I ran 3 Tae Kwon Do schools for about 10 years. Had a shit load of students, mainly from the military. One thing I made sure of was that I took care of my black belts and higher belts. I had to rely on them to teach at other schools now and then. So what I did was set up advanced training sessions on the weekend ... no charge ... where all the black and higher belts (red belt and black stripe) got together, fought most of the time, trained our weaknesses ( I asked them what they wanted to train).... sessions were about 2 hrs... the bond we had when we taught classes was phenomenal. I would let them teach a lot of the time and I would train. Good thing my Instructor seldom came to my schools cause some of what I did was a big no no to a 9th Degree Korean Master
My business is vastly different than yours. We produce all 500 different products instore, plus do a hundred of custom customer orders a day.
What makes us special is we read our customers minds and figure out what they want even though they have no idea what they really wanted, lol.
Way too many variables.
For example I had a customer on Saturday.
Him: my wife bought something that looked like thin sliced brisket, but it was smoked
Me: I dont produce a smoked brisket, you sure it wasn’t a cold cut
Him: no it was smoked meat though
Me: oh so she bought some Montreal smoked beef
Him: no I’m sure it was bridkst
So I go grab a brisket, trim it then slice it very thin and show him.
Him: no it didn’t look like that it was cooked.
Me: I know what it was, the he’ll end of the Montreal smoked beef has a brisket shape, I bet you that’s what she bought
So I sell him smoked meat.
Things like this happen multiple times a day, never mind the upselling, lol.
As far as staff goes. Even the majority of the staff I have let go, come in and shop at the store afterwards and chat. So I guess we can’t be too bad.
Almost all the people who have worked with me and moved on to different opportunities shop at the store. It’s nice to see them, especially the part time students I helped to mould into good workers.