"Are you doing anything new, dynamic, and outside?" the e-mail said. A friend was asking if I'd be interested in being on an "Emerging from Covid" panel discussion about wineries' wine tastings. It was a great question, because it made me pause to think hard about this momentous event we are dealing with and how it has impacted our on-site engagements.

After sleeping on it, I decided that I had nothing to contribute. The property I'm working with is doing foundational work in this area that need not be overly clever at this stage. I did search the web and read some articles on the subject. It seems that the industry is attracted to the idea that social distancing and the new necessity for COVID 19 protocols are turning us all from caterpillars into butterflies. I think that storyline is over-inflated.

What remains dynamic is the same as always.

Knowing your audience, backgrounding them before arrival, setting up the relationship and expectations perfectly, creating an effortless path, demonstrating clarity of intent, personalizing the interaction and emotionally over-delivering, matching your story strengths to their life values, consummating the relationship, recording the exchange with human insights, and mining the seam post-visit.

Some folks are promoting isolated pods in the vineyards. Others, wine selecting from your car or sitting in private garden arbors. My dubious favorite is, "Our exclusive setting was always safer." These physical elements are temporary marketing comfort blankets.

The real dynamism is not newsworthy. It comes, as it always did, from consistently carrying out the fundamentals with honesty and heart.