Building Sales With a Contest

April 5, 2011 by Mary
Filed under Operations

Of course as an operator you can’t do it all on your own. If your goal is to drive sales, you have to enlist the help of your sales team…also known as your front end staff. Why not have a sales contest from time to time? Choose an item that you want to sell more of – a special entrée, dessert or appetizer. Suggestive selling for the most part does not come natural for a lot of servers. That is why it is important to encourage it through training, positive reinforcement and a little healthy competition.

Here are 6 ways to encourage Sales:

Give your employees a scorecard by tracking sales for each server – what gets measured gets done.

Post a chart on the employee bulletin board and let each server keep track of every time their suggestion to a guest results in a sale.

Decide on a prize for the winner. It can as simple as a shift contest everyday with the winner receiving a lottery scratch ticket. Or it can be a bigger prize that is award after the end of a month long contest. Or both!

Make it fun by having pre-shift meetings. Remind your staff of what’s in it for them (fun, competition, awesome prizes).

Give them a challenge for the shift. (“Frank, can you commit to selling 4 House Appetizers today?”)

Follow up during the floor shift to make sure that each server is attempting to achieve and exceed those goals. Coach them along as you check their progress -(“Just one more Appetizer Frank, you’re doing awesome!”)