Ep. 2119 Ben Salisbury | Masterclass US Wine Market With Barbara Fitzgerald

If you wanna create a new wine brand today and launch it in the US, it is infinitely harder to do that than it was seven or eight years ago. Too many brands, too few distributors, is created an unworkable situation. And here's the punch line. Distributors can no longer do what they used to be able to do. It's not a matter of motivation or education. It's a function of what's possible. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market with me Barbara Fitzgerald. In this show, we'll break down the complexities of selling wine in the US by discussing the relevant issues of today with experts from around the globe. Each episode serves up three key insights to help elevate your wineries presence in the US market. So grab a pen and paper, and let's pave the way for your success in the US. Hello. Welcome to Masterclass US wine market. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Ben Salisbury to the show. Ben is a multi faceted professional with over four decades of experience in the wine and spirits industry. His expertise in sales and marketing strategy comes from working with major companies like Sim Michelle wine estates and Constellation brands. Then as a sought after speaker and contributor frequently sharing his knowledge at industry conferences through his blog, his YouTube channel, and in publications like wine business monthly. His mission is to challenge outdated practices and provide innovative solutions to help wineries and distilleries thrive. So welcome to the show, Ben. It's so nice to have you here. So thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Absolutely. And before we dive into today's discussion, Ben, I'd love it if you told us a little bit more about your your background and how you came to work in the business. Sure. Selling wine experience is my second career. I started out working in restaurants. I went to culinary school for college my bachelor's degree in hotel restaurant management. So that was my first career. But in the middle eighties, I switched to selling wine and spirits to restaurants instead of working in restaurants. And that's all I've ever done since then. Somewhere in the mid nineties, I started to focus on chains on premise chains. And so of my forty year career, twenty one of those years was spent selling, to major restaurant and hotel chains and leading as salespeople who sell to hotel and restaurant chains. But that taught me a lot about, you know, thinking long term, going after major pieces of business. I learned a lot doing that, and A lot of what I learned informs my career as a consultant. So ten years ago, just over ten years ago, May, having done really well on Constellation stock. I picked up the phone and said, I won't be coming in ever again. And by the way, as fun as you think that might be. It's ten times as much fun to make that call. So for the last ten years, I've been doing what I wanna do, the way I want to do it, and it which is helping small brands box above their weight class, take a bite out of the much bigger brands market share. I love helping startups, small brands, small family brands, and I have clients all over the world. So it's been a fun journey. I really love what I do. People ask ask me, well, when are you gonna retire? I just I'm not the retiring kind. I think I'd love what I do, so I'm just gonna keep doing it. I might work less someday, but right now I'm having a good time. That's fantastic. Keep it going. You're you're good at it. So why slow down now? Right. So In this episode, we'll talk to Ben about his experience working in the US market to now having his consulting firm that specializes in wine and spirits, and specifically we'll talk about the current state of wine distribution in the US. So our three key takeaways for today's master class and what we're excited to learn from Ben are, first understanding what has changed in US distribution over the last five, six years and why wineries need a new strategy. Understanding how the burden of growing sales and distribution has shifted back to the winery and then lastly best practices for developing a new distribution playbook. So let's let's dive in. So, Ben, we've definitely seen profound changes in the wine industry in the past years, specifically like consolidation of distribution channels and growing threat of neo prohibitionism among other things. So can you talk a little bit about how about these changes and tell us what innovative strategies you would recommend, especially for smaller or independently owned wineries to adapt and thrive in the evolving landscape. So the big change in a nutshell that has taken place in just the last six or seven years because this wasn't really as big of a problem, say, eight years ago. And that is just the proliferation of brands, wine, spirits, ready to drink, low alcohol, no alcohol, cannabis drinks, and it's just crazy proliferation of drinks. And at the same time, a shrinking pool of distributors is so dramatic. It's so dramatic. And it's getting worse every day, but it has become an unworkable situation for most brands. If you wanna create a new wine brand today and launch it in the US, it is infinitely harder to do that than it was seven or eight years ago. Too many brands, too few distributors. Is created an unworkable situation. And here's the punch line. Distributors can no longer do what they used to be able to do. It's not a matter of motivation or education. It's a function of what's possible. When you have, you know, literally tens of thousands of products in your portfolio, it's very, very difficult to give attention to some of the smaller ones. So it's a rough, rough environment. But the good news is there are alternatives that you can build your brand in spite of the current condition, but it it requires you to accept the reality of what has changed. And that's where a lot of people are stuck, Barbara. They're stuck. They haven't really put a wet finger in the wind and said, you know, what? Something's changed? Something big has changed. And so we better adapt. Unfortunately, there's way too many people have missed that memo. So what kind of strategies then would you recommend for for those wineries? Once they may once they come to feel feel the change in the air, what's what can they do to to evolve? Yeah. So first, and foremost is accepting the reality. A lot of people are stuck there. They haven't made it as that. They're clinging to what used to work. They've they're thinking, well, the distributor's making thirty, thirty five points they should be selling for me. Or, you know, I've spent a lot of money traveling to the market blah blah blah. They should be selling for me. Well, if you if that's how you think you're gonna stay stuck and disappointed for a very long time. But once you accept the reality, now you're free to move on, to doing something about it. And so the first thing to do about it is to accept it. The second thing is to begin to control your own destiny. I I like to tell people to adopt the mantra. If it's going to be, it's up to me. Meaning you and your team, you're gonna have to take responsibility for building sales and distribution. I say this a lot in my videos and articles, but the burden of building sales and distribution has shifted from the distributor tier back to the supplier tier. Now if you're an importer or a foreign producer, that makes it even more complicated because you still have the same number of intermediaries. But what you wanna do is make sure that your partners you have chosen importers brokers, etcetera, understand and have adjusted to the new reality, where they're doing more things themselves. So number one, except that the reality of what's changed. Number two, begins to control more of in our destiny. And now I can get into some more granular specific stuff. Yes. Absolutely. So let me tick off a couple of things. One thing is the days of building, what we would call a wide and thin distribution There was a time where you wanted a lot of distribution across a large breadth of accounts. This is how you build the brand. You want to, you know, have a nice broad distribution. That is not practical anymore. And because we all still have revenue goals. What I recommend is a narrow and deep approach, fewer accounts, but much better chosen accounts and going very, very deep with them. So lots of business with fewer accounts is a great way for small producers to insulate themselves against the realities of the market. So that's a bit of a shift too. Is think narrow and deep instead of wide and thin. And that leads to yet another strategy, which is researching the opportunities for each market. Who are the twenty percent of the accounts that are driving eighty percent of the business? The eighty twenty rule is real. You if you ignore it, you ignore it to your peril. So it requires a lot more data and research and forethought, and most people just aren't really used to doing that themselves. They're like, well, that's what I have a distributor for. That's I have it imported for is their job to find the best customers. So if you're a small producer, let's say, if you're in Italy, you're making great. Chianti, you wanna have success in the world's largest wine market. You've gotta have conversations with your importer. And ask questions like, to what extent are you relying on distributors to sell for you and what extent are you using your own relationships in the market to to make sales? To what extent are you walking away from a wide and thin strategy and embracing a narrow and deep. That's the kind of conversation I would be having if I was an Italian wine producer talking to my importer and and distributors. I think it's interesting. My my my primary my day job is is I do a lot of consulting for direct to consumer business in wineries. And it's almost like taking those sensibilities of the direct to consumer model and applying it to distribution. Absolutely. There's so much we can learn in the three tier world from the DTC world. A lot of these disciplines using scalable digital strategies. Right. Those can be done in the trade context too, but it's very foreign for a lot of people. A a couple other really interesting a couple of the interesting things we're throwing into the hopper here. Is if I wasn't, a producer in Italy, I would want a clear line of sight as to who's using my products, and by who I mean, which accounts, which on premise accounts, which off premise accounts, I would wanna know exactly where my products were being sold. And even beyond that, I would want access to my consumers through email. That's why I'm such a big fan of collecting first party data. A lot of people spend time and money building their social following. That's very important. It's not without value. But if you're going to put time and energy into building an audience, make sure it's first party data, and that is an email address. Now this this is all opens up a whole new sidebar about how to use email marketing in a modern way, and we won't have time to dive to that today. Yeah. A different master class. Yeah. Email marketing is not about newsletters and sending out promo blocks. It's about building relationships at scale. Could be done for the trade, and it could be done for consumers. So if I was, an Italian wine producer, I would wanna know who my retail partners are. I'd wanna know their names. I'd wanna have them on my trade only email list. I would wanna communicate with them minimum once a month. It's kind of like bypassing the middleman sort of, but it comes into the heading of controlling more of your own destiny. That with that first party data. So what you're saying, you know, the summary is But responsibility is really shifting to brand owners, the responsibility for sales and distribution. So given that, how can a wine, again, a small, independently owned winery really effectively manage this transition and ensure they maintain strong because they still need the relationship with their distributor. But the nature of that relationship has changed. What you expect from your distributor has changed. So, let's talk let's get really tactical for a minute. Let's stick with the analogy of being an Italian producer. I would make sure that my website had the red carpet rolled out for trade buyers. I want a trade section of my website. I want it really plain how to join my trade only email list. I'd provide compelling reasons to join my trade, only email us, get access to special allocations, be first to know about, you know, scores, be the first to know about new releases you provide compelling reasons to join your trade only email list. I would make sure my website was ready to receive and grow a trade only email list. I would also make sure my website was full of the assets that the three tier system needs model shots, label shots, tasting notes, bios. These all need to be available digitally. Now a lot of producers leave that up to their importer to put that up that on their website. That's fine to have that redundancy. But if I was a producer, I would want that on on my own so that, as people organically signed up for my email list, I would do that. And this is also I like to say all roads lead to email. Your social media, your website, your advertising, all of it should go to acquiring email addresses. So if you have an Instagram presence, for example, you know, Instagram only allows one URL, and that's in your bio. You can't put links into the content that you're posting. So but it's shocking how many wineries and producers are using, that one URL to point to their website, what they should be using is linktree, which opens up a whole array of of calls to action, visit our website, shop online, join our email list, check out our latest scores, check out our events. So it's the little things like that. And on that list of calls to action for Instagram should be a button right on the top to join our trade on the email list or join our consumer email list. So it's possible to take the steps to cure, you know, to collect that first party data. Then you need to know what to do with it when you get it. Perhaps another conversation we could jive into that. Yeah. And so in a recent article you had written, you talked a little bit to about the importance of not just trying to make it about account, you know, trying to hold your distributors accountable, but really, you know, taking the reins into your own hands. So can you explain that a little bit more? Think it comes down to what distributors are are and are not capable of doing anymore because there's so many put yourself in the shoes of a typical distributor sales rep, completely overwhelmed. Every day is a day of survival, There's not a lot of planning or, you know, prioritizing. It's just survive the day. That's what it's like. So if you're expecting distributors to, you know, to take this document you've prepared Hey, we wanna be in these types of accounts, and this is where we wanna be priced, and all this granular quality of distribution issues, you are, off your rocker if you think the distributor has time to process that kind of granular direction. They don't. So what you do is recalibrate the expectation of distributor. Just some very simple and basic things, but but extremely valuable. Don't run out of stock. And if you're a foreign producer, you want forty five days inventory on the floor. The way you can tell if it's forty five is you must know the daily rate of sale so that you can participate in that, that number of what should be on the floor. So holding inventory, pricing it appropriately so that, the accounts, whether the off premise or on premise or receiving the the goods at the right price. You have to have an active role in that and monitor that. So not a lot of expectations about them going out and building this In fact, I would go I would be so bold as to say, and I've said it many times in my articles and videos. If any part of your business plan relies on a distributor to sell something for you, you're gonna be very disappointed. Now that sounds really harsh and unrealistic, but that is the reality. And so if you accept it, now you can begin to make the moves that you need to so that you can be successful despite that dilemma. It's really hard because it's not fun. And it it means a lot of extra work for producers, in most cases, extra, you know, resources for training and the digital tools that you need. But it's it's the alternative is not attractive. The alternatives if you get lost in a in a distributor's book, if you're small. And I could tell you story after story of the story of conversations I have with importers, distributors, producers, brand owners around the world, their business is going like this because they haven't made this adjustment. They continue to just be disappointed in what the distributor can do. They never stop to think, well, maybe they can't do more. Maybe we should start taking more control of road testing. I'm not saying this is easy. It's not easy to accept. It's not easy to do. So let's talk about, you know, let's imagine we're, a small producer I mean, definitely a small producer in Italy, but even a small producer here in the US, maybe we don't have the resource is to bring on, like, in market sales reps. But we do can see, you know, digital communications are becoming the norm. So what are some scalable strategies? A wine brand can prioritize to maintain this kind of customer engagement and drive growth from a distance. Yeah. What a great question. I love that. Well, a couple of things come to mind. Again, email is the way that you're gonna communicate with people, but not with newsletters and promo blast. Modern email is about personalization automation and segmentation. So here's a good example of this. If a trade buyer visits your website and they find their way to the trade section and they see a little pop up that says join our trade on the email list When they join the trade on the email list, that's the beginning of a very intimate journey that can be automated. They fill out the form and join the list. They immediately get a confirmation email with a few very light calls to action like follow us on Instagram or or visit our website. Nothing sales y. Three days later, they get another automated email, just pulling them a little bit deeper into the relationship, talking about the history of the company and the family that started it now. How many generations? Just something very interesting. Very short. No pictures, not newsletter. Three days later, they get a third email, bringing them a little bit deeper. This time is about the portfolio and why we make the wines we make, and our philosophy, blah blah blah, maybe the fourth, and then three days later, a fourth email. Maybe this is about their commitment to sustainability. And, you know, any number of topics, it's non it's a non sales communication that builds rapport and trust. Any whining regardless of how small they are, how small their budget is can do this. Is it costs almost nothing to set up an automated nurture sequence for new subscribers. So that's the minimum viable way to leverage this technology. But if you really wanna pour gas on the fire and you really wanna accelerate your list growth, This is when you can get into digital lead generation. Some of it's organic, a lot of it is paint, and it doesn't cost a lot. And the most common way to do this is a lead magnet. Something of value, give away something of value, a digital asset, a guide, a checklist, how to, something that makes the user's life better. For example, the insider's guide to getting the hard to find wines or, you know, seven tips for starting a home wine collection, you create something that would be desirable by your ideal customer avatar, and then you create advertising to put it in front of those people. The targeting tools that exist Let's just talk about the meta suite of tools, which I'm a huge fan of. The ability to put the right content in front of the right, customer is so precise now. It's almost frightening what meta can do. Yesterday, I took on a new client that was producing ice wine, and that they want to be very specific about who they attract. Take one of attract people who enjoy drinking ice wine. Well, you can do that. You literally can do that. You can target people who have an interest in ice wine That's how sophisticated these tools have become. So digital lead generation, which brings people to you, this is known as inbound marketing and sales as opposed to outbound where you're reaching out to people. So you grow your email list by attracting people to you using these digital strategies. It's game changing. It's quite remarkable. It's easy to measure the ROI, and, you do have to sometimes test several different things to see if the work, but Inbound lead generation is a game changer for a small producer. Yeah. That's fascinating. And SIP's good. Like you said, something that really and a winery of any size or any budget can really set up. You don't need a big tech team to make that to make that happen. You don't you don't even need to to pay for expensive graphic design. You can use Canva. And in the age of, AI, you can use chat you a small Italian producer could sit down right now. And with a few, special prompts, get some ideas from Chat GPT on what would make a great consumer lead magnet for the United States for for my Italian wine. So you could do the same thing for, Samuel. And and wine buyers. There's help available for the small producer. You don't need to hire an expensive agency to create a winning lead gen campaign. There's a learning curve, but it's worth it. And quite honestly, if you don't submit to the sorting curve, the alternative is pretty bleak. Yeah. And I like the advice too of those smaller emails, that as you said, kind of so people can get to know you and build a relationship with you, but also because people have short attention spans. And if you send everything in one long email, they probably won't make it to the bottom. So a little bit here and there, little nuggets are really digestible. Backhardt, when I think about how much work and effort goes into a typical winery newsletter. That nobody reads, and your open rate isn't gonna tell you everything. Maybe they'll open it, but did they read it most likely not? No one has time for that. But if you customize and segment your list and you send out shorter communications, that doesn't waste people's time. It gets right to the point, and you've leveraged the subject line so they know what to expect when they open it. You can literally train your users to open every email you send. And I frequently I'm a practitioner of this myself. I built my own business with lead generation and modern email marketing. And I love it when I get a reply. I send an email out to nine hundred people, which is just one segment of my list, but I get a bunch of replies because it feels like I'm writing just to them. Because I've segmented my list so that I'm only sending out communication that's relevant to that particular recipient. Here's a here's the case and point of the opposite of this. I'm constantly getting emails inviting me to some event going out of winery that is nowhere near where I live. They have sent that announcement to everyone on their list regardless of where they live. They're completely ignoring that they could have segmented that list to the people who are within certain distance from their winery. So it's just a It's just a lack of discipline around how to use these tools properly. Yeah. And keeping the conversation relevant for for the for the other side. One of my favorite books is by Gary Vaynerchuk called jab jab jab right hook. And the premise of the book is every three emails you send out should be informative, educational, entertaining, something to enrich the relationship. Only one out of every four should be a promo. Some kind of a pitch to buy something. If if wineries just did that, if they just adapt it, adopted a jab jab jab right hook philosophy, they would have higher open rates, and they would actually sell more. So if you wanna sell more product of your website, for direct to consumer, it all is, contingent on the size and engagement level of your email list. If you're not constantly growing your email list, you can expect your sales to flatten and and decline. The amount of people that come to your taste, you know, driven by email. The amount of people that go to events out in the trade, driven by email. All road sleep email. That's my number one takeaway from this conversation. Yeah. Well, thank you for that and for all of your, incredible, experience and wisdom that you've shared with us today. So before we go, we like to wrap up with a rapid fire quiz where we ask, three questions to help our listeners better understand the US market. And what you talked about today. So number one, what is your number one tip for mastering the US wine market? Learn what to do instead. That's my number one. Yep. It's a reality that you must accept, but the minute you do, you can begin to do something about it. Those days are gone. And what is something you would have told your younger professional self about selling wine in the US? I love this question because when I was younger and I was first learning to sell, I thought selling was about persuasion. I thought selling was about the features and benefits of the product. And if I could just convince you how wonderfully delicious this product is, you would buy it. And I thought it was about presentations and overcoming objections. That's what I thought selling was because it didn't know any better. Fast forward to today. I know exactly what selling is about, and has very little to do with the product ironically. It's about the sale should be a byproduct of a much larger relationship, a business relationship built on dependability and service and trust So if I could go back and do it over, I would have not made my selling approach be about the product. It would be about the customer. And instead of doing most of the talking about the features and benefits of my product, I would be asking a lot of questions like How is your how are your wine sales? What kind of inventory do you have? How often do you turn your inventory? Let's take a look at your list together and eliminate redundancy. So see if we can accelerate sales by lowering your inventory and cash cost and improving your cash flow. That's how I would sell back then. That's because that's how we sell now. That's great advice. Okay. Number three, what is your favorite travel hack, when doing market work? Well, I don't like to travel. I And the reason is I traveled forty times a year for seventeen years. So I don't it takes a lot to travel. So you just mean my my tips when traveling. Like, that sort of thing. Yeah. A tip a tip for somebody who's on the road a lot. Not on the road a lot, but used to be. So for those of you who are on the road, I would just say don't confuse activity with achievement. Being in wine sales is a very busy job, but being busy isn't the job, getting the results are. So activity and work and travel and hustle doesn't always relate to results. So be mindful of that, slow down, make more disciplined use of your time. Learn to say no. You don't have to to do quite so much. Great advice again. So, Ben, thank you so much for joining us today on the master class US wine market podcast. How can our listeners connect with you? Well, I would love it if you would visit winesale stimulator dot com. Weinstein stimulator is my group membership program. It's the future of my company getting people to pay one monthly fee to be part of my group. Part of my inner circle. So windsales simulator dot com would be a great place to find me when you get there. There's tons of articles, videos. You can reach me from that place. That would be great. Perfect. Windsales stimulator dot com. Well, then thank you again so much for your time and all that you shared with us. Hope to talk to you again very soon. Thank you for having me. Alright. Take care. And that's a wrap for this episode of Master Class US wine market. Thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode and want to stay up to date with the latest industry trends, remember to like, follow and share our podcast. And if you find value in our conversations, please leave us a review to help others discover the show and grow our community. Stay tuned for new episodes every Monday. Until then.