Central Coast Wine Blogs

10 Signs Your Business is Failing: And How to Recover

Although we are seeing signs of general economic recovery, the last year has been a hard slog for small winery and vineyard owners.  In an economic downturn, the luxury good, hospitality, and travel industries are often the hardest hit.  Among our associates, chins are held high and stories of silver linings abound.  But industry vendors and salesmen are telling a different story--one of back payments requiring COD status, higher returns, downtrending sales, and equipment foreclosures.

Now more than ever, it's important to have a clear-eyed view of your business' health, ratios and sales trends.  In a climate where bankers are looking at every new loan application with a jaundiced eye, and subjecting renewals to greater scrutiny, it's important to be able to identify and address each of the signs that your bankers will be looking at.  Even if you feel that your sales and bottom line are healthy, you may be surprised to see your business in a different light by applying some of the ratios below.  And if your business really is healthy, then you should be able to present these ratios with pride and explain what you are doing to protect and increase them.

A white-paper article by Debra Ellis of Wilson & Ellis Consulting describes the Ten Hidden Signs Your Company Is Sinking and Some Life Preservers.  We'll discuss each of these ten issues in a little more detail, including what you can do to improve your business health, but here is the list in simple form:

1. Customer attrition exceeds acquisition.
2. Your best customers are buying less.
3. Buyers are not completing the life cycle.
4. Your vital signs are erratic.
5. You have more back inventory.
6. Costs are not aligned with sales.
7. Analytics are trending down.
8. You are avoiding innovation.
9. Employees are unhappy.
10. You have lost your passion.

Death, Desire and Cassoulet . . .

 
 
  
What, exactly, does Central Coast Wine Blogs do?

What I do is make your dreams possible. 

In fact, I may occasionally take you outside of your comfort zone and show you the possible. 

For instance, when I met New York cookbook author Brigit Binns, who is also known in culinary circles as roadfoodie, I was instantly charmed. Who hasn't heard of roadfoodie, the sassy vixen who has documented her culinary travels across the US and around the world?   Brigit is the author of 23 cookbooks, including some gorgeous Williams Sonoma selections. When I met her last month she was working hard on a couple of cookbook drafts and  taking a month-long hiatus in Paso Robles to relax and finish her recipe testing.  But her current dream is to write a cookbook inspired by the central coast, where she spent many glorious summers as a child.

To help her achieve that goal, I introduced her to some wineries and local food artisans.  But I really wanted her to experience our culinary connection to the land, so I even went so far as to set up a boar hunt for us.  Dubost Ranch Winery kindly hooked us up with professional guide Matt Tupen ([email protected]) and we had the time of our lives. 

From roadfoodie.com, What a Boar:

"I am standing underneath a scarred, ancient oak tree on an isolated ranch far to the west of Paso Robles, in central California, with a dead body, a blond woman, and a strange man—I first laid eyes on him five minutes ago—who is holding a very, very sharp knife.  'It’s a surgical blade,' he says, with disarming cheer."

"The dead body is a 200-pound wild boar, the man is a hunter, and the blond woman is Mary Baker, of Central Coast Wine Blogs; she has opened doors for me in this wine community that I might otherwise have spent months—if not years—knocking on."

You might think that sliding around in the mud in an ATV and learning to skin a boar with a surgical knife is not a typical woman's idea of fun.  And you'd probably be right.  But we loved it  And the boar (pictured above) was parceled out lovingly to local foodies.  In Brigit's hands, he became a delicious and robust cassoulet, which she proclaimed a 'Passoulet', and it was served with Paso Robles syrah and cabernet.

So when you ask me what Central Coast Wine Blogs does, my reply would be . . .

I help you realize your dreams.  Whatever you want to achieve, I can take you there and beyond. 

How to Write an Effective Press Release

　

A successful press release convinces a writer or editor to write about your product and business.

What actually happens to your press release when it arrives at the publication? I’ll tell you. An intern or editorial assistant downloads all the morning emails. Then she sorts them into piles. Then she picks up the biggest pile and walks it over to the advertising department. "Here you go," she says as she plops the stack on the advertising intern’s desk. "A hundred or so product pitches thinly disguised as press releases."

Print publications are in the business of selling advertising space to businesses like yours. This is the main source of their income. Therefore, if you approach the media with a message that you have a product to sell, your message will go straight to Advertising. Or worse—into the wastebasket.

"But I have wine to sell," you say. "New releases! I’m a new brand. I’m the hottest thing out there since Brad Pitt and they should be interested."

Um, sorry. They’re not. The wine industry churns out new labels like a Gallo bottling line. The fact that you exist and are anxious to sell product is not a story.

But you CAN capture a writer’s interest with a well-crafted press release, and there are only three things you need you do.

1. Identify a unique angle.

2. Position yourself as an expert.

3. Write a professional release.

Step 1: Identify a unique angle about your business.

It could be the start of a new trend, an unusual farming technique, experimental packaging—anything truly new or different. Here are some ideas: