Lisa Denham on The Sales Scoop, Founder @ World Wines / VMove

Automated Transcript

Alastair Cole 0:07

Hello, good afternoon, and welcome to ‘The Sales Scoop’. This is a weekly live show for the founders and senior leaders of technology businesses who want to accelerate how they sell? My name is Alastair Cole. I am an ex computer scientist and software engineer with two decades experience in sales and marketing, and I'm delighted to say that I'm joined today by Lisa Denham of ‘World Wines’ and VMove, hello, Lisa,

Lisa Denham 0:38

Hi Alastair, good to be here. Nice to see you.

Alastair Cole 0:42

Yeah, it's great to see you. The last time we saw each other was in person in Santiago in Chile, which was very exciting. Last month, I'm really excited to have you on the show, Lisa. You've got a really fantastic experience, especially in the high value deals that we're going to get into. And I love how you're blending the very ancient with wine, with the very new and software. Really keen to get into all that. But can we just start? Maybe you could tell our audience a little bit about you and your journey here, so they get to know you before we get started?

Lisa Denham 1:21

Yeah, excited to do so. Alastair, so I'm coming to you live from Santiago, Chile. I wasn't born in Chile. I'm originally from Texas, and I went to school at the University of Texas in Austin, and I majored in marketing and international business, and I got my start in the sales arena. One of the first jobs I had right out of school was selling fax machines. I don't know if anybody remembers what a fax machine was, but I was selling fax machines door to door in these big office buildings, and so it was basically cold calling. It was an amazing way to get a start in the sales arena, and helped me to learn a lot of valuable skills that originally that eventually trans I was able to transfer, transfer to high value sales in the wine industry. So I joined the Peace Corps eventually, and the Peace Corps sent me to Bolivia, and then I arrived in Santiago, Chile, after I finished my Peace Corps experience, and I didn't know a soul in Santiago Chile, so I had to start cold calling all over again. And so I went door to door, offering my expertise to wineries in Santiago, Chile, and eventually was hired by a major winery. And so that's how I got my start in the wine business. And then I eventually evolved into bulk wine sales, which is an industrial version of the wine business. And so I started my company World wines in 1996 and I began offering wine from Chile, eventually from Argentina, then from Brazil, then from South Africa, from Spain, in bulk to big buyers who were bottlers and wineries all around the world, and so it was very exciting. It's been a very exciting journey. Bulk wine sales are high value sales, so normally, it would take about six months to develop a prospect and then close a sale. And most sales are quite large, because the minimum quantity of wine that you can buy in bulk for export is 24,000 liters. So 24,000 liters, that's the unit that will fit in a flexi tank, a large plastic bladder, which is mounted in a 20 foot container. And so normally, these large wineries and bottlers will buy at least 10, usually 20 or 40 containers at a time. So usually one one purchase order would be about, you know, between half a million and a million dollars. And so this has always been very exciting for me too. Work with these high value, high value sales. And what I realized Alastair is that as humans, what we can share with each other, the most important value that we can share with each other is our time and our attention, and with high value sales, it's important to be as personally engaging with customers as possible, as soon as possible, and so this is one of the takeaways that I that I have to share with your with your viewers.

Alastair Cole 5:46

Well, yeah, and that's great. Well, let's put that on the back burner. So, I mean, it's amazing. You started out like knocking on doors. I love that you've done those hard early sales yards and and ended up, you know, and selling million dollar, you know, products, right? Wine products. And along the way, you know, you picked up a wine MBA. Tell me about, I mean, for most people, at that price it sounds amazing and I love one of those, but I'm sure it's a lot of work. But be like, like, what? What is it? How? What is a wine MBA, and how did you get well,

Lisa Denham 6:20

Oh, wow. So I studied at the kedge Business School le cole de Management de Bordeaux in Bordeaux, France, and they have a very specialized program called the wine MBA, and so it's very specific to the wine industry. And so it was an amazing experience. It was an itinerant program, so we studied wine marketing at the University of South Australia in Adelaide. Then we studied another version of consumer marketing at UC Davis in California. We studied logistics at the Catholic University in Santiago, and then most of the courses were in Bordeaux, France, where we had a great opportunity, not just to learn about the European tradition, but also to experience firsthand. With the chateaus in Bordeaux, for instance, we have a field trip, and we go to Chateau Marco for lunch, and the technical director would give us a tour of the winery. We do a vertical tasting of the barrels. A vertical means when you taste one vintage back to back with the other vintage, right? So you can compare how one vintage evolves in the barrel compared to the next. And then we have lunch at Chateau Marco. And that was one amazing field trip, right? So, yeah, so, yeah,

Alastair Cole 8:08

sounds very, very special. And, you know, you've, you've been there, you know, and built your experience in that area. And I've worked with, I'm talking about, you know, kind of luxury, high value products. I've worked with ultra high net worth individuals in, in philanthropy, but never in, never in a luxury product like wine, you know what? What is your experience? What are some of the kinds of, like human factors involved? Because that's a different kind of selling to a lot of our audience, which is selling, you know, a lower end product. Some have, some have high ticket items as well. Some are selling technology consultancy, and they are, you know, six, seven figure deals. I think a lot of people aspire to have those bigger ones. What's at play from a human point of view in those bigger deals, in your experience? Lisa,

Lisa Denham 8:58

Well, like I said before, personal engagement is critical, and it's all about relationships, especially in the wine business. The wine business is such a traditional business. So it's an agricultural based business, and it's a business that is so conservative, it's so traditional, and so I think the wine business has suffered from being so conservative And so traditional that most players have not been early adapters to technology and so. So this is a big issue, but when it comes to high value sales, especially in the wine business, it's about being. As personable as as as and building relationships over time. And so these are usually relationships that are developed over long periods of time, which help to lend buyer confidence. For instance, I'm one of the world's leading experts in bulk wine, and I haven't traditionally used a lot of technology to develop my business, because what I found is that big buyers. They search me out. They contact me because they don't necessarily feel comfortable with a platform, for instance, that offers X amount of bulk wine at x price right from x country, because these deals are so big, Alastair, credibility is paramount. Yeah, and credibility can be established by others recommending you Sure. But the best credibility, of course, comes over, over time. And for instance, I used to go to trade fairs. And at the trade fairs. I would see people at Vin Expo, for instance, every two years. So I would see the same people over and over again, and they would say, Well, Lisa, how have you been doing? Oh, I've been doing well. I've been selling to this big customer. I've been selling to this other big customer. And then as they saw me, year after year, they began to have more confidence in my abilities, and more confidence that they could trust me to create big bulk wine programs for them, because, like I said, a typical deal could be half a million dollars. It could be a million dollars, and so it's difficult for a buyer to trust that they're going to send you half a million dollars, and the wine that they receive is exactly what they expect, right? And so credibility and trust are so, so very important, especially in traditional businesses like the wine business, but generally speaking, in all high value deals. And so this credibility and trust doesn't come overnight. And so it's something that you have to build. I mean, you have to build a reputation. You have to build a rapport with, with your customers and all different decision makers, in, in, in, in that, in that deal, right? So in my case, I was working with, with the wine buyer and then a chief winemaker, and then maybe an assistant winemaker. But you know over time, on your first approach, you'll have, you'll have you'll try to establish rapport, understand their needs, be attentive to what their concerns are and and then be able to to advance. But it takes time, and hopefully face to face relationships. Hopefully, you know, when you have a big, high value deal you're trying to get in front of the customer as often as possible. That way you can really understand what their needs are and how to address those needs, and of course, my Cole calling always has come in handy because it helps you to perfect the 32nd speech. You know? It helps you to get your foot in the door. It helps you to be able to handle objections on the fly, right and. And learn how to, you know, recognize patterns when you talk to people you know, because when you're with a buyer, you have to be very, very attuned to them, and it should be all about them, so that you can seek, first to understand and then to be understood, right? And so with the high, high value deals, traditional selling techniques are even more important than ever, right? And so sometimes I feel like with digital marketing and with so many amazing digital tools available, we can also lose touch with that. So I found the move, which is a company that I'm working with to develop wine tourism here in Chile. This is a different type of sales opportunity, because with VMove, we're trying to move tourists physically, logistically, to with a van service, to to wineries, to for winery tours, right? And so it's a different type of environment where you have multiple customers, multiple tourists, and you have an opportunity to use more digital tools in order to enhance that experience. If you know of getting picked up from your hotel, maybe sharing a ride and going to and going to a winery for a tasting or picnic, whatever. So I've found that with high value sales, it's a different, entirely different approach. And so the more high value, the sales opportunity, the more that personal attention is required, and the faster it's required. But the lesser, the higher volume, the lesser the value, then you can, of course, use all of these amazing tools that are available. Yeah,

Alastair Cole 17:52

and so you talked about, there's a long sales cycle. It might take six months, 12 months, whatever, to land those big, high value clients. So as a lot of effort goes in, how do you decide, what do you use to make a judgment about whether that opportunity is real and whether you should go off or invest all that time?

Lisa Denham 18:16

Well, in my case, Alastair, in the wine business, there's not a lot of big buyers, right? And so there may be a few 1000 large wineries and bottlers. And so after, after a very short period of time, you can figure out who's who in the zoo. And so just by going to trade fairs, I was able to identify who was important, who was buying. And so from that standpoint, it was a lot easier, because the wine business is a very, very small business.

Alastair Cole 19:03

Yeah, and obviously, there's a lot of emotions involved. You know, big ticket items. It's a big purchase. There's a lot of money. People are worried. Buyers and sellers want to make sure that the deal goes through. There's a lot of pressure there. How do you, how do you, how have you handled it? How do you handle that kind of emotional way to manage those emotions in high value deals?

Lisa Denham 19:28

Yeah, well, that's a very good question Alastair, because you've got to understand that buyers have a lot of pressure to make the right choices, and so when it comes to wine, wine is complicated, because you can evaluate the quality of the wine based on certain characteristics, right you. On certain chemical measurements, but at the end of the day, there's a lot that is subjective. And so when I would present a sample of wine, maybe a liter or two liters of wine, to a potential buyer, they would taste that wine one time they may or may not analyze it, and then they would order a million liters. And so then I had to prepare a blend that was as close to those samples as possible. So at the end of the day, there's a lot of margin for error. And so what the buyer wants to know that some with with big deals, buyers need a lot of hand holding, and so what the buyer wants to know is, if there's an issue, they want to be assured that you're going to resolve it, you're going to provide all the solutions necessary to make, make, make things work as perfectly as possible. And I can give you an example. I was working with a large Chinese buyer, and they asked for dark red wine that they use to blend with wines that they have of lesser color, and so they use it principally for the color, right? The problem is that wine's color fades over time, and it especially fades with cooler temperatures. So when I was shipping the wine from Spain to Yantai China, there's about 45 days on the ship, right? And it's very, very cold, yeah. And so over time, with the Cole temperature, the color dropped. And so the buyer gets the wine, the winemaker tries it, and the winemaker says, I'm not satisfied, because the color is not what I expected. Yeah. And so the buyer comes to me and says, Look, this is a problem. So I evaluated it, determined that, yes, it really was a problem. And I said, Okay, well, I'll give you a discount. So I gave them a discount, and they were relieved by it, right? And so after that, Alastair, this buyer, I became a preferred supplier to them, because they knew that if there was a problem, I would be able to work it out. And they really appreciate that, because a lot of money is on the line. It means everybody's got their eye on the deal, and it means there's a lot of pressure on everyone involved in the deal.

Alastair Cole 23:05

Yeah, and you know that that makes perfect sense, right? You're the reliable, the reliable place to go if there's a problem, right? And that's a trust thing that you've established over years by meeting them and building that relationship and that rapport. What you know, wine tourism, through VMove and transportation, for smaller groups around wineries, for tasting and recreation, is, is a smaller, you know, a smaller price tag, but obviously, there's a much bigger market, right? You've got the adult population globally, with disposable income and desire, which is a huge market, not just the 1000 buyers. So, What? What? What? What are you taking from your arsenal of expertise in kind of like high value, ultra high net worth individuals? What? What are you taking from that that is applicable in the world of more technology empowered wine tourism with VMove. What do you do? What can you do? What have you brought with you? What are you taking with you on that journey?

Lisa Denham 24:14

Well, Alastair, these are apples and oranges and so, and you have to recognize it. And I said at the beginning that you have one approach which is more tech oriented, especially with a platform like the move, and another approach which is more traditional, more old school, and requires more psychology, more human relationships, more eye to eye. And so these are, these are completely different, like I said, One, they're apples and oranges, right? Yeah, and so. But there are these core sales techniques. Things that you can always use. And so sometimes I think that it's important to get back to basics and remember the basics, and then evaluate how you can implement the basics and improve the experience. So, yeah, so it's exciting for me to take this traditional, very ultra, Uber, traditional industry and evaluate how we can bring in new tools in order to capture this growing opportunity of wine tourism and so, yeah. I mean, there's so many things that can can be implemented to improve the the customer experience now we can engage with the customer automatically before a tourist visits the winery to custom, customize that experience for them, understand Their needs a little bit better and improve the experience as much as possible, and improve their possibility to repeat the experience and also to recommend the experience To to others and also be able to offer them additional products. For instance, after the experience, you know, buying the wine, having the wine delivered to them, etc, and so, yeah, so it's, it's exciting for me to to be able to have the vast experience in a traditional industry and using very old school sales text techniques, and to be able to bring that experience and and and transition it into the modern world of of AI and SAS and and take advantage of where the opportunity is is heading. And that's wine tourism,

Alastair Cole 27:39

Yes, and the same. You know, human motion, human emotions are important there. You know, even online buyers, if you're engaging with them as they're booking their travel and you're able to insert some kind of recommendation or offer for wine tourism, they still need to be, still need to, they still need to trust you, right? Either they trust the brand or the experience is solid and

Lisa Denham 28:03

personalized. Alastair, because now, with the tools, you can figure out better what they want and you find that consumers want to tell you what they're looking for. They want to know. They want to tell you what their needs are, what their desires are, and so it's a great opportunity. Yeah,

Alastair Cole 28:27

yeah. I mean, you know, 90% of people expect to be, you know, expect a personalized, delightful experience before and after purchase. And digital technology, digital marketing, Software as a Service, does enable that. That's fascinating. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, to ask more about, you know, enormous million dollar bulk wine sales, or the exciting world of wine tourism through VMove. How could they? How could they get in touch with you? Well,

Lisa Denham 28:53

I'm going to put my email address here on the chat. Hold on a second. And yeah, through LinkedIn. Lisa Denham,

Alastair Cole 29:06

Let's see. Well, we, we've got you here. Lisa dennon, wine, MBA, and your, your World wines email address is there on screen? Lisa at World wines.cl, thank you. That's great. It looks fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. It's great to hear the kind of like ancient skills, the door knocking and one on one, and also where you're where you're going next, which feels like a very exciting place. And a lot of tidbits there, I think, eye contact, the one on one and the emotional management of handling deals. I thought it was great, especially that kind of Chinese story, right? That, because ultimately, that kind of offer to solve the problem is the thing that builds trust. And you might think people listening might think, well, that's awful. She's giving away income, but really, what you're doing is. Kind of buying credibility, buying trust, buying future sales, which is yeah, yes, which is a like a bold, strong move, but needed at that, those high ticket items, so look really fascinating. Thank you so much for your time, Lisa. I really, really appreciate it.

Lisa Denham 30:19

Thank you. Alastair, look forward to seeing you in Santiago, Chile again. I

Alastair Cole 30:23

will be back very soon, and what's what where, where this show is going next, two weeks from today, is Kieran and I will be presenting a show on sales playbooks that land investment I think we are averaging at the moment, Lisa, something like 1.3 million pounds is what we've been averaging in terms of helping our clients land as investment since we started uplift so and a lot of that has come directly from sales playbooks. One client said that it helps seal the deal. So in two weeks, we're going to be sharing our expertise in sales playbooks and how they can help you, if you're a tech business founder, to land investment that's us for today. So thank you so much, Lisa. I really appreciate your time and your expertise, and I wish you all the best for the exciting VMove opportunity the rest of this year.

Lisa Denham 31:17

Thanks. Alastair, Cheers.

Alastair Cole 31:19

Bye, bye, bye.