Lesson 1) Labatt Breweries of Canada is the name Anheuser-Busch (AB InBev) does business under in Canada.
I had no idea how many beers and RTD brands were in our portfolio until the day I started and actually looked at the sell sheets. Back in 2016 in Vancouver Labatt had a 46% market share. I had no clue so much of the beer industry in Canada was owned by one company.
Lesson 2) The official name of the internship might be “Summer Sales Rep” but internally I was a “Merchandiser”.
A Merchandiser is a level below Sales Rep. Instead of being assigned our own accounts to manage, we were assigned a whole sales team (mine was the Vancouver-Whistler sales team). Essentially, we were an assistant to everyone. Each day of the week I would be assigned a to-do list by a different sales rep.
Only a tiny portion of my week would be spent in office - just our team meetings on Friday mornings. The rest of the time I was in my car, in an account, or at the storage lockers. I’d say maybe 10% of my time was spent with a sales rep working alongside me, 90% of the time I was solo working down their list and asking questions over the phone. Most of your human interaction as an alcohol field rep is with the clients.
Lesson 3) I learned the beer rep vocabulary
CATMAN = Category management (the science & psychology of which product goes beside which)
LRS = Liquor retail store (private liquor store)
LDB = Liquor distribution branch (government liquor store, aka BC Liquor store)
OP = On premise, a venue where you drink the alcohol on the premises where you bought it (bar, restaurant, stadium, etc)
HL = hectolitre, unit we measure beer sales
KA = key account
KDM = key decision maker
POS = branded signage
GWP = gift with purchase
Planogram = map showing which product goes where on shelf in an ideal situation
& many many more
Lesson 4) I learned all the worst practices of alcohol reps (so I can avoid them)
It’s been over a decade so I’m passed the statute of limitations on covering for sales reps bad habits - a huge % of the tasks on my merchandising list were shady practices.
“Build this display, take a pic, send it to me so I can post it, then take it down”.
“In my storage locker there are displays I was supposed to build last month but never got around to - take them to the dump”.
“I ordered one case of our new SKU to this store so it shows up as a distribution point for me; I told the owner you’d go buy it”.
“Can you go into this store, pretend to be a customer, and request they bring in our product”.
“I missed the delivery cutoff, I need you to go to the warehouse, get all these products, and deliver them to my client yourself”.
I am so so grateful I saw all this firsthand because it made me know what to look out for later in my career when I was running programs for sales teams. Some brand team person who was never in field might be so confused why their well thought out program didn’t perform as predicted in a territory - taking the heat for that themselves - not realizing their assets never made it out of the storage locker of many reps.