Apt Sales Strategies are Key for Success

Sarah Bakx serves as chief sales officer for Treasury Americas, a division of global wine company Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) and one of the leading California wine companies. Since joining Treasury Americas’ leadership team in April 2020, Sarah has completely reshaped the business for success, leading a team of over 90 incorporating commercial and luxury sales, strategic accounts, emerging channels, and insights across the US, Canada, Central and South America and the Caribbean. Sarah draws upon over 25 years of experience working in a variety of commercial roles, both at some of the largest corporate wine and spirits brands as well as luxury startups. 

Current Business Developments Contribute Significantly to Meeting Your Evolving Business Requirements

Current developments in commercial business are truly a tale of two cities. On the one hand, the global economy is very volatile, which vastly affects spending and consumer behavior, driving unpredictability. On the other hand, technology and innovation continue to soar, exceeding our comprehension of what could come next. Our access to information and the ability to act on it almost instantaneously continues to give us optimism for the next evolution of consumer engagement and trends across CPG, not only in the alcoholic beverage space.

Our internal employee's priorities have changed, our consumer priorities have changed, and our obsession with these priorities at TWE has changed along with it. 

Important to have a Dynamic Sales Strategy

The most important overarching sales strategy we've implemented here at Treasury is consistency. We've evolved and flexed based on climate and market dynamics, but we have not wavered from our long-term goals of leading with luxury and obsessing over our consumers. Our entire world, not only our local market, has changed drastically over the past three years, but our long-term mission has not. Our strategy has been centered around evolving with these changing dynamics internally, with our sales teams and externally alongside our consumers. With every evolution, our destination has remained consistent; we constantly reevaluate the best route to our destination. Social issues, politics, inflation, and economics have all affected consumer behavior. Any strategy that tries to remain inflexible in a world that is flexing weekly is sure to fail. 

‘Every consumer change creates a new opportunity to better meet their demands.’ 

Sales are the business of linking human relationships to mutually beneficial business results; when our goals are clear, we can create new and creative paths without losing sight of the long-term plan. Wine trends are ever evolving from flavor profile to high growth price points to the percentage of alcohol or the package format most preferred. We are obsessed with our consumer's preferences and evolve when they tell us they've changed course! We are still focused on leading with luxury and actively listening to our consumers.

Challenges That Current Services Are Unable to Solve

The beverage alcohol business, like most CPG industries, is highly dependent upon data integrity. The quality and creditability of these customer and consumer analytics shape future investments and inform growth trend trajectories.   The data science boom in this industry was very late to the technological party. The data has existed for decades, but the industry was very slow to adopt it and, more importantly, share it. We rely heavily on many talented third-party providers but have yet to crack a gold standard for measuring and evaluating all business channels across all US markets. This leaves much data open to interpretation. We have a long road ahead to fully embrace technology as an industry, but great progress is being made, and some brilliant minds are leading the charge.

Cautionary Insights for Professionals Working in the Sales Domain

I have two that quickly come to mind. I'll relate my first cautionary tale to business in general, given the current unpredictable environment. My warnings stem from watching past beverage businesses, large and small, try to scrimp and save their way to growth during periods of extreme pressure. Instead of creative, innovative strategies to operate more efficiently, implement strategic partnerships, or simply think differently, many organizations mandate cuts, above all else, as the lead strategy. Economies ebb and flow, trends ebb and flow, and consumers change their minds regularly. Every consumer change creates a new opportunity to better meet their demands. A challenged environment could be a great opportunity for the bold.   Several companies have tried to save their way into irrelevance instead of innovating when everyone else is cutting and retreating.

My second and most important watch out is directly related to sales. Within the sales domain, we’re constantly fed ‘efficient steps to a sales call' and phrases that mirror 'always be closing' and 'more aggressive, always wins.'  These are our sales mandates of an era that has passed and no longer applies to a technology and data-driven world. Humanity is now (and perhaps always has been) the greatest skill a salesperson can have. Pick up the phone and make a call with no script and no demands; learn something about the human on the other end.    When your competition is sending a digital link for an app download or requesting quick payment, you're investing in a real relationship. We're surrounded by data and varying levels of technology all day, every day, but we're still human and crave interaction and connection. Lead with humanity and watch out for sales systems and processes that circumvent that. Technology and data can be priceless partners to humanity when used as a tool and not a replacement for real interaction.