{"id":1270,"date":"2013-12-10T07:45:58","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T12:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1270"},"modified":"2013-12-08T18:03:21","modified_gmt":"2013-12-08T23:03:21","slug":"you-dont-know-what-you-dont-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1270","title":{"rendered":"You don’t know what you don’t know….."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Fat<\/a>While working as a distributor I was often assigned new brewery reps. for our markets.\u00a0 The majority of these new brewery reps. were young, fresh out of college, and some had MBAs in which the ink has not yet dried.\u00a0 These young reps had been put through training on distributor economics and how to sell beer.\u00a0 The classes were generally taught by brewery executives who had never owned or operated a beer distributorship.<\/p>\n

In the 80s, Coors Brewing Co. had a training program called Distributor Economics.\u00a0 This was a two-part training class:\u00a0 DEI was the introduction to distributor economics and DEII was a three-day exercise, with each day representing one year of business.\u00a0 You were placed on a team and given a\u00a0case study\u00a0in which the distributor\u00a0was losing money.\u00a0 The idea was to put programs into place that would make the operation profitable.\u00a0 At the end of every day, each team presented their operation to the group.\u00a0 The team with the best case study results won.\u00a0 Again, the class was usually taught by executives with backgrounds at company owned operations.\u00a0\u00a0The class\u00a0was mostly theory.<\/p>\n

I had numerous new craft and import vendors come and visit when I was building Glazer’s beer portfolio.\u00a0 Each time I would ask the vendor to outline their strategy and marketing programs.\u00a0 In almost every situation the vendor would produce their beer and packaging.\u00a0 I would continue to press them for a marketing business plan and I would usually get this answer “well, we have a couple of signs!\u201d<\/p>\n

My recommendation to each of these vendors was to find an experienced beer sales manager, hire that person, than we would talk.\u00a0 While the vendor made excellent beer, they often did not know how to sell their product.<\/p>\n

Soon after hitting the streets in Texas, New Belgium hired a new ranger.\u00a0 At a lunch meeting, the ranger spent the entire time explaining how he was fasting and cleansing his system.\u00a0 He did not even bring up New Belgium and their programs.\u00a0 Shortly thereafter,\u00a0in talking\u00a0with Kim Jordan, head of New Belgium, I commented on how it would be interesting to watch NB grow and adapt to the industry while trying to keep their unique culture.\u00a0 To her credit, Kim and her team have done a great job bringing in top beer talent, yet keeping their niche.<\/p>\n

A new book on craft beer, Distribution Insight for the Craft Brewer, <\/em>recently<\/em> hit the shelves.\u00a0 This book, written by\u00a0the sister of a small Colorado brewer\u00a0who now puts on beer festivals,\u00a0is advertised as\u00a0a how-to on distribution, distributor appointments, and a myriad of other top topics in the craft industry.\u00a0 The price of the book is $39.95!<\/p>\n

So, craft brewers, who have spent years in training and learning how to brew beer, have invested hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars in a brewery, can now spend just $39.95 and learn how to distribute beer!\u00a0 Perhaps we will soon see Craft Beer for Dummies!<\/em><\/p>\n

Those craft brewers who do end up purchasing this book may, in fact, realize that to be successful in the beer business one needs more than simply good craft beer!\u00a0 Maybe then they will also invest in finding the experienced beer people who can help them with sales and distribution.\u00a0 To those other craft brewers who do not invest in employees to bring them this much needed knowledge, you don’t know what you don’t know!<\/p>\n

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While working as a distributor I was often assigned new brewery reps. for our markets.\u00a0 The majority of these new brewery reps. were young, fresh out of college, and some had MBAs in which the ink has not yet dried.\u00a0 These young reps had been put through training on distributor economics and how to sell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-ku","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1270"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1430,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1270\/revisions\/1430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}