Six Steps for Increasing Sales

It goes without saying that your food and service must be significantly unique and separated by excellence from your competition before you can begin to think about building additional sales. With this said we can then explore the following Six Steps for Increasing Sales:

1. Turn Your Managers Into Detectives-Unit mangers must be constantly investigating the needs, wants and desires of their guests. This means talking to guests tableside, in the lobby, on the sidewalk and everywhere else the guest goes! Listening skills first and then follow up skills must be applied as part of this step. There is pure magic when a guest sees that something they suggested to a manager becomes reality on the next menu or is featured as a special.

2. Create a Process to Follow Up or Reconnect with Your Guests After Their Dining Experience. This is about building relationships with your guests. Email newsletters, hand written notes, post cards, birthday greetings are all examples of post visit follow up techniques. People appreciate a personal touch and being connected with a business in their neighborhood.

3. Visit Your Check Average Figures. Keep in mind that the easiest way to increase sales is to sell more to the guests you already have. Take a look at your appetizer sales, sides, desserts, after dinner drinks and see if there are opportunities. Build real and immediate incentives for staff to do a little more selling. As an example to get you started--calculate the average number of appetizer sales per guest. Is it 1 out of every six guest, one out of every four guests? Take a look and set some goals and share the info with staff.

4. Make Your Guests Partners-Include them in unit level activities (no--not taking the weekly inventory in the freezer or counting the banks out at closing) When you are working on new menus, or rolling out a new wine list think about including your guests as part of the roll out or tasting. Look for other ways for guests to participate as partners or internal consultants.

5. Reward Your Regulars-You may think this is corny--but our guests still love to be rewarded for being regulars. The old punch card or make x visits and get the next one free are still appreciated. Find a reward system that fits your style and give it a try. If credit card companies can reward their customers by giving back a percentage of their purchases to a college savings fund we can think about how we can reward our regular guests and their families.

6. Take Care of Your Employees-Employees love to talk about their jobs. If you make your place the best place to work--all of a sudden you will find yourself hosting all the special events in the lives of your employees. This seems to also have an effect in other areas as well. All of a sudden community groups want to have their regular meetings and special events in your shop. Keep in mind that employees often sell more outside the restaurant than they do while working on the floor.

Thank you to Ron Yudd for his permission to post this article.