Increase your Wine Sales this Christmas

Christmas is approaching quickly. Here’s a fast way to increase your sales.

Create gift packs.

Put together a bundle of special holiday-themed items and sell it for one price. You’ve all seen gift baskets, I’m sure. It’s the same principle.

Holiday shoppers like buying bundles of items because they make great gifts. Also, people throw a lot of food-related parties during the holidays. If you can provide a wine/cheese combination or a wine/snacks combination, you’ve just saved the home chef a bundle of work. They’ll buy it just for that.

Taste your wines, figure out what will go well with them, and then put those items together. For example, one of the Arizona wineries has a Merlot with a light smoky flavor. Pair that wine with a smoked gouda or a smoked cheddar cheese, and you have a great match. Put it into a colorful package, add a holiday ribbon, and you can sell it for more than the cost of the two put together.

However, don’t just bundle products together without thinking about it. Take the time to put together winning combinations. Remember, YOU are the expert in the wine/food area. Customers look to you to help them have a satisfying wine experience. If you bundle together some great flavors, they’ll remember you and come back for more.

This will help with your PR as well. The local daily TV programs (Channel 3, Channel 15, etc) are always looking for stories that will help the home chef. If you can provide suggestions for improving their viewers’ holiday parties, the TV stations will be interested in talking with you.

And remember: Actively encourage your potential customers to *experience* the gift packs. When you’re displaying the product gift packs, provide tastes of the wine and cheese together. Tell the tasters that those are the items in the gift pack and that they’re specially chosen to go together. The more senses the customer uses (taste, smell, sight) to experience your product, the more likely they are to purchase.

And it doesn’t have to be just cheese. Sausage, chocolates, fruit, cakes; whatever goes well with your particular wines will work.

So before you head out to that next tasting to show off your wines, put together a couple of gift packs and offer them to your customers. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many more sales you’ll gain by doing this.