Buy or Sell
I love movies but two chick flicks in one weekend…my wife owes me big time! 
One of the movies we watched was called “No Reservations” starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. I wasn’t really looking forward to watching the movie but it did have a couple of elements I liked. Catherine was in it, and from the sounds of the title it had to do with restaurants.
The movie takes place at 22 Bleecker, a fictitious, upscale restaurant in Manhattan. What I really liked about this film, besides Zeta-Jones being in it (did I mention I like her), was that they showed scenes of the wait staff in training.
It’s not very often while watching a chick flick that I sit up and pay close attention during a restaurant scene, but this was good. The scence depicted the owner leading the staff through a training session. They were conducting sales training!
One scene has the staff sitting around a large table. The chef is up front passing around samples of a new menu item he has created. They are attempting to educate the team and to get the wait staff excited about the new item.
The second scene has the servers standing at the table practicing how to describe a bottle of wine. They are trying to paint a picture with creative words that will inspire their guests to want to purchase a bottle. I loved that!
With all of the negative chatter I hear about how servers should not be selling (don’t believe most of it) I thought we should make a point around sales today. One of the top rules of selling in a restaurant is:
Customers don’t want to be sold, they want to buy.
Your customers don’t want to feel like they are being sold yet they do want to buy, on their own terms. That’s why in our Maximizing Sales training module we teach how to present menu items in an inviting way.
An easy way to show this is to look at an example.
When someone asks about today’s special you can say “The sandwich has roast beef, cheese, and olives on wheat bread and it’s heated”.
Or you can say “The cook piles lean, thin-sliced beef on fresh-baked wheat bread and tops that with Italian provolone cheese. Then he puts it under the broiler until the cheese is melted and bubbly and tops it with a sprinkling of sliced Spanish olives.”
Which one makes you want to buy?
Desserts are another menu item where your customers absolutely don’t want to be sold. They are watching their weight this year, or trying to get into shape, don’t want to spend the money… the list can go on and on. But deep down they really do want to buy that Midnight Ice Cream Cake which has layers and layers of chocolate. They just need a nudge.
A server walking up to the table and asking “did you save any room for dessert” is not the nudge I’m talking about. In fact it allows your guests to go into autopilot and say no.
But an excited server that is passionate around the Midnight Ice Cream Cake, creates a beautiful image and offers to bring out multiple forks, is the nudge that can convince your guests that he or she does indeed want to try that cake. They were not sold, they wanted to buy.
Besides, it’s a common known fact that desserts shared with friends don’t have any calories
