Sending samples to distributors and modern trade buyers without wasting stock

A sample is stock you spend to get a decision. If the buyer gets it with no note, no date and no question to answer, it is a gift and will be treated like one. Send each sample with a card that says what it is, what you want the buyer to decide and the day you will call. Log every one, and later count how many turned into orders.

Who deserves a sample

Not everyone who asks. A buyer who writes "send samples" with no company name, no town and no description of the shop is a collector, not a prospect. Before you send, ask three things:

• Do they buy in your category today, and from whom?
• Can they decide, or do they pass it to someone else?
• If they like it, what is the smallest order they would place?

If the answers are vague, offer a price sheet and photographs first. If they are clear, send a sample. For requests that threaten your margin, the post on handling a sample request without giving away your margin sets out the rule on who pays.

What goes in the box

• One unit of each pack you want listed. Not the whole range, which tends to stay in the carton.
• A card with your name, number, product list, the trade price sheet and the date you will call.
• A single question on the card: "After trying it, will you list it, hold it for review, or pass?"
• Where the buyer may share it, a second unit for the person who actually decides.

Modern trade buyers, such as a supermarket chain's category buyer, often work from a vendor form, so ask what documents they want sent with or after the sample. Distributors usually care more about the margin sheet than the item itself. Write the card for the person who opens the box, not the person you met.

Keep a sample register

A spreadsheet is enough. Without one, you will not know which sample went where, or whether the follow-up happened.

Every row has a date to call and a question. Fill the outcome column honestly, including "no reply". After a few dozen rows you will see which kinds of buyer convert and which merely collect.

The follow-up call

Call on the date on the card, not when you remember. Ask the question you wrote down. If the answer is "not tried yet", ask what day to call again and write it down. If it is "we liked it, send rates", send the sheet that day. If it is a no, ask why in a single question and record it; the reasons are the most useful data in the register. Our note on what to send after a sample board or demo covers the message that follows the call.

Decide in advance when you stop. A buyer who has not answered after the sample, a call and a reminder is telling you something, and the number of tries is yours to choose. Close the row and spend the stock elsewhere.

When not to send a sample

Skip it when a photograph and a price sheet will answer the buyer's doubt, such as colour range or pack design. Skip it when the product is perishable or its rules differ by state and body; ask the buyer what they need and check requirements with your own adviser. Skip it for buyers who have asked three times and ordered nothing. And skip it if you cannot afford to lose the stock, because some samples will not convert and that is normal.

For example: a tawa maker and eight distributors

Imagine an invented maker of cast-iron tawas in Tamil Nadu. Each pan is heavy, so a courier parcel of three pans to a distributor costs about ₹700, nearly as much as the pans. The maker sends three each to eight distributors across Maharashtra, with a note saying "please try". Five reply "nice", one asks for rates and two say nothing. Nobody has recorded where the pans went, so months later the maker cannot say which town liked what.

On the next round the maker writes the register first, then sends one pan to a distributor in Aurangabad, the 10-inch size that sells best. The card reads: "Tell me by the 14th whether to list this size, and what margin you need." The trade price sheet is in the box. On the 14th the maker calls.

The distributor likes the pan but says the retailers sell at a price where the margin is a rupee short. The maker revises the margin on that one size, offers the 8-inch as a lighter second line, and gets a trial order for both, though only for one carton of each, smaller than the eight parcels the first round would have needed to reach the same result.

Free sample or paid sample?

Decide this once, in writing. A common split is that a single unit to a buyer who passed the three questions goes free, a second or third unit goes at trade price, and a sample asked for by someone who cannot say what they buy is not sent at all. Where you charge, say it is refunded against the first order, so it reads as a deposit and not a toll.

Cost the sample as marketing

Add up the cost of each sample with packing and courier, then divide by the number of buyers who listed you. That figure is what one listing costs in stock. An illustration, with made-up figures: if forty samples cost ₹20,000 in all and four buyers listed you, a listing cost ₹5,000. If a listed distributor then orders ₹40,000 of stock in a year at a gross margin of ₹10,000, the listing paid for itself once over. If the same distributor orders ₹8,000 and stops, it did not.

Before the next parcel leaves, open a sheet, copy the register columns above and fill in the three samples you sent last. If you cannot say who decides or when you will call, that is the gap. Makers of everyday goods will find the wider picture on our consumer products manufacturing sales and marketing page. For the follow-up side, lead response and follow-up is the service, and you can tell us what you need.