Retention
“Since the only way a business can create both customer and employee loyalty is by delivering superior value, high loyalty is a certain sign of value creation.”
- Frederick Reichheld

Accounting 101 “There are only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can’t.
- Jim Buelt

Service in a Small room “Handle each and every interaction with each and every Customer, no matter who that Customer is, as if you will have to live with that person in a very small room for the rest of your life.”
- Jim Sullivan

Customers don’t care how valuable they are to us, they only care how valuable we are to them.
- Don Pepper

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-HH Humphrey

Interviews test only how well someone interviews.

If you were accused of being outstanding, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

It is no harder to build something great than it is to build something good.

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Short Stack: Stats that Matter

heft in the restaurant industry averages 4% of sales as a percentage.
Source: IFMA 2006 Outlook

The typical American eats meals an estimated 4.3 times a day and some eat as many as six meals a day of varying sizes, according to the findings of an Information Resources survey of the eating habits of 2,000 U.S. consumers. Titled “Meal Demise, Snacks Arise,” the study contends that the definition of a meal has changed, with a meal today sometimes consisting of a Diet Coke and a Snickers bar. Among those surveyed, 58% admitted they don’t have “well-balanced” diets.
Source: Technomic Foodservice Digest

Hispanics/Latinos account for 18 percent of eating-and-drinking-place employees — an increase of 6 percentage points since 1992. African Americans make up 11 percent of industry employees. Source: National Restaurant Association Restaurant Industry Workforce Study!

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12 Month Action Plan for 2007
Copyright 2006 Sullivision.com
by Jim Sullivan

Holy Schnikes! It’s nearly a new year! Have you finished planning for 2007 yet? If not, we gotcha covered right here in the Sullivision.com Fundamentals e-Newsletter. Here’s your monthly planner for 2003. Read it and reap!

January: Get help in the mail. When planning your direct mail marketing or promo pieces for 2007, use the Post Office first as your primary research tool. For the next 12 weeks, save every piece of promotional and advertising material you receive in the mail. Then make two stacks—one for material that appeals to you visually, and one for pieces that don’t. “Make a list of what caught your eye in the mail you liked; then evaluate the ones you didn’t choose, and ask yourself what they lacked,” says Portsmouth, NH consultant Peggy Sharp. Then keep those visual and copy elements in mind when you sit down to design your next marketing, catering, large group brochure, or menu.

February: Institute mandatory pre-shift meetings. If you don’t focus and energize your team before every shift, who will? Pre-shift meetings with front and back of the house teams should be mandatory, not optional. If you already do them, use this month to do them better.

March: Know the price of nice. There are only so many ways you can put food and beverage together; the real secret of hospitality success is in the service. Stop trying to “WOW” your customers. Focus first on eliminating all the things that cause dissatisfaction in guests. If you succeed at that you’re 90% ahead of every other operator. Make March your service-focus month and make eliminating customer-problems your daily goal.

April: Re-focus training needs on performance issues. Employee performance problems originate from one of three perspectives: “Don’t Know, Can’t Do or Don’t Care.” Design your new—and ongoing--training programs to address these 3 areas for every person you train. To overcome the “don’t know” and “can’t do” people, the solution is to teach them very well, and get them the resources they need. For the “don’t cares”? See next month.

May: Prune your deadwood. This month, commit to getting rid of all low-performers. It’s not the people you fire who make your life miserable, it’s the people you don’t fire.

June: Focus on finding keepers. Hire people that share your values and culture as part of who they are instead of trying to inject it via a “training program”. You can’t manage change but you can help people do what they already want to do.

July: Learn how to eat an elephant. We do that one bite at a time. Break period or monthly goals into SHIFT execution. By the yard it’s hard, by the inch it’s a cinch. (Check out our best-selling SHIFT DVD for help. Click HERE. )

August: Make time to find time. The newest Treo Smartphone has a “to-do” list for 1,850 items. Pretty sobering thought. But maybe we also need a “stop doing” list, too. Look at your business this month and see if there’s something that you could stop doing--take away unnecessary policies, procedures, restrictions--to bring more energy to your workplace.

September: Plan your holiday business no later than September 15.  Get ahead of the curve for once and plan your holiday business, gift card merchandising and service goals for the next 3 months. Procrastination is the devil’s chloroform.

October: Make it good to go. Get it together on takeout/to-go or don’t do it at all. Stop leaving the process in the hands of a cranky bartender or impatient hostess who’d rather you didn’t bother them by waiting to pick up your phoned-in food order to go. The takeout guest is your job, not an interruption of it.

November: Fix what needs fixing. Don’t leave those operational problems unattended this month. Never leave a nail sticking up where you find it.

December: small is big; focus on the little things. Instead of trying to be a 100% better than the competition next year, try to be 1% better in a hundred different ways. Same result, better odds. Happy days.

Thanks for your time, and remember: if you had half as much fun reading this as I had writing it, then I had twice as much fun as you.

Jim Sullivan is a popular keynote speaker at manager conferences worldwide. You can reach him through Sullivision.com at 920-830-3915. Or visit www.sullivision.com anytime.