Marketplace Series: Pitching Sellers

Sellers are the lifeblood of the modern marketplace.

The quality of the catalogue determines the quality of the offering … meaning the marketplaces with the greatest ability to onboard high-quality sellers will be those with a durable competitive advantage.

Being able to paint a vision of the marketplace you’re building and capturing seller interest ensures that you will offer the best-possible brands to your end customers.

The best way to capture seller interest is through describing the essence of the opportunity through a pitch deck. An excellent pitch deck covers two main areas: the opportunity itself and the operations involved.

As part of our series on seller enablement, this article will outline what constitutes an effective seller pitch deck. The individual components will be discussed and a sample template is available for download at the bottom of the article.

The Opportunity

The main purpose of the pitch deck is to communicate the opportunity you are offering and the benefits it will provide to the seller’s own business.

Communicating the opportunity comes down to describing the “why, what, and how” of the marketplace.

The “Why”

The core purpose of your marketplace. What separates your channel from all of the others competing for this seller’s resources? What unique need do you satisfy in the market?

The “What”

What does your marketplace actually do? Most often this slide details the curation of the catalogue and the and the way this brings value to the end-customer.

The “Who”

Describe your marketplaces ideal customer profile. This helps the seller confirm whether their brand and products are relevant to your audience.

The “How”

A major determinant in whether your marketplace will succeed is your ability to drive relevant traffic towards it. The How slide focuses on the ways you will drive customer engagement across your full spectrum of marketing channels.

Other Opportunities

Any retailer that offers multiple channels or opportunities to drive sales becomes increasingly compelling to sellers. Highlighting complimentary channels (an additional smaller curation, a warehouse sale outlet) increases the sales potential for your sellers.

The Operations

After the opportunity has been framed, it is time to provide details around what the seller’s onboarding experience will involve. This should give an introductory view into how the marketplace will function and conclude by prompting the seller to begin onboarding.

4 Steps to Sales

How does a seller go from listing to getting paid for a sale of their products? A 4-step description of what the sales process looks like helps the seller visualize the steps involved in setting up and turning a profit. By describing this process is a simple manner, you can preempt common questions on when payouts are triggered

Getting Connected

Provide a high-level description of the onboarding flow so that this point of contact can describe the syncing process to any of their team members. Keep this description high-level as more granular details can be provided in the enablement guide.

Pricing

Any seller receiving a pitch deck to join a marketplace will be wondering what the costs will be for them to list on the channel. Depending on your business model, the pricing slide could contain one-time onboarding charges, details on minimum margin requirements, annual listing fees, and more.

Call-to-Action

The final slide of the deck needs to be a straightforward prompt to either contact the marketplace team or begin the onboarding process itself.

Final Thoughts

Your relationship to new sellers begins with your initial contact and the pitch deck you send them that frames the opportunity. Providing a clear picture of the opportunity, the potential benefits, and a path to getting started, all ensure that your sellers understand your mission and will be eager to join you.

To help tie this together, a sample pitch deck can be downloaded from this link.