Paul Mabray of Emetry shared an article on LinkedIn the other day about how the direct-to-consumer model is infiltrating the alcohol industry and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. In case you’re not familiar with Paul’s work, I consider him the EF Hutton of the wine industry. When he talks, I listen. When he posts and article, I read it.

The take-away from the article that’s induced my insomnia for two nights in a row is this idea of “applying DTC sensibility” to the 3-tier system. My post is all about expanding on this idea.

When the supreme court case, Granholm v. Heald, was decided in 2005, it kicked off an avalanche of investment and innovation the likes of which our industry had never seen. It was our Y2K. Only this time instead of stocking up on freeze dried foods and filling our bathtubs with fresh water, it was all about rushing to install CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, legally compliant order fulfillment and a whole slew of new marketing strategies & tactics. Wineries found themselves face to face with the ability AND the platform of permission to connect directly with consumers in a context other than their own tasting rooms.

It’s also quite interesting to recall that, at the time, the formidable Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America had a singular focus for the funds in their lobbying coffers which was to stop the DTC train from ever leaving the station. I remember this well because I was heavily involved in helping to recruit new members to the American Beverage Institute which was up to its eyeballs in the battle against the (successful) attempt to lower the BAC level to .08 in all states. Despite strident efforts by some of the most powerful buyers of alcohol in the country, WSWA’s standard response in refusing to support the ABI financially was they needed to keep all their powder dry for the DTC battle. In the end, consumer choice won out as it inevitably does.

But the Granholm decision was 14 years ago. No one can deny most if not all the wineries in the US have been working overtime ever since to capitalize on the opportunities ushered in by the ruling. I’d go even further to say the epic proliferation of US wineries was enabled by this newfound marketplace. It allowed for small wineries to sell their entire production without ever having to darken the paneled hallways of a distributor. We’ve come a long way and learned a great deal about CRM, email marketing, targeting & re-targeting, data sets and a host of other tech and data driven best practices. And yet, from where I sit, I’ve seen very little of this transfer over to selling efforts in the 3-tier system. I certainly have my own theories of why this is. At most wine companies, the DTC team is siloed away from the “regular” sales team that oversees the wholesale network, which is a shame, in my opinion, because many of the same SENSIBILITIES can and should be applied to the trade side.

For example, take email marketing. What is your strategy for acquiring well-qualified email addresses of trade buyers from all over the country? How large is your list now? How is it segmented? How dialed-in is your messaging and your use of email service software such as MailChimp or Constant Contact? Many wineries have their email marketing tool as a plug-in to their e-commerce system, so they’re not used to operating it as stand-alone platform. What a missed opportunity! Especially considering the low cost of this technology.

Next, let’s talk digital advertising. How often do you upload lists of trade buyers to your Facebook Ad Account, save it as a Custom Audience and then create Lookalike Audiences so you can launch highly targeted ads on Facebook aimed at wine buyers both on and off premise? How well are you leveraging Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to research and create trade audiences with titles like Restaurant General Manager, Bartender and people who have an interests like Master Sommelier and WSET. Do I hear crickets?

And don’t even get me started on CRM! News flash: CRM is not just for DTC! Talk about DTC sensibilities circling the drain (instead of being leveraged). As powerful as CRM is and has been for the DTC channel, it’s TEN TIMES more powerful in the 3-tier realm. I’ve been a street-corner evangelist on this topic for more than 5 years. My poor, ragged cardboard sign is in tatters. But don’t cry for me, Argentina. Cry for yourselves. Because while you’ve been doing what you’ve always been doing (believing the distributor is the center of your universe), many of your competitors have been going to night school at places like the University of GreatVines and KARMA College, putting in the time required to learn CRM sensibilities- but this time for the trade. And now, while you’re asleep at the wheel (blissfully unaware just how dramatically this business has changed in the last 14 years) a new breed of wine companies (armed to the teeth with said DTC Sensibilities) are quietly eating your lunch. Nom Nom.

So let’s go back to the DIGIDAY article that launched this rant in the first place. It’s called, “Direct-to-consumer is coming to the alcohol industry” (dated July 9, 2019). Just for fun, let’s Key Word the crap out of it. Here goes: “infiltrate, shift, branding, opportunity, content, growth playbook, hit mainstream, making an impression, brand equity, natural evolution, growing competition, healthy results.” By the way, I don’t meet a lot of wine sales pros who eat, sleep and breathe key words. Case in point.

Since it’s a Friday, I’d like to end on a positive note. It is by no means too late to start applying these DTC Sensibilities to the trade. If fact, if past performance is any indication of future results, you’ve still got a gigantic head start on the rest of the field.

The wine business is full of contradictions. But, nowhere are the illogical absurdities more abundant than on the selling end of the game. The tragedy is the beliefs wine sales pros hold most deeply are the very ones in desperate need of some serious myth-busting.

Take for example the dogmatic notion that there is a direct correlation between the amount of wine knowledge someone has accrued and their ability to sell it. I’ve spouted off on this misguided perception in other places, so I won’t belabor the point here. Ironically (and paradoxically), the higher you go on the learning scale, the less in touch you are with the mindset of the average wine consumer.

Another incongruous and highly unsound bit of reasoning is the belief that the best way to sell wine is to blather on endlessly about its flavor, its provenance, and its “story.” Everything about this approach makes complete sense to our brains. People love stories, we say. Stories sell, we say. The problem is the vast majority of conversation and persuasion around a wine’s “distinctiveness” (in quotes here because there’s a lot less distinction among wines than people think – yet another paradox) takes place between the employees of the company that produces the wine and the employees of the retail/restaurant community. The consumer rarely if ever partakes in this supposedly game-changing storytelling.

But the wine selling paradox that frustrates me most is the persistent belief that the more accounts in which you have distribution the more wine you will sell. The widely used and highly revered metric of “accounts sold” is held up as one of our industry’s most important KPI’s. Yet, while it could be true (and makes perfect sense to our brains), it seldom IS true. The reason, quite simply, is not all accounts are equally capable of moving lots of wine through their operation. Like it or not, the 80/20 Rule is real. A fatally ironic twist in this more-is-more fallacy is it is now 100 times more difficult to put your wine into distribution than it has ever been. So, in reality it’s a very a good thing that not all accounts are equal and wineries who have the presence of mind to aim their time, money, and manpower with great precision will enjoy consistent and profitable sales results year after year.

The massive explosion of the number of wine brands for sale in the US combined with the ever-shrinking pool of distributors has created a very unworkable situation for ALL sizes of wine companies: large, medium, and small. Never in the history of the wine sales game has it been more important to choose your points of distribution as wisely and strategically as possible. My suggestion is to trade off a little bit of time spent amassing wine knowledge and use it to more thoroughly research the market opportunities.

The key takeaway from this blog post is to do your homework and choose your targets wisely. The single biggest determinant of volume in any given account is foot traffic. The best accounts in which to seek distribution are incredibly busy – packed every day. THESE accounts are worth pursuing above all others because they sell so much more wine than all others. So, how can you tell which accounts fit this profile? For restaurants, look for “indicators” of volume like lots of private dining space, outdoor seating, and massive numbers of reviews on Yelp. BTW, “most reviewed” is a much more reliable indicator of volume than “highest rated.” Ratings are subjective. Foot traffic is not only objective but a rock solid gauge of volume potential.

On the off premise side, one of my favorite targets are retailers who sell as much or more wine off their website than they do inside their brick-and-mortar store. These accounts are not limited in any way by their shelf space and can carry a virtually unlimited “inventory.” They are very easy to find if you know where to look, what to look for and are willing to spend time on it.

Taking time to understand, research, and target highly desirable account types is one of the most important ways modern wine salespeople can spend their time in this highly competitive environment. And the good news for those of you reading this post is most of your competitors will continue to cling to the “old playbook” and look elsewhere for keys to sales success.

Less really is more. Not all accounts are equal. Narrow the focus of your sales activity, don’t widen it. Truly, one of the great paradoxes of our time.

I predictably get strange looks whenever I tell salespeople that “real” selling isn’t necessarily about the product. It’s such a counter-intuitive concept to the untrained, amateurish seller of goods that they convulse involuntarily when I espouse the notion.

If you look as closely and as frequently as I do at the profession of selling (which already ranks among the most maligned of occupations), you’ll see very distinct camps or schools of thought and these demarcations are easily put into a hierarchy representing progressive levels of expertise. In a fairly simplified way, I’ve arranged them for you here:

At the very lowest level is the “TRANSACTIONAL” approach. This is the bastion of the much revered but hopelessly obsolete features-and-benefits style of selling. I have a product to sell. You have money. I’m going to keep spewing facts until you buy. The seller sees features and benefits as a logical, linear pathway to fulfilling your prospects needs but the buyer sees only trivial BS. Need proof? Just look at the expression on your prospects face when you’re engaging in transactional selling. You can always tell you’re amid a transactional sale because the salesperson is the only one talking. In the very worst cases, the seller has never bothered to even qualify the need of the buyer with a few simple questions. For those of us who know better, it’s excruciating to see the profession of selling being clubbed to death before our very eyes.

The next level “up” is (clear-throat, put hands around own neck in a choking position) the much touted “CONSULTATIVE” approach. While this was certainly a breakthrough in sales technique when Jimmy Carter was President, this selling style, too, is as outdated as a public payphone. I know, I know! Many of you reading this believe this is cutting edge stuff! For a lot of you, this is as far as you’ve progressed in your sales skills. Completely unaware that “modern” selling has evolved significantly in the last two decades, you continue to hang your hat on the idea that once you’ve asked a few off-the-shelf, qualifying questions, you’re free to launch a diatribe of your products’ features and benefits. The central pillar of both the transactional approach and the consultative approach is still the presentation. And that, my friends, is how you can tell whether you are truly a professional salesperson – how much emphasis you put on the presentation.

Jeff Thull, in his book, Mastering the Complex Sales, says that presentations suffer from 3 major flaws. Too much information presented too early in the sales process to the wrong people. This overemphasis on presentations is so ubiquitous it’s very hard to get anyone to see its futility. A practical tip for getting out of this “trap” (which is exactly what it is) is to ask yourself, “Is this presentation focused on my products or the buyer’s well-qualified, well-researched needs?” I think everyone reading this knows the answer to that question.

The highest level of sales expertise, in my well-qualified opinion is what I call a “MODERN” approach. The distinguishing mark of this level of sales proficiency is that it doesn’t look like selling at all. In fact, in all my training classes, I frequently use the following phrase to vividly capture the spirit of the idea, “The more you act like a salesperson, the less you will sell.” As proof that I’m speaking the truth here I ask you to take a moment right now to conjure up in your mind what it means to “act like a salesperson.”

If you aspire to this level of professionalism (and effectiveness), I know of no better place to start than Daniel Pink’s book, To Sell is Human. Among the many pearls of wisdom put forth by Mr. Pink, my favorite is the shift from buyer-beware (Caveat Emptor) to seller-beware. This caution flag truly conveys why a more modern approach is needed today. The relationship between buyers and sellers has changed dramatically due to the astounding availability of product information, social proof, and transparency via the internet. Buyers no longer lack access to high-value expertise, product information and category insights previously offered by sales people decades ago. As a result, THE SKILLS REQUIRED to be successful in sales have also changed.

A modern selling approach is about taking the focus off yourself and your products and placing it on he needs of your customer. It’s about postponing the urge to talk about your products and services long enough to find out what the buyer really wants. Sometimes THEY don’t even know so you’ve got to do a lot of research and bring real solutions/suggestions to the table. A modern approach is about empathy because, truth be told, quite often your product is not the solution they need. You have to EARN the right to ask for the business and that takes time. So a big part of the modern sales approach is patience. A saying that very much captures the spirit of the modern approach is this: You can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

In almost every instance, I begin my sales training classes with the question, “Selling has changed- have you?” It’s natural to blame individual salespeople for not taking the initiative to keep up with the times and continually upgrade their selling skills. But, instead, I prefer to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of sales leaders and training departments who perpetuate antiquated sales approaches in their organizations. I do a lot of recruiting of salespeople for my consulting clients and I make it my personal mission to eliminate candidates with “old school” sales approaches as early as possible in the hiring process.

I’m sure the same can be said for a lot of sectors of the business world these days that if you’re still operating in the same ways you did ten years ago, you are already obsolete. “Transactional” sales people are a dime a dozen and offer no enduring value to an organization. By contrast, a “Modern” salesperson is one who truly understands a sale is merely a by-product of a much larger relationship and that adding real business value is the key to achieving greatness in sales.

About the Author
Ben Salisbury is the Founder and President of Salisbury Creative Group, Inc. which specializes in helping wineries and craft distilleries achieve high levels of sales effectiveness. Leveraging his knowledge and experience from three decades in the industry, Ben and his team deliver sales, marketing, and distribution expertise to a wide array of adult beverage clients. Prior to starting his own company in May of 2014, Ben spent 17 years as VP of On Premise National Accounts for both Ste Michelle Wine Estates and Constellation Brands.
Contact info:
ben@salisburycreative.com
469-265-2210

The modern sales environment has never been more challenging for small wine & spirits brands, and it won’t be improving any time soon. But thriving and surviving IS possible if you’re wielding the right tools for the job at hand which is building high quality distribution and lots of it.

At the top of the list for the 3 BEST tools is your mindset. “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me” should be your mantra. “If it’s important to us, we’ll have to do it ourselves,” is what you should say every day to the face in the mirror. With every fiber of your being, you must avoid the temptation to reach for one of the 3 worst tools (below). YOU are responsible for building distribution. YOU are responsible for generating demand. YOU are responsible for absorbing the learning curve necessary for survival in the modern era.

Next is leveraging digital & social media to generate demand for your products. Facebook advertising, landing pages, email marketing and, of course, your website. Everything must me optimized to capture data. Data that can be used to target and build relationships with both consumers and trade. Some of this data will be captured by the Facebook Pixel. Some accumulates via your various lead-gen forms on your website and landing pages. If you think this stuff is confined to the realm of fancy pants marketing gurus, you’d be wise to reconsider. YOU or someone on your team needs to not only learn about this but master it. If necessary, find a TRUSTED expert to help you.

The third best tool is awareness of your options. It continually amazes me how shockingly unaware most small producers are of the options for selling, distributing and managing sales activities of their products. If you’re not familiar with following companies, strategies, and platforms, I suggest you give yourself a crash course asap. LibDib, SevenFifty, GreatVines, Provi, BevStrat, Green Glass Global, Equinox Technology Partners, Bevology, winery direct programs, clearing distributors, Merchant 23, BlueCart, Tennessee v. Blair just for starters. What you want to be aware of is anything that disrupts the status quo because, quite frankly, your livelihood and life’s work depends upon it.

My list of the 3 worst tools is counter-intuitive for most and downright offensive to some. But, don’t shoot the messenger. Somebody must tell you the emperor has no clothes. Might as well be me.

For decades and decades, working with distributors was the number one tool in the small brand sales tool box. Unfortunately, due to the astonishing proliferation of new brands (most of them small) and the rich-getting-richer consolidation of the wholesale tier, this is no longer the case. I can’t overstate this enough: when it comes to small brands, distributors just can’t do much for you. The best they can do is match your efforts and even that is a big stretch. Accept it. Adjust to it. Move on. The good news is most of your competitors simply refuse to accept this new reality so, for at least the next 3-5 years, you’ve got a first-mover advantage. Start relying less and less on your distributors now so you can enjoy a thriving enterprise for many years to come.

The second worst tool is product knowledge. Nothing wrong with it. Got to have it. But having it, investing in it and spending time on it won’t move the needle on your sales in any meaningful way. It’s simply not enough. Most of the wine & spirits industry reveres product knowledge over business acumen. I implore you to get the heck off that train. Again, nothing wrong with product knowledge, just don’t expect too much from it. The wine & spirits industry suffers from two powerful but opposing forces: romance & hedonistic passion on one end and cruel & pitiless competition on the other. While your top salesperson is describing soil types and degree days through moist eyes and tremored discourse, his competitor is on the phone confirming a winery-direct order for a 20-foot container.

The third on the list of worst tools for wine & spirits sales is activity. Not really a “tool” per se but it is high on the list of things-to-do-to-sell-more for most small brands. I’m talking here about the flawed mindset that more sales calls equal more sales. Or that more activity means more achievement. Not necessarily. When a small family winery or craft distillery goes out of business, a post-mortem analysis will reveal they had no regard for the 80/20 Rule. They tolerated way too much low-value activity from their sales team. They sacrificed the best on the altar of the good. The path of the productive, however, is one of prioritization, focus, and discipline. Less really is more. And it’s a good thing because small brands have so much less of everything than the larger players.

About the Author:
Ben Salisbury is the Founder and President of Salisbury Creative Group, Inc. which specializes in helping wineries and craft distilleries achieve high levels of sales effectiveness. Leveraging his knowledge and experience from three decades in the industry, Ben and his team deliver sales, marketing, and distribution expertise to a wide array of adult beverage clients. Prior to starting his own company in May of 2014, Ben spent 17 years as VP of On Premise National Accounts for both Ste Michelle Wine Estates and Constellation Brands.
Contact info:
ben@salisburycreative.com
469-265-2210