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Readers Write |
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Sydney Time
Copyright © Ric Einstein 2009
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The Games that Distributors and Producers Play
It looks like its not only some of the wine retailers that play games when trying to sell their products. Retailers have to put up with games from distributors and producers, as the details in these two emails show, and they make fascinating reading.
The first is from Gerald in at Winemax in San Francisco and the second from Stewart at Cloud Wine in Melbourne.
Thank
you both for taking the time to send your thoughts and comments.
Gerald
from Weimax here in San Francisco. I have customers who come in and
taste, then run home to see if the wines they've tasted are high scoring and if
they, then, ought to buy them. My advice and their tasting these is still not
sufficient.
(Editors
note, it gets stranger.)
I have the laugh/cry thing virtually every day. Right now
I'm crying about dealing with a major, small distributor and importer of
wines. They have a nice portfolio. A small percentage of their
products are available in good supply and they'd like to "sell"
these. However, a number of items they offer are "restricted"
and allocated.
Okay, the latest incident is this: Our shop has sold
about quite a few dozen of a lovely Rosso di Montalcino from the 2002
vintage. I am interested to taste the same property's 1999 Brunello which
is newly-listed in their catalogue, figuring if this guy can make such a good
wine in a disaster vintage, his Brunello in a good vintage might really be
terrific. This firm always makes its customers jump through hoops and when
you think you've jumped through the required number, they produce one more,
dipping it in gasoline setting it on fire.
Stewart here - Jacinta's better half and part owner of Cloudwine.
I'm not sure
where to begin so perhaps I'll just relay some examples of the typical behaviour we see from a wide array of sales. I should explain beforehand that
when we got into this game I assumed that all suppliers the world over
exhibited a strong focus on customer service. My professional background is
that of corporate / investment banking, an industry that is cut throat and intensely
competitive, and one that has deeply shaped my approach to business. If you
don't make an all out attempt to service customers in a professional and
ethical manner, you will eventually fail, and I have seen this time and time
again in banking.
Mind you,
selling wine is much more competitive in comparison, so one would expect that
those doing the selling might just employ at least a small amount of
professionalism and compassion.
Interestingly,
our peers that we have dealings with in Melbourne don't share our concerns to anywhere near the same degree .... perhaps
they just accept that this 'is just the way it is'? Anyway, let the ranting
begin!
(Note: for
further reference checkout out US retailer
Gerald Weisl's
sales tips. Very funny, and unfortunately very real. These skills have
managed to find their way across the Pacific to Oz).
(Editors Note: Now here is a surprise, Stewart’s link is
to Weimax Wines, the author of the first section of this story. Small
world!)
Ability to
interact with the customer base in a professional manner: this is perhaps my biggest bugbear - the inability of sales people
to behave in a professional manner. This 'illness' usually takes its form via a
blatant disregard of our requests to make appointments, but we have also seen
examples of sales staff using offensive language when customers are in the
store, an inability to follow up refunds / corked wine in a timely manner,
failure to keep appointments, and a more serious crime, the cloak and daggar
approach to volume pricing. The latter usually relates to the inability of
sales people to be fully transparent over volume pricing deals
- we didn't
receive a deal because we didn't ask. As a matter of policy we now instantly
terminate relationships where we have been f%$#% over. I would get sacked if I
treated customers like this in my 'real' job.
- re
follow-ups, one company "borrowed" 3 or 4 bottles to give to a
restaurant that desperately needed it on a weekend. This was in June this year.
The wine has not been returned to us and a chase-up email has been ignored.
- re
appointments - Jacinta is repeatedly requesting reps make appointments, yet
every day they wander in - "I was just in the area and thought I'd pop in
and say hello" is a common line. They seem to think we're just sitting
around all day with absolutely nothing to do!
Know your
Product: as a rough rule of thumb 80% of the sales
people we deal with (i.e. winery employed staff excepted) have a surprising
poor understanding of what they are selling. Many fail to appreciate or recognise the 'hook' nearly every winery has to assist its sales (i.e. could
be the maker, vineyard sites, awards, limited production) and lack of knowledge
on price is common. Although this probably sounds horribly arrogant, I can only
think of 4 - 5 sales people (out of say 100) that know more about the wines in
their portfolio than I do.
A false
sense of demand: this practise is often employed by individual wineries themselves and is
downright deceptive. Usually takes one of two forms:
- a 'customer'
wondering around the store confused as to why we don't stock a wine, thereby
encourages us to make a purchase ('I'd buy it regularly if you stocked it'). Do
you think we every see them again post our decision to stock? Nope!
- Jacinta had
one or two people a day over a period of week come in and ask if we stocked an
“X” NE Victoria Company wine - no one had ever asked for it before. Finally she
said to "that's funny - you're the 7th person this week requesting “X’s”
wine and no one has ever asked for it before." Must have been the
companies sales convention in Melbourne and out of town reps were visiting Melbourne stores where they didn't have a presense to generate demand.
- a call from a
stranger enquiring as to whether we stock a wine, and if not, questions why.
Funnily enough the caller displays a surprising lack of knowledge about the
wine in question (when prompted) and looks to kill the call quickly when you
ask for credit card details to secure the order! It may also come as no
surprise that the mystery customer sounds like they are ringing from a call
centre.
Nightclub
queue theory: a bit of an out chestnut. A number of
wholesalers believe that creating a false sense of tight supply spurs us on to
purchase more wine. This takes the form of instant 'allocations' whereby we are
told after purchasing two cases that we can have a '6 pack' every now and
again. Rather than mess around with small volumes we usually move on. Of
course, we nearly always receive a call three months later from the rep
claiming to have 'found' another three cases - too late!
Back Door
selling: these techniques really get my dander up!
It nearly always relates to situations where a winery bypasses its
agent/wholesaler to get wine to consumers at whole price levels. Recent
examples have included a Clare winery doing deals on certain wines with
corporate social clubs as well as small producers. One small producer quotes
prices (on Torbwine and other sources) that make a mockery of the prices Cloudwine pays. I now feel stupid for
having even taken the time to support this producer and we will no longer sell
those wines (ever). I can only imagine wineries behaving in this manner think retailers
have their heads stuck in the sand.
Now I do recognise
that a consumer advocate like yourself would see no problems with this activity
as the wine ultimately gets into hands of consumers at a lower price but try to
understand the view from someone who has spent a lot of time and money building
a business to distribute wine on behalf of producers.
Know your
customer: this probably impacts Cloudwine more than other retailers as we
have a heavily focused niche on small producers that is rarely found. From our position,
we market this image quite well and I think most wine geeks would associate Cloudwine with this segment, and it would
be fair to assume that most sales people should as well. But this hasn't
stopped numerous 100,000+ case producers trying to flog us wine. The other day,
a rep from one of the biggies (note book out and pen poised) who claimed he
'had done his homework' came in to try and get an order. To their credit both
Southcorp and Hardy's have not been in either store since we opened (I could of
course be confusing astuteness for laziness!).
Willingness
to embrace technology: where possible we
communicate via email to enable orders to be made out of hours. Funnily enough,
some suppliers cannot for the life of them reply to emails or even act upon the
orders contained within. Frankly we'd prefer to deal this way given most sales
people add zero value in sales calls (Gerald Weisl's term 'sales prevention
agents' is very apt) but this of course would put a whole bunch of sales people
out of a job.
Appreciation
of industry dynamics: this relates mostly to reps
trying to stuff wine down our throat that Dan's regularly sell at cost. Reps
often have no idea where their products are being sold and for how much, and even
if they do, still can't work out why a small retailer doesn't want to buy the
wine (and look horribly uncompetitive in the process).
All we are
really asking for is professional, ethical, fair treatment.
Please keep contributing.
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