A professional shows up and does the work, and if they’re good, they do it better than most in their profession along with having a good attitude. A professional eye surgeon shows up and does the work they do, even if she is having a bad day or is tired. A professional chess player practices Read More…
Category: Brands
Know your history (and that things change)
The history of wine trends, facts, and fads is always good to keep in mind, mainly to recognize that some trends grow roots and stick, white others blow away with the wind. The sands shift with the tides. For those relatively new to the wine business (be it wholesale, restaurant, or retail) here are some Read More…
What if? (50ml edition)
Time for another edition of What if? The pandemic is changing how we have to work, which means there is an opportunity to make things better. An opportunity, only once, here and now, to rewrite the rules of ‘normal work’ in the wine business. So here’s an idea … What if it became the norm Read More…
The Post-Pandemic Wine List
What is your restaurant wine list going to look like on the other side of the pandemic? Will it be the same size? Will you work with the same vendors? Or the same number? Will you allow big brands to wiggle, seduce, push, shove, or buy their way onto the by the glass program (yet Read More…
Four Months from Today
Welcome to SOND 2020. This is a final third of a year like no other. The global pandemic, the unrest in America, the upcoming election, and for those in our industry the continued upheaval of the business in general. Taxes, tariffs, the crash of restaurants, the boom of retail business. Wildfires, overproduction, competition … the Read More…
The Annual Review
Merry Christmas Eve, happy holidays, and Bestest Festivus to all! This is not the normal Vinethinking essay. It’s more important than that. This essay is about the Annual Review. The Annual Review is a process that I’ve been going through since 2009, during which I take the time to get secluded, get reflective, get analytical, Read More…
Looking into the crystal ball of wine retail
Let’s look into the future. I don’t know how far into the future. It might be two years or maybe ten. But sooner than you think. Amazon has entered the liquor retail game. Not in a small way either. Through their Whole Foods locations, they now permeate into many key urban areas. And through Amazon Read More…
Wine Inventory as Wine Marketing
Inventory is one of the most mis-understood aspects of the wine world. A wholesaler that commits ten percent of their annual revenue to a single purchase of five thousand cases of Hungarian Viognier is going to run into an inventory problem. A restaurant owner who has a wine buyer that overbuys on Barolo and ties Read More…
What do your wineries want?
What do wineries that you represent really want? “We want to be placed in the right accounts.” “We want to be a category leader.” “We want to grow our direct to consumer business.” “We want less competition in your book.” “We want your sales reps to take more samples out.” “We want your sales reps Read More…
Is Wine an Experience Good?
In economics, an experience good is a product that can only be evaluated after experiencing it. The other two categories are a search good, where an item is fully evaluated prior to purchase (think clothing), and credence claims which are difficult to impossible to evaluate or measure accurately even after consumption or purchase (think legal Read More…
A Wine Retailer’s Two Question (digital) Checklist
If you’re a wine retailer today there are two key questions you have to ask: How do potential customers find me? How do I convey to them who we are and what we stand for? Everything grows from those two questions. How do potential customers find you? Is your Google Business page up to date? Read More…
Wine prices and pillows
Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I bought a new pillow. A fancy one. It came in cool packaging, well designed and unlike other pillows on the market. Being who I am, I also looked online at reviews to help nudge me toward what I wanted to do (buy the pillow). Enough glowing reviews led me Read More…
A Sales Rep’s Choices
A wine sales rep is in a marvelous and privileged position. You get to choose. Today, are you building a brand or building the market? Tomorrow, are you finding the unknown (wine or customer), or are you learning the known even better? Next week, are you showcasing the new or reinforcing the established? What are Read More…
The irreplaceable placement
Many restaurants have one or two. Every retailer has six to twelve. They are the wines they cannot swap out, cannot consider getting rid of, and cannot possibly imagine life without. They are the wines that customers would riot over losing access to. The wines that sell as regularly as a heartbeat. They are the Read More…
Rethinking Points of Distribution
The acronym is PODs, and if you work in a larger wholesaler or for a big winery, you hear this term often. If you work for a small wholesaler you may not hear it at all. PODs represent placements, and for every wine in every market with every distributor there is a certain number of Read More…
Invent your own week
This is for wine retailers and restaurants. It’s an easy way to drive some traffic and get some attention from the local wine community. It’s repeatable and scalable. And it’s a way to train and focus your staff at the same time. And it’s a way to have fun while selling more wine. And yet Read More…
By the numbers: larger public wine tastings
If you are a wine retailer, wine group, or wine organization that puts together the occasional wine tasting for the public, here are some ideas to keep in mind for a successful event. This essay is focused on the small to the mid-sized event, for attendance in the 80 to 800 person range. Large convention Read More…
Wine for customers, or customers for wine?
Which direction are you going? Are you finding a wine for your customers, or are you finding customers for your wine? This is one of the big questions, for it shows the intention of the business and at the same time dictates how a sales call should and will proceed. If you are a wholesaler, Read More…
Reinvention
Don’t try reinventing the wheel. The wheel is perfect. And it works great. And any change in the shape of a wheel makes it work less well. There are aspects of your job that are a wheel. Leave them alone. But for all the other parts … maybe a little reinvention is needed. Your intro Read More…
Wine Pros: Attitude
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…
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…
Setting the right goals
It isn’t good to say “I’ll sell more wine.” Goals without structure, steps, and accountability are fantasies. And the problem with fantasies is that it’s too easy to walk away from them when it’s obvious you’re not going to achieve them. Setting the right goals in the right way is one of the most powerful Read More…
If they don’t buy it, did I fail?
In the world of wine sales, part of the job is showing product. Learning how to present, how to tell stories, and how to close the sale are all essential tools to do the job. So what if they don’t buy? Did you fail? Of course not. The process of a good sales call is Read More…
Social clean up
Here’s a good list of projects for the week. These are important, will take a bit of time, but only need to be done once a year. Linked In Remember that profile you filled out in 2010? Well, your network keeps seeing it and those that search for you will find it. Take the time to Read More…
Taking a stand
All that really matters is the experience of the end consumer. Simple as that. If she pops a bottle of wine with friends, pours the glasses, and loves the experience of drinking that bottle then it really doesn’t matter who the wholesaler was or even who the retailer was. The only two connection points in Read More…
I don’t care if the wine is good
Thanks for pouring me a glass. Yes, I agree that’s pretty damn good wine. But I don’t care. Because there is a ton of good wine out there. But here are some questions for you: Who made it? What do they represent? Are they taking a stand on something? Is it a region consumers are Read More…
The five percent, and the one percent
95% of all Champagne sold is produced by the largest houses and have the names we all know. 5% of all Champagne sold is Farmer Fizz, i.e. Recoultant Manipulant, stuff from the families and the little producers that ship tiny quantities their wines to the United States. For wine salespeople and marketers, the discussion usually Read More…
Why can’t you?
Why can’t you be the most successful wine sales rep in the state? The region? Why can’t you become the most successful wine retailer in your city, or your state, or even the country? The common answer, the default answer, is competition. “Too many other wholesalers / sales reps / retailers … that’s why.” But Read More…
The wine velocity sweet spot
Right now, today, we have the technology to put self-driving cars into the world that are safe and reliable. Seriously. The technology is there to have fully self-driving cars all over every city in the world. The problem is they max out at two miles per hour. Would you hop in a self-driving car that Read More…
High end chocolate
The world of high end, exclusive, limited availability, hand-made chocolate is pretty neat. Where the beans came from, the roasting, the pressing, the sweat involved in every step makes each bar simply taste better. It’s a world where knowledge multiplies the taste experience. And the folks that buy the high-end chocolate have little hesitation to Read More…
Info power (and wine wholesalers)
I type this post while sitting at a coffee shop. No surprise there. But this coffee shop (Caribou) is trying to compete with Starbucks. Part of their strategy is the new “perks club” (cute name). If I join the club I can slooooooowly build points for a free cookie or a coffee. But in exchange Read More…
Learning to taste, or tasting to learn?
When buyers are just starting on their wine journey (“Hey server manager! You’re now the bar manager and the wine buyer! Good luck!”) they need to learn the basics. A sales rep in tune with this will welcome the opportunity to help them learn to taste. Then at the next sales call you might have Read More…
The irony of competition
There is a grand irony in the wine business. First, the more wholesalers there are, the better it is for retailers and restaurants. It makes for competition, it makes for more choice, it makes for opportunity to buy wines that nobody else has, it allows for a retailer or restaurant to stand out easier. Second, Read More…
Don’t forget the boss
Most wine buyers, both on the restaurant side and retail side (but it seems more so on the restaurant side) have one thing in common: they don’t own the store. And when the buyer is not the owner, then you have a worker. And when you have a worker, they have a boss. And a Read More…
Seeing things with true clarity …
… is almost impossible. But doubly impossible when you’re starting from behind to begin with. How do you start from behind? Lack of sleep Lack of exercise Drinking too much wine and feeling the compounded impact on your brain and body Anxiety (fear of what might happen) Disorganization Poor diet Letting others usurp your time Being digitally Read More…
On luxury wine
A luxury wine (as opposed to a great but expensive wine) exists based on scarcity and social proof. It has to be scarce, because the rules of supply and demand not only keep the proposed value sky high, but actually increases the eventual cost of holding a bottle of your own. A luxury wine cannot Read More…
The problem with committees
Committees work on averages and “most votes win.” Therefore, in a committee people (over time) are hesitant to speak their mind, outliers are outvoted, and passionate singular voices have no impact and thus are rarely heard. Committees can be great when it comes time for group discussions and decisions such as where to put the Read More…
It’s not the age, it’s the attitude
I’ve had two interesting interactions in the last week. The first was with a young and freshly minted Somm who works as a sales rep for a distributor. His sales style, his pitch, his attitude, his focus, and his energy were all about him. And talking with him got old really fast. The second was Read More…
Proven and tested vs. taking a chance
When taking wine out to show to your accounts, take a moment to think about how you’ll present the wine in the context of the rest of the marketplace. A wine that has been proven and tested can be a big brand, stacked high at all other retailers, on the top ten hot brands list, Read More…
Rosé showers bring May flowers
The rush is on. Containers are landing at a furious pace, and dry pink wine is being stacked high at wine shops coast to coast. Rosé features on wine lists become coveted spots, and it’s a boxing match between reps to get those placements. When most wholesalers put together their rosé offerings into a sell Read More…
Maybe you’re not selling wine today
You’re showing wine. You’re showing off bottles and labels. You’re pouring fermented juice in glasses for people that buy it for retailers and restaurants. But often the wine is just a prop. Often what you’re actually selling is yourself and the company you work for. The wine in the glass just happens to be something to talk about Read More…
The benefit of size (both large and small)
The sales rep of a large, national, big business wine wholesaler meets with an important wine buyer. Here is what she says: “We have scale and resources. We have many people on staff that work in the background and help us be better every day. If a truck breaks down, we have dozens more that Read More…
The myth of the overnight wine success
What is this wine and where did it come from?? It’s suddenly everywhere! Who is that sales rep that is mopping up business all over town? Nobody knows anything about her! Overnight successes are found in all industries, including ours. Some brands, from previously unknown wineries and tiny weird distributors, shoot into a city like Read More…
The customer is always right …
The customer is always right, until they are not. Then you need to distance yourself from them. Burning bridges is a historically bad idea, so don’t do it. But if you have a customer who is simply wrong (in how they do business, how they treat you, how they pay their bills, what they ask for Read More…
The Playbook: Losing a brand
Every wine wholesaler needs a series of playbooks. These are plans and protocols that you pull out when the inevitable happens. When you lose a sales rep, when you hire a new sales rep, when you bring on a new brand, and of course when you lose an important brand. Here’s a quick outline for Read More…
Manage energy, not time
The month of December is a strange one for the wine sales rep. Sales are up. Customers are buying more than other months. But due to the efficiency of the sales and the busy-ness that everybody is experiencing, there is little room for the idle conversation and no room for the product pitch. More sales Read More…
Constant, consistent, and always evolving change
Nothing stays the same for long. Restaurants open and close. Often with little or no warning. Distributors merge and portfolios shift. Always with no hint that it’s coming. Retailers have ups and downs, successes and failures, great days and horrible weeks, sometimes for no apparent reason. Every wine on every wine list in the world changes Read More…
You can’t have it all
You know you can’t have it all. You can’t sell every single wine in your portfolio to every account in your territory. You can’t sell a retailer all of their wine selections, leaving out all competition. You can’t magically open all the doors at all the restaurants and have them buy only from you. So why Read More…
Selling Champagne
There are a few fundamental differences between selling Champagne (and I’m only talking about real deal Champagne here) and other wine categories. Consumers tend to buy it one bottle at a time. And thus, without another glass next to it for comparison and assuming it’s served quite cold, it’s hard to make a call on Read More…
If you don’t know what to say …
… then don’t say anything. Too many people love the sound of their own voice far too much. Learn to listen. Learn to not talk when necessary. Through careful and considered communication you will stand out, not through endless blather and babble. Know when to keep your trap shut and ears open and you’ll sell Read More…
What you can’t measure
Loyalty. Smiles. Thank yous. Dedication. Focus. Positivity. Resilience. Creativity. Innovation. Attitude. Ideas. Friendships. Relationships. Partnerships. Be careful about trying to measure everything. Much of the most important stuff is impossible to quantify. If you ignore something simply because you can’t measure it, then you’ll lose it all.
Then you have a brand
Two scenarios. A company assembles 100 carefully chosen wine consumers. They enter a room and taste and rank five whites and five reds. Then they leave. The statisticians come in. They analyze the numbers. They discover the one white and one red the crowd liked the most. They speculate why. The scientists come in and Read More…
More Wines, More Distributors (what is competition?)
Every major metro area in the United States is seeing an explosion of new wine distributors. Most are small. Some are mid sized. All are passionate and carry wines that were usually not in that market before they came around. The first to complain about this? The established distributors. “More competition! How can our market Read More…
It’s your job
If you are a sales rep, it’s your job: to have a current catalog at hand to have current pricing sheets at the ready to have your phone charged up for the day to have extra time built into your schedule to handle last second needs of your customers to know how best to communicate Read More…
Thin skin vs. Thick skin
Thin skinned salespeople are impacted by the word NO, are hesitant to ask for the big sale, always question what they said and if they did the right thing, and are generally nervous about how a customer feels about them. But so called “thin skinned” salespeople are also better attuned to the emotions of a Read More…
DIY Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day didn’t exist before Amazon decided it should exist. Why is it so successful? Because they have a dedicated fan base that responds to deals, offers, suggestions, reviews, and consistent fulfillment (if they are out of stock, you usually know it before the pain of ordering and never seeing it). So the steps Read More…
The squeeze and the sales rep
The life of a sales rep used to be quite easy. If you showed up every week, you got the sale and business grew. The good ‘ol days! (Which of course were harder than it sounds, but sales reps stuck in the past seem it think it was less work.) Everything has changed in the Read More…
The gut instinct
“When you follow your gut, you get indigestion.” Sage advice coming from somebody as disconnected from the real world as possible: a Fortune 100 CEO in a high rise Manhattan corner office, who wrote a book about productivity years ago, aimed squarely at the people that he needed more of: workers, not thinkers. Being aware Read More…
Give them what they want?
Or give them what they don’t know they want? The smartphone didn’t exist until Steve Jobs pulled it out of his pocket. Uber didn’t exist until you downloaded the app and made your account. NakedWine didn’t exist until somebody said “what about crowdfunding for a winemaker?” Do you give people what they want, or Read More…
How empires topple
Every major wine market in the United States has one dominant distributor and one dominant retailer (or a chain of stores). Sometimes it’s not actually obvious who the dominant players are, but just a little bit of research will easily unlock the secret of who sells the most wine. These are the empires. And just Read More…
Monday Challenge: Where ya at? (Q1 ends soon)
This week’s Monday Challenge is quick and simple. Question one: did you read the first Monday Challenge of this year? If not, here you go. Question two: did you read and respond to these two questions on that list: What is one clear personal goal (quantifiable) that you want to achieve in 2017? And … Read More…
Give them what they want and they’ll get what they expect
It’s supposed to make so much sense: just give the customers what they want. Of course it’s not that simple. Let’s break down what all customers seem to want, what all customers do want, and what all customers really want. A few no-brainers that customers say they always want: Lower prices … the number one answer Read More…
Company culture and long term employees
The idea of culture building gets bantered about far too much in many corporations, and ironically the ones that talk about it the most are often the ones that have a cultural problem on their hands. Culture is built through actions, not mission statements (see the 9 worst of all time), and thus by definition it starts with Read More…
Large and known vs. Small and unknown
Large wineries have brand presence, resources, marketing departments, sales forces, trend reporting and analysis, marketing materials, and larger overall goals. Small wineries lack brand presence, lack resources, often have no marketing department, maybe a sales force of one (and often the owner/winemaker), no trend reporting or analysis, no marketing materials, and smaller overall goals. When Read More…
Find the customers that embrace the New and Unknown
If you do what you did yesterday, you’re doing okay, right? If you buy the brands you have found and like, and they do their job, you’re okay, right? Most people are satisfied with most things, and this applies to wine. Most people buy what they know and are comfortable with. Most people want things Read More…
We are all salespeople
Servers at restaurants are salespeople. Hosts who answer phones and take reservations and greet customers and say goodnight to them are salespeople. Bartenders are salespeople. Retailers that put wine the hands of a customer and earn their trust are salespeople. The ones that ring up the order at a wine shop are salespeople. The delivery crew at Read More…
That’s a wrap!
Good day everybody, and welcome to the last work day of 2016! Thank you for joining the VineThinking community. So far 184 blog posts composed of over 62,000 words since I started this in April, and a readership that has grown by leaps and bounds as the months have gone by. Thank you to all who Read More…
So what ya doing today?
What are you doing at 10am? At 12:30pm? At 3pm? If you took up yesterday’s Monday Challenge, then you know. You know exactly what you’re doing and where you’ll be. Not only every half hour of today and tomorrow, but also Thursday and Friday. And because you filled out the chart and thought ahead about Read More…
Private conversations
The amount of information that people are inclined to share with you privately rises in direct proportion to how well you handle the information others have given you. To put it in a much simpler way, if you lead any sentences with “I shouldn’t tell you this, but …” then you’re doing the wrong thing. Read More…
The problem with choices …
… is that most people second guess their decision. When faced with a huge number of choices in front of them, most people will fret and fuss and debate and contemplate until the frustration leads to simply grabbing something that they hope will work and going for it. It’s the video store syndrome. Remember those Read More…
Wine Industry Baggage and Assumptions
When you walk into a new account as a sales rep, one that doesn’t know you at all personally but might have opinions about who you work for, what kind of assumptions could that customer make? Perhaps more importantly, what kind of assumptions do YOU make about what they are thinking? And in that instance, Read More…
Monday Challenge: Have you fallen off the track?
Every Monday I send out a Monday Challenge. This week: stay on target, set your goals, and recognize when you are off the track (while making a plan to get back on track and on target). One example of being off the track? Sending a “Monday Challenge” on Tuesday morning, like I’m doing now. Goal setting and Read More…
Wine sales is not a zero sum game
The idea that if one wine is bought, then another can’t be. That there is only so much space. This is the thinking of the old guard. There is a new dynamic in play, and the best wine sales reps in the nation are doing it. That of the giver and connector. If you can Read More…
Monday Challenge: Share your contract
This week’s challenge is super easy, if you completed last week’s (Write your own contract). The goal last week was self-accountability. To list the primary goals you need to achieve between now and the end of the year, and the steps necessary to achieve those goals. Then you were to put it into a contract, and Read More…
It’s the singer, not the song (as long as the wine is good)
Fictional scenario, but play along: Two sales reps. Two different wholesalers. One buyer. Both reps bring in the same wine. Not the same label, but the same juice in the bottle. What’s going to happen? The buyer will buy one wine and not the other. It’s the “why?” of this equation that needs to be examined Read More…
Who is your mentor?
Study after study proves the same thing: those that work with mentors outperform all others my a monumental percentage. If you can find somebody in your orbit that understands and supports what you’re doing, but they can bring more experience and ideas to the table, ask for them to mentor you. They might be taken Read More…
Adding value when something costs nothing
Taking pictures used to be expensive. First you had to decide what kind of film to use. Black and white, color negative, or color positive. A 24 shot roll would cost you $4-10, a 36 shot roll between $6 and $13. Then you had to take the pictures. No clue how they eventually would look. Read More…
Quick Wine Math Quiz
Get ready, get set, go! What percentage of a 12 bottle case is one bottle? If the alcohol content of a wine goes from 12% to 13% what is the percentage volume increase in that alcohol content? If you buy a wine at $10.00 and sell it for $15.00, what is you margin? If you Read More…
Cheap is not an attribute
“We are the cheapest in town!” But at what cost? Being cheapest does not mean you are not delivering value (they are different things), and you are inviting comparisons to others. Being cheapest means your only measuring stick to determine if you’re doing the right thing is controlled by your competition. The moment somebody is cheaper Read More…
Tiny, fast, nimble, and original
The rise of the number of wine distributors in major markets in the past five years has been stunning. Even in heavy handed and “old boy’s network” markets like Chicago, more and more micro-distributors are opening shop and succeeding. Not only succeeding, but making amazing inroads that are pissing off those that feel they “deserve Read More…
Habits are for breaking
As a wine retailer, you lead people to the same wines, tell the same stories, and bring to work every day the same attitude. Time to break the habits. As a restauranteur, you carry forward the same energy to your team, you suggest the same wines on a regular basis, you train your staff the Read More…
Connect your wine to something bigger and greater
Of course you think the wine you’re selling tastes better than the competition. And guess what? That doesn’t really matter. Playing the game of “mine is better than that” is a fool’s game because the rules can change constantly (via personal opinions). Would you throw money on the table in Vegas if the rules constantly changed based Read More…
Are you selling a commodity? Probably not.
Commodities are products that are driven first by price. Charles Shaw, i.e. Two Buck Chuck, is a commodity. Barefoot, YellowTail, Franzia box wines, Beringer White Zin, and many other wines such as those are commodities as well. Yes, they have brand recognition, but the driving force of the sale of those wines is first and Read More…
Why do you buy a new wine?
This one goes out to the buyers at restaurants and retailers everywhere. It’s a simple question with far reaching implications, and one that I want you to think very carefully about. Why do you buy a new wine? The quick and cheap answer is “because it’s good” which means nothing because everybody’s definition of good Read More…
Wine Connections
As a wholesale rep, retailer, or restaurant, you have a customer base. That base is composed of fans of your work, your wines, your food, and your energy. Think about that base, and some of the individuals that are in it. Certain buyers for certain accounts, customers that regularly attend your tastings, the regulars that Read More…
Do you really want the main stage?
Here’s a fabulous story from Moby’s new autobiography Porcelain, talking about playing Lalapalooza in 1995. Lalapalooza in those days ran two stages, with the primary and bigger acts on Stage One and a handful of relative unknowns on Stage Two. Moby was booked for the second stage, which “had made me feel like a techno Read More…
Who is your real competition?
For restaurants, is it any other place that serves food for money? Or is it places that serve food similar to yours and charge the same or less? Or more? For retailers, is it any other store that sells alcoholic beverages? Or is it other stores of similar size and reach and impact? Or is Read More…
Missing the Free Throw
A basketball player steps up to the line. This is no ordinary basketball player. He’s a professional, paid millions of dollars to put the ball through the hoop. There is no defense. Nobody attacking them. It’s a free throw. And how often will they miss? On average in the NBA, over the last two decades, they Read More…
All Corners of the Wine Business
Note: before going into the post, I just want to say a huge Thank You to those that are spreading the word about VineThinking. Subscriptions to the email updates are going through the roof, including many big names in the wine business and wine journalism fields. Please keep spreading the word if you’re finding value Read More…
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Every once in a while a site comes along that provides so much pure information and advice that you simply can’t ignore it. One such site for me is Barking Up the Wrong Tree, run by Eric Barker. Join Eric’s newsletter list and absorb his findings into your job. All of his findings are based on Read More…
Surprise the people you see the most
We are all stuck in a rut, because the rut is predictable and comfortable. Same type of clothes everyday. Same shoes. Same attitude. Same jokes (or at least themes of jokes … that one person always tells bad jokes, another only off-color jokes, another long-format jokes). For wholesale reps and winery reps, there is comfort Read More…
Happy July 4th, and a Marketing Plan
Happy July 4th to everybody. America’s holiday. Fireworks, grilling, and good times for all. So let’s make use of it. Lesson Part 1: If you need photography for your blog, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. you have an amazing and legal archive at your fingertips within the Flickr Creative Commons. Here’s what you do: Go to Read More…
A July 2016 wine challenge
Think of your network in your wine world. Think of the people that are either relatively new to it, or so constantly enthused about wine that they still have that buzz of excitement whenever you pour something for them. The people that know enough to know they love it but don’t know enough to get Read More…
The weakest wine
Yesterday I wrote about choices, and about being the person to stand up and be remarkable and make a fuss when things aren’t quite right. There was some chatter on the social channels afterwards about the post, and I want to riff a bit about one line in particular, coming from my examples of situations: Read More…
Some Wine Math You Should Know
Fun stuff to think about: One standard wine barrel = 60 gallons 60 gallons = 25 cases 25 cases = 300 bottles If that barrel costs $1000 then each bottle costs $3.33 more just to pay for that barrel (assuming that a winery is trying to recoup the costs in one vintage, which most do Read More…
Wine sales strategy
A question for wine wholesale reps. Pick one of your customers, any customer. What is your strategy with them? I’m not asking “what do you normally do when you see them?” No, I’m talking about strategy. Strategy needs both short term and long term goals. Strategy considers all objections and obstacles to achieve the those goals. Strategy Read More…
Monday Assignment: Thank you
Starting today, every Monday morning will be the “Monday Assignment” … a gentle kick in the butt in a certain direction to achieve a certain goal. This week: say thank you. Not to everybody, and not to the obvious. I’m aiming at the middle, the ones that don’t hear it often from anybody, including you. Read More…
Sometimes there is no good reason
A major point of frustration for many wholesale wine reps is when they see a competitor’s (usually declared inferior) product get a prime spot in a wine shop, or a new by the glass slot at the restaurant they have been working on for months. Why did that wine get in? Often there is a great Read More…
The high price of sunk costs for wine sales reps
In economics, the term Sunk Cost refers to a cost that has been incurred and cannot be recovered. Businesses of all types, when evaluating the profit and loss statement and evaluating operating expenses, are sensitive to sunk costs for good reason. Wine sales reps have sunk costs as well. The money you spent on a customer for Read More…
Formula 1 and NASCAR … and wine
Both are about cars going fast. Both are about driving a set path. Both are about engines, technology, and momentum. Both have sponsors, for they are incredibly expensive sports to participate in. The big difference? The audience. NASCAR advertising leans toward energy drinks, tools, viagra, Wal-Mart, chewing tobacco, and low cost website hosting. Formula 1 Read More…