Good Grape Wine Company

October 29 2006

The Winery and the Bon Vivant

Food & Wine magazine has a really funny take on wine sales and salesmanship in the October issue. 

Lettie Teague, the F&W monthly wine columnist, recounts her failed attempt at wine sales some years ago and decides that revisiting the grinding gearbox known as commission sales was an interesting idea--as a journalist on a “ride along.”

Undoubtedly, being an on the street wine salesman is tough work.  Not as many people as you would think know that the life of a salesperson, while seemingly glamorous with travel and entertaining, is tough work filled with customers plying a daily dose of lack of respect, rejection, or worse. 

Those unsavory aspects of the sales life make the Food & Wine article even more interesting for its portrayal of a “Day in the Life …”

In most sales disciplines methodologies have taken grip that guide the salesperson through the sale process picking up cues from the buyer, navigating a maze of company politics, competition, budget issues and a myriad of other items to come out of the other side with a “solution sale.”

While the wine industry may make use of a key account methodology or two, most of the art of the sale is the verbal jousting/quick on your feet/sound bite laden/hand-to-hand combat/get the order right now kind of sale that gives immediate satisfaction or defeat—kind of like pharmaceutical sales without donuts for the doctors. 

This article captures that industry flavor perfectly.  And, it captures the “sound bite” aspect of the business, as well.

This notion, in particular, was reinforced to me last week when I went to a non-profit tasting function that benefited a charity, but was run by a wholesaler.  The fact that this charity tasting might as well have been an inventory clearance sale is an entirely different issue that I won’t address here.  The tasting personnel at the event were a mix of staff, winery representatives and distributor sales people.

The interesting thing to point out about this is the way we were addressed as “theoretical” customers.  Winery representatives, wearing casual clothes and using their tasting room experience undoubtedly, always asked us, as we eyed the selection, “What do you like to drink” as a segue into a conversation. Or, they framed us into parameters to take us through a couple of different wines from lightest to heaviest and whites to red.

Oddly, though, in stark contrast to the soft glove approach of the winery reps. were the distributor sales people—they stoically stood there, pressed shirts and ties until I eyed a wine and asked to taste it before they launched into their canned patter about the wine—an elevator pitch of information given not the least bit conversationally and not to be interrupted, lest flow and thought process be broken.

The Food & Wine article similarly captures this trademark of the business.

Overall, I find the dichotomy of approaches within the same supply chain to be interesting—the difference between the way a winery works with a consumer versus a distributor rep. and a retailer.

Everybody in that supply chain—the winery, the distributor and the retailer is in sales, but the approaches are ALL different.

When I commented to a “patter” guy that he must be in sales because he had the pitch down cold, he said to me:

“Acutally, I consider myself a Bon vivant.”

Go figure.

digg this | toast this! | add to del.icio.us | add to newsvine | add to furl | add to reddit |

Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print | Email This