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+--- Thread: Montesquieu Wines (/thread-21463.html)
- nycwinepro - 05-05-2011
OK, I have been in the wine biz for 6 years, trained here in NYC and UC Davis. I took a job at Montesquieu and was invariably disappointed with the products and sales methods; being that The wines are sold via 'cold call' in a carnival barker style. The training to work at Montesquieu is decidely NOT wine focused training. Instead, you are told to read the 'Secret', create a 'vision board of wealth' and sell based on targeting customers who exhibit an impulse buy mentality. The wines are not legit, they are created by purchased juice and unused lots and they put a large ticket price on the bottle. Once again, these are not small production-boutique wines from small family owned vineyards, but left over second-or more likely third label wines, with shiny labels trying to appeal to the nouveau riche. I resigned, as I am a wine pro, who cannot, in good conscious, sell a product that is fraudulent. Oh, one more thing. I was relatively successful, I made a sale a day,( you can expect to make a sale per 300 phone calls...and that's an amazing average as you are calling business people at their jobs and spend a majority of your time being hung up on by savvy ad-mins) but my wine sales were not because I was a trained wine pro, it was because I am very charismatic. I noticed that the second best so-called broker was a drug addict and knew nothing about wine at all....you are expected to drink all day, starting at 8:30am and for someone who loves fantastic wines, I had a hard time choking down a few of these subpar wines. The office managers were nice, if not disillusioned and they were not trained in wine at all, the office in New York is nice as well, but to reiterate, the wines are subpar and not sold by wine professionals. At the time of my departure, there were only 2 remaining 'brokers', one was the aforementioned drug addict....actually doing cocaine on the job, and another woman who knew her stuff and had vast food and wine experience but she popped Vicodin on a reguclar basis as she had a back injury from a car accident . The last I heard she ( the vicodin addict, not the coke-head) jumped ship based on the inethical products and sales methods. To sum up, this is a job for a person who is hard up as they pay you $500.00 a week for 6 months, you need not have any wine knowledge, and you don't have to pass a drug test, dress nicely or even have a professional demeanor.....If you are opportunistic and able to bullshit on the phone you will do ok.....Expect to make no more than 20,000.00 yearly. After 6 months, you work 100 percent on commission. Soooo, you do the math. You only sell by the case. The average weekly sale is less than $3,000.00. So, there you go, if you have no other recourse, take a job at Montesquieu, but keep interviewing in the meantime.
- Kcwhippet - 05-05-2011
Montesquieu, in this and other iterations, has shown up here for quite a few years. Sometimes it's been Montesquieu brokers or folks looking to hook into this apparently lucrative venture. In all cases, I and my compatriots have shown the folly in purchasing from or joining Montesquieu. So sorry you got sucked into their trap, but glad you got out with your sanity and principles intact. Oh, BTW, welcome to the Wineboard. Don't know if you've noticed yet, but there are some really great folks here. We run the range from fairly new oenophiles to long term ITB, and just about everywhere in between. Hope you can hang with us and share your knowledge. One thing you might finde is that we're far from being as stuffy or pompous as on some other boards.
- winoweenie - 05-06-2011
Velchomme aboard there Prosie. When this boiler room operation was first starting up I got a call and after about 2 minutes I asked to talk to the young mans manager. When all of the flowers had been strown in the aisle I put some pretty basic questions to him, none of which he could answer so I pointed out that to my knowledge there 'twernt no vineyards in France with the name he was repping and after an aqward pause I got the summary " Hang-Up". WW
- winescom - 05-06-2011
nycwinepro: Welcome to the wines.com forum. I've heard about Montesquieu and I'm happy you left when you did, sounds like an awful situation. Enjoy the forum and let us know if you need anything! Cheers