A Guest Blog

One of my subscribers, Lew Sims, owner of Dynasty Lanes in Ohio was kind enough to respond to one of my blogs with his own take on building a management team and getting them to all pull in the same direction,

His blog is below:

"Hi Fred,

Loved your seminar in Columbus last week. I like sitting in the front row, but I wish I could have seen some of the facial expressions in the room. You made some really great points and I hope that more than a few will take them to heart. The dollars spend on marketing/advertising is a big deal. If we at a 12 lane center can spend well over $5,000 why can't they?

Maybe they got burnt with ineffective newspaper ad's one time too many times and feel other forms of media, social or not is just not worth it when we both know they are. It just might be some just don't get it. 

An example, Governor Kasich's declaration of June being Kids Bowl Free All Summer Kick-Off Month in Ohio. With all the hard work that went into such a thing, all the positive light it puts on bowling and the awareness it will create among families, communities and the media, I was surprised when I discovered that one my fellow proprietors emailed the BCAO office that we should contact the Governor and ask him why June isn't No Tax Month.

Sometimes when you can lead a horse to water, but instead of drinking it, he ends up drowning in it.

In any case, I always enjoy your blog and one of your recent blogs made some very good points.

Proprietors, managers and employees might be experiencing "burnout" towards the end of March and then they hear from the one time bread and butter bowlers known as traditional length league bowlers over and over when is the season going to be over or I can't wait to be done. This adds to their own decline in enthusiasm.

 We just had a pep talk meeting with our employees. Started it by praising the job they have done so far this season and especially during the month of February (up 21% from last year). The “I don't want to be at this meeting, I'm tired and would rather be sleeping looks” started to disappear as the meeting continued.

 I pointed out what areas they each seemed to be good at. Asked what we could do to make their job easier. Asked for suggestions in new menu items and specials. I acted upon each request within a few days. It was nothing earth shattering just things like adding breaded cauliflower, pizza fries, honey mustard dressing, an extra broom for clean-up , larger font food menus in the snack bar, etc.

I had a league menu for the spring in mind before the meeting started based somewhat upon suggestions they had made during the meeting a few weeks before and some ideas I came up with on my own. We went over them together covering the pluses and minuses of both. We went with total of 4 in which I already planned on doing and another I had 3 or 4 different ideas on concerning Sundays at 8 p.m.. They now had ownership of these league, knew how they worked and knew the best ways of offering them to the customers. Best of all that "burnout" look disappeared.

AS you said, the employees, especially the new ones don't know people aren’t supposed to bowl in the summer either. They listen to the proprietors and the mangers just like we listen to that full season league bowler. We need those employees on board too to add to the league base, we can't do everything ourselves or just rely on flyers. Luckily we haven't had too many "When is the season going to be over" league bowlers at Dynasty Lanes in the last few years.

We have tried to make our league experience more fun with Shammy Wammy's we call Screwey/Lewey's and other league bowler only fun things to do. Our short season leagues have many full season league bowlers in them adding a 2nd, 3rd or 4th league to what they already bowl because they like the fun twist and turns short season formats can provide.

Goals can also help employees. We had some extra expenses this year in order to make our center better, all the employees knew about that at our September meeting. Our goal was adding $50,000 (hard to do for just a 12 laner) compared to last year in sales between September 1st 2013 and September 1st 2014.

At every meeting, either they asked first or we told them just in how we are doing in order to reach this goal. The good thing is that we might just make it! They even asked for management to raise some prices in the bar (wow). Guess what? They told the customers on their own why the increases were needed to improve things.

Communication can be a wonderful thing."

Lew