How the rise of the account manager is driving the wine industry forward

By Richard Siddle 

Here’s a challenge for you. Take out your CV and have a look at the last time you updated the “Skills” section. Not what your last position was and all the various responsibilities you had doing it, but an actual new skill that you think makes you more competitive and attractive to a new employer. 

We’re not just talking about a new wine qualification here or the fact you have added a diploma to your already impressive list of distinctions in all your WSET level wine exams. No, to play this game you have to be able to show you have completed a course outside your normal skills set that now makes you a better employee for the changing world of wine you are all now working in.

Don’t worry if the answer is none. You want be alone. It’s not just a shortage of wine that the global wine trade is having to tackle with, ask the average chief executive or managing director and, if pressed, will increasingly talk about a skills shortage too. 

It’s not just in wine. A recent report by Price Waterhouse Cooper that questioned 1,300 CEOS the world over about the challenges they face running their businesses revealed 77% saw the availability of the right skills sets as being the biggest threat to their collective companies. In particular 77% struggle to find the creativity and innovation skills they need to take their business forward. The skills shortage is seen as being a bigger threat to profitability than technological change or changing customer behaviour. 

Noticeably, in this world of increased automation and smart technology, it is not the digital skills per se that CEOs worry about it. In fact it is all the skills that machines can’t do. The so called ‘soft sklills’ covering leadership, adaptability, problem-solving, relationship building and collaboration. 

Which is very much in keeping with where the modern wine industry is going. Where the focus is becoming less about how good your sales and negotiations skills are, but how you can see the bigger picture and work on collaborative solutions that are of benefit to both the buyer and seller.

Time and again at last week’s Prowein, producers, suppliers and distributors alike all spoke of the need to consolidate and build up existing relationships with their customers rather than go off in search of something better. 

But there’s the rub. Up to now so much of the wine industry, particularly on the bulk side of the fence, has been dictated by good old fashioned traders. Hardline negotiators that can drill down a price until every possible bit of margin and value has been squeezed out of it. 

Account handling 

Not any more. We saw last week how the global shortage of wine has made those kind of negotiations already out of date. To succeed in this current market place you need to be able to play the long ball game. Where it is the account managers, capable of truly understanding yours and your customers’ needs, that are the ones in demand. 

Account managers that, on paper, you would not think are too hard to behind, but in practice are few in the ground. Talk to a major supermarket or restaurant or pub group category manager and they will all share their experiences of poor account management from across the wine sector compared to other grocery and product areas. 

Mark Lansley, managing director at Broadland Wineries, told February’s International Bulk Wine & Spirits Show in London that it was a lack of the right kind of skills across the wine industry that was holding it back. 

For too long the sector has looked to recruit from within, and failed to bring in the necessary skills from outside, be it in technology, supply chain management, through to marketing, branding, promotion and consumer communications, stressed Lansley. 

It was often, he admitted, hard to find the right people to bring in, but if a business like Broadland Wineries wants to do more business with its target supermarket and multiple operators then it needs new talent to help it.

Other major companies picked up the theme at last week’s Prowein. Mark Roberts, sales director at Lanchester Wines, said it was looking to recruit quality account managers capable of really taking that aspect of their business onto another level.

“You really need to have very good account management skills now. You have to know your customer very well,” explained Roberts. “You have to get all your touch points with them right. Integrity is everything.”

That way you are better placed to develop and deliver the more “channel specific” wines that retailers and operators all now want. “It’s all about a building that reciprocal relationship,” he added.

Boyce Lloyd, the new chief executive at KWV in South Africa, said the challenge for its business was to have the right internal talent that would ensure it has the most “completely relevant” wine offer available to its customers. “For ultimately the consumer will choose who is successful. It’s like there is a live scoreboard up there that decides the outcomes. You have to look at the macro trends out there, spot them early and create brands that are relevant, like our new Cuvée rosé sparkling wine,” explained Lloyd.

“Your route to market is very important. Who you have as your partner, your distributor in every key market,” he said. “What added value are you offering to your customer? You have to be constantly having new ideas, you need to be reliable, deliver a consistent service or you will be out.”

To do that means having the right customer facing teams that can go to their partners with genuine solutions, and not just do what they have always done. 

Category first 

Being able to show you have a category first approach in everything you do is what is pushing the right suppliers forward when winning partnership and contract agreements with the major retail chains. 

The fact you have cheaper wine to sell is not going to get you a seat at the table any more, said Lansley.“You can have a really good brand, but you need to have the relationship with the retailer to help get them to take it on,” he explained.

It is why the door for retailers is increasingly open to smaller, more flexible, fully focused wine companies to exploit. Take Marc Patch and his GM Drinks business, which works with a number of major supermarkets, wholesalers, and cash and carries to ship 1.7million bottles to the UK a year, even though it is all run out the back of his garage. 

Patch listens and knows what those major customers want and will only knock on their door when he has what they need. Which increasingly means they also now come to him, confident he can deliver what they need.

“It’s not about how big you are,” he said. “I can go up against all the big boys. It’s about how good your wines are and how good your relationship is with them. 

When, for example, he wrote to Morrisons supermarket in the UK to thank the wine team for working with GM Drinks, he received a reply from the managing director of the overall chain saying no other supplier had ever done that before. 

Which is a nice line for his CV.