Your very best marketing tool is your employees, if you have cultivated the right climate within your company. The attitude, knowledge work skills and work habits of your employees are the tools that your employees use to market within your restaurant. Your employees are the most important factor to the success of your restaurant. It is not enough to have good food or a great atmosphere. You need to have friendly, competent employees in order to deliver the overall guest experience.

To accomplish this goal, you have the opportunity to set-up and train SuperStar Employees. Through interviewing and testing job applicants, you can verify and ensure that you will select the most qualified employees for each job. The AIMHIRE SuperStar Employee Selection System allows you to filter the SuperStars and to eliminate unqualified job applicants. For information on AIMHIRE, see www.hireSuperStars.com.

It is also your opportunity to meet and exceed the expectations of job applicants and to share the values and vision of your company with them. SuperStars are eager to learn. Through appropriate new employee orientation and training it allows the manager to build a "trust" relationship with the new employee. Handled properly, it will allow the employee to immediately "bond" with your company.

You will create a high-performance work environment through open entry/open exit training and having a results-orientated compensation plan wherein you measure the performance of every employee and reward the SuperStar and "weed" the non-performer. You should replace your worst employee with a SuperStar one-by-one.

You need to be the "Employer of Choice" in your Market area. You need to be a "fun" place to work and provide incentives, contests, rewards and recognition for all of your employees.

As you involve your employees in the "Employee Challenge" program they will have the opportunity to be rewarded in direct proportion to the work and effort they put forth.

The Employee Challenge program will be a tremendous success IF you have learned how to motivate every one of your employees. YOU are really the key to a successful program.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. It is amazing how many restaurants practice Insanity Marketing.

Evaluate your own restaurant operation. What are you doing that is insane? What can you do different that will bring you immediate results? How can you stand-out in your market area? How can you be the "Restaurant of Choice" for your market area?