Since April 2016, VineThinking has been a platform for me to share sales ideas with the beverage industry. Some years have been idea-packed, some a bit quiet, but the archive has become something I’m proud of and, based on our website traffic numbers, something that continues to be sought out by others (this was our most Read More…
Category: Wine Sales
Aim to be the CONSISTENT PROFESSIONAL salesperson
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…
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…
Ideas: How wine retailers can generate more revenue the last six weeks of the year
Once we get to mid-November, it’s like running the last mile of the marathon. You’re exhausted, but the adrenaline carries you forward. The group around you, the runners in front of you, and the runners behind you make for energy that pushes you towards the finish line. Nobody gives up the marathon in the last Read More…
The main hack for beverage sales rep: embrace being Professional
As a follow-up for sales training seminars that I lead, I like to ping select reps a few months down the line to see how they’re doing and if they need any advice. Lately, consistently, I’m being asked for a great ‘hack’ … as if there is one magic formula to make sales go up. Read More…
Some thoughts on leadership vs. management in wine and spirits sales
Wine and spirits distributors have salespeople. And the one “in charge” of them (quotes intentional, as you’ll read) is the sales manager. The role of the salesperson is to sell. To connect customers to the stories they tell. To service accounts with professionalism, consistency, and accuracy. A good salesperson is a storyteller, someone who is 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…
Being in, or out of, alignment (who do you play ball with?)
There is more to business relationships than numbers and sales. There is often friendship (though not always). There is often judgement (spoken or otherwise). There are often pressures on each side that the other doesn’t understand (very common). But in the end, every business relationship needs some form of mutual respect. This respect can be Read More…
Selling wine during a recession
The word RECESSION is being bantered about far more now than in over ten years. All signs are pointing toward an economic recession on the horizon (and the truth is, it’s always on the horizon … but we can never tell where the horizon is). As always, nobody knows anything, so don’t be surprised if Read More…
Today is different than tomorrow (end of a quarter)
Today is the last day of Q1. It’s a much different day than tomorrow, the start of Q2. What do you do today vs. tomorrow as a wine sales rep, restaurant owner/manager, or retailer? Today, you work super hard. You push for the final sprint ahead of the finish line. You make that extra sales Read More…
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 are you selling? The juice in the bottle?
Ask a wine sales rep or a wine retailer what they sell and they will say they sell wine. But in terms of what you’re selling how much is actually the juice in the bottle? For a wine sales rep, you are mainly selling (in order): Yourself and your ability to convert for the customer Read More…
High gas prices are a wine rep’s friend
A big part of a wine sales rep’s job is driving around. Not only from account to account, but back to the warehouse again and again for the sudden will call because your customers forgot something on their order. Somehow, their problem became your problem. Oh and let’s not forget about the account you saw Read More…
Building fences as a wine sales rep
Newer sales reps are prone to be ‘yes’ people, doing whatever the store or restaurant asks to the point of crossing a line. The sales rep doesn’t intend to cross the line, they just may not know where that line is. If you build fences and tell yourself you’ll never breech them, it can keep Read More…
Selling wine is not rocket science
A wine sales job doesn’t involve rocket science. Nobody is going to die if you screw up. There really aren’t that many moving pieces. Keep it simple. Be consistent in doing what you say you’ll do. Be consistent in who you meet with, and how you run your meetings. Be consistent about your goals, both Read More…
Six Habits of the Best Wine Sales Reps
The best wine sales reps have routines and habits that set them apart from others. Let’s dive into six of the most essential. The best wine sales reps know the power of a positive attitude It’s sales 101 to leave your emotions and opinions at the door, but I’m constantly amazed at how often this Read More…
More is not better (focus on focus)
A wine by the glass list that is 90 items long is confounding for the customer (and impossible to train a service staff on, much less preserve the quality in the bottle). A Chardonnay section in a wine shop that has three times as many wines as the other sections is obviously trying to appeal Read More…
The Real Goals of a Wine Sales Rep
Most wine sales reps don’t do it for the money. There is surprisingly little money in the wine business. Yes, income can be stable, but you’ll never strike it rich. And wine sales reps shouldn’t do it for the fame. There’s no fame in wine sales. There’s a little bit of stardom for some sommeliers, 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…
Measuring a sales job by dollars, or not
Sales reps usually measure by dollars. It’s an easy yardstick to use, it contributes to the quality of your life, and it’s a measurement that allows instant comparison to others in the industry. An “Annual industry salary survey” can be useful to a small degree. But it can also be clickbait. When you measure by Read More…
Problems, solutions, and the blame game in wine sales
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…
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…
What happens if …
… you present ten Pinot Noirs to an account, they don’t find joy in any of them, then a competitor presents just one and that makes it on the list? … you own 95% of a wine list at a local restaurant, but the company that has the other 5% suddenly starts spending a lot 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…
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…
You don’t need to have the answer
… you just need to know how to help your customers find the answer. Those are two very different things.
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…
A challenge: more questions
I’ve run into a few wine sales reps lately that only tell, they never ask. They tell me about the winemaker. They tell me about the steel tanks. They tell me about the vineyard. They tell me about the barrels. They tell me the scores. At no point do they ask anything. “What’s the best 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 things go wrong
In the relationship between a wholesaler and a retailer or restaurant, things will go wrong. It’s just a matter of time. A forgotten invoice. A screwed up delivery. A change of vintage from the 95 point wine everyone wants to the new vintage, which is only 85 points. Or something bigger. A shift in the Read More…
Tools vs. Skills part two (appearance and smoking)
In yesterday’s post I wrote the following: The most common myth: it’s someone’s physical attractiveness that makes them successful in sales. (The proof? I succeeded big time in sales.) How people look and/or handle themselves is a tool, not a skill. It is a tool to be conscious of for sure, but it’s not the Read More…
Tools vs. Skills
The writer Neil Gaiman was on the Tim Ferris podcast. In the show, Tim asked Neil about his writing process and how he physically went about writing his wonderful books. It’s a common question for authors, photographers, painters, and musicians. Why kind of guitar does she use? What type of camera does Annie Leibovitz prefer? 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…
Dangerous multipliers
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 very special case: having the whole wine list
To own the entire wine list at a restaurant, wether it’s a coffee café that happens to pour a couple of house wines at night, or the hot new restaurant with the hot new chef that is packed every evening, is a very particular situation that deserves a different playbook. A few thoughts: You’re 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…
Little nudges vs. big changes
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…
More is, unfortunately, free
I’ll bring you more samples. I’ll pour more wine in your store. I’ll put up more shelf talkers. I’ll train your staff more than last year. I’ll spend more time in your account. When you offer more, you’re doing it because you don’t see the costs in dollars and cents. You’re not being billed for Read More…
Strategy solves problems
There are three types of problems for wine sales rep: short term, mid-term, and long term. Short term is tomorrow, the day after that, and the next selling week. It’s the immediacy of having to react. Having to run a will call. Having to correct an error on an invoice. Having to scramble for appointments 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…
The Velocity Question
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…
Wine and Bagless Vacuum Cleaners
Bagless vaccum cleaners don’t perform their job as well as the old-school cleaner with a bag that you toss out when full. This has been proven time and time again and is the advice you hear if you go to a good vacuum cleaner repair shop and ask. But for most people that buy bagless vacuum 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…
Strengths, and your personal superpowers
Peter Parker can shoot webs and swing from building to building. Aquaman can swim underwater like a dolphin. Bruce Wayne builds great gadgets and tools to help get his job done (plus he drives a pretty awesome car). And what do you do? We all have superpowers. The strengths that set us apart from others. 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…
What is the modern wine wholesaler?
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…
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…
Nobody owes you anything
Sorry to bring you the bad news. But it’s the truth. That extra will call you ran? Looking the other way for a week while a bill was due? The extra in-store tasting you decided to do last week, when your kid’s play was being put on? There are no repayment gods that will ensure Read More…
What doesn’t work
It doesn’t work to not show up at an account for weeks. It doesn’t work to forget to tell an account they are overdue on a bill and about to get posted. It doesn’t work to not show new wines during a sales call. It doesn’t work to bad mouth your competition. It doesn’t work Read More…
Who is the hero?
Selling, all selling, is storytelling. And every good story has a hero that overcame obstacles, found the path, and achieved (or is working hard toward the goal). Every wine worth talking about has a hero. This is where commodity brands stumble and family-owned wineries have the edge. It’s hard to make a hero out of Read More…
Can you measure it?
As a wine sales rep for a good retailer, you sometimes take your personal time and devote it to the store by standing behind a barrel pouring samples for anybody who wants them. Boring stuff, usually. You might not sell very much wine, but one person connected deeply with one of your wines, and she Read More…
The 5000 piece puzzle
Lots of people love puzzles. It’s a great way to idle away time on a long weekend at the cabin, or during a family reunion. Why are some 1000 pieces? Why are some only ten inches square while others are huge? Why would someone intentionally choose an incredibly difficult 5000 piece puzzle? Easy: they want Read More…
Fiction perfection.
There is no such thing as a perfect wine. There is no such thing as a perfect sales call. There is no such thing as a perfect customer. And there’s no such thing as a perfect sales rep. Don’t aim for perfection. Aim instead for continuous improvement, personal development, refinement, and betterment. Be better today Read More…
Show notes
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…
Why did they say “no”?
There are so many reasons an account says no. They said no because they don’t like the wine.They said no because they already have 20 Pinot Grigios around $15.They said no because they read a report that wine of that category and price are slowing in sales.They said no because their budgets are tight that Read More…
Who did better?
Sales rep A and sales rep B have the same account list. They joke about how they should carpool to their accounts. Sales rep A walks in, does the normal discussion and tasting with the buyer, goes through the inventory and starts to take the order. Ten wines get ordered, a case of each. A Read More…
How to make a phone call
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…
The intimidation of the Wine Wizards
Every market has them, usually on the wholesaler or retail side. I call them The Wine Wizards, because they often look the part. White hair, a look in their eye, an air of wisdom and voice of knowledge. They have decades of experience. They have traveled the world. They have more stories about meeting great Read More…
Bowling and Wine Selling
Bowling is easy. If you can consistently deliver the ball, with the same energy, direction, spin, and accuracy, you can win big, and you can crush the competition. And it has to do with math. It’s the difference between a 90% success rate and a 100% success rate. When you’re winning at bowling (consistently throwing strikes) 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…
Promises, promises
“I promise I’ll communicate better about out of stocks. Trust me.” “I promise I’ll visit that unsold account. I’m all over it.” “Have no fear boss, I promise I’ll get that invoice mess up cleaned by the end of the week.” “I promise I can run that will call on Monday.” “I promise you I Read More…
A simple rule for wine sales reps
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…
Building systems (and avoiding reactive work)
In the wine sales world, there are SO many balls to juggle at a given time. Samples, staff trainings, cold calling, prospecting, and personal education to name a few. Returning phone calls, catching up on email, outlining a day, outlining a week, outlining a month. Maybe you work for a wholesaler that requires a weekly Read More…
The Paralysis of Analysis
I know several spreadsheet masters. These people work Excel like David Copperfield working an illusion. They know every twist, component, angle, and formula. They can plug in data along with a single variable and come up with years of projections. They can take the smallest of downturns in sales in a territory and analyze it Read More…
Selling motivations
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…
Buying motivations
A critical question when selling wine to restaurants and retailers is this: who is really making the decisions? The wine buyer might be making 100% of the choices. But usually not. An invisible hand exists in all business, and the motivations of the owner is often a controlling force within an organization. Sometimes for better, sometimes Read More…
Sometimes paper is better
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…
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…
The alternative to working smarter, not harder
It’s sage advice for most people. We’ve heard it time and time again. Work smarter, not harder. But after you have organized your work life, after you have figured out systems to work harder on your business instead of being stuck in your business, after you have figured out the key customers to make an Read More…
The easiest formula for opening new business
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…
Overwhelmed
Another sales call. More samples to pull. Who is the new buyer again? Oh yeah, that will call I have to run! The focus winery of the month. Do I have a sparkling wine stopper? OMG Thanksgiving and Christmas is around the corner! My phone is out of juice! Yet another sales call. I know Read More…
Passions vs. Skills
Two wine sales reps. Two different ways of doing business. Sales rep number one has a passion for what she does. She is so into wine! It’s her life. It’s all about the aromas, the flavors, the food, and the occasional travel. Wine is first and foremost the creator of her energy. A wine sales Read More…
What customer service is not
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…
Under promising? Over delivering?
“Under promise then over deliver.” The problem with that equation is that you intentionally under promise. Why do that? Just over deliver. Keeps it easier.
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…
The choice to complain
Private complaining and grumbling about accounts and your sales life, to friends or significant others, is part of a salesperson’s life. We all have to unpack a bit at the end of a tough day. It’s life. It’s normal. We all do it. Don’t worry too much about your daily or weekly grumbling about small 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…
Let’s talk email
Efficiency is talked about often, and email is definitely one of the most efficient ways to communicate (in many ways too efficient, which is why it gets overused). In the spirit of efficiency some people use email well. And others do not. And it’s painful to watch (and read). Rules: Learn what BCC: is all Read More…
Tell and Show
When we are young, we have Show and Tell in elementary school. Then we grow up and become wine sales reps. And we continue our version of Show and Tell. We pop the cork, we show the wine, then we tell. Flip it around. Tell and Show. It works better that way. Tell your customer Read More…
The problem with being the first to say it
Sometimes the truth needs to be said. The problem is somebody has to say it first. “This brand really doesn’t fit our portfolio or our company style.” “That customer is not good for our business, even if they buy more and more wine.” “Your technique in selling is too abrasive and confrontational.” “The cigarettes you Read More…
Screwing up (gracefully)
You dropped the ball. Screwed up royally. There are no excuses. Somebody is going to be mad. The owner’s manual on screwing up gracefully reads pretty simply: Own it. Don’t make excuses. Don’t try to hide. Apologize. Hope for the best. Then apologize again. Too bad more people don’t have a copy of the owner’s 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…
When problems happen
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…
Investment: Out of the (TV) box thinking
This is going to be a strange one but stick with me on this… I just got a new TV and it came with Roku, one of the many cable-cutting options out there. You scroll through the available services, some free and some not, and add them to your options. I added the CW Network (for free!) Read More…
“So, do you have any questions for me?”
It’s a predictable part of the job interview, usually happening at the end of the interview process. The wholesaler doing the hiring of a new sales rep asks their rote and standard questions (“Where do you see yourself in five years?” etc.). Then they ask you, the one trying to be hired as a wine sales rep, 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 communication quandary
The single biggest problem wine wholesalers have is simple and universal: communication of important information. Nobody does it well. Nobody. What’s new in the portfolio? What’s leaving the portfolio? What is out of stock? What containers just arrived? Which sales rep left? What sales reps just got hired? When is the next portfolio tasting? Who is Read More…