REthink Wine Blog

Establish your trade database!

Your trade database is the most critical element of a successful Direct-to-Trade program. Your first step should be to consolidate every trade account (hotel, restaurant, specialty wine shop, etc.) that you have touched, or that you want to touch, into one database. Be sure to include names, emails, phone numbers, type of account (on- or off-premise), and any relevant information (steakhouse vs. seafood). The more information that you include on each account, the easier it will be to segment your list for future marketing efforts.

A few basic sources for building your list:
- Business cards from tasting events
- Email inquiries from the trade generated by your website
- Favorite local restaurants that have purchased in the past
- List of trade attendees at various wine maker dinners

Your second step should be to distinguish between unqualified leads, warm contacts, and current or former customers. This information will help you segment your list for direct marketing efforts. In addition, be sure to differentiate between restaurants and retailers as the value proposition of direct to trade is slightly different.

Your third step should be to associate order history with customers in order to narrow-cast and present specific offers (i.e. new release of Merlot to those who purchased last vintage). Wine brokers and wholesalers’ biggest strengths live in their ‘rolodex’ and relationships – it is what allows them to deliver demand to meet the supply of producers. You can create and connect with that demand yourself, this is why your trade database should be your single greatest asset (aside from your wine), if leveraged appropriately.

More on leveraging it appropriately in Part II.

Cheers,

It’s that time of year again when students are looking for summer work and we could all use the extra help. But really, how much effort is it to manage a summer intern? It shouldn’t be too challenging if you structure it right and plan it now. Considering that I have worked as an intern and have managed many interns, I thought I would share some of my observations to help prepare for the summer. I’d love any other suggestions that you may have.

First off, what does a potential intern want?

• Experience that they can put on their resume
• The opportunity to learn new skills
• The satisfaction of having contributed to something meaningful
• Some form of compensation whether a stipend, in kind goods (rent/meals/wine), or an hourly rate. Not everyone can afford an unpaid summer and there are enough companies willing to pay, that you may miss out on a superstar if you can’t provide some type of incentive.

With this in mind, think through what you need help with and then create a “program” for your intern(s). Below are a few tips and questions to consider:

• Who will manage the intern? I’d recommend one point of contact so the intern isn’t the “catch all” for everyone. With that said, you could structure a rotation program where a different department/function manages the intern for a 2 week period. In our situation, we may have our interns rotate from Client Services to Client Development to Channel Development and then Product Management.
• Interns definitely need structure. Discrete projects are a great way to keep them interested and challenged. When I was a college intern, all too often I was asked to do filing. Woohoo! The key is creating projects that balance what needs to get done (filing or data entry) and projects that are more compelling (research on potential trade prospects or establishing an online presence for you within wine 2.0 communities). Also, ask your interns to craft a project of interest to them and have them continuously work on that and then have them write up the results at the end of the summer.
• Definitely create an evaluation mechanism to assess your interns and have them assess your internship “program.” Your written evaluation of the intern will provide a great recommendation for future jobs or internships. Their assessment of your program will help you better structure future programs if you decide to continue.

In my mind, interns are a fabulous way to offset resource constraints because they can make strong contributions and their rates are discounted. More importantly though, hosting an intern is a great way to excite someone about our industry and teach them tangible skills that will accelerate their learning. Who knows, your former intern could one day become your future employee or partner or boss! Stranger things have happened.

P.S. I almost forgot, if there are any readers out there interested in an internship @ Inertia, feel free to email me directly.

Cheers,

It is odd, I know. Most businesses, books, and inspirational posters encourage us to think big, see the forest through the trees, and go for the gold. I am all for this mindset, but sometimes you need to focus on the details and the plan before you can even attempt to achieve the bigger picture.

I recently took on a new role at Inertia and my team is tasked with trying to build a channel that has never really existed before, Direct to Trade. The opportunity is obvious and the vision well crafted, but the execution of some lofty goals remains a challenge. I’m approaching it in a very methodical way that echoes the notion that you should “Plan your work and work your plan.” Only the extremely lucky actually achieve a huge goal without a plan and without executing against that plan. And even if these lucky souls achieve the goal one time, it probably isn’t sustainable. I learned this lesson the hard way.

One July a few years ago, I climbed Mt Whitney (14,500 feet) with some friends over a 24 hour period. I didn’t really prepare for the climb and instead relied on the fact that I’m athletic, have strong will power, and could simply muscle it through. Seems stupid, but it worked. Over a 24 hour period, we climbed in the hot sun, splashed in the lake on the way up, and ascended the summit in time to watch the sunrise. I wouldn’t say it was a cake walk, but I would say that it was a manageable challenge and we succeeded in achieving our goal.

Now, let’s fast forward to the following Memorial Weekend when the same friends and I signed up to climb Mt Ranier (same elevation). My friends followed their preparation plan for the climb - weekend hikes with 40 pound backpacks, regular exercise, and some light weight lifting. And you ask, what did the ever-crafty (read: cocky) Andrea do to prepare for climb #2? Not a whole lot during that 10 month period. I created a work out plan, but I never executed the plan. Not too smart. It turns out that I ended up on the side of a very scary mountain in a snowstorm wearing crampons and using an icepick to help me stick to the mountain as we climbed in 5 foot deep snow towards the summit. I have never been more miserable in my life and I cursed my failed strategy to muscle through it. We made it to base camp and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you ask) an avalanche alert prevented us from summiting the final 1000 feet. To be honest, I’m not sure if I would have made that final stretch.

The lesson learned on that special climb stays with me today. Without question I see the forest through the trees, but I definitely pay attention to those trees. You never know how many there are and how much of a barrier they can be. And so, my strategy has shifted. Every time I attempt to climb a mountain, I make a plan and execute against that plan. So far, so good. And even better, the success is generally repeatable when you follow a plan that works.

Nothing new here, just sharing my thoughts as I prepare to climb a different kind of mountain. Oh yes, and just in case you want a visual representation of this blog entry, the cheesy poster….cheers.

It’s holiday time and while we continue to work like little elves, we can’t help but take a minute to have some fun. As such, our outstanding design team created some holiday cheer and we thought we would pass it on to you. Cheers, the Inertia Team

Good friends of mine recently founded an exciting company - Low Impact Living (LIL). They want to help you lower the environmental impact of your home and your daily life. To do that, they help you find the best green products, practices and service providers to help you achieve your environmental goals. And they will also help you understand the environmental benefits and economic trade-offs of your choices. Their primary goal is to make the path from inspiration to implementation as short and as smooth as possible. Only by taking action will we collectively reduce the damage to our planet and ecosystems.

With that said, they are constantly searching for great green products and services to bring to their customers. With the holiday season upon us, I asked if they would be interested in featuring some “green” wineries in their holiday guide. Indeed they would! What a natural fit - wineries practicing biodynamic agriculture. For those of you not in the know, and I did need to look up the details on wikipedia, this is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a closed, self-nourishing system. Biodynamic farming includes organic agriculture’s emphasis on manures and composts and exclusion of the use of artificial chemicals on soils and plants.

I am pleased to say that several of our clients are exploring or are engaging in biodynamic programs: Medlock Ames, Chumeia, McFadden, Gryphon, Amity, Barra, Matthiasson, and Girasole to name a few. If you are a “green winery” by all means let us know and we will connect you with our friends at Low Impact Living. Please email Rachel.Reed@inertiabev.com to learn about how to work with LIL. And, of course, if you are striving to be green, please check out their informative and exciting website and blog @ www.lowimpactliving.com/blog. Eventually, I’d love to see an entire section dedicated to organic wines and foods. We will keep you posted on progress there.

Cheers,

I just couldn’t resist and had to be an early adopter of the iPhone.  One week in and I have to say that I LOVE its functionality and it looks cool to boot.  Apple certainly thought of just about everything to make this pda an easy, highly functional, and very fun toy (I mean tool).

Some of the coolest features include: one-touch phone calls, voicemail retrieval in any order you want, quick synch to Outlook, instant internet access via wifi, and then, of course, the ipod functionality to listen to all of those wine podcasts.

 

 

BUT, with all of the cool stuff Apple packed in, there are a couple of features/functions that Blackberry had and this does not. First, the ability to delete multiple email messages at one time.  Very important for those of us who receive over 150 emails a day. Second, unless you are a pixie with teeny tiny fingers, the iPhone onscreen keyboard is a bit clumsy.  Or maybe it’s me, but I’m quite certain that my fingers aren’t extraordinarily large. 

In any event, as I’ve played with my iPhone it made me think about how they developed the product. I am certain that the functions that I miss were on the development list, but booted off in exchange for something else.  In iteration one of the iPhone, I’m guessing there was a discussion that went something like this: would the consumer rather have the ability to delete multiple mail messages OR would the consumer rather have an instant catalogue of their You Tube favorites? And so on.

My experience at Inertia has given me quite a bit more patience for new technologies. As we plan for our new RTE platform (to be released next year), we think through all of the same trade-offs.  We start out with a wish list of everything that should be in the new platform.  “Everything” includes what we think we need, what our clients want, what we think our clients will want one day, what our partners have requested, and what our future partners will require.  After compiling all of these features, our able product management and tech teams assess each request, compile the development plan for version one, and then schedule each approved feature in subsequent releases. 

And so, having experienced the product development cycle at several companies, I am patient with Apple. I LOVE my new iPhone and I’m glad I have it now, even though there are a couple things that I would improve. I could have waited for the next version of the iPhone and it will likely have everything I want, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as fun.  This iPhone is better than the pda I had before and I’m certian that future releases will only catapult the technology further ahead. 

Cheers,

The 3rd Annual Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) is on July 17th this year at the Meritage Hotel in Napa. WITS has become a not-to-be-missed event that brings together wineries, technologists, and industry experts. We at Inertia Beverage Group are proud to be one of the leading technology companies sponsoring this year’s event.

In fact, yours truly has put together an exciting panel called Understanding and Maximizing Wine 2.0. The compelling description - Catapult your brand into new wine consuming communities and build your database. Social networking, wikis, blogs, online user-generated content – the crux of Web 2.0 – provides a new paradigm where the consumer is king and their opinion (novice or expert) generates sales. We are a recommendation-driven industry and this new sphere enriches the online experience, broadens consumer access to products, and ultimately expands the winery direct channel. This panel will give insight into companies, trends, and opportunities.

My panelists include a nice cross-section of Wine 2.0 types who will give their unique perspectives:

Josh Hersmeyer - Pintoblogger - a winery that blogs.
Tom Wark - Fermentations - a wine blog.
Philip James - Snooth - a new Wine 2.0 company focused on personalized recommendations.
John Hingley - Andiamo Systems - a new company focused on “word of mouth measurement.”

Also, as an IBG client, you are entitled to a 10% discount on your registration fee when you use a promo code. Hurry and sign up as this offer ends on July 1! Email Liz@inertiabev.com for the promo code.

We also wanted to remind you that IBG is hosting an open house on July 16 from 12:00 to 5:00pm at 1190 Airport Blvd. We will feature our innovative Direct to Trade program and showcase the Rethink Engine, our comprehensive consumer and trade direct software system. For more information, contact Jeanne Van Pelt at (707) 603-2804, or jeannev@inertiabev.com

We hope to see you at both of these events.

In an effort to educate myself (and stimulate online sales), I decided to implement one of the tactics that we promote to our clients - call your top customers. As a representative of one of our favorite wineries (with their permission of course), I pulled a list of their top 25 customers. I sorted them by total spent in the past year, then distinguished club members from e-commerce customers. Next, I developed my “spin” on the purpose of the call which went a little something like this:

“Since you are one of our best customers, I wanted to call and thank you. I also wanted to remind you that in two weeks we will stop shipments until mid-August due to the summer heat. If you are interested in stocking up on our wines for the summer, I can recommend a couple of great bottles and take the order for you over the phone or you can order from the website and use promo code LOYALTY to receive an x% discount…”

Some observations/lessons learned that would have saved me some time:

• Keep their customer record open during the call and intelligently refer to their order history, i.e. she buys a ton of Merlot!
• Fill out incomplete information in their customer record. For example, many phone numbers were not in general info, but I pasted them from the credit card info. Seems minor, but this helps in the customer reports that you run.
• If you have a lapsed wine club member, i.e. the past 6 wine club runs were canceled, remove them from the wine club to streamline your current loyalists.
• Make sure that you club exclusive products are up to date and visible to your club members when logged in.
• And finally, remember that the purpose of the call is to thank them and give them special attention, information, and an offer, just for being a loyal customer.

The results:

• 25 calls placed during a two day period - morning was best.
• 3 phone numbers were wrong
• 16 voicemails were left with the gist of the message
• 6 people talked to live
• 2 said thanks but they are stocked up
• 1 said thanks and that he was heading to the winery this weekend
• 3 people gave me orders

In 1 hour of prep work and 3 hours of calls…drum roll please….I sold 2.5 cases of wine resulting in about $1000 over the phone. Hopefully there are some residual online sales as well.

Dialing for dollars is one thing, but the real take home for me is that each person I talked to felt as if I knew them and I was looking out for their best interests over the summer.

Happy customer; happy winery; and happy IBG.

I took a glance at my to-do list this morning and noted that it’s about as long as the American River and growing steadily.  This is not an observation that fills me with joy, rather it makes me think differently about what I’m doing, how I prioritize my tasks, and how I should reallocate my time.  I hopped off the computer, took a few deep breaths, and let my mind wander back to my fun-filled days at business school where we learned a little about a lot.  What repeatedly popped into my head was the question of cost centers or profit centers and where my responsibility is associated.

• A cost center: a responsibility center in which employees control costs but do not control revenues.
• A profit center: responsibility centers which employees control both the revenues and the costs of the products or services they deliver. 

Both centers are vital to any type of organization.  The question I asked myself and now ask you, what is your primary role within your company and do the tasks on your list correlate with your primary responsibility? In my case, it’s a mixed bag. However, when I apply this lens to my lengthy & diverse to-do list, my priorities become more clear and the immediate tasks at hand rise to the surface.  My primary responsibility is to build the direct channel - a profit center for us and a profit center for you, our winery clients. 

And, naturally, I pose this question back to you: what is your primary responsibility and how do you prioritize your tasks?

 

We are pleased to announce our two newest wine club partners - VinoAmigo and MamaCork - who handpick wines and process wine club shipments from our collection of brands every month.

VinoAmigo is a Total Access Wine Club that is as much about the wineries as it is about the wines.  Their mission is to deliver you the EXPERIENCE of the wine country and give you a taste of what it’s like to be the guest of honor at a NEW winery every month…lucky for you, they’ve got wineries lining up to give VINOAMIGOS Total Access to the Vino Experience.

MamaCork is a new wine club for women focused on discovering boutique wines, sharing opinions, learning about the nuances of wine, and helping all of us identify our own palate through the opinions of six sassy, wine loving “mamas” who write compelling tasting notes online every month to compliment the wine shipments.

VinoAmigo is officially kicking off with a launch party next week at The Stave Wine Lounge and will feature the Dutcher Crossing Winery as well as a few cameos from the ladies at MAMACORK.  Join us at 6 p.m. on May 4th ~ 1149 First Street in Napa.  We hope to see you there.