Outsold by Fast Food

“Hi! Can I take your order?”

If you’ve ever been to a Tim Hortons restaurant, surely you know what follows…

Would you like your sandwich toasted? Do you want cheese with that? White cheese or cheddar? Bacon? A drink? How about a $0.99 donut? Blah, blah, blah…

Boring, right?

I know.

But profitable?

Absolutely.

Employees of fast food restaurants, like the Tim Horton’s example above, need to have a sales process that works. Their sales process is also in a constant state of refinement and change. The questions a customer gets one day, may very well be adjusted when they return two weeks later.

Without a successful sales process and a commitment to ensure its continuing success, fast food restaurants risk loosing everything.

Every week, I read about DJs who complain that they are always loosing money to the Kijiji DJ or to that other guy in town who gives it all away, every time, just to get the sale.

How many of these frustrated DJs have actually put in time, money and effort into their sales process in the last 12 – 24 months?

Honestly, how many?

My guess…very, very few of them.

You might respond with, “Well Dave, I just do this for fun. I don’t care, nor do I want to, about the ‘business’ side of things.”

Well, then…stop complaining.

Seriously.

Stop. Complaining.

If Tim Hortons takes the time to carefully train their staff how to sell an order of food that starts with “I’d like a turkey bacon sandwich.” then surely you might consider some training to sell a set of services that has the potential to massively impact the success of a $20,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 party!

Just a thought…

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5 thoughts on “Outsold by Fast Food”

  1. Sales is only one aspect of business training. It could be expanded beyond sales. There are three columns in a DJ business; Sales, Marketing and Operations. You mention Sales training in your article. Yet, you must raise public awareness of your company through marketing before people will approach you to start in the sales conversation. Learning to effectively market your company is a key training area. Performing at a wedding or dance is part of operations. DJs, excel in performance. Yet it is not the only part of operations. Financial planning, business forecasting, taxation, client management and scheduling are also very important aspects of operations. To be an effective business owner, a DJ must constantly train in all aspects of their business. Otherwise they can never advance beyond the breakeven / hobby level.

    1. Agreed Dennis. I operate my business based on a few additional “columns” though too. Performance is, completely on it’s own, an independent column that all DJ businesses should be based on. Truth be told, my performance does more marketing for me than anything else. Typically speaking, I don’t put a lot of energy or dollars into marketing, rather, I let my performance and word-of-mouth carry that. We must constantly train in all aspects of business too. Couldn’t agree more there!

  2. Amen Dave! Stop complaining or do something about it. Those that say they don’t care must care or they wouldn’t mention it, but only want to focus on the parts of your hobby that don’t feel like a job.

    Think I need to go talk to Mitch Taylor now and tighten uo tighter 😉

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