“Jigsaw, but better, for wineries and wine salespeople.”
That’s the quick pitch. But before I go on, let me give a little background on why I think this could be a killer app for folks interested in self distribution.
A couple weeks back I was at the Best of the Best at the Westin in SF with a friend who works for Southern Wine and Spirits, tasting some pretty good wines and enjoying the all you can eat prawns (which the wineries - NOT Southern - paid for BTW, along with everything else at the gala). My friend got a new territory late last year and is still working on building the relationships he needs to exceed the sales figures that everyone expects. Watching him interact with fellow salespeople, winery reps and buyers, it was crystal clear that for professional salespeople it really is all about relationships. More than anything else (with the possible exception of quality, and even then not all the time) developing those personal relationships is the number one key to wine sales success.
Wineries that are interested in direct to trade in CA (and elsewhere thanks to Inertia) face the same challenge. Only our problem is compounded by the fact that restaurant wine directors have limited time to devote to being tasted, and frankly it’s a lot harder to manage 200 mini-relationships rather than 4 or 5 large ones. That’s the advantage (among many others) that distributors have.
Still, there’s a reason why winemakers and winery owners go on sales junkets with distributors. Wine directors do like to have contact with the people who are ultimately responsible for the wines they put on their lists. The trick for small wineries is to quickly develop and nurture strong relationships with wine directors that will lead to placements.
Long story long, the best way to develop relationships quickly is to know your customer. Smart businesses have been doing this for years. Harvey Mackay developed the Mackay 66 as a way to track information on his customers that helps his salespeople sell more (envelopes in this case). Each time they talk with a customer, they add to the profile so nothing is ever forgotten or lost. Things like personal interests, birthdays, favorite drinks etc. Each bit of information, if used appropriately, can help to strengthen and improve customer relationships.
But what if you don’t have a database of names, numbers and facts on wine directors because you are new to the wine industry? Or what if you’ve always relied on a distributor, and never made any personal contacts yourself? What if you work for a distributor and you’ve just taken over a new territory, like my friend at Southern?
For me the answer was to create my own database of information. Over the past year I’ve collected the names and contact information of over 450 wine directors in California.
More important than just basic contact info however, I’ve added key information about as many of the contacts as I could (around 40% have detailed profiles) which will help me to understand their personal interests, goals, and wine preferences, and to better serve them as customers. I’ve also included sample wine lists so I can see at a glance what the director’s goals are and if there might be a gap that we could fill.
Here are a couple samples so you can get a feel for what I mean:
Click to enlarge.
Click to enlarge.
Ultimately this is a time consuming job, and filling out the entire list will likely take years. I think that it could be done quite a bit more quickly if more folks were involved in creating the profiles however, web 2.0 style.
The database combined with a solid social site where folks can get credits for adding to and updating profile information and contacts would be a great use of the wine web IMO.
I’ve got the data and I’ve got an appropriate domain name (winedirectors.com). What I don’t have is time or the technical chops to pull off a site this complex. Do you?
Anyway, that’s what would have been my pitch if I’d made it to Wine 2.0. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in pursuing it.
Besides being wine-centric, what advantage would this site have over something like LinkedIn? Are you trying to build a community for sommelier’s to share their information or something for wineries to tap into behind a toll gate?
I agree that the Web 2.0 approach is preferable to your brute force private database but I’m not sure if I get who the site is aimed at from your pitch…
Hey Tim,
Thanks for the comment.
The difference is pretty straightforward: Linkedin profiles are self-generated. The database I’m envisioning has already been created (by me) and would be added to by people who come into contact with the wine directors, not the wine directors themselves.
Not that I would be against it, but I’m not looking for wine directors to add any information to their own profiles.
The site would be useful only to a highly targeted group of people, not very large in size: wineries looking to self distribute and wine salespeople at distributorships.
In the end I’m more than happy to keep my database private, it took a lot of effort to create and gives me what I feel is a pretty good advantage over other folks like me just starting out with self distribution to white table cloths. The only way it would make sense to share the info would be if I could make it better and somehow monetize it.
Thus the pitch.
Hope this helps!
Josh,
Great post. I like that you referenced Harvey Mackay, too as I have his “How to Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive” and “How to dig your well before you’re thirsty” on my bookshelf.
This is somewhat inline with what Inertia would like to create with a Sommelier community. I think the key to this, from an information gathering perspective, is to populate the initial content as quickly as possible so additional energy can be spent on refining and relationship-building. Something like the Ronn Weigand/Chalk Hill Sommelier Guide would go a long way towards that end. Barring that, WS has similar information based on their restaurant awards. I wonder if it’s possible to license that information so it can be provided in an electronic format, as opposed to a bound book. Since it’s self-published I’m guessing it can be.
Good stuff, here.
Jeff
Hey Jeff,
Yeah, Makay’s great. Huge fan of his books.
One thing tho: If all you are looking to do is populate the database with contact info, there is no reason why you can’t use the information in the guides you mention. Contact info isn’t proprietary nor can it be copyrighted. The only thing you wouldn’t be able to use is the custom Q&A from the Somm guide or any other original content.
That said, Ronn would be a great guy to have on board for a project like this. It would also probably be a great forum for him to cross-promote his book.
You’re absolutely right though, the real value (and the real headache) is in the information aggregation that can only be acquired by scouring multiple sources like trade journals, WS, rest. websites, google searches, and newspaper reviews. It’s from that stuff that useful info can be found to help build relationships.
Thanks for the comments as always Jeff!
Josh, Note Jeff’s hints but I’ll be more overt - this is one of our “skunk-works” projects.
P
Well I’ll certainly look forward to it. Now hurry up! :p
Thanks Paul.