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 boss’ job is to make sure they worker is doing their job. And they do that through asking questions.

So when you pitch a new wine to a worker instead of an owner, be sure to sell it better than “this is really good wine.” There a billions of those out there. Ask yourself: what will their boss ask them to justify buying this new product?

Give them the answers they need to look good in front of the boss. Then you’ve succeeded in doing part of their job for them, and your value suddenly goes up.

Pretty simple, really.