Brad Sugars talks about a restaurant's results with ActionCOACH

Brad Sugars Says …

Just by the look of the restaurant itself, we could see that it was indeed very different from other restaurants. It felt like we were taken back in time.

The owner came out and greeted us warmly. Our first impression of him was of a mild-mannered and cultured businessman who conducts business fairly. We got to find out more about this during the program. He treasures his staff and doesn’t favor retrenchment.

During the business diagnostic, he appeared to be quite comfortable with the way his business was going. It was soon revealed that he had met all his goals since the day he took charge of the business.

And that was some 10 years ago!

Probing further, we realized that he wanted to improve the business and was willing to learn.

Of course, the ActionCOACH coaching program is all about learning and gaining knowledge, and this we stressed to him.

Our new business relationship commenced one week later.

The Alignment Report got him to revisit his personal and business goals. It also made him aware of the business challenges that confronted him and highlighted a number of ways to overcome them. The process got him to analyze his target market and think about his market awareness.

The first decision taken was to put new sales and marketing strategies in place. This was because the restaurant was not doing much in the way of sales and marketing activities at that point, and the owner realized he had to get some outside help if he wanted to commence moving down this path.

Fortunately, he didn’t find this traumatic, as he had already decided he wanted to progress and improve.

At the beginning of coaching, the goal was to improve revenue by 10% by the end of the program.

We then devised a recommended plan which consisted mainly of sales and marketing strategies within the five areas of leverage (leads, conversion rate, number of transactions, average dollar sale and margins).

We certainly faced some challenges along the way. These included time and capability constraints faced by the owner, when it came to copywriting and implementation, as he didn’t have anyone to help him. And he didn’t plan to have anyone doing that full-time for him, either.

How were they overcome? ActionCOACH helped him with the first copy and the rest were outsourced.

ActionCOACH also worked on Host Beneficiary and Strategic Alliance strategies to increase the restaurant’s leverage, as this was more cost effective than hiring a dedicated marketing person.

Of the novel solutions we introduced, the most successful was the “Food of the Month” promotion.

The offer was to give a FREE desert for a dish that takes at least two people to consume.

So sales of desert also increased for that month, and all for the cost of one promotion and a once-off printing cost for the posters!