Everyone knows that October-November-December (OND) is a critical time of year for companies selling wine, spirits, and beer. OND is rapidly approaching, and we want our customers to be ready for it. But how can they prepare? One approach is to create programs for trending – and gift-worthy – beverages. These programs will not only encourage consumers to buy because the products will be available in the store – they will reward your salespeople for stepping up their game. In this article, we’ll look at what to include in these programs, how you can increase sales, and how you can track the success of these programs.
What to include
What would you include in these programs? One idea is to increase your odds for success by highlighting some of the trending beverages.
In the newsletter EHL Insights’ article Top 7 Drink Trends in 2022, four drinks are alcoholic. And in the Dimensional Insight webinar, “How Millennial Trends Are Changing Beverage Alcohol Sales & Marketing,” panelists noted that millennials are seeking higher-quality and premium options. So it is no surprise that EHL Insight’s #6 top beverage is premium canned cocktails – made from high-quality ingredients, mixed, and packaged in cans. Here is the complete list of the “Top 7 Drink Trends in 2022” that EHL calls out:
- CBD-infused relaxation drinks
- Bubble tea
- Fermented drinks as health-boosters
- Celebrity-endorsed wine & champagne
- Boxed wine (as a sustainable and sanitary option)
- Premium canned cocktails
- Spiked sodas and alcohol-free beers and spirits
Programs to increase your business
- You’ve got your recommended trending beverages ready. But what kinds of programs can you use to increase sales? Well, we have some ideas to help. Here are some ideas for brand-based, market-based, sales region-based, and incentive-based programs.
- Distributor programs for particular brands or items that the distributor sells to accounts (restaurants and stores)
- Incentives to the sales team or even management
- Monetary incentives like increased sales rep commissions, bonuses, or travel incentives
Here are 2 examples:
- The distributor rep has to sell a certain number of cases within a fixed time frame to get the incentive. The incentive might be increased dollars per case sold to each of the salespeople who sold the cases.
- A placement program with an incentive for making placements of a product in a certain number of stores and the placement defined as a certain number of bottles of a product sold into the account. The incentive might be a bonus per placement made to the salespeople that placed it in the accounts.
These programs focus on creating excitement. And people often act when they are excited about your program.
How to track programs with Program Advisor
Now that you’ve got your programs, you’ll need help following and tracking all the details. That’s where Program Advisor comes in.
Sales managers know that some of their promotions are working more profitably than others. Yet, the amount of time and energy it would take to compare all the factors of all their promotions often makes compiling the information an overwhelming task. Program Advisor can do that work quickly and easily. In addition to appreciating a faster input of the programs, users of Program Advisor find that by analyzing the collected data from Program Advisor, they can stop promotions that are losing money and reinvest in those that bring in more profit. Here are some of the programs tracked with Program Advisor:
- Dollars — The total dollar value that each account is spending on products
- Cases — The total number of cases that each account is purchasing
- Bottles — The total number of bottles that each account is purchasing
- Accounts Sold — The total number of accounts that are purchasing the product
- New Accounts Sold — The number of accounts that are purchasing the product that did not previously purchase the product
- Recurring Accounts Sold — The number of accounts that are purchasing the product that did previously purchase the product (reorders)
- Placements — The number of individual products that an account is purchasing
- New Placements — The number of individual products that an account is purchasing now that they did not purchase before
- Recurring Placements — The number of individual products that an account is purchasing now that they did purchase before (reorders)
- Points — The total point value of the products purchased by an account
One distributor that has implemented Program Advisor is Allied Beverage. The organization needed a centralized way to track the effectiveness of sales programs and provide sales reps with a daily look at their progress towards goals. The organization uses Program Advisor, an application built on Dimensional Insight’s Diver Platform, that tracks and measures the effectiveness of sales programs. With Program Advisor, Allied Beverage can set sales program goals for reps. The reps can then log in to the application to get real-time updates on whether they meet those goals. Allied Beverage is also able to track incentives and payouts through Program Advisor.
This ability to track programs is essential, given that Allied Beverage has many programs it is running every month for sales staff. Unfortunately, that number can grow exponentially in October, November, and December. That isn’t easy to track. However, with Program Advisor, Allied Beverage can easily calculate and split goals at all tier levels within their organization, saving Excel formulas and calculations time.
Another company using Program Advisor is wine and spirits distributor Brescome Barton. “Programs are one of the more difficult areas for the company to track,” says Kevin Kranzler, the Chief Operating Officer at Brescome Barton. “We were tracking programs in spreadsheet form, and we didn’t have daily program updates — some were weekly but most were monthly. So we didn’t have day-to-day visibility.”
With Program Advisor, the company was able to meet its business challenges. For example, Program Advisor helped Brescome Barton link goals and sales in the same system.
You can read more about how these two companies are using Program Advisor or read the Program Advisor datasheet online at the Dimensional insight website:
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