What Comes After a Successful Sales Workshop?

So, you’ve completed a successful sales workshop. What happens next?

We gathered a series of creative team briefings designed to maintain a strong sales culture over time. Share them with your managers, and the next briefings they lead will deliver real results.

Professional Alcohol Briefing

The goal of this briefing is to strengthen the team’s knowledge of your alcohol program, increase sales, and improve upselling opportunities.

Choose one category you would like to promote and expand the team’s knowledge around. For example: digestifs (which can be divided into grappa, sherry, port, amaro, etc.), gin, whisky, or any other category relevant to your menu. If your selection is large, focus on one subcategory at a time.

Introduce the team briefly to the category and the brands you offer. Share a short story about each brand, no more than one or two sentences, focusing on what makes it unique. Then move to the “sales floor” discussion:

Who is this product suitable for?How should it be presented?How do we upgrade from one product to another?When should we suggest it?How do we avoid missing sales opportunities?

Practice as much as time allows. Let the team experiment, make mistakes, and improve. Set sales challenges for the shift and follow up throughout service and during future shifts to ensure they are actually trying.

The beginning is always difficult. Teams should not be discouraged by rejection and should continue practicing and improving. Remember: if managers do not actively verify that the team is trying, most of them simply will not. Even the best briefing becomes meaningless without follow through.

Example roleplay for an alcohol briefing:

Guest: Can I get a gin and tonic?

Server with sales knowledge: Of course. Which gin would you like? Our house gin is Bombay, but I can also recommend Hendrick’s, a Scottish gin infused with cucumber and rose, which is very refreshing. Or, if you prefer something drier, Tanqueray is an excellent option.

All of these sales phrases should be practiced during the briefing before reaching the table.

Wine Sales Briefing

Ask the team to present a specific wine or answer common guest questions:

Do you have an Israeli Cabernet?

Can you recommend a semi dry white?

Which Chardonnay would work best? “What pairs well with food?”“Do you have Italian wines?

Help the team formulate concise, valuable answers without unnecessary overcomplication. If the server cannot genuinely identify “notes of ripe grapefruit,” there is a good chance the guest cannot either, and spending too much time on technical descriptions rarely helps the sale.

It is important to understand that the wines on your list compete with each other, not with every wine in the world.

Comparing your Pinot Blanc from Northern Italy to a German Pinot Blanc may interest wine enthusiasts, but most guests care more about how it compares to the other aromatic wines on your own list. In other words: why should they choose this wine over the others?

Is it more acidic? More fruit forward? Fuller bodied? Exceptional value for money?

Support the team during the following shifts. Make sure they are not missing opportunities, help them refine their sales language, and never forget to provide positive feedback, ideally publicly during briefings or in the staff WhatsApp group.

Pay attention:

An upgrade should never exceed 20% above the value of the product originally requested by the guest.

Do not begin recommendations with the most expensive wine on the list, as this often creates resistance.

If your wine list has a very wide price range, do not hesitate to ask guests approximately how much they were planning to spend.

Meal Building Briefing

The goal of this briefing is to help the team understand what the ideal dining experience looks like in your restaurant.

Does the team know how to build a complete meal?

Even if your restaurant does not encourage “surprise menus,” it is still essential that the team knows how to guide and recommend effectively. When we create a complete and memorable experience tailored to the restaurant, guest satisfaction increases dramatically. It also becomes much easier to sell and upsell naturally.

So what does the ideal experience look like at your restaurant?

Shared dishes, wine pairings, cocktails, desserts, digestifs, and the overall flow of the meal.

The team should understand the experience, practice it, and feel confident recommending it.

During the briefing, ask the team to build the perfect meal for a hungry couple who eat everything.

Pay attention to whether they are thinking ambitiously. Teams that aim low will never reach high sales potential.

Do they begin with an aperitif before moving to wine?How many dishes do they recommend?

What is the order of the meal?

Are they recommending the strongest dishes on the menu?

Are the selections diverse?

It is important that the team understands that once a strong “meal structure” exists, it becomes very easy to adapt it for different guests.

Vegetarian guest? Adjust a few dishes while maintaining the experience.

Guests less hungry? Remove a few components strategically.

Ultimately, the goal is for the team to know the restaurant’s ideal meal experience by heart. That confidence makes recommendations feel natural and authentic.

Opening Speech Briefing

This briefing focuses on how the team introduces the menu and the restaurant concept to guests.

Does everyone actually do it? And more importantly, how do they do it?

The way the menu and concept are presented during the initial interaction has a critical impact on sales potential and the ability to create a more memorable experience.

Personalizing the experience for the guest creates a stronger emotional connection and significantly increases the chances of repeat visits.

Do not assume you know what your team says at the table. Ask questions during the briefing and have them practice in front of each other. You may be surprised by how many employees fail to properly introduce the restaurant and its concept.

It is also worth testing how they deliver their opening speech in English.

Sales Case Study Briefing

Collect stories and situations from service throughout the week and turn them into one structured weekly briefing.

Not only negative examples.

Include successful upgrades, creative sales moments, memorable guest experiences, as well as situations where opportunities were missed due to lack of availability, insufficient product knowledge, or weak communication.

Analyze the situations together with the team and discuss what worked and what did not.

The goal is to learn and improve collectively.

You may be surprised by how many valuable ideas and insights come directly from the team itself. These discussions also increase confidence and create a stronger sense of capability among employees.

Team members who struggle with sales often learn the most from watching their colleagues succeed, and gradually gain the confidence to try themselves.