FREE Multiunit Leadership WEBINARby Jim Sullivan on March 9 at 1 pm CST. Click Here to Register!

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Brand New and available right now: Multiunit Leadership-in-a-Box Kit. This awesome customizable kit allows your trainers to teach your franchisees and area managers with the same slides, videos, style, content, templates, research, interaction and activities that Sullivision uses in its popular $20,000 Multiunit Leadership workshops. It's like having the experience of over 1000 multiunit leaders and franchisees in one box. Just open and develop your teams immediately to improve people, performance and profitability across diverse markets. Click HERE to learn more.
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What You Get Paid For: An Open Letter from the Owner to the Crew...by Jim Sullivan

Dear Team Member: In the last ten years the customer has been really good to our business despite the fact that we may not have always been at our best for them. Americans dined out an average of five times weekly in the previous decade, and we saw higher comparable same store sales quarter after quarter. Traffic was good and even when we screwed up, the customer seemed to forgive us. Even if they didn’t come back, another customer took their place. This got us all believing after awhile that maybe we were running this thing for ourselves and not the guest.  

But the swift kick-in-the-butt that the global recession has given our industry lately woke me up to a sad reality: I think we became complacent, unfocused, and lost sight of what we get paid for. Shame on me for not pointing this out earlier and often with you, but we were just too busy. Or maybe I just didn’t make the time. (I guess it’s true that volume can hide a multitude of sins.) Either way, we unfortunately have the time now, because our business is down so dramatically. We can certainly blame the economy for the dip, but why are some places still doing well and we’re not? I hope you don’t mind me taking a moment to remind you all of What You Get Paid For...

--Be nice to the people with the money. Everything that you or I will ever have is currently in the hands of someone else: the Customer. Our business is run first for their enjoyment and satisfaction, then yours. This I swear: I will never forget that when the upturn comes. Service has always been our invisible product. It can’t be stored but it can be given away. It can’t be discounted or prepared, but it can be super-sized and delivered. It’s most genuine when spontaneous and at its worst when it’s discretionary. It makes a good meal taste better and customers come back. It costs us nothing. So heap it on.

--Minimize costs. Do you know what the average pre-tax profit on the dollar is in our business? Less than a nickel. That’s right. For every dollar our customer gives us I spend 95 cents of it paying for food, beverage, utilities, napkins, rent, labor and waste. Then I pay taxes out of the remaining nickel. Follow our recipes, and please don’t over-portion, overheat or break, twist, bend or snap things that aren’t meant to bend, snap, twist or break.

--Maximize sales. I do not pay you. The customer does. When a customer buys a sandwich or entrée that purchase barely covers the cost of our sourcing, buying, storing, prepping, plating and serving it. When you suggest and sell a  beverage, combo, larger size, appetizer, or dessert, we stand a chance of making that nickel on the dollar. Chances are that if you don’t, we won’t. To sell is to serve.

-- Tell the truth. “Lying makes a problem part of the future,” said basketball coach John Wooden, “Truth makes a problem part of the past.” Nuff said.

-- Be on time. Excuses are like...well, let’s say bellybuttons...everyone has one. Next time please just leave the house ten minutes earlier.

--Build repeat business. A new customer will visit a business once by either chance or by choice. A coupon for or proximity to our restaurant may foster a chance visit. A good or great experience on the part of the cooks, servers and managers converts chance to choice next time they go out.  Return business is our lifeblood, and it means that the customer has driven past twenty or thirty or forty other places to choose ours. Let’s give them something memorable every time.

--      Save the drama for your mama. It’s not about you. Or me. It’s about the customer. If your attitude is poison to the team and the guest, if you would rather be somewhere else other than here, if you insist on endlessly railing to your fellow crew and managers about how this is a bad place to work, and its not like your old job, or that life is constantly unfair, then it’s my responsibility to help relieve your misery by giving you a job at the competition. Things that matter most should never suffer because of things that matter least. Just saying.

-- Continuous improvement. If you see, sense, or know a better way to improve our people, process or procedures please let us know. I promise to listen to your ideas before you have to listen to mine. None of us is as smart as all of us, so please bring your brain to work every shift and help us all move the business forward for our customers and colleagues. We must all have a bias for action to make things better all ways and always.

--Having Fun. At the end of the day this is still the restaurant industry, the best business the world, and a free circus everyday. Yes, you get paid to have fun too. So have fun with what you do, who you serve and who you work with. And if you see somebody without a smile, give them one of yours.

Jim Sullivan’s brand new DVD “60 Second Lessons in Leadership: Big Ideas in Short Video Bites” is available exclusively here at www.sullivision.com

Biggest non-foodservice trend of 2010: all Social Media is Now Mainstream. If you still think of a "hard drive" as a trip to the in-laws and terms like SMS, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook are foreign to you, you're missing key and critical best ways to acquire and maintain more customers through the art of mobile marketing. Rather than explain the entire breadth and benefits of Social Media applications, how they will help you be more productive and help your business grow, simply read Pete Cashmore's blogThough written awhile back it provides a succinct overview and insight in to what Social Media is and how it can affect your business both now and in the future.

--DIRFT: Means Do It Right the First Time. One of the things you can control in a downturn economy is executing the operational fundamentals better than your competitors. “Practice” doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. If it ain’t a ten, make it again. Practice with team members before every shift via the pre-shift meeting. Check out the hour-long Jumpstart DVD or our best-selling The Shift: How to Plan It, Lead It, Make It Pay DVD. Show your unit managers how to plan, deliver and improve your daily pre-shift meetings and make every shift a profitable one. Be sure to download our FREE daily pre-shift meeting planning template.Training is your secret weapon. Never practice on the customer. 

 Get Jim Sullivan’s free monthly e-newsletter of leadership best practices  

 --2010 Leadership Training: get stronger faster If your team is suffering from a lack of real-world  effective leadership training in these challenging times, check out Multi U, Sullivision's brand new 6 hour online leadership training e-learning course powered by DiscoverLink and Nation's Restaurant News. Hundreds of foodservice leaders and multi-unit managers have taken it and the results have been outstanding. You can check out the free demo or take the course at www.sullivision.com/multiu The course is an ideal leadership training tool for Regional Managers, franchisees, Executives and high-potential GMs.
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With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, which almost went unnoticed last week.   Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey", died peacefully at age 93.   The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin.  They put his left leg in.  And then the trouble started.
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Truths About Our Industry:
The restaurant business is like oxygen: if you're alive you'll use it.
Different is not always better, but better is always different. 
Never Practice on the Customer.
Training is our secret weapon!
Speed is not everything...direction counts.
Marketing is a philosophy, not a department.
Know the difference between busy and being productive


For a POSTER of more great quotes like these, CLICK HERE.

SULLIVISION'S "Greatest Hits" Vol 2 NOW on Sale: get our 3 best-selling products: the Mind Your Own Business book (over 220,000 sold), the Jumpstart Pre-Shift Meeting DVD and the QuoteZilla DVD together and SAVE $20 plus get free shipping:  Only $121! Click on "Products" to the left. 

OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD! We now feature Bob Nelson's two best-selling books: "1001 Ways to Reward Employees" and "1001 Ways to Energize Employees" for only $14.95 each plus shipping!   CLICK HERE to get yours right here, right now for EVERY manager at this low, low price.

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