{"id":1571,"date":"2014-03-04T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2014-03-04T11:57:20","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T16:57:20","slug":"experience-is-one-thing-you-cant-get-for-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=1571","title":{"rendered":"Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mikes\"<\/a>The last seven of nine Ryder Cup matches between the US and European teams have been won by the Europeans.\u00a0 The PGA of America selects the captain for each event,\u00a0historically choosing a captain in their mid, to late 40s, with the thought that they would be familiar with the tour players who were generally younger.<\/p>\n

In the 2012 Ryder Cup, the US team had a four point lead going into the singles competition and still they lost.\u00a0 The PGA of America, tired of getting beat, changed direction and appointed Tom Watson, this year\u2019s captain.\u00a0 Watson, now 64 years of age, has appointed Ray Floyd and Andy North, co-assistants, both of whom are also in their 60s.\u00a0 The PGA\u2019s has appointed leaders with experience who know how to win and take\u00a0the 2014\u00a0team to victory.<\/p>\n

While I was running Warsteiner, the agency had about 260 wholesalers in the US.\u00a0 While that number is small compared to the number of AB or MC wholesalers, Warsteiner had multiple wholesalers who had distribution rights for the brand statewide.\u00a0 Ten years ago, Glazer\u2019s had Warsteiner in 12 states representing around 22% of Warsteiner’s US business.<\/p>\n

I often get the question from craft brewers: which are better, a statewide distributor, or a local distributor?\u00a0 It is not an easy question for anyone to answer as both models have their plusses and minuses.\u00a0 The next question I am frequently asked is: how do I manage this new territory?\u00a0 Who can I hire?<\/p>\n

As I have discussed in several past postings, craft breweries initially hire sales reps to fit their culture.\u00a0 This usually works as long as the sales continue to grow equaling production capacity.\u00a0 Then there comes a point when ownership realizes that getting to the next step requires professional help.\u00a0 This takes courage for the brewery to go this route.<\/p>\n

The number one request from a distributor who wants to see a vendor be successful is that the vendor needs to put a sales rep in the market.\u00a0 This can, however, be economically unfeasible to any vendor.\u00a0 \u00a0Just as a distributor cannot have a sales person for each account, a brewery cannot have a rep for each market.<\/p>\n

The beer industry continues to struggle, but why?\u00a0 Pabst is now looking for its fourth CEO in five years!\u00a0 NAB is looking for a new CEO to turn around its declining trends.\u00a0 Mike\u2019s is changing its go-to market model, by eliminating experienced beer sales people and hiring younger, inexpensive people with the idea of churning and burning.\u00a0 This is simply putting feet on the street, but accomplishing very little other than to make the wholesaler feel good that there is a rep in the market.<\/p>\n

Wholesalers complain to vendors about the quality of their hires who are young and inexperienced.\u00a0 At the same time, it is the position of most vendors that the wholesaler has a lack of focus on their brand, or a lack of internal skill sets to sell crafts!<\/p>\n

Both tiers need to have realistic expectations from their business partners, however, in doing so; they both need to understand the value of having experienced beer professionals. Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last seven of nine Ryder Cup matches between the US and European teams have been won by the Europeans.\u00a0 The PGA of America selects the captain for each event,\u00a0historically choosing a captain in their mid, to late 40s, with the thought that they would be familiar with the tour players who were generally younger. […]<\/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-pl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571"}],"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=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1613,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions\/1613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}