Leading Change: Transforming Companies With Alan Wizemann

[00:00:00] Tessa Burg: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation brought to you by Mod Op. I’m your host, Tessa Burg, and today I am joined by Alan Wiseman. He’s the Chief Digital Officer at Southern Glazer’s

[00:00:13] Alan Wizemann: Thanks for having me looking forward to it.

[00:00:41] Tessa Burg: So before we jump into talking about Southern Glazer’s and their platform, tell us a little bit about yourself and your role now at Southern Glazer’s.

[00:00:51] Alan Wizemann: Sure, sure. I kind of accidentally became. I’m a, a change agent. I started really in startups, you know, and funny enough, my first startup was actually in e-commerce. Uh, we, I built an e-commerce platform with my co-founder and we found a little niche market and turned out, you know, we were, we were right along the pathway of what Shopify was doing at the time.

[00:01:11] Alan Wizemann: And it was getting pretty excited and, you know, venture backed and started to grow pretty big. And it turned into a pretty good company, but at the time we shifted into more social commerce, you know, and it was a little early. And so a of our bigger customers took an interest in just how we were building technology and how fast we were going.

[00:01:31] Alan Wizemann: And I realized just through a lot of the conversations and partnerships that I had with some of these big fortune 50 companies, that there was big opportunities to bring what we effectively learned in the startup internally. And so when I left the startup before it was acquired. I effectively got a call from Target, which kicked off my career.

[00:01:50] Alan Wizemann: And, you know, Target was one of our bigger customers at the time, and they really wanted to push the envelope and change internally, you know, they’ve heard all these terms around agile and product development and how they can effectively leverage technology in different ways that were really focused on their guests, which would be their users. And so internally we, you know, I helped them build out cartwheel, which is one of their first sort of mobile applications to deal discovery and, um, in store shopping, and it turned into. Effectively the start of a career of just changing companies and transforming what ultimately used to be sort of like sub doubt projects and, you know, small e-comm teams into actual true organizations that focused on value creation, time to value and internal proprietary technologies that, you know, at the time in 2012. The 2015 were, was really sort of a big debate. And that really led into just doing the same thing for a lot of different companies except for Target. I did it at Lululemon help run their transformation, bringing a lot of teams internally, building e-commerce for them. you know, effectively taking a very fledgling e-commerce site for an up and starting brand that was competing against Adidas and Nike into a multi-billion dollar company.

[00:03:03] Alan Wizemann: And then after that, I kind of got a reputation to start to do that sort of in a quick hit style. And so with some of the partnerships I made with venture companies and PE companies, I was sort of the one they called to come and fix things. Which was really fun because, you know, sometimes I have the attention span of a gnat.

[00:03:21] Alan Wizemann: And so it was, it was nice to get into companies and fix them and move on. And I, and I started to really find a lot of good very interesting patterns. You know, that regardless of company size, regardless of team, they all sort of had the same problems. And it’s around how they work together. How, a business needs sort of. Is translated into the technology that they build and how different ways you can focus a company and serve the users of that company or the customers of the company can really lead to a lot of that value and speed. And then I think through that, you know, working at Dollar Shave Club and then Goop and then getting into quip, it was really around seeing how. The retail and CPG background that I had in the, in the e-comm, uh, customers and platform that I created, lended itself at the time really well to direct to consumer. And so that was learning a lot about what, you know, digital marketing really meant to customers and how that can be tied together. How supply chain actually becomes a tool rather than a hindrance of what you can do with, with customers. And how overall, when the entire business is focused on the actual creation and fulfillment of a product. Sometimes even being the brand and product itself, like a dollar shape club, you could actually build some really powerful stories that connect it all and help drive adoption and help drive understanding and ultimately be successful in it. What led me into Southern was actually quite interesting. It’s just, you know, Southern is probably the largest company. A lot of people haven’t heard about, you know, we’re, we’re a family owned private company. We do about 25 billion a year in business is what we disclose. And then, You know, we’re a distributor.

[00:04:59] Alan Wizemann: So we distribute beverage alcohol products. Among pretty much all of our inventory is done by and manufactured by suppliers. We have the, the relationships and the sales teams for our customers. And so we’re that middle tier, um, you know, part of the three-tier beverage alcohol system that was created out of prohibition. The work that we do here and the network that Potentially can be created through that was just very enticing to me. Um, what I did at Quip was help connect, you know, a lot of our information and systems from our, our consumer side into, you know, insurance and care for dental offices. And I always found that if, if you could be the center of a network by connecting ultimately what either a supplier or manufacturer is doing to a customer that you’ve got a lot of power, you can create great technology and create great experiences, and ultimately you can make both sides. Um, generate value and in turn, obviously generate value for the company. The company itself is looking for radical transformation, you know, they they internally built out Um what you were talking about earlier proof, you know as a fairly fledgling b2b site, but that grew every year They got very lucky because they’ve always sort of been ahead of the curve on technology, especially in beverage alcohol.

[00:06:10] Alan Wizemann: It’s a an industry that I usually say is about 10 years behind everybody else. but they had it out pre pandemic, so they’re able to capitalize a lot on what happened with, you know, things shutting down. I would say business moving online, they also knew that they had to build things in different ways, that there were a lot more opportunities to develop technology, a lot more opportunities to really push. The envelope for the industry. And so they purposely went out and in a leader myself that was not in the industry that had a lot of background and different either digital technologies, you know, brands, um, direct consumer retail. so when I met the family came in and interviewed, I just kind of fell in love with it.

[00:06:50] Alan Wizemann: I think it’s a fantastic company and what they’re sitting on being effectively the largest, um, beverage alcohol distributed in the States with 48 different markets, it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

[00:07:02] Tessa Burg: Yeah, I love your journey and the fact that you have embraced being a change leader. I mean, sometimes that can be the least popular person in the room because people don’t like change. And historically people in large retailers can be very slow to change. So it says a lot about the places that you’ve worked that they recognize and seem to have this senior leadership alignment.

[00:07:31] Tessa Burg: That change was necessary and necessary to deliver value to their customers. Can you tell us a little bit about the early challenges in getting alignment across the organization to really understand and embrace the vision that the leaders of the companies had for how they could start serving the market differently.

[00:07:55] Alan Wizemann: Yeah, and you know, it hasn’t always been easy. I think, you know, being that change agent, you definitely ruffle feathers, you know, you push against the grain and you’re challenging practices, processes, and sometimes leaders that have built what you’re challenging. And so it could be. You know, adversarial, but I try to look at it ultimately as a changing of how you’re empowering the business rather than changing what was done before. And that’s usually a lens that helps those conversations a lot. It’s not to say someone did it incorrectly. It’s to say that there are opportunities that could leverage what was done, but the way either something’s built or the way it’s being. targeted, you know, has to change. And most of the time when the companies are hungry for change, you know, and the leadership team realizes it early is when I think the most success can be had.

[00:08:52] Alan Wizemann: It’s, it’s when you have to fight the actual leadership team where change was brought in sort of underneath them where it becomes more difficult. And, and, you know, I’ve had the experience on both sides. At Southern, it’s been extremely, uh, enlightening here because the entire leadership team knew they needed to change. And because they’ve been ahead of the curve for, you know, a while, they knew that it was another advantage that they can really piece together. But they kind of didn’t know what they needed to change. You know, they knew it was a bit of how they would work, a bit of how they would build things. But I think the true value came in to the conversation they kind of made space for the discovery and the exploration of what could be changed.

[00:09:37] Alan Wizemann: And ultimately how that change could drive value for the business. And that was entire career. I I’d say that’s only happened one more, one other time, which was a target. And so to see that here was just very, very enlightening, you know, and it’s also not without its challenges because we’re effectively trying to build. And have built entire teams that have never existed here before bringing in disciplines around, you know, development, engineering, design, and agile ways of working that weren’t in the building. And so, know, there’s, there’s a broader change that is just like, get the team stood up, understand the foundation, understand the mission and the vision of what has to be put together.

[00:10:17] Alan Wizemann: And then there’s the tactical change of actually making it work. what a lot of people don’t understand is when you bring in a new organization, like a digital organization, or you’re driving digital transformation, everybody else focuses on the shiny stuff, you know, like, what’s the product came out of it?

[00:10:32] Alan Wizemann: What’s the outcome? But it’s the it’s the dirt that I actually like digging into to make it all work. You know, you have to change funding models, you have to change how things are managed, you have to change how you update. users, your executive teams, it is a very large amount of change management traditionally would be done through quite a lot of information, quite a lot of, you know, meetings and time and time and time.

[00:10:57] Alan Wizemann: And when you’re running a transformation, you don’t have a lot of time to get it to stick, you know, the fastest, the faster you can make the change, the more successful it usually is. so a lot of what you have to do is. What I call gentle brute force, you know where you make the change and then you show why you did it and you show The advantages of it so you can give the team that you are spearheading the change with To have the time to actually make the change and it’s been very interesting here to say the least because it’s been very welcomed You know, there’s not been a lot in the way. And so it’s really ours to Mess up, but we’ve had some really great success out of the gate to make it all work.

[00:11:38] Tessa Burg: That is very impressive from a leadership standpoint and from the other managers and team members at the company, because I, like you said, you’ve experienced where you do hit those walls where people understand they have to change. But when you start getting into the dirt, as you described it, one piece of feedback I’ve heard a lot is.

[00:12:03] Tessa Burg: Well, now you’re making it complicated. Like, when it comes to, does that mean I, individually, have to change what I’m doing? Well, now I think it’s too complicated. Or now I, I’m not sure I actually need to do this differently. I just, all I asked you to do was like, stand up this new e-commerce website using AI.

[00:12:24] Tessa Burg: Um, and I have to say, like, just because you could say it in one sentence, it doesn’t mean it’s one step.

[00:12:30] Alan Wizemann: Yeah.

[00:12:30] Tessa Burg: You

[00:12:31] Alan Wizemann: that’s

[00:12:31] Tessa Burg: steps.

[00:12:31] Alan Wizemann: true Very true. I use this drawing a lot that you know is a fairly famous change curve which sort of shows You know, the start of the change, the kind of chaos that it creates, the turmoil that comes out of it, and then how the change curves come back and effectively get to a steady state where the change sticks, the chaos is gone, and there’s sort of an understanding. You spend a tremendous amount of time in the chaos, and I think a lot of people, especially from a senior leadership perspective, Don’t fully understand how much time you’re going to spend there and how much turmoil it can create. But as long as you sort of show people, be it, you know, people on the team, resources you’re working with, partners you’re working with, that You understand where you’re at in that change.

[00:13:20] Alan Wizemann: You can help them and also empathize with the chaos you were creating, but that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, that’s not a train coming at you, that you can actually get a lot more buy-in when the change happens at this scale, you know, it, it, it actually is. Easier to a degree than smaller changes across multiple teams that have different leaders you can drive it with different missions you can drive it with an overall vision that you can get people to rally around the more you can get people to understand the positive outcome of it for Obviously their job and what their organization does, but also as the company, you know, to maintain either your scale, your growth, to get bigger. You can really use that as a motivating factor to drive everybody together, rather than just the one-off, you know, change messages that. Usually fall flat or the emails that try to rally teams, you know, so we do a lot and, and a lot of the things that I’ve done in my past is to bring teams together a lot, you know, show them where you’re at.

[00:14:26] Alan Wizemann: Be very, very transparent with them that sometimes I don’t even know what’s going on because of, you know, the chaos that was created. But when you tell them that, and you’re like, we’re all in this room to figure it out, there’s a lot more buy in and a lot more understanding and ultimately a lot more success out of it.

[00:14:43] Tessa Burg: Yeah, you hit on a lot of things that I think are very important for CMOs to hear today. And one is, first, that CMOs need to see themselves in a seat. Of being a change leader. I think that the advent of AI makes that inevitable. And in accepting that, I love how you describe setting the expectation for chaos.

[00:15:08] Tessa Burg: I think a lot of CMOs that I know are very buttoned up. They’re always professional. They are always sharp. And that’s, that’s a hard, those two things are really hard to accept that one, I am in the seat of change leadership and two, that there’s going to be some chaos, but you’ve also given CMOs two really simple things to do to navigate it.

[00:15:32] Tessa Burg: Be vulnerable and be transparent. And the third one, actually there’s a third mention, but I think it’s the one that everyone knows, which is we all have to have a shared vision. But I think it’s hard to always be vulnerable and transparent about what’s actually happening under that shared vision. And right now with the speed at which AI is going to impact the way marketing and sales teams work, we really need to lean into that.

[00:15:58] Tessa Burg: Um, because it’s all new to everybody.

[00:16:01] Alan Wizemann: Yeah, yeah, and you can’t be more correct, you know, and I think a lot of a lot of the things that I’ve seen before in change and even the things that I’ve done before is, you know, sometimes you can change something that doesn’t seem related to what you’re trying to do the company, but optically it can move. The sort of collective unconscious of an organization in a different way. The best example I have from that is actually at Target. You know, when, when I started, it was a business formal company. Like, so you were in a suit and tie. when we started hiring engineers. There is a little bit of a conflict there, right?

[00:16:38] Alan Wizemann: And so rather than going to, you know, engineer or a team and say, Hey, you know, if you have meetings today, you gotta put a suit on, you know, we actually went and start to change the dress code of the company, because if we would show that the support was there to embrace a different culture or a different environment.

[00:16:57] Alan Wizemann: You know, way of dressing, even that we could actually sort of loosen the optics of the culture that would embrace more change. And it was wildly successful. And a lot of people really enjoyed the change, which just went to effectively like, just dress your day. Like if you’ve got a meeting, dress up, if not throw that hoodie on and come to work. And funny enough, the marketing side of that, uh, when I was there, uh, actually embraced that even more like they, they really leaned into the communication around it and how. company was adapting. The company was changing, you know, and this was a time where store traffic was declining and, you know, there was a lot of threats from Amazon and, you know, they knew they needed to change and it was remarkable of just how you can move one small cultural message that would cascade into an acceptance of monumental change at the time.

[00:17:46] Alan Wizemann: I mean, they even changed the CEO when I was there, like it was monumental change.

[00:17:51] Tessa Burg: Yeah, no, that I love that marketers usually are so quick to pick up on like those positive bright spots. I know one challenge that change leaders have though is almost like evidence to even start. Where did you find the insights to sort of bring people together and, and validate that this change was necessary and that this change was ultimately going to provide value to the people that the business is serving?

[00:18:22] Alan Wizemann: That’s a great, great question. I think, I for me, I’ve always sort of felt that I had sort of a into opportunities, I don’t know if it’s from just the past of having startups or, you know, being involved in sort of like every role and kind of seeing a picture of what ultimately a company can be. Either could be or opportunities they can go after. But most of the time, what I’ve noticed is that the ideas are already in the building, have thought through we did this or, you know, this is, this could be a revenue stream, but they never really had the either support the organization or the opportunity to sort of push on those ideas.

[00:19:06] Alan Wizemann: A lot of companies drive, like, you know, innovation forums or programs that sort of look for ideas that they can grow internally. But when you have an organization that’s built on principles of driving either, you know, value or at what, what I call time to value, you start to build a muscle that listens to the organization and then reacts to whatever the ideas are or whatever the opportunities are. And so when I come in and put together, uh, either a strategy or a vision of what an organization should do digitally, it’s not a closed sort of end all be all, it’s way more directional because what I’m trying to do is foster internal innovation and creativity that ties into it. And so at Southern, you know, our, our entire strategy is to effectively connect the network, how our suppliers can get closer to our customers through us and how we can really leverage a lot of the technology. Information marketing, you name it from the supplier standpoint to really empower our customers and drive value for them because in turn that drives value for us and our suppliers, it wasn’t to be prescriptive of, we’re going to do this, this, this, this, and this to do it, it was really getting everybody understand that they now had that as a canvas that they can work with.

[00:20:25] Alan Wizemann: And so the teams really were able to sort of think through that. Listening to the organization, listening to the past leadership that was here, and then forming strategies of products that we can build that do that. And some very innovative stuff has come out of that. And then when you support it, when you actually have an organization that can also build it, you start to really stretch the muscle internally and then more ideas come out.

[00:20:47] Alan Wizemann: And so it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling, you know, mission of designing the teams correctly, having the right mission that has that flexibility and space to advance and then fostering that internally.

[00:21:01] Tessa Burg: So that’s some keywords that I’m just going to call out. I think are so important. And one is that the vision and the plan to reach that vision are directional. I think that’s something that’s really important to say out loud to teams so that they know they’re also expected to give input. Um, I feel like, especially in the age of AI, when there’s resistance, some of the feedback that we get is, well, tell me when it’s done.

[00:21:34] Tessa Burg: But in reality, like, we want. Our staff, we want our, even our clients to be a part of defining what done looks like. So I even like qualifying like, Hey, here’s, here’s the vision. Here’s where we’re going. Here’s a roadmap. This roadmap is directional. And even when the reality of AI is that it’s going to automate some tasks and it might replace some roles is the creative problem solving and the creative solutions.

[00:22:08] Tessa Burg: That really, not only insert the humanness, but make sure that the change initiative is successful in the end. Because without that creative thinking, creative problem solving, uh, it won’t be successful. Because if just one person says, okay, it’s done, now we’re all going to do this, like, it will be confusing.

[00:22:28] Tessa Burg: But I, I think the other part of that resistance, you know, part of it’s fear, part of it’s like, I didn’t understand the expectation that I should be involved, but it’s time. And, you know, a lot of everyone. At their jobs is really busy. Like how have you worked with organizations to create that time and space so that people can process so that they can understand the expectation and start to contribute.

[00:22:51] Alan Wizemann: Yeah, it’s pretty difficult. And I, and I think a lot of what. You’re touching on too are also some of the facets that make change pretty difficult. And so when you, when you start to think through, you know, changing a culture away from a, a, a project mentality into product, or you start to introduce those sort of open-ended strategic missions that they’re not used to, you know, there there’s some. Tried and true things that, that I’ve honed in over the years. The first, and I think most important is keep metrics out of your strategy and vision. Like it’s not to, you know, put a percentage of growth. It’s not to throw sort of arbitrary guesses. It’s really to make the space to have. You know, the leaders that you brought in around either product development or design, you know, understand that sort of the, the goal we want to go towards. In the vision, but there’s no, you know, expected results. Because everybody’s naturally wired to drive positive results. It’s just, it’s part of how people think. And when you limit it actually in your mission, you could actually limit what a team does. And so creating the space in that without, you know, arbitrary growth definitions very good and very healthy for teams, but an entirely different practice for a lot of people who have been involved in leadership positions for quite some time, you know, goes against a lot of. probably best practices from all the business books that are out there, but it does help create that. And then when you’re looking at a newer technology, and I think AI is the example we’ve ever had of this, that moves incredibly fast, that has created, I would say, probably more fear than good.

[00:24:38] Alan Wizemann: That is, you know, literally in a headline every day that you have to not only provide The guidance and the space for people to understand it, but you also have to help drive its acceptance and it’s understanding that it’s, it can be fearful. It can have a position, you know, if it’s used incorrectly, that can be bad for the company. Introduce it in ways that make things very comfortable. And one thing that I’ve seen has been wildly successful here at Southern literally embracing it. From the top down and bringing it into our, our tools. And so like we’re, we’re big users of CoPilot across all office systems. We do a lot of training on it. The idea was to use it to not only introduce it as a, as an accepted technology, but to get our leaders to use it, to show how they use it, to talk about it in, in trainings and in meetings. So people internally understand that, Oh, this is accepted. It’s just part of another tool that I have. And even though it might change some of the ways I do things, you know, the positive nature of how it was introduced, the patterns that it has created and how people use it, can now leverage and other tools that we create proprietarily or custom within the, in the business. so our, our entire rollout strategy from an AI standpoint. As as we were rolling out that acceptance and those tools and sort of the everyday life, we were building custom tools underneath that that were in reporting, you know, so people can ask questions just like they would in copilot and then thinking through of how we can take advantage of a lot of the technologies and data that we have for our sales teams. And from what we knew for our customers, we started then introduce that stuff into our sales tools. the biggest sort of message that I have across that. And one of the big shifts that you have to do within companies, especially this size you can’t do things. At scale out of the gate. You have to start small.

[00:26:35] Alan Wizemann: You have to show that it has value and you have to show that in the either development, the orchestration or the vision of product or technology coming out with has an errant that ties to that mission and strategy that then starts to generate the metrics of how it’s tracked. And so then you can show the success of that without having that big banner metric in the in the vision or mission. And it’s look, it’s something that I think tech companies have done from a startup perspective when it’s two people in a garage trying to figure something out to scaling to a multibillion-dollar company, you start small, you make sure it’s a great product, you centralize it from a user-centric standpoint to where it’s solving the problem that has to go against. then you market it. And it’s the same way internally a company like we market internally, we show people why we’re doing something. Um, we do these things every month we call power weeks, the big demo days. So the entire company can actually see what we’re cooking and we’re honest about it. Like if, if something didn’t work, like, you know what, that was a great idea.

[00:27:36] Alan Wizemann: We tested it. It didn’t work. And so we’re not doing that anymore. We’ve pivoted to this and it just shows that the flexibility for failure and change is embraced. The flexibility for adoption of new tools is understood. then it really paints the picture and then creates the space for people to go after it in new and unique ways.

[00:27:54] Alan Wizemann: And then you get very, very. Positive results out of the tools that you do come out with. one of the bigger ones that we’re focusing on this year that is all AI-based is what we simply internally just called the next best action. Um, we are amazing place from a data perspective because we’re the middle.

[00:28:11] Alan Wizemann: We’re this sort of hub of the network. We understand our customers, their assortment, what they do, how they do business, we understand our suppliers, like their marketing, what’s coming next inventory to a degree that I’ve never seen before. And so we’re able to really leverage that, but through the lens of sort of a user-centric artificial intelligence products that takes advantage of the knowledge our sales people have and how that can be generated as feedback into our models to make them better. And so our, our recommendations, which if you go to any, you know, e com site or retailer, they’re going to say they have great product recommendations. I can honestly say that the ours are probably the most targeted and personalized I’ve ever seen because of our understanding. So I can make a recommendation out of our assortment with the knowledge and intelligence of the customer, of their location and of their salespeople and how all that information is tied together. And so the recommendation with the insights that it comes with of what it can do for that customer’s business is quite powerful and it’s one of the best use cases that I have seen from an AI perspective, because we’re keeping the human element live in it. And we’re introducing all of our tools from our, to our sales staff tools for them to use that there it’s there for them to help create time so they can do the things that they’re very good at building the relationships, bringing in samples, talking about the brand stories. Cause that’s the stuff you can’t do. Digitally. And so it’s really removing the stuff that is in their way of the stuff that takes time, you know, stuff that we can automate. And so they can really focus on the customer differently.

[00:29:52] Tessa Burg: I think that’s very reassuring for salespeople to hear. I know my husband’s in sales and he like legitimately gets worried that AI is going to replace him, that people are just going to want to talk to bots because, you know, they don’t have to worry about how rude they’re being or just they can say anything.

[00:30:11] Tessa Burg: Um, and When you build tools that really elevates the humanness, the results are, I would say like more scalable because again, humans are seeing what the next problem is going to be, or really able to relate to the person on the other side of the phone. And that person too is receiving information and having an experience in real time.

[00:30:38] Tessa Burg: Uh, but you said something I thought was. Kind of blew my mind and it is because I’m a very KPI-driven person. Um, I love a good revenue goal. I just love goals. So the thought of like not having one, I was like, Holy crap. Uh, feels very different and almost, I don’t want to say uncomfortable, but I, I, I like how freeing that is like, Hey, let’s try this.

[00:31:08] Tessa Burg: Let’s just see what happens when we throw it out there in small controlled ways. At the same time, proof did generate a massive metric. It generated 3. 86 billion in revenue in 2024. Um, what was. I guess the path to that, like how, at what point do you say we have an expectation for this platform? And you mentioned the product personalization.

[00:31:38] Tessa Burg: What were some of the other features that really solved? major issues for the buyer that powered that growth from 2023 to 2024.

[00:31:49] Alan Wizemann: Yeah, I, I think it’s one of the coolest product paths that I’ve seen, and this is launched before I was here, you know, it’s about, it’s been around for about six years, and, you know, there’s a lot in that story that’s pretty interesting. The ultimate initial goal of it also probably didn’t have a revenue number on it, and the people I’ve talked to that were responsible for it, you know, had the same feedback, I think they realized. the time that it was so new that they had to create space for it, but they didn’t have a sense of what it could become. You know, if you look across other industries of what e-commerce has done and how it’s grown as a percentage of revenue, are use cases out there. You know, and although that you don’t have a sort of overall big number in your vision and strategy, You definitely have numbers that are tracking the success of a team and what they’re going against.

[00:32:39] Alan Wizemann: And one of the principles that we drive in an OKR culture of across our product teams are, you know, metrics that are attainable and some are hero. Like if you can get even close to this thing, you are successful. If you back up to the launch timing of when proof came out, like right. Free pandemic, you know, and so even though Southern has always been ahead of the curve on technology, there’s a little, little luck involved because some, some business moved online and proof was there and ready, but at the time, just through our earlier conversation, the sales team was petrified of it, they

[00:33:14] Tessa Burg: I

[00:33:14] Alan Wizemann: thought that it was there to replace them, that. You know, a digital tool that’s always available that can effectively do, you know, 80 percent of their job would put everybody at risk. And it, and it took the past transformation team that put it together to really start to convey that. No, this is a tool. And the reason why that conversation ultimately won.

[00:33:35] Alan Wizemann: And I think the reason why we’re seeing the same conversations now with around AI and why we’re, we’re moving the needle forward with more comfort than fear We are looking at it to augment and actually empower our sales teams rather than replace them. And at the time, and even now, you know, proof is available 24, 7, you know, there’s of thousands of SKUs that are on it across, you know, hundreds of suppliers for all of our customers salesperson in a limited interaction that they can have in person with a customer can’t cover that amount of product, they can’t tell all those stories, but the things that they can do probably have the most value in the relationship that we have with our customers. so we have been really positioning our tool sets and effectively everything we’re building from an AI perspective for them to be just that. What we’ve seen is, you know, a lot of reorders happen on proof, a lot of business that’s sort of after hours, you know, so after five o’clock up till four or five in the morning, because that’s when a lot of the businesses that we deal with are actually able to do orders are able to understand and have the time to look at reordering, look at where their orders are, but in that we foster a lot of discovery and exploration of things for their assortment, you know, other things that we sell that a salesperson might not be able to talk about in a limited amount of time.

[00:34:58] Alan Wizemann: Like, okay. Maraschino cherries or mixers or other things that we can add to their assortments that they can then add and, and, and effectively increase their value as a customer to us, but also increase their satisfaction with what we can deliver to them. keep our sales staff, you know, fully informed of what’s going on.

[00:35:17] Alan Wizemann: Once a salesperson. Effectively is one of, you know, selling things to a customer, regardless of where our transaction happens. The salesperson gets the credit because they own the relationship with our customer. And so a lot of the things that we’ve established was to really not only support, but also validate the fact that we’re not here to replace them.

[00:35:34] Alan Wizemann: Like what makes this company special? I think it’s a secret sauce that really nobody else has in the industry is. Our amazing relationships with the customers and suppliers and the salesforce that we have as just some of the best tools to not only foster that, but they have the information, like they, they understand their market.

[00:35:53] Alan Wizemann: They understand the neighborhoods, they understand assortment customers. so what we’ve built in a lot of the feedback mechanisms for our models is to get that information. So if a sales story didn’t work, the recommendation fell off the mark or. If the recommendation doesn’t make sense because they already sold the thing to the customer a day before we actually take that feedback from the salesperson in a way to where we can process it, understand it to make the models better.

[00:36:18] Alan Wizemann: So it’s not just like a thumbs up or thumbs down. It’s actually structured content that we can sort of work through and make sure that we are continually supporting them. So not only do they feel heard, they’re part of the process. They’re part of making our technology better. And, you know, ultimately as we save them more time, as we bring in these tools to either augment their day or make their clients happy, they see it and they, they understand that we’re solving the problems that are in front of them.

[00:36:44] Alan Wizemann: We’re, you know, trying to automate the stuff that they shouldn’t be probably even doing anyways. Now we’re making the relationships just much stronger for the company.

[00:36:52] Tessa Burg: think that’s a refreshing headline from what people hear about AI all the time. Like you are dependent on the expertise, the insight, and the feedback from salespeople on the front line in order to make the technology better and to better serve them as salespeople. And The customer, uh, that’s not what people hear most of the time from, from from the press.

[00:37:17] Alan Wizemann: technology, it’s like, oh, the pendulum is going to shift and swing so far. It’s going to replace everybody’s job. And, you know, first look for some industries. I think that’s true for AI in a while. I don’t, I don’t think it’s where people really think it is yet. You know, I think the press has done a number on it.

[00:37:33] Alan Wizemann: Um, there are great technologies. There are great companies that are working on this stuff, but it is still very new and it’s changing so incredibly fast that. Even our technology, architecture and foundations and how we’ve had to build things needed to embrace that level of change. But it’s, it’s not to a point to where I think it even could replace a lot of the things that are out there, but that’s also not the right way to look at it.

[00:37:57] Alan Wizemann: You know, the pendulum comes back. if you look at the history of sort of every time something that had happened, it always comes back. And ultimately, if you’re focusing on the right business problem, you’re focusing on your customer, and you’re looking at how you can You know, increase the value of that relationship to ultimately grow the company, the technology is there to support, not to replace.

[00:38:20] Tessa Burg: You’re driving so much change and transformation right now and clearly having success. What are you looking forward to this year in 2025? Like, where can you go from here?

[00:38:31] Alan Wizemann: Oh, we’ve got a lot of things that we can do. I mean, we’re, we’re still sitting on, you know, what I would call, uh, an older experience when it comes to e-commerce, I think there’s a lot of things that we can do that. Or not e-commerce related, you know, cause of our relationship with our customers, the amount of data that we do have across the three tiers and our understanding of markets and, and even how we’re getting connected to marketing plans of our suppliers and their brands and understanding what’s happening within, you know, right down to the city or neighborhood level, we can start to provide insights to our customers that are based on product assortment based on their business. show them, you know, the relationship they have with us is to foster value creation for them. And it’s not, we’re not just here to sell you the next best whiskey or, you know, help you understand what a brand is. We want to package that all up to help drive their business entirety. of the big things that we’re testing, which is a huge AI underpinning with one of the, one of the teams that we have here. Is on the marketing side. Um, one of the biggest challenges in this industry, because the three tiers is the dramatic separation between what a supplier can do from a marketing standpoint to a customer and what we do, or sorry, true consumer. And what we do to our customers, because they can’t really see their entire supply chain, like a direct-to-consumer company can and how a product ultimately gets into someone’s hands. And so what we’re experimenting with is understanding where they’re marketing, how they’re marketing. It could be digital, it could be TV. It could be, you know, out of home, Since we understand that at a neighborhood level, or at least even a city level, we can go to the customers into those neighborhoods and cities and actually say, Hey, marketing is going to happen around here.

[00:40:16] Alan Wizemann: These are the products. This is what could happen for your business from it. Here’s actual assets from the campaign that you can amplify on your own social channels. And here’s what we think it will impact to your inventory or assortment or menu needs and how and actually use that to help inform a sale. And so, and there’s a lot of things that we’re doing around that to sort of to connect the network because we don’t want to be effectively a black box. And that’s how, you know, I think the three-tier system, at least the distributed tier has been looked at for so long. it did take a little bit newer thinking and how all this stuff can be brought together, but it’s all under that big banner strategy.

[00:40:52] Alan Wizemann: And a lot of the teams are now thinking through how to, how to, Connect the dots there to make it all work.

[00:40:58] Tessa Burg: I think that’s absolutely revolutionary. I know, you know, we B2B clients. And you’re right. That has been a black box that no one has been able to crack. And they’ve always wanted to, we hear it all the time. Like we run marketing campaigns, ABM awareness, go to trade shows, but we don’t actually know who bought the end product.

[00:41:22] Tessa Burg: They’re experience their feedback. And I think a lot of companies and B2B have tried to rely on loyalty programs. They’ve tried to rely on market research. Like there’s always these ways in and around to get a sense. Of how well your product is doing. So I, I mean, I feel like that’s going, that can change the market, not only, um, in alcohol distribution and beverages, but a lot of B2B companies can take that inspiration into their own supplier manufacturing business and think about, you know, now is the time to rethink how we engage the people we serve.

[00:42:06] Alan Wizemann: Yeah. I, I a hundred percent agree. Yeah. And what, what we’re trying to do, I think in this industry, which hopefully kind of changes the industry becomes almost like a case study. And to me, that would be ultimately successful because we’ve always been looked at as the, you know, decade behind, we still fax things kind of, you know, industry.

[00:42:25] Alan Wizemann: And so to have that as sort of a feather in the cab would be. Pretty amazing. And I think the success that we’ve had with with proof, success that we’ve had with a lot of the products that we’ve released this year, sorry, last year, and we’re going to release this year is all really to foster that.

[00:42:40] Alan Wizemann: And, and, you know, we’ve got some pretty exciting stuff on the horizon for our customers as well, to really understand. Not only their business, but ultimately what it, you know, what tools we have that they could have at their disposal that are from our suppliers and what we can start to show them from products that are coming out, you know, so what we call innovation products from our suppliers, there’s just a lot of opportunities I think that exist in this industry that also exists in others, but nobody’s really been able to think through how to either capitalize on it or effectively have a strategy that starts to even show it, you know, and I think When you look at any three-tier like business, you know, from a B2B perspective on out, there are opportunities in those connections.

[00:43:25] Alan Wizemann: It’s just seeing which ones can be made to the betterment of sort of all three. Right. Cause the, the worst thing that we can do be to create products and services that are just benefit us. that would be I mean not only selfish and against the culture of this company but it wouldn’t be fair to the customers and it wouldn’t be fair to the suppliers because We grow when they grow and so our focus should be to grow them first and we’ll just be the natural benefit of how that happens

[00:43:52] Tessa Burg: Well, Alan, we’re way over time getting texts about being late to my next meeting, but I did not want to cut

[00:43:57] Alan Wizemann: sorry

[00:43:58] Tessa Burg: this conversation short because there’s so much valuable information and inspiration that our clients can pull from. And I’m excited for people to follow your journey and Southern Glazer’s journey as you redefine the way that you market and sell your products and services.

[00:44:16] Tessa Burg: I just think it’s absolutely fascinating. Before we leave, if People want to reach out to you or find you, uh, how do they get in touch?

[00:44:26] Alan Wizemann: Uh easy to find me on LinkedIn or just email me directly. So it’s alan A-L-A-N at sgws. com

[00:44:32] Tessa Burg: Yeah, and I hope everyone else enjoys this conversation as much as I did. I think, you know, a great first step for anyone listening is really looking at what data you have and how you can identify where you might be the center of a network and leave that to be directional and get input and listen. From other people in your organization to facilitate that collaboration that ultimately leads to scale.

[00:44:56] Tessa Burg: And I guess don’t set a big metric on it. Like I have definitely done that with my team and now I’ll be like, Oh guys, don’t worry about that goal. Sorry about that. No.

[00:45:05] Alan Wizemann: Fantastic recap

[00:45:07] Tessa Burg: But thank you so much again for being on the show. And for anyone else listening, if you want to hear more episodes of Leader Generation, you can find them on our website at modop. com that’s M O D O P dot com. You can click on the Vanguardian and find Leader Generation there or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

[00:45:26] Tessa Burg: Uh, Alan, thanks again, and hopefully we’ll talk to you again soon.

[00:45:30] Alan Wizemann: Sounds good. Thank you very much.