"Sales" - a Misunderstood Role in Consumer Products.

My approach to building partnerships and why cold-outreach is a learned superpower.

Hey there!

I’m currently in Woodstock, NY - staying in a Kindred with our friend’s dog, Happy. Another beautiful home and a great guest experience - I love this app.

I’ve had this article in mind for a few weeks as I’ve interviewed countless candidates for a partnerships role at a consumer products (personal care goods) company. I also try to make myself clear to any new sales (partnerships) hire that I view this role a bit differently from what they might be used to. Let me explain:

Software sales have a notoriously repeatable model that works well for SaaS businesses and can be lucrative for top performers and sales directors. However, it can also be quite lifeless and lack an understanding of how people want to be communicated with. Granted, this is entirely up to the company and the sales department leadership. The model usually involves SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) who are incentivized to book meetings, AEs (Account Executives) who close the deals, and AMs (Account Managers) who manage the relationship over the long run. Sometimes there is a dedicated implementation team, customer success, and sales operations that work to improve processes, decrease churn (losing current customers), and handle other technical aspects of the sales process.

In my opinion, the SDR role is on its way out. Prospecting, lead generation, and getting meetings booked are becoming increasingly automated with AI, and there is an expectation for fewer employees to have more responsibility given the macroeconomic environment. My issue with the model above is that it requires the buyer to be constantly passed off to a new point of contact instead of fostering an authentic, trustworthy human connection. It also incentivizes sales leaders to use a shotgun approach to outreach, hoping to improve close rates by increasing the number of meetings taken. If your sales director is training you on “objection handling” (i.e., how to bother people who say no), rather than finding better-qualified deals, there’s a problem. Either the product is not actually good enough to drive interest, or marketing is not doing a great job of communicating the story in a way that creates desire. This makes the sales role feel increasingly uncomfortable.

The big difference between everything mentioned above and what I do? I’m looking at this from the perspective of selling consumer products, not software. With that comes an opportunity to change the traditional model and have a role that feels more natural, provides more ownership, and fosters honest connections. Let me explain.

In consumer products, I view the sales pipeline as a scenario where there’s a constant group of deals that could be initiated. It’s up to you to find them, communicate clearly, push things forward (kindly), and repeat. That’s a gross oversimplification, but I want to emphasize the importance of ownership. I look for people who are comfortable generating leads, prospecting, doing outreach, closing, and managing their book of business. I build a model with a base pay that is comfortable but with a commission structure that is outstanding and allows people to earn significantly once their book of business gets closer to being filled. Paying people extraordinarily well is easy if the revenue they are bringing in is extraordinarily high.

Eventually, in this role, you will reach a point of critical mass where your book is nearing full, and your time will be mostly focused on account management and less on new business. Everyone has the same 24 hours a day, and eventually, they will reach capacity. I set this up to be a 9-12 month progression and allow people to have their role naturally evolve, preventing stagnation and building confidence and connection. As books get fuller, new hires are in order. This is a scaling model that involves hiring a larger team. The overhead will be high assuming high performance, but so will the new business revenue and recurring revenue. That’s a game of financial modeling for leadership to ensure profitability.

What I’ve described above is not traditional sales. Sure, these deals (which I will get into shortly) are profitable revenue-driving activities for a consumer product brand, but they require project management skills to close. They involve storytelling and crafting a strong narrative. My focus for the past 6 years has been on building partnerships that distribute consumer products to businesses in retail, hospitality, wellness, media, PR, corporate gifting, and more. The size of the deal matters, and I recommend building an efficient self-service process for small and medium-sized orders, with the partnerships role focused on “key” enterprise accounts.

I emphasize project management because when there is a deal on the table worth $100k+, it almost always comes with a set of challenges that need to be solved. Payment terms, inventory forecasting, custom product development/packaging, custom pricing, and approvals can be as demanding as manufacturer visits. These deals often require finance, product development, and operations to get things out the door, and brand creative and marketing to drive home the storytelling and launch.

Trust me, when you're in Asana or Notion managing timelines and pushing people to get their delegated work done, you forget entirely that this is a sale. You’ve become a project manager.

“Distribute” is a great alternative word for “sell,” and “partnership” is another great term for a sale. The word “sales” lacks good brand equity and doesn’t encapsulate the mutually beneficial, storytelling-driven deals I’ve overseen. “Partnerships” do just that. These accounts provide tangible brand touchpoints in consumer products for a company to have its products out in the real world. When a brand exists only DTC (direct-to-consumer) online or on Amazon, they miss out on the places and spaces we visit every day.

So, when you sell a line of products into a hotel property, you’ve just increased your brand awareness by an immeasurable but absolutely substantial amount. The sale (partnership) becomes marketing, which creates a flywheel effect of growth for the brand.

One of the most important things I have failed to mention is believing in the product you are selling (distributing). If you don’t, neither will your buyers. If your goal is to create a mutually beneficial partnership between two businesses (brands), you need to own your end of the deal and provide value. Colors, typography, and placement matter. I believe in products that make you want to buy a new medicine cabinet or redo your living room at a minimum, and buy a new house at a maximum.

I plan on doing a creative direction column intermittently as my desktop has become a puzzle of design inspiration, and I’ll be investing in storytelling-driven marketing (imagery + video content) that invokes the emotions we want to feel and the experiences we wish to have.

Till next time!