{"id":5308,"date":"2019-02-26T07:00:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5308"},"modified":"2019-02-25T09:40:37","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T14:40:37","slug":"written-reports-stifle-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=5308","title":{"rendered":"Written reports stifle creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the early 1970s, the senior executives at Lone Star Brewing Co. came from Schlitz.\u00a0 Harry Jersig, who was the owner of Lone Star, had retained these executives in an attempt to turn the brewery around while simultaneously upgrading the execution of the company.<\/p>\n

The required administrative work required of these senior executives was similar to what had been required during their time at Schlitz.\u00a0 Looking back, the Market Activity Report<\/em> was simple.\u00a0 \u00a0A two-page report; the first page consisting of a review of sales, product inventory, orders, and p-o-s inventory; and the second page consisting of a follow-up\u00a0from the last visit, the result of any programs the distributor had agreed to, a recap of the program, and the agreed-to-program(s) to be executed during the next time period.<\/p>\n

Since most of the distributors were one-brand wholesalers, brewery reps had their undivided attention and program execution was a given.\u00a0 The entire process was simple to manage for both the wholesaler and the vendor.<\/p>\n

During the 1990s, Gambrinus required all field employees to follow-up with their respective wholesaler through a performance letter.\u00a0The letters, which were predominantly negative in nature and non-productive, were graded internally and posted.<\/p>\n

Over the years the Market Activity Reports<\/em> gradually evolved into annual business planning meetings with both the wholesaler and brewer agreeing upon certain goals.\u00a0 During the calendar year, both parties conducted monthly review meetings to ensure stated goals were being met, and if needed, adjustments were made.<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s market, wholesalers have a plethora of vendors, some with more than 30. In a good size market, the vendors will have market\/retail specialists on the street.\u00a0 Today\u2019s wholesaler might also have a brand manager for the vendors, with many managers having five or more vendors to manage.\u00a0 If a brand manager has over five vendors, this results in not enough time to devote to even a single day<\/em> to one brand.\u00a0 Someone falls through the cracks.\u00a0 And thus we see the need for market reps.<\/p>\n

Wholesalers began asking for weekly recaps from the vendors, the obvious reason being that while the wholesaler works with multiple vendors, the wholesaler needs to know what is being accomplished.\u00a0 The ideal model would have the wholesaler follow-up with the vendor when necessary and execute as needed.<\/p>\n

The wholesaler\u2019s\u00a0requests could result in vendors asking the wholesaler, “What are you doing each week with my brands?”\u00a0 This is certainly a fair question. Vendors often have software to programs, like VIP, that enable the vendor to see real-time sales, inventory, and distribution.\u00a0 Such programs, however, do not give the vendor a complete and updated picture.<\/p>\n

The numbers of vendors have exploded in recent years and the number of wholesalers has shrunk. This situation has created challenges in today\u2019s market. The old adage, however, may still be in play:\u00a0the wholesaler’s job is to put the dog food on the shelf, the brewers’ job is to get the dogs to pick it up.<\/p>\n

Written reports stifle creativity.<\/p>\n

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In the early 1970s, the senior executives at Lone Star Brewing Co. came from Schlitz.\u00a0 Harry Jersig, who was the owner of Lone Star, had retained these executives in an attempt to turn the brewery around while simultaneously upgrading the execution of the company. The required administrative work required of these senior executives was similar […]<\/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-1nC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308"}],"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=5308"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5322,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5308\/revisions\/5322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}