Good Grape Wine Company

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Show me an old wine business sales hand and I’ll show you an old dog with the palor of a corpse, cussing a blue streak, and a gallows sense of humor that would make comedians telling “The Aristocrats” joke wince.  It’s through no fault of their own: selling wine is significantly less glamorous than it’s made out to be, or so I’m told. I’m reminded of the night whilst at a non-profit wine tasting when I chatted up a regional sales rep. for a well known Dry Creek winery that started tearing up when she talked of being on the road 85% of the time, away from her daughter and how, as a single mother, her own mother was raising her daughter.  She complained about her wineries packaging and said that the quality had slipped when the winemaker had left a year and a ½ ago and hadn’t been replaced because they were letting the assistant winemaker do all of the work, without the promotion.  She referenced a conversation she had with her sales manager about quota’s citing the popular phrase for the mother of cuss words, “F-U.” I gulped my generously poured sample and thanked her for, well, for sharing too much information, really. I moved on to the next table making mental note to never, innocuously say, “Your job must be great.” I also squelched the desire to enter the wine business on the winery or distributor sales side.  With that in the back of my mind, back in April, I wrote a post on Weimax Wine & Spirits and Gerald Weisl’ deliciously snarky manifesto on “How to be a Wine Sales Rep.” I left out the equally fantastic article by Weisl called “How to conduct a Trade Tasting” for a future post.  At the time I compared the articles to the irascible postings on the wine business by Joe Dressner on his site (found here).  And, despite the embittered, scurrilous contempt they may both sometimes demonstrate towards the stark reality of the wine trade (read:  selling the stuff—a business older than prostitution, by some counts), perhaps their shining beacon is occurring subtly around the country as new entrants come into the wine field. Cue the music because “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” In the immortal words of James Brown, Come here sister Papa’s in the swing He ain’t too hip now but I can dig that new breed babe; He ain’t no drag He’s got a brand new bag Maybe I’m overstating this a bit, but nonetheless my interest was piqued when I saw two recent wine job postings on the Winebusiness.com site—postings that promise to bring in some fresh blood and treat wine sales, well, differently. The first is from Web 2.0 favored son, Cameron Hughes Wine.  The job ad to be one of the in-person demonstrators for Cameron Hughes screams, ARE YOU A ROCK STAR SALES PERSON? Do you have an awesome personality? Do you really enjoy wine? It continues … You MUST have a ‘GO-GETTER’ attitude demonstrating confidence & charisma, with a knack for public speaking. You must be reliable, solid, and hard working. No wimps need apply – don’t even try. The other ad is from a distributor in Illinois called Wine-o-Rama.  Bonus points to them for having a “break the clutter” name and for citing the wine blogosphere in their ad: Do you find that you idly swirl your water glass or spend personal free time reading and searching for entertainment from online podcasts, blogs, or articles about wine? Perfect! Is your passion for wine uncontainable? How so? Tell us about that. Do you want to work with a company that is quality driven and focused on small-production wines that are worthy of your passion? If so, then we may want you to join our team. We are looking for someone who is excited about wine and is already selling wine even though you don’t happen to do so professionally; you can’t help but sell wine to those around you. You’re not a wine geek; you’re just its biggest fan. You are smart, motivated and savvy; independent in spirit and mind; someone who cares about the product they promote and know the difference between selling wine and widgets. We’ve already established that you are excited about wine, but what is your strategy to convert the non-excited? It’s an interesting dichotomy, the romance and glamour of the winery story juxtaposed against what is the reality of wine sales through the three-tier system.  A couple more bright, shiny new hires from the likes of Cameron Hughes and Wine-o-Rama and maybe the wine industry will continue to shake off the shackles of the legacy ways of doing business, gaining a new sense of humor along the way.  May the “F-U” in wine sales mean only that they are the first two letters in F-U-N.  http://www.goodgrape.com/index.php/498/