8 Learnable Skills for the New Economy
These are must-haves for sales reps and those that manage them
Editor’s Note: I first wrote this post over five years ago with five essential skills. The market moved. Today's economy demands eight. I’ve added AI literacy, organizational psychology, and data analytics because the reps who refuse to learn them are a severe disadvantage to those that do.
Sales reps require reinvention in order to stay relevant. Like certain pop stars—The Beatles and Madonna come to mind—successful salespeople evolve. This could mean fine tuning their presentation style or honing certain timeless traits. One’s market awareness must be constantly revised in light of changing tastes. Still, it’s better to develop a toolkit of skills that will allow you to adapt with the new economy. These skills, rather than product trivia, are often what need updating. After all, the ability to quickly find a payphone prior to order board cutoff is no longer in high demand.1 This brave, new world requires these five, learnable skills that will help you level up your sales:
AI Literacy
AI isn't going to walk into an account and sell a case for you, but it will save you ten hours a week on back-office admin. If you aren't using LLMs to synthesize market reports, clean up messy account lists, or instantly draft a custom pitch angle for a busy buyer, you are competing against a calculator using an abacus. Don’t harness the tech to create slop; leverage it so you can better understand your accounts and spend more time face-to-face. Learn about AI by reading a book like Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick and The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods. Or take a free online class like Google Prompting Essentials.
Organizational Psychology
Beverage sales are rarely a straight line between you and a single buyer. To survive, you have to navigate an ecosystem of competing incentives—the bartender’s ego, the GM’s margin panic, and the distributor’s inventory pressures. If you don't understand the psychological friction and internal politics inside an account, you aren't selling; you're just pitching. Learn how groups make decisions, find the real stakeholder, and solve their specific anxiety. If you want to master this, read The New Strategic Selling by Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman to learn how to map out who actually holds the power in an organization. Check out Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss to learn how to negotiate with others.
Data Analytics
The era of the "relationship rep" who sells purely on a good lunch and a handshake is evolving. Some retailers might care about your golf game, but all of them care about cold box velocity and margin-per-square-inch. If you can’t open a spreadsheet, pull your own depletions, and read a market report to prove your brand's organic pull, you’re just guessing. Data is how you defend your shelf space from being swallowed by a competitor. Start arming yourself with knowledge and know-how now.
Social Media Literacy
In late-stage capitalism, a fate worse than death is invisibility. For a brand or person, the shortest path to the latter is through social media ineptitude. Think of it as irrelevance by way of incompetence.
Contrary to the belief that you’re selling yourself, social media for salespeople is way of reminding others—your customers and your company—you exist. The more you “exist,” the easier your job will become. Mark S. Granovetter’s 1973 hypothesis on weak social ties might go a long way in explaining why likes, followers, and shares resonate and reverberate into sales.
Writing
You should know the difference between pallet and palate.2 You should be able to express yourself clearly. You should be able edit your company’s marketing blast so that it’s in your own voice. If you’re not actually talking with customer, you’re likely communicating with them via email or text. The ability to gain trust and respect by sounding authoritative is key.
How do you get better at writing? Read good authors. Write every day. Don’t like writing? Too bad. It’s a muscle that must be worked.
As William Faulkner once quipped, “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning.”
Read everything you write out loud. Change what doesn’t sound right. You can almost always edit at least 10%. Make every word work.
Project Management
Every sales rep needs to know how to manage their own time so they can be respectful of their customers’ time. Being organized is of utmost importance because this isn’t a business with cookie-cutter clients. Planning helps you deliver and delivering pays dividends.
If you’re an executive or sale manager and you aren’t implementing agile sales it’s time you begin educating yourself. Your company, your salespeople, and your customers deserve it. It is time wine and spirit distribution learned something from the tech industry.
Bilingualism
If someone speaks another language, they will taste and talk of things you could never know. Download Duolingo and start learning.
Graphic Design
Reps need to be able to make their own simple graphics just like they’re expected to be able to carry 40 pounds. Salespeople need to know how to crop images, add text, and make collages. Canva is free and has just about all of the functionality that a rep could want. Level up your graphic design skills and never have to wait for anyone else to get back to you with that image you need.
Sales rep obsolescence is real. Sadly, obsolete wine and spirit reps don’t usually fade away, they just become sales managers. This, in turn, means they just end up reinforcing their dated, ineffective views on up-and-coming sales reps.
Of course, this is to say nothing of palette. Knowing these distinctions are the wine and spirit equivalent of saying that a potential online suitor should know the difference between your and you’re or their, there, and they’re. These are the table stakes for getting customers to swipe right on a new product.