Tag: Sales-Force-consultant-Pune

Your Dream Begins with Projections

Nothing stimulates the senses, pulls at the heartstrings, and invokes visions of successful grandeur more than the initial development of the first draft of a restaurant empire’s business plan. It?s how dreams are born. It’s how simple cooks and ex managers become pseudo celebrities in small towns across the country. I have spent many hours, days and weeks with a team of experienced enthusiasts planning spaces, developing menus, brainstorming concepts, running numbers, projecting lunch customers and dinner covers in order to tweak numbers to predict success. Aside from the location factor, I learned how o multiply chairs and convert those two tops, four tops, six top rounds and eight top rectangles into dollars and cents.

Looking back, this exercise was more important to my existence and my future than any recipe or menu I ever developed. It mattered not that the plan may not have worked in reality. The paper projections gave me the hope and drive and fuel to keep going. How then, could my Monday night predictions, done at another time, in another town, be so far off? And although many a night I was right on target, there were those Monday nights when I was so far off  if I had been pitching baseballs I would be back at the little league field never being asked to stop in the minors.

Needless to say, the exercise I did again and again, on vacant space after vacant space became perfected with time and experience. Eventually, I could feel the frenzy, or lack of it, that could be generated from a space, once bustling, now vacant. In many cases, the numbers proved that I shouldn’t sign a lease or make a move on a location that had gone bad. But not everyone runs the numbers or performs the actual exercises to decide if the project is viable.

Many dive head first, without the inkling of knowledge or experience. Many decide the concept is workable, the product surely profitable and the name and concept so significant that it is a sure fired success. Little could be further than the truth. The restaurant business isn’t one that can be conquered or adopted because of a cut feeling.

The success or failure of a restaurant is not necessarily in the hands of the owner or the beholder ? of a lease. The public has the final say as to when the next steak or the last bread pudding will be served. And, there is little else an owner can do once the public speaks. I found out last week that out of each of my restaurants that I sold, they have all eventually either ceased to perform and closed, or they have gone through substantial renovation and repositioning in order to limp along in a style that seldom pleases the masses.

When I sold the vibrant eateries, they were not highly profitable, but had decent cash flow and a reputation for consistently well prepared creative menus. The numbers directed the fate of each eatery. The profitability was continually tweaked and fine tuned. The excel spread sheet was not my bible, but when my partner, Kranston, ran the numbers I looked at them to make sure my projections and predictions coincided with the future. Yes, beginning a restaurant is one of the most difficult tasks in business.

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Rules for Training Our Construction Professionals – Part 1

 As we look to grow our present workforce to assume more responsibility (and authority), a training approach has to be option 1A or 1B. Said a different way, it has to be the primary option if we are serious about replacing our Senior Managers as they are starting to enter retirement age.

Contrastingly, another option is “let the cream rise” or your best people will just naturally earn more responsibly and authority. I don’t think it is a second option, that is, let all you people make mistakes and learn. Darwin would understand this approach. The fittest become rulers and the rest of us work. As you know, this approach is inefficient, costly and takes a long time.

I have been actively training for many years as a construction supervisor during the 70’s 80’s and early 90’s. Since that time, I have trained many groups as a management consultant. From both tenures, I can tell you some basics that may help you as you try to speed up the learning curve with your subordinates.

Train your people to task / skill just before they need to use it. This means one task is trained and acquired. It may sound strange but, it is true. It could take weeks to train someone who does a myriad of tasks. Not what most construction companies want. However, “drinking from the fire hose of knowledge” leads to poor results. People can only absorb so much.

Adult learners like new or interesting information. This causes mental engagement. It makes the whole experience deeper and less boring.

We have to get past the first 7 minutes of training. People will become focused deeply after 20 minutes. Physiologically, we should take a break at 1 hours and 15 minutes. Getting past that first 7 minutes is critical.

Adult learners like interactivity. This also causes mental engagement and makes that 1 hour and 15 minutes seem brief.

There are other key parts of training. More in another post.