Finding a sales rep challenge!

[CasselBrewery]

Hey!

We're facing a real tough challenge which I'm sure a lot of you who will read this has gone through at some point.

last march we hired 2 sales rep, 2 person we know personally. One was part time and one full time. 15K base salary for the part time and 30K for the full time, both + commission.

The part time sold pretty much the value of base salary paid so far but we need 3x times that amount so this sales rep is profitable. The one at 30K cost us 10K in base salary and sold for 2000$, we had to let him go...obviously.

Needless to say with breweries opening up by the dozen per year, the competition is starting to play a major role. We need a sales force but we can't try 10 more people at 10K, we just dont have 100K aside to cover that financial risk.

Is there any advice when comes to hire a sales rep? I mean is there key things like experience as a sales rep in the brewing industry?

What should be the base salary and commission?

Any tips or past experience will be much appreciated!

Thanks!

[DemlerBrew]

We too have been looking to fulfill a sales position and have been having some conversations about it internally (and externally) and here are some of the suggestions that came out (we're a brewpub in NY so I know the distribution laws and solicitors laws are a bit different than in ON)

Try and poach a salesperson from a distributer (state side move) as representing one brand/brewery is easier work than pushing a wide portfolio.

See about getting some staff in other areas (brewers, brand ambassadors) to pick up sales part time as well.

With piece-meal oriented work it may be easier to have a lower salary rate with relatively higher compensation.

The long and short of it is this. Your sales force needs to be compensated fairly, and properly incentivized. 30k as a base is around what pay is in our area with a 6-8% commission rate on top. I know some breweries prefer a profit-share model vs the commission style but that's a different metric.

To go along with sales do you have advertising support? What kind of brand awareness campaign are you running? Licensees are more likely to buy your beer if they've heard of it. Are you at events? Advertising? Is the brand image consistent? We had a big brand confusion issue for years with too many different logos floating around. As we've refocused our logo/image/mission its made it easier for us to sell.

Have your sales staff been spending time talking to bar managers? What lines have been moving slow that might give you a foot in the door?

I'm certainly no expert on this but as we've been going through much the same issues as you (lagging sales/ineffective sales force) these are some of the questions that were raised by some better sales folks as well as by our staff internally.

Hopefully there's been at least one useful idea here for you.

Cheers!
Ryan

[CasselBrewery]

We too have been looking to fulfill a sales position and have been having some conversations about it internally (and externally) and here are some of the suggestions that came out (we're a brewpub in NY so I know the distribution laws and solicitors laws are a bit different than in ON)

Try and poach a salesperson from a distributer (state side move) as representing one brand/brewery is easier work than pushing a wide portfolio.

See about getting some staff in other areas (brewers, brand ambassadors) to pick up sales part time as well.

With piece-meal oriented work it may be easier to have a lower salary rate with relatively higher compensation.

The long and short of it is this. Your sales force needs to be compensated fairly, and properly incentivized. 30k as a base is around what pay is in our area with a 6-8% commission rate on top. I know some breweries prefer a profit-share model vs the commission style but that's a different metric.

To go along with sales do you have advertising support? What kind of brand awareness campaign are you running? Licensees are more likely to buy your beer if they've heard of it. Are you at events? Advertising? Is the brand image consistent? We had a big brand confusion issue for years with too many different logos floating around. As we've refocused our logo/image/mission its made it easier for us to sell.

Have your sales staff been spending time talking to bar managers? What lines have been moving slow that might give you a foot in the door?

I'm certainly no expert on this but as we've been going through much the same issues as you (lagging sales/ineffective sales force) these are some of the questions that were raised by some better sales folks as well as by our staff internally.

Hopefully there's been at least one useful idea here for you.

Cheers!
Ryan

Thanks for sharing your experience and challenges!

To bad we don't have such distribution system here so we could try to poach one!

We're actually meeting a communication and marketing strategist tomorrow to discuss our branding then we will proceed to the hiring of a sales rep.

Thanks again!

Cheers

[TiminOz]

The key to hiring a good salesperson is pretty simple. Hire someone with experience and training in SALES! You can educate them about your product but if they don't know how to market, operate and update a customer data base and have polished follow up skills you might as well not hire anyone and just do all your own sales over the internet and phone yourself from the brewery.
The most common errors I see are: 1) Sales people showing up without an appointment and at the busiest time of day (prior to lunch and from 3pm onward. 2) Not identifying the decision maker and wasting time and money dropping product and shooting the breeze with bar staff who don't write the checks. 3) Not being able to articulate the benefits of the product along with strong knowledge of the ingredients and the process of brewing along with a story about what makes your beer any better than the competition. 4) If a customer does not want the product the salesperson needs to have the wits to ask why they don't to buy it and identify what the objection is. If that is done he can do the old, "if I can will you place an order today?" to enable the sales to overcome the objection. 5) Keeping good records in the data base of who the decision masker is, what occurred during the last sales call and when to contact them again with the choices only being 30. 60 and 90 days regardless of whether they want to buy or not.

As a company are you giving them adequate training? Have you supplied them with a customer hit list that you want them to target? Are you directing the moves of your sales force or just letting them wing it and drive around thinking about where to stop and who to talk to? Despite what you might think it is very difficult to ask for the decision maker, ask for the sale and if no sale ask why not!

[CasselBrewery]

The key to hiring a good salesperson is pretty simple. Hire someone with experience and training in SALES! You can educate them about your product but if they don't know how to market, operate and update a customer data base and have polished follow up skills you might as well not hire anyone and just do all your own sales over the internet and phone yourself from the brewery.
The most common errors I see are: 1) Sales people showing up without an appointment and at the busiest time of day (prior to lunch and from 3pm onward. 2) Not identifying the decision maker and wasting time and money dropping product and shooting the breeze with bar staff who don't write the checks. 3) Not being able to articulate the benefits of the product along with strong knowledge of the ingredients and the process of brewing along with a story about what makes your beer any better than the competition. 4) If a customer does not want the product the salesperson needs to have the wits to ask why they don't to buy it and identify what the objection is. If that is done he can do the old, "if I can will you place an order today?" to enable the sales to overcome the objection. 5) Keeping good records in the data base of who the decision masker is, what occurred during the last sales call and when to contact them again with the choices only being 30. 60 and 90 days regardless of whether they want to buy or not.

As a company are you giving them adequate training? Have you supplied them with a customer hit list that you want them to target? Are you directing the moves of your sales force or just letting them wing it and drive around thinking about where to stop and who to talk to? Despite what you might think it is very difficult to ask for the decision maker, ask for the sale and if no sale ask why not!

Thank you very much TiminOz! All great info to consider, I can see where we have missed the mark on some key elements.

Cheers!

[jmcinerny]

Salesperson thoughts

TiminOz hit the nail on the head. I run a beer and wine specialty retailer and I spent some time selling wine on the street. Here are my two (or three) cents. First of all, this subject is as old as business. This subject is not specific to selling beer. This subject is about selling anything from shoes to airplanes to hot dogs. It is easy to find a person who is passionate about beer. It is hard to find a person who is passionate about sales. It is hard to find a person who loves to sell. Most people hate to sell. Most people are afraid to sell. Making sales calls, especially cold calls, is immensely challenging. Sales people get rejected all day every day. Most people can not handle being constantly rejected. I am amazed at the lack of sales training people receive in all industries. People who study business in college or get MBA's in grad school rarely, if ever, take a class in selling. They take marketing classes but marketing is an entirely different thing than actually going up to a person and convincing that person to buy something. One of the reasons that Jim Koch at Boston Brewing is so successful is that he understands sales and he is a salesperson himself. He is also an MBA.

It's probably safe to assume that you have many of books about brewing. Maybe you have some books about beer history and beer styles. Do you own any books about selling? Do you read any sales blogs? Do you know who Zig Ziglar is? He is corny but he sells. If you don't like his style, then find one of his many imitators who has a more contemporary approach. What is your sales strategy? What's your social media strategy? Do you have a CRM system? Do you use ConstantContact or Mail Chimp? Speaking of e-mail, one thing I would do if I had to hire a salesperson or sales team is that I would require the sales people to use a company e-mail which stays with the company so we can make sure that I have a point of contact when the salesperson leaves. Do not let your salesperson use gmail, yahoo etc. It has to be salesperson@yourbrewery.com. Tell your salespeople anything you say on yourbrewery.com e-mail goes to you. Therefore do not communicate with anyone but customers. Do not say anything you would not want me to read in those e-mails. Everytime a salesperson leaves, the next salesperson starts gathering contact information all over again. It's a huge waste of energy and time yet I see happen regularly. This is the fault of the front office as is the high turnover rate.

In closing, I would hire a person with sales success but knows little about beer over someone who loves beer and has some kind of certification. Ideally the experienced sales person would at least be a beer enthusiast but that is not a pre-requisite. In a perfect world, I would hire an established beer salesperson but he or she will be expensive and you could make enemies by poaching another business' employee. Also be aware of non-compete agreements, they can hurt you pretty badly depending on where you are in the United States. I don't know how they are handled in Canada.

Rant over. Good luck!

[CasselBrewery]

TiminOz hit the nail on the head. I run a beer and wine specialty retailer and I spent some time selling wine on the street. Here are my two (or three) cents. First of all, this subject is as old as business. This subject is not specific to selling beer. This subject is about selling anything from shoes to airplanes to hot dogs. It is easy to find a person who is passionate about beer. It is hard to find a person who is passionate about sales. It is hard to find a person who loves to sell. Most people hate to sell. Most people are afraid to sell. Making sales calls, especially cold calls, is immensely challenging. Sales people get rejected all day every day. Most people can not handle being constantly rejected. I am amazed at the lack of sales training people receive in all industries. People who study business in college or get MBA's in grad school rarely, if ever, take a class in selling. They take marketing classes but marketing is an entirely different thing than actually going up to a person and convincing that person to buy something. One of the reasons that Jim Koch at Boston Brewing is so successful is that he understands sales and he is a salesperson himself. He is also an MBA.

It's probably safe to assume that you have many of books about brewing. Maybe you have some books about beer history and beer styles. Do you own any books about selling? Do you read any sales blogs? Do you know who Zig Ziglar is? He is corny but he sells. If you don't like his style, then find one of his many imitators who has a more contemporary approach. What is your sales strategy? What's your social media strategy? Do you have a CRM system? Do you use ConstantContact or Mail Chimp? Speaking of e-mail, one thing I would do if I had to hire a salesperson or sales team is that I would require the sales people to use a company e-mail which stays with the company so we can make sure that I have a point of contact when the salesperson leaves. Do not let your salesperson use gmail, yahoo etc. It has to be salesperson@yourbrewery.com. Tell your salespeople anything you say on yourbrewery.com e-mail goes to you. Therefore do not communicate with anyone but customers. Do not say anything you would not want me to read in those e-mails. Everytime a salesperson leaves, the next salesperson starts gathering contact information all over again. It's a huge waste of energy and time yet I see happen regularly. This is the fault of the front office as is the high turnover rate.

In closing, I would hire a person with sales success but knows little about beer over someone who loves beer and has some kind of certification. Ideally the experienced sales person would at least be a beer enthusiast but that is not a pre-requisite. In a perfect world, I would hire an established beer salesperson but he or she will be expensive and you could make enemies by poaching another business' employee. Also be aware of non-compete agreements, they can hurt you pretty badly depending on where you are in the United States. I don't know how they are handled in Canada.

Rant over. Good luck!

Thanks jmcinerny! Really appreciate your input!

[TiminOz]

Your right mate you are snarky and I for one would never by beer from a jerk! I have been involved in craft beer one way or another for over 25 years and I am also a sales professional. Cassel Brewing was asking for advice on sales force and the replies prior to yours addressed that topic. You obviously could not even qualify the jobs you were looking for or you would not have been at an interview offering $400 per week or with old product. I seriously doubt you have a brand or a brewery and if you do I feel sorry for the people who have to work with or for you.

[wlw33]

I have answered a similar question on the difference between salary and commission. I would disagree with the previous post (no offense) on hiring knowledge vs enthusiasm. You might have a hard time selling to a craft beer bar if you don't know some pertinent details about how your beer fits in it's category compared to others or identifying the bar owner needs this style (hey, you have no wheat beer on tap). I would also disagree with the email as a source for your account list. Use company email, of course, but have a master account list at the brewery. Are you stupid?

Next, this is not directed to any one poster or brewery. It's a general response to the question. I don't mean to light a fire onto this post which will surely happen. Here's the deal; this is where the men are separated from the boys so to speak. We first need to identify are you using a wholesaler or self distributing. If you are self, you are going to always be small. I realize there is always an exception for everything. (Red Oak in NC) The real issue is that most of you have no idea how the wholesale tier works and this is where the game is won or lost.

You are not going to poach a wholesaler rep, you can't afford him. For the most part, they are $50 k and up if they're worth anything. Here's what really gets me about you guys who come into this industry with no beer experience; you sink every nickel you can scrape up, loans, time and whatever else you can conjur up into hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment and possibly real estate... And you try to hire someone for poverty level wages. You put the whole future of your company in the hands of the cheapest warm body you can find. What the hell is wrong with you guys? Go out and do it yourself if you can't hire competence. You don't understand there is much more to this business than making a beer, getting a cheap tap handle and sending a college kid into a bar to get you a tap.

Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, So Tier etc... These are real breweries. They have real distributors and real beer industry sales people working for real salaries. You don't and will likely never succeed because you don't know the game and are to cheap to learn it. Example; I was hired for a week as a consultant/sales gun to get some accounts.. I show up, the hot side of the brewery is outside the building under a large roof over hang. Are you fing kidding me?? Is this even legal? It gets worse.. The draft I was hired to sell was, I shit you not, 3-4 months old. All 3 brands. WTF am I going to do with that? If the only reason you are in this game is for money, GTFO!

Ask yourself some tough objective questions and come up with some objective unbiased answers; Why should a bar choose my beer over the 613 other ones that are out there? What does my brewery name say about my brand? What do my brand names say about my brewery? Are my name and brands relevant to the market I'm selling in? If your name is, I dunno, Jones County Brewery.. And you want to sell beer 2 counties over, guess what.. No one gives a shit about Jones County. Yes, I realize Sierra Nevada is a regional name. You aren't Sierra Nevada. You want to send an enthusiastic auto mechanic into a bar to sell a craft beer that needs differentiating from 613 other brands? Are you stupid?

There is a lengthy list of things you should have in order before you even go into an account. How about a price list for one thing. Hey, maybe a post card with your 3 beers, logo and descriptions might be a good thing to leave behind there genius... Something.. How about doing a pint promotion, the bar will buy the pint glasses if you have a sales guy who knows how to sell the program. I could rant on, but no one is paying me for this advice and I don't work for free anymore.

You guys can say I'm snarky or whatever. Maybe the low dough route works for a few of you. I spoke with a brewery owner, $2MM facility, couldn't get traction outside his 30 mile radius, told me if big city X 150 miles away where he hired a distributor didn't start selling his brand, his brewery would go belly up. He then proceeded to offer me $400 a week, no benefits, no mileage, $2 for a case placement and $5 for a new tap. Nothing for repeat business (not that it would have helped his case) Hey guy, go F yourself. I would rather watch you fail than save you for $4 an hour.

Hey guys, my brand sold 400,000 barrels it's third year, how many did yours sell?

As a nano brewer just starting year 2, this post is great to read. Maybe I could do without the snarkiness, but maybe it's the snarkiness that grabs my attention and makes me think more about it.
We are a two man operation, we have done well and are expanding after our first year. Lots of things are falling into place in a positive way. We do 95% or more of our sales in the brewery selling growlers; just a few tap accounts. Selling beer by the pint next spring (that's the goal anywho). Hoping to add some wholesale accounts as well. We have a couple here and there right now, partially because we are limited by our size (1.5bbl, have one 3bbl that we just got going to do double batches-upgrading shortly to 3bbl batches and 7bbl FVs to double into) but definitely part of the reason for not having more wholesale accounts is our lack of a sales team, and neither of us have sales experience.
I know what it takes to be a sales person and I also know that neither of us really has it, and posts like this, however snarky they may come off, should be heeded. It's easy to look at the shelf and see a ton of different beers and breweries represented and say "hey i make pretty good beer, this is a cinch!" and overlook the work, labor, marketing and sales experience that it takes to be a beer on that shelf. Just because we have a lot of breweries now, doesn't make it an easy business to get into.

Wholesaling beer is no easy game, especially when the guys bigger than you engage in pay to play on the hush-hush. The odds are against us. Time to take that into consideration.

[BeerBred]

Tim you are right, I don't have a brewery. Family sold it in 2000. In the 90's I had the third best selling craft in the country, A brand I created and opened 16 new states with making 33 total. I do have a theme with brands for a new brewery, I don't have $2MM. The snarkyness comes from the frustration I have seeing hundreds of incompetent operations that really shouldn't be here but somehow found the money. Contrary to popular belief, I got no money from our sale (33MM).

I applaud those who found a way to get it open and if you are making quality beer and your sole intent is not money, I support you and wish that you prosper. Hell, that's why I'm here, to provide free and competent advice.

The topic of commission beer sales is a sore one for me. This is not a commission business. The problem in brief is that you will get a starving sales rep making poor decisions on behalf of the brewery so he can eat. Sales is a small part of the job. Distributor management is the job. Your job is to get the distributor to sell the beer while you aren't there. The brewery in question in my initial response made the mistake of presuming a wholesaler will sell his beer with no help or support from his brewery, ie a rep and a marketing budget.

Clearly a delineation needs to be made, does the brewery have a wholesaler or not. Wholesalers are a good thing, if you know how to use them.

Here's the answer to the initial question; $40-45 minimum. 15% bonus at goal, benefits, car allowance and expense account. Level 3 Cicerone or similar knowledge. Pay or subsidize Cicerone if she doesn't have it. Don't expect someone to go build your brand for you for peanuts. Who is to say they go sell a million in beer and you don't fire them? Do ask them to "show me now and I pay you later."

And thanks 33, all the free info you want.. email me.

[Shorthillsbrew]

Great thread, regardless of tone, sales is obviously a must for success and there are many different styles. Marketing and branding are essentials to help sales but it all boils down to getting out there and selling, success in selling is knowing who to talk to and not wasting time/resources on non decision makers. I have spent the last 7 years in sales and marketing in the insurance industry and in planning to open a small batch brewery in the summer 2016, even with 7 years in sales I am still really focused on the best approach on how to market and sell our brand and finding the fastest way to get names of the key people with the local bars/pubs/restaurant. I am planning on wholeselling about 80% of the brewery's production so this will be the make or break segment of the business.

One thing about Ontario distribution, Breweries basicly have 2 options for wholesale, option #1 is to self distribute, option #2 distribute through the Brewers retail. the brewers retail is the monopoly owned by AB-inbev, Moslon/Coors, and Sapporo who don't need any sales reps since they own all the beer stores and have exclusive distribution rights. So really the only option a craft brewery in Ontario has is to self distribute. Welcome to the mess and the lack of skills.

With Mill Street Brewery selling out to Labatt your best bet right now is to start cold calling thier old sales reps and offer them a new opportunity since they will more inlikely be the first to go when AB-inbev starts restructuring.

Cheers and all the best

[BeerBred]

How does it work in Canada with regard to on premise distribution? Does Brewers Retail distribute the kegs and bottles to the bars?

[Shorthillsbrew]

How does it work in Canada with regard to on premise distribution? Does Brewers Retail distribute the kegs and bottles to the bars?

Only Ontario works this way (every Province regulates it differently) the brewers retail will distribute bottles and kegs to Bars and restaurants but there is a $25,000 listing fee with no garuntee and real reason for them to promote your brand (imagine having to rely on ab-inbev and Molson/Coors to represent your brand) and they have the right to de-list your brewery if you don't sell enough. Every brewery can have an on-premise retail store and tasting room as long as municipality is ok with it.