Increase Sales with .PDF — Pretty Darn Functional

 
Distributors, brokers and sales reps are crying out for informative sales materials from their wineries.  Retailers want to see technical information on the wines, not just sales hyperbole.  Restaurants want to know if the wines have been reviewed, and if the style will fit their menu.  And by 'style' I don't mean marketing-speak—these are buyers who want to see TA and pH figures, and an explanation of your oak regimen.

It's important for wineries to realize that, no matter how much you love your broker or sales rep, there are many buyers who are astute and want to measure your wine against their own palate.  And they want to see your data.  If the wine and the data back up the salesperson's hype, then that account will begin to trust you and it will confirm their trust in your sales rep.  It's a win-win scenario for everyone.

Your wine profiles (or technical sheets, if your prefer to call them that) and a well-done shelf talker should be part of every winery website.  Attach these wine media as .pdf files so your sales reps and customers can view and download them with any program.

PDF stands for Portable Document Format—a universal file format developed by Adobe that preserves the fonts, formatting, graphics and color of any source document, regardless of the application and platform used to create it. 

Unfortunately, very few wineries are recognizing what other industries have long known—providing your brand and product information online in .pdf format increases sales!

PDF software is extremely affordable and can be used for a variety of tasks—you can convert financial documents for emailing to your bank, or graphic design pages for emailing to media contacts.  PDF software costs only $10 to $75 for a basic program that will be more than sufficient for your needs; most have free 30-day trial periods.  If you plan to get into designing your own labels and media materials, excellent suites are available for $100 to $400. 

The software is also extremely easy to use.  All you are doing, basically, is converting an existing document into a universally readable format.  My software takes just two clicks, and I'm done.

Here is what sales professionals on Facebook have to say:

"Very important . . . Especially if you are dealing with small wineries."

"I agree, having them in PDF saves everyone money and the ability to put them into the right hands is key."

 

"When I had my shop, I wanted them if they were noteworthy. It was a time saver for me. As much as I wanted to handsell everything, I appreciated any help I could get."

 

"From my past wine sales days . . . extremely important—both for tech sheets and talkers—but I agree having them available as a PDF download is ideal. I think readily available (and up to date timeliness) on the web site is the best way to go. I think while press-printed talkers are nice—it's quite an expense—especially for a small winery,  that all too often doesn't get fully used. Also regularly emailing out the files to sales managers and/or reps/brokers (even though they might be available as a download) is a very cost effective way to stay at the front of their minds."

 

"Very. Yes. Frederick Wildman has a very accurate and up to date site."

 

"Tech sheets very important and I had somebody ask me for shelf talkers today and the winery does not have them so I have to create them."

 

"I find them incredibly worthwhile, especially for selling boutique wines.  Electronic distribution makes incredible sense, too (see Martin Ray Winery's website for a good example of useful consumer/staff tech sheets). Include the reviews!  Shelf talkers, not so much -- we print our own, primarily from tech sheet info and/or reviews."

"I hate printing them out as it costs us too much money and we never have the right one in hand when we need it. Having them available as a PDF on the website is 100% mandatory. Sending data out to your reps on a USB key would be GENIUS!!! Please include ratings too."

Great idea!  How about these cork-shaped USB keys that can be custom-imprinted with your brand?  And now you know what to put on them!

Comments

[Lynne Teckman]

Thanks for the informative article. Gotta work on this for Per Cazo.