Selling Food Safety to Your Employees

Once you have implemented the tactics involved in selling food safety to employees, your strategy will come to life. Focus on your employees to maximize food safety success. Develop standard practices and expectations that are simple to execute. Give your employees the proper tools, equipment, and time to execute safe practices easily. Make food safety personal by giving them practices that they can use at home. These tactics make food safety intuitive to, rather than just expected from, your employees.

Know Your Customer

Great sales people really know their customers. Getting to know your customers can help you close more sales in two months than you could in two years if you focused only on the customer getting to know you. Great sales people want to understand rather than to be understood.

In food safety, your customers are the colleagues who work in every department of your business, from the executive team to the hourly store associate. If you want to sell food safety, you must build and establish trust. First impressions are crucial. Simple actions instill trust: smiling sincerely, first with your eyes and then your mouth; keeping a relaxed stance; maintaining eye contact; and leaning slightly toward the person to whom you are talking.

Do you really know your colleagues? What are their personal interests? Who are their family members? What motivates them? The only way to answer these questions is to get out of your office and walk the halls. I make it my practice to walk the halls once a week to say “hi” to the merchandisers, facility engineers, communications people, and executive team members. I ask about projects they are working on. I also ask about the people in the pictures hanging in their offices, engaging them in casual conversation. You can learn a lot about people—who they really are—when they talk about their personal lives and what is important to them.

Researchers believe that up to 90% of communication is nonverbal. In other words, the more you can get beneath people’s facades, the more accurately you can predict how they will react or respond in certain situations and then use that knowledge to your advantage. As long as you do not abuse your insights (be discreet and sensitive, and do not act superior) people will appreciate your intuitive and insightful food safety messages.

Author Frederick L. Collins had a saying: “There are two types of people—those who come into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am!’ and those who come in and say, ‘Ah, there you are.’” I prefer to be the latter. People are drawn more to sincerity than to the flash and fanfare of someone who cannot be found when difficult decisions must be made. People remember how you made them feel rather than what you said.

Buzz Marketing

Buzz marketing is a word-of-mouth marketing strategy and my favorite method of selling food safety. It involves cultivating opinion leaders and getting them to spread information about your product or service to others in their communities. You will need to design your food safety messages in such a way that everyone in your company has an opportunity to talk about them.

You must communicate how food safety fits into every aspect of your company’s business and into the personal lives of each associate. Sell obvious, easily predictable food safety conclusions and solutions. Food safety is a complex issue, so remember to use very simple language and avoid getting too technical.

Form a cross-categorical network. Build a team of colleagues in other departments who are good collaborators and networkers. They will assist you in getting the cooperation you need to reach your food safety goals. Establish food safety champions in every department.