7 Minutes to Better Selling Podcast - S2 - Ep.8

Thank you

Hey, welcome everybody to the 7 Minutes to Better Selling podcast

I'm your host, Colin Lake. I am coming to you live from Hot Springs, Arkansas

I know, I know. What the heck are you doing there? That's too long a story to share in the introduction

But I'm also the president and founder of Development Next Leaders, as well as your host here on the show

And if you remember, Development Next Leaders is this firm that has designed this pathway to help sales executives, sales leaders, and sales teams love what they do

And we recognize it's really hard to love what you do when you're not doing it at your highest level or to your greatest potential

And so our organization, along with this podcast, is designed to find these tools, tactics, strategies, scripts that help you do what you need to do in order to best serve your clients

And so we've transformed thousands and thousands of sales folks from doing their job to embracing and loving their career

And so from a logistics perspective, our title says we're at 7 Minutes of Better Selling Podcast, although the live conversations typically last somewhere between like 9 to 12 minutes

and we have a good one today. So you're going to love listening to Dom as we bring him on in just a second here

So we take the show to the editing floor, the live show to the editing floor

We find all those pearls of wisdom. We edit it down to seven minutes and voila

we bring that out to the rest of the world to watch. So with that in mind, I am going to welcome Dom Fabiano on the show with us

Dom is an investor. He's a restaurateur. He's an entrepreneur and an all around really, really good guy

So, Don, welcome and thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Colin

Good morning. Yeah, good morning. So happy to be with you, Don. And we spent lots of time together in multiple different ways, you know, personally, professionally, coaching

You know, we've done all these different things, you know, where we've coached each other in a small group, which has been a great like mastermind situation

So we've done a lot of fun things together. So, so happy to be on the show with you here today

So, Don, tell me if you will, tell people how you get from like this guy

You grew up in Long Island, right? actually North Shore of Massachusetts. Oh, you are? You spent some time down in New York

didn't you? I did. I lived in Manhattan for two years. Yeah, for a couple years. I know we talked

about that. But yeah, so North Shore of Massachusetts, how do you get from that guy

doing what he was doing to this amazing restaurateur, entrepreneur, and really interesting

guy? Well, my entrepreneurial venture started really young. I considered myself a hustler

So I was driven by making money. My parents were immigrants that came from Italy in the 50s

They didn't speak a word of English, didn't have much money, came to Boston for opportunity

And if I wanted new shoes or clothes or what have you in school, my dad's like, well, you're going to have to work for it

We're not just going to buy you the things that you want. And so that might have been detailing cars

That might have been going down to the convenience store and buying candy and then selling it out of my locker at school for a profit

I love that. It was just kind of the mentality I had at a young age, and that stuck with me

Hmm. Let me ask you this. This is this is slightly off topic, but you have a couple of bucks in your pocket

Thank God. Due to the wonderful culture and business, businesses you've created

How do you do that same thing for your kids? Like how do you like, you know, you got a few bucks

How do you make them go earn their own way and not give them what they want and what they asking for you all the time And this day and age where everyone has to have what everyone else has Sure So I lucky that my wife

we have two children, two boys, five and nine, Dylan and Bryce. And, you know, luckily

we both come from a great work ethic background. The two of us share that in common. And it's

something that we really want to drive home to our children. So making them work for what they have

is a really important concept that we're continually driving home. So for example, at home, it might be

you know, something as simple as, hey, if you're getting all these chores done, then you can get

you know, $5 in V-Bucks, you know, or fortunately, I have a restaurant and my oldest, who's nine

can help out at the restaurant. Doing small tasks, we have a really robust curbside takeout business

which means that folks drive up to the front doors and they give us an order number

We give them their takeout food, and Bryce has helped with that

even just bringing the food from inside the restaurant out to the guest

with a smile and earning some gratuities as a result. And I have big plans for him to continue to work

and his younger brother at Arturo's, you know, by bussing tables, seating guests, you know

just starting small and have them be comfortable building relationships, talking to the public

Those are really important life skills that need to start at a young age

That's great. Great point. Dom, I'm going to ask you this question. It's a single question

but I'm going to break it into two parts, see if you can answer it in two parts. so um i i said a couple of times in promotion of this podcast you took what was a what i would call

an average business i would even call it a below average business um in in a town with a few

restaurants and you've taken into you've taken it to this like behemoth restaurant where everyone

wants to go where it's always mobbed it's terribly difficult to get a table you know

people want to eat your food so bad that they'll get curbside takeout, like I said

because people just want your food. It's so consistent. The staff is so good. I could go

on and on about this restaurant. So how early, like very early on in this process

how did you sell yourself to build that culture, to build a restaurant the way you want it

And now that it's here, how do you continue to sell yourself every day to continue to make that

culture so welcoming and so consistently exceeding people's expectations. How do you sell yourself to

build that business early parts and then today? Okay. Well, thank you. First of all, a lot to

unpack there. I'll start with it takes a dream, right? And whatever your dream is, I mean, my

nine-year-old has a dream of becoming an NHL hockey player. Whether or not that comes to fruition

time will tell, but I am driving home the fact that it's going to take hard work to get noticed

to, uh, be part of a team and compete at the highest level, right? NHL, you make it into the

pros in any sport that is the highest level, right? So, um, I would say that I started with

the dream. I wanted to own my own business, uh, really passionate about food. I grew up working

for my family's restaurant. And it's just something that's in my blood. And being an

Italian American, I think you grow up with hospitality as being a part of your blood

I love taking care of people, genuinely. I enjoy it. So if I go and stay at your house

chances are I'm going to make my bed. If I'm having dinner, chances are I'm going to bring

my plate over to the sink and maybe even wash it or put it in the dishwasher. Just small things

that I grew up with. So I'm really passionate about hospitality. I'm really passionate about

food. And more than anything, I love seeing people smile. I love making people smile

And I get all of that from the restaurant. So it started with that dream of having my own place

And, you know, I didn't need my name on it. I bought an existing business back in 2009

And we had 23 employees and our sales were X Well fast forward 14 years later we have 68 employees So we just about tripled our staff and our sales are 6x of what they were when I bought this place

And that took grinding. It took commitment. It took working till 1 a.m., 2 a.m

You say, Dom, what are you doing at the restaurant at 1 a.m. or 2 a.m.? Well, it might have been working on my marketing strategy. It might have been fixing equipment

It might have been painting walls. All those things kind of in the early stages were just grinding, grinding and making the advice to get my business to where it's at today

I find that a lot of people come into hospitality industry and really don't understand what they're up against

It's a really unique industry. It's not something that you're going to learn in culinary arts school and really understand the business aspect of things

In fact, I never went to culinary arts school. And I went to Northeastern University, and I have a degree in supply chain management

But a lot of what I learned at Northeastern in supply chain, I applied directly to my day to day operations here at Arturo's

So hard work, dedication, and then to get to the part about selling yourself

Well, you know, I think the perception of who you are in the community is really important

your presentation, confidence in when you speak, and making connections with people is absolutely

crucial to having you state the things that you said at the beginning of this conversation

you know, that, you know, we're a great restaurant. But the idea is, we're also in the relationship

business, you know, you could come here and have a bad steak or a bad meal. And, you know, we hope

we get the opportunity to make it right. And our goal is to get it right every single time

But it's about the relationships that we build. We're in a great suburban community and we have

regulars, but we also have new customers that come in every single week. And it's up to myself

to engage with my customers and my entire team to build relationships daily so that people feel

like family when they come into Arturos. They feel welcome. We know their names. We know a little bit

about them. We know about what they like. We know what table they like and just continue to build

those relationships. I'd say those are really important things. So, Dom, the example of painting

the walls at one o'clock in the morning, that was driven by your passion or that is driven by your

passion. Like you, you, you want this business to succeed and you like to see people smile

And that's what makes that hard work. I'll put it in air quotes, that hard work not seem so hard

because it's based on the mission of servicing, which is so important to you. Did I, did I catch

all of that? Yeah, absolutely. And that starts with the dream, right? That's what you're passionate

about. Um, and you know, I could say, Hey, I'm doing this to make a paycheck. Um, but I genuinely

enjoy what I do. I genuinely enjoy seeing people smile and stopping me and saying, oh my gosh

that was the best chicken parm I've had, or that was the best cocktail I've had in a long time

or things like that are very rewarding and give me the drive to continue to do what I do

I think it's really important to tell a story in sales, right? And I never personally view it this

way, being a restaurant owner. But when you think about it organically, you have to tell a story

I think it was Simon Sinek said it in a TED Talk. I don't know when, but he said, people don't buy

what you do. They buy why you do it. And for example, in the restaurant, that could be when

I'm chatting with guests at the table. I never tell people, oh, we have the best food. Oh, we

of the best wine list. Rather, I share stories and see where the conversation goes. So it might be

hey, this guy Mike started an organic, all organic winery. And we came in and we tasted

seven organic wines and they were amazing And that might be a segue into a discussion about wine and some of the wines that we offering at Arturo And it might trigger the guest to you know have some trust in me

Right. Because ultimately it all comes down to trust. And, you know, oh, wow

Dom just tried these organic wines. And he said that this organic Cabernet was amazing

I'm having steak. What a great pairing. Let me try. Yeah. But by the way, I've seen you do that

You do that effortlessly. And that's what storytelling is all about. Storytelling and story selling is all about is the sale

Again, use air quotes around that is effortless because it's just a discussion and it's just getting people to connect to, you know, ultimately something that they want to be part of

So, Dom, I'll ask you this question and give you the last thought here and then we'll wrap up the podcast

Um, like how, how do you, how do people find you? One, that that's one. And then how important is

social media to your overall sales? Yeah. Okay. Uh, well, how do people find us? Uh, well

we're in Westboro, Massachusetts, uh, arturosristorante.com is our website. You can just

Google Arturo's Westboro and our website has a lot of information about how to make a reservation, checking out our menu

We host a lot of private events in the community here. We have great event spaces and a great bar

So that's how you would find us. What was that? There's your website right down there

And you're on social, but like should people find you on Facebook

I think that's where I see you most often. Is that where is that where you all post? Yeah, so uniquely, being an owner, I could easily delegate off the social media to someone on my team

But again, it's one of these things that I'm really passionate about. I love to manage my social media

Why do I think it's important? Well, it's a great way to make connections to guests that aren't directly in front of me, right

So, and it's free, right? So it's free for me to take my iPhone, snap a picture, or take a short video of a special that we're serving tonight that I think looks great

And, you know, I want to capture that audience and let them know, hey, this is what the seafood special is tonight

This is one of the special cocktails we're serving tonight. And give people a reason to want to come in for that special item

So it's absolutely important. Can I quantify it to sales necessarily in my business? No. However, it's really rewarding when I'm walking through the dining room or I get a text from a regular that has my cell and says, oh, I saw that picture of the cod dish that you that you posted yesterday

and that's what made me come in. And it was so good. And, you know, keep doing what you're doing

So those are the kind of things that are very rewarding to put the time and effort into my social media

and create content that people can engage with and share and like and comment on

And we also do promotion. So we had a big snowstorm a couple of days ago

and we actually closed the restaurant for the safety of our staff, not having to travel to get to work

And, you know, I just posted a contest. I had a picture of my wife and I and and one of my children with a baby making a pizza at home

And I said, hey, post a picture of your, you know, what you're making today when you're stuck at home

And, you know, we're going to select one lucky winner to win a $50 gift card

And we got some great food. You know, one woman made this focaccia and she had mortadella and cheese in there

And she said, this is my, you know, snow day lunch. And it was really cool

and we got some engagement out of it. Yeah, that's great. That's great

Okay, so if you want amazing food, amazing drinks, and exceptional service

Arturo is the place. This isn't a food blog, but I will say that

And then one of the great hacks in life is just as Dom suggested is

when you have a dream and you have passion about executing on that dream

everything else seems really easy in order to execute on that dream

So Dom, thanks so much for sharing and good selling everyone. Thanks