Lunch presentations have long been a part of the B2B sales process. A meal has often been a tool to secure meetings with hard-to-reach decision makers. When the pandemic hit and in-person meetings were cancelled, B2B sales and marketing professionals had to instantly pivot strategies. Without the experiential field marketing experiences teams relied on delivering, it was suddenly significantly more challenging to break through the noise to secure sales meetings.
One Grubhub Corporate Account client, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a leader in science-based pet nutrition and a part of Colgate-Palmolive, was in this exact situation. Before COVID, the lunch and learn model was core to educating their sales leads, i.e. veterinarians or pet shop employees referred to as “recommenders”, when it came to new products and innovations. Time with their recommenders and their time with the consumers has been severely reduced. This challenge introduced a need to figure out new ways to attract and engage their recommenders.
Enter Grubhub Corporate
In a crucial time for the business, Hill’s Pet Nutrition was able to use their Grubhub Corporate Account to essentially replace and redefine the classic lunch and learn. Whether they are virtually meeting with buyers at other corporate headquarters or veterinarians at the hospital level, they provide meals for their key decision makers to enjoy while they discuss innovation and business anywhere in the country. Dr. Andrew Hanger, the National Business Account Manager at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, shared with us a good example of this use case. He invited all of his customer’s incoming veterinary interns to a virtual welcome dinner where he shared a tailored educational presentation and a delicious meal. This VIP experience really helped him capture the attention of his potential recommenders and share his pitch.
Measuring Success
In a recommender/influencer model, Hill’s Pet Nutrition cannot measure success on sales figures alone, though it’s a variable. Rather, they measure success based on the number of qualified members who engage with their educational product presentations. Regardless of which metrics you choose for your business, it’s important to set a goal and a mechanism to accurately report on your progress. With a Grubhub Corporate Account you unlock customizable and detailed back-end reporting including capturing email address and company name at the point of sale.
“Grubhub enabled better tracking than we had in place before. At in-person seminars it was hard to track everyone you fed…for webinars, it’s hard to know how many people watched each screen. With a Grubhub virtual lunch and learn, we know exactly who we fed.” Dr. Andrew Hanger, Hill’s Pet Nutrition
Looking Ahead
As we enter 2021, Dr. Hanger is excited to get back to in-person meetings and the traditional lunch and learn format, but he doesn’t think we will be going back fully to the “classic” way of doing things for quite some time. He goes on to point out an unexpected benefit of the virtual model: “For those of us who work with customers spread across all 50 states, we can now capitalize on the nation’s increased comfort with virtual meetings to engage with larger groups more efficiently.”
We look forward to catching up with Dr. Hanger later in the year to hear the additional ways Hill’s Pet Nutrition is innovating in this ever-changing world.
Interested in learning more about using a Grubhub Corporate Account to host virtual lunch and learns?
