There's a moment every area manager knows all too well: you go to the wholesaler to take a new order and they tell you their warehouse is still full. End of visit.
The problem isn't the product. It isn't the price. It's that no one helped your intermediaries sell what they already bought.
And this is exactly where this case study begins.
First things first: sell-in and sell-out are not the same thing
I'm saying this because people often confuse them, or worse, work on only one of the two.
Sell-in is the activity that pushes the product toward the distribution chain: you convince wholesalers and retailers to buy, to stock up, to carry your brand. Push activity, by definition.
Sell-out is the other side of the coin: stimulating demand from the bottom up, making sure the end consumer wants your product and goes looking for it. Pull activity.
Most companies invest in sell-in and delegate sell-out to central marketing. It works — until the supply chain jams. And when it jams, the wholesaler's warehouse becomes a bottleneck.
The real problem: a bottleneck halfway down the chain
I was working with a multinational in the spirits sector — distilled spirits, to be precise. The trade division had a clear task: sell to local wholesalers, who then resold into the Horeca channel (hotels, restaurants, bars, pubs, nightclubs).
The breaking point was this: the area manager visited the wholesaler to renew the order for gin, vodka, whisky. The wholesaler pointed to the stock still sitting in the warehouse and put it off. The area manager went home empty-handed.
The usual sell-in levers were no longer enough. Discounts already given. Visibility already negotiated. Shelf space already won. The product was there, stuck.
The right question wasn't "how do I sell more to the wholesaler?" but "how do I help the wholesaler sell what they already have?".
The strategy: turning the trade into a sell-out engine
We built a simple but precise mechanic.
The wholesaler, together with the area manager from the producing company, logged into the platform and created a personalized offer for their Horeca customers. Not a generic discount: a structured offer with tangible rewards, real working tools for the people behind the bar.
Custom bar mats. Shakers. Glassware sets. Ice buckets. Aprons. Materials a bartender uses every day and perceives as concrete value, not drawer-filler swag.
The mechanic went something like this:
"Buy 2 bottles of gin + 3 of vodka → get a free custom bar mat."
or
"Buy 3 gin + 6 vodka + 2 whisky → custom glassware set and ice bucket."
Every promotion went out with a graphically designed A4 flyer: product photos, reward photos, the distributor's logo. Printed, packaged together with the gadgets, shipped directly to the wholesaler. The sales reps physically carried it into the venues, with a tight deadline that created real urgency.
The result: +30% sell-out on the trade channel. The wholesalers' warehouses emptied out. Orders started flowing again.
The principle that holds in any sector
Before we go on, a direct question: in your sector, who are the intermediaries sitting on your product without selling it?
Because the mechanic is cross-cutting. You don't have to be in beverages. You have to understand where the supply chain gets stuck and build a tool that helps the person in the middle do their job better.
This is the cross-pollination I talk about often: take a model that works in one market and test it in yours. Don't copy it — adapt it. The process of trial and error isn't a flaw, it's the method.
Today: the same principle with different tools
What in the case study required manual coordination between area managers, the graphics department, logistics and the trade, today compresses into far shorter timeframes thanks to the right tools.
The AI platform for sales lets you structure this kind of activity systematically: pipeline analysis, identification of bottlenecks in the supply chain, building measurable promotional mechanics. Not relying on the gut instinct of whichever area manager is on duty, but on data.
The principle stays the same. What changes is the speed with which you put it into practice.
Gianluca Testa
Founder Salestack
Host Marketing Garage