first-to-market” exclusive for a limited time.  Your Buyer will ask you these questions, so it is better to get on the front foot and have answers at the meeting.  Even a “no” is a preferable response than “maybe” since it offers the customer complete clarity, rather than giving them false hope. 

Furthermore, if you are fortunate enough to be able to offer exclusives to your customer, then work with the Customer Marketing Managers to build a plan to show your Buyer how you can execute the exclusives in store.  Similar to physical samples, mock-up images of the exclusive on their shelves with branded shelf barkers or innovative FSDU solutions will tap into their PQ Channel and really bring your plans to life.

Build in time for customer feedback and co-creation.

The best time to receive rich and honest feedback is at the meeting itself, so make sure that you build in enough time in your agenda to have this conversation.  If everything has gone to plan your Buyers will be energised and fully immersed in your brands and the NPD you have showcased. 

If there is negative feedback, rather than taking a defensive mindset to handle possible objections, use this opportunity to get curious and fully explore their respnses.

What do they like about the NPD? What don’t they like about it?

If they don’t like some of the NPD, why is this the case? What changes could be made to improve the proposition for them?

How would they execute the NPD in store and online?

Your Buyers will have fantastic ideas to help you evolve the products or go-to-market strategies.  Note down all this feedback and set to work on then following up with the relevant cross-functions and stakeholders to see what can be actioned before you next meet with your Buyer.

How building Mental Fitness can help you deliver peak performance.

Building your Mental Fitness will help you to manage all the stakeholders whose input is critical to making the Brand Kick-Off Meeting a success.  It will also allow you to be curious and see all the gifts and opportunities which will arise from your customer’s feedback on the day.

As is true of any lasting habit change, this takes at least 6-weeks of intense work.  If you are interested in this game-changing program then take the Positive Intelligence Saboteur Assessment https://www.positiveintelligence.com/saboteurs/ and then book a free 30-minute coaching call with me at https://www.expcoaching.co.uk/ to find out more!