Welcome to part two of Turning Guests into Converts. Today, we address Categories Two and Three: Guests who come regularly to see you and converts who will tell the world about your winery, wines and why they love to visit and buy from you.
Caution: If you are a person who does not like people much, whether they are people you already know or those you have only just met, working in a hospitality center in a winery is probably not the job for you. If you do like people, working in the hospitality center is both rewarding and enjoyable. It can also be an interesting job for anyone training to be a psychologist as you meet all sorts of people.
Category Two: Regular visitors to your winery hospitality center, who also come to your events and may be members of your wine club at lower levels and greet them by name if possible.
If your winery is appointment only, once they make an appointment look up their customer record so you will know them by sight.
Ask questions:
- What have they been up to since their last visit?
- How did they enjoy the wine they purchased last time?
- What new wines have they found lately (it helps to know who your competition is).
Remind them about the wine club and any offers or events coming up (Just because they have not joined the wine club in the past does not mean they won’t join now).
Category Three: Converts are the customers who buy wine from you all the time, belong to the wine club and come to events and promote your wine to others.
Greet them by name like old friends. If possible, come from behind the bar, shake their hands or hug them, whichever is appropriate.
Tell the how pleased you are to see them and ask them questions about their lives (using information they have told you in the past or that is in their record).
If they are wine club members make sure they get the perks that go along with membership.
Give the something special to taste (other people at the tasting bar will be taking notice).
Ask them if they have found anything new in the wine world that they like (know our competition).
This is just a small sampling of ways you can make people feel comfortable. While we don’t want to overwhelm our customers with questions, (they shouldn’t feel that they are being interrogated), taking an interest in them, their relationship with wine and other things enhances the interaction and makes guests, customers and converts want to come back again.
E Column
by Elizabeth “E” Slater, In Short Direct Marketing
A recognized expert in the fields of direct marketing and sales in the wine marketplace. Slater has taught more wineries and winery associations how to create and improve the effectiveness of their direct marketing programs and to make the most of each customer’s potential than anyone in the wine industry today.
