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The salesperson who makes a mistake, then offers an excuse for it, has made two mistakes. - Mind Your Own Business book
“Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck.“
- Former coach Don Shula
COMPENSATION
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
- Ogden Nash
Democracy by the Numbers?
No need to write a caption for this one:
• 105,405,100: Votes cast in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.
• 119,000,000: Votes cast in 2005 for Fox Television’s American Idol competition.
- Source: Fast Company
A FATHER BROUGHT his son, just out of school with an MBA, into the family business as a 25 percent owner. “I think you’ll learn the business sooner if you start in the factory,” said the father.
“Dad, the factory is automated, we get reports, and I don’t need to spend any time there,” said the son.
“Okay, perhaps you should start in sales. That’s a good way to find out what the customers want.”
“Dad, I have an MBA! We don’t knock on any doors. Come on, let’s be professional businessmen here.”
“Okay,” said the father, “tell me what you want.”
“Buy me out,” replied the son.
Source: Bits & Pieces for Salespeople, Vol. E/No. 3
 CLICK HERE To order the animated QuoteZILLA
Meeting Energizer |
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Ask new hires what worked.
On their first day, ask new employees to identify which specific elements of your job offer:
1) were most compelling,
2) had no impact and
3) almost made them turn you down. Use this data to redesign your offers to focus on improving the “deal-breakers” and reducing the number of rejections.
Source: “Why Candidates Reject Offers” by Dr. John Sullivan
ENCOURAGE THEM TO “BYOB”
Great incentive programs start with great themes. When First Union Nation Bank
decided to motivate mid-level managers with an incentive program, the theme management chose was BYOB – Beat Your Own Best. The managers were responsible for coaching the sales of credit insurance, and in the final four months of 2004, they were encouraged to beat their best month’s performance from the year’s previous eight months.
“We hoped that at least 40 percent of the managers would beat their own best in
any given month,” says Mike Mickler, director of marketing. When the program ended, 72 percent had done so, and a number of them beat their own best several times.
Moral: have your servers focus on beating their own Personal Best check averages every month and reward them for doing so.
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Here’s the free July 2005 edition of the Sullivision
E-Newsletter you signed up for. Check out our e-news archives, quote of the day, product catalog and free downloads at www.Sullivision.com
The 5 Best Ways to Lose an Employee
We’ve shared creative employee retention strategies for the last three years in this e-newsletter. This month, let’s focus on how to lose employees. It’s not that hard. You and I do it every day.
1. Don’t ask new hires what worked, and what didn’t.
After your “official” orientation, a good way to improve turnover is to forget to ever ask new employees for feedback on your recruiting system, your orientation, your training program, and your company goals. They’re eager to be with you, so tap into that enthusiasm to generate feedback from new hires early on. Find out what part of your recruiting process brought them to you. Then use that insight to recruit others. What elements of your company’s recruiting or reputation were the most compelling, what mattered least, and what had no impact?
2. Ignore Tomorrow, Hire for Today.
“Next week” is tomorrow in Modern Time. Clearly define and understand what skills and knowledge your company needs today and in the future. Will you have fewer servers per section, more server assistants? Take a hard look at how the cultural gumbo of restaurant management (mixing generation, opinion, style and technology) is changing the very nature of our jobs. How will the preponderance of pre-prepped products affect the design, feel, and number of bodies in the kitchen in the next three years? If you’re not focused on bench strength, you’re focused on the wrong thing.
3. Don’t let your employees know where
they stand - good or bad.
What’s the old saying? ”Never let either good work go un-praised (if you see it, say it) or poor work go unnoticed (make it private and positive).”
4. Play by the Rules. Lots of them.
A sure way to turnover more people is to over-burden them with rules and regulations. A better philosophy? Strong culture, thin rulebook. And it’s helpful to also recognize the difference between rules and principles. Rules tell your people what they can do. Principles them what they cannot do. And as far as rules go, the bottom line is that nothing is sacred other than that the guest returns.
5. Focus only on recruiting new team members
You need to re-recruit your current team everyday, after every shift. If you don’t recognize or reward your people, somebody else will!
P.S. Just wanted to say THANKS to all of you for your tremendous support of our best-selling book Mind Your Own Business: Improving People, Performance, Profits. We just topped 225,000 copies in sales! If you don’t have a copy yet, take advantage of our special offer called Sullivision’s Greatest Hits: you get the MYOB book and a copy of our award-winning rockin’ DVD of animated service-related quotes called QuoteZILLA. It’s available at www.sullivision.com or by calling 920-830-3915 anytime! |
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The Top 10 Questions to Which You
Don't Want to Know the Answers
10."If that's not chocolate, then what is it?"
9. "How contagious are you?"
8. "Did I really just say his badge looks ridiculous?"
7. "How many more Star Trek series can they come up
with?"
6. "Why would you pay me money to eat that?"
5. "What's keeping that beltless vagrant's pants up?"
4. "To whom in the bar are those unkind words from the
screaming biker directed?"
3. "What's inside this letter from the IRS?“
2. “How more weird can Michael Jackson get?”
1. "No, I've never heard of Amway. What is it?"
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Jim Sullivan is the CEO of Sullivision, Inc., an Appleton, Wis. based consulting group whose clients include Walt Disney Company, Coca-Cola, American Express, Hershey’s, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Target. You can reach Jim at 920-830-3915 or www.sullivision.com |
