Planograms as a selling tool for brokers and distributors

The problem, in the words we usually hear

"I rep a dozen brands and none of them send me decent shelf visuals." "The retailer wants to see where this goes before they'll talk about it." "A brand asked what their product would look like in this account and I had a phone photo."

A broker's time is split across many brands and many accounts. Custom visuals for each call are rarely practical to produce in-house, so most calls fall back on sell sheets and store photos. Those do not show a retailer what a new item does to their set, or show a brand what an account's shelf really looks like.

How the work runs in an engagement

Broker work tends to follow a repeatable pattern, because the same portfolio is being placed across different accounts:

• Portfolio item list with dimensions and pack images for each brand you represent
• Account details for each target retailer: fixture type, section width, photos of the current set
• The ask: a new listing, more facings, a secondary placement or a reset
• Velocity data if the brand or account can share it

Planogrammer is not self-serve software. GOODS consultants build the sets inside a consulting engagement, so the inputs go to a person who asks follow-up questions rather than a form that silently accepts whatever it is given.

Once a portfolio is modelled, those products can be reused across accounts, so each new call starts from an existing library rather than from scratch.

What the deliverable looks like

For a retailer call: renders of the account's set with the brand placed where you propose, and a before-and-after if space is moving. Schematic shells can mark the space each item would take, which helps a retailer see exactly what changes.

For a brand conversation: renders of the brand in a specific account's set, showing the neighbours and the likely position. Either version can be shared as a password-protected link, and the published viewer lets the other side explore the shelf and even suggest a rearrangement, which is returned as a proposal rather than an edit.

Why it matters for a broker

A broker's value is knowing both sides: what the retailer needs from the category, and what the brand can deliver. A visual that shows both at once makes that knowledge concrete. It also shortens the gap between a first conversation and a decision, because the retailer does not have to imagine the change or wait for the brand to produce something.

For GOODS, this is a tool that brokers and referral partners actively use on their own calls, not a deliverable they wait for.

It also helps with consistency. When every brand in a portfolio is presented the same way, with the same level of detail and the same honest treatment of the competitive set, retailers learn what to expect from a broker's proposals and can compare them more easily.

Related work

Broker visuals often become a full buyer presentation once a retailer is interested, and a reset proposal once the change is agreed. Brokers working trade programmes also use promotional display mockups for secondary placements.