No matter what career you set your mind to, you’ll have to create a set of professional development goals, so that you stay on top of your game. It’s also important to invest time and energy into your professional development, since they focus on your functional expertise, accomplish tasks in your current job, and prepare you for the next step in your career.
Here are 7 goals that you need to set for professional development today:
1. Start With An End Goal
You heard right! Start with the end!
“To start with an end goal means to think about the future,” says Joan Smith, a business coach at NextCoursework and Write My X. “In other words, work backwards. As you work backwards, you’ll find your answers easily. Figure out what it will take to get to each goal, the skills and experience needed, and any other required training or certification.”
Here are questions to consider when thinking about your end goal:
Where do you want to be in a few years?
What will your title be in a few years?
What kind of company do you wish to work for?
What new skills will you have, by the time you’re hired for a company?
What will your achievements be?
2. Remember Why You’re Here
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed, to the point where you question how you’ve picked a profession to begin with? Don’t worry – we’ve all been there at some point.
In fact, part of your professional development goals should be to make sure that you don’t get burned out of what you’re doing. Instead, take some time for yourself to quietly reflect on why you’ve chosen your profession in the first place. Also, think about the people that you’re affecting with your profession. Once you reflect on these things, you’ll get a clear understanding of why you’re here, and then come to appreciate it more.
3. Be SMART
Try the acronym SMART to figure out your objectives, and learn to reach them:
Specific: Your goal must be clear and specific, and it’s what you want to accomplish. Also, think about why that goal is important, who is involved, where needs to be done to complete the task, and what resources you need for it.
Measurable: A goal should be trackable from beginning to end.
Achievable: The goal has to be realistic, to ensure success.
Relevant: Your goal must matter to you, and also align with your other goals and long-term plans.
Time-bound: Your goal needs a deadline to maintain accountability.
4. Strategize Each Goal
It’s important to have strategies for each of your goals – not just one of them. First, break down your goals into smaller tasks to give yourself achievable milestones as you progress.
Afterwards, ask your HR department if there’s a budget for learning and development. If so, sign up for a course, and learn as much as possible. Finally, when you take a certification exam, make sure you study prior to testing.
5. Establish Relationships
Relationships matter in many industries, including retail, real estate, customer service – the list goes on. No matter your profession, you have to cultivate relationships with your customers, so that you can be a shining star in your community, and positively affect people’s lives with what you have to offer.
6. Check In With Yourself Often
“It’s important to check in on yourself every so often, when developing your professional goals,” says Hayden Wilkinson, a writer at Britstudent and Australia2Write. “In other words, set up a time weekly or monthly to track your progress, and see how you’re doing. If necessary, you can have a friend or family member check in on you to see how you’re doing every week or month, so that you’re giving your best all the time, every time, in your profession.”
7. Make Time
When it comes to setting goals, you still need to make time for them. Regardless of your objective or profession, you have to be consistent with your goal-setting. Even if you have to substitute an activity (i.e. watching TV) for focusing on your goals, then do so.
Conclusion
Once you set up some of these professional development goals, you be certain that you’ll improve always, and that you’ve kept track of your accomplishments.
Don’t just wait for your company to offer you on-the-job training. You can start setting your professional development goals today!
About the Author
Vanessa Kearney is a writer and editor at Write my research proposal and Phdkingdom.com. She is also a contributing writer for Research Paper Help. As a professional writer, she is not only passionate about writing on various topics, she also strives to create something unique and exciting for her readers and subscribers.
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If you’re an employer or you’ve recently been offered a contingent job, you may have heard about comprehensive background checks. While the name may sound intimidating, background checks are a useful tool that essentially provide accurate information about a potential applicant. They help businesses make informed decisions about who they hire while minimizing their risks. If you’re curious about how comprehensive background checks work and what they cover, there are a few key things you should know.
1. It Helps Verify Your Identity
One of the main components of a comprehensive background check is the verification of your identity. In other words, it helps a prospective employer check that you actually are who you say you are in your application. This is important in helping employers avoid cases of employment fraud or identity theft. These checks will usually verify your full name, date of birth and social security number. Some checks may also reveal any other names you’ve been known under and your address history for the last ten to fifteen years.
2. It Details Criminal History
Another important factor that background checks reveal is an applicant’s criminal history. Many reports will go beyond local records to check multi-state records and sometimes even global terrorism records. Registries like most-wanted lists or sex offender lists are typically included, and results are usually cross checked to ensure accuracy. This helps employers avoid potential harm to themselves, their customers and their business.
3. It May Include Credentials and Credit History
While not covered in all background checks, a truly comprehensive background check will often include a check on an applicant’s credentials and credit history. The credentials check covers things like state licenses, institutional degrees and certifications, diplomas and more. This helps employers ensure that you have the credentials you’ve stated and you’re eligible and qualified for the job. The credit history check isn’t done by all employers, but those employers that carry it out may see your history of handling finances as an indicator of your responsibility. However, there are some states in which employers are banned from including credit history in your background check, so your location may make a difference in this area.
In today’s increasingly competitive business world, comprehensive background checks are becoming a standard part of the hiring process. It allows employers to verify information about prospective employees to make truly informed hiring decisions. Whether you’re an employer or an employee, a comprehensive background check plays a key role in helping keep business operations accurate and honest.
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If you’ve been to any management seminar in the last few years, you may have heard the term “high-performance team” thrown around. But what exactly IS a high-performance team and why do you need one in your office?
While there’s no formal mandate to say exactly what a high-performance team is, it’s clear when you’re in one because everyone works together better. And, it’s clear when you’re not in one because everything is a struggle.
Creating a High-Performance Team
Creating a high-performance team doesn’t happen by chance; it involves hard work and picking the right people, even when you can’t always know that you’ve selected the right ones. It means looking at the leadership structure of the team with open eyes and being honest with your team about the style you want to work with.
Inspirational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, is famous for saying “people don’t wake up in the morning wanting to be managed”, and that couldn’t be more true for high-performance teams. Getting the top-down leadership right to begin with makes a huge difference.
What else can we do to encourage high performance out of our teams and turn a mediocre team into an incredible one? We have six tips that every potential high-performance team should follow.
Building Your High-Performance Team
1 Work With Personalities and Personal Strengths
The very first thing you must make sure of when building your high-performance team — or if you’re looking to turn around an under-performing team — is that you work with the personalities and the personal strengths of the people you have, not against them.
Personalities are a funny thing. Many of us have done the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities tests, which give an interesting insight into our personalities, but there are many more. Psychologists mostly agree that there are five personality traits, known as ‘the big five’. These are conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, extroversion and agreeableness. Understanding how your team scores individually will allow you to see who will work properly together, as well as who won’t, and what tasks they will perform well on.
For example, someone who is high in openness is generally high in creativity, and someone who is low in agreeableness will probably be very detail orientated, but less creative. Knowing who scores highly and in what area will allow you to make sure the tasks are divided properly between the team members.
2. Collaboration and Communication
Good collaboration and communication for your team are vital, especially when it comes to project management and remote teams.
Remote teams, perhaps more so than those in an office setting, need to have open lines of communication. Whether that means you use a tool for keeping track of tasks, like Trello for example, or a tool for managing feedback from clients, or even a tool for managing your day-to-day collaborative calendars, getting the communication right is absolutely vital.
Open communication allows everyone to know where they are, what they are doing and who is doing what. It removes that “what is she doing?” or “why has he done this in that way?” line of questioning and speeds things up.
3. Rewards
Great teams need great rewards, whether that’s pizza on a Friday, a team building day every 12 weeks, or even just a congratulations where it’s required.
Building team morale helps when things are tough. For example, if teams know they are appreciated, they are likely to be higher in morale and happier to work harder. Be warned though, if a team feels like their reward is just a gimmick, like free pizza on a Friday, then it will backfire on you.
Your team is human, after all, and needs real responses to real-world problems, not fake gimmicks to trick them into working.
4. Risks
Risk-taking comes easier to some than to others. It’s usually easier for creative types to take risks than those who may be more logical, but taking risks as a team can pay off in the long run.
If you give your team the room to take calculated risks and to grow in confidence, it will pay back in dividends.
5. Personal Development
Personal development comes in all forms, but studies have shown that life-long learners make for happier employees and, as we all know, happier employees make for better team members.
There are not many people in high-performance roles who will be happy to plod along year after year without the investment they are due. It’s time to take this commitment further and really invest in your team.
Workplace coaching is great for this, and getting in an accredited coach to work with your team and instill a coaching culture in your workforce can make a huge difference to your whole team’s attitude.
6. Weed Out the Rot
This last tip is possibly one of the most important of all: it’s time to weed out the rot.
Everyone knows what this means, and everyone has worked with that colleague who just brings nothing to the table. They’re that colleague who is sullen and angry about everything; they are cynical and they can bring everyone’s mood down. Essentially, they are the rot that will set in and destroy a team.
Before you work on trying to find a way to get rid of this team member, try to figure out why they are like that. Of course, many people will be cynical and angry just because they are in the building, and it can’t be disregarded that some people just hate their jobs. But for some people, it is because they aren’t being challenged or supported enough.
If your company has a strong hierarchical structure, doesn’t support employees particularly well, has a lot of gossip and office politics, and doesn’t push people to better themselves, this can create resentment and low mood in employees, leading them to become angry and cynical and not productive.
High-performance teams are made up of all sorts of people and need a diverse range of thinkers to really achieve their goals. What kind of team will you build?
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If you run a restaurant, you’ll know exactly how competitive the industry is. There are over one million restaurants in the United States, and the projected sales for 2020 are expected to be $899 billion.
To succeed and thrive in your business, you’ll need to be savvy and innovative. You’ll need to find novel solutions to all of your marketing problems.
But exactly how do you go about building restaurant sales?
In this article, we’ll take a look at how to increase restaurant sales.
Increase Table Turnover Time
Is everyone who wants to come to your restaurant able to get a table when they want one? Having a full restaurant is great, but if there isn’t a high turnover of diners at the tables, then there’s room for improvement.
Often, the ability of a restaurant to increase sales lies in the speed of the service. If diners are coming in and it’s taking a long time to get them served, you’ve got a space in your restaurant that isn’t meeting its potential in terms of sales.
This doesn’t mean that you should rush your diners and ruin their customer experience. What it does mean is that you should be focused on taking their orders and expediting your service.
As soon as a table is free, it needs to be cleaned and reset for the next customers immediately.
Up-sell
Getting more customers into your restaurant is always going to be something that you’d like to do, but a great solution to increasing restaurant sales is to build on the size of your current customer order.
Asking your customers if they’d like to increase the size of their portion or suggesting different additional items that will compliment their meals are both great ways of up-selling and building the size of the order.
To make sure that your employees are up-selling to the best of their ability, carry out training so that they know the menu inside out. You should also teach them how to build rapport with the people that they’re serving.
Another great way of up-selling is by offering combos. If your customers are coming in and are just buying a main, get them to take a side too by creating special deals that build on their order.
Getting the Price Right
Your menu needs to be set at the right price. When you decide on the pricing, remember how much it costs to buy in the ingredients, to make the food, and serve it. In addition to factoring cost, you need to think about where your business is located and what the competition is doing.
Think about your target customers. How much do they expect to pay for a meal? If your prices are too high, you’ll miss the mark. If your prices are too low, you’ll sell yourself short and miss out on valuable profits.
Get the Decor Right
The look and ambiance of your restaurant are essential to its success. Your diners need to feel comfortable and at ease whenever they visit. If the decor and atmosphere don’t meet their expectations, it can end up ruining their meal.
Everything needs to be considered. Think about how brightly lit the dining areas are, consider whether the temperature of the room is okay, how comfortable the chairs are, etc.
Check out this restaurant furniture guide to find out more about selecting the right restaurant furniture.
Deliver the Very Best Service Possible
Things can go wrong in any dining experience, however, there is always going to be one way that you can overcome any shortcomings in your restaurant, and that is by delivering the very best service that you possibly can.
Great customer service provides a memorable experience and will leave a lasting impression on your diners.
Make your diners feel at ease. The more welcome they feel, the more they’ll relax. Impress them with the confidence that you can take their order. Suggest things that they might like from the menu and compliment them on their great choices.
When it comes to serving up the food, provide complimentary items. Bread or olives for the table or a free aperitif after the meal will make your guests feel special.
Help Your Customers Find You With Local SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way of improving where your restaurant’s website rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). But if you want people to find your business online and visit you in the real world, then you need to harness the power of local SEO.
Local SEO entails getting your business listed on as many online listing sites as possible. These include Google My Business, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Foursquare, and many more.
By getting your restaurant listed on Google My Business, you’ll appear above the organic search results in the SERPs.
When you create your listing, make sure that your name, address, phone number and opening hours are all consistent with your website and with other listing sites.
Once you’re on these sites, do encourage your customers to leave reviews of your restaurant as this will enhance your listing.
Providing Offers and Happy Hours
Promotions and offers are a great way of enticing new customers into your restaurant.
Identify the times of the day or the week when your sales are slowest and run a promo. Happy hour offers where drinks or food are reduced in price work exceptionally well for many businesses.
Think about up-selling additional items from your menu during these happy hour promos.
Now You Know How to Increase Restaurant Sales
Improving sales in your restaurant needn’t take an entire menu revamp. Often, you can achieve this goal through great customer service, the right promotions, up-selling, and making your surroundings comfortable.
Now that you know how to increase restaurant sales, you can put all of these tricks and tips to good use.
For more great articles, make sure that you check out the rest of the site.
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In 2018, people sold over 10,000 small businesses. If you want a business but don’t want to start one, buying a business can be a great choice.
You can find the right company that makes you excited about running a business.
But first, you should know how to buy a small business. Here are a few things to consider.
Determine What You Want
The first step to buying a business is to decide what kind of business you want. Think about if you would prefer a product or service-based business.
Consider if there’s an industry that you would prefer the business to be in. On the other hand, think about any industries you don’t want to work in.
You should also consider the business structure. A small business could be anything from a sole proprietorship to an S corp. Each structure has unique tax codes that you should consider when buying a small business.
Work With a Broker
If you aren’t sure how to buy a small business, consider a broker. You can find a business broker to help you find the right business for you.
Brokers understand the different types of businesses, and they can help you compare different options. Your broker can also recommend a specific business that they know is for sale.
While you can buy a business yourself, having help from a broker will make buying a small business easier.
Research the Business
Once you have a prospective business that you want to buy, you should research it. Learn as much as you can about the structure and the products or services the business offers.
You should also look at any financial records regarding sales, revenue, and debt. A small business may look good at first. But if they have a lot of outstanding credit, you may not want to buy it.
This is another great time to work with business brokers. They can help you go through the more technical
information to help you decide on a business.
Negotiate the Deal
After you research a business and decide to buy it, you have to figure out a price. The current owner may have a price they want, but you should negotiate.
You can use the information you gathered from your research to help negotiate a better deal. For example, if a small business has good sales but a lot of debt, you can leverage that.
Valuing a business can be difficult, so it may take some time to figure out the right price. But once you and the seller agree, you can move forward with buying a business.
Once you’re ready to buy a small business, you can sign the paperwork. That will transfer ownership to you, and you can start running the company how you see fit.
Deciding How to Buy a Small Business
Buying a business sounds like a lot of work, but it can be surprisingly simple. If you know how to buy a small business, you will know what steps to take.
And if you aren’t sure where to start, a local business broker can help. Then, you can navigate the process much more easily.
Want to learn more about running a business? Check out our other articles for more information.
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7 Professional Development Goals To Set Today
/in Professional Development/by Vanessa KearneyHere are 7 goals that you need to set for professional development today:
1. Start With An End Goal
You heard right! Start with the end!
“To start with an end goal means to think about the future,” says Joan Smith, a business coach at NextCoursework and Write My X. “In other words, work backwards. As you work backwards, you’ll find your answers easily. Figure out what it will take to get to each goal, the skills and experience needed, and any other required training or certification.”
Here are questions to consider when thinking about your end goal:
2. Remember Why You’re Here
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed, to the point where you question how you’ve picked a profession to begin with? Don’t worry – we’ve all been there at some point.
In fact, part of your professional development goals should be to make sure that you don’t get burned out of what you’re doing. Instead, take some time for yourself to quietly reflect on why you’ve chosen your profession in the first place. Also, think about the people that you’re affecting with your profession. Once you reflect on these things, you’ll get a clear understanding of why you’re here, and then come to appreciate it more.
3. Be SMART
Try the acronym SMART to figure out your objectives, and learn to reach them:
4. Strategize Each Goal
It’s important to have strategies for each of your goals – not just one of them. First, break down your goals into smaller tasks to give yourself achievable milestones as you progress.
Afterwards, ask your HR department if there’s a budget for learning and development. If so, sign up for a course, and learn as much as possible. Finally, when you take a certification exam, make sure you study prior to testing.
5. Establish Relationships
Relationships matter in many industries, including retail, real estate, customer service – the list goes on. No matter your profession, you have to cultivate relationships with your customers, so that you can be a shining star in your community, and positively affect people’s lives with what you have to offer.
6. Check In With Yourself Often
“It’s important to check in on yourself every so often, when developing your professional goals,” says Hayden Wilkinson, a writer at Britstudent and Australia2Write. “In other words, set up a time weekly or monthly to track your progress, and see how you’re doing. If necessary, you can have a friend or family member check in on you to see how you’re doing every week or month, so that you’re giving your best all the time, every time, in your profession.”
7. Make Time
When it comes to setting goals, you still need to make time for them. Regardless of your objective or profession, you have to be consistent with your goal-setting. Even if you have to substitute an activity (i.e. watching TV) for focusing on your goals, then do so.
Conclusion
Once you set up some of these professional development goals, you be certain that you’ll improve always, and that you’ve kept track of your accomplishments.
Don’t just wait for your company to offer you on-the-job training. You can start setting your professional development goals today!
About the Author
Vanessa Kearney is a writer and editor at Write my research proposal and Phdkingdom.com. She is also a contributing writer for Research Paper Help. As a professional writer, she is not only passionate about writing on various topics, she also strives to create something unique and exciting for her readers and subscribers.
3 Things You Should Know About Comprehensive Background Checks
/in Talent Management/by StrategyDriven1. It Helps Verify Your Identity
One of the main components of a comprehensive background check is the verification of your identity. In other words, it helps a prospective employer check that you actually are who you say you are in your application. This is important in helping employers avoid cases of employment fraud or identity theft. These checks will usually verify your full name, date of birth and social security number. Some checks may also reveal any other names you’ve been known under and your address history for the last ten to fifteen years.
2. It Details Criminal History
Another important factor that background checks reveal is an applicant’s criminal history. Many reports will go beyond local records to check multi-state records and sometimes even global terrorism records. Registries like most-wanted lists or sex offender lists are typically included, and results are usually cross checked to ensure accuracy. This helps employers avoid potential harm to themselves, their customers and their business.
3. It May Include Credentials and Credit History
While not covered in all background checks, a truly comprehensive background check will often include a check on an applicant’s credentials and credit history. The credentials check covers things like state licenses, institutional degrees and certifications, diplomas and more. This helps employers ensure that you have the credentials you’ve stated and you’re eligible and qualified for the job. The credit history check isn’t done by all employers, but those employers that carry it out may see your history of handling finances as an indicator of your responsibility. However, there are some states in which employers are banned from including credit history in your background check, so your location may make a difference in this area.
In today’s increasingly competitive business world, comprehensive background checks are becoming a standard part of the hiring process. It allows employers to verify information about prospective employees to make truly informed hiring decisions. Whether you’re an employer or an employee, a comprehensive background check plays a key role in helping keep business operations accurate and honest.
6 Tips for Building High-Performance Teams
/in Managing Your People/by StrategyDrivenWhile there’s no formal mandate to say exactly what a high-performance team is, it’s clear when you’re in one because everyone works together better. And, it’s clear when you’re not in one because everything is a struggle.
Creating a High-Performance Team
Creating a high-performance team doesn’t happen by chance; it involves hard work and picking the right people, even when you can’t always know that you’ve selected the right ones. It means looking at the leadership structure of the team with open eyes and being honest with your team about the style you want to work with.
Inspirational speaker and author of Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, is famous for saying “people don’t wake up in the morning wanting to be managed”, and that couldn’t be more true for high-performance teams. Getting the top-down leadership right to begin with makes a huge difference.
What else can we do to encourage high performance out of our teams and turn a mediocre team into an incredible one? We have six tips that every potential high-performance team should follow.
Building Your High-Performance Team
1 Work With Personalities and Personal Strengths
The very first thing you must make sure of when building your high-performance team — or if you’re looking to turn around an under-performing team — is that you work with the personalities and the personal strengths of the people you have, not against them.
Personalities are a funny thing. Many of us have done the Myers-Briggs 16 personalities tests, which give an interesting insight into our personalities, but there are many more. Psychologists mostly agree that there are five personality traits, known as ‘the big five’. These are conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, extroversion and agreeableness. Understanding how your team scores individually will allow you to see who will work properly together, as well as who won’t, and what tasks they will perform well on.
For example, someone who is high in openness is generally high in creativity, and someone who is low in agreeableness will probably be very detail orientated, but less creative. Knowing who scores highly and in what area will allow you to make sure the tasks are divided properly between the team members.
2. Collaboration and Communication
Good collaboration and communication for your team are vital, especially when it comes to project management and remote teams.
Remote teams, perhaps more so than those in an office setting, need to have open lines of communication. Whether that means you use a tool for keeping track of tasks, like Trello for example, or a tool for managing feedback from clients, or even a tool for managing your day-to-day collaborative calendars, getting the communication right is absolutely vital.
Open communication allows everyone to know where they are, what they are doing and who is doing what. It removes that “what is she doing?” or “why has he done this in that way?” line of questioning and speeds things up.
3. Rewards
Great teams need great rewards, whether that’s pizza on a Friday, a team building day every 12 weeks, or even just a congratulations where it’s required.
Building team morale helps when things are tough. For example, if teams know they are appreciated, they are likely to be higher in morale and happier to work harder. Be warned though, if a team feels like their reward is just a gimmick, like free pizza on a Friday, then it will backfire on you.
Your team is human, after all, and needs real responses to real-world problems, not fake gimmicks to trick them into working.
4. Risks
Risk-taking comes easier to some than to others. It’s usually easier for creative types to take risks than those who may be more logical, but taking risks as a team can pay off in the long run.
If you give your team the room to take calculated risks and to grow in confidence, it will pay back in dividends.
5. Personal Development
Personal development comes in all forms, but studies have shown that life-long learners make for happier employees and, as we all know, happier employees make for better team members.
There are not many people in high-performance roles who will be happy to plod along year after year without the investment they are due. It’s time to take this commitment further and really invest in your team.
Workplace coaching is great for this, and getting in an accredited coach to work with your team and instill a coaching culture in your workforce can make a huge difference to your whole team’s attitude.
6. Weed Out the Rot
This last tip is possibly one of the most important of all: it’s time to weed out the rot.
Everyone knows what this means, and everyone has worked with that colleague who just brings nothing to the table. They’re that colleague who is sullen and angry about everything; they are cynical and they can bring everyone’s mood down. Essentially, they are the rot that will set in and destroy a team.
Before you work on trying to find a way to get rid of this team member, try to figure out why they are like that. Of course, many people will be cynical and angry just because they are in the building, and it can’t be disregarded that some people just hate their jobs. But for some people, it is because they aren’t being challenged or supported enough.
If your company has a strong hierarchical structure, doesn’t support employees particularly well, has a lot of gossip and office politics, and doesn’t push people to better themselves, this can create resentment and low mood in employees, leading them to become angry and cynical and not productive.
High-performance teams are made up of all sorts of people and need a diverse range of thinkers to really achieve their goals. What kind of team will you build?
How to Increase Restaurant Sales: The Complete Guide
/in Marketing & Sales/by StrategyDrivenTo succeed and thrive in your business, you’ll need to be savvy and innovative. You’ll need to find novel solutions to all of your marketing problems.
But exactly how do you go about building restaurant sales?
In this article, we’ll take a look at how to increase restaurant sales.
Increase Table Turnover Time
Is everyone who wants to come to your restaurant able to get a table when they want one? Having a full restaurant is great, but if there isn’t a high turnover of diners at the tables, then there’s room for improvement.
Often, the ability of a restaurant to increase sales lies in the speed of the service. If diners are coming in and it’s taking a long time to get them served, you’ve got a space in your restaurant that isn’t meeting its potential in terms of sales.
This doesn’t mean that you should rush your diners and ruin their customer experience. What it does mean is that you should be focused on taking their orders and expediting your service.
As soon as a table is free, it needs to be cleaned and reset for the next customers immediately.
Up-sell
Getting more customers into your restaurant is always going to be something that you’d like to do, but a great solution to increasing restaurant sales is to build on the size of your current customer order.
Asking your customers if they’d like to increase the size of their portion or suggesting different additional items that will compliment their meals are both great ways of up-selling and building the size of the order.
To make sure that your employees are up-selling to the best of their ability, carry out training so that they know the menu inside out. You should also teach them how to build rapport with the people that they’re serving.
Another great way of up-selling is by offering combos. If your customers are coming in and are just buying a main, get them to take a side too by creating special deals that build on their order.
Getting the Price Right
Your menu needs to be set at the right price. When you decide on the pricing, remember how much it costs to buy in the ingredients, to make the food, and serve it. In addition to factoring cost, you need to think about where your business is located and what the competition is doing.
Think about your target customers. How much do they expect to pay for a meal? If your prices are too high, you’ll miss the mark. If your prices are too low, you’ll sell yourself short and miss out on valuable profits.
Get the Decor Right
The look and ambiance of your restaurant are essential to its success. Your diners need to feel comfortable and at ease whenever they visit. If the decor and atmosphere don’t meet their expectations, it can end up ruining their meal.
Everything needs to be considered. Think about how brightly lit the dining areas are, consider whether the temperature of the room is okay, how comfortable the chairs are, etc.
Check out this restaurant furniture guide to find out more about selecting the right restaurant furniture.
Deliver the Very Best Service Possible
Things can go wrong in any dining experience, however, there is always going to be one way that you can overcome any shortcomings in your restaurant, and that is by delivering the very best service that you possibly can.
Great customer service provides a memorable experience and will leave a lasting impression on your diners.
Make your diners feel at ease. The more welcome they feel, the more they’ll relax. Impress them with the confidence that you can take their order. Suggest things that they might like from the menu and compliment them on their great choices.
When it comes to serving up the food, provide complimentary items. Bread or olives for the table or a free aperitif after the meal will make your guests feel special.
Help Your Customers Find You With Local SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a great way of improving where your restaurant’s website rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). But if you want people to find your business online and visit you in the real world, then you need to harness the power of local SEO.
Local SEO entails getting your business listed on as many online listing sites as possible. These include Google My Business, Trip Advisor, Yelp, Foursquare, and many more.
By getting your restaurant listed on Google My Business, you’ll appear above the organic search results in the SERPs.
When you create your listing, make sure that your name, address, phone number and opening hours are all consistent with your website and with other listing sites.
Once you’re on these sites, do encourage your customers to leave reviews of your restaurant as this will enhance your listing.
Providing Offers and Happy Hours
Promotions and offers are a great way of enticing new customers into your restaurant.
Identify the times of the day or the week when your sales are slowest and run a promo. Happy hour offers where drinks or food are reduced in price work exceptionally well for many businesses.
Think about up-selling additional items from your menu during these happy hour promos.
Now You Know How to Increase Restaurant Sales
Improving sales in your restaurant needn’t take an entire menu revamp. Often, you can achieve this goal through great customer service, the right promotions, up-selling, and making your surroundings comfortable.
Now that you know how to increase restaurant sales, you can put all of these tricks and tips to good use.
For more great articles, make sure that you check out the rest of the site.
How to Buy a Small Business A Step-By-Step Guide
/in Entrepreneurship/by StrategyDrivenYou can find the right company that makes you excited about running a business.
But first, you should know how to buy a small business. Here are a few things to consider.
Determine What You Want
The first step to buying a business is to decide what kind of business you want. Think about if you would prefer a product or service-based business.
Consider if there’s an industry that you would prefer the business to be in. On the other hand, think about any industries you don’t want to work in.
You should also consider the business structure. A small business could be anything from a sole proprietorship to an S corp. Each structure has unique tax codes that you should consider when buying a small business.
Work With a Broker
If you aren’t sure how to buy a small business, consider a broker. You can find a business broker to help you find the right business for you.
Brokers understand the different types of businesses, and they can help you compare different options. Your broker can also recommend a specific business that they know is for sale.
While you can buy a business yourself, having help from a broker will make buying a small business easier.
Research the Business
Once you have a prospective business that you want to buy, you should research it. Learn as much as you can about the structure and the products or services the business offers.
You should also look at any financial records regarding sales, revenue, and debt. A small business may look good at first. But if they have a lot of outstanding credit, you may not want to buy it.
This is another great time to work with business brokers. They can help you go through the more technical
information to help you decide on a business.
Negotiate the Deal
After you research a business and decide to buy it, you have to figure out a price. The current owner may have a price they want, but you should negotiate.
You can use the information you gathered from your research to help negotiate a better deal. For example, if a small business has good sales but a lot of debt, you can leverage that.
Valuing a business can be difficult, so it may take some time to figure out the right price. But once you and the seller agree, you can move forward with buying a business.
Once you’re ready to buy a small business, you can sign the paperwork. That will transfer ownership to you, and you can start running the company how you see fit.
Deciding How to Buy a Small Business
Buying a business sounds like a lot of work, but it can be surprisingly simple. If you know how to buy a small business, you will know what steps to take.
And if you aren’t sure where to start, a local business broker can help. Then, you can navigate the process much more easily.
Want to learn more about running a business? Check out our other articles for more information.