IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The Grocery

 

Many food entrepreneurs don’t realize they’re negotiating in the grocery aisles. This episode’s guest is Tim Forrest, a consumer product marketing, branding, and distribution expert with over 30 years of remarkable success. Tim discusses with Christine McKay how small businesses need to place themselves in a position where they have more leverage. Why go to Walmart when you can negotiate in your local neighborhood? Join in the discussion to gain more strategies on negotiation. Don’t miss this episode! 

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here

Negotating In The Grocery Aisles: Strategy For Small Businesses With Tim Forrest

I am very excited and very honored to have Tim Forrest with us. Tim has many years of experience working in consumer-packaged goods and the food industryHe started loading and unloading trucks way back in the day but then he’s worked with some of the largest brands in the worldNestle and Unilever but now he works and has done for the last several years helping smaller businesses get recognized in the food industry and the packaged goods industry. He habeen doing consulting for many years. 

Timwelcome. I am so honored to have you. I’m very excited to have this conversation with you. Thanks for being a guest on the show. 

Thank you so much. I’m expecting to learn something and potentially get some insight from you on negotiating. I’m going to share with you what we do and how it works in the CPG but there are a lot of opportunities for entrepreneurs to do a much better job with negotiations and possibly you can share some insight for them now. 

Fill in the blanks a little about how you went from loading and unloading trucks to working with some of the amazing brands. Your success stories are fantastic. 

Get into a position where you have a lot more leverage when you negotiate.  Click To Tweet

This took many years. I literally went from the loading dock and pushing the hand truck a6:00 AM in the back of a grocery store to being on the corporate jetI’ve got promoted to drive a truck. My first delivery was toa SuperValu group and I ended up on the SuperValu jet twenty years later in my consulting company leading their executive team on how to be smarter with what they are doing in their businessI put together the field trip. It was my deal. I organized it and I led it on their jet with their executive team. 

I have seen almost every piece of the food business and that’s what I do and how I help my clients. It’s that I have been there, done it before in the processes and systems that I worked with the largest food companiesI bring those and share them in a way that food entrepreneurs, smaller enterprises can use and be successful in their negotiations and how to leverage the fact that they are small to their advantage in the negotiations with some of the largest companies in the world, corporations that are retailers. 

I love David and Goliath negotiations. I enjoy working with smaller businesses and helping them negotiate with larger organizations because there are some big differences between doing business with somebody who’s your peer when you are small versus doing business with somebody like a NestleUnileverJohnson Johnson or any of the consumer-packaged goods, not in the food industry. Tell us a little bit more about that. 

You might not recognize there’s any negotiating going on. That’s one of the issues. Many of the food entrepreneurs don’t even realize they are in a negotiationAlso, because you are dealing with a company that has been in business for maybe a hundred years or many decades and they have a developed buying department. The way the structural issues on the purchase process are that there’s no thought or no idea that any negotiations are going on. 

Also, when you think about the food entrepreneur, they are competing with some of the largest companies in the world. How can they as a small company compete? The cards are so stacked against them that there’s no opportunity in that meetingfacetoface to whatyou would think of from like the movies or what I think of when I learn about the work that you do that there’s an opportunity to negotiate. Where’s the negotiation, Tim? What do you mean by negotiation? Have you run into this in other industries? 

lot of companies think that they can’t negotiate. it is one of the classic issues or challenges that smaller businesses haveBig companies will slide a contract across the table and say, “We don’t negotiate.” That’s one scenario. That’s not true. They will negotiate and you better negotiate that contract. Other timesthey will be in a conversation, they won’t recognize that they are negotiating and they will agree to do things that end up in a contract. It’s like, “She said she hato do that.” There was no structured thought to it. 

I find that people are not very effective at being clear about what it is that they want. They get so enamored with the idea of that big account, I’ve got that big deal,” that they forget to think about what’s the cost of servicing that account. What do I have to do operationally to adhere to the contractual requirements and all that? It’s this combination of either not recognizing that they are in a negotiation and then it happens. They agree to something without realizing that it was a negotiation. When the contract arrives, bigger companies are saying, “Just sign it. We don’t negotiate it.” You end up believing it in every industry. I have not seen an industry that doesn’t do that. 

It’s even worse in the food business with retailers because oftentimes, there is no contract. There is no negotiation because there’s no signing. There’s nothing to sign. You do sign some agreements as far as vendor agreements but the actual negotiation for the product is very different. You had on a topic one of the keys that I share with my clients and so often I have been hired multiple times for clients getting ready for a Walmart negotiation. They bring me on and they say, “Timwe need to work with you now. This is important.” We start the process and then by the time we would go through the process of preparing them, they realize, I don’t need to be in this negotiation. I don’t need to work with them as a client. That’s not the right fit for our businesses at this point.” 

That leads to one of the first things that I’m asking or working with my clients. It gets into a position where you are in negotiation, negotiating with someone and you have a lot more leverage. There’s no reason to go to Walmart when you are a very small businessThere are opportunities in your neighborhoodThere are places you can go where you can negotiate. The person you are talking to can make a yes or no decision and is also a financial buyer. Let’s start there and let’sbegin negotiating thereIt can be a different picture in that situation. 

I love that and I say thattooI have worked across a lot of different industries and I see this phenomenon in every industry I have ever worked in, whether it’s financial services, high tax, telecommunications or oiland gas, you name it. It’s on all of them. A lot of my clients do have customers that are upstreamthat are enterprise organizations. You are right. Most of the time, that smaller company shouldn’t be looking at doing business with a big organization. They can but there are a lot of times when there are alternatives in the market that as potential customers that make more sense and aren’t going to be as demanding. 

I was negotiating with British Telecom several years ago. One, their contract is over 100 pages long. Two, they have an operational manual that was referenced in the contract. The operation manual is over 100 pages long. You have to do things like sending the invoice in a very specific format. If you don’t do that, then they can delay payment. The thing is if it’s a producthow you put it in a box and how you label it, they change how you do your processeshow you hire and the type of background checks. It’s a lot. If you are not prepared to do that, don’t go trying to do business with British Telecom. 

IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The Grocery
Negotiating In The Grocery: Many of the food entrepreneurs don’t even realize they’re in a negotiation.

 

It’s the same way with Walmart and any of the largest retailers in America. That’s the exact same situation we deal with from unloading the truck but the beauty is the leverage in the negotiation with these large accounts begins with a smaller account you can negotiate with. You build your power base and your success, then you are beginning to add to the strength you have in the negotiation when you are ready to go to those accounts. That’s howI have negotiated with some of the largest retailers. Externally, when you are not with the retailer and there are so many different things you can do outside of the retailer, that’s when you get there. You are in a much stronger negotiating positionThis is the other piece, much of what I do is want to align the goals of my clientwith the goals of the person we are negotiating with. That’s the way we are going to make things happen when we get alignment. 

The problem is so many entrepreneurs and many people starting, they love what they do. They love their item. They are in love with the product. They are a makerbread baker, granola maker or whatever it isThey love the recipe and the emotion they share with friends and family when they share the product but they are not in a position to think of, “What do I need to do to be in alignment with this retailer? They don’t think in those terms and what the objectives are. They don’t understand the needs of the buyer and the store. There’s no way for them to get in alignment. That’s what I doI help them to get an alignment. 

You hit on a whole lot of things that are valuable to unpack a little bitTimand I know each other because we both have Blair Dunkley, who was on an episode previously asa mentorBlair talks about process versus content. One of the things that I see people do and that you touched on is that people are so enamored with the contentproduct or service that they are offeringwhatever it is. They forget the process aspect of it. How you highlighted what you said was around the negotiation process is a strategic process. Who are all of my customers and how can my customer base create options for me to work with these larger organizations? 

If I have a strategy, that customer acquisition strategy and overarching strategy around X, how does that influence a Walmart, Target or whatever the big box biz that you are trying to get intoYou are right. It’s all about that alignment and that is process-related alignment, not content. You will not ever get alignment on content, you get alignment on the process. Say a little bit more about that because that is a big deal. 

What’s the buyer looking for? I spent a decade with the biggest brands in the world in making presentations and developing marketing programsI was doing it, I knew what I was doing and how to be effective. We were having tremendous success but I didn’t understand the basics. No one ever sat down and said, “This is what we are doing and why we are doing it.” I went along with the programs and then we found successI decided after years of being a consultant and then teaching all my clients where the gaps areI realized I was repeatedly sharing, “We need to do this. We need to add this. We need to think along.” 

I developed my 9 PillarsThere are nine basic gaps that no one hasThere are three things of information that we haveThere are nine buckets of data in three areas, so we had to get the information right on the product. What is it that buyers want to know about your product? There are three basic things there. We need to know about who is your shopper and then how we retail it. The key to the product is innovation. The definition in my industry of innovative may be the same everywhere and a lot of people don’t realize this. Ineeds to serve a unique need in the category. The other piece of that and this is where we have to spend all our time is, there has to be a market. Consumers need to understand they have a need and they are willing to spend money on that innovation. Those are the two pieces. That’s the key. That’s what they are looking for and that will unlock so much of the world for you in these negotiations with big retailers. 

When you build your power base, you build your success.  Click To Tweet

If you can define that and demonstrate thatyou are very clear on what that market isthen you share who the shopper is. Who is your shopper? Who wants to buy this? Who has that problem? Share with them how many of themfrequent their store. There are ways to figure that out and then you share with them the last piece, which is, “That makes sense. Share with us. Tell me what it’s going to do for my store. Have you been successful in other stores? How are you going to drive more shoppers to my store? One time in many years of consulting, a client of mine had this before me, talking to them about a business case. What’s the business case? How much money are they going to make? 

This is the thing that so many entrepreneurs don’t understandI will bring this up. The buyer is looking for these small food entrepreneurs to make them richer, not to make you rich and serving themMany food entrepreneurs don’t understand. They are saying, “Tim, I can sell $8 million. You can sell millions of dollars to these retailers. I’m going to sell $8 million. It’s going to blow my business up or $10 million. My investorsI can pay off my house. I can do all these things with this money.” That’s the wrong way to think about it. The buyer wants to know how you are going to make them rich. That short circuitso many people but that’s the case. Go in there with the idea that you are going to make them rich. Many people have issues when I share that but we have to get over that. That’s really what it’s all about. 

I have had a lot of guests talk about that. Roman Tirone who creates mobile apps talked about that same conceptIt’s like, “How do you make sure that you are making yourclients successful?” I have had people talk to me, “You mean I have to think about my counterpart in a negotiation?” When I heard that, I was shocked by it. I don’t know why I was shocked by it because very rarely do people spend enough time getting clear on themselves, let alone being clear on their counterparts. That’s something that I talk about when I’m speaking. It’s making sure that you are clear on what you want and what’s important to you. Also, spend time to get clear on what you think that your counterpart needs to be successful. That is where the negotiation is. 

It’s figuring out that overlap, which is why the show is called In The Venn Zone because that overlap is the Venn Zone. That is where agreement exists. It’s in that interconnectivity. That part where the V on my logo. For those who can’t see my logo, there are a threecircle Venn diagram with a V underneath it. The Venn Zone is that V. That’s what you were talking about. Making sure that you find out by doing the business case. It is always astonishing to me how few people understand their numbers deeply enough to be able to negotiate effectively. Scott O’Neil, who is the CEO of a company that owns the Philadelphia 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, says, “You’ve got to do the work. 

With our business, there are a couple of numbers that if you understand the buyer and the field that you are playing on, you can share a couple of numbers and almost cut through all the discussion, negotiations and they go straight to yes. That’s how important it is to understand your numbers. Christine, I want to ask you. If I’m a food entrepreneur and I’m going to have what I think is the negotiation of my life or the presentation of my life but I think it’s a sales presentation, I’m going to go sell my product to this incredible company. It’s going to make our business. I’m going to have to hire more employees, find more money, have more resources and make more money than I ever have, how would you organize it from your training and sharing with the other clients? What would be the process for them to think about negotiating and going into this process? I guess from a step method, your vision of how that would be organized and what the steps are? 

As I said, the first step is getting clear on what you want and what you need which is making sure that you are delineating between those two because they are not the same. You asked for what you want, but you better know what you need. That comes to having a detailed understanding of what drives your numbers. I have gone into so many negotiations on behalf of clients that they have no idea of their numbers. They were like, “My sales are this. What does it cost to get to those sales, not just the cost of goods sold? What are all your operating costs? What is your profit on your products? 

Go down to that level of detail because the more detail you have about what drives your numbers, the more you can figure out how you can play. Where can I play with the price overall? I would say, the price is output. It should be an output of a negotiation, not the input. Most people, when they were selling and thinking price, they were not thinking about what are all the inputs to price because it’s the inputs that you can negotiate. Maybe you do something different in your manufacturing process or you have the ability to do something different that changes yourprice dynamic, which gives you flexibility when you are negotiating. 

IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The Grocery
Negotiating In The Grocery: When you don’t understand the store’s needs, there’s no way for you to get in alignment.

 

It’s understanding detailed level of what your numbers are, figuring out what you can do and what the options are for you to improve your profitability and then it’s researching the living daylights out of your counterpart. When I say counterpart, I mean company and personYou are never negotiating with a company. You are always negotiating with a person, unless you are with Walmartalthough I have never negotiated with Walmart. My understanding is they try to make it so that it’s very difficult to build a relationship with their buyers. That creates leverage. 

I have a friend who does negotiate with Walmart and he loves negotiating with Walmart because he’s like, “They switch their negotiators out all the time. Their buyers change quickly because they don’t want you to have a relationship. Guess what? They lose institutional knowledge when that happensI can bring up crap that I brought up years ago because they keep changing them. He’s like, “That’s okayI’m good with it.” It’s also understanding what doing a lot of research on your counterpart and reading their press releases. Ithey are publicreading their financial statements, analyst reports, what’s going on in the industry, what isthe CEO, what’s the company saying to the public, what messages are they trying to convey, how have those messages changed over time and reading their financial reports. Do they have contingent liabilities? What does that mean? 

I’m very dataoriented because I’m looking for clues. I’m looking for the information that tells me where does, what I offerwhat I do and what I bring to the table match? Where is that Venn Zone? What is that overlap where we have common ground? How can I craft my message to leverage that, to meet thatThat’s where the start of the negotiation happens. That’s the first thingJosh Weiss, who is a professor at Harvard Program on Negotiation, was on the show. He said, If you break negotiation out into three main steps, preparation, engagement and implementation, 70% of the work effort is in preparation. I agree 100% of that. Seventy percent of it is preparation and very few people are effective at preparing in a detailed enough way. When you prepare at a deep level of detail, you create options for yourself in the conversation of negotiation because negotiation is a conversation about a relationship. You cannot run a relationship but you can get more value out of itWhen you are prepared, it gives you the ability to be resourceful in that conversation. It changes the dynamic of the conversation and the relationship overall. 

That’s tremendous. Thank you. 

You and I have a lot of things in common in terms of our negotiation styleHow is your approach similar or different from that? 

The buyer wants to know how you're going to make them rich. Click To Tweet

I agree with you but the preparation that you just discussed is very important. You have to do the preparation. The preparation for my clients includes a lot of action. A lot of work outside of preparing for the call. You need to take action in the market and do a lot of things that you want to impact that person that you are negotiating with before you get into the room. That’s a lot of the work that I doI don’t want to say it’s pressure but what actions can I take that are going to impact the individual I’m going to negotiate with before I even enter the room? I do a lot of work there. 

Some of the things some people might think are odd or would maybe not do butif the executive lives in a certain area, why not buy advertising for that community on cable television in that particular area? Which we have done. Why not buy a billboard that is seen by all the executives that go to work in the offices? I have done things like that. Why not be in their competitors? Have incredible displays and work very well with their competitors and be very successful. I’m not saying you should do every time or that’s part of every negotiation but that is part of being successful in these higher-level negotiations in this industry. You’ve got to be very strategic. 

How you design your packaging, the promotions that you do, all the communication, the way that you work with shoppers and consumers and you want to have a relationship. I want to have a relationship, not only with the person I’m negotiating with but other employees within the company. Store managers, for instanceI want to have relationships with them. How can I impact them? way to do that is to impact their shoppersI want to have relationships with their shoppers before I go into that meeting oftentimes. 

These are some of the things that my clients do that have helped them to be so successful. That’s why they have been able to do the things they do. We outlined my 9 PillarsI have a client from Montana, when they discovered this way to negotiate with retailers, they had only been able to grow to 100 stores. This was in December of 2019COVID happened in 2020. They discovered in December when we did their entire presentation, we did their whole strategy on how they think about marketing going to the client. I2021, they are in over 2,000 stores. 

That’s an incredible success story. 

The company is Plant Perks. They have a fantastic product and team. They have done a fantastic job. To go into 2,000 stores is a heck of a lot of workI’m very fortunate that they credit the 9 Pillars and the negotiation style that we have been talking about that changed how they thought about the business, able to go in and work and provide value. What they are doing is they are supplying value. We don’t necessarily call it and I don’t frame it as a negotiation. I share it as adding value. We are adding value and we are able to make things happen. They have increased the value of their business by millions of dollars by using this technique of negotiation. 

That’s phenomenal. One of the guests that I have had on the show beforeBrenda Sterling Meyers. She owns Sterling Tea. She iout of Texas and she was telling the story of how she used to be in Whole Foods and a couple of other big brands. She wastill in some stores. It gave her some credibility in the market but she did not enjoy that experience. She found it very frustrating. She would have to sell at the store leveland then she would have to stock the shelves. She was spending all her weekends driving to stock the shelves and that got super frustrating for her. You commented when we talked before about some of thedemeanor of how intimidating some people can be in the negotiation in the consumer-packaged goods space. I have seen thattoo. I have had people throw things at me and call me all sorts of names andwhatever. 

IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The Grocery
Negotiating In The Grocery: You need to do many things that will impact the person you’re negotiating with before you get into the room.

 

I have so many people who have been on the show. Nick Yousif is getting ready to launch a new chocolate product, like a competitor to Nutella as a chocolate spreadMany people have these food ideas. You had told melike, “Don’t go there.” My husband has the best Bloody Mary mix on the planet and it’s so good. We ship it to friends all over the place and you were like, “Don’t worry about getting into a store. Tell us a little bit about if somebody is thinking about doing a food product, what are some of the things that they need to be thinking about if they are starting out? 

I get this off from so many people. The first thing you need to think about is the food business and food is so fun. I worked with Keebler cookies. I figured out it’s a long story but I was able to open up the Saudi Arabia grocery market for themI put that together many years ago. That was the start of my international work. The dynamics of the business are so different. That’s what I want to share with you. They are so different from sharing food. When I was on an airplane, if I had samples with me of Keebler cookies,I could share those samples at the airport. Iwouldn’t be unusual that I could get moved up to firstclass if there was an available seat back then. To be able to share samples and give out cookies., people love you. 

Anytime you are at the lake, on vacation, sporting event or a party at your homeyou prepare fresh food, fresh ingredients and serve it warm and fresh. Everyone is in a great mood. They are going to love it. It’s an exciting time. It’s that emotion is so fun. It fills me with so much joy to be a part of food but that’s not the food business. The food business is a whole different ballgame. For instance, at times, I have gone years with buyers and they have never tasted my product. They don’t care how it tastes. They are not excited about it for the most part. It wasn’t until I dealt with a retailer that did care about the taste that I realized that earlier in my career, all these buyers weren’t tasting my product. They were looking at something totally different. They were interested in the business. The business and the dollars behind the food products. 

First off, you have to understand that the fun aspect, the wonderful aspect that we love so much about food, is different from the food business. We need to understand that first. The second thing is we want to share and I want to share with people. Go ahead, share your food. I hope someday to have a gift of your product from your husband. Send me the Bloody Mary mix. My wife Tracy loves Bloody Mary. I will look forward to that. 

Now, the second piece of that and this is what I always share with people is begin to sell it even if you have your friends and family pay for the ingredients. Get some money for the productThat’s the question, Are they going to? I know that I have family members, their cakes are so good that people will, “Please make me a cake. Here’s the money.” You can learn about that. If your friends and family aren’t going to pay for your product or you can’t find someone, if you can’t sell the product for any amount of money, then there’s no business there. There’s a reason. They are getting it somewhere else. They don’t want to pay you for it. It’s more convenient for them to pick it up at the local Safeway than it is to deal with you. The quality is not that big a difference. They can get it for half the price, wherever the local bakery. Begin to sell the product. 

You need to have a relationship, not only with the person you're negotiating with but also with the other employees within the company. Click To Tweet

Once you understandand you realize there may be some interest there, then you can start thinking about, “Is it really innovative and are people willing to pay for it? That’s the nugget. That little spark. If that’s there, then we can do millions of dollarsI have taken multiple clients of mine from non-revenue to over a million dollars in revenue by understanding that spark and being able to expand it and go forward. That’s the key. That is the difference between sharingyour food with people that we love to dothinking about the food business, and then exchanging that value for money. That’s the beginning of it. That’s what leads to everything. 

Especially with food, I love my husband’s Bloody Mary mixed drink. There are certain foods that I make that I love to make and I love to share them. I make great fried chicken and people love my fried chicken. Am I going to go into business to make fried chicken? No. People don’t eat enough of it. The business isn’t there. I love how you say that. You can love the product but is there a business in that product? Is somebody going to buy it? Is it going to have an appeal? Is there a business case for it? That’s fantastic. 

Our whole conversation was about negotiations. You’ve got to know your numbers for the negotiations and unfortunately, that’s the businessI share this all the time. My friend, Wally Amos, is in the cookie business as wellWally taught me this. We were working on a project together and he shared it with me, I don’t know how it came up but he said to me, Tim, I don’t need a recipe. That’s what he said and he gave me the recipe. He created Famous Amos cookies. He gave me the recipe to Famous Amos that he started the company with Helen Reddy. 

I don’t know if you know this but he was an agent in Hollywood, with William Morris Agency, the first black agent with William MorrisHe has had some very famous clients. Helen Reddy was one of his clients. She ended up donating money for him to start his company. Every time he went to a meeting, he brought his cookies. They would start a meeting out where you are without him having his cookie, so he started Famous Amos. He said, Tim, I don’t need a recipe to startjust need a cookie to promote. You can give me any cookie and I can promote it. 

What he was saying is, I can build a business around any cookie. There are limits to thatI grant that but it’s not about the recipe. You don’t build a business on a recipe. That’s what so many people don’t understand. The food business is not built on recipes. It’s built on what you shared earlier, the business case. Although, there is an entry point. You have to have the right recipe. It does have to be there but every successful one does have a key recipe. 

You can get amazing recipes offlineYou can go and search on Food Network, Delish or whatever and get great recipes. You can do something. Is there something that you can do with it that then is there a market for it? 

IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The Grocery
Negotiating In The Grocery: The food business is not built on recipes. It’s built on a business case.

 

Wally did everything that we talked about. Everything that we spent our time talking about. He did influence those buyers before he came into the meeting. He’s in the Smithsonian Institution for the work that he did before he went in these negotiations with buyers. They almost had to buy because he did all the work ahead of time and the meeting was just a formality to being on the shelf for the most part. 

That’s a very effective preparation for the negotiation where it becomes the yes. Negotiation is a series of yeses. It’s an accumulation of yeses if you can get the yeses before you even walk in the door and sit at the table. Once you are sitting at the tablethat final yes is so much easier to get and to accomplish. 

I have enjoyed talking with youChristine. I hope it has been valuable for you. 

This has been great. I appreciate the time and special gifts that you gave us, which is Ali. To everybody who’s reading, you are going to want to check a special episode that speaks to some of the volunteer work and philanthropy work that Tim does. We will drop that little nuggetat a separate time, so check it out. 

I’m proud of 2020 and thanks to Blair. Before I met Blair, Tim Forrest Consulting had never financially donated to any opportunities. We had been donating our time and efforts. There habeen a lot of work but it wasn’t until one of the things that we are passionate about is fighting child labor. In CalcuttaIndia, I want to credit Blair in a lot of this. We decided to go ahead andbegin to fund some of the work that we are doing. We have been able to fund, in 2020, 100% scholarships for kids that had never gone to school before that can go to school for the first time. Their scholarships are in the form, if you can believeis an internship so they can attend school. If they weren’t working, their family wouldn’t be able to attendnot only attend school and they can’t afford school, they can’t even afford for the child not to work. We have been able to do that. Our goal is 100 students in the next few years. That’s what we are working towards. 

In the middle of all of this, I met Ali. I’m amazed and impressedI have developed a friendship with Ali. You can imagine with nothing. Hread Tony Robbins’s book years ago, no school, no resources. Literally, at times, he only has two pens. He created a school. He teaches hundreds of students and with no resources. The UN has given him several awardsI’m so impressed with him, like so muchI’m impressed with the folks in Calcutta, India as well. 

The work that you are doing there in Indonesia and India is remarkable. They are both special parts of the world for me and it’s amazing the work that you are doing there. Tim, how can people find you? 

It’s really simple, TimForrest.com. You can go there and if you want to talk to me or ask any questions, there’s a link there to set up a call and we can talk about your product. If you have an innovative product and you feel confident about the future, I’m happy to talk with you about the product and see if there’s an opportunity or answer any questions. That’s the easiest. I do take a lot of pictures of the ocean, so there’s Island SunrisesIf you go to IslandSunrises.com, you can see some of my pictures. If you want to send me a note, you can send Tim@TimForrest.com as well and I can answer an email. 

Did you have a gift for the audience? 

Add value and make things happen. Click To Tweet

We have been talking fast and quickly about this but I’m happy to send you two gifts. I’m going to send you the Eight Steps To Negotiating with bigretailers and then I’m going to send you my 9 Pillars. That’s two. It’s an outline of the eight steps and then I will send you an outline of the 8 Pillars as well. The eight steps incorporate 9 Pillars into it. All you have to do is go to TimForrest.com and say Eight Steps To Negotiations. The link will be down below. I know that’s the link, TimForrest.com/8steps. 

Tim, it has been a fantastic conversation with you. I have enjoyed it. Thank you very much for being a guest on the show. 

I appreciate it. I had no idea was going to be this moved and this excited during our callI loved itI enjoyed spending time with you as wellChristine. Thank you so much. 

Thank you and to everybody reading, we appreciate you. Thank you for gifting us your time. Remember, negotiation is a conversation about a relationship and you cannot win a relationship but you can get more value out of it. Happy negotiating. Check this out again on Venn.Zone. Subscribe, rate, review and all that good stuff and we will see you on the next episode of In The Venn Zone. Have a great day, everyone. 

Bye. Thank you. 

Important Links: 

About Tim Forrest

IVZ 36 Tim Forrest | Negotiating In The GroceryTim is a consumer product marketing, branding and distribution expert. With over 30 years of remarkable success, he alone has generated over $700 million in new product sales.

He knows the food industry like no one else.

He transforms businesses through his deep understanding of the entire food business channel, excellence in marketing, Tim’s proprietary 9 pillars buyer sales presentation, branding, market research, business and sales innovation. With a highly successful career based on win-win relationships, Tim Forrest connects clients with opportunity and growth.

Tim launched Keebler Cookies into Saudia Arabia almost two decades ago. He is well known internationally. His years of innovative marketing, 100’s of millions in new sales and international consulting experience have made him nothing short of an institution.

He knows the North American Consumer Products industry like no one else and is a master at helping companies create and extend their brand success and profitability in this complex environment. Building markets for Nestle, Unilever, the famous Mr. Wally Amos cookies, as well as smaller food entrepreneurs, his clients share insight into:

  • How Tim’s creativity doubled their sales volumes
  • Developed ‘sell out’ consumer programs
  • Catapulted them into international markets
  • Along with leading a record 20 vendors into the club channel
  • 10 items onto QVC Television
  • Introducing food companies to DISNEY and WALMART
  • Just recently pioneered one of the world’s largest Organic product launches

Tim lives in Florida with his family, including triplet 17-year-olds. He enjoys activities with them and seascape photography.

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://venn.zone/