The Tahoe portion of the event was hosted at  Sunnyside Steakhouse, a popular destination for both locals and tourists to the area. On this gorgeous Tahoe spring day, the venue provided tasters not only some fabulous wines but also a spectacular view of the lake. The second half of the trip was spent in Sacramento where Inertia hosted another wine tasting at the Citizen Hotel, a newly renovated building located downtown.

Our featured portfolio varied, providing a range of selection for potential buyers who came from all around the Tahoe and the greater Sacramento area to taste the wines. Wineries that were featured came from Napa, Sonoma, the Central Coast, Willamette… all the way to Walla Walla. All of these wines have not readily available in these markets in the past, and these two events provided an entry to the market for some great boutique brands who are selling through our Direct-to-Trade program.

Inertia hopes to host more events that enable wineries to directly connect with trade accounts to our Direct to Trade wineries. We expect to see many of the wines featured at the tastings throughout establishments in the Tahoe and Sacramento area this upcoming summer.

For more on this, please check out a great review and synopsis of some of the featured wines by journalist Barbara Keck. Featured in the Tahoe Weekly, you can also read her blog post entitled “Where to Wine in Lake Tahoe” here.

Consider the Wine Club, for instance, that delivers four shipments annually to members and costs $200 per shipment. That price probably includes a 20% discount on the price of the wine included in the shipments. Now consider that the average wine club member will stay in your club for at least 3-4 shipments. Even if you offer mailing list members a 50% discount on a package of 4 wines if they join the wine club, you come out ahead in the long run financially, plus you are likely to create a real evangelist for your wines—assuming you do what should do with wine club members—treat them like kings.

The benefits of accumulating new wine club members far outweighs nearly any pain that comes with momentarily or conditionally discounting your wine.

Technology companies use post-project reviews, or “post mortems” as a method to conduct this type of analysis. However, any business can benefit – if you set out to accomplish an objective within a specific period of time, you’ve got a project ripe for review. Think about barrel tasting events, winemaker dinners, in-market visits, auctions, wine club runs, etc. An effective post-mortem will help you identify:

• what went well
• what didn’t go so well
• areas where you can improve
• how to achieve that improvement

There are three primary stages to an effective post mortem:

1. Preparation
2. The Meeting
3. Follow-Up

Preparation

First, determine who will participate. At a minimum, require attendance of all the people who  performed the day-to-day activities. It can also be informative to invite everyone who was at all a part of the project, from budget planners to the executives who set company direction. Once you’ve decided on your list of participants, choose a meeting facilitator. If you have the luxury of assigning someone who was not directly involved in the project, that can help in that they are more likely to be impartial. Otherwise, just make sure to put on your impartial observer hat. You will also need a designated note-taker.

Perhaps most importantly, set your intentions, goals, and agenda for the meeting in advance and distribute them to the team. This allows the participants to prepare on their own which makes the meeting go more efficiently and helps everyone stay on track. Consider also posing questions ahead of time to spark ideas and reflection.

The Meeting

Set any rules you might have at the outset. For instance, “be constructive and respectful”. Reiterate your intentions and objectives, then start working your way through your agenda (with time constraints noted). Sample topics include:

• Process & Planning
• Communication
• Roles
• Acknowledgements

Some Tips:

1. Choose a meeting style and surroundings that match your company culture. It can refreshing to be removed from the usual work environment as well.
2. Starting out by reviewing the original project timeline can help ground the meeting and set the scope as well as identifying areas that required time adjustments.
3. Critical to evaluating the success of any project is an analysis of the stated goals compared to the project results.
4. As the team talks through communication issues, it is likely that future role definition takes shape.
5. Be sure to acknowledge all the things that went well, note areas that surpassed expectations, and emphasize any exceptional performances.

Follow-Up

Write up the meeting summary, highlight any process improvement suggestions, and capture the noted action items. For instance, during the meeting you may have created a list of materials that need to be created or improved, or discovered an adjustment to team roles, or recommended that each project begin with a kick-off meeting with all the key players along with a project plan to indentify all the necessary tasks with assignments noted. Finally, distribute your summary to the project stakeholders.The next time you embark upon a similar project, you will have a blueprint and list of improvements to take advantage of during your planning. Then you will have a whole new set of events to learn from and refine.

I’d love to hear if you have tried this type of exercise and if you have any tips to offer. There is always more to learn!

The overriding theme of the different stories profiled is that; one, everyone will hit a slump, and two, you’re in a slump because something changed.  It’s amazing to me that these highly skilled professional athletes, who spend thousands of hours practicing, would have something as fundamental as the way the hold the club, change over time. For most of them, the way they broke out of their slump was to get back to basics.  Some returned to their first coach, others went back to old equipment they use to use, others simply started enjoying the game again.

So how does this apply to business, and specifically the wine business.  My principal skill set is sales.  I’m pretty good at it, and have had a fair amount of success.  I’ve also had slumps.  Weeks, even months, when I couldn’t close a deal.  Most often it was due to one of two things.  I had either lost my enthusiasm for what I was selling, or I had stopped doing the basics and just jumped to the end game.  If I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit I had stopped working as hard as I had to, and tried to coast on my past successes.

How many wineries are in a slump today?  Easy to blame it on the economy, and maybe that is the total reason.  However, I suspect that some of us have strayed from the basics that built our business in the first place.  Do we spend time in the tasting room connecting with our customers, or do we leave that to the staff?  Have we picked up the phone and placed a call to some club members, or have we just been too busy for that?  How about market visits? Have we spent time in the trenches with our distributors? Have we looked at our pricing in relation to our competition? Most importantly, are we, and our staff, still enjoying what we are doing?  Are we letting the pressure of todays market dampen our enthusiasm, and reflect in our dealings with our customers?

Is there a magic pill for breaking out of a slump? Unfortunately,no there is not.  Most often it is as elemental as remembering how you became successful in the first place, and returning to those actions.

Good luck, and good selling,

Mitch