Are your cellar door staff passionate, knowledgeable and respectful of the wineries history and its wines?

Do the cellar door staff you hire turn out to be as talented and engaged as you expected them to be? Reflect for a moment on the challenges you have experienced as a consequence of getting hiring decisions wrong. Have you lost time, energy, resources and momentum by selecting candidates who fail to deliver? or worst still damage your brand without you even knowing.

Do they interact well with customers and offer tastings according to the customers needs or follow a script.

Do you know how customers feel about your cellar door staff?

We tend to employ people that we like or have similar views to us , I know I’m guilty of that. I like people I can relate to, understand, communicate with but the pitfall can be – do the customers like them ?

Your ability to grow, retain, inspire and leverage people is profoundly influenced by the quality of the selection decisions you make. Here are five essential ways to hire great people who are willing and able to perform at the level you need them to.

1. Understand the role and person you need

Before you start your search for candidates, take the time to fully understand what and who you are looking for. Review or design the job by identifying the roles and responsibilities of the position, as well as your selection criteria. Having a position description will help keep you focused on what matters most throughout the process.

Recognise the non-negotiable outcomes you need the person to achieve and challenges they are likely to encounter. Identify the capabilities and character traits needed to be successful in the role and your business. Think beyond technical skills to the knowledge, experience and behaviours that will enable someone to be an effective member of your team.

2. Apply a consistent approach

A consistent approach throughout the hiring process will unquestionably impact the quality of decisions you make. Most importantly, it will enable you to accurately assess candidates relative to one another, as well as to provide a fair opportunity to everyone who applies.

A consistent process begins with a clear view of the approach you will take. For example, what steps in the process will you ask candidates to participate in? Will you conduct phone interviews? How many face-to-face interviews will you conduct? When will reference checking occur? Interview guides that include questions aligned to your selection criteria are essential tools that will help you assess staff consistently.

3. Assess business fit

Identify the values and behaviours you need every new member of your team to bring, and ask questions that expose the candidate’s alignment with each. Read between the lines and observe attitude when reading application documents, conducting interviews or completing reference checks. Assess the candidate’s priorities, philosophies, beliefs, prejudices and motivations.

Consider the likely impact the candidate’s approach to doing their job and dealing with others will have on their success, and that of the team. Never ignore concerns you may have about cultural alignment. The way people choose to behave defines the extent to which they effectively apply their talents. Unless you believe someone is likely to behave successfully, don’t hire them.

4. Assess competence

Search for evidence in the candidate’s career history that they have the ability to achieve the outcomes they need to. Ask that they demonstrate when they have successfully been able to apply their knowledge, skills and experience within a similar context. Provide a clear view of the core objectives, responsibilities, challenges and complexities of the role, and explore their motivation to take on the job.

Assess technical and intellectual abilities by asking candidates to participate in assessment tasks such as tasting wine, presentation or scenarios. Take steps beyond discussing the candidate’s level of competence to testing them through practical application. Give candidates reasonable time to prepare but also test the depth of their capabilities by requiring that they ‘think on their feet’ and resolve challenges in the moment.

5. Assess career goals

Amongst the most common challenges for managers is retaining people for a reasonable period of time. Explore each candidate’s motivation for applying and assess the extent to which the role you have to offer is a good next step for him or her. For example, hiring someone to be a team member when they are eager to move into a management role is likely to impact their engagement, performance and ultimate tenure. Any candidate who sees your role as a stepping stone to where they really want to be is likely to leave if a more attractive offer comes along.

On a recent trip to the Barossa Valley I was so overwhelmed by the cellar door woman constantly talking at me  that I could not wait to get out of there. She had been there for 10 years, so clearly the owner thought she was doing a good job and to be fair maybe other people relate to her better.

But do you want cellar door staff that only some customers relate to or do you want cellar door staff that everyone relates to because they change their delivery according to different customers.

Being able to read customers is a difficult thing and staff need training in being able to read customers

Read our post on customer segments

The answer to the question is, of course, simple, you ask them .

You ask your cellar door visitors how their experience was, either simply at the cellar door

How was your experience today?

This will give you an overall picture but unfortunately not that detailed or specific

Or post visit, through surveys or detailed research

Or you can ask them at the cellar door using a new platform called Cuspidor.

Providing an exceptional visitor experience does not happen by chance, it requires a detailed breakdown of the elements and responses according to different customers needs. Cellar door staff play a vital role in the overall customer experience.

WFA guide to a successful cellar door

Location
Close to, or preferably part of, a main tourist route.
Your proximity to target markets and/or high-population areas.
Your ability to attract visitors year round.
Being part of a strong tourism region and/or close to other wineries.

First impressions
Brand consistency through your signage, buildings, grounds and facilities.
Professionally presented and maintained entrance, grounds and buildings.
Authenticity and a clearly recognisable point of difference.

Signage
Strong entry statement that entices visitors to stop.
Good directional signage into and throughout your property.

Extra selling points
Adequate parking for a range of visitors, including buses, caravans and limousines.
Your ability to create a destination in your own right.
Features that encourage referrals from other wineries and attractions.
Family-friendly facilities and grounds.
Links with nature-based activities.
A range of facilities that lead to a ‘total tourism experience’.

wfa.org.au

Businesses always try to woo customers with impeccable customer service during the buying cycle.

But what happens after all your efforts pay off and the customer buys from you?

What happens after they have bought the wine/beer, and they leave the winery/brewery?

Most businesses put their focus back on new customer acquisition and do whatever it takes to win them over and get the deal done over and over again. The cycle continues in pretty much the same fashion, until the old customers come back to do more business.

But the question is: Will they come back?

The answer is simple: not unless you give them reasons to do so. 

I’m not saying that you don’t need new customers.

Every business needs them; it’s virtually impossible to grow without making new customers.

But to ignore an existing source of revenue that’s right under your nose is just bad business sense. For many businesses, the total customer lifecycle is about the buyer’s experience from the beginning to the end.

What comes after is often left out. This is a huge mistake. When you think of it from a customer’s standpoint, it’s not hard to understand why.

Despite the fact that customer acquisition is six times the cost of retention, a new report concludes that more than eight out of 10 companies tie their business objectives to customer acquisition but less than half give importance to retention.

In a world where terms like “Yelp economy” are sometimes used to highlight the fact that companies are being watched and discussed by clients, both past and present, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to spend a little more effort post-sale or in between sales.

Luckily iwine HQ  can help you map the customer journey from customer attraction to customer return.

Because we start at pre cellar door arrival to return visit, we take into consideration all events, all touch points, so that we can build a complete customer journey map, using new tools like Cuspidor, we now have an opportunity to engage with customers post visit and if there were low points in their visit, find out why.

If you would like to make your life easier and more informed contact iwine HQ straight away!

There was a number of wineries that  i would not go back to and that’s because of the cellar door experience. I would have liked to have told them but how can you?  Knowing what your customers feel about your wine and winery is vital to the long term success of your business.

Luckily a new innovation –Cuspidor– which can help customers record which wines they loved and captures their details at the same time, can change that. It won’t change if they have a bad experience, but thats where we come in.

If you would like a quick and dirty appraisal or a full audit of your cellar door experience please contact us and we can provide you with an indepth insight of the customers experience.

We can assist you to make sure those myths remain excellently that myths that don’t apply to your winery

Further reading

I came across a great article by wine compass on ‘how to know you are at a great cellar door’