{"id":900,"date":"2013-10-01T06:50:11","date_gmt":"2013-10-01T11:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=900"},"modified":"2013-09-29T19:31:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T00:31:24","slug":"if-you-have-no-critics-youll-likely-have-no-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=900","title":{"rendered":"If you have no critics, you’ll likely have no success…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Schlitz<\/a>From the time prohibition was repealed, until the mid-1970, beer was delivered to retailers\u00a0the same way: either off the truck\u00a0which is called\u00a0DSD.\u00a0 Almost all distributors had only one vendor with limited packages.\u00a0 Most accounts only carried one package, and grocery stores carried just two or three packages.\u00a0 This made selling easy.\u00a0 The first changes came with the rush of new imports and the beginnings of consolidation.\u00a0\u00a0With the eastern expansion of Coors, wholesalers felt they had to change the selling systems to pre-sell method in order to successfully handle the demands of the new brands.\u00a0 Pre-sell became the system of choice, and remains so to this day, even with the hundreds of new breweries and products.<\/p>\n

Recently, consultant Joe Thompson commented on what he thought could\u00a0be the selling system of the future.\u00a0 According to Joe, the system will be more retail-driven with the orders generated by the retailer through web based operations and supported by the wholesalers\u2019 tel-sell system.\u00a0 Using this system, the remaining sales people will concentrate on value- added programs and items.\u00a0 The thought behind this is to move away from the idea that sales people are nothing more than order takers, to a more cost effective sales and delivery system.\u00a0 In fact, one distributor the Joe studied has now implemented the new system and is seeing positive results.<\/p>\n

So then the question becomes, how\u00a0will the retailer and the vendors look at this system?\u00a0 Retailers for years have had the luxury of having the beer wholesalers supply labor, inventory management and programs to the point where any cut backs of service might create real problems for the wholesaler.\u00a0 Consider a chain with stores across multiple states, with some wholesalers servicing the chain as they have for years, while others have moved to Joe’s system.\u00a0 If there is dissatisfaction, push back from the chain will go to the vendor(s), not the wholesaler.\u00a0 Do wholesalers feel that the smaller retailer will really make an effort to order on line?\u00a0 What if the competing wholesaler does not transition to this type of selling system and continues service as usual?<\/p>\n

Joe’s system assumes the vendors will have feet on the street, as will be required by the wholesaler.\u00a0 This might work in major markets; however, you cannot put people everywhere, just as a wholesaler cannot have a different sales person for every account.\u00a0 In large markets, the wholesaler could easily become just a delivery and warehouse for the vendor, but understand the wholesaler will then be required to work with\u00a0less margins.<\/p>\n

What makes Joe\u2019s program workable is the franchise laws.\u00a0 When there are only two wholesalers in a market with all the brands, the retailer has no choice because there is no way the retailer can get beer except from the wholesaler.\u00a0 Add in minimum orders for each delivery, and it creates a difficult environment.\u00a0 But this is what happens when there is no competition.<\/p>\n

A recent forecast\u00a0for the domestic beer sales indicated that the industry could soon slip under\u00a0200 million bbl. in\u00a0sales, and in the future, continue to lose ground to wine and spirits.\u00a0 Joe\u2019s program is all about cost control, not about brand development and volume growth.\u00a0 With multiple sales teams with different vendor pads and strong merchandising programs, the wine and spirit wholesalers and vendors see this as a great opportunity.\u00a0 The beer industry continues to offer volume to the W&S guys, as\u00a0the W&S teams\u00a0expand calls to the retail trade.\u00a0 Joe’s value-added sales team may be adding value, but to whom?\u00a0 Based on future forecasts for beer, it is value added\u00a0only for the wine and spirit industry!\u00a0 Remember, if you have no critics, you will likely have no success!<\/p>\n

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

From the time prohibition was repealed, until the mid-1970, beer was delivered to retailers\u00a0the same way: either off the truck\u00a0which is called\u00a0DSD.\u00a0 Almost all distributors had only one vendor with limited packages.\u00a0 Most accounts only carried one package, and grocery stores carried just two or three packages.\u00a0 This made selling easy.\u00a0 The first changes came […]<\/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-ew","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900"}],"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=900"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}