Operations – Sales Techniques
You Can’t Sell Anyone Anything!
The harder you try to SELL the extra hot wings, the cheese sticks or the bigger pizza, the more resistance you build between you and your customer. When someone places an order and your server or the person taking the order applies pressure to “”up sell” the customer, the customer feels the pressure and most of the time backs off. After the server or order taker fails a few times they get discouraged and quit trying.
So if you can’t “sell anything”, what is the answer to INCREASING CHECK SIZE? Here is the key: People like to make their own decisions.
Here is a guaranteed way that you can get customers to add something to their order…Explain to your servers that they are not expected to try to SELL the customers more items, but they are expected TO HELP THEIR CUSTOMERS MAKE GOOD DECISIONS.
For example: Let’s say a family of four entered your restaurant and they are looking over your menu. Instead of saying something like “Hi, my name is Mary and I am going to be your waitress tonight, would you like an appetizer?” Or “Hi, my name is Mary and I am going to be your waitress tonight, what would you like to drink?” What if they said: “Hi, my name is Mary and I am here to help you make the perfect choice for your meal. Do you mind if I give you a quick update about what most people have been ordering?”
For more tips on how to increase orders without actually selling anything, please see the April 2009 edition of the Delco newsletter found in the Newsletter Archive section.
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