We work in a chaotic industry where success—or failure—is often determined by pennies earned or pennies lost on a store-by-store, period-by-period, shift-by-shift basis. So as we rush headlong into the final quarter of 2007, I thought it might be helpful to share some quick and effective tips, tricks and techniques to help build your bottom line over the next 90 days. The ideas are a mix of the new and time-tested and true. But enough talk, you’ve got targets to hit. Here’s a quiver-full of sales-building arrows.
1) Train better and more often than the competition.
2) Improve service. Serve your team and guests better than anyone else; that improves employee retention, which simultaneously lowers costs and builds customer traffic.
3) Market repeat visits to every guest through every transaction. The goal is not merely to “sell more” but to get the customer to come back more often. Getting a guest to return one more time in a month increases your sales 100 percent with that person.
4) Seek out, select and retain servers, greeters and bartenders who are natural sales people, and prune those who are not. Stop paying people who make your job harder.
5) First teach servers why we must sell before you teach them what to sellor how to sell it. Show them how low the profit is and reinforce that daily by pointing out that servers must sell as much as the kitchen can make and the kitchen must make as much as the servers can sell.
6) Training builds confidence. Confidence builds sales. Teach servers product knowledge daily via pre-shift meetings to help them feel comfortable and natural at suggesting items. It is better to know it and not need it than it is to need it and not know it.
7) Remove all internal obstacles to selling more. Make a list of potential obstacles by asking your managers to fill in this blank: “Our customer-facing team tends not to sell because…” Examples may include slow ticket times (work with the kitchen team), perceived slowness of the point of sales system (practice order-entering for busy times), lack of inventory, faulty prep, operational and throughput bottlenecks during peak periods, kitchen issues, supplies, and employee attitudes. Now do what it takes to eliminate those obstacles.
8) Schedule smartly and staff properly so that servers have time to sell and time to connect with customers. Giving servers an eight-table section to save labor dollars may be “penny-wise” but it’s certainly “pound-foolish.”
9) Train your hosts better. This is the first salesperson that guests meet when they enter a fullservice restaurant. Don’t overlook the importance of teaching them how to recommend drinks, desserts and specials while seating guests.
10) Set specific sales goals for each shift. First, agree at the weekly managers’ meeting what the gross-sales goals are for each shift in the upcoming week. Then break it down into the lowest-common denominators for the waitstaff: How many beverages, sides, desserts or combos does that translate to per server, per shift? Share those goals with your team members during regular pre-shift meetings.
11) Train the drive-thru team and server team to upsell by using the classic “I say/you say?” training exercise: “Marcel, I’m the customer and I say ‘I’ll have the No. 1 burger combo with a Coke.’ What would you say in return?” The answer you’re looking for is, “Would you like cheese on your burger combo?” Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
12) Institute fun and fair shift sales contests for servers, and don’t forget to include the kitchen team, too.
13) Recognize and reinforce suggestive-selling efforts as often as you can during the shift. Ditto for after the shift as you’re releasing each server.
14) Sell more gift cards year-round. Don’t wait for the holidays. People celebrate special occasions (or have contests that could benefit from your gift cards) year-round.
15) If you have a frequent-diner program, drive business on slower days or dayparts by offering extra points for patronizing your restaurant then.
16) Connect to the community. Focus more on building positive relationships with key organizations, charities and businesses within your trading area. Think of it as social capital and factor it into your weekly marketing plans and efforts.
17) Reduce turnover. Profitability is arguably a simple formula of sales minus costs. Studies indicate that the cumulative cost of losing a current employee and then hiring and training a new team member to replace them is approximately $6,000 per employee. Return-on-retention should never be overlooked as a significant profitability matrix. Besides, retaining high performers practically guarantees high sales.
18) One-hundred-percent table visits. Seek out a stranger every shift and touch every table with hospitality.
19) Know and understand current, companywide and historical sales trends. Use the data to set goals, project sales and beat targets.
20) Be better at local store marketing than the competition. Visit every business, school or organization within a three-mile radius of your restaurant no less than monthly and find ways to either bring them in or cater to them. Assign each of your managers to “adopt” specific local businesses and have them design and share a marketing plan for each one.
21) The best restaurants sell both great tasting food and memorable customer experiences. Habitual consistency in food quality, cleanliness, service and suggestive selling is what brings customers both in and back. Never get bored with the basics.
Jim Sullivan’s newest book is called “Multi Unit Leadership: The 7 Stages of Building High-Performing Partnerships & Teams” and is available exclusively at www.sullivision.com or by calling (920) 830-3915 anytime. To hear a podcast of this month’s column, go to