Turn Your Employees into Professional Salespeople! Up Your End-of-Year Sales. You Can Make It If You Start Today.

Lockdown measures are eased. You can open your restaurant and sell alcohol. Plus, it’s the end-of-year season. The timing couldn’t be more perfect so seize the opportunity. Train your employees to boost sales starting today. You have a month left to close the deal on the end-of-year’s super sales! But first, to prevent mistakes and plan the right sales strategies, you have to start with the following:

Learn more about how to create SOPs for free in “Systematically Creating Standards for Your Restaurant”by Pornchai Nitmethawong, a famous restaurant guru. (Click the link to enter the course.)

2. Train the Employees So They Understand Every Step - Once you’ve established SOPs, you need to convey them to your employees, so they understand and follow them. Sometimes you can’t see the real picture just by reading manuals. Therefore, the owner or manager must show the staff the correct methods and how to perform them, like how to take orders, how to recommend menu items, how to recommend promotional menu items, what else to promote after taking orders, etc.
3. Call a meeting before starting work to inform the employees of the promotions and menu items to promote that day. If possible, hold a meeting every day before work, especially if your restaurant has a different promotion every day. The staff needs to understand the promotions well before opening because some promotions involve additional conditions, for example, 10% discount only on food or for value sets that can’t be used with other promotions or explaining that the benefits of membership sales to the restaurant and customers and how to promote sales so it is easy for customers to picture it.

4. Have the employees show you how to do it. Reading a manual or watching examples are never as good as actually doing it. Therefore, after the training, have your employees perform the tasks, inspect them and advise them if there are any mistakes. Having the employees perform the tasks can help them to perform them naturally and the owner can also see whether there are any mistakes in the SOPs so that the steps can be fixed before they are implemented.

5. Create incentive for your employees. Other than setting sales goals, don’t forget to create incentive for your employees in the form of bonuses, commission or rewards that they can gain when the restaurant achieves its goals. Generally, there are two popular types of incentives that restaurants use: individual incentive and group incentive. The characteristics are as follows:

Before using incentives, first consider whether they’ll truly work on your employees and whether your restaurant will still earn profit when you use them. If the employees aren’t interested or the restaurant risks losing money, these incentives won’t be of any benefit to you.

6. Assess customer behaviors and close the sales with promotions. You have to really understand the customers’ additional needs during the New Year’s festivities and offer promotions that meet their needs. For example, if your customers are the working age group or office employees, they’ll want restaurants that can hold New Year’s parties and offer promotional menu sets, banquet rooms and karaoke. Therefore, if you want to offer promotions for this customer group, try offering party promotions such as free banquet rooms, no bottle opening fees, free karaoke if there are a lot of guests or individual service fees and menu set options. Otherwise, promotions for when customers order food with alcoholic drinks are also interesting. In addition, promotions for mixers and beverages are suitable for this customer group.

           Meanwhile, for family groups, emphasize discounts and menu sets that they can choose. These groups usually include children so they’ll be more interested in optional menu sets or free desserts and ice cream.

Therefore, first determine who your main customer groups are, what they like or dislike and what they need from you, and then find the best promotions to offer.

7. Give customers a better service than they expected. Of course, customers expect good service from restaurants, but if you can do better then their expectations, how can it benefit you? 1. The employees get a chance to receive tips for excellent service. 2. Customers will spread the word and give good reviews for your restaurant on social media. 3. The chance of repeat business is very high. Therefore, in this opportunity to celebrate, giving customers an extra good service will definitely benefit your restaurant. Think of it as a New Year’s present for your customers.

8. Give your employees a future rather than just a paycheck. Restaurant owners should consider each of their employees’ future instead of compensating them with just salaries because people tend to connect their life’s progress with their salary. If the salary is good but they’re at a job that gives them no opportunity to grow, they might not be convinced to stay with the organization. Therefore, trying to give your employees opportunities is a good thing. For example, try giving an employee whose performance has been great for 1-2 years the opportunity to be promoted to a supervising position so they can help manage the other employees or teach new employees. If the employee is at the manager level, offer them a chance to become a partner or a chance to manage a new branch and adjust their salary accordingly.