Death of a Beverage Salesperson

The classical beverage salesperson that we all knew will not get a do-over. The beverage version of Willy Loman really is dead and there won’t be any kind of sequel.

Gone are the postal routes, encyclopedia sales methods and schlocky promises. Covid-19 has forcefully jettisoned the sad-sack, antiquated practices of the mediocre plus.

For those of us that actively participate in the streets of NYC in the beverage ecosystem, the old way of sales was already on the way out and we saw the last hurrah. Covid-19 just accelerated it.

Here is what won’t be going away: the Connection Artist. The Artisan Salesperson in a new and more perilous landscape.

The salesperson will either evolve and lean into a more connective artist or disappear into the ether. Why? Because the playing field is now a head-spinning, multi-dimensional pitch to play on – a shape-shifting game is now the daily field of play. In short, it just got more complicated.

The Connection Artist is a multi-faceted, tech-forward, learned, fuller-scoped, market-savvy beverage player. This new modality of the connector is fluent in what was done before by the classical beverage salesperson, chooses wisely when to apply past principles, and when not to.

The beverage game today is a freshly-picked paradigm of immense opportunity and the Connection Artist is the star player.