Everybody Sells!

“Everybody sells.” That’s a mantra now at Middleton Family Wines. But what does it mean?

I’m in full agreement with the idea that everybody in a business or organization should be actively supporting sales every day. If we didn’t sell, we’d have no customers, and no income, and ultimately no paycheck.

But we don’t mean that the winemaker should be traveling full time selling to key accounts around the country. The winemaker still must make wine.

Nor do we mean that the accountant should be working full time behind the counter in the Tasting Room. The accountant must still manage the finances.

And using the winemaker as a traveling salesperson, or the accountant as a retail attendanct, scarcely makes best use of their skills and talents.

“Everybody sells” is an easy-to-like mantra because it’s simple. Usually simple is best. Sometimes, however, simple lacks detail, and can be differently understood by different people.

Boss:  “We should get the tasting room manager out selling wine.”

DAH:  “What do you mean? The tasting room manager spends most of every work day selling wine, to consumers, in our tasting room.”

Boss:  “I mean selling wine to accounts, that’s all that really matters.”

DAH:  “Then we should get some other winery to bottle wine for us, fire the winemakers and marketing people and accountants, and hire more sales people to sell wine to accounts.”

Boss:  “That doesn’t make sense. We need to make good wine and build brands.”

DAH:  “Then ‘everybody sells’ means something different than everybody selling full-time to retail and restaurant accounts.”

What “everybody sells” means to me, DAH:

1. Everybody in a winery organization must have some regular experience and real appreciation for what it takes to sell the wine;

2. In the wine business, there are usually three different sets of customers: retail consumers, shops or restaurants, and wholesale distributors;

3. All three sets of customers need to be “sold” for sales success to be achieved.

If those three points are true, then this is the question we need our “non-sales” personnel (and our “sales” personnel, for that matter) to ask of themselves, and report up the management chain:

“What am I doing today to sell and help sell wine to retail consumers, shops or restaurants, and wholesale distributors?”

If each and every one of us has a real answer to that question every day … If everybody is actively, consciously, working on selling wine every day … then “everybody sells.”

DAH is David Anthony Hance