“Sandra Hess, DTC Wine Workshops, has been instrumental in guiding our team through a strategic transformation in the DTC wine sales channel. From updating our J. Lohr Wine Clubs program, to better defining our meaningful access points, to reinforcing our wine family story, to showcasing our small-lot wines, to assisting with implementation of mobile POS/CRM strategies, to improving overall channel engagement. This ideal blend of tools, talent and technology is helping us elevate our brand experience at every consumer touchpoint”.

When it came time to invest in winery hospitality training for our DTC team at Cakebread Cellars, we knew we wanted to work with Sandra Hess. She brought a tremendous amount of experience to our trainings and worked with us to make sure our timelines were met. We learned a lot throughout the process and now have a much better understanding of priorities and procedures around service.

“Sandra was a key partner for us through our Vin65 integration.  She helped us lay the foundation for our CRM strategy, to have a true 360 degree view of our customers across all of our on-property experiences.  She is incredibly diligent and goes above and beyond for her clients, to ensure their success.  Thank you Sandra for all of your help!”

“Sandra – thank you so much for yesterday’s presentation and discussion. The content was very relevant and timely, as well as engaging and very helpful.”

“Sandra – we are trying to keep our employees working and really appreciate the workshop you did on Virtual Tasting Program Development. We have taken much of that information and created our virtual tasting program so THANK YOU!”

“Taylor Eason (DTC Consultant Network Member) over-delivered on creating a wine consumer insights profile for one of our wine brands. The detailed report will be crucial for our marketing programs in the upcoming year. In addition to their excellent end-product, Taylor is great to work with – professional, lots of communication and the work was delivered on time.”

“Thank you for coming to DAOU and sharing your knowledge with us. There were some great takeaways from our workshop sessions that I plan on implementing to increase our wine club retention and continue to evolve our membership as a whole.”

“Hi Sandra – Thank you for a great and informative workshop yesterday. It was great meeting you. I will be sharing a lot from the event with our team for our upcoming staff meeting.”

“Sandra – Thank you again for a wonderful presentation at the CANVAS event this morning. I found your content to be very interesting and helpful. I look forward to sharing it with my team.”

“Sandra, the Staying Connected Workshop that you presented was very helpful and useful with simple tips and tricks to retain wine club memberships. Thank you!”

“Quady Winery worked with Sandra Hess from October 2016 to May 2017, helping us develop and implement a marketing strategy.  She shared invaluable expertise in DTC marketing, specifically in the areas of Customer Touch-Point scheduling and Vin65 implementation / migration. Sandra is very well organized, efficient, hard-working, and a great communicator.”

“Sandra, I wanted to send a quick note of thanks to you for your presentation at the Napa Valley Hospitality Forum today!  I got a lot out of it, and really appreciated your time and efforts.”

“Hello Sandra, I want to thank you for the very useful DTC Wine Brand Ambassador workshop last week at Los Alcobas.  I was attending doing double duty.  I’m both the Director of Hospitality at Burgess Cellars, and also the Napa/Sonoma brand ambassador for Women of the Vine & Spirits alliance.  I had attended with the WOTVS media director, and we both reflected how applicable your strategies and suggestions will be for us.”

“Sandra, I attended your workshop and wanted to take an opportunity to reach out and thank you for a great seminar. Your workshops and DTC wine case studies are such a great way to get insight. If you find yourself offering another seminar in Paso Robles or the local area I will be sure to attend.”

“Stefani Ginotti (DTC Consultant Network Member) was instrumental in our initial stages of opening a winery. She knows people in every aspect of the wine business from accountants to label designers to winemakers and everyone in-between while having a special skill for networking. As a former winery owner, she has her pulse on the wine industry and is full of great ideas for Direct Wine Sales Strategy that she’s willing to share.”

“The Stay Connected Workshop is a great way to stay connected with current trends in the DTC world, which is always changing. Sandra brings some heat with lots of examples and tactics/strategies to help DTC wine professionals not let stuff slip through the cracks by making sure the winery keeps it’s clients continually engaged in meaningful ways and not let the “love” fade. I was able to come back to my team and create a pacing schedule based on a template that was provided and implement these strategies immediately. I highly recommend the workshop and I will be back for the remaining series.”

“The DTC wine seminar was absolutely packed with tools and practices that have empowered my student wine makers and staff. Not a minute was wasted. I love how you not only provided us with a very complete list of contemporary sales practices, but you also gave us the resources to make implementation practical. Your seminar had the biggest ROI of anything we did this year! Thanks so much.”

“DTC Wine Workshops provided us with a DTC Strategic Wine Sales plan that worked! We contracted with Sandra Hess at DTC Wine Workshops in March 2015 to help us improve conversion rates in the tasting room, make wine club improvements and increase direct wine sales. Sandra provided a DTC Sales Strategic Plan that included data analytics, wine club analysis and staff training. Sandra also assisted with content development to communicate a genuine brand story and showcased Andretti Winery’s Old World Charm experiences. Tasting room traffic has increased as a result of her published articles in Wine Country this Week. Our team has also improved customer service and conversion rates. 2015 was the best year we have had in several years. We closed down 15 wholesale markets and placed more emphasis on direct wine sales and it paid off with a 14% sales increase at 70% gross margins. Direct to consumer wine sales is the way to go. I highly recommend DTC Wine Workshops.”

“The DTC Webinars are insightful, time-efficient, and effective for me and my boutique winery.  Sandra’s presentations reflect both research and practical experience, and she follows up promptly on individual issues.  Every seminar I come away with several immediately actionable ideas to improve my customer’s experience.”

“It’s rare when you find a webinar series that is this inspiring. Sandra has put together a clear, informative, and creative series that gives me tons of fun new ideas. Our winery’s marketing and web presence has improved with each month’s presentation. Thanks for all the great ideas and information Sandra!”

THE SCORES ARE IN!  Survey comments about Sandra’s presentation “Measuring DTC Sales Success” at the Vin65 Roadshow in Walla Walla, WA on May 26, 2015:

• As a TR manager – DTC is my passion. Thank you for reminding me & inspiring me to reach out & build better relationships
• Loved the personal touch as intro – really helped to open new ideas with newsletters and emails
• Interesting points – as a TR associate & customer your points showed how some observed/experienced situations could have been better handled.
• Thank you for making your points so clear and easy to understand

“Our team worked with Sandra Hess of DTC Wine Workshops through a re-imaging phase of our company.  Sandra was invaluable in looking at our data and giving us new insights in how to think about and use it for both ourselves and our customers advantage.  She evaluated our business and brought new insights into how we could improve our customer experiences. Sandra understands how wineries can best treat their customers and has great insights into the world of DTC sales.”

Working with Sandra through our WineDirect/Vin65 integration was crucial to our success. Her insight helped us streamline our Direct to Consumer wine business and really helped us reach that next level. She is a great resource and I very much recommend her. She’s also one heck of a karaoke singer.

“Thank you for taking the time this morning and recap the first part of the DTC Wine Management Academy Workshop Session –  that was AWESOME.  I really enjoyed today’s class as we are going to start using VIN65 and you gave us great tools on how to be more proactive on collecting our guest information and what is more important  – leverage the information! Looking forward to our next class.”

Hi Sandra. Thank you for your time and energy at the DTC Big Picture seminar at Unified last week! Your data and breakdowns for effective DTC wine practices were useful for our organization. Your insight and examples regarding shipping were also a helpful takeaway.

“We are a small winery in Murphys, which is a town that is gaining interest and getting busier every year in Calaveras County. We reached a crossroads where our sales techniques weren’t meshing with the increased business and needed help refreshing our team training. Frequently we research sales techniques but find that they don’t suit our needs since we are so small and specialized. Sandra tailored the workshop specifically to us and reenergized our team. She gave us wonderful insight into sales tactics and wine club management that were supported by extensive market research. It is one thing to just be on the pulse of the business (which Sandra definitely is!) but to have statistics, figures and real-life examples to support her training is unique. We look forward to working with her again in the future!”

“Sandra, Just a quick note to say “THANK YOU SO MUCH” for the fabulous lecture on Do’s/Don’ts of DTC sales at Merryvale on November 3, 2015. It was great to see the audience glued to your presentation. We know it takes a great deal of time and effort to put together a great lecture, so we very much appreciate your top-notch presentation.”

I really enjoyed the Top 5 Member Management Tools webinar! Dina was very personable and informative. I am sure I will be taking another DTC workshop in the near future.

Hello Sandra. Thanks for the great information today in the telesales wine workshop for our winery! We are all looking forward to our session tomorrow.

Hello Sandra. Your contribution to our learning experience yesterday at the WITS conference, Sonoma was transformative! We appreciated your spending extra time during the Round Table discussion to share your knowledge and insights in the DTC world.

“Without Sandra’s skills and help we would not have been able to successfully integrate Brennan Vineyards onto the Vin65 platform. Sandra was instrumental in extracting data from our previous management system that we would have never even known we needed. Thank you Sandra, for your insight and support in taking the next leap in growing our business and e-commerce presence. You are a tremendous asset to Brennan Vineyards and we highly recommend any winery working with you!”

“Sandra – thank you so much for the amazing and informative “Wine Consumer Data Collection” seminar. I really learned a bunch and am grateful for your time!”

“Sandra has been incredibly helpful in assisting us define and achieve our Direct to Consumer goals as a young, boutique winery. I look forward to working with DTC Wine Workshops in the future as we continue to grow and further our DTC reach.”

“Sandra, thank you for providing our group with the most practical, timely and readily-implemented ideas we’ve seen and heard in a long time. You’ve obviously got the pulse of best practices in winery DTC. We’re looking forward to keeping in touch and learning more from your DTC workshops.”

“Hi Sandra – I just wanted to take a moment to say that was a really great session today. I will digest my five pages of notes over the next few days! I have received so many “take aways” from all of the sessions that we will be implementing here at Brassfield. Thank you so much for your time and attention. It was all incredibly well-organized and well thought out.”

“Sandra and I have partnered on a number of marketing initiatives associated with The Luxury Marketing Council and DTC marketing. She brings fresh perspectives, creative flair and winery marketing insights based on hard-earned experience and results. And her business network is unsurpassed in breadth and quality. We are a better organization because of our association with Sandra and her DTC Wine Workshops”. 

“It is a continuing pleasure for me to work with Sandra on behalf of CANVAS’ education program. Sandra has presented very well received workshops on DTC through our training partnership. The feedback and referrals from attendees are exceptional. On another point I greatly respect the broader outreach she offers through her channels of DTC webinars and speaking engagements. Her perspective offers serious value for growing DTC winery revenue”. 

“As a DTC team we had started to stagnate a little. While doing work at a B to B+ level, we wanted more. Sandra provided a DTC wine sales strategy workshop series that refocused our energies and helped us understand what we were missing. I felt really good about my ROI on our work together. If you are looking for help from a true DTC professional, look no further”.

I had the privilege of attending Sandra Hess’s workshop in Walla Walla and I found her checklist for consumer engagement incredibly helpful. Having a tangible guide on how to better my tasting room team and create meaningful connections with guests was truly next level. The list has already been very helpful and I can’t wait to go through the rest of it!

“It is my pleasure to recommend Sandra and give her a stellar reference. She is one of if not the best DTC specialists in the wine industry. She stays on point and has the most up to date and relevant information. She taught the team at Ehlers Estate to use Vin65 from top to bottom and then to use the special tools to identify our biggest purchasers and then segment by location and buying preferences. I would hire her anytime to help us make the most out of our customer data and to train our team!”

“Sandra – It was so nice meeting you last week. You’re class was super informative and I hope to experience more of your lectures/ workshops to come.”

The Calaveras Winegrape Alliance has been working with Sandra Hess and DTC Wine Workshops for approximately three years. Sandra worked with a few of our local wineries individually and provided exceptional education in regards to building their brand, increasing sales and streamlining their efficiency. The individual wineries were so happy with their results that our wine alliance organization developed a plan to implement a series of workshops for our winery members. What I appreciate the most about Sandra is that she does not cookie-cutter her direct wine sales presentations. She has really taken the time to research our unique wine region, secret shop our wineries to get a feel for the tasting room experience and has talked with a number of wineries and their staff before preparing a lecture or educational workshop that was custom tailored to our region, where we are today in terms of growth and market share and where we want to be in the future. She has been an invaluable resource and advocate for our small growing wine region.

“I HIGHLY recommend these workshops. I can’t believe how much incredibly valuable information and insights I got. Sandra’s knowledge is way worth the cost.”