The world of beer sales is a complex maze. There’s proven methods, and there’s also misguided notions, too. Here, Susanne Currid from The Business of Drinks tells all.

If our experience at the Business of Drinks is anything to go by, the world of craft brewing is rife with misconceptions and misguided mantras when it comes to selling beer.

I’ll hazard a guess that you’ve come across at least a couple of the following notions when discussing sales within your business. 

However, help is at hand. If you need to resteer your course, use some of our alternative tried-and-tested sales maxims.

Brew it and they will come

In today’s increasingly crowded craft beer market you need to do more than simply brew great beer.  Customers might have beaten your door down, back in the day when fresh, interesting beer was rare. Nowadays, a sales strategy is an essential part of any professional brewhouse business plan. You need to be thinking about what will sell and how you will attract those all important customers from the get-go.

Alternative mantra – Invest in selling from day 1.

Just sell more dammit!

Moving along a phase, you realise that sales matter.  However, you still need to bear in mind that not all sales are equal.   In a nutshell, you need to find customers to sell to, who will a) pay you a great or, at the very least, a fair price b) know how to sell your beer to their customers in good to great volumes and c) reflect well on you and your beer brand by sharing similar values, customer types etc. Selling your products at lower than optimum prices invariably leads to poor or no profits.

Alternative mantra – Develop the optimum mix of customers to sell to

Let’s leave it to the wholesalers

When small breweries start out, it can be a useful strategy to sell more through wholesalers whilst you get the other aspects of your brewhouse and operations in order.  However, if you are to make a profit in the longer term, you need to ensure that you either invest in your brand such that your beer is in demand (costs money) so you can secure the right price level for your product, or you need to start selling more beer directly to get a better overall return per litre sold. 

In practice, this means growing some direct sales via your own direct delivery or taproom and events.  Ideally a mix of wholesalers as well as your own cost efficient ways to deliver direct customer sales with your own, a co-operative or outsourced delivery service.   If you leave it all to the wholesalers to sell, you can become locked in with limited opportunities at lower margins.

Alternative mantra – Direct sales matter

Targets?  What targets?

If you don’t set sales targets, you make it significantly more difficult to monitor and manage your sales efforts.  The best targets will be SMART i.e. Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-bound. For example, you want to increase your beer specials monthly sales by 5% in the coming 3 months. 

Develop a plan, put numbers and dates by them with people’s names and then regularly review and chase! Targets should stretch but not excessively strain your team.  Smaller targets regularly reached are much better for morale and more realistic than setting big number ungrounded goals.   The tighter the target, the easier it is to see whether it has been achieved.
 
Alternative mantra – If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed

Everybody does it online these days

It can feel like the whole world operates online these days.  Especially when many aspects of your job are done at your desk or laptop.  However, you’ve got to remember that pub and bar General Managers don’t operate that way. Their work dicates that they are customer facing most of the time.  To make your sales relationships work with the independent on-trade, make sure you visit and speak directly. 

Don’t let your Sales person hide behind a screen or the telephone.  It’s amazing what extra information you’ll also glean when you chat directly.  For example, it’s so much easier to ask difficult questions  face-to-face.  Often when beer sales dry up, you’ll never get feedback on what went wrong.  They’ll simply stop ordering and move on to another supplier.  To make sure that doesn’t happen to your sales, make sure to keep regular face-to-face communications as part of your sales regime.

Alternative mantra – Real world sales relationships matter

Fresh beer sells

We’ve seen many of the bigger craft brewers make a serious marketing play about delivering fresh beer.  That’s all well and good and sounds like a great sales patter on paper.  However, freshness, hopiness, strength etc. are what we’d call product features.

They are quite utilitarian and are shared by most other comers in your drinks sector. If you want to sell more, it’s wiser to focus on brand benefits.  And those brand benefits are often psychological or emotional.  In practice this means talking about your brewery’s vibe or emotional appeal. 

When talking to your customers, talk more about your packaging design/events/collaborations/partnerships and the customers it’s helped to draw in.  For example, you could promote a collaboration with a another local drinks business in the local press.  

This activity demonstrates that you are successfully building awareness for your beers and that you are positioning yourselves as the beer of choice for local artisan drinks fans.  Pubs ultimately want to sell beer that they think their customers will recognise.  Demonstrating your flair for PR will win favour with the on-Trade.

Alternative mantra – Sell the beer and the brand benefits

When desperate, discount

When sales are not forthcoming, the urge can rise to discount your price in order to shift sales.  It’s fair to say discounting has its place within the marketplace, especially when you are looking to shift larger volumes.  However, if you can’t get a sale without always having to offer a chunk off your list price, some or a number of business points need examination.

Alternative mantra – Use discounting with care and attention