Schools and courses in entrepreneurship are popping up all over the country. Each school has a slightly different approach to teaching this relatively new class study. Some schools have a few specific courses, while others have full curriculums devoted to entrepreneurship.
This results in a wide variety of approaches about how to teach entrepreneurship. Some schools stress the structure and function of building… Read More
How to Teach Entrepreneurship – It’s the Wild West!
Entrepreneur Magazine Interview with Michael Houlihan
Please check out this great interview in the March issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, that Michael Houlihan had, on Sales with Wine Benefits.
March 2013 Entrepreneur Magazine Article … Read More
Build Your Business using Guiding Principles – Part 4
The critical decisions we make in business are guided by our attitudes toward our employees, our creditors, our vendors’ representatives, and our customers. How we treat these people is based on our perceptions, opinions, and attitudes.
In this series, we have endeavored to demonstrate how our guiding principles affect our success. By putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes, we get an objective view… Read More
Build Your Business using Guiding Principles – Part 3
The salespeople who call on your business have much more to offer than the products and services they represent. They are a gold mine of information and are in a position to significantly help your business.
In this series, we have examined the guiding principles that were instrumental to our success in the belief that they will be valuable to you in your business as well. The questions we ask put you in the other guy’s… Read More
Increasing the Value of a Wine Business Seminar
Today, I am sharing our experience building brand value in the Barefoot Wine brand with wine industry owners and professionals at the Wine Industry Brand Value Seminar in Napa.
… Read More
Halloween is More Than Trick or Treat
Halloween has popped up in both our personal and business lives. Bonnie’s mother and Michael’s father were both born on Halloween. Somehow, we discovered we had this in common within an hour after we met. Also, the concept for the Barefoot wine label was developed at a Halloween street party in Santa Barbara.
Halloween has different meanings in different cultures. In ours, it’s all about trick or treat with witches… Read More
Sales Professionals Deserve our Respect
From the outstanding musical, “The Music Man” to the hilarious movie, “Used Cars,” people in the sales profession have long been saddled with an unfair stereotype. Yet, without sales, few businesses would succeed.
Our economy relies on hundreds of thousands of salespeople that most of us never see, but their skills are responsible for our high standard of living. They call on the buyers who produce and sell… Read More
World’s Best Sale Pitch: “My Product will help you Increase Sales”
We’ve spent over two decades in sales, and it’s true – nothing happens until the sale is made. We have a friend who described her sales job as “conveying the value proposition of (her) product to (her) buyers.”
There are many books written on the subject of sales, sale techniques, and best closing strategies. We’ve often said the best sales person is the “Assistant Buyer”. The key to sales success… Read More
Successful Hiring takes Preparation, Permission and Patience
No matter what business you think you are in, you wind up in the personnel management business. Your first hires will require a great deal of your time and energy with no guarantees. Your way may conflict with their previous way of doing things.
For the most part, great employees are not found, they’re made. In order to delegate and allow your company to grow, you really have no choice.
All this takes time, energy, preparation… Read More
Gaining Traction in the Marketplace takes Tenacity and Focus
You may hear about a brand that “just took off.” From our perspective, very few brands just take off. What’s more likely is that they started out small and sometimes took years to gain traction.
As we’ve said many times before, it’s not the quality of the product, the price, or the demand so much as it is mastering the distribution and timing.
They say you can move the Queen Mary if you exert enough pressure over… Read More
