When I was in high school I worked for a local Amish deli that had a wine section of the store. Although I wasn’t old enough to know or drink wine I was still often tasked with selling the wine to people and helping them find what wine they enjoyed the most. Over time I noticed that , with wine specifically but also with all sales, knowing your competitors product is incredibly important to creating a good sales relationship. When it came to wine most people don’t have enough wine tasting abilities to give a detailed description of the flavor pallet that they hope to experience when drinking wine. However, what they do know is the name of a generic wine that they like and or don’t like. If they tell me that they really like a cab sav, I am not going to hand them a sweet white and tell them they’ll love it. Hearing the customers previous experiences isn’t helpful if you don’t know the characteristics of the things they’ve had or used in the past. Knowing the pain or pleasure that they have had in the past will help you create a situation best suited for them. After I noticed this and started to do the research on main stream wines I was able to quickly get people wine that they liked and came back for. This helped my selling ability tremendously.
testacr22
I completely agree with you! I think if you don’t understand and know your competitors then you will start to face challenges in conversing with the prospective client and could possibly lose the sale.
I agree with you Ryan, It is impendent to understand the customers likes and dislikes. You clearly, even though you didn’t have a taste for the wines yourself, where able to find the similarities between different wines in order to make recommendations.