We’re Building the Community Benchmark Team!
Greetings friends!
This time last year we were a bare skeleton crew of a genius coder, a brilliant intern, and a guy with a crazy idea about benchmarking (that’s me). We’re happy to share that we’ve more than doubled our team and are blasting off in 2018 — we’ve added another software engineer, a designer, a product and member manager, a DTC analyst and a social media manager.
We’ve been signing up new members in Mendocino, Napa, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz and Livermore. Please schedule a brief demo with me if you’d like to take a peek at the latest version of our software.
With the new year fast approaching, it’s time to get your team excited about new beginnings. Here are some things to think about as you plan your tasting room management strategy for next year:
- Steer the ship! Be clear on goals. Ensure that your team is clear on company goals, tasting room goals and personal goals. When individuals don’t understand an organization’s larger vision, they can’t understand their role in it or impact on it. Make their work meaningful by encouraging a culture of daily learning as well as personal and company growth.
- Incentivize! Find out what motivates the members of your team — financial, educational, and emotional factors all play into what keeps that employee showing up and working hard. Rewarding success with dollars is a key motivator for most people, but so are continuing education (Seminars, WSET or Court of Somms courses, COPIA or Napa College courses, Hospitality Trainings etc) and acknowledging the efforts and energy that people put into their work. Creating a culture of support and teamwork will instate trust and purpose to your team.
- Empower your team! Hospitality in tasting rooms is key — how do people feel when they visit your tasting room? If your team feels they “own” the tasting room they are more likely to treat the space like their home, and by default treat guests as though they were guests in their home and by default sell more wine. Empower your team to own their space, connect personally with guests, and participate in decision making.
- Measure your data! (OK, OK, a semi-shameless plug.) If you know where you stand year over year, month over month, you can identify your weaknesses along with your strengths. Set and track individual sales goals as well as tasting room sales goals so you can develop solutions to problems before they arise.
- Celebrate your successes! Take the time to acknowledge when you do things right whether as a team or individually. Fostering positivity and success creates a space for people to get creative on finding new ways to be innovative in their work. Get creative. Post acknowledgements on the wall in the breakroom, take the team to lunch, get creative- the options are endless and effective.
Getting Social — One more thing — we’ve begun the process of connecting with our fans, friends and members on social media. If you haven’t seen our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn pages yet, please find us there and say hi!
We’re very excited for the future of Community Benchmark and have plans to announce new product features, customer success stories and additional ways you can use your data to generate actionable insights in the near future. Stay tuned!
Cheers,
John Keleher
Founder, Community Benchmark
johnk