Distribution is Not a Sales Strategy

And You're Already Paying for the Salesperson You Didn't Hire

Sales Doesn’t Fix Everything. But Nothing Gets Fixed Without It.

You do not have enough effective sales coverage in the market. Everything else, the pricing, the packaging, the distributor relationship, may be contributing factors. But that is still the answer. Most operators are simply reluctant to say it.

There is a familiar instinct running through the wine business right now, and it reveals itself in meetings, in budget cuts, and in the delicate language people use when they talk about performance. When sales are down, the assumption is that something else must be wrong. Pricing is off. The packaging is tired. The website is “old”. The distributor is not doing enough. The market itself has changed, which is true, and the consumer is behaving differently, which is also true. So, all of those things may be contributing factors and, in some cases, are very real constraints. But there is a simpler and more direct explanation that too many operators are hesitant to confront, largely because it feels almost unsophisticated in its clarity. You do not have enough effective sales coverage in the market. Emphasis on effective.

The System No Longer Carries You

For a very long time, wineries were able to rely on a version of the system that masked this reality. Distribution created a kind of ambient, inertial motion. If you secured placements, there was a reasonable expectation that depletions would follow, even if it was a bit uneven. In a constant-growth environment that was close enough to certainty to feel dependable. In the current environment, as we have learned, it is not. Distribution has revealed itself for what it has always been: a filter rather than an engine. It moves what is already moving. It rewards what is already proven. It does not, on its own, create demand where none exists. Which leads to a conclusion that is uncomfortable only because it is so direct. If your wines are not being actively sold into the market, they are not really being sold at all. We all saw this coming.

The Wrong First Move (Like pawn to f3)

At that point, the question is no longer theoretical but operational. What does it actually mean to add sales capacity, and why do so many wineries fail to do it in a way that produces meaningful results? The answer, in many cases, is that they reach for what appears to be the least expensive solution and, in doing so, choose a structure that cannot do the work they are asking it to do. They hire commission, the worst first move.

The Commission Myth

There is a persistent belief that commission-based sales are an efficient way to extend reach without incurring fixed costs, and the logic is appealing. You pay for results, right? You avoid carrying expenses. You create that delicious alignment between effort and outcome. The problem is that this model only works when demand already exists and simply needs to be harvested. Commission salespeople are not builders. They are momentum optimizers that are already present. They carry portfolios, not your priorities. They allocate their time to what pays them fastest, not to what needs to be developed, retained, or maintained. In a market where attention is scarce and where placements must be created rather than assumed, your brand does not need to be available. It needs to be represented, best case, by true believers.

Representation > Transactions

That distinction matters more now than it has in a long time. A commissioned salesperson is paid to be present and to transact. A representative is paid to build, and yes, to nurture. That means they spend time in and on accounts that are not yet productive. They follow through after the first order rather than before it. They show up in markets where your presence is weak, not in markets where the path of least resistance has already been established. They carry your story into rooms where it is not yet understood, and they do it repeatedly until it is. That kind of work is not immediately efficient, which is precisely why it is valuable. It does not fit neatly into a commission structure because the return is delayed and the effort is front-loaded. It requires ownership, accountability, and a tolerance for building something that does not yet exist. In practical terms, it requires a salary. And benefits.

The Math You Wish You Could Avoid

Once you accept that premise, the arithmetic becomes clearer and far less intimidating than most people assume. A regional salesperson in the current market might cost between $80,000 and $120,000 fully loaded, depending on experience and geography. It can be more, it can be less, but if ever there was a clear case of ‘you get what you pay for’, it will be here. If your average wholesale contribution margin is in the range of eight to twelve dollars per case, that salesperson needs to move roughly seven thousand to ten thousand incremental cases annually to cover their cost. For wines with a stronger margin profile, say fifteen to eighteen dollars per case, that number drops closer to five or six thousand cases. Again, less than that if your margins are even better.

At first glance, that can feel like a high bar, but it rarely presents itself as a single, monolithic number in the field. It shows up in smaller, repeatable actions that compound. Twenty new accounts, placing five cases per month, create twelve hundred cases a year. A handful of modest chain placements can add another 2 to 3,000 cases. Reopening dormant accounts that once carried your wines can produce another thousand or more. A more focused engagement with a distributor team that has previously treated your wines as incidental can close the remaining gap.

For a smaller winery operating at tighter margins, say six to eight dollars per case, the bar moves somewhat, but the structure of the math does not change. The cases required go up, but so does the relative cost of not moving them. If those cases sit in the warehouse instead, the margin loss is not zero. It is real, it is compounding, and it carries a cost that does not appear on the income statement until it is too late to ignore. (Whites and Rosés, anyone?) The question is not whether you can afford the salesperson. It is whether you can afford to keep explaining to the gatekeepers why you do not have one, or, much worse, why you got rid of your good salesperson.

None of this is abstract. It is the accumulation of directed effort over time, and in many wineries today, that effort is simply not being applied.

The Opportunity Sitting in Your Hand

At the same time, there is a structural opportunity that is being underutilized. There are experienced salespeople in the market right now who understand how to do this work. They have relationships, but more importantly, they have pattern recognition: they know how accounts make decisions, how distributor attention gets allocated, how long it takes to turn initial interest into a reorder, and when a placement is fragile versus secure. They get up at 6am, and they’re working the street, bag on their shoulder, all day. Many of them are available because the industry has responded to slowing demand by consolidating roles and reducing headcount. Wineries have told themselves they are becoming more efficient when, in reality, they are withdrawing coverage from a more competitive market. Withdrawal in a soft market does not read as discipline. It reads as an absence.

The Fear of Getting It Wrong (FOMO?)

This is where hesitation and hand-wringing tend to surface, usually framed as a question about risk. What if the salesperson does not perform? What if the market does not respond? What if it just doesn’t work?

These are reasonable concerns, but they are often used to justify inaction rather than to design better systems. The answer is to define the outcome before you hire, not after. Not revenue, which is too slow to surface as a signal. Define it in activity: accounts visited, placements secured, distributor work-withs completed. If those numbers are not there at ninety or 120 days, you do not have a market problem. You have a hiring problem, and it is an easily solvable one. A salesperson is not a permanent condition – get a new one. It is a role with a defined outcome, and if the outcome is not being achieved, the response is to change the person, refine the scope, or adjust the expectations. The premise remains intact. The market requires presence, and presence must be created intentionally. You’re going to have to trust them - but verify. They won’t be insulted. It’s what they do for a living.

The Decision You Are Already Making

What emerges from all of this is a clearer view of the decision that wineries are making, whether they articulate it or not. Put bluntly, they are choosing, in many cases, to protect cost rather than to create movement. That choice is understandable in the short term, particularly in an environment where uncertainty feels high and margins feel compressed. It is also a choice that carries its own risk, because inventory does not resolve itself, and the market does not always come looking for you. Distributors will not create demand where none exists, and they will not prioritize wines that are not already demonstrating momentum. And they certainly won’t prioritize wines that aren’t represented. So, the decision becomes quite plain. Would you rather protect the margin on wine that is not moving, or create movement that could restore margin over time?

What To Do Now

If you accept that sales capacity is the constraint, then the path forward is not especially complicated, even if it requires a degree of commitment that some have been reluctant to make. You begin by identifying the markets where your presence is weakest, not where you are already comfortable. Maybe that’s Southern California? It isn’t always necessary to add sales horsepower in faraway lands like Florida unless you can justify such a thing. You define a role that is narrow enough to be actionable, with a clear geographic focus and a short list of priorities that can be executed in the first ninety days or so. You hire for activity and judgment rather than for a résumé alone, because the work is not theoretical and it will not be done from a distance. You set expectations that are tied to actual movement, not to abstract notions of pipeline, visibility, or awareness. And you remain willing to make changes quickly if the role is not producing what it should, because the cost of waiting is much higher than the cost of acting.

And The Point Is

This is not an argument for indiscriminate hiring, nor a claim that sales fixes every underlying issue in a business. Although it definitely helps. Product still matters. Pricing certainly matters. Brand clarity and positioning matter, too. All of those things set the conditions for sales to succeed. But without a direct, accountable, and present sales effort, none of those advantages can be fully realized in the market. Sales do not fix everything, but nothing meaningful gets fixed without it.

Done/Not Done

There are a lot more capable salespeople than you might expect available right now. They’re older, experienced, motivated, and extremely capable. Hiring them is not the difficult part. Designing a role they can step into and holding that role accountable for creating movement is the work most wineries have not yet done, but should start today.

Finally, the question is not whether you can afford to hire, but whether you can afford to look at your inventory, look at the horizon, and keep explaining why you haven’t.

Something to consider. Did you know that you can hire me by the hour? As I mentioned last time, I’m so pleased and honored to be working with Napa Valley Consulting, a firm established by Chris McDonald to help you manage, not just your day-to-day finance, but your whole financial outlook, taxes, investments, vineyard development, and winery capex. My contribution is to translate some of the financial work into operational realities, such as sales, e-commerce, marketing, or software implementations. If you have questions (anywhere, not just in Napa), do not hesitate to reach out either to Chris himself regarding your business or to me. Press the button below to see the website.

I don’t have to explain who Arnot-Roberts is, I think, given the erudite readership I enjoy! If you don’t know, this winery’s ideal analogs around the world, in my opinion, are LaPierre or Foillard in Morgon, Clos Rougeard in Saumur, or, to some extent, Benanti in Etna. Here you’ll find an obsessive stewarding of terroir and markedly low intervention, and low alcohol. The 2025 Arnot-Roberts Rosé is produced from mostly Touriga Nacional and a grape I’d never heard of before, Trincadeira. That popping sound you hear isn’t the cork, it’s the snap and crackle of beautiful woodsy strawberries, zippy rhubarb, mineral, fresh citrus zest, oyster shell, tarragon (light), and wild berries you picked off a thorn bush. This is easily the best pink wine I’ve had in many years. I’m so glad to be a member of Compline’s monthly wine club because it forces me out of my comfort zone and into wines I wouldn’t normally chase. This is a great “discovery” for me.

Jim Silver is a sales and operations consultant at Napa Valley Consulting, where he works with wineries on DTC strategy, sales structure, and operational growth. He is the author of The Post-Pandemic Wine Market (2025).