One of my subscribers, Lew Sims, owner of Dynasty Lanes in Ohio was kind enough to respond to one of my blogs with his own take on building a management team and getting them to all pull in the same direction,
His blog is below:
“Hi Fred,
Loved your seminar in Columbus last week. I like sitting in the front row, but I wish I could have seen some of the facial expressions in the room. You made some really great points and I hope that more than a few will take them to heart. The dollars spend on marketing/advertising is a big deal. If we at a 12 lane center can spend well over $5,000 why can’t they?
Maybe they got burnt with ineffective newspaper ad’s one time too many times and feel other forms of media, social or not is just not worth it when we both know they are. It just might be some just don’t get it.
In any case, I always enjoy your blog and one of your recent blogs made some very good points.
We just had a pep talk meeting with our employees. Started it by praising the job they have done so far this season and especially during the month of February (up 21% from last year). The “I don’t want to be at this meeting, I’m tired and would rather be sleeping looks” started to disappear as the meeting continued.
I pointed out what areas they each seemed to be good at. Asked what we could do to make their job easier. Asked for suggestions in new menu items and specials. I acted upon each request within a few days. It was nothing earth shattering just things like adding breaded cauliflower, pizza fries, honey mustard dressing, an extra broom for clean-up , larger font food menus in the snack bar, etc.
AS you said, the employees, especially the new ones don’t know people aren’t supposed to bowl in the summer either. They listen to the proprietors and the mangers just like we listen to that full season league bowler. We need those employees on board too to add to the league base, we can’t do everything ourselves or just rely on flyers. Luckily we haven’t had too many “When is the season going to be over” league bowlers at Dynasty Lanes in the last few years.
Goals can also help employees. We had some extra expenses this year in order to make our center better, all the employees knew about that at our September meeting. Our goal was adding $50,000 (hard to do for just a 12 laner) compared to last year in sales between September 1st 2013 and September 1st 2014.
Communication can be a wonderful thing.”
Lew
One of the biggest benefits of setting goals is that you have something to pull and drive you when things get challenging. If it were not for these goals, I would basically wander with zero incentive to get anywhere. The exciting thing is after reaching the goal setting the next bigger one that seemed so far out of my realm of comfort only a year ago.
Wanda Hanson @ Tax-Tiger