You have a good product. You know it. Your customers know it. And yet, your retail sales are not growing as fast as they should.
You are not alone. Dozens of Mexican brands with competitive products, investment capacity, and years of experience still fail to grow in the country's most important retail chains — not for lack of product, but for lack of commercial strategy.
At Alkimia Comercial, we have been helping brands sell more in retail for over 25 years. And after working with hundreds of companies, we identify the same mistakes over and over again. Mistakes that can be corrected, but that are costly if not detected in time.
Error 1: Entering retail without a correct pricing strategy
The most costly mistake brands make when trying to grow in retail doesn't happen on the shelf — it happens before reaching it.
Many companies calculate their selling price based on the margin they want to earn, without considering the full chain of margins that retail demands: the distributor's margin, the chain's margin, shelf investments, mandatory promotions, and volume discounts. The result: they enter the chain, place their product, and three months later discover they are selling at a loss or that the consumer price has left them out of the market.
What to do: before negotiating with any chain, you need a financial model that works the price backward — starting from the consumer price the market accepts, down to the price at which you can sell and remain profitable.
Error 2: Confusing 'being on the shelf' with 'selling'
Getting a chain to list you is just the first step. The mistake many brands make when trying to grow in retail is believing that the job is over there.
Entering Walmart, Soriana, Chedraui, or any self-service chain does not guarantee sales. What guarantees sales is execution at the point of sale: the product in the right place, with the right display, at the right price, with the appropriate POP material and with constant replenishment. Without execution on the sales floor, your product occupies warehouse space, not the consumer's mind. And chains have no patience with products that don't move.
What to do: from day one of your entry into retail, you need a point-of-sale execution plan with clear indicators of turnover, coverage, and presence. If you don't have the sales force to do it, outsource it.
Error 3: Negotiating with chains without knowing the rules of the game
Large retail chains in Mexico have professional buyers who negotiate every day. Most brands that want to enter retail or increase their sales in chains arrive at these negotiations without experience, without data, and without knowing the unwritten codes of the process.
The usual result: unfavorable conditions, agreements signed with enthusiasm that later become a financial burden — excessive chargebacks, mandatory support, penalties for shortages, payment terms that suffocate cash flow.
What to do: arrive at the negotiation with an advisor who knows the buyers, who knows what can and cannot be negotiated, and who has been in that seat before. Experience at the negotiation table is worth more than any PowerPoint presentation.
Error 4: Not having a Key Account Manager dedicated to your key accounts
One of the most frequent reasons why brands fail to increase their retail sales is that no one is truly managing the relationship with the chain after entry.
The Key Account Manager (KAM) is not a salesperson. They are responsible for growing the relationship with the chain: detecting expansion opportunities, solving problems before they become penalties, negotiating additional spaces, managing promotions, and ensuring that agreements are met. Without a dedicated KAM, your retail account is managed reactively — only when there is a problem. And in retail, when the problem is already visible, it has already cost money.
What to do: assign a KAM with real retail experience for each key account. If you don't have the budget to hire internally, commercial outsourcing is an efficient and proven alternative.
Error 5: Operating with a commercial structure designed for another channel
Many Mexican companies built their sales force to serve small grocery stores, direct customers, or regional distributors. When they decide to grow in modern retail — self-service, price clubs, pharmacies, convenience stores — they try to do so with the same structure. It doesn't work.
Modern retail requires different processes, systems, language, and skills: EDI management, planograms, inventory management by category, sell-out vs. sell-in analysis. Operating with the wrong structure is one of the main brakes on growing in retail, even if the product is competitive.
What to do: before scaling in retail, audit your commercial structure. Identify what capabilities you have and what you need. Sometimes the most efficient solution is not to build the team internally, but to integrate with a partner who already has that infrastructure.
How many of these errors is your company making today?
If you identified with one or more of these points, it does not mean that your brand has no future in retail. It means that there are concrete opportunities for improvement that, well executed, can translate into significant growth in your chain sales.
At Alkimia Comercial, we work as an extension of your commercial team. We don't just tell you what's failing — we correct it with you from the inside.
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