THE REORDER 01/17/22

Allocation Manipulation

Allocation Manipulation is one surefire way to accomplish the sales destruction trifecta; alienating customers, destroying trust, and building future bear traps for yourself.

The power the industry has given allocations is staggering. It is intoxicating to all parties when the phrase “it’s allocated” gets thrown into the mix. These two words magically imply that the wine (or wines) offered have other interested parties. Not unlike “best and final” in real estate, it’s a dynamic that plays on the urges to compete and not miss out.

What’s vital to understand is that Allocation Manipulation can put you in sales jail (the no trust zone, allocation management purgatory, or both…) if you do it. So here are a few guidelines on approach.

Allocation Guidelines

An allocation fulfills a promise.

In most cases an allocation implies a yearly reservation. If you offer, you should honor. And you need to keep track…

The most effective allocation offers are truthful.

Be genuine, communicate clearly and do it with good intent. State the facts. This is especially important when the amount of wine you can offer is lower than the previous year.

Most allocation offers look the same.

Come to terms with the fact that there may be no clear and visible difference to most buyers between the genuine offer and the allocation manipulation offer. Time will tell. Treasure the easy sleep you have because you don’t take the manipulative path.

There will most likely never be enough.

For wines that are in high demand, unhappy customers are a certainty. This is not the time to blame the manager, say that someone doesn’t know what they are doing, or hide. If you can find more wine, great. If not, it isn’t the end of the world. Aim for dialogue. Many a great relationship began with an allocation conflict.

Educate whenever you can.

I am still shocked at how much we know as an industry about terroir, winemaking, and culture and yet, how little we know about how the business works.

Allocations from producer to importer do not always translate to allocated wines from distributor to retailer/restaurant. They aren’t the same thing. Also, if a customer only takes allocated items from you, cool. Just know that at some point a tough conversation is coming. It’s better to weave this conversation in sooner rather than later.

“

THE REORDER 10/31/21

Patience/Impatience

There is always a strong tension of patience/impatience that goes along with artisan salescraft.

Your ducks will never be in a row and you will have to adjust to constant change.

The high performers of artisan salescraft I know and have worked with have one thing in common: they accept this tension. They know that there will be times to wait, times to act and times to start over.

Patience and impatience in tandem is a reality and the practice of the professional is to work with that duality and not against it.

“

THE REORDER 07/19/21

There is No Perfect Circle

1 minute read

File under: Philosophy

There is no perfect circle in a beverage business of artisans, no straight lines.

That reorder you expect might not happen. The beverage director you know will not be there forever. Hallowed Domaines that we think will never change, will change. And as much as we expect that wine to be in good supply forever, no one can predict the weather.

So that leaves us with a vital question: what do we do?

Know the why, as in why you do what you do. Develop a philosophy that you can hang your hat on every day that isn’t some number. Roll with impermanence. Feel the shifts coming and laugh when you miss them and a grand change happens.

Move past mistakes quickly and learn from them, but don’t live in them.

Acknowledge the challenges and know that within them there are great opportunities.

“

THE REORDER 06/26/21

To the New Sales Rep

3 minute read

File under: Artisan Salescraft

Don’t listen to them. Don’t listen to the appointment obsessed, or the hackneyed never-before-in-the-trenches middle manager spreadsheeting you for no reason and telling you that numbers never lie.

Do listen to your intuition. Develop that.

Don’t create sales, create dialogue.

Look for what is hidden in plain sight.

Take the new and make it known and take the known and make it new.

Don’t take orders, tell memorable stories.

Connection wins every single time, it just may not seem like it in the moment.

Be fearless if you actually have something real to offer and if you don’t, figure it out yesterday.

Listen more. Empathize like a professional.

Think like a fluent buyer. Ask better questions.

Learn to feel the pulse of a place.

Practice restraint. You don’t have to drink of the cup from the second bottle.

Send bespoke emails that actually mean something, not just because.

Go home well.

Confidence comes from a philosophy that doesn’t involve any number.

Be open. Be thirsty to learn.

Don’t get locked in the technical info and miss the context.

You are not a brand, you are a person.

You don’t ever sell to – you sell with.

Sevenfifty is a tool. Use it like one.

Love impermanence – constant change is part of the game.

A great sales rep (whatever this title actually means now) makes waves that no one will ever see, waves that continue to crash for years – but no one but you will know.

More artisan sales craft explanation here.

And if all else fails, just reach out @iamlooper. I am here to help.

“

THE REORDER 05/01/21

The One Month Wonder

2 minute read

File Under: Salescraft

Anyone can be a one month wonder. Anyone. If you have the right product, the right demand and the right moment, the number at the end of the month can be a whopper.
Unfortunately, one of the most pervasive and destructive modes of thinking in the beverage business is the month to month mentality. “We had a great month” is thrown about casually and almost exclusively without context.

To state the obvious: one month does not make a career. Consistent performance is actually a much bigger game and has nearly nothing to do with that one month. High performance in the sales game is how you consistently create/cultivate connection and demand.

What guided me was to think in larger blocks. Try to tune in to what is driving demand in the marketplace. Engage in thinking that is creative and empathetic. And learn to accept the impermanence of what we do.

It’s amazing to have a whopper month. It is a thrill. But most importantly, if you know why and how to do it again, then you are beginning to see the craft of an artisan. The fluency of knowing how to do it becomes one of the many building blocks of a foundation of consistency. And once you achieve that, the game gets a lot more fun and you can really make waves.

“

THE REORDER 03/15/21

To sell, or not to sell

To sell, or not to sell, that is not the question.

If the idea of “selling” motivates you, then live in that frame. Invest in the sales mentality as a competitive fire to continue to drive you. This pursuit is in itself not a bad thing. But be careful to avoid idolizing the number or that big case drop of wine or case stack of spirits that goes out. It’s a trap.

Selling is a result of philosophy and connection artistry – real craft.

The most important question in the beverage game today is how well you can connect.

Connection artists make waves. Salespeople make sales.

“

THE REORDER 03/01/21

Ground Game Defined

If you connect people to wine/spirits and you don’t just send email offers all day hoping someone will respond, your ground game will define your career. It is the difference between the professional and the passable/mediocre in the artisan practice of sales.

Unfortunately, typical management practices in the beverage business have created a debauched sense of what is best practice by asking for recaps, appointment counts and god knows what else with the mere goal of making sure people are doing their jobs and not emboldening a team to make waves.

The Strong Ground Gamer

Strong Ground Gamers observe and act by simply noticing.

They don’t “desktop surf” the marketplace, they walk the marketplace.

They don’t covet appointments, they promote dialogue.

They don’t show an ocean of wine to see what sticks, they get specific by putting themselves in their customers’ shoes.

They are led by truth and not by number. They are never dishonest in the pursuit of shipping an allocation.

They ask better questions, listen more intently and dance with the marketplace devil that will never be tamed or fixed, it will always be moving.

How do buyers know the difference? They know the difference as much as you know the difference between an artful buyer that creates a narrative in what they buy and offer and the hackneyed or self-interested.

Mostly it is in between the rests. The unsaid. But over time, you will always know who has Ground Game and who doesn’t.

The kicker is that the folks with real Ground Game don’t get caught up in the comparison – they just hone their craft on the daily.

“

1 2 3 … 8 Next »