Shelf-Talkers

QUESTION
What’s the easiest way to sell a great bottle of wine that
your clientele will love even when you aren’t immediately
available to assist them – especially during this busiest of
seasons? Answer A piece of well written, eye-pleasing
Point-of-Sale (POS), or as it’s more casually known, a
shelf-talker. Try as you may, some of your valued customers
will have to peruse the shelves this holiday season without
your valuable input. But you can communicate with them, and
successfully match the right bottle with the right consumer,
even if you’re tied down with vendors all day (which tends
to happen a bit more often this time of year). Shelf talkers
are the best way to showcase a product’s uniqueness,
especially in large stores, or in establishments which,
while they may try, do not have enough employees to possibly
help all of their customers in the most effective way. Next
to a competent and well-trained wine staff (or buyer, if
it’s a smaller store), the most effective way to get
customers to try something new, especially if it’s a
somewhat obscure bottling (yet something you really know
they’ll love), is a well-written, informative and accurate
shelf-talker that’s also both eye-catching and tasteful. In
my experience, a more esoteric selection (especially with a
dark or plain label) without good POS will often stagnate on
the shelf while waiting for brand-death – that inevitable
dust-covered trip to the clearance rack. On the other hand,
a detailed, concise shelf-talker will result in quick
product movement and return customers.

To seasoned
proprietors, this may seem all too obvious. However, there’s
more to these wonderful little wine-vignettes-on-a-postcard
than one first might imagine. This is not an article simply
advising that you consider posting shelf-talkers in your
shop; most likely they’re already in use to some degree. Nor
do I advocate that proprietors begin hanging them
willy-nilly on every 1.5L of Merlot, Aussie Shiraz and White
Zin in the store. I recommend a balanced, sensible approach
to Point-of-Sale that will help both your store (and your
suppliers for that matter) sell more wine. In addition, it
can also help to educate your customers even when you aren’t
available. Not only will this allow you to expand the
selection of existing wine categories in your shop, it will
also enable you to bring in some additional, more obscure
categories as well.

And it’s not
limited to expensive wines, most of which need a
shelf-talker or personal recommendation in order to move.
After all, what good is it to carry an obscure wine from
Spain made with the indigenous Moristel varietal, (or
Tempranillo, for that matter) even if it’s one of the best
wines in the store, and you bought all the supplier had left
for a song, if the customer isn’t familiar with that
particular grape? It might cost $8/bottle, but they won’t
look at it twice – even if it is infinitely better than the
Merlot they always buy at the same price. Not that you want
them to stop buying their favorite Merlot, but wouldn’t it
be great if they felt comfortable enough in your selections
to try something new? You see where I’m going with this –
eventually they might come into the store looking to put
together a mixed case of new things to try, and that’s the
goal. But first, customers want to know, even just a little
bit, about what they’re buying. Take that same bottle of
obscure Spanish wine: some retailers wouldn’t buy it no
matter how low the price, even if it was one of the best
wines they had ever tasted. Good proprietors know their
customer base, and know what’s too obscure for them to sell.
Let’s face it – it’s not so much of a value if you have to
hand-sell every single bottle. That’s where a reliable
shelf-talker comes in. If that retailer, who “knows” she
can’t sell a particularly obscure red, were to put it on the
shelf next to a top-selling Merlot or Cabernet (depending on
the new wine’s style) with some well-written POS, it would
sell. And her customers will be happy with the shop and the
superior, exciting new product she turned them on to. In
addition, a customer who “choses” a bottle of wine on his
own will feel good about his decision, and more confident
the next time he browses your selection.

But enough about
the merits The question still remains – how can you ensure
effective POS finds its way to your wine aisles, and what
style of shelf-talkers are the most effective (the ones that
really move product)? It’s important first to have set
standards in your store regarding POS. First, your
particular situation and location will determine whether
you’ll have to generate most of it on your own or demand it
from your suppliers as a condition of purchase. For example,
if you run your business in a control state or have
poor-quality sales representatives who either don’t have the
knowledge to make good POS or don’t care about
follow-through, you may have to produce your own. This may
be tempting for any retailer, even those serviced by an
abundance of well-trained sales representatives, as wine
managers often have volumes of yellow legal pads packed with
tasting notes and binders full of winery information. If you
have the time, by all means this is the best way, as it adds
a personalized touch to the store that customers will surely
appreciate. But few of us do have the time to write concise
reviews for hundreds, if not thousands, of products. Fed up
with generic shelf-talkers from their suppliers, fine wine
managers will often set lofty goals, vowing to create
immense amounts of marketing pieces themselves. Keeping up
with POS yourself, however, can quickly become tedious, as
it inevitably gets dog-eared and vintages change. Since the
salespeople are there, why not use them to keep track of
their own products? You just have to be clear about what you
want, and what you don’t want. Ideally, your salespeople
will be eager to please if you make it clear what’s
expected, especially in super-competitive markets. Also, in
larger stores with lots of traffic and a highly variable
customer base, having a variety of competent people making
their own style of shelf-talkers is a plus. Different
consumers like all different kinds of wine, and eventually
each type of customer will hopefully come to identify with a
particular salesperson’s style of wine-speak, which they
recognize and find to be accurate for their
taste.

In any case,
you’ll have to be selective about deciding which wines get
attention, as time is limited (even more so if you have to
generate it all on your own), and not all wines need a
shelf-talker. Let the wines with a reputation sell
themselves. For instance, perhaps you don’t need a
shelf-talker on 2OO2 Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon
Alexander Valley – it sells on its own by recognition and
reputation. If anything, a simple card containing the name
of the wine and the price may do. But what about its poor
neighbor on the rack, 2OO2 Honig Cabernet Sauvignon, which
is similarly priced (and absolutely fabulous) from
Rutherford? Without a shelf-talker, this wine may be too
limited and obscure to find its way into consumers’ hands,
unless you personally are there to sell it to them. The key
is not to draw attention to every product, but to make sure
the more obscure, small production wines sell. As I
discussed earlier, it is these lesser known products that
will help your shop’s reputation and attract more (and
hopefully higher-spending) consumers.

Now the final
question What style of POS is most effective at selling wine
when the staff are all busy helping other customers? All
shelf-talkers should include four fundamental points. First,
include something about the region where the wine is from,
its characteristics, etc. Next, ensure information is
included about the winery itself, its history, etc. Third, a
short, accurate tasting note is most important. Finally,
especially for European wines, the cepage or grape-blend. If
there’s room, it’s also helpful to include food-pairing
suggestions (but not generic, useless ones like “great with
meat” or “great with fish” – these are far too broad to be
helpful). Length should be kept to an absolute minimum.
Trust me – very few customers will take the time to stand in
the aisle reading two paragraphs about one particular
wine.

There are also
cosmetic considerations. In my experience brightly colored
cards with a hand-written description of the wine can’t be
beat, as long as they’re accurate and concise. Hand-written
cards illustrate to the customer a level of passion and
excitement about a certain wine on a personal level. They
show that someone felt strongly enough about the quality of
the wine to actually take the time to write something; the
card is their own work, and wasn’t a generic description
spit out from a supplier database. After all, how many times
can we read that “this Cabernet Sauvignon has notes of black
cherry and cassis complemented by hints of toasty vanilla
oak, firm tannins and a long, rich finish” before it gets
ridiculously redundant? If you end up writing or demanding
hand-written POS, there are a few other factors to consider.
Obviously unreadable penmanship is unacceptable, as are
spelling errors – it’s just plain unprofessional. Also, less
than competent writing ability and grammar will spoil this
method. If a salesperson can’t achieve an acceptable level
of quality in their hand-written cards, insist on having him
hang type-written POS that either he or the wholesaler’s
marketing department creates. Insist that it still conform
to your standards, however.

Consistent,
high-quality POS will help you to gain the trust and
confidence of your valuable customers. If it’s honest and
precise, and doesn’t over-inflate the quality of the wine,
they will appreciate the educational information that good
shelf-talkers provide. On the other hand, if someone keeps
getting burned by misleading marketing pieces, they’re
likely to ignore them, leaving you with nothing but brightly
colored, ineffective window dressing. Worse, they’re also
likely to begin ignoring you when you try to sell them a
superb bottle. After all, if they complain to you about a
bad bottle that they bought based on the recommendation of a
sorely inaccurate shelf-talker (for instance, describing
young Brunello as “soft”), and you explain to them that it
wasn’t you but a misguided salesperson who’s to blame, the
customer will assume that at best you’re not looking out for
her, and, at worst that you condone using shifty sales
tactics to sell wine.

On that note I
have one final recommendation: if you use magazine and
journal reviews and/or critics’ scores on store POS (which
can be extremely effective, if somewhat impersonal and just
a bit lacking in effort), you absolutely must maintain
vintage accuracy. Not only is it illegal to tout the
incorrect score as the rating for a vintage wine, it can
result in some very unhappy customers who will think that
you’re intentionally trying to deceive them. Insist that the
vintage, description, score, and actual wine on the shelf
match, and that the issue in which the quoted review is
taken from be stated.

Certainly you’ll
sell more wine and make more friends this holiday season if
you continue to produce or insist that your wholesalers
supply quality POS. As we all know, selling more wine is
key, and it’s possible even you can’t see all your customers
all the time. For the times that you miss them, let good
shelf-talkers work for you. You might be amazed at the
additional sales you can generate, and the variety of wine
you can sell by properly using this classic, highly
effective, yet simple and passive marketing technique.

JOSEPH
ASTUKEWICZ is the
Wine Manager for Yankee Spirits in Sturbridge. In addition
to running the wine department he also writes the store’s
bi-monthly newsletter The Yankee Wine Journal. For more
information visit www.yankeespirits.com.