Beer Sales: How to Turn a "No" into a "Yes"
Sales is a tough job in any industry, but with over 7,000 breweries operating in the US, beer sales are particularly difficult these days. How do you make your brand stand out? Does your sales rep (which might be yourself) know how to navigate our crowded market and leave a lasting impression on the buyer? How do you move that buyer towards a purchase or tackle rejection?
In other industries, these problems would be addressed during new hire training, but the craft beer industry now predominantly made up of start-ups, micro- and nano-sized breweries, that either don’t have the funds to hire a professional sales trainer or the time to organize a formal training program. Sometimes you have an internal team member that’s stepped up to do sales part time or your delivery driver is also a swing salesman. In every sales position I’ve ever held, I got about 1-2 days with a co-worker and then it was “sink or swim.” There was also an insider joke amongst other veteran brand reps that it “will take you at least a year or so to really get comfortable in your role” - why is this the norm? Why do we settle for subpar performance from brewery reps until they get their feet wet? Why should they struggle before they find their footing? I’m fairly certain that you either hired a sales rep or promoted someone from within your brewery to start selling now, not a year from now.
If you Google “sales trainer”, you’re going to be presented with thousands of results for corporate sales training programs that will not only cost you an arm and a leg, but they don’t know squat about the beer world. And if you can manage to find a trainer that specializes in alcohol, you’re usually going to get a 2-3 day snoozer of a workshop at a cheap hotel, in a random location, where you and your sales team will walk away with a old school, door-to-door salesman type education that predates the use of technology in sales and a plastic binder full of role playing activities.
What is it about beer sales that takes so long to get comfortable in your role? And why do we allow our sales reps to navigate a challenging market on behalf of our brands totally unprepared? The answer is lack of beer specific sales training designed for our industry at affordable pricing and in convenient delivery methods. And that’s why I started this company.
I’ve made it my mission to provide sales and marketing training for craft breweries of all sizes and all income levels, so that you can make your brand relevant in a crowded market, leverage your current resources and learn how to boost sales without shelling out a fortune on a generic corporate trainer or spending months training your sales team while juggling other brewery tasks.
One of the most common questions I get about beer sales is how to tackle objections or obstacles out in the field. Below are some rules of thumb that will help you or your brand rep navigate the challenges of today’s competitive landscape. After over a decade in the field, here’s how I used to turn a NO from a beer buyer into a YES.
Sales Booster: How to Turn a “No” into a “Yes”
PS - I’m getting ready to launch my quarterly SALES 101 FOR BEER REPS online course, if you’re interested, find out more on my SALES TRAINING SERVICES page of my website or you can get on the waiting list now by clicking HERE