Here are a few ideas on how you can start planning now to attract more vacationers to your establishment… and turning the local hosts who bring them into year-round regulars:

• Friend-of-a-friend discounts. Encourage your regulars to bring in family and friends who are visiting from out of town. Offer patrons with out-of-state driver’s licenses a free drink or appetizer.
• Maximize signage. When attracting visitors, one of the best advertisements is a billboard with an Exit Now sign and a Kids Eat Free promise. If you’re not near a highway, maximize what you have. Make sure signage welcomes visitors and promotes specials. Keep the outside area as clean and inviting as possible. You may have the best wings in the world, but no one from out of town will know that… and they won’t even slow down if your exterior isn’t up to par.
• Hit the hotels. Often operators shy away from hotel marketing because one-time guests aren’t nearly as profitable as long-term customers. But coupons and discounts for guests will only increase your awareness at hotels and when conferences come to town – or visiting groups look for caterers – your presence at the front desk can add up to literally thousands in additional, unplanned sales. Make sure that all hotels in your area have clean, new menus with personalized maps to your location. Include coupons with a substantial offer – free entrée with another – and set up a quarterly visit where you drop in and introduce yourself to the manager and the people behind the counter. When you come, bring a platter of your best appetizers or a tray of desserts. People recommend what they like… and this small investment can add up to large profits.

Need more marketing ideas? Check out Slam Dunk Marketing: From Rim Shots to Results. Learn how to Slam Dunk your way to economical marketing success and limitless customer satisfaction!

If employees perceive your message to be hard to execute in the real world, the discomfort they feel will probably outweigh the suggested benefits of a change in performance, rendering your training ineffective, if not useless.

But don’t worry, there is a solution. Stay in touch with reality. Whatever you ask your employees to do should be do-able in their minds, not just in yours. If there are skeptics in the crowd, demonstrate first hand how the training can be put to work the very next shift, then, if possible, relate past success stories. Depending on the subject matter, role-playing may be helpful.

Need more ways to improve your waitstaff training program? Check out No Train? No Gain!, Developing And Delivering A Training Program That Gets Results.

Pointless, pre-planned or vague praise isn’t effective and, in fact, can actually damage a restaurant manager-employee relationship. But when employees are praised correctly and consistently, it’s hugely beneficial to the person receiving the praise and the people hearing it. In turn, it’s also beneficial to your customers and your bottom line.

Here’s how to make your praise worthy:

• Praise the performance, not the employee. If you tell Tom that he’s absolutely terrific, how do you discipline him later when he comes in late (again)? Instead, tell Tom that he did a great job recording and re-organizing the inventory and that you appreciate his effort and innovative spirit. Be specific and sincere… and leave the door open for talks about improvement.
• Pass on praise (literally). Don’t put “praise employees” on your daily restaurant management to-do list. When you go hunting for something to compliment (and stretch the value of an action), your employees will see it coming… and they won’t buy it for a minute. Instead, consider the term praiseworthy and make sure the performance truly is worthy of praise before you comment on it.
• Publicly praise. The old management adage, “Praise in public, reprimand in private” still holds true. Praise the specific performance of a restaurant employee (skip compliments on haircuts and avoid those “she’s got a great attitude, doesn’t she?” comments) and do it in front of other employees, managers, owners and guests.
• Be punctual with praise. You can’t always publicly praise an employee during a shift, but when you wait days after the action’s been completed, it’s less dramatic for everyone.

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• Tell the truth. If you ask your restaurant staff how much profit a restaurant makes from $1 in sales, many would say around 75 cents. (Don’t believe it? Try it at your next staff meeting.) Here in the real world, we know that somewhere between a nickel and a dime is closer to the truth. Your team members should also know what’s at stake to make their operation successful. No profits, no pay raises. No customers, no restaurant. Sometimes the bottom line is the best motivator.
• Encourage solutions. If you ask waitstaff how to raise check averages, chances are you’ll get regurgitated responses from your own training materials. But if you ask for innovative solutions, you’ll get those, too. Ask servers to share success stories at pre-shift meetings and set-up a revolving contest that awards sales ideas and strategies.
• Bring in a rookie. Sure, we all want the professional to motivate us—or the consultant that can pinpoint areas of weakness—but an enthusiastic, inexperienced new employee can often recharge our own batteries. When you pair a new server with an experienced one, both of them will benefit. The new employee will be trained, of course, but the experienced server will be forced to remember the “why” behind small details… why we offer premiums (for a better experience), why we suggest certain items (for the best possible meal)… and, yes, why we got into the business to begin with (we like people, remember?).
• Reward successes. It sounds basic, but too often we forget to monitor—and report—the success of our restaurant training programs. Waitstaff may be easier to monitor (sales receipts, etc.), but everyone on the team should be responsible for service and sales… and rewarded for it as well.

 Give your servers the training they need to sell effectively. Check out our series of Real World Selling DVDs, available in full-service and family dining versions, as well as on the specific topics of increasing sales of appetizers, desserts, wine, or beer. View an excerpt of the Real World Selling: Start to Finish for Family Dining restaurants below, and click for more details on DVDs from Service That Sells!

• “Be our guest, be our guest, put your service to the test” – Pick a slow night like Sunday or Monday to close the restaurant a bit early (or do it after closing) and have the chefs coach the front-of-the-house staff on how to prepare a family-style dinner. Then, let the front-of-the-house staff sit down and be served by the back-of-the-house staff. Let them role play a bit (use up-sell techniques, handle difficult customers, etc.) and then, while everyone eats, pinpoint the challenges that each side faces. After the dinner, while everyone cleans up together, award two winners: the “server” with the most sales and the “chef” with the best team skills.
• Speedy Gonzalez vs. Sponge Bob: Pair your team members by job description (a server and a host pair up while a bus person and a dishwasher work together). Have each duo prepare a short presentation of their role (what we do, what we can do, why we’re important, our challenges and how you can help us). Then, have them pick a fictional character (from sports to cartoons to politics) and have that “character” make the presentation. You’ll find that choosing a character will prompt team members to think outside the box about their challenges and possible solutions and it will spark interest in others who rarely consider another team member’s challenges.
• Don’t Dodge the Ball: Throw a beach ball in the air and whoever catches it must rattle off a selling point of something in your restaurant before passing it to the next person. Encourage each department to use their own job skills to come up with original ideas. For example, a prep cook might say, “Fresh chopped basil from the farmer’s market” and a bartender might offer, “Hand-shaken martinis with caramel rims.” Try this exercise in pre-shift meetings to spark awareness of the specials or new menu items or use it as full team exercise to internally market your operation.

For more ideas on how to add fun to your restaurant training programs, check out Playing Games at Work: 52 Best Incentives, Contests, and Rewards for the Hospitality Industry. You’ll get 52 ideas that will improve profits, increase morale, and energize restaurant training programs. That’s one idea for every day of the week!  Buy the 52 Ways Book Package and get all five books in the series for the price of four!

No matter how hard restaurant managers push employees toward constantly improved performance, there will always be those employees who prefer stable, predictable work — jobs that can be explained on a half-page job description and mastered in a half-day training session. After all, it’s just restaurant work … right?

In a team environment, employees will often be asked to learn several jobs, be ready to switch jobs, move into leadership positions, master new skills and back up others. It’s no wonder you’ll find resistance.

Nowhere is this resistance stronger than among supervisors and managers. For many, not only will their job duties change, but they will be asked to change their communication style, the way they give instructions and how they use their power. “Position power,” based on title, gives way to personal power. And when you ask people to give that up and help out the lower-level employees, expect that a few feathers will be ruffled.

When you make the decision to change your culture, no one will be exempt from the pain of that change. But don’t let that scare you. Instead, think about how best to introduce the change — gradual change is often best.

And think of how you will deal with those who are hurt by the change. It’s often easiest if everyone on staff is asked to make changes. There shouldn’t be any exemptions — particularly among management staff. If egos become bruised, treat the injured parties with respect and care. Leaders and supervisors who lose their authority and whose concerns are ignored can poison the rest of the team with their grievances.

Excerpted from All For One: 52 Ways to Build a Winning Team. This innovative book is part of the 52 Ways series of restaurant management books that offer one idea a week to increase profits, improve staff morale, reduce turnover, and make more money! Buy four 52 Ways books, get one free!

The most important thing to remember is that you can’t be everywhere all the time. Incentives do work, but highly trained professionals know that they always succeed when check averages rise. So, instead of dangling prizes in front of your employees, train them to think of themselves as their own professional profit centers. Here are a few ways to begin:

• Provide solid sales training. More often than not, servers and bartenders haven’t received any formal sales training prior to taking the job at your restaurant. It’s your responsibility to teach them the basics as part of new employee orientation and through ongoing sales lessons during pre-shift team meetings. Teach, train, coach and counsel every day. If you think you can’t afford it, think again. Servers who are trained to suggestively sell can increase your per person check average $1 or more.
• Create a professional atmosphere. Employees won’t act like professionals if they’re treated like slugs. Empower your salespeople to handle customer service issues and other responsibilities. Make them a part of your marketing and menu decisions whenever possible. Create mentoring programs where your top performers are rewarded for encouraging and coaching weaker performers while on the floor.
• Encourage prospecting. In most restaurants, it isn’t the server’s job to bring in new customers, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Give all your servers restaurant “business cards” good for a free appetizer or dessert. Each server signs his or her name on the back of the card and gets $1 for each card that’s redeemed. Not only will this increase traffic, it will encourage your staff to become part of the overall sales process — from prospecting to closing the deal!

Want more restaurant training and management ideas? Check out the Now That’s Service that Sells! DVD. See below for a clip, and click here for more details.

Important enough to be:

• Acknowledged no later than a minute after they’ve been seated.
• Recognized if they’re a regular customer.
• Taken care of with a smile, friendly eye contact and thoughtful guidance through the menu and the lineup of beer, wine and spirits.

Those are bare minimum requirements — your day-in, day-out responsibilities in meeting guests’ expectations. To exceed those expectations, however, you have to be ready, willing and able to do Little Something Extras for guests. To pamper them in unexpected ways. To go beyond the routine.

That’s what Caring Behavior is all about. And it’s what separates the winners from the losers in bar and restaurant business. To get your servers to keep caring behavior top of mind, use this exercise: Present them with typical circumstances they’ll encounter on their shift, and ask them to identify both an “adequate response” and a “little something extra.”

Excerpted from the interactive waitstaff training workbook, Work Smarter, Not Harder: The Service That Sells! Workbook. Click here to read more.

• Discipline immediately.
• Be specific in explaining the problem.
• Focus on the performance problem, not the employee.
• Ask for the employee’s help in solving the problem.
• Reach an agreement and write it down.
• Express confidence in the employee’s ability to solve the problem.
• Praise the employee at the first sign of improvement.

Consistent standards in restaurant management will lead to happier employees, better teamwork, and less turnover. For more restaurant staffing tricks of the trade, check out Turn the Tables on Turnover: 52 Ways to Find, Hire and Keep the Best Hospitality Employees. Click to learn more!

When most of us walk into a restaurant we hear, “Two for lunch?” We nod, follow the host, take the menu and forget about it. We expect that kind of service. But what if that changed? What if we experienced a host that truly greeted and not just seated us? How could that change our whole outlook of the restaurant and its service? Encourage your team members to consider that and brainstorm ways they can improve this first service and sales step.

Here are some ideas to get started:

• Open the door for guests. Forget the podium… plant the host by the door and make sure they make eye contact, smile and make a personal greeting.
• Use names. If a guest is required to wait and give a name to hold her place, there’s absolutely no excuse for a host to not use it later. It’s as easy to say, “Please follow me, Mrs. Smith,” as it is “Right this way.”
• Sell the wait. How often do you hear, “There is a twenty-minute wait tonight”? Instead, train hosts to say, “There is a short twenty-minute wait, but if you’d like to have a seat at the bar I’ll come get you the minute your table is ready. The bartender can set you up with one of our great appetizers or specialty drinks!” What would convince you to wait?
• Teach everyone to greet guests. If the host is not at the door, teach everyone who works in the front-of-the-house to welcome guests and let them know the host is coming.

Your greeter is just one part of the cycle of service that will make your restaurant stand out from the competition. Learn more ways to improve service and sales in your operation with the best-selling book in hospitality history, Service That Sells!