What is your end-of-year project?

I’m writing this in mid-December, which is unlike any other time of the year in the beverage sales cycle. Retailers and restaurants are too busy for long meetings with their sales reps. Their focus, as it should be, is the customer walking through the door. (Reactive, not proactive, work.) The sales reps are busy getting Read More…

“Get some chalk on your boots”

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…

SOND 2022 is on … what are your plans?

Welcome to September! Start that countdown. We’re only 121 days away from the end of the year. Wholesale reps Open your calendar. Mark the evenings you want off, no questions asked. Family evening, concerts, commitments, downtime, you name it. Your job is a daytime job, and any hours you put in the evening should be Read More…

What is missing?

Late August is a unique time in the wine sales and retail game. It’s a moment for a pause, a final vacation, a little breath before September rolls in. It’s also a great time to ask what is missing and start to work to fix it before the busy season hits. For a sales rep, Read More…

Selling Wine vs. Taking An Order

You sell wine when you guide the process, when you frame choices for the customer, and when you present options (paths) that lead to the company’s (and your) ultimate goals. You are an order taker when the customer is the guide, when the customer frames the choices, and when the customer presents the paths that Read More…

Payoff

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…

Six minutes

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…

The easiest way to sell anything

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…

Are you secretly trying to fail?

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…

Customer management is not …

… 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…

Choose carefully

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…