It's refreshing to see many marketing messages now geared at things operations has long tried, but struggled, to sell — extra cheese, bacon, larger sized drinks, and the like. Too often, marketing and operations seem to be competing instead of working together.
You know the story. Marketing is promoting the latest and greatest LTO, but operations is trying to work on line speed, cook times, and selling the afore-mentioned add-on items. The customer can't buy everything, and competing messages are not only confusing for the customer, they are difficult for operations. When the customer is confused, they simply say "no" and sales are lost.
Partnering external marketing (to the customer) with internal marketing (training the employees) can leverage the impact of the promotion or offer. When the customer hears a consistent, single message from both the advertising (whether in-store, coupons, TV/radio, etc) and the employees, the likelihood of a purchase increases.
When the customer hears or sees an advertisement before visiting your restaurant, but the message isn't reinforced during the visit, the customer often forgets—and the benefit of the new item or offer is lost.
What to do? Take a few marketing dollars and create a simple training video or podcast to help train the employees, as well as reminder cards or an incentive program so the employees are rewarded for supporting the effort. Getting everyone pushing in the same direction will yield far greater results!
About the Author
TJ Schier is the president of Incentivize Solutions, former President of CHART (Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers), a noted industry speaker, and author of books and training videos that you can find at http://www.incentivizesolutions.com/store/index.php. Reach him by email at
