How to Track and Manage Your CPG Broker's Performance

You signed a broker, paid the retainer, and handed over a chunk of your wholesale future. Six months later you still cannot answer a simple question: is this working? Most CPG founders manage brokers on vibes. They get a few status emails, hear about "great conversations," and assume progress is happening behind the scenes. Then a quarter passes with no new authorizations and they realize they have no way to track their broker's performance at all.

Managing a broker is not the same as hiring one. Once the contract is signed, the work shifts from selection to measurement. You need clear KPIs, a reporting cadence the broker actually follows, real visibility into what is happening at retail, and a defined path for what you do when the numbers stall. This is the management playbook. If you have not signed a broker yet, or you are still figuring out commission structures, those are separate problems. This post is about the active relationship and how to keep it honest.

Why Most Broker Relationships Fail on Measurement

Brokers do not usually fail because they are lazy. They fail because the brand never defined what success looked like, so the broker optimized for activity that felt productive instead of results that grow the business. You get reports full of meetings and "interest" while your distribution stays flat.

The root problem is incentive misalignment plus information asymmetry. Your broker carries a portfolio of brands. Yours competes for attention against every other line they represent. If you cannot see what the broker is actually doing, you cannot tell whether your brand is a priority or a logo on their deck. The brands that get results are the ones that set expectations on day one and hold a consistent measurement rhythm. The brands that get ignored are the ones that go quiet and hope.

This is the same trap that makes "spray and pray" outreach fail. Activity is not progress. A broker sending your one-pager to fifty buyers means nothing if none of them are best-fit accounts and none of them convert. What matters is movement down the funnel: presentations to real decision makers, new authorizations, distribution points opened, and product actually moving off the shelf.

Define the KPIs That Actually Predict Growth

The single biggest mistake founders make is measuring activity instead of outcomes. "How many buyers did you contact" tells you nothing. You need a small set of KPIs that connect directly to revenue and distribution, tracked over time so you can see the trend, not just a snapshot.

Here are the metrics that matter, roughly in order of how directly they predict growth:

1. New authorizations. The count of new retailer or banner authorizations the broker secures per quarter. This is the clearest output metric. Set a target up front (for example, three to five new regional chain authorizations per quarter for a brand at your stage) and track it relentlessly.
2. Distribution points (TDP or store count). Authorizations mean nothing if the SKUs do not reach shelves. Track total distribution points, which is the count of SKU-store combinations carrying your product. A single chain authorization across 80 stores and 3 SKUs is 240 distribution points. This is the number that drives revenue.
3. Velocity and sell-through. Units per store per week (or per $1M ACV) is the metric that keeps you on the shelf. A broker can open doors, but if velocity is weak the retailer delists you at the next category review. Track velocity by account and watch the trend. Flat or declining velocity is an early warning.
4. Promotional execution. Did the broker secure the promo calendar slots, ad features, and display placements you agreed to fund? Track planned versus executed promotions. Brokers who land authorizations but never drive trial-building promotions leave you stuck at low velocity.
5. Pipeline coverage and stage. A forward-looking view of accounts in process, segmented by stage (initial contact, presentation scheduled, sample sent, category review pending, authorized). This is how you see whether next quarter's authorizations are actually being built now.

Notice what is not on this list as a primary KPI: number of emails sent, number of calls made, number of trade shows attended. Those are inputs. Track them only as a diagnostic when outcomes stall, never as the headline measure of success.

Those targets are only as good as the account list behind them, and a vague list is the easiest way for a broker to look busy without moving distribution.

Get Real Visibility Into What Is Happening at Retail

You cannot manage what you cannot see. The hardest part of broker management is that the broker controls the information flow, and most brokers will only report what makes them look good. You need independent sources of truth so your reviews are grounded in data, not the broker's narrative.

Build visibility from three layers:

• Scan and POS data. If your retailers share scan data (through SPINS, IRI/Circana, Nielsen, or the retailer's own portal), this is your ground truth for velocity and sell-through. It tells you what is actually selling, by store, by week, independent of anything the broker claims. For natural channel brands, SPINS data is the standard. If you cannot afford a full subscription, many distributors and retailers will share account-level reports.
• Distributor data. Your UNFI, KeHE, or regional distributor portals show shipments, authorized items, and which stores are ordering. Depletion reports (what distributors ship to stores) are a strong proxy for sell-through when you lack scan data. Watch for authorized-but-not-ordering stores, a classic sign the broker got the paperwork done but never drove the actual launch.
• Store-level checks. Nothing replaces eyes on shelf. Use a retail audit app, a merchandising service, or your own store visits to confirm your product is on the shelf, in the right position, priced correctly, and in stock. Founders are routinely shocked to discover "authorized" SKUs that never made it to shelf, or products buried on the bottom shelf with no velocity. Photos from stores cut through broker spin instantly.

When you combine these three layers, you can walk into a review knowing more about your own retail performance than the broker does. That changes the entire dynamic. The conversation shifts from "tell me how it is going" to "I see that velocity at Account X dropped 20 percent last month and these eight authorized stores still are not ordering, what is the plan?"

Run a Reporting Cadence That Keeps the Broker Accountable

Inconsistent communication is how broker relationships drift. Set a fixed cadence on day one and hold it. The right rhythm has three layers, each at a different altitude.

Weekly check-ins (15 to 30 minutes). A short standup, usually a call or a structured email. What moved this week, what is scheduled next week, what is blocked. Keep it tactical. The goal is momentum and quick problem-solving, not a deep review. If a sample needs to ship or a buyer asked for a spec sheet, you catch it here before it stalls a deal.

Monthly business reviews (60 minutes). A proper review against your KPI dashboard. Walk the numbers together: new authorizations this month, distribution points opened, velocity trends by account, promo execution, and pipeline by stage. Compare against target. This is where you spot trends early. One soft month is noise. Two in a row is a signal.

Quarterly business reviews (QBRs, 90 minutes). The strategic review. Are we hitting the quarterly distribution and authorization targets? Which channels and account types are converting and which are not? Should we reallocate effort? This is also where you revisit the target list and decide which best-fit accounts to prioritize next quarter. A good QBR ends with a written plan and revised targets for the coming quarter.

Send a one-page KPI dashboard before every monthly review and QBR so the conversation starts from shared numbers. The format matters less than the consistency. The brands that run this cadence for a full year build brokers into genuine partners. The brands that skip it end up surprised, usually at the worst possible moment.

Spot the Red Flags of an Underperforming Broker

Underperformance shows up in patterns long before it shows up in a flat revenue line. Learn to read the early signals so you can intervene while there is still time to fix it.

Watch for these red flags:

• Activity reports with no outcomes. Lots of "great meetings" and "strong interest," zero new authorizations quarter after quarter. Interest that never converts is not progress.
• Vague, defensive answers about specific accounts. When you ask "what happened with the regional chain you pitched in March" and get a fog of generalities instead of a clear status, the deal probably is not real.
• No promo execution. Authorizations land but the agreed promotions, features, and displays never happen, so velocity stays at launch levels and stalls.
• Authorized stores that never order. Distributor data shows authorized items sitting at zero shipments. The paperwork got done; the launch never did.
• Going dark. Missed check-ins, delayed reports, and slow responses. A broker who stops communicating has usually deprioritized your brand.
• Blaming the brand or the product. Some feedback is legitimate (price, packaging, gaps in your story). But a broker who only ever explains misses by pointing at your product, never their own effort, is managing your expectations downward.

None of these in isolation is fatal. The pattern is what matters. One vague answer is a busy week. A quarter of vague answers plus flat distribution plus no promo execution is a broker who has checked out on your brand.

Course-Correct Before You Part Ways

When the numbers stall, resist the urge to either ignore it or fire the broker on the spot. Most underperformance is recoverable if you act early and structure the intervention. Here is the sequence.

Diagnose with data first. Before any hard conversation, pull your scan data, distributor reports, and store photos. Pinpoint exactly where the funnel is breaking. Is the broker not getting presentations? Getting presentations but no authorizations? Getting authorizations but no orders or velocity? Each failure point has a different cause and a different fix.

Have the direct conversation. Bring the data to a focused review, not a casual call. State plainly where the numbers are versus target and ask for the broker's read on why. Listen for whether they own it and have a concrete plan, or deflect. Their response tells you most of what you need to know.

Set a written 60 to 90 day improvement plan. Agree on specific, measurable milestones with dates: a set number of presentations to named target accounts, a specific count of new authorizations, a promo calendar locked in by a date. Put it in writing. This removes ambiguity and gives both sides a clear bar.

Check whether the problem is actually yours. Sometimes the broker is doing the work and the product is the bottleneck: price too high for the channel, packaging that does not stand out, weak velocity story, or no marketing support to pull product through. If your scan data shows the product does not move even where it is placed, no broker can fix that. Fix the underlying issue before blaming the rep.

Decide at the milestone, not before. If the improvement plan delivers, you have salvaged the relationship and reset the standard. If it does not, you have a clean, documented basis to part ways, and you already know exactly what went wrong, which makes the next broker (or a different go-to-market approach) far more likely to succeed.

Parting ways is sometimes the right call, but do it from a position of clarity. Review your contract for notice periods and post-termination commission terms before you make the move, and have your next path ready so your retail momentum does not stall during the transition.

Managing a broker comes down to three disciplines: measure outcomes not activity, build independent visibility into what is happening at retail, and hold a consistent review cadence so problems surface while they are still fixable. Do those three things and you will know within a quarter whether your broker is growing your business or coasting on it. The founders who treat broker management as a system, not a hope, are the ones who scale distribution without surprises.