Reps

Perhaps I’m just lucky that I have been able to spend the majority of my working life dealing with products I have a passion for. Perhaps I expect way too much, maybe I’m out of step with the world. But I would expect that if you are earning your living trying to sell a product that you should have a decent understanding of the product and perhaps a touch of enthusiasm for it. The number of reps who seem to have neither sometimes astounds me. This isn’t just the case in the liquor industry I used to come across it at times in the cheese world also.
With this year being billed as the ‘summer of cider’ there have been a lot of reps trying to get their wares on our shelves. Many of them, though not all, obviously had a rather limited knowledge of the product. Perhaps the prize goes to the rep who after serving me a sample of their rather sweet chilled cider over ice (somewhat akin to showing an artwork to an art buyer by driving them past the gallery window in a bus!) answered my question as to whether they were using cider varieties by saying “oh no, we don’t use rotten apples just nice ripe ones from the tree”. I was being a touch disingenuous as I already knew the answer and was just testing but the point is they should have known what I was talking about!
I suspect there are a number of beer reps out there who couldn’t name all the fundamental ingredients in a bottle of beer. How can we expect the punter’s understanding to improve if the person in charge of marketing a product is so limited? A bit of education goes a long way.