How do you interpret the difference between “commissions” and “sales quotas?”
Does quotas mean you lose your job if you don’t reach the number?
Honest question, not meant as a criticism or nitpick.
A commission is paid, typically based as a percentage of the sales. Think commission for a realtor on the sale of a house.
That realtor may also have a quota, a target total sales revenue number they must achieve to keep their job.
There’s a big difference between a tasting room offering a “commission” or “spiff” for every case sold or club member sign up versus them having a quota.
Quota is the metric for evaluating financial performance. I’m sure, based on observed behavior some tasting rooms are quota driven. Especially the wineries selling the “experience”. If the responsible person isn’t putting butts in the seats then they’ll find someone that does.
I am fully ok with the folks in the tasting room earning a commission for selling wine or club memberships. I just hope they give the best experience possible and if we like the wine we are probably buying some bottles. This is a large source of revenue for wineries.
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I’ve experienced and heard about off-putting hard sellers. It’s usually for wine club sign-ups. That’s understandably a big deal for wineries, but like anything it’s about the execution. An out of context stat can look great. Amateurish owners might not “get” the big picture and be poorly delegating something they aren’t good at, trusting too much it’ll be handled well. But, of course, goodwill is crucial to growing and maintaining a business. Harassing existing customers, giving a negative impression to all, having people who signed up feeling scammed and resentful? There’s an art to increasing sales as part of a fun experience where the customer will want to come back and will recommend your business to others. Haven’t we all been to wineries and kicked ourselves later that we didn’t buy more?
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Oak furniture
I had not heard too much about commissions on wine sales but the idea of a spiff on a wine club sign up has been prevalent for quite some time. I ran into someone today who will be earning a 7.5% commission on wine sales at a new winery he is going to start working at in a few weeks. He’s excited about the potential income increase.
I agree with what others have said - the concept in and of itself is not bad as long as the ‘sales process’ is not a hard sell. It’s a ‘win win’ for the winery as they hope to sell more wine - but hopefully not at the cost of ‘honest people skills’ rather than ‘hard sales techniques’ . . .
Cheers
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And, yet, I have a friend whose favorite winery visit was at Del Dotto and he has other friends who swear by the place. I tasted several vintages at one of those guys houses and the wines did very little for me. I expected the wines to be 18% alcohol and 200% new oak, but they weren’t that. They were ok, nothing special.
Don’t see myself ever visiting the place.
I actually do have another problem with all of this at California wineries. I live on the east coast, and am not likely to be driving back home ever with a bunch of wines in the trunk of my car. I don’t visit California wineries that often, but when I do, I usually visit some of my favorites and maybe a couple of new ones I would like to try. I have local wine retailers here I like to buy from and in many cases I buy the wines from places that I taste in California, but from my local wine retailer and not from the winery. Frankly, how I am treated at the winery can influence how much I buy even when I don’t buy anything at the winery (I would always buy from the winery if when they don’t charge for visits, but when they do, I feel free to buy from wherever I want, esp. given my relationships with local stores. I would hope wineries would compensate people who provide a good image of the winery and provide pleasant experiences even where people don’t buy anything or much because those people may be buying wines off premise. Otherwise, they are really hurting themselves.
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I know someone who works in a tasting room.
$11-$14/hr base wage
$2/bottle commission $20 - $40 price range.
The majority of the income is tips which motivates them to make it an “experience”. Knowledge, entertainment, regional expertise (other winery referrals), education = better tips.
Over a full season averages gross about $40/hour.
Seasonal busy days $65-$90/ hour all in.
You can make it a career, but it’s really a very good PT job.
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This is often true of our visits to Italy. Only once have we driven there, with the rest of the visits leaving little space for wine in the luggage (of the order of half a case in total). In such instances, I’ve ideally gone prepared with the name of their importer, so I can confirm it with them. That is usually well-received, confirming genuine interest.
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I’ve been a lurker here, but I’ve worked in tasting rooms (or “cellar doors”) in the USA and other countries (Australia and Canada), although now more on the winemaking side.
Commission on sales seems to be more of a USA thing. I’ve worked in America where we were given comission/bonus on club sign ups, and I know of another winery where the staff got comissions when selling specific bottles–typically what the winery was long on in inventory ;). I didn’t see that where worked in Australia, albeit because of their labor laws weekend base pay rates were substantially higher. I didn’t notice a significant difference in service among the teams I worked with between the two systems, although club sign ups were pushed more agressively when incentives were involved.
I’m not a huge fan of individual comissions, in part because in the age of ever more elaborate winery “experiences” in many cases the final sale is not due to one person but the entire team that contributes to the visit–chefs (if food), tasting room attendants, back of house, etc. and giving extra cash to one person feels a bit disingenuous (the same for tips, and I think pooling tips, while not always popular, is the fair way to go).
Tasting rooms in general are a poor value proposition IMO; margins are extremely thin and you need a high amount of traffic and/or have the ability to rent your site out for events to turn a profit. The money in DTC is through clubs/memberships, and while tasting rooms may be one of the primary ways to drive this for smaller wineries, for the life of me I don’t understand how some wineries (looking at Washington state in particular) think that operating 3 separate tasting rooms makes financial sense.
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Tell me more, Emma! 