Wine sales amateurs bring their life and emotions into the sales call. The crappy night of sleep. The bills that are piling up. The internal issues at their company. The mud being thrown on the street about competitors (and about them). The dinner they had last night. The fact that sales are down. Wine professionals don’t Read More…
Month: April 2019
More is not the answer
Don’t fall into the trap that more is better. More accounts means more time pressure to see them all and do a good job. More products to sell in your portfolio means more pressure to sell the whole range, which is difficult because there are only so many minutes in a sales call. Calling on Read More…
Reporting to your Grand Plan
It’s easy to be guilted into saying yes. As a salesperson, being liked by your customers is part of the job. So you go out of your way. You do favors. You bring lunch to the store. You say yes to an in-store tasting on Memorial Day weekend. You say yes to another in-store tasting Read More…
Services, products, scalibility, and your job
A wine sales rep is in a special job with some particular leverage advantages. Service-based businesses trade time for money. A hairstylist cannot make money unless he cuts your hair. A therapist cannot bill the insurance company unless she has a client and an appointment with them. A tree trimmer need to trim a tree Read More…
The best things about wine sales
You get to talk about beautiful places. You get to talk about a delicious and historically important beverage. You get to talk about legendary families and fresh new upstarts. There is always something new. There is competition at all levels and price points (imagine the boredom if there was truly no competition). You get to Read More…
Tell me a (curated) story
Who made the wine? Where did it come from? What does it taste like? What makes it different from the others? These are common questions that get addressed in a sales presentation about a wine. They are what buyers expect to hear, so much so that a sales rep often blindly rattles off the list Read More…