A Reminder To All Salespeople

Out of every 10 complete sales presentations that a company does, three will not buy no matter what you do because they just don’t like what they hear or are not really in a position to buy. Another three definitely will buy from you because of your brand reputation and overall quality. Even if they get a poor presentation, they still will buy from you. The remaining four are the future of your company because they are truly shopping with an open mind and are ready to purchase from the company they feel has the most to offer.

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Many Salespeople Are Reluctant To Ask For The Order

One of the axioms of professional selling is that you are supposed to become a friend to the shopper. Salespeople spend great amounts of time endearing themselves to the shopper in order to get on their side and earn their trust. But friends don’t ask other friends for money.

After all this caring, is the salesperson supposed to stop being the shopper’s friend and instead ask for a deposit check? So, some shoppers never really hear from the salesperson an explanation of how their deposit policy works and then ask their "friend" for the sale. Winning salespeople avoid this trap and find a way to ask for and receive a deposit while still maintaining the friendship and trust of the shopper.

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Roman's Tip On Qualifying Callers

A salesperson’s time is golden. It cannot be wasted. The purpose of qualifying the caller is to determine if the caller should be passed to a salesperson or if there’s another action, such as sending them a brochure, that’s more appropriate so they won’t take up the valuable time of the salespeople. You need to find out the date, approximate number of guests expected and the type of event it will be from the caller, using questions from the official script to get this information. You also need to make sure that the caller has the money needed to buy from you.

Roman's Tips On Product Lines

1. Catering is NOT your product line. The types of catering you sell are your product lines. Here are a few examples:

·   Box lunches

·   Weddings

·   Corporate picnics

2. Go a step beyond:

·   Weddings over 300 guests, weddings under 300 guests

·   Barbecue weddings

·   If you have a venue, allowing other specialist caterers in to do weddings on your off nights – Kosher, Asian, Indian

·   Box lunches for 12, box lunches for 75

·   Box lunches for church groups, box lunches for DMC’s

·   Picnics for corporations, picnics for charities

·   Picnic/barbecue cooking classes

3. You need to measure operating profit for these product lines:

·   Look for disproportionate costs for labor resulting in improper profit (spinning your wheels).

·   Danger: “I need to keep my staff busy” or “They’re here already, why shouldn’t I do more?”

·   Being busy doesn’t always lead to proper growth or proper profit.

·   Often 20% of a month’s volume consumes 50% of the month’s labor costs.

4. Don’t give up on your current product lines – rethink them. Rename them. Resize them

Roman's Reminder On Answering Phones

Make sure that the person answering the phones is trained and skilled; don’t relegate your newest staffer to the phones. Nothing is more important than phone calls requesting information. Nothing. When callers hear “I’m new here, so I really don’t know the answer to your question,” they immediately lose confidence in your abilities as a caterer.

Think of it as going into a restaurant that has a “Chef Wanted” sign in the window. The goal of the person answering the phones is to gather information, qualify the shopper and then to get them to the right salesperson in a timely fashion. The only professional way to do this is to have the person answering the phones follow a well-written script. This script needs to be used every time the phone rings and followed closely.

Roman's Tips For Better Management! #1

1. Spend as much time thinking about staff as you do clients.

2. Celebrate each victory!

4. Reteach the company’s “mission statement”.

3. Make staff learn about “choices” they can make.

5. Establish shared goals between departments.

6. Challenge and/or permit staff to grow.

7. Establish meeting patterns that “always” take place and offer important information.

8. Treat staff like adults and communicate concerns.

9. Protect staff from premature judgements.

10. Listen to staff... really listen.

11. Permit and encourage everyone to rethink.

12. Explain why clients do certain things.

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Don't forget about my new sales clinics coming to
Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco!
http://cateringguru.com/upcoming-education/

Another View On Kitchen Staffing

A chef earning $15 per hour shouldn’t be making box lunches that sell for $7 each; a kitchen staffer that earns $8 per hour should be making the box lunches. The $15 an hour, higher skilled chef should not work at all on the box lunches, but rather concentrate on the more costly menu items being prepared for the day. This is at the core of the manufacturing process: Labor costs need to be correctly applied by skill and cost to functions.

To go one step further: The $8 per hour lower-skilled person should start their day at 6 a.m. and leave by 2 p.m. The $15 per hour chef, unless needed early for some special reason, should start later in the day. Staff should be brought into the kitchen on an as-needed basis by level of skills and orders. Your first reaction might be that is not possible in the real world. The answer lies in the numbers associated with the dollars spent for producing your menu items in relation to your profit picture.

A manufacturer hires more staff when it has more business and doesn’t hesitate to let staff go when business is down. Caterers tend to maintain constant staff levels most of the year, even when business is slow, because they believe that if they don’t keep their staff busy and paid on a regular basis, the staff will leave and go elsewhere. In essence, many caterers are subsidizing the welfare of their staff with profitability from the company. The answer to what is right or wrong in this matter is up to you.

Caterers, like manufacturers, create events that were sold weeks or months earlier. They know what they need to buy for these events and how many kitchen staff they will need for any given day in the future. This is a huge advantage over restaurateurs, who can never be sure of what they will sell on a given day. Caterers should be able to increase profits by minimizing wasted purchases and staffing based on need.

Whenever possible, eliminate kitchen overtime. By forecasting staff requirements, you can budget your costs and monitor sales to insure that overtime is eliminated. If you have a wonderful future day filled with properly sold events with correct profit margins, why should a salesperson be permitted to take another event that now requires the culinary team to stay past eight hours and incur additional costs that can only be covered by taking profit away form the other properly priced events? From a business point of view this makes no sense.

Close dates that already have reached the point of maximum profitability within an eight-hour period. Once the event booking calendar closes a date, it can only be opened again if additional sales for that date are sold at higher than normal prices to cover any overtime costs. Another way to avoid paying overtime is to stagger scheduled shifts, so as one eight-hour shift is ending, another one is beginning or overlapping.

Have you checked out my new website?
Don't forget about my new sales clinics coming to
Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco!
http://cateringguru.com/upcoming-education/