Focused on sales

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business. ~Greg Dollarhyde

With a dismal 2016 in our rearview mirror, it’s time to get laser focused on building sales in our restaurants. Some of our restaurants have come right out of the gate in fiscal 2017 by setting both daily and weekly records in week one.  BWW Limestone forged into fiscal 2017 by crushing their Monday daily record by $1500.  BWW Bear broke their Friday sales record by over $2000, which, set them up destroy their previous weekly sales mark.  BWW Middletown set new daily records for Monday, Tuesday and Friday, all in the same week.  Almost every location was up in SSS to ring in the new year.

Listed below are FIVE tactics to keep the momentum in 2017.

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business.

• One percent goal setting: Daily objectives based on realistic expectations that are clearly communicated to each sales person is critical to a successful shift. How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time.  Does each manager know what last year sales were for today?  For the same week last year?  Do we all know the number to beat it by 1%? 2%? 5%?  Do we know what our sales were last Monday?  Can we beat it?  What’s our plan to get there?  Unlock the doors?  Come on!  Some say that knowledge is power…I say what you do with that knowledge is power.  Communicate your goals!
  • Do your servers ever compete with their own sales records? Why not?

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business.

• Opening 15 minutes early – This means that you unlock the doors and allow guest to enter 15 minutes before the posted opening time.  Lets just say that a guest pulls in your parking lot today at 10:43am.  By the time they walk to the front door it’s 10:45, chilly outside, and they pull on the handle and it’s locked.  What will they do?  The odds are very high that they will go back to their car where it’s warm, wait about five minutes and then decide to drive away…..to your competitor….and by the time they get there it’s 11am and their doors are open.  Green Turtle or Grottos get the sales! What?  That’s not okay.  We may not be ready to serve them wings at 10:47am but we can be ready to provide hospitality, say a kind word, offer a drink and win them over.

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business.

• $20 rule – If you are within $20 of the next hundred, you are required to go get it. That is the H5H standard.  What does that mean?  That means that the closing manager each day must pay attention to where sales are before locking the doors and calling all sales final for the day.  It means that the closing servers and bartenders will be challenged to sell instead of pre-close.  It means that from the time we open (10:45) until the time we close, we are focused on sales.  On Sunday’s, we will need to look at both daily and weekly sales….and if we wanted to be real aggressive (high octane sales pitbulls) we would look at WTD sales daily and PTD sales.
  • I took a look at one of our locations and their reported sales for each day in 2016. On 83 occasions, we closed the doors within $20 of the next hundred.  Once we closed with $19.39 of 70k for the week and once with $0.73 of 12k for the day.  The result: $901.36 in lost sales for the year.  No big deal?  Multiply that by nine restaurants and it equates to $8,112.24.  In 2017, we will end the year with 14 locations….do we stand to leave over 12k not deposited into your bank accounts?

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business.

• Hospitality – It’s what we do. It’s who we are.  It’s the business we are in.  It’s our last name….we should be the best at it!
  • As I walked up to the Middletown restaurant yesterday for my TOGO order, a young man opened the door for me and welcomed me to BWW. He did the same when I exited.  EXTRAORDINARY and exactly one of the differentiators we should have from our competitors.  Great job!
  • CHISPA – the Spanish word for SPARK. Does your management style create an environment that lights sparks among the team?  Are our team members always happy, staying spunky, active and alive with every guest and creating an atmosphere of excitement?  Do we have CHISPA running rampant in our restaurants or just service?
  • My pleasure – ‘nuff said.

Winners and champions focus on the revenue generating side of the business.

• Sell more of what you have – Watching costs obsessively is important. Period!  Watching how you purchase and what you purchase is critical.  Making sure that we receive what we purchased and we rotate (FIFI) the product is crucial, too.  But you don’t make money buying or managing, we make money selling.
  • A Buck a guest is worth a lot. Focus on raising your sales by one dollar per person.  Doesn’t sound like much, does it?  Do the math:  The average BWW restaurant (Stone Balloon – you can do your math) has 175,000 guests per year.  175,000 x $1.00= $175,000.00
  • Do your servers know that the guest tips 15-20 percent on the total of the check? Every soda/tea should be entered in the POS.  Selling a dessert or a cup of coffee could be the difference of a $1.00 more in tips for them.  Help them multiply that by the number of guests they serve and help them put $$$ in their pocket.
  • Are your greeters/seaters talking about our appetizers as they seat people?
  • Do your servers/bartenders “nod” when their selling or are they just taking orders?
  • If you’re not out selling, you’re being outsold.

Winners and champions…