30 Ways in 30 Days to Make the Next Month Rock

by Jim Sullivan Copyright Sullivision.com

What can you accomplish in the next four weeks? Not much if you don’t set specific goals, formulate a specific plan, a share both that plan and those goals with everyone on the team. Every 30 days you should determine how to “sharpen the saw” and generate momentum for the next month and then the month after that.  Here are 30 daily leadership strategies and tactics for the next 30 days to keep you more focused and more fiscal. Read ‘em and reap.

  1. Drive around the 1 to 5-mile radius of your restaurant today. List all the schools, churches, businesses, senior centers, residences, etc in the area and plan a specific way to generate more customer traffic in your restaurant from each place.
  2. Teach someone something new today. Knowledge, not time, is money.
  3. Make Pre-Shift Meetings mandatory not optional with your managers and team starting today.
  4. Learn something new today. The only person you can truly prod, inspire, and improve with any degree of success is yourself. “Work on Me First.”
  5. Today, commit to hiring noticeably better people for the rest of the month. Don’t just hire—assemble a cast.
  6. Don’t train in “general,” train in specific today. Ask yourself: who (or what) is my training target today? Apply this question to the next 26 days as well.
  7. Collect three receivables today. As author Norm Brodsky says: “A sale isn’t a sale until you collect. If you generate receivables, you are, in fact, a bank.”Hundred Dollar Bill
  8. Prune an under-performer from your staff that you should’ve let go two months ago.
  9. Re-evaluate how you interact with customers from A to Z. As Peter Drucker said: “Focus first on where the company and the customer meet and then build your solutions outward from that moment-of-truth.”
  10. Conduct a purchasing audit: you can’t compete on price if you can’t compete on cost.  Assess every vendor’s service, quality, and resources today.
  11. In today’s pre-shift meeting, tell your team why we sell instead of just how to sell. Know-why trumps know-how.
  12. Be a Brand Ambassador today for your team and customers. Purpose and not just personality should be used to lead. If you manage your business’s culture daily that culture will manage your business.
  13. Today, list the top 5 expectations your customers have when they do business with you. Define ways to meet and exceed those expectations.
  14. List the Top 5 customer complaints you’ve gotten in the last 60 days. Formulate a plan to make those same mistakes in the next 30 days.
  15. Today, teach the team the basics of Food Costs 101 in your pre-shift meetings.
  16. If you’re in the QSR segment, work on improving your speed of service today. You don’t just sell food and beverage, you sell time.
  17. Start a plan to sell more Gift Cards starting today. Why wait until the holiday season when there are plenty of guests celebrating birthdays, anniversaries or special occasions in September, October and November too?
  18. Assess your entire team of hourlies today. Assign a yellow light to the ones doing the job, a green light to the ones doing more than the job, and a red light to the ones doing less than the job.
  19. With your red-yellow-green hourly team member assessment in hand today, determine to groom ‘em or broom ‘em. Send a distinct message to low-performers: we will not lower our standards so that you can raise yours.
  20. Now that you’re developing a high-performing crew, assess your current stable of managers. Do they have the leadership skills necessary to help the team develop and excel in performance? Remember, the mediocre manager is always at his best.
  21. Today ask yourself: “Where is my target customer group when they are not in my business?” Figure out ways to co-market with those other businesses to bring more traffic in.
  22. Find two hourly team members deserving praise or recognition and give it to them today.
  23. Walk in stupid today. What is your restaurant teaching you?
  24. Don’t run out of month at the end of your money. You have 7 more days and fourteen more shifts to make a sales and marketing push this month. Design your revenue plan first thing today and begin executing it during the first shift.
  25. Time management involves not only efficiently scheduling tasks; it also means eliminating unproductive or diversionary activities. Today, instead of a “to-do” list, make a “to-don’t” list
  26. Resolve to teach the people who do the hiring how to get better at choosing the right people to let on to your team. This skill is routinely overlooked and under-valued but results in huge back-end costs in terms of management time, discipline, and service issues.
  27. Write three thank-you notes to three customers today.
  28. Ask your managers to define two best practices they noticed last week in your restaurant. Continuous improvement is key.
  29.  The first thing that training teaches young workers is what they’re not good at. Find two under twenty-somethings to compliment today on their progress and reassure them of their value to your team.
  30. Improve one facet of Service today. As author Chris Peck says: “If the only thing to purchase at a restaurant were food, it would be called a grocery store.”

And finally, what did you learn in the previous 30 days that can now be applied to the next 90? Leaders know that one day teaches the other days what to do.

Jim Sullivan is a popular speaker at manager conferences worldwide. His free monthly e-newsletter and product catalog is available at Sullivision.com. Follow him on Twitter @Sullivision

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