In the wine and booze game, going from on/off prem to wholesale isn't as easy a transition as it might seem. The dynamics differ greatly, and if you think that the skills you’ve honed selling drinks or bottles will directly translate, reality might hurt.
It often looks like this: maybe there comes a point in many hospitality careers when the late nights start to lose their allure. Maybe coming home at 3 a.m. is straining your relationship with a significant other who works a 9-to-5. Maybe your body is sending you signals that it’s tired of the grind. Or it might simply be that you've hit a ceiling in your current role, realizing there’s little room to move up the ladder. That’s when one starts thinking about "going to the other side."
Below are a few thoughts about how real life might look for the first 12 to 18 months of a fresh wholesale rep’s life, unless one manages to land (and/or is willing to land) a job selling brands that sell themselves, for which education/story-telling/carrying bottles in the bag are not really a thing, products that can be sold using only a laptop and discounts on deep buys (a game i know nothing about as I have never practiced it).
1- The Sales Game Is Different
First off: selling or upselling to a guest in one’s venue is vastly different from doing the same with on/off prem accounts as a wholesale rep. When you’re wholesale, you're not dealing with people who've already decided to invest their time and money; you're dealing with people who have no idea who you are, don't want to work with yet another company, and don’t want to bother making the effort to get to know you or your book. Imagine trying to pull people walking by on the street to not only enter your venue but also to sit down and spend money. Rejection is a thing. This is when you really sees whether your skin is as tough as you thinks it is.
2- Your Social Circle Will Shrink
When you thinks about wholesale and how successful you can be, a way to reassure yourself is to count your friends, look at that social network, and think the first thing you’ll do is leverage it. Reality is this: the moment you start selling to friends, you’ll find that your circle is way smaller than you thought. People might not get back to you as quickly as you are used to; some won't get back to you at all.
3- Ego Is The Enemy
If you’re known for having a prominent ego or are self-aware enough to know you have one, understand that in wholesale, ego can get in the way of sales big time. Wholesaling demands humility, and a willingness to listen and learn. You're also representing a brand and building relationships. Humility will go a long way, helping in opening doors that would otherwise remain closed and creating genuine, solid relationships.
4- Gotta Be Willing to Embrace the Suck
It will be a grind. You might need to hustle for a solid 12 or 18+ months before you start to see tangible results. Nobody is waiting for you, the market is filled with portfolios, products and fellow sales people all calling on more or less the same accounts. Success comes to those who are okay with following the tougher path, have patience, create a game-plan for themselves, have discipline, organization and do what they said they would. The road will be hard, the rejections numerous, and the challenges plentiful. One will be working for days and weeks and months without seeing immediate rewards. So keep pushing.
The work is challenging, but it does offer real opportunities for who hustled enough to earn them. The people you meet, the relationships you create, the places you go to, the experience you live are hard to match.