Some Wineries Get It...And Others Don't...Chap 37

Over the last month, I’ve tried a few new wineries that I was really impressed by. In all 4 cases, I made an effort to track down their contact e-mail and tell them how impressed I was by such & such a wine. Along with my TN and all its erudite/florid prose. Oftentimes, I will ask a few questions. The response?? Nada/nothing. It would seem so simple just to reply to the e-mail with merely a “Thank You” and they would have made a customer for life. But a real missed opportunity I think.
As an aside, when I tasted AdamTolmach’s first Syrah, I was blown away by it. I sent him a nice note and my TN’s (then it was as a deck of punched cards). Response? Nada. I continued to do this for 4-5 yrs. Still no response. Finally, I met him at a WineCask Futures tasting, wild/curly hair & all. He apologized for not responding to my missives. Now we’ve become fast friends & I continue to buy the Ojais.
TablasCreekVnyds has always been a wnry that does get it. Every year at Christmas time, TCV sends out some small gift to their VINSider Club members. A very nice gesture of appreciation I think. I look forward to seeing what sort of gift Jason has dreamt up every year. I keep thinking he’s gonna run out of ideas at some point. But this yr’s gift? A small btl of olive oil from the olives on their property, processed at a nearby Mill up in SanArdo. TN to follow. The gift is a bit confusing because it has a back label that identifies it as a “Product of Italy”, so I first thought it might be some special Italian olive oil. But I believe this is just a special olive oil btl that he imported from Italy. Nice touch, I think.
I can hardly wait till next yr’s TCV Christmas gift. I am quite confident it will be a lamb chop from the lambs they grow on their BioDynamic operation there!! Now that would be a real gift!!
Tom

A few do. Martin’s Lane in Okanagan, my first small ( in bottles if not dollars ) order, with no prior winery visit, was shipped with a hand written post card from the winemaker following up on a brief email exchange we had prior to my ordering. A few other good experiences of similar personal nature with smaller or medium sized Ontario or BC wineries. However in most cases it follows a winery visit and or meeting them at tastings.

Sometimes people/companies think those that try to make a strong connection with them are either psychopaths or stalkers, and tend to ignore those that fall off the bell curve. I suppose being nice and enamored should be a positive, but sometimes others take this the wrong way.

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Agreed, Tom. I honestly don’t know how 70% of the world stays in business - you contact companies via websites and never get a response.

Then there’s the other spectrum as well - I bought a single bottle of Riesling from a wine shop, and every day since then I’ve gotten multiple emails with offerings etc. I can’t call it spam, because they’re honestly just trying to sell their goods, but come on people - you gotta read the room. I never read them anymore. They go straight into the trash.

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Yup…agreed Adam. But I realize that winemakers are busy people and don’t always have time to respond to every e-mail. And I don’t think I’m such an important wine consumer that I expect them to respond. And, oftentimes,
those e-mails are intercepted by some office flunky that doesn’t bother to pass it on to the winemaker…just another crank e-mail from that stalker in LosAlamos. So I don’t ding them or never try their wines
again because they didn’t respond. But you & I recognize that it is a missed opportunity to solidify a connection w/ a customer. Those personal connections are what drives your business.
Tom

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I actually didn’t know that Tablas Creek sent a little xmas gift each year - that is brilliant. I want to copy that!

I tell you what I struggle with - keeping track of all the connections across multiple platforms. Some might contact me via PM here and ask if I they can buy a few bottles, some on another forum, some via Instagram, some via Venmo. It’s hard to keep track of all of them, especially if there’s special requests, such as a personal greeting etc. I wish there was a little app or software that could log them all chronologically so I can keep track (as my memory gets worse and worse).

A customer who demands email replies around the holidays or they don’t “get it.”

Honestly a customer who is a PITA.

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Not this again… you’re 37 for 37 now in being the one who doesn’t get it.

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Hey Adam,

The solution you are describing sounds like a CRM or database that logs these connections/customers, etc. I think some of the newer Wine industry commerce software are starting to add some of these features so you can track the LTV and engagement of your connections/consumers. There’s value in tracking this, but at the end of the day your priority is probably making the wine.

Regarding Tom’s main point, I think it’s tough to expect wineries of various sizes to offer a consistent and high-touch level of response and service. It costs money to track these customers who reach out as well as evaluate their spend or potential for future spend. At the end of the day, it’s about selling wine and finding avenues to increase that.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens after the pandemic. Will wineries continue to invest more into their wine clubs and hospitality departments to generate revenue from DTC or will wineries look to move back to more distribution/suppliers?

I don’t know if it would pay off, and the answer certainly varies from one particular winery to the next, but it seems like you could get an independent contractor (e.g. stay at home parent, someone looking to add something onto their primary job, retiree, young person interested in a little work and learning about business or the wine business, customer of yours who would love to get a tiny bit involved, whatever) to work 5-10 hours a week from home and just interact with your customers.

Reply to messages and inquiries, follow up to see if regulars who didn’t reply to an offering want to buy, filter and pass through appropriate messages to the owner or winemaker for response, check for social media type contacts, chime in on some message board type discussions about their wines, send out custom birthday wishes, etc. Basically just lubricate the flow of communication, put a positive face on the winery, create some goodwill and loyalty, get a few more orders.

As Tom notes in the OP, it’s amazing how little effort it would take to create a positive connection, create customer loyalty and so forth.

Probably a naive comment from someone who has never owned a business himself, but I throw it out there just for conversation.

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Sounds like a good idea…in theory, but where are you going to find these excellent workers? I can’t picture a lawyer or doctor who made a quarter million last year wanting to do this during retirement. You would have to find someone who has an interest to connect to folks and preferably has some wine interest as well who wants a part-time job to work for something like 10-12 bucks an hour (or $15 in those minimum wage states). Personally, I think it could be a cool stint, but there are no wineries near me.

I work at a small winery and we have about 400 wine club members. I would bet I could find at least 10-20 who would love to act as an ambassador of the winery. We have people ask to volunteer to help bottle even.

As to the comment above, I made a ton of money, more than you mention, when I was in business, but now I am retired and I absolutely love making a few hundred bucks a week working in the tasting room, helping with the club and bottling/labeling.

The base wage is $11/hour, but with tips I can make $30-$40/hour on weekends. Plus, discounted wine. Perfect gig for this former big wage earner.

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Well, Chris… most larger Wineries have someone in house to handle these customer interactions. Like DCV or TCV both do. But for someone small like Lagier- Meredith , it’s Carole who does it.
Tom

Michael, your path is what I’ve been planning for these past years. I am counting the days when I don’t need to be a lawyer anymore and can pour wine for a tasting room or by appointment.

You’re my hero!

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It’s like those Christmas letters you get every year from certain people that provide some of the best entertainment, unintentionally.

Not sure where the doctor or lawyer part came in, but there should be lots of sufficiently bright folks out there who do gig work and part time stuff. You wouldn’t even actually have to live by the winery to do it, I don’t think.

Answer the emails, maybe represent the winery on social media, contact customers, follow up on things, meet on Zoom with the owner for 30 minutes a week to tell her what’s going on and bundle the few things that need her attention (“two customers wrote about having a corked bottle which you should replace, one emailed a question about your barrel program that you should answer, there’s a thread on WB where people are wondering some details about your vineyard sources so you should go on there and answer them and thank people for their interest, one customer wrote and asked if you’re going to start making a chardonnay in the future,” etc.).

I guess where I see the value is just how little it takes to make a great impression and deepen a connection. We customers really want to have that kind of connection, imagine we are in it with these folks, think there is some two way street more than just they make a product and we purchase it. A tiny bit goes a long way. And if the winemaker doesn’t have the time, energy and/or organizational skills for that piece, I wonder if they could find someone else to do most of it for them at a pretty modest cost.

My son is 16, and I drilled him a few years ago about how to talk to adults, how to address them, how to shake their hands, how to hold the door open for people. This is the most rudimentary stuff most of us completely take for granted, but when a 14 year old does it, it’s incredible what an impression it makes. The bar is so low from how most screen-addicted young people act, that a boy who looks adults in the eye, says “Hi Mr. Smith, it’s great to see you, thank you for having us over,” gives a firm handshake, says please and thank you, you should see how they react. Mind blown.

Tom’s post above illustrates a similar point. Many or most wineries are poor at this stuff – often for legitimate reasons, but poor nonetheless – and if you were one of the ones who did it pretty well, that could go a long way.

Again, I don’t own a business, and my ideas here may be less practical than I think they are, so feel free to point that out in a constructive way if you want.

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Hi Michael, My wife and I are in our low 30’s and have been blessed to do very well. We plan on retiring around age 40 and will have passive income off the businesses that we own. We are looking to buy a place in the Napa area and spend 3-6 months a year doing exactly what you are doing. Is it difficult to find a tasting room that will hire someone to just work in the peak season? Also, are they opposed to someone working 2-3 days a week and not year round? We own restaurants and have some connections with wineries to get our foot in the door, but I’ve always wondered if wineries were open to this. Hell, they could pay me in wine for all I care. We are thinking about working harvest in the next couple of years, just for the experience.

Great to see that someone is still passing that on to our youth!

I think the difficult thing is that you need to find people who will care about what they are doing. Any thoughtful email back would probably go miles, and any person who spends 5-10 hours a week reading emails and thoughtfully responding would get pretty educated on what they are dealing with in just months, but not many people go in with that enthusiasm at those wages. I can say this from personal experience starting and growing a business and having to hire just slightly above minimum wage in NY.

Personally I think the issue is the decreasing social mobility. Climbing the latter today is not quite as common as it was 50 years ago and I think people of lower income generally don’t see the point in caring so much. Also, 50 years ago, someone working this type of job would be 18 and looking for growth or would be part of the family or a friend who really cares about the mission and company. It is a very different environment today. Unfortunately, you can see this just by the general customer service across large companies, but they also have the issue of rigid policies made for automation and simplicity, but then again that is often made because they don’t trust the staff to be flexible and problem solve… difficult cycle.

I work 10 days a month, 7 hour shifts, in busy season and 4 days/month in low season, like now. Bottling and labeling occasionally as well. If you are good, you’ll get a job.

I’ve had winery owners friend me on Facebook. Easy way to keep in touch.
I’ve had a corkscrew or bottle stopper added to my club shipments. Guess what I still have.
I have even gotten a card at the holidays from wineries I have only purchased a few bottles from.
Being small or “busy” isn’t a pass for not acknowledging who pays your bills.

I owned a business for 24 years. I couldn’t go to sleep at night knowing I didn’t at least acknowledge a customer’s email.

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