January – Getting the team selling
Our client, a restaurant company was experiencing a drop in volume and a static spend per head believed to be as a result of the economic downturn. Despite staff meetings and in house training concentrating on “skills” training there was little impact on the team’s selling ability and the introduction of a new VIP discount scheme to address declining volumes was held back by the waiting team not promoting it to guests. Business Blueprints were invited to look at how to improve the business. Firstly we conducted a survey to gain feedback from guests and then a second one with all the staff members to try to understand what the barriers were. From the results of the two quantitative surveys we were able to highlight key issues that could be further explored within a focus group of regular guests that was filmed. In a nutshell the team were afraid to sell because they did not believe that customers perceived an enthusiastic promotion of the business and all its products as part of fabulous service.
We then organized off site training reporting all the feedback from the research including the relevant parts of the footage from the focus groups. The structure of the training was taken from the Magic Programme that Business Blueprints developed in the early 90s to enhance self esteem in the unemployed, as well as retail and catering staff. The training took less than 4 hours and the results have been phenomenal with an increase in spend per head of 8 percentage points and an additional 1,500 VIP members.
In January sales have increased overall on a like for like basis by 10% - a fantastic start to the year.