The tide’s going out. And like the man says, that’s when you find out who’s been swimming naked.
Rates are the highest they’ve been in a decade. Inflation came in hot again. Beer volume’s headwinds and the consumer is tapped out. If your whole game has been volume; move more cases, chase more points of distribution, hope it all shakes out at the end of the month, this is the market that exposes it. The easy growth is gone. It’s not coming back this summer.
So here’s the question we’ve been chewing on over the last few episodes of Tapped In:
When the water drops, what do you actually stand on?
Because a lot of distributors are standing on vibes. We had Sean Baker from Rehrig Pacific on the show, and he told a story that stuck with me. A distributor told him he was making decisions “based on vibes.” Sean’s answer was perfect. That’s not vibes, he said. That’s hope and a prayer.
And he’s right. Running on vibes sounds loose and confident, like you’ve got a feel for it. But strip the swagger off and it’s just hope. You’re hoping the case moved the needle. You’re hoping that big placement was worth the six stops it cost you. You’re hoping the month lands where you need it. Hope is a nice feeling. It is a terrible operating plan.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
That’s not a poster in the break room, it’s the whole thing. If you don’t know which cases actually make you money, you’re guessing. And in a fat market, guessing works fine, because volume covers a lot of bad decisions. In this market? Volume can’t cover for you anymore. The bad decisions show up on the bottom line, naked, for everybody to see.
Here’s where I want to land the plane. The number that gets you through a market like this is GP per CE. Gross profit per case equivalent. Not cases. Not revenue. Not margin percentage, which lies to you half the time anyway. Dollars per case, on the stuff you actually spend your day pushing.
Let me give you the Fireball story, because it makes this real. Everybody wrote Fireball off. Dead brand, they said. But look at it through GP per CE and it’s a top-five gross profit winner. That “dead” brand is quietly paying the bills better than half the shiny stuff on the truck. You’d never see it if you’re staring at case counts. You only see it when you measure what pays.
That’s return on effort. You’ve got a rep with a finite number of hours and a portfolio full of products that do not make you the same money. Some cases are worth a fortune of your time. Some aren’t worth bending over for. If your team is spending their day where the cases are easy instead of where the dollars are, you’re leaking profit every single day and calling it a good month because the volume looked okay.
Now, I’ll say the part people expect me to skip. Your reps don’t fight this. That surprises folks. They think the team’s going to blow back on seeing the GP math, like you’re taking something away. Opposite happens. When a rep sees exactly how they win as the business wins, they get on board fast. Because now the game is clear. Pay people on the thing that pays the bills and watch what they do with it. That’s not a threat to a good rep. That’s a map.
And no, this isn’t an age thing or a generation thing. Car dealers pay on profit. Chemical distributors, plumbing supply, old-school owners who’ve been at it forty years. It’s not about young versus old. It’s about whether you’re willing to bring the real number all the way down to the point of decision, where the rep is standing in the account making the call. That’s the whole battle. Leadership from the top down and the bottom up, meeting at the case on the shelf.
One more thing on the AI noise, since it’s in every conversation right now.
The goal is not to replace your people. It’s to hand them the truth faster. Your best rep with better information is a machine. The tech’s job is to put the GP number in their hand at the moment they need it, not to take the human out of the account. People still buy from people. We just want those people operating on truth instead of hope.
So that’s the pitch, plain as I can make it. The tide’s out. You can keep running on vibes and pray the water comes back, or you can start measuring what actually makes you money and spend your team’s effort there. One of those is a strategy. The other one you already know.
If this hit home, go listen to the two episodes it came from on the Tapped In Sales podcast.
“When the Tide Goes Out”
and
“That’s Not Vibes, That’s Hope and a Prayer”
And if you’re ready to see your own GP per CE laid out where your reps can actually use it, that’s exactly what VXP does. Reach out at info@vxptech.com or grab a demo. We’ll show you the math on your own book.
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