Your Servers- Salespeople or Order Takers?
WRAP UP
By Shawn Kiley

ALOHA!

Welcome to this special edition of TIPS. Here is where we wrap up everything we have discussed so far and package it up neatly for even the most ardent of order takers to see how their lack of performance as salespeople is not only bringing the house down, but putting a rather large dent in their pocketbook as well.

But first, let’s review our checklist so that we are certain that everything is ready to go before we finally break on through to our staff. Here’s what we should have done or should be in the process of doing RIGHT NOW:

• We should have identified the order takers and the sales people in our organization. The salespeople are easy to spot - they’re the ones always smiling and happy, leading by example, with money falling out of their pockets.
• We should have begun the process of seperating the salespeople by putting them in positions of leadership. This could be as trainers, shift supervisors, schedule makers, whatever, but they must be the ones leading the floor.
• You, as managers and owners should be modeling the behavior you want to see on every shift, no excuses, no matter what.
• In every pre-shift, you should have at least one role playing scenario or one “fun” contest that reinforces the salesperson mentality.
• By now, hopefully you have read Service That Sells, and are teaching many of the techniques to your staff.

Okay, so I googled the name of a popular family oriented restaurant, got their local menu and prices and put together an average ticket for a party of two using the skills of a salesperson and the monotony of the order taker. This should be an eye opener.  Here we go:

This “Guest Check” scenario is playing itself out every day in thousands of restaurants across the country from fast food to family dining to fine dining.  With your salespeople up front, and you modeling the behavior, shift after shift, the order taker’s will eventually become salespeople or be squeezed out of the operation. This is a serious issue. Why? Because the order takers are costing YOU money and taking up space. You’re paying them to lose money for you.

Let’s add this scenario up.  Under the assumption that the average server would be working just four shifts per week just 48 weeks out of the year. Under the assumption that just one server is playing out this scenario just once per shift. Here are some numbers for you. First let’s look at revenue. Your salesperson, using the above scenario is bringing in $4,437.12  MORE in revenue to your establishment than your order taker per year. 

In addition, your salesperson, just by being a salesperson with this one deuce once per shift is putting an extra $1,176.96 in their pockets each year in gratuity over the order taker.

C’mon Shawn, this is all hypothetical, it’s really just a shell game.  My servers won’t fall for that. REALLY?  I’ll bet you already have a few salespeople on you staff currently. Compare their check averages to your order takers. Is this hypothetical? 

Owner’s and operator’s natural instinct is to swim upstream on this one because it takes effort, hard work and consistency to convert your restaurant from order takers to salespeople. But let’s take it a step further just for fun. Let’s say you have 50 servers on your team.  Let’s say just half of them are converted salespeople. Let’s assume that they are selling to just one deuce per shift using the above scenario.  Now we’re talking about $110,928 extra revenue per year for your establishment.

Now let’s assume that 50% of your salespeople are selling only twice during their shift. Now your restaurant is generating an extra $221,856 in revenue per year.  You see where I’m going with this.

Let’s assume you’re operating a family dining restaurant that is grossing $6 million per year. I can prove to you through simple mathematics, probability and good old fashioned hard work how you can turn your $6 million dollar a year operation into a $9 million dollar a year operation in one year of applying basic, simple rules of effective restaurant selling.

Ladies and gentleman, these are all LOWBALL figures. This is nothing out of reach for the average owner/operator.

If you are the GM and your sales increase by 50% in the course of the year (and we all know that a healthy top line means a healthy bottom line) what sort of bonus would you be expecting that year? Unless you have Scrooge as your Regional, I’d count on a happy ending.

But Shawn, I run a fast food franchise, and my employees aren’t motivated by gratuities. Recent studies show that 75% of employees would rather be complimented by their manager or win an award in front of their fellow staff than make a monetary incentintive.  You have salespeople at your registers and in your drive thru’s, too. Get them up in front of the rest.  Make them shine.  Go ahead and cut a little out of the budget for a cash incentive every now and then.  There’s nothing like a crisp $100 bill handed to your top salesperson in front of the rest of the crew to drive a point home.

Well Shawn, what about the back of the house?  They’re always getting neglected. They’ll be envious or not want to be team players.  That’s where your skill as a manger/leader comes in.  Find a way to involve your back of the house crew so that everyone is committed to seeing revenues increase.  If your unit increased sales by 30% over last year, I’ll bet you could afford to give your top back of the house players a nice raise.

The sky’s the limit! The only thing holding you back is YOU.  Take the initiative now to make this happen.  Don’t put it off another day.

Remember, you’re paying your order takers to lose money for you. That doesn’t make much sense.  Whereas, in effect, your salespeople are voluntary independent contractors showing up every day looking for ways to make you money. 

We’ll be focusing more on retail next month. This formula can be replicated in virtually any aspect of the hospitality industry.

Until next time... Shawn
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