Transform Waiters into Sellers

At least 5% of the restaurants use their staff as vendors and take advantage of this great resource of gastronomic marketing and hotel sales.

To help you become part of this elite group, we want to show you some simple strategies or techniques by salesman waiters that you can implement today. You will start to see results quickly if you do.

 

 

Hire salesmen waiters

Selecting people with the right skills and personality is key to building a staff of salesman waiters. Undoubtedly there are many factors that you must take into account when selecting staff and one of them is to check if the candidate has sales skills.

Evaluate them by observing their gestures, their ability to put themselves in the customer’s place, or even asking them to try to sell you any object or product in the interview. Doing role-play will help you to determine if they have the necessary sales skills to work on your team.

The sale is a conversation, a talk that tempts you to buy a product. You could ask him to sell you a homemade chocolate cake. Ask him how he would do it.

If you see that he dares and tries, you already have a potential seller in your team.

 

 

 

Include sales in the training of your staff

The most effective way to have a strong sales system is to incorporate this section into your staff training.

Most restaurants train their staff by indirectly referring to sales, not giving enough importance or tools to develop sales skills.

How not to value the benefits of your business? Does it not matter that you can earn more money each month?

Train your employees with specific exercises related to sales, define how you want them to carry them out, and convey that all your work in your business should be focused on selling more.


 

 

Role-Playing

Although the game of exchanging roles is usually present in personnel training, its use for sales training must be mandatory.

Ask your team to play the role of waiters and customers and demonstrate how to make useful suggestions to customers that will increase sales, but also improve their dining experience.

There are indeed people who do not like the idea of ​​role-playing during training because they find it uncomfortable to be the center of attention. However, this is the best way to practice selling and to get your employees to adopt your vision of selling, putting it into practice.

If you allow each of them to act according to their criteria, you will not have control over their way of executing the sale, and you will inevitably lose money.


 

 

Gamify the sales process with incentives

Implementing a system of incentives in sales is an easy way to reward your staff’s good work, both individually and as a group. And an excellent way to motivate them.

The exciting thing about gamification is that it affects two motivations of any person:

Extrinsic motivation: It will be the reward of the competition, as you can give those tickets to the cinema, tickets for a spa, pay them an annual subscription to Netflix, etc.

Intrinsic motivation: In this case, the reward is in the activity itself: feel part of the group, the satisfaction of winning the competition, or collaborate with other participants and not so much in economic objects or awards received.


 

 

Results and response

The last step to get your restaurant sales up is you.

It is not enough that you have hired, trained, and encouraged your team to have salesmen waiters.

To indeed do your job focusing on sales, as part of your business’s culture, you must reinforce the message through your response.

Start by not keeping success secret. For example, share the results regularly with your team, because by doing so, you will get them to understand that you value the sales achieved.


 

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