The beverage sales world is similar to other sales jobs in many ways. You represent a product or products, connect with buyers, prospect endlessly, suffer rejection, and pick yourself back up and do it again and again. Yet, in the beverage sales industry, there has been a slide away from two key aspects of Sales Read More…

I’m a big fan of “real football,” otherwise known in America as soccer. (The story of why it’s called soccer in America is quite interesting.) There’s a beautiful phrase in the sport that can easily translate into the business of selling, “Get some chalk on your boots.” It refers to the need to spread the Read More…

It’s mid-November, and the sales call in this time of year changes in shape: the buyer has less time to meet with you, but orders more wine. Ironically, and seemingly counter-intuitively, you make more money for less work. But this is the moment to realize the payoff from ten months of building, planning, relationship massaging, Read More…

Problems between sales reps and buyers come up naturally. Sometimes small, sometimes big. And sometimes opportunities are simply problems with a costume on. And sometimes problems are simply problems. But it’s the job of a good sales rep to always present solutions. Better yet, present two. Maybe even three. That’s part of the job. Telling Read More…

You just pulled into the parking lot of your next sales call. You’re about to bounce out of the car and rush right in. Hold on! Before going in, stop and breathe. For one minute, sit in your car, radio off, and think. What is the goal of the sales call? Do I have all Read More…

There is one surefire way to sell anything. This works across all industries, across all cultures, and during all economic situations. You give it away for free. Not just your product. But your time. And your energy. And your ideas. Free is a dangerous downhill slide, and once you have put no value onto something, Read More…

If you fail in selling wine and spirits to a particular account, and you get kicked out or have the account taken off your roster, you are off the hook. Some sales reps, consciously or unconsciously, secretly try to fail in an account for this very reason. Why? Because going through the truth and the Read More…

… telling your customers how it’s going to be. That’s not customer management. Customer management is done on the backside and in the shadows, not in front of your restaurant and retail buyers. It’s the coordination of deliveries. It’s the replacing of samples. It’s making sure their bills are paid and confusion is quickly resolved. Read More…

Think about this: if you see an account for a good sales meeting 30 times a year, and you show them four wines at each meeting, you show them 120 wines in a year. And if you have 2000 wines in your portfolio, it will take you 16.7 years to show all of them, without Read More…

Say you have 25 accounts in your territory, and you’re pulling in $50,000 a year. Makes sense to think, therefore, that if you doubled it to 50 accounts you’d make $100,000 a year. So why not ramp up to 100 accounts and make $200,000 a year? Using the easy multiplying math, you only need 500 Read More…

A baseball manager walking to the pitcher’s mound for a little conversation is looking for a little nudge. Don’t try so hard, try harder, focus more, stop focusing so much, you can do this, don’t forget what the plan is. A baseball manager walking to the mound to substitute out a pitcher is making a Read More…

As a wine sales rep, having a retailer say “I’ll take 31 cases of that wine” is rare. 31 cases, at 12 bottles per case, is 372 bottles. That means the retailer has to sell a bottle every day, seven days a week, for a bit over a year in order to move through the Read More…

It’s never been this hard for wine sales reps. It used to be that you could sell on quality because there was a lot of crap wines being pushed into the market. Train your customers what good wine was all about, then they would buy what you were selling. Then we entered the era of Read More…

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…

One more sales call is done. Onto the next one. You throw the wine bag into the trunk, you hustle into the driver’s seat, take a quick look at the time (damn, late again) and throw it into reverse. Not so fast. The moment after a sales call is the one moment you have to Read More…

When I was a teenager, I had an unnatural shyness about calling people on the phone and asking for information. What time do you open? What time do you close? How much do your karate lessons cost? What time does the movie start? Are you looking to hire a very introverted teenager like me? I Read More…

All wine sales reps should have one simple rule, a rule that cannot be broken, a rule that is priority above all other duties. A weekly email communication with their customers. Here’s the template, and it doesn’t have to be more complicated than this: “Hey __________ – I’m glad you enjoyed the __________ that we Read More…

A critical question to ask at the start of your sales day is this: Why am I selling wine? Making money is one reason. This is your living. “Bad salespeople have hungry kids” is the old (old, old) saying. You have to convert sales to make dollars and keep your lights on. Pretty simple. For Read More…

Your customers, the wine buyers at both the restaurant and retail level, need one fundamental thing. Without this, it the sales relationship falls apart. With it, it grows stronger over time and builds in accountability on both sides. Communication. But here is a trap many fall into — thinking that email is communication. It can Read More…

New business is the lifeblood of most wine sales reps. You need to be opening new accounts to help energize the growth needed to expand your business. Here is the simple universal formula for 100% success in opening a new account. Show up. Show up again. Be there. Call. Email. Communicate. Show up more. Shake Read More…

Customer service for a wine wholesaler takes many forms. Clear information. A heads up. A lead. Running the emergency will call (when it truly is an emergency, not a matter of convenience). Being on time. Making sure your customer knows your portfolio and what you can do to help grow their business. Customer service is Read More…

In the wholesale wine biz, life can seem like an ever-ending pattern of putting out fires. Wrong pricing. Wrong delivery. I need it NOW. I needed it yesterday. And on and on. The organizational structure of most wholesalers treats problems the same: “we will solve the problems as they come up because we believe in Read More…

As a wine sales rep, the temptation is to make life easier for your buyers. You run that will call. You put up those shelf talkers. You pick up the 10pm phone call, or respond to the 1am email. You train their staff. You figure out the industry trends for them. You do the work, Read More…

We are in the final stretch of the wine sales year, the last two weeks of December. Christmas music is playing. Your restaurants have gift card promotions galore going on (and I assume you’re buying one, right? You’re going to eat there anyway, might as well write of the purchase on this year’s expenses while Read More…

We are about to enter the second half of November, and that means there are about 50 days left in the year. A few thoughts: I assume you know what you are doing each of the next 50 days. Crunch time in the wine business is before us, and on both the wholesale and retail level Read More…

Wether you just opened an account, just inherited an account, or have an account that you haven’t yet connected deeply with, questions are the simple key to unlocking the buyer and building business. What is the best way to get in touch with you about pricing and deals? When do you make your buying decisions? Read More…