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…
Category: Ideas
Calm waters and making waves
Swimming in the calm waters is easy. It’s fun. It’s what everyone wants to do. Swimming in the waves is harder, it’s challenging. It’s demanding. It’s not what everyone seeks out. It takes a special type of person to seek out the waves. And then there are the wave creators. The ones that make the Read More…
Speak three months ahead
This isn’t a sales trick, hack, or tool. It’s just a good habit for a wine sales rep to get into. Talk three months ahead. Not all the time, but at least once during every sales call with a customer. In September: “Let’s start mapping out December’s features for the holiday season.” In November: “I’m 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…
When it’s not working
When you know the uphill battle is not getting easier. When you know the problem account has no solutions and will never become better. When you know that stack of Hungarian Pinot Noir was a bad sell or a bad buy. When you know the organization you are working with or for is getting more Read More…
Tug of War
Watching a tug of war match is great fun. Two individuals or teams, if evenly matched, give it their all. Sweat, power, energy, and eventually a winner. But think about this: tug of war only works if both sides are trying hard. If one side didn’t pull, then what’s the point? If the other didn’t 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…
Is it really that bad?
Rejection is tough. Hearing NO is difficult for everyone, across all industries and cultures. And too many times hearing NO can wear down the best of us. But why did they say no? If they said no for a specific reason, that is okay. “We have twenty Malbecs right now, we really don’t need another Read More…
Faults vs. Problems
I used to say, rather sarcastically, that there is no such thing as a wine emergency. The idea being that far too many sales reps run around like chickens without heads solving emergencies that don’t qualify as emergencies. And in the big scope of world problems and social issues, a restaurant running out of a Read More…
Articles. Clippings. Proof of concept.
Just sell wines that people want to buy. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But if you have to spend precious selling time rolling the ball uphill to reach the peak of simply convincing someone to think about maybe buying, then you’ve wasted energy and resources. Oh, you’ve never heard of Zweigelt? Well, let’s spend Read More…
You’ve made the choice
If you’re a wine retailer, you’ve made the choice to not have Memorial Day or Labor Day off. You made the choice to work weekends. You’ve made the choice to be in one spot, waiting for customers to come to you. You made the choice to know that every New Year’s Eve, the day before 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…
You can’t, in good conscience
As a wine wholesaler, you can’t, in good conscience, be a supporter of both the boutique hand-selling wine shop and the mega national retailer. You can’t, in good conscience, sell a wine that goes against the core of all of your personal values and the needs of your accounts simply to make a quota or Read More…