Building A Coffee Roaster Sales Program

Over the years, I’ve been privy to dozens of different companies' sales processes, or the lack thereof. The coffee roasters that have a process for how they go about sales are the ones that stand out vs. the roasters who let sales happen to them. Painting with broad brush strokes here, to be sure, but most of the roasters that I’ve worked with don't have an established sales process. This results in unpredictable sales, prospecting, partner care, and growth. You know, all the things that matter to your wholesale business.

Why is Process Important?

Effective sales programs are built on process, not the charisma or talent of a particular salesperson. Imagine that you are the owner of a car racing company. Your salesperson in this example would be the driver of your racecar, and maintenance is the process. You maintain the car, put fuel in it, make sure it has good tires, and ensure everything else is dialed in. It’s their responsibility, as the driver, to put the car in drive and navigate your racecar across the finish line… i.e. the close of a sale. As long as the maintenance is taken care of, a new driver could be changed easily. The sales car can be put in drive and navigated to the finish line no matter who’s in the driver seat because the process you’ve created is being implemented.

But First, 3 Questions

If you were running a car racing team, you wouldn’t just throw a random person in the driver’s seat and see what would happen, right? Of course not! You’d want to ensure that you have a plan in place, ensure the driver is fit to sit behind the wheel for hours on end, and be sure they know the strategy you’ve created to get them across the finish line before the Red Bull team.

So before you even post a listing for a salesperson, you need to get clear on these 3 questions:

1. What is our sales strategy?
   Meaning, who are you trying to sell to and how are you going to capture their attention and business?

2. What are the key sales activities our salesperson will do?
   If you only do one thing after reading this article, do this: outline exactly what your salesperson’s key sales activities are. Things like the number of tastings they should have each week, the number of cold emails and samples they should be sending out each week. These are just a few activities that come to mind.

3. What are our short and long-term monetary goals?
   Your people need to know where you are trying to take them so that they know how best to contribute. They need to see how their work will and is contributing to the top and bottom line of your P&L so that they can see themselves in the story of your business. This practice also helps you work backward from where you are going to provide specific goals. If you want to grow to $1,000,000 in sales and your average account value is $25k per year, that would mean you need to close 40+ accounts to reach your goal. So fill these big monetary goals out:

• 1 Year Goal: $

• 5 Year Goal: $

• 15 Year Goal: $

Before Hiring A Salesperson, Answer These Questions

So you’ve answered the initial big picture questions around goals and strategy. It’s still not time to hire a salesperson. The next step is to define the actual sales process. Here are a few questions you need to have answers to in order to build the coffee sales process:

• Who are you selling to, and who would you like to sell to?

• What, specifically, are you selling? (i.e. product, volume, etc.)

• What are the steps in the process of onboarding a new account?

• How do you prospect and who is an ideal client?

• Who is responsible for account training, support, and nurturing?

• What is the partner training, support, and nurturing process?

• What CRM will you use and how will you use it?

• What is your sales script? Even just bullets or a loose outline is more than most.

• What is the sales process from prospecting to close?

Once you’ve answered the above questions, you’ll be in a much better place to start to build your sales process and hire a coffee salesperson.

The Process

The anxiety that pops up when you think about losing that charismatic salesperson who’s really good at sales, is typically due to your business not having a sales process. But what should your process look like? We’ve synthesized this down to two key things:

1. Methodical Steps

2. Built-In Iteration

If you don't have precise steps outlined from first contact to close, you don’t have a methodical sales process. Each and every step needs to be outlined and clarified. These methodical steps should feel effortless to your buyer and each should serve a purpose in your organization.

Next, you need to have iteration built into your process. There needs to be a specific day each quarter or at the very least annually to reevaluate your sales process. With methodical steps put in place, it's easier to iterate because you’re doing the same thing during each and every sale. Following methodical steps makes it much easier to notice when one step in the process is redundant, unnecessary, or a bottleneck to the rest of the process.

Creating a sales process that is methodical and continually iterated and improved over time removes the anxiety from that feeling of, "What happens if our superstar salesperson leaves?" Having a honed sales process also removes the guesswork around why sales opportunities aren’t closing. A methodical and iterated process is much more reliable than a sporadic and inconsistent approach to sales. This approach is often called the spray and pray method. Meaning, try to make as many touchpoints with potential prospects as possible and pray that some of them work. This is not a reliable, helpful, or even sustainable method of sales, especially in coffee because coffee is relational.

Your process is the thing that alleviates this fear. Your sales process is something that you should be iterating on, learning from, and making continual adjustments to increase your overall close rate.

Need a hand building your coffee roaster's sales process?