Situation

Barton Beers is the number-one independent beer importer in the United States and the number two U.S. importer of German beer, the award-winning St. Pauli Girl. Since acquiring the once- failing brand in 1992, Barton Beer has used sales force incentive programs as a key element in their promotional plans, and has been recognized as a “Comeback Brand.”

After running successful incentive programs with All Star for many years, Barton Beers aimed to transition its program to a timesaving online solution. The company wanted that solution to help increase distribution of St. Pauli Girl beer packages by 4,000 new placements at restaurants, bars, and resellers by providing incentives to key volume distributors in its Eastern Division. The challenge was to increase secondary packages, to increase in-store presence and full-line sales.

Solution

All Star has managed the St. Pauli Girl “Girls of Summer” incentive program since the 1990s. It had started out as a call-in program. When a distributor salesperson made a new St. Pauli Girl beer placement, he or she would call to record it on an answering machine. A Barton employee logged the calls; salespeople were awarded points and ordered their awards from a catalog.

The new online St. Pauli Girl “Girls of Summer” incentive program streamlined award allocation and redemption and targeted approximately 600 salespeople at high-volume beer distributors. The program was launched with direct contact between Barton Beers’ personnel and distributors’ sales managers, who then communicated to salespeople. Weekly e-mails from the Eastern Division office helped promote the program, along with phone calls from regional sales managers. To measure the program’s progress and success, distributors completed a tracking form.

Salespeople accumulated one to four award points per placement depending on the type of placement and number of facings. At the end of the program, points were totaled and participants were given an award code to access one of seven award levels. The top two salespeople were awarded a bonus Panasonic 32" TV for their salesrooms.

Results

The transition of the St. Pauli Girl sales incentive program from a printed catalog to an online format was extremely successful. Initial reception from distributors was strong— 88% of the 33 targeted participated. Participation was nearly doubled over the previous offline incentive programs. In the end, Barton Beers’ sales goals were exceeded, with approximately 400 award winners and more than 4,000 new St. Pauli Girl Beer placements. In addition, the online solution has been a significant timesaver for staff.