Training Staff to Make the Most of POS Technology

"From an operational standpoint with a POS system, there should be an open book for training from your salesperson,” says Mike White, CEO of Omni Career Search (see also White’s article on hiring staff on page 82). “You really should have your salesman (train your staff) multiple times — not when it’s brand new and shiny out of the box and the technician just connected it to your mainframe, and they show you for two hours and leave, and you never see them again. It should be an ongoing thing, because glitches will happen.” A solid technique to insure your staff retains POS training is to require them to then teach other staff. “Keep in mind when you’re being trained by a person from the company, you should have that person who is learning, in turn, turn around and train someone else within 24 hours,” White advises. “That’s an adult-training thing. If you learn something new and you have to train somebody, you’re going to be much more focused andretain a lot more. That’ll strengthen that knowledge base.” 

The Keys are Key
After the salesperson has left, management must set up PLU keys and train staff to make sure they use the correct keys for sales. “The biggest thing when you’re first buying one, from a training standpoint, is to make sure you enter your PLU numbers correctly,” White says. “What a lot of people do is get lazy. If you don’t have a key for Tanqueray and a key for Beefeater and a key for Bombay, they’re going to go to ‘Gin’ and be ringing the wrong price. It’s going to screw up your liquor costs. So it’s very important to make sure that when you initially set it up that you key in every single product you have at the right price, to make sure you are as profitable as you can be. It may be tedious, but programming the keys for each brand is essential to numbers. “It’s key when you do the training that they get the right key,” White says. “Let’s say you get in the newest Patrón, and you don’t have time to update the PLU. It’s key to train your employees to come to you and let you know that the new Patrón is on there, and you need to act on it. In management a lot of times (managers) will say, ‘Use XO because it’s close in price.’ Now you’re brining a Cognac into the tequila category, and you’re never going to be able to break down your liquor costs.”

Cash Handling
Finally, once a great POS system is in place and staff are up to snuff, a very important matter in POS training is establishing a regimented cash-handling procedure that helps drastically reduce human error and dishonesty. “You should initiate a cash-handling policy, no matter what your POS system is,” White says. “The industry standard is called 30/60/30. The policy is that you have 30 seconds to greet the guest, which is a customer service issue; 60 seconds to make the drink, which is an operations issue; and then 30 seconds to ring the transaction. If you initiate that policy for every server, it allows you to eliminate all the loopholes. “Let’s say I’m sitting at the bar, and I have a Jack Daniel’s & Coke in front of me, and you walk up as a manager and ask the bartender where the receipt is. With 30/60/30, if I’m a cash-andcarry customer and I pay $10 for that drink, and you gave me back $1.75 in change, the POS system should print tickets for cash receipts. Then the $1.75 should go on top of the receipt in front of me, so that at any given point, the manager comes and sees that. “If I start a tab and don’t want to cash out, you should still print the receipt, and it should go in a rocks glass in front of me. At any given point, the manager should be able to look down the bar and see a white piece of paper in front of somebody. “If you don’t do that, I have that Jack Daniels & Coke in front of me, and the manager asks the bartender about it, and the bartender says ‘Oh, I haven’t had a chance to ring that in yet.’ Well, how do you know he was going to remember or actually do it? You don’t leave any of those windows open.” With this policy and a high-tech POS system, the numbers at the end of the night should be as accurate as possible. “If you put that into place, it’s such a benefit to the POS system that you have, because now you’ve got a cash-handling procedure that goes along with something that tracks everything very well,” White says. “The most sophisticated POS system in the world isn’t going to make sure your employees are handling the cash properly. Don’t put your operation on autopilot just because you have the best POS system with all the bells and whistles. There’s still the human element.”