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.”

Have you ever exhibited at a trade show and wondered if it was worth it? You had lots of conversations where they said they’ll order through their wholesaler? Well, guess what, those orders never happened.

Same thing used to happen in field sales. You walk into a shop, sample the product and assume that’s enough to win the order. The reality is that you’re much more likely to win the order, if you send the order to their wholesaler yourself.

That’s why we built our wholesale transfer order product. Where every rep can quickly access pricing and record orders across dozens of wholesalers, and an automated email gets sent to all the relevant people (customer, wholesaler and rep) in realtime.

Earlier this year we decided to apply this concept to trade shows, and dozens of our customers had our QR codes on their stand at the NEC in April for Food and Drink Expo.

Now when someone visits their stand, they can scan the QR code, see a list of wholesalers that they can order through and create an order in seconds. Great, for if you can offer a deal on the day to promote urgency and secure the order there and then.

Something along the lines of: “If I put the order through now, we can get you a free case” often helps close the sale.

What should you do now to take more orders at upcoming trade shows?

1. If your reps don’t already do wholesale transfer orders, speak to your wholesalers about sending them orders if their customers visit your stand. Most of the regional wholesalers will be thrilled that you’re helping them generate sales.

2. Have an action plan for if someone visits your stand and wants to order your product but doesn’t have an account with any of your wholesalers. A lot of wholesalers are very happy for you to send them leads. Ultimately, these wholesalers are always looking for new customers themselves.

3. If someone isn’t ready to order, set up a “distributor” on Bowimi called “Samples” where you can quickly record interest in products and contact information.

4. Make it as easy as possible to order. Print QR codes onto cards and flyers for people to take with them if you can’t convert them on the spot. Ensure everyone on the stand has quick access to the ordering QR code or the Bowimi app.

The goal is always to win an order there and then, but if that’s not possible you might want to send them samples or visit their store in the coming months.

At the NEC (Birmingham), one of our customers did 13 orders in a single day through Epicurium. With the upcoming trade shows in London (where our customers have a strong field sales presence) I can imagine they’ll be converting at least double that number.

If you’re exhibiting at Cafe Culture, Speciality Fine Food, Lunch or any other trade shows this year, and you’re looking to take orders at your stand, contact me on dan@october2025.bowimi.com

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.

If you liked it, You can subscribe to my free newsletter here at https://www.winningwithdrinks.com/signup/

 

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

Buying software sucks. There’s so much noise out there and we’ve all signed up for products we’ve not used and been tied in for 12 months 😤

Unfortunately for us, CRMs are the worst offender in this category. Teams don’t like them, they rarely get adopted and most CRMs have large set up costs and 12-month contracts so it’s an expensive gamble to take.

So 12 months ago when we entered the market, proving the product was a much bigger priority than dragging unwilling customers through 12 months of regret, so monthly rolling was the standard. No commitment. This put the responsibility on us to deliver value, and fast, so we came up with a process where any business could fully determine within one month whether or not our platform would be worth the monthly investment.

Here’s what your first month on Bowimi looks like:

Day 1 – Set up surveys (data capture), tags (location management) and ordering (if applicable).

Day 2 – Get the whole team set up: Download the app on phones and set passwords so that they can go straight into using Bowimi in the field. We give every team member a tour of all the relevant features, plus our contact details for peace of mind. They’ll have full access to our:

• Prospecting tool to find local businesses
• Route planning and optimisation to save time and money
• Task management to keep track of follow ups
• Surveys to record photos and other key information from visits
• Orders to create wholesale transfer and direct orders in seconds

Day 7 – Insights: Once you’ve had a week of using Bowimi in the field, you’ll have some good data to visualise. This is where we build bespoke dashboards for you, showing you exactly the data and metrics you want to see. Once they’re set up, you can access them anytime you want and even get them automatically emailed to you for added convenience.

After the insights session, you’ll now have all the tools in place for your team to work more efficiently and for their managers to have instant access to the most important metrics. Over the remainder of your first month, you’ll be able to clearly see whether or not the platform is working for you and making a real difference to your business. If it’s not, cancel. No strings attached.

The saying goes: “No one wants a drill. What they want is the hole” and this couldn’t be more true when it comes to field sales software. Whilst you might think you’re shopping for software, what you actually need is a process that works for you and a tool that your team enjoy using.

For more information on how to get started, email me on dan@october2025.bowimi.com

When you hear the word “automation”, you’d be forgiven for thinking about robots stealing our jobs and a dystopian future where a handful of pale, eccentric billionaires own armies of mechanical workers whilst the rest of us live out our days in the metaverse.

Whilst I can’t predict the future, I’m here to paint a brighter picture of how field sales teams can easily implement automations to save them hours every week and make them more productive than they ever imagined.

In 2011, three guys in Missouri created Zapier, a product which would go on change the way hundreds of thousands of businesses work. Zapier allows you to connect the platforms you use everyday via “Zaps” to automate your workflows and save you time. A “trigger” in one platform, causes an “action” in another and with over 4000 integrations, the opportunities are endless.

For the past decade, a growing community of people have been obsessively building zaps to automate their workflows, drive efficiency and grow their businesses. I have no doubt, that among the talented individuals who use our platform daily at leading challenger brands, that we’ll see some extraordinary creativity in the automations they create.

In wholesale, for example, brand reps visit shops with the intention of introducing them to their products and putting a wholesale transfer order through one of their wholesale partners. After each visit, they could be interested in sending a follow up email (perhaps using Zapier’s delay feature). Brands in grocery may want to automatically save photos of displays from store visits to shared Google Drive accounts. Manually updating spreadsheets could soon become a thing of the past and any repetitive processes which happen at any point in your sales processes could soon be turned into a zap.

At Bowimi, building a Zapier integration isn’t a tick-box exercise on our product backlog, it’s an opportunity for us to make our platform infinitely more useful and extendable. The best part? You get to spend more time selling and on high-value tasks, and less time on repetitive tasks.

Here’s how you get started: https://bowimi.notion.site/Automation-with-Zapier-b3838699564948df90ac1378702935ce

Running a challenger food and drink brand can be difficult on the best of days. After a year of working with dozens of leading and early-stage challenger brands, I’ve come across a number of products and services that I feel make a real impact.

For any brand with grocery accounts, Elm is quickly establishing itself as an absolute necessity. Elm takes all of your data across grocery, e-commerce and wholesale, and gives you actionable, easy-to-digest insights. Some brands use these insights to direct their student brand ambassador store visits on Bowimi, others use external agencies.

For brands (particularly craft beer brands) who want to offer direct sales to stockists, Sellar is proving to be an incredibly useful tool. Sellar gives brands an online trade store and automates most of the tasks involved in placing and managing direct sales for both the buyers and suppliers.

Every brand that wants to win new stockists or action grocery store issues, needs field activity, either in-house or agency, which is why this article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Bowimi. Take Elm for example, if you get 100 “stock no sales” alerts per week for Sainsbury’s stores across London, Bowimi will be the most cost-effective way for you to manage (and own the data from) the in-house or agency activity that you carry out. If you’ve invested in Sellar to manage your direct sales, Bowimi will make your team much more effective when prospecting, planning routes, tasks, customer visits and placing orders (wholesale and direct).

For any brand with grocery accounts, direct trade and field sales, combining Elm, Sellar and Bowimi would deliver efficiency improvements that large brands like Coca-Cola or Heineken would have spent millions of pounds to achieve. With every innovation, it’s becoming easier and easier for challenger brands to achieve more, in a cost-effective way which wasn’t possible even 3 years ago.

Beyond sales and growth platforms, there’s a wealth of resources available out there in the form of podcasts, programmes and other support. My favourite podcast in this space is Brand Growth Heroes by Fiona Fitz. Fiona uses her podcasts to dive deep into how leading challenger brands achieved their success in often unconventional ways, her guests have included the founders of Tenzing, MOJU, Dash Water, Lucky Saint, and TRIBE.

In summary, if you’ve got grocery accounts: buy Elm. If you’re doing direct sales: buy Sellar and if you’re doing field sales or grocery visits: buy Bowimi. All three are UK-based, early-stage startups where the founders will work tirelessly to deliver extraordinary results for your business.

Imagine waking up in the morning, you look at your phone and there’s a perfectly curated list of tasks for you to complete. New customers to visit, follow ups with those who haven’t placed an order in a while and a handful of relevant, new prospects to explore.

The app organises your day for you, planning your route and making sure you have enough time to fit all the required tasks in. You make some changes here and there when urgent tasks unexpectedly come up, but on the whole, your digital assistant takes this into account and adjusts your day accordingly.

Every visit, follow up and new prospect is optimised to drive the most sales. A digital assistant which learns from your activity, curates a perfect list of prospects and prepares your daily tasks in the most efficient way possible. No admin required.

In the meantime, your manager has real-time insight into your activity and key metrics, and weekly/monthly/quarterly reports for each rep are automatically generated with important information flagged.

Sounds like science fiction, right?

It’s actually closer than you think and here’s why:

More online data on places than ever before

Every location you’re selling to or want to sell to has an online profile made up of thousands of datapoints across Google, Tripadvisor and social networks. Photos, reviews, menus and more make it possible to build an accurate profile of the places which stock your products and build a curated list of similar businesses nearby that you should target.

This is why Bowimi uses Google’s +200m places as a foundation upon which brands build their CRM and field activity. This means that our customers will benefit from intelligent insights and suggestions based on the locations they’ve been interacting with.

Machines are better at learning than you

When you’re planning your day, how do you know who you should visit, when you should visit them and what tasks you should prioritise? Overtime you learn what actions lead to the best results and you use these learnings to win and retain customers. You may have figured out that the best time to visit a cafe in Central London is 2-4pm, Tuesday – Thursday. You may have figured out that your key accounts need to be visited every 30 days to prevent churn. There is no reason why a digital assistant couldn’t learn exactly what you should do and when you should do it to deliver the best results.

The good news is that in field sales, technology will never replace the face-to-face visits which are a core part of almost every brands sales strategy. People and technology will work hand-in-hand to deliver ever-improving results.

If you’re interested in finding our more about the future of field sales, and how Bowimi is working towards the world’s most intelligent digital field sales assistant, please reach out to our founders Dan or Dom, or sign up for a demo today.