It’s been exactly twenty years since I started my professional wine journey. I was an enthusiastic amateur for several years, drinking old, Zonnebloem vintages found on a shelf in my local liquor store or bottles of cheap Rosé that my father brought back from his business trips to the Boland. I had various bar jobs in the UK, Switzerland, and South Africa, before I got a real job, where I sampled wine from far and wide. Back then I had no idea what the difference was between a Chablis and a Sauvignon Blanc, and I certainly didn’t know what a Rioja was made from, and the mysteries of Burgundy remained as elusive as ever. What I discovered when I embarked upon my wine career was that whilst I could learn about wine and its origins and be schooled on tasting it as I attempted to acquire a “palate”, the commercial side of the industry was a complete blank slate.
My shiny business degree didn’t help me at all when I was thrown out of my first sales call, and it certainly didn’t help when I had to negotiate a three-hotel wine deal based on our business achieving a set margin, to secure my first key account. Managing stock levels to satisfy my regions’ customers’ needs was as alien to me as picking a Savoie white wine in a line up – although at least with the Savoie I could get some points for the right colour and whether it was dry or not! Trying to get a stubborn landlord of a Windsor pub to change his house wine from Stowells was a life lesson and not something that had been taught in any executive business school. The rock face of being a wine sales rep is aptly named.Other necessary skills to do my job of the last 20 years including category management tasks as one of my teams sought to change the trajectory of our business in a particular channel – using 29 000 lines of data and the analytics to make sense of it all. People management skills were vital when my team consisted of 62 salespeople, or when I had 17 nationalities across 31 team members in three locations in one business unit. Negotiating with a national UK wine buyer when VAT gets changed 2 weeks before an annual price increase discussion, was a bit of challenge to say the least. The point of all the reminiscence is that most of the “hard” skills I have deployed in the last 20 years were learned from my bosses, mentors, team members, and very often, from my customers. The “soft” skills are ingrained, you either have them or you don’t. Most certainly no training program existed that taught all the skills that I have had to learn to remain relevant in the wine industry. Until now!
Following many years of teaching on commercial, marketing and digital strategy at the University of Cape Town, University of Stellenbosch, and most recently via WSET, I have been encouraged by wine industry colleagues to put a course together that encapsulates what I have learned over the years into one course, that will help the industry and train wine professionals in the art of selling wine.
Therefore, I am announcing the launch of the Vinez Sales and Marketing for Wine Professionals course. The course is aimed at sales and marketing personnel who wish to improve their sales, marketing, and communication skills for them to be successful in trade. Winemakers or winemaking students who wish to understand the commercial side of the wine industry are also catered for, as our wine business owners or investors who wish to polish their skills to achieve an effective ROI for their investment.
The course will cover the following topics:
- The global wine market
- Commercial objectives
- Making strategic decisions
- Marketing principles
- Digital strategy
- Wine tourism
- Wine awards
- Legislation
- Personal brand development
- Media engagement
- Major market reviews
Guest speakers from the wine industry and elsewhere will add their commentary to the modules presented. The cost of the course including all materials, lunch on each day, and two wine tastings is R5 950.00 per person (Incl. VAT). Note that the course is non-residential, and own transport is required.
For next available dates please contact Ross Sleet at ross@vinez.co.za
For more information on Ross Sleet, click here.
CONTACT DETAILS
Ross Sleet
+27 (0) 7888 62246
ross@vinez.co.za
www.vinez.co.za
@Vinezrsa
