Signing on with a wholesaler is an important milestone for any brewery.
It gives you access to more retailers, more markets, and a professional sales and delivery network that is difficult to build on your own.
But it doesn’t guarantee sales.
Many brewery owners believe: “I signed with a distributor…now they’ll grow my brand.”
The reality is much different. The wholesaler provides the distribution platform. The brewery must help create consumer demand.
That’s not a criticism of wholesalers, it’s simply the economics of the business. A wholesaler rep may have 100 brands and thousands of SKUs in the portfolio. Your brewery has one brand to focus on: yours.
That’s why the strongest brewery-wholesaler relationships are true partnerships.
Your wholesaler excels at logistics, account service, order fulfillment, and maintaining relationships across hundreds of retail accounts. But they also represent a whole lot of other beer brands.
To grow grow through distribution, you need a solid presence in the market.
Support your retail partners by:
- Hosting tastings and sampling events.
- Visiting key accounts regularly and building relationships with managers and staff.
- Promoting retail partners through your own social media and email marketing.
Every account visit should focus on the big goal: “What can we do to help this retailer sell more of our beer?”
When retailers see that you’re invested in helping them succeed, they become more likely to recommend your beer, expand your shelf space, or support your next seasonal release.
Great distribution is built on partnerships.
Breweries that consistently grow wholesale sales aren’t always the ones with the biggest sales force. They’re the ones that consistently help wholesalers and retailers sell more beer.
P.S. Next week we’ll bring everything together by introducing the Wholesale Sales Operating System – a practical framework for building your annual sales plan, identifying leading indicators, measuring what matters, and creating a repeatable process for sustainable wholesale growth.
Ready to grow wholesale sales more predictably? Learn how the Beer Business Finance Association helps breweries install practical management systems from financial planning to wholesale sales forecasting that create sustainable, profitable growth.
