More paperwork…we don’t like We all dislike writing service reports. They take too long to prepare and the chef who we need to sign off is too busy to do much more than scribble his name. What’s worse, he’s unlikely to pay much heed to the suggestions you’ve made about problems that are beyond your […]
Those pesky…WATCH principles How soon we forget – or more correctly overlook some of the lessons we learned as newbies. Take the principles of cleaning where we learned that cleaning effectiveness was the result of achieving the ideal balance between its five foundational ingredients of: water, mechanical action, time, chemicals and heat. We learned that […]
Sales objections and …Service problems Sometimes we have to wear our sales hat and other times not. But where’s that dividing line? Ironically in some (admittedly rare) selling situations we may not have to. And just as oddly there are those non sales situations where we better have it tightly fastened and ready to use! […]
Who’s the …salesperson now? Listing the most essential skills to be successful in our business is challenging. Of course there’s product knowledge and the need to fully understand the application of your products. And who would dismiss the criticality of knowing how to trouble shoot all manner of results and mechanical problems? But maybe the […]
It isn’t easy or…even always pretty! Being an effective manager takes a pretty broad range of skills. First and probably foremost it requires extensive knowledge of the task that’s being overseen. Then it relies on having the ability to communicate in clear language to articulate the actions being directed so that associates understand exactly what’s […]
Preventive maintenance …And important fixes Where it concerns the preventive health of our customers’ equipment, we’re pretty disciplined about seeing that it’s kept in proper order. We’ll replace curtains before they get too raggedy and take care to replace those squeeze tubes pretty regularly. But in the case of a much more important kind of […]
Wallets, money and…Measuring character Honesty is kind of a slippery slope. It goes like this: You hand a guy your wallet to hold. If he’s a number one, he never even looks inside. Give it to a number two and he’ll go through it looking at every item – but returns it exactly as received. […]
Members by…the numbers… Team members come with different skillsets and abilities but perhaps most importantly they differ in their level of initiative. Let’s classify them with the numbers one through four. Take a number one type first. He’s the guy who sees a task that needs doing and simply does it. No need to tell […]
Clean front door…Equals a clean kitchen The patrons of our hospitality and foodservice customers don’t know if the kitchen preparing their food is clean or dirty. But if the entry area, or pretty much anywhere in the front of the house isn’t spic and span they just might think that what they can’t see elsewhere […]
Bugs, dollars…And their ties We can – and generally do explain how quickly bacteria can reproduce to those catastrophic levels and most importantly how critical it is to use our sanitizer correctly. For example, we probably explain how, if food debris – or even its’ film isn’t removed, a disinfectant solution can’t actually contact the […]