Points of Profit NewsÓ

Points of Profit News-the newsletter that promotes service excellence, leadership building and enhanced profits in the restaurant and hospitality industry. This monthly resource provides quick tips, tools and solutions you can use right away to instill a passion for service in your business, build real and lasting profits and help develop your managers into leaders. 

July 2, 2002

Issue 26

Ron Yudd, Editor, www.ronyudd.com

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Welcome to our July holiday issue of Points of Profit News. Welcome to our new subscribers. Thanks for joining us in our restaurant and foodservice adventure. Enjoy the upcoming holiday!

Thank you Nation’s Restaurant News for publishing our article entitled “Model Behavior: Success very often follows leaders who can practice what they preach” (NRN June 24^th, 2002)

Thought of the Month: As Major League Baseball’s All Star game approaches this month’s thought of the month comes from Babe Ruth who once said—“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up”. That’s great advice for everyone out there plugging along each day on the front lines of business. Life long perseverance is a very special leadership quality that we need to model for those that work for us and with us.

Also, it was great to hear from many of you last month reaffirming our salute to Dick Gaven for his many years of service to the National Restaurant Association’s annual Show. His lessons in leadership have obviously affected many. Dick—you have quite a following.

For those of you that are just joining us-previous issues of the Points of Profit NewsÓ can be found on our website on the resources page at www.ronyudd.com.

“50 Points of Profit” Audio Album ----The Fifty Steps to Build Lasting Profitability in Your Business

An audio album that explores 25 Points of Profit in the Back of the House and 25 Points of Profit in the Front of the House and gives you the tools to enhance your profitability. Keep in mind that the sales from all our professional growth audio tools go to support our Leadership Cares Foundation’s initiatives. Click on www.leadershipcares.org to learn about our activities.

See our full line of audio tools by clicking on www.ronyudd.com/products.php

Special Note to Golf Lovers-The Leadership Cares Golf Classic will be held on August 12^th, 2002 at the Bretton Woods Country Club in Germantown Maryland 20874. It’s going to be a rewarding day filled with fun, food, networking and great golf all to support the three Leadership Cares outreach programs----------Mentor training, literacy tutor training and hunger relief.

Leadership Cares teaches teenagers and young adults the leadership skills they need to be successful in the market place. We build these skills by having the young people get directly involved in participating and operating the outreach programs. It is this “hands on” approach that makes our programs successful and ensures that our participants will be caring leaders in the future in their communities and businesses.

If any of our readers (or your contacts) are going to be in the Washington D.C. area on August 12^th we would love to have you come out and play a round of golf on this award winning course. Fees are tax deductible. A special flyer will be going out after the holiday but if you would like more information on participating in the golf tournament or learning about sponsorship opportunities please click on: http://www.ronyudd.com/golf/classic.htm

On the Front Lines of Service

We’ve been exploring the Five C’s of customer service over the last several months. We agreed that these five things had to be in place as the foundation for any successful business. The five C’s of customer service are:

Comfort-Consistency-Confidence-Convenience-Courtesy

• We covered these five C’s of customer service in detail over the last several months. Take a look at back issues on the web site for a refresher on the 5 C’s: www.ronyudd.com/resources.shtml

This month, we offer a quick bullet list on the five most effective ways to teach these customer service concepts:

• First—It’s all about modeling behavior. The best run operations have a leader that lives guest service in each and every of his/her guest and associate interactions.
• Second-Show associates how important customer service is on your list of priorities. Every communication you have with staff should start off with the phrase--------We are doing this because it will enhance the experience of our guest.
• Third-Reward extraordinary delivery of service. Make heroes of those on your staff that do extraordinary things for their guests.
• Fourth-Create comfort on the fundamentals. When we teach this concept we call it the “Mechanics of Service”. The more comfortable a server is when executing the basics, the better chance he/she will actually perform them. We are always preaching about making your staff feel as comfortable as your guests, but we really believe this is the key to exceptional service delivery.
• Fifth-Develop a 5-Week program where each week you cover one of the C’s of customer service. Your line-ups and training sessions should start off with a little demo or role-play on the particular C that you are focused on for that week.

Building Leadership Skills

We are continuing our look at Hands on Leadership that we started several months ago. We talked about the value of getting involved and jumping in to help the staff during prime time. We observed that going “hands on” created an atmosphere where teamwork could take hold and flourish. Last issue we took a pretty in-depth look at problem solving and the four approaches to teaching this particular skill.

This month we take a look at learning to prioritize. Prioritizing skills generally develop from the experience one gets in performing his/her job on a daily basis. We sort of go about figuring out what has to be done first and then second and so on. The problem is that we often prioritize based on what’s important to us rather than what is really important to our guests and associates. When learning to prioritize do the following three things:

· Put yourself in the place of the person who is going to receive the benefit of your work. Ask yourself what is important from this person’s perspective? Remember the rank of importance—Guest---Associate----Your Boss and then you.

· Create a Top Five List as you begin your shift and then put them in the order of rank as outlined above. I know what you are thinking---“Hey Ron—if my boss calls for the cover count from last night—I can’t tell her--sorry –you’re fourth on my list”. Balance real world situations with your goal of taking care of guests and associates first —keep trying to get there.

· Break things further down into categories from short term to long term---what’s important today—what’s important for the week, month etc. Keep your notes and checklists to review at the end of the shift and then again at the end of the week and so on.

Little by little—the task of prioritizing will become a skill that you will do sub-consciously.

There is much more to this concept of prioritizing --and we’ll share several more tips in our coming issues.

Profitability Plus

This month we continue our Point of Profit on recruiting and retention. We often hear the lament about turnover and the “shortage” of good employees. There are actually operators that don’t have these problems because they spend their time creating a work environment where people want to come and work.

Last week there was a fire at local diner that has been part of the community in Bethesda, Maryland for over 40 years. I can remember going there as a kid and hanging out. The article talked about the details of the fire but more importantly it talked about the staff and regulars that were devastated because of what had happened. It talked about the servers that had been working there for years and years. It mentioned the fact that they were lost and didn’t know what to do. It went on to talk about the regulars that kept stopping by to express how sorry they were about what happened. The good news is that rebuilding started the next morning and the regulars and staff will be back in their “home away from home” in a matter of weeks. It turns out that creating a place where customers and staff feel at home is the best retention tool that a manager or owner could have.

Do you have a Coach? Take a look at our One-on-One Success Coaching Programs. Reach your personal and professional goals. Check out this popular way to stay on course for building personal and professional success. Click on www.ronyudd.com/1on1.php. We have three levels of personal coaching services available.

Take Home Idea of the Month

Start a “Book of the Month Club” with your management team. I can hear everyone moaning right now about not having the time to read one book a year let alone a one per month. Break it down and start slow. Buy several copies of a book you want to share with your staff and assign a couple of team members to read different chapters and be ready give a “book report” at next week’s meeting. (Whoa—I just had an elementary school flash back—pretty scary). Just have each team member present a brief summary or “mini book report” on the chapter or ask them to describe the most important thing they took away from reading a particular section. One book to get you started: Winning the Talent Wars-By Bruce Tulgan (author of Managing Generation X) W. W. Norton and Company 2001

One “take home idea” as a reminder----let us know what you’re doing on our mentoring challenge. This is the year of mentoring a young person on your staff with the goal of sharing your wisdom and experience. Remember young people are not our future---we are their future.

Web Site of the Month-This month we have two sites to explore. The first is www.starchefs.com. You could spend a week in this site and not see everything they offer. Take a special look at their “business tools” page. The other site of the month is also a great resource, whether you are an old hand in the business or just starting out exploring a career in the restaurant and hospitality industry---www.cookingschools.com Take a look at the career and education statistics on this site. Great stuff.

Points of Profit Leadership Inc. helps companies develop their managers into leaders. We are a “one stop shop” for resources and tools for enhancing customer service levels, increasing profitability and developing leadership within your operation.

Points of Profit News is an online means of sharing information of interest to the restaurant and hospitality community. You are encouraged to send questions, make observations and share items of interest. E-mail your ideas, thoughts and contributions along with your name, address and phone number to: ron@ronyudd.com

Ron Yudd is a recognized expert on developing profit strategies and customer service solutions. Ron provides his clients with the tools for their success. He accomplishes this through keynotes, seminars, workshops, facilitation, consulting and personal coaching. His keynotes and seminars- Leadership Legacy, Leadership for the Bottom Line, No One Escapes Customer Service and Mentoring Today for Leaders Tomorrow have helped business operators focus in on building leadership skills, improve customer service and enhance the profitability of their operations. He combines a motivating style with practical “take home” ideas. You can reach him at www.ronyudd.com or email him at ron@ronyudd.com. His office number is 301-540-5791. Copyright 2002 by Ron Yudd.