Early Sales, Consistent Sales

[flyhigher87]

Hey guys hope all is well!

  So my company launched our product about 3 months ago and sales are less than what I was expecting.  I know it takes time but we had a small initial buy and then a drop off, which I was expecting.    Some people want to buy that brand new product.  Then they drop off and you have to make real sales to people who consistently need product.  But the drop off the last 2 months was pretty much down to zero.  I was expecting we would be moving a little bit of product here and there.  At least 3 or 4 cases per month.  We have a distributor which pretty much stopped promoting the day we signed the contract.  We recently hired a brand ambassador.  He just started and is very very well connected in our area.  And we also hired a person who does plublicity stuff.  Both are doing excellent jobs already and they;ve just started.  We are really happy with their work already!    And I know you will all think i;m being really impatient, but as i;m sure you guys were when you started I;m crazy nervous all the time about sales.

Anyhow I was wondering how long did it take you guys to get any sales?  How long for any consistent sales?  

 

 

Our hopes are not to much we need about 200 bottles a month to break even(I;m in South America costs are very low).  And our real hopes are to sell our capacity at about 1000 bottles a month. 

 

Anyhow please let me know what your guy;s expierences were. 

As always thank you for your knowledge you all have helped me immensly throughout the last year.

(PS sorry about the ;  I;m using a spanish keyboard and don;t know how to make a proper apostraphy also I have no english spell check)

[Glenlyon]

The start up plunge of doooom! Now that all of our friends have bought something, now what?

What you have is a sales and marketing problem. Sales is not marketing and marketing is not sales. They are two separate ideas with objectives that lead to the actual point of purchase.

Your cash flow projection should have warned you of this problem as it actually shows up pretty quick, even in a hypothetical model.

So, now as a business you have only three options...

Borrow money.

Sell assets.

Sell more product.

Only one of these options will actually help the cause, so roll up your sleeves. Only you can set a benchmark for your sales people. Get out there and outsell them, your distillery’s life depends on it.

[paulNL]

I'm roughly in the same situation, started selling in August, biggest individual sale 24 bottles. A lot of people have said this before on this forum: you're not running a distillery, you're running a marketing and sales company that also makes booze. I'm going to make a few hundred bottles in one go (one day distilling - one day botteling)  this week. Why? Ingredients have already been paid, and I need all the time for sales. If you got the time you may ask your resellers if they need any help pushing your product on a busy day (Saturday?), or their Christmas fair. Use the opportunity to talk to their customers, see if there are any bars, restaurants or hotels you can convince to put your product on their "menu" - repeating sales!

[SlickFloss]

What type of programming are you doing w your dist?

[flyhigher87]

Sorry Slick Floss, i'm not following.  What do you mean by programming?  Sorry i'm not sure if this is a marketing program or production program.  please elaborate.