We have learned from our seven years of teaching WISE Academy courses that training tasting room staff members pays off in big ways. It changes their behavior and moves the needle on our key metrics in the tasting room to increase sales, customer loyalty and profit.
In our Tasting Room Professional course, we teach attendees how to build rapport with their guests and ask the questions that help them better serve their customers by filling their needs. We know from our clients that they have seen dramatic improvements in key conversion rates—conversion to buyer, conversion to wine club member and conversion to email list—after their tasting room staff members complete this course. These three conversion metrics make up what we call the WISE Triple Score. By improving these conversion rates, we can dramatically improve our financial outlook.
Sometimes it’s easy to underestimate just how much training pays off, so let’s do some math. Let’s say that we currently have a tasting room with the following statistics:
- Visitors per year total 18,000.
- Conversion of visitors to buyers is 35%, resulting in 6,300 buyers, with an average order value of $100.
- Conversion to wine club is 6%, and the average club shipment is $150, four times per year.
- Conversion to email list is 15%, and there are eight email campaigns per year, with an average of $1.50 in sales per email sent.
So what happens after training? Let’s look at the potential improvements we might see from a very conservative standpoint.
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Wines & Vines is a primary sponsor of theUnified Wine & Grape Symposium each year in Sacramento, Calif. The 2016 show hosted more than 620 exhibitor booths and more than 12,000 wine and grape professionals from all over the world.
In addition to equipment featured at the giant trade show, more and more parts of the business are represented, including direct-to-consumer sales.
Two sessions addressed DtC topics such as “How to Craft and Share Your Story, Stand Out, and Measure Everything Along the Way” and “Opportunities and Challenges with Agri-tourism as a Component of your DtC Marketing.”
If you are serious about a career in the wine industry, it is worth trying to convince the financial powers of your winery to invest in a trip to the Unified Symposium. You will come back recharged and full of positive ideas. Click here to read a summary of the Wine Industry of Tomorrow.
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Conversion to Buyer
Let’s pretend that with training, we raise our conversion of guests to buyers from 35% to 40%, with the same average order of $100. That would increase the annual number of buyers by 900 to 7,200, resulting in $90,000 in additional sales. Is that realistic? With an increase of 900 buyers, this amounts to only 17 buyers per week, or 2.5 more buyers per day. If we have an average of two to three staff members per day, each one only needs to get one additional purchase per day to exceed our goal.
Conversion to Wine Club
Let’s say that with this same training, we increase our annual conversion to wine club members from 6% (or 1,080 new members) to 8% (or 1,440 new members). This would add 360 new wine club members per year. With the four annual shipments totaling $600, we have just added $216,000 in sales. Is this doable? If we want 360 new club members, we need just one more per day from the whole team. And, if each team member added just one more club member per shift, we could double or triple that number. Put that way, it sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? And this doesn’t include the facts that wine club members bring friends (who sometimes join the club), and they tend to spend more in the tasting room and from email campaigns than non-club members.
Conversion to Email List
Lastly, if we were able to raise our conversion to our email list from 15% to 20%, this would result in 900 new email list members per year. This is very doable if all of the new buyers above sign up for the email list when they make their purchase. If we are getting $1.50 per email sent and do eight campaigns per year, we have just added $10,800 in revenue.
The big question we need to answer is how much would you spend to get this $316,800 in additional revenue by sending your tasting room staff to class? Would you spend $1,000 per staff member—say perhaps $10,000 for 10 people—to net $306,800 in increased sales? How many other investments is your winery making that would produce that kind of return?
And then there are the other rewards from training for the winery—trained staff members are happier because they are more confident in their jobs and their commissions grow. Happy staff members stay with the organization longer and provide a better guest experience, which leads to increased conversions beyond what we have hypothesized above. The untrained staff member may instead disappoint customers who then never return.
So as we look at our budgets for 2016, it should be crystal clear that the cost of not training is the one cost we cannot afford.
Source: WISE Academy,
www.wineindustrysaleseducation.com
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Wine Industry Metrics:
Direct-to-Consumer December 2015
Sales are up 7% in December 2015 over December 2014, and 8% for 2015 overall. Read the whole story at Wines & Vines Metrics.
Wines Industry Metrics:br /> Winery Job Index December 2015
December usually drops significantly, but the total for 2015 was up 19% over the previous year. Read here.
Importance of the Message Content
What do we say to our consumers? Here is an essay on the value of what a winery sends out, via various media, as content about themselves and their products.
Where to Look for Winery Jobs?
With more than 9,400 wineries in North America (5,900 with tasting rooms, and 4,677 with wine clubs), there are many opportunities for DtC professionals. Here are the latest opportunities on winejobs.com.
The Invasion of the Drones
Many grapegrowers are using drones to map vineyards and look for nutrient deficiencies as well as diseases. But drones have another use: revamping your winery image with videos. Read more.
Bottle-Your-Own-Wine Events
In the continuing quest for the next event that will draw visitors to your winery, here is one about “Bottling Your Own Wine,” as seen on the video from Toogood Estate, producers of Who's Your Daddy?, Rocket Dog Red, Foreplay and Zin Chic.
News from North American Wine Regions:
North East
Great Lakes
South East
The Plains
Northwest
Southwest
Cheers,
JB
Please send suggestions to trf@winesandvines.com.
Jacques Brix is vice president and director of sales, West Coast, for Wines & Vines. This column is based on his personal experiences at winery tasting rooms and events.
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