Starting your own field team can be daunting, and it’s very tempting to sidestep the hassle and find a more plug and play solution like an agency. At Bowimi, I work with brands of all sizes who do it really well themselves, and agencies who can accelerate the growth of a brand or help maintain their position as a leading brand. 

As I’m always on the lookout for new FMCG brands to show Bowimi to, I’ve found they’re often at the point where they’re weighing up building out their own sales team or outsourcing it. 

So, I asked some of my contacts about when you’d want to start your own team and where it might be smart to look at agencies.

You want to scale founder-led sales

Great brands come from their founders pouring themselves into the product, and truly caring about the end product. So, when a founder goes to do sales, they bring all of that passion and expertise to each stockist they speak with.

Founder-led sales are often super effective, and if the conversion rate of these early sales can scale linearly then the business will have a bright future. However this often isn’t just a plug and play with a business just adding four sales people and expecting 4x the output. 

One advantage of building your own team is that you can curate the salespeople and their pitch a lot more closely than you can with an agency. Whoever’s selling it should be able to tell the gritty story and eloquently explain the benefits of the product, and you can handpick those people and train them to do it your way. 

Now, you could spend a lot of time trying to get an agency to go this deep into your product, however they’re usually trying to sell multiple products alongside yours. Wouldn’t it be nice to have the focus all on yours? As Louis Gill, the Sales Manager at Daily Dose, says “How can an external agency be as invested as someone that’s along for the ride?”.

You’ll own and process your data from the field

I normally tell people who are considering joining Bowimi that an underrated benefit of the platform is unlocking the knowledge that usually is either stuck with their reps or is left unexplored. Getting lots of anecdotal and quantitative datapoints from the field can help your team exploit the market better and helps you identify how to drive volume through the trade. 

It goes without saying that you’ll need great technology to fully utilise this (I can show you how Bowimi helps with this, book a time here). 

Although you can instruct an agency to report on specific things, and carry out research on your behalf, when you’ve got your own field team you are better equipped to find weird things and react to them quickly.

For example, Weekend Drinks, found it difficult to get stocked in the off-trade. By getting their reps to pause selling, and start asking why they quickly got to the bottom of the problem. It wasn’t price, quality or branding, it was the size of the bottles. The secret to their quick reaction was having an internal team who were able to investigate what was going wrong and get the answer conveyed quickly. 

Surely there are disadvantages?

While organically growing your own field team has many upsides, you’re going to have a ramp time as you expand it, so it will take a while for the return to come back on the investment. If you want to get 100 salespeople on the ground to take your brand national, you might be better off looking at field sales agencies. 

However, John Morrissey from Vocation Brewery is on the money with this analogy:

“Sometimes it’s necessary for brands to utilise other breweries to brew their beer for a whole variety of good reasons, but we would all prefer to control production from hop to glass to ensure you have the best product possible. The same is true for Field Sales, your sales teams may be the first ever interaction with your brand and making the right impact is crucial.”

I’ll share my 5-step process to improve your approach to selling to on-premise outlets.

By adopting this hunting process, you’ll spend time better. You’ll likely increase your strike rate in the right outlets.

Unfortunately, most people lack a pragmatic system. They are getting rejected or focused on the wrong outlets.

Without a system in place, you’ll encounter a few challenges.

Challenge 1: You focus on the wrong outlets. People will recommend you to get a hunting list. The problem with those lists is that you’ll focus on the hottest places in town. If you search online you’ll end up with the same list as all the salespeople in your city. You’ll focus on the wrong, hard-to-get outlets

Challenge 2: The wrong bars reject you. You may have heard they don’t have time for you, or that the manager is not there. Showing up at the door of people who don’t want to buy you is a waste of time. Many bar owners now do their research online or through word-of-mouth. They have already made up their mind about what brands to stock. You need to create the demand for your brand before you’re going to capture it with a visit.

Challenge 3: Unbalanced relationships. By focusing on those above, you will affect your mood. The moment you walk in, you’ll feel you’re in a lower position. If successful, you’ll base those relationships on favors and you’ll be always “on-call”.

Challenge 4: The wrong outlets will have slow velocity: In case of success, they may try one bottle. They will make you sweat for any new small sales. Very ineffective.

Here’s the 5-step process I follow to overcome the above challenges:

Step 1: Understand whom your brand is right for

Skip the target consumer. Clarify what your brand is for. What consumption occasion and what type of venue. No, I’m not talking about the 50 best bars or the hottest venues. I’m talking about the venues that will likely sell your brand on a specific occasion. You’ll have to do trial and error at the beginning. Analyse the patterns you see.

Step 2: Get referrals vs Cold-calling

Get recommended by other bartenders who are already using your brand. Ask them to make an intro. Caveat: It’s easy to get the wrong referral. If you don’t brief them well, they’ll send you to the hottest bars, to owners that play cool. You want to get access to outlets that are like those in which your brand already resonates. Places that don’t buy the brand to do you a favour but because they believe in the added value it brings to their venue.

Step 3: Use technology to map the city

Do as much as possible online so you can be effective when walking the streets. Take advantage of technology. Check their Instagram, and their website. Use Google Maps. That’s 1.0. If you want to get 2.0, you must start using a CRM system where you can also gather other relevant information. I’ve worked with several CRM systems and I recommend skipping the complicated one, especially when you are starting as a small brand. My favourite tool is Bowimi. Super intuitive and without complicated features for a simple start.

Step 4: Analyse their back bars and drinks menus

Most outlets list their menu online and you’ll find a photo of their back bar. If not, you can always go there in person and check it out.

• How many brands from your category do they carry?

• Do they mention any brands on the cocktail list?

• What cocktails do they have?

• How much are they?

It’s important to put that info into Bowimi via surveys to make sure that it becomes your go-to place for all that info.

Step 5: Focus on one area at the time

Don’t spread yourself too thin. Yes, there’re many right areas in your city but you can’t have it all. Win in a couple of areas before venturing elsewhere. Make sure you make your brand is visible in the community of bars, restaurants, and bottle shops in the area. In this step, Bowimi is again your best friend in understanding how your brand is doing in your selected area and to plan your routing.

I hope you find this guide helpful.

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Should you need more support don’t hesitate to reach out at ciao@maffeodrinks.com