Sales contest basics inspire competition and profits

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 2, 2002 by Jim Sullivan

I personally have designed hundreds of effective employee contests and incentives for successful restaurant, manufacturing and retail operators over the last 10 years; Contests can be used to improve service, sales, cleanliness, labor, ticket times, breakage and dozens of other operational issues. This month I'd like to share a collection of the most basic and easy-to-use employee-sales contest ideas. The ideas can help you kick-start your fall sales and create some fun competition on each shift.

When implementing sales contests, remember three things:

Make sure that each contest is staged for no longer than 30 days. Experience has shown that hospitality employees tend to lose interest in contests lasting longer than a month.

When you stage sales contests, I strongly recommend setting team-sales goals whenever possible. Avoid pitting individual servers against one another in monthly contests. Let them compete against your other stores or other districts, but not against each other unless they're in teams. It's OK to post individual server's sales or check averages; in fact, I strongly recommend it. And it's certainly OK to encourage individual achievement each shift, but tally collective efforts whenever possible in monthly contests.

Let the team set its own goals. For instance, if you tell your servers how much you want them to increase sales, those are your goals, not theirs. Give them their recent sales averages and ask them what they think they can do collectively to improve those numbers. Most of the time, they'll set goals higher than what you would have.

Here are few classic check-boosting games to help focus your team on increasing same-store sales this quarter:

The "Perfect Guest Check": The contest applies directly to tableside restaurant operators but easily could be adapted to the QSR segment as wall. Have a game that encourages servers to amass as many "Perfect Guest Checks" as possible on each shift. In the case of a tableside restaurant, that means a guest check that includes a beverage, an appetizer, an entree and a dessert. In a pizza or quick-service restaurant, it. would mean an appetizer, pizza or sandwich and beverage. Each "Perfect Guest Check" recorded wins a special raffle ticket or small gift for the individual or team. The more perfect checks you sell, the greater your odds of winning the raffle drawing at the end of the month. Pair up cooks and dishwashers on the different server-sales teams to make them partners in the, contest, too.

Personal Best: Record the highest sales each employee ever has posted during a single shift. Now have a contest to see who can exceed their personal bests. Be sure to post the results and recognize and reward the team and individual achievers.

Sales Bingo: Create a "bingo-style" game board with at least 12 to 16 squares with a different menu item -- an appetizer, a dessert, beverages, specials or promotions -- in each square. Servers who sell every item on the sheet or four in a row win a prize. The classic contest is a staple of every savvy manager's playbook.

Ticket Time Dollars: You probably have specific cooking-time goals set for every appetizer or entree. And if it takes too long to get that food out, service suffers and sales drop. Here's an incentive that might help: Before a busy shift string 10 or 15 $1 bills on a wire behind the pass-through window. Tell the cooks that for every order that goes out beyond the targeted cooking time--measure by the time the ticket went to the kitchen--you'll remove a dollar bill. Whatever's left at the end of the shift is theirs to keep.

Sales per hour: Measure sales per hour or sales per register against a previous month or year as a fun contest for QSR cashiers-counter servers.

Highest team check average: The contest works best for servers in a tableside restaurant. Measure the individual check averages of every server and bartender and then assign them to three random teams, cipher their collective check average and encourage them to beat the other teams' posted averages. Assign a different manager to each team so that they can be competitive as well and coach their team to victory.

Raffles: Go to a stationery or party store and purchase a package of raffle tickets. Every time a cook, server, hostess or drive-thru cashier does something commendable, give that person a raffle ticket. The more they earn, the better their chances of winning whatever it is you raffle off in a monthly prize drawing.

Once your crew is on a daily diet of fun contests and monthly incentives, the critical companion step is to implement habitual recognition and intermittent rewards. Popular no-cost and low-cost incentives include Lotto tickets, long-distance calling cards, movie tickets, letting them off early, unexpected food treats, pass-around trophies, a "get out of work free" card and don't forget the simplest and most-effective incentive of all: a simple and sincere thank-you. Always supervise with an attitude of gratitude.

Anything worth doing is worth measuring, and if you don't reward your best performers, you can bet that your competition will.