Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/877508
October 2017 WINES&VINES 33 VIEWPOINT them in our day-to-day operations and interac- tions with customers. It meant taking stock of our brand. If we believe in preserving the environment and our old-vine, organically farmed vineyards, then it also meant moving from paper bags to reusable bags in the tasting room and keeping staff silverware in the kitchen so no one needed to use plastic utensils. Whatever a winery's values are, it is a necessary first step to make sure they are known and lived by everyone on the team and most importantly by those who interact with customers. 2. Build a relationship-driven team We are fortunate to have some of the most amazing people working in our small family business. Most importantly they value relation- ships–with each other, with our family, with club members and in their own lives. They are people people—and while they all come from very different backgrounds and experiences, they thrive from building relationships and making people happy. We now hire with this one character trait as a priority. Even more than sales experience we look for people who have rapport and can easily connect with others. And to be clear, we have wine club members who still leave. This turnover is healthy and inevitable as people experience wines. What is important for us, however, is that we treat the end of this rela- tionship in the same healthy way we would with a graduating student. We let them know how much we have appreciated getting to know them, we wish them well and tell them that we would always like to see them again. 3. Size matters, and smaller is better This seems counter intuitive to a successful wine club, so let me be clear: A small wine club only needs to feel small. A wine club with 10,000 members can still feel small if the member receives concierge-level experi- ence. There are multiple models for how to achieve this, and while the customer man- agement software we use (Vin 65) does not capture everything we need, it is possible for every winery to monitor the health of the relationships they have with their members. We have developed systems on our own (think multiple Excel spreadsheets) to cap- ture what Vin 65 does not. Capturing this data and measuring perfor- mance has been essential for testing and implementing our ideas. We also remain open to changing course should we begin to see any negative performance as a result of the changes we've made. There are multiple ways to help make a wine club feel small. Smart, effective systems can help support and pre- serve that feeling. For example, at our winery each wine club member has an advisor, some- one on our team who is responsible for their experience as a member. This person is charged with the outreach for that member and building the relationship with him or her. And while we all strive to deliver quality ex- periences to every member, our team mem- bers feel an additional level of investment in their own club members. The expectation is that each wine club member has a personal interaction with their advisor either in person or by phone at least twice during the year. We intention- ally don't consider emails, newsletters, Facebook posts, mass mailings, newsletters or other various ways we communicate with our members as "personal." They're not. It seems a small goal, but the results have been compelling. One of the first and very subtle but, I believe, very powerful changes we saw after implementing this personal advisor approach was that our customers began calling the winery and asking for our team members by name. They were no lon- ger calling a winery or business; they were calling a person. Relationships matter Relationships are important. While we all know this to be true, relationships can also be built—strategically, thoughtfully and as part of a winery's business plan. Investing in relationships and making them the pillar of our wine club model has had a deeper and more profound impact than any market- ing idea, new brochure, discount or quar- terly newsletter. And while these are all valid strategies and techniques, we have found that getting down to what really drives people—whether students in the South Bronx or wine club members of a small, family winery in Lodi—is what we all have in common: the desire to have meaningful and authentic relationships. Mitra Grant grew up in her family's vineyards with her two older brothers and spent her childhood learning to make wine alongside her parents. After leaving Califor- nia for New York City, where she spent 15 years in edu- cation, she has now returned with her husband and two small boys to the family business and the sandy loam soils of Lodi, Calif. 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