Client Testimonials

“Sandra is truly a DTC/hospitality guru who has been instrumental in training and educating our team on best practices. Her understanding of the customer journey and her insights and expertise have enabled our team to execute high-touch hospitality and an authentic connection with our customers. Sandra’s trainings are thorough and approachable and our team is always inspired after spending time with her”.

“FANTASTIC JOB SHANA! The Digital marketing Webinar was really great! Thank you again for presenting to the members of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.

“Hi Sandra – we are so appreciative of your time and expertise in compiling and executing a fabulous staff training over these past several weeks. Our management team is hard at work shoring up all of the logistical loose ends and mapping out our follow up training materials.”

“Thank you Sandra! I really enjoyed the Winery Telesales Workshop and have LOTS of notes and ideas to share with the team.”

“Sandra – it has been great to attend your workshops through Napa Valley Vintners and I have been able to pull some great tools to lift our customer service level up. Thank you for what you do and for sharing this with all of us. I’ve always felt that if we all do it better, we lift the whole valley in the eyes of our guests.”

“I had the privilege of attending Sandra Hess’s panel recently and I especially found her checklist for consumer engagement strategies to be incredibly helpful. Having a tangible guide on how to better my tasting room 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!”

“Sandra – thanks so much for your help and a great seminar hosted by the Napa Valley Vintners yesterday. We got a lot out of the Wine Consumer Data Collection presentation and look forward to sharing with our team.”

“Thank you so much for bringing the DTC Wine Roadshow to Amador. I had a great experience, and took away so many helpful tips and tidbits that I’m looking forward to applying to Borjon. I look forward to attending similar events in the county. Keep up the great work!”

“Sandra, thank you for providing our group with the most practical, timely and readily-implemented tools 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.”

“It is my pleasure to recommend Sandra Hess 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 us at Ehlers Estate to use Vin65/WineDirect from top to bottom and then to use the List Builder Reporting Tools to segment our biggest purchasers, know where they are from, and how to view these key buyers by location as well as buying preferences. I would hire her anytime to help make the most out of CRM data and to train a DTC team.”

“Thank you so much for the amazing and informative seminar. I really learned a bunch and am grateful for your time!”

“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!”

“As a DTC team we had started to stagnate a little. While doing work at a B to B+ level, we wanted more. Sandra 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.”

“Hi Sandra – thank you for hosting the past four sessions of the DTC Wine Management Academy. The sessions have been very helpful and appreciate the tools shared!”

“Sandra – thank you for your time and energy at the “DTC Big Picture” seminar at Unified 2018. Your data and breakdowns for effective DTC practices were useful for our organization. Your insights and examples regarding shipping were also a helpful takeaway.”

“Sandra – you are the Ritz Carlton of DTC experts. You are the Valerian Steel standard of sharpness. You are ……I could go on and on. Thank you for a fast paced, clearly delivered presentation and educational experience for my team. It was great catching up with you after the class as well. I look forward to setting up our annual program for the coming year with you to make this team an extraordinary one. I am grateful.”

“Thanks so much, Sandra.  I really appreciate all that you do to raise the bar for DTC!”

“Sandra – thank you for such an organized and informative webinar on establishing Virtual Winery Events & Tasting Programs. It was just what we were looking for and will use your best practices as our framework.”

” Hi Sandra – we’re trying to keep our employees working during the pandemic and really appreciate the workshop you did on virtual tastings. We taken much of that information and created our new Virtual Tasting Program at Gloria Ferrer. So THANK YOU!”

“Thank you for sharing your important insights about direct to consumer wine sales Sandra! It was a pleasure taking the “DTC Wine Management Academy” online course and learning form you. I look forward to completing our DTC Wine Sales Strategic Plan!”

“Thank you so much for the Napa Valley Vintners training session on “Top Winery Website Tools”.  I was very impressed on how you engaged the audience even though this was a remote session. I got a lot out of the program, especially since we are about to launch our new website and cart.”

“Sandra – I learned so much your “Wine Club Design Webinar” that I recently attended! Thank you for sharing these important tools and training resources.”

“Sandra – thank you again for the amazing Storytelling workshop. It was incredibly informative with excellent takeaways that our team can implement almost immediately! I feel I learned quite a bit of new information, and reinforced some standards that tend to take a back seat.”

“Sandra, I attended your workshop and wanted to take an opportunity to reach out and thank you for a great seminar. Your workshops and online 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.”

“Hello Sandra, I want to thank you for the very useful DTC 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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 a great understanding of the world of DTC sales.”

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

“Working with Sandra through our Vin65 (WineDirect) integration was crucial to our success. Her insight helped us stream line our Direct to Consumer 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 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.”

“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.”

“Taylor Eason over-delivered on creating a 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 the excellent end-product, Taylor was great to work with – professional, lots of communication and the work was delivered on time.” 

“Sandra was a key partner for us through our Vin65 (WineDirect) 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 on Wine Consumer Engagement Best Practices. The content was very relevant and timely, as well as engaging and very helpful.”

“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.”