Sale-Sell-Sail Away
Celebrating Your Successes Can Be a Big Motivator!
Beth Standlee
By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment
At TrainerTainment, we’re focused on helping others grow their people and their businesses. We teach a lot of entertainment centers how to “sell” more. Sometimes it takes a “sale,” but most of the time, it takes excellent “selling.”
People use language like “when my ship comes in, I’ll be able to…” In order to have that ship “sail” your way, you’ve got to learn to create more sales! To that end, we started the year at our company by taking the team on the second annual TrainerTainment cruise!
Thanks to you, our team had a great year. We posted 372 days in the field, sales-coached more than 40 locations, and business-coached 14 teams. It certainly was a year to celebrate. It is difficult to take the time and enjoy the “win,” because in business, we’re always in the game. As a result, it feels like there’s very little time for practice or celebration.
My team is small, and I can hear you thinking how ridiculous it is to suggest that every family entertainment center take their team on a cruise. (I can tell you that your team doesn’t think this is a ridiculous idea! Just kidding.) What I am saying is that a “sale-abration” of some sort could make a big difference for your team and your business.
Does everyone in your location understand what the goal is? They might not, even if you post a goal within each department. I know some of you are uncomfortable with sharing numbers, but there is a way to make each area’s numbers relevant. If your team doesn’t know how to keep score then how will they know if they’ve won?
We’re a competitive society. Just showing up for the game isn’t enough to create superstar players. They need to know how and when they win. I think that can happen on a daily basis. A server can easily have a sales goal, the laser tag attendant can have a goal of selling XX number of plays per day, the front desk guy or gal can keep score by posting how many VIP upsell packages they sold in the day.
Listen, we work in a “fun” business and I suspect you have a core value of fun. I know we do. In fact, we state that “we believe in having, being and promoting fun” and we lived that fully on the cruise as we started what we expect to be another BIG new year.
As a team, we sailed together to Cozumel, Mexico. We had a three-hour team meeting on the first full day at sea, followed up by a wonderful day at the beach. In the evenings, we had dinner together and because of crazy high winds and sea swells we even got one more bonus day at sea! We had an impromptu meeting after breakfast on our extra day that was fantastic. Best of all, our families joined us on this cruise so everyone got to know each other at a deeper level.
Work is an important part of life. We spend a lot of time doing it. I think most of us are in this hospitality industry because we desire some balance of fun in our work. We were able to take full advantage of that work/fun balance on our trip together.
I encourage you to celebrate with your team. I don’t know what that looks like for you. Maybe it’s a quarterly or annual party for your entire group. Maybe you take your leadership team on a cruise. (Maybe, TrainerTainment will host an industry cruise and we can all go together!) Find some way to celebrate and motivate your people.
Have a great month and I hope your “sales” are big! Party on!
Beth is the CEO of TrainerTainment LLC, a training company devoted to the family entertainment and hospitality industries. Beth and her team are focused on helping the companies they serve make more money through sales, guest service, leadership and social media marketing training. Training products and services are delivered in person, through books and DVDs, and virtually with e-learning courses, webinar development and 24/7 online access. Visit her company’s website at www.trainertainment.com.
