Vibe’s annual Supplier Awards—which recognize the top performers in the beverage industry through the creation, training, execution, management, and on-going positive results of beverage programs—will be announced at the 2023 conference on Tuesday, February 28 at 3:35pm.
But just what goes into determining the top-notch suppliers in the beer, wine, spirits, and non-alcoholic categories? We caught up with Shawn Fox, sales director at CM Profit Group, to demystify the process.
Ensuring Better Understanding Between Operators & Suppliers
CM Profit Group was started by Tom Fox and Carol Breedlove in 1999 as a category management, sales training and research business for the beverage alcohol industry. The research and consulting firm helps beverage suppliers provide better service to their national account customer base, which results in better productivity for the category.
“Suppliers typically work with us to understand how they stack up against operator expectations and how they stack up against their competition,” explains Fox, who says they conduct surveys and publish studies with two main goals in mind. “One, to help suppliers understand what operators want from their beverage suppliers and what services and competencies are most important year over year. And two, to evaluate the largest beverage alcohol suppliers against operator expectations and against each other.”
What separates CM Profit’s methodologies is that the interviews are conducted live over the phone or on Zoom, Teams, etc. This enables the firm to not only capture quantitative scores and ratings, but also the qualitative reasons behind those scores. “So when a given supplier gets an “exceeds expectations” score from an operator in an interview, we dig deeper to ask what specifically they’re doing to go above and beyond,” says Fox. “It is not a fill in the blank, added question on an internet survey. That has been a big part of our vision to assist the supplier community in both the scorecard, but also the rationale behind it.”
Some of the questions CM Profit asks of suppliers are:
- Did you help grow the category?
- Did you help your customer make more money?
- Are you bringing objectivity into the partnership to bring appropriate recommendations or SKU suggestions into their menu or their assortment that helps the operator with their business?
In turn, the incentive for operators to participate in the process is the promise of helping their suppliers understand how to provide better service. “Maybe it is higher trained category management skills, more dedicated headcount towards certain channels, or putting processes or systems in place for programming or execution,” says Fox. “It could be effective follow-up or quarterly reviews, maybe it is providing actionable insights and trends, or any service a supplier could provide in an effective relationship with an operator.”
Another key to the process is that CM Profit ensures confidentiality and anonymity to the operator community in order to ensure candid feedback. While the suppliers know what channel the comments may have come from (fine dining, casual dining, etc.), they will not know specifically which operator made which comments.
Perfecting the Process
With Vibe, CM Profit classifies suppliers based on a combination of volume, company size, and team size, and it groups them into large, medium, or small supplier categories.
“This year we asked over 70 operators to evaluate 42 beverage suppliers over live phone interview calls that lasted between 30 to 60 minutes. Operators only rate a supplier if they get a call from them regularly,” explains Fox. “The primary question we ask of the operators in their evaluation of each supplier reads as this:
'Please rate the following suppliers that call on you regularly on your overall impression of the value that they provide in terms of national account services, category management services, and overall sales professionalism and support.'"
From there, CM Profit asks each operator to use a 4 through 1 scale in rating each supplier on that overall impression question:
- 4: Exceeds your Expectations
- 3: Meets your Expectations
- 2: Minor Gap from Meeting your Expectations
- 1: Does Not Meet your Expectations
During this process, CM Profit asks that operators try and remove brand performance (good or bad) from their considerations as well as supply chain and stocking factors as a supplier may not have control over some of those things, especially given the current supply chain challenges. CM Profit asks them to instead focus on what the supplier does have control over—their response. “The communication aspect of trying to get out in front of it, or reporting the tough news the second you hear about it, that it is important to operators and part of the service they expect,” says Fox.
After all interviews are completed, CM Profit uses a formula it developed with Vibe and Questex to tabulate finalists and winners for each category and level. The formula is a combination of two factors: quantity and quality, both weighted equally.
For the quantity score, CM Profit tallies the total number of points each supplier receives from the operators, but the firm believes this only tells half the story, which is where the quality score comes in.
“The other half is taking into account that a supplier that is 20 points behind among the 70 operators might actually call on 12 less accounts than the supplier in the lead. So, is that supplier 20 points ahead actually ‘the best?’ The supplier 20 pts behind might have a better average score for the accounts they do call on, albeit 12 less accounts,” says Fox. “We believe that this provides a level playing ground for suppliers who may have a smaller team size but a very high average call rating to be able to stack up against each other.”
Trends & Surprises
The qualitative aspect of CM Profit’s research is where the most surprises (and trends) pop up each year. Fox says the variance in supplier performance year over year has been encouraging, “The ability for suppliers to improve and move up the ranks significantly is exciting to see. And it’s apparent to the operators, their customers, that suppliers can and are improving their service levels.”
While there is improvement, Fox says there is still a recurring theme of some suppliers being subjective in their sales approach with little-to-no understanding of an operator’s business concept and needs.
“We know sales professionalism starts with understanding and trying to achieve it by being empathic. That happens through asking questions and trying to comprehend what that operator is trying to accomplish,” says Fox. “We continue to be amazed at how many companies are focused on their own portfolio. That is a massive opportunity for suppliers in our mind. We know they all can bring a customer-focused approach, it’s just the process and vision to go and do it.”
The Top Suppliers
It’s this customer-centric approach that Fox says can be found in all of the top suppliers, “Those companies that have professional sales approaches, that bring objectivity, that bring an understanding of how to identify opportunities using data, and that bring relevant product suggestions that make sense to the channel are the suppliers that rise to the top of the rankings every year in our study.”
Much of it has to do with vision and sales processes, and Fox says these attributes are usually included in the top suppliers’ reviews:
- Established processes for sales professionalism
- Ways of uncovering operator business needs and bringing objectivity to the sales pitch
- Data and analytical capabilities and incorporating relevant and appropriate menu suggestions that would work for casual, gaming, entertainment, fine, etc.
- Understand and bring a curious, empathic approach to their operators, trying to help them make more money or grow their category
“These are the ones that receive the highest scores. And those scores aren’t from us, they’re from the operator community,” says Fox. “We love conducting these interviews every year. I hear awesome success stories and examples of suppliers bringing objectivity into their relationship that helps all three tiers. We just appreciate playing a small part.”
Plan to Attend or Participate in the Vibe Conference, Feb. 27 – March 1, 2023
To learn more about the latest trends, issues and hot topics, and to experience and taste the best products within the on-premise beverage community, plan to attend the Vibe Conference, Feb. 27 to March 1, 2023 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina. Visit VibeConference.com.
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