Product Management - Wholesale Alcohol Beverage Industry

Introduction

                For over five years I have managed several product portfolios for a top 10 Wine and Spirits Wholesale company in North America. My experience spans franchise states, control markets, four tier states, and open markets. All have unique compliance and tax hurdles but the manager position in them is relatively the same. The role is designed to be a liaison and often times a translator between all departments.

                Before I started in this role I worked as a sales manager for a large distributor. Before that, a product specialist for a slightly smaller distributor. Before that a bar manager and creative for bars and restaurants. The list continues to cover a broad range of different avenues of the hospitality business in several different states. My parents were in sales or business for much of my life. A father that sold and managed insurance portfolios. A mother that managed a national sales team for gift items in the equestrian industry, before eventually coordinating and partnering with a wholesale tradeshow for the equestrian industry. Like a lot of elder-millennials, I was told to stay away from the two things that would end up being the bulk of my occupational life. Alcohol, and sales.

Somehow I laterally moved from all of my previous positions to the next one, and now as a portfolio manager for beer, sake, and spirits, I do a little bit of all of them. The job itself has a lot of titles depending on where you work. Marketing manager, business manager, portfolio manager, brand manager, etc. The function of this job that is highest in priority, on the surface, is the responsibility to the supplier. With the United States there is a three-tier system that guides regulation of both state and national compliance. The portfolio manager at a wholesale alcohol distributor acts as a guide. We show the supplier how best to navigate and manage our own execution against mutually agreed upon goals. Some of us have to operate in this space through stockbroker eyes.

Managing a book of business means working for a wide array of bosses. Everyone is your “customer” but the checks still come signed from the wholesale company. The best way I have found to serve both, is by asking my sales team what they need, and finding ways to get it for them. That means to achieve the goal, I reverse engineer a budget or plan to achieve it. This is the same as creating a 0-sum budget. You start with the goal, and work it backwards to calculate the cost to achieve it. Again, but more simple, a portfolio manager’s job is to make sure both the supplier and wholesaler are “keeping the lights on.” Everyone needs to make more than they did last year. The question becomes how much more, and everything after that is just a road map.

                The role is rigid in some aspects with pricing and profitability guidelines. There are shades of gray amid the guardrails but the ends are very much black and white. The relationship to the vendors is often one of nurturing. Success is measured by growth year over year. No one ever walks into an annual business review and says “sell less.” On any given day the portfolio manager is there to protect the sales team from themselves. Setting up for success means encouraging your consultants to over reach, but knowing how to accept “no” as an answer.  

The dichotomy of the position’s duty to different departments cannot be over stated. The better you are at reinventing yourself from one conversation to the next, the better you’ll be at the job. So how do you maintain your identity and act as a translator between all of these different branches? My answer has always been transparency. Learn the limitations of each, and make sure you never promise something on someone else’s behalf. Start there, and you’ll give yourself enough room to grow. You won’t be the person selling, producing, shipping, receiving, or buying. Your job is to get everyone else what they need to do their job better than they did yesterday.

You’re accountable for everyone else’s failures or you get to celebrate their wins.

Like in sports, “Players win, and coaches lose.”