SHIFT MANAGEMENT TRAINING

An effective sale meeting is a DIALOGUE not a MONOLOGUE.

It incorporates Inspections, Information and Motivation.

Smart managers will use this time to exchange ideas, verbally test product knowledge and highlight service goals. Demand responses from each staff member; ask them to repeat goals, product changes and new policies or procedures aloud. Training is marketing and a sales meeting , aka “pre-meal”, is a training session not a meeting. Use the following steps to improve your sales meeting.

Key in on inspection. Focus carefully on uniform standards, hygiene, product knowledge & service standards. Quiz every member constantly throughout your delivery to be sure everyone heard and understood the information. (new items, new employees, changes, etc.) Managers speak 3 minutes out of every 5 at sales meeting by using "I say, you say" techniques. By creating a dialogue, your staff are more likely to retain information. If the manager lets sales meeting become a monologue, your staff will start to daydream and tune out whatever is being said.

Sales meeting needs to be planned in advance. That means the manager should take a few moments to plan out sales meeting. If it is not planned out, you run the risk of the monologue. However don’t go overboard. The k.i.s.s. principle applies here, keep it simple & straightforward. Sales meeting should not take any longer than 15 minutes to plan. You may want to develop and use a standard form.

Have your training session in different locations (cooks line, server area, bar, outside, etc.) Have employees give examples of "The Cornerstones". A sales example could be a Server demonstrating two greets where they sell vs. order take, a Bartender describing a specialty drink and the host describing an appetizer while seating a guest, etc. A great service story could be of how someone exceeded a guest’s expectations. Involve every department, including the BOH. Use your own examples. A food example should be a cook describing the ingredients and cooking techniques for that days training item and present the finished product to FOH staff. Every session should conclude with the manager commending individual sales and service efforts from team members over the last 24 hours. The old adage is true, “don’t expect, inspect”. What you don’t inspect probably will not happen.

One well done sales meeting does not make a successful restaurant. The number one enemy of training outside the sales meeting is HABIT. It takes 21 days of different behavior to change a habit. Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Therefore, effective pre/shift team training is a significant daily opportunity to transform behavior and have your staff practice good habits. For example, you change the behavior habit of being an "order taker" into the behavior habit of being a service oriented salesperson. People need to be trained and coached up the stairs, one step at a time.

Use your daily Pre Meals as your stairway to productivity by honing your staffs service and sales skills. Work on their behavior; forget that nonsense about changing their attitude. Staggered schedules may make conducting Pre Meals difficult under daily time restraints. In such cases, you should Pre Meal with every one of your employees (1:1) before their shift. You may want to make it a house policy that if an employee is late for work and misses sales meeting, he or she must find the manager before they start work on the floor.

A quarterly training session with the staff is worthless compared to the value of teaching someone something new every day. Hold *Sunday school classes for those servers who are having a difficult time with suggestive selling. Managers who deliver consistently energetic and interactive Pre Meals will see their service jump and their sales soar.

* 2 hour training on a weekend, involving salesmanship role playing.

• Some of the preceding is from the corporate training manual of AHCI.

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