I sent you this chapter. Reply on LinkedIn or by email.
Before a buyer meeting, use what marketing already knows about thousands of customers. It’s the preparation most founders skip, and the evidence buyers trust most.
A founder going into a buyer meeting usually prepares a deck about the brand. The buyer wants evidence that the product will sell in their stores, to their customers. A DTC brand has more of that evidence than almost any supplier, and rarely brings it.
Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow (2010), built on research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, argues that brands grow mainly by winning more buyers, most of them occasional, and that marketing builds two things: mental availability, being easy to think of when buying, and physical availability, being easy to find and buy Published. His evidence comes mostly from repeat-bought consumer categories, and his claims about loyalty and targeting are still argued over. But the frame fits the buyer meeting. The retailer sells you physical availability, its shelves, and wants to know whether you bring mental availability: customers who will look for you there.
| Source | What it tells the buyer | How to show it |
|---|---|---|
| Orders by ZIP code | You already have customers near their stores | A count of customers within reach of their locations |
| Repeat rate | People come back, so shelf space earns more than once | Share of customers who order again within your usual window (The Second Order) |
| Reviews | Why people buy, in their words, and what they complain about | Three quotes and the rating spread, not just the average |
| Return reasons | The problem the buyer will inherit | The rate and the top reason, with what you’ve done about it |
| Search and site data | People look for you by name | Branded search trend; top questions asked on your site |
| Existing stockists | Sell-through in a store like theirs | Units per store per week, and the price you sold at |
| The message map | Why your customers choose you over the category | The top reason customers give, in their words |
Bring the weak numbers too, with an answer, as chapter 8 recommends. A founder who raised the return rate and explained it is more believable about everything else.
The same data gives you the point of view from chapter 4: which pack sizes first-time buyers choose, which product brings people back, which season spikes. One true finding about their business beats a slide of logos.
Buyers check, and the Gartner figure in the note at the front says they often find the two disagree. Before the meeting, read your own site as the buyer will: prices, pack sizes, claims, where else you’re sold. If your deck says one thing and your site another, fix one of them before you walk in.
Want to answer the note that sent you here? Reply on LinkedIn or by email.
If this is your store
The free Klaviyo audit reads your own account and scores it. Start with your store’s address. A read-only key gets the full report.
Written by Andrew Lauchner, a growth and retention operator for consumer brands. The paid work is one ninety-day Sprint.
This is one chapter of One to Many, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.