Are Your Prospects Eating Palatable Snacks?

I giggled at a piece I read this week. All about getting picky toddlers to eat ‘properly’. I’ve come across similar ideas before. In my free ebook on new product selling I wrote five years ago now, there’s Pitfall 4: Accepting Neophobia; having a plan for when people instinctively, and repeatedly, say no.

Ideas there were influence in part by experiments on how to get youngsters readily eating their veg. In various studies, plates of crudités were left lying around. Kids took anywhere in the range between around 5 and 20 times to be asked to feed on them before, eventually, they willingly grabbed them unprompted. Apparently forever converted to the winning ways of greens.

This article quoted dietician Ellyn Satter.

I liked the concept of ‘palatable snacks’. “Smash and grab” food is perhaps a more commonplace name. The kind of easy-to-consume generally less-than-healthy fayre that includes anything from crisps to chocolate bars to biscuits and beyond.

It’s evidently best not to have multitudes of these lying around.

Then when you combine that with the view that snacking itself is a no-no, and you should remind fussy young diners that there’ll be nothing until the next meal if they claim not feeling hungry, I sense you’ve decent insight into the lack of enthusiasm your prospect tends to display towards your excited fresh pitch.

Whilst this applies to any product, thinking of a genuinely new product pitch, then as with many a ‘new’ item, they may well be able to live their life without it.

If that is because they are in an environment where they can snack between meals then you too will struggle to get any adoption.

Sometimes, it is not just the replacement of one product with another. You may also need to contend with the ‘snacks’ they may be devouring.

People will often prefer to keep spending supposedly small amounts on upkeep or add-ons or complimentary items rather than take on the supersession. Especially considering any official procurement process and sign-off and hassle. Are you aware that their cupboard may well be stocked with such sweets?

It’s truly a hard sell if you’re trying to change what they eat every day. Harder still if you don’t realise there’s a load of snacking between meals going on behind your back.

Do you know what ‘palatable snacking’ may be hurting your more nutritious sale?