SALES SCIENCE: How to Gamify Sales to Motivate Staff, Boost Checks
How do you motivate someone being paid minimum wage to care about your net sales? It’s actually much easier than you’d think. If you’ve tried and failed in the past to get staff members to care about increasing sales, it’s probably because you’ve failed to frame the goals in ways that relate to them. Today we’re going to dive into intrinsic motivation and how you can create it to make selling more fun by challenging your crew, creating competition, and recognizing achievement.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Hot Fast Food
Sometimes your food is so good that guests will wade through a burning building to get it… kinda. Some “oblivious” customers in Winnipeg sat in an A&W drive-thru line while the restaurant burned to the ground. The smoke was so thick that firefighters couldn’t enter the building, so we’re talking about a serious fire here. Fortunately, everyone inside the building evacuated safely.
Online Dating About Romance, Not Sex
As millions of people celebrate Valentine’s Day with their loved-ones last week, many of those who haven’t found their significant other yet may turn to dating apps to avoid spending the night alone and possibly find a partner to celebrate many future Valentine’s Days with. Despite its sometimes questionable image, online dating isn’t all about casual sex and promiscuity. According to a recent YouGov poll, the most cited reason to use Tinder or any other dating app/website among Americans is finding an exclusive romantic partner.
Solar Employment Not Sunny
242,343 people were employed in solar jobs in 2018, a 3.2% decline on the previous year. The decline is being attributed to uncertainty about the outcome of the Section 201 trade case on solar modules and cells. That made it difficult for U.S. solar project developers to price, bid and contract for future projects. The Trump administration then introduced tariffs for crystalline silicon modules and cells at 30% on January 22, 2018. That resulted in increased hardware costs and curbed growth in the industry, creating more problems for the job market.
TURN YOUR NEGATIVE REVIEWS TO GOLD
Why it matters to you: Make responding positively to every review, even the negative ones, a priority and see your business grow.
Nothing stings quite like a lousy online review. With 62% of diners citing reviews as the top influencer of their dining decisions, bad ones hurt even more. But that doesn’t mean you can’t recover from a bad online review and, in fact, it means it is imperative that you respond to any and every bad review you receive. Hopefully there won’t be many, but with 89% of consumers saying they notice how a brand responds to reviews, it’s seriously important. This blog covers the steps you need to follow in order to make managing online reviews a priority and part of your systems. Start by checking the various review sites daily for any feedback your location has received. The irony is that even a bad review can be a way to grow your business with other guests.
For example, if your place features music prominently in your atmosphere, you could receive a negative review that the music was too loud and disrupted their experience. If that were a mistake, you would respond and assure the guest that it won’t happen again. However, if you purposefully have loud music, you can respond and clarify your theme which may actually get a new guest to visit who wants that atmosphere. The key takeaway here is that every review, even the negative ones, have the potential to help you grow your business. By taking them seriously, interacting positively with every reviewer and learning from the reviews, you give yourself the best chance to increase your overall ratings…which could lead to real increases in your sales.
[Source: Modern Restaurant Management]
SCHOLARLY ADVICE
Why it matters to you: What can you learn from Chick-fil-A’s scholarship program?
Everyone has an opinion on Chick-fil-A. Some say they are the best fast food chain in America while others, say their politics are reprehensible. No matter which side of this debate you fall into, you can’t deny their success or the loyalty of their core guest audience. Another audience they appear to do well with is their employees. They recently announced an additional $15.3 million for their scholarship program. The program has provided tuition assistance to 53,000 total employees of the chicken chain and meant over $75 million direct help. Here’s the rub; it actually makes a big difference in both retention and employee perception of Chick-fil-A.
Take the fact that 90% of those supported by the program claim they will stay on after receiving the scholarship. For that fact alone, the program is a net benefit to their retention. But that’s not all that is amazing about the program from a corporate responsibility perspective, almost 100% of those in the program described the scholarship as a major benefit and 60% said they wouldn’t have been able to afford school without it. Now big companies like Starbuck’s and McDonalds are following suit and that should also tell you something. Sure, most of you can’t follow suit, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do something smaller, but still impactful.
[Source: Restaurant Business Online]
