Wine Sales and Distribution: The Secrets to Building a Consultative Selling Approach

This definitive book offers the first focused guide for developing personal wine-selling skills. The authors’ approach is based on a clear understanding of the principles, strategies, and practices used by leading wine professionals. Step by step, the authors explain how to develop relationships, understand customer needs, and deliver both products and sales presentations in an efficient and effective way.

Based on the authors’ over six decades of combined research, consulting, and teaching in personal selling skills, the book draws on their countless interviews and interactions with effective sales professionals in the wine and broader hospitality industries. Many of their ideas have been incorporated into the unique consultative selling skills framework they develop in this manual. The strategies they outline will be invaluable for all those seeking to start or enhance a career in wine sales. For anyone who wishes to pursue a career in the wine industry, whether their focus is distribution, retail sales, sommelier sales at a restaurant, or working in a winery tasting room, this book will be an invaluable launching point.

Paul Wagner is founder of Balzac Communications & Marketing. He has been an instructor for Napa Valley College's viticulture and enology department for the past twenty-five years. In addition he teaches at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone, is a guest lecturer at many universities, and speaks regularly at international wine conferences. He is the coauthor of Wine Marketing & Sales: Success Strategies for a Saturated Market, which won the 2008 Gourmand International Award for the best wine book of the year for professionals.

John C. Crotts is professor of hospitality and tourism management in the School of Business at the College of Charleston. He is coauthor of Selling Hospitality: A Situational Approach.

Byron Marlowe is clinical assistant professor of hospitality and wine business management in the Carson College of Business at Washington State University, where he coordinates the wine and business management program.