5 Strategies for Becoming Beverage Selling Superheroes
- Diversify Beyond Depletions: Drive sales rather than take orders. Share your strategic execution plans and results with your supplier partners. Furnish them with brand activation and retail execution data, not just depletions. When you focus on executing strategic sales-driving activity, you prove the value you bring to the table and become their distribution partner of choice. Always remember: depletion reporting is a lagging indicator of success, whereas brand activation data is a leading indicator. Lead! Don’t follow.
- Beef Up Survey Efficacy: You’re performing surveys anyway, so you may as well get the most benefit from the efforts you expend. You need a survey tool that facilitates the actions required to close the loop on customer opportunities and brand execution priorities. GreatVines’ powerful survey tool, for example, immediately converts observations into strategic, actionable directions for reps to execute against brand distribution, visibility and activation priorities to drive sales.
- Assign Strategic Objectives: Wholesalers (like most other types of businesses) produce better results when they lay out specific goals, performance metrics and objectives. Using GreatVines, wholesalers are constantly improving performance by assigning more relevant, targeted, sales-driving strategic objectives and goals to their teams. Establishing KPIs is even more effective when they can be applied to fully segmented accounts, and reference past sales history during the planning process – something your competition is not likely able to do using other, less robust technologies. No more basic “5 per rep” goals!
- Incentivize Success in the Right Areas: Focus with determination on long-term brand-building activities. This is how a wholesaler can continue to grow and overcome the weaker players in the markets they serve. Offer sales incentives to your team that focus on developing long-term growth through execution of displays installed, drink menu features, staff trainings conducted, retail ads and catalog features, POS placement/merchandising, and other sales driving activity, not just immediate depletions. Moving the needle on any of these metrics will do far more to truly drive your bottom line than rear-facing measures like cases sold. Explain this proven strategy to your staff so that they understand the exponential effects it will have on sales and how it will build a more sustainable and healthy business vs just “making this month’s numbers”.
- Implement a New Platform for Sales Management: Gain a competitive advantage by leveraging a state of the art and comprehensive Sales Execution and Management solution and apply all of these best practices. Plan smarter and easier. Execute with precision. Measure with full visibility to drive performance.
