Trellis Growth Partners, LLC
  • Welcome
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Real Whole Foods
  • Research Reports
  • Contact Us

Portland Business Journal's Take on OR Competition

5/18/2011

0 Comments

 
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by writer, Jon Bell, for his Portland Business Journal piece.  I spoke with him about the importance of recognizing the extremely competitive nature of the industry and subsequent need for a strong business plan and marketing effort in addition to great wine that over delivers on value.

Read the full article by visiting my website's News page in the Published articles section.
0 Comments

What Winery Operators Can Learn from Casino Management

5/16/2011

0 Comments

 
Why look to gaming to provide best practices for the wine industry?  Because we're all in the hospitality industry first.  Many in wine prefer to focus on the product attributes (variety, oak treatment, aging time, etc.), but given the tremendous competition, it is much easier to differentiate and sell profitably given a winery's service attributes (customer experience, club member benefits, etc.).  

Oregon provides a great example -- there is a lot of excellent Pinot Noir produced here.  It tends to be costly, relatively scarce and quite similar from a broad consumer perspective.  It is much easier to differentiate based on the winery's story, tasting room/ customer experience and overall brand sentiment and loyalty.

Just like casino hosts, tasting room staff are on the "front line", dealing with customers daily.  Despite excellent training and customer focus, there will always be problems needing solutions and situations needing service recovery.  To achieve a better return on service efforts, a recent Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Casino Payoff piece recommends "freedom within a framework" approach.

Author Dennis Fisher reports that giving casino hosts more autonomy to make customer service and recovery decisions results in better return on investment and enhanced staff knowledge. For example, a host with five years of experience working in a loosely monitored environment gained 32% better return on comp investment than a counterpart working in a tightly controlled environment ($1.82 versus $1.38 for every comp $1). 

Therefore, the researchers found that staff who have the opportunity to learn in a more loosely monitored environment encouraging experimentation with reason make better service decisions leading to bottom line profit.

What types of service policies are in place at your winery?  Do you encourage knowledge acquisition through experience realizing that mistakes will be made, or focus too intently on singular experiences and individual one-time errors?  Do your incentive policies encourage innovative thinking?  Do you recognize and reward customer service recovery efforts?
0 Comments

    About our blog

    Commentary on all things marketing and more.

    Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If you are having experiencing problems, send us an email.

    Categories

    All
    Branding
    Business
    Competitions
    Conferences
    Crisis Communication
    Customers
    Distribution
    Email Marketing
    Events
    Hospitality
    Leadership
    Legal
    Marketing
    Media Relations
    Oregon
    Packaging
    Planning
    Ppq
    Pr
    Research
    Sales
    Service Recovery
    Social Media
    Strategy
    Survey
    Tasting Notes
    Washington
    Websites
    Wine

    Archives

    December 2017
    August 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009

    RSS Feed

Trellis Growth Partners, LLC
​
​All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2019.

415-283-7830  |  Phone  |  Email

  • Welcome
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Real Whole Foods
  • Research Reports
  • Contact Us