Archive for the ‘Operations’ Category

Nagib’s Corner: Ironing is Gaining Steam as a Perk

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

Follow up from my last email, this amenity is gaining steam!

For anyone who has been on the road for a business trip (all of you), you know what a drag this is to the trip.

You can offer either a steam service or light ironing at limited cost and high value.

· Shoe shines – you can offer these with the help of your housemen who will be in the building, for the most part, in the evening/graveyard. NO EXTRA COST

· Ironing – offer this over a certain time period when you can retain a room attendant to stay over for an additional couple hours or so. Or ask another to come in for a couple hours in the evening. Imagine the impact with your corporate guest!

Test it for a Mon, Tue and Wed only and see how it works.
Make it a back to work special for September for all corporate clients who have a negotiated rate with you.
If you offer a manger’s reception (which I hope many of you are), you could offer this over that period which will really get them talking!
2 HOURS @ $18-$20 max total.
Offer some free ironing to groups or at least to the group organizers as a point of differentiation.

For those who try this, please let me know your comments!

Nagib.

More hotels get the wrinkles out for guests; Ironing is gaining steam as a perk in the USA
News from LexisNexis

Gary Stoller — USA TODAY, August 4, 2009 Tuesday FIRST EDITION

Owen Mekitarian checks into a hotel almost every week and faces the same problem when he unzips his bags.

“I arrive just about every week with wrinkled clothes,” says Mekitarian, 52, a Canadian broadcast engineering consultant who frequently travels across the border to visit U.S. radio stations.

Like Mekitarian, millions of travelers can arrive at hotels each year with wrinkled clothing. Many reluctantly reach for an ironing board and iron or call the front desk for the equipment.

That’s no longer needed at Omni Hotels. In late April, it announced that its 41 North American hotels are providing free ironing for frequent-guest-program members.

Omni joins a growing number of hotels offering complimentary clothing and grooming services. Complimentary shoeshines, for instance, are increasingly common. And more hotels are letting guests use washers and dryers for free.

But simply getting the wrinkles out is often the biggest concern, and free ironing remains a rarity. Looking for hotels with free ironing, USA TODAY contacted numerous chains, and the American Hotel & Lodging Association asked its thousands of members.

Two other hotels offer the free service: the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine, and The Jefferson, a Washington, D.C., hotel that’s scheduled to open later this month after an extensive renovation.

The White Barn may have the most guest-friendly policy in the country. Guests can have as many items as they wish washed and ironed for free, and the inn provides free shoeshines, says spokeswoman Kristin Hutton.

The Jefferson will iron one item of clothing for free per stay and provide free shoeshines.

Omni irons two items for free per stay for most members of its Select Guest frequent-stay program, which can be joined without charge at check-in.

Select Guest black-level members — those who have 11 stays or spend 20 nights annually at Omni hotels — can have as many items as they wish ironed for free.

Omni estimates that 8% to 10% of its guests a week use the service, according to Vice President Caryn Kboudi. Excluding repeat guests, the chain says it has ironed more than 1,000 shirts a week for free.

Guests at 190 Hyatt hotels who pay a higher room rate for upgraded amenities can have one shirt or blouse ironed daily per room without an extra charge. The amenities are part of the Hyatt Business Plan available at participating Hyatt Regency, Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt hotels.

Free ironing is more prevalent at foreign hotels.

The St. Regis Punta Mita Resort, north of Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta airport, offers free ironing of two items of clothing per stay and free shoeshine and button repair.

Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh, Scotland, washes and irons for free two items of clothing daily per guest room.

Many hotel guests despise ironing clothes in their rooms.

Omni announced in June that it hired a research company to survey business travelers and found that some would rather have their teeth pulled than iron clothes.

Mekitarian, the frequent business traveler from Canada, can relate.

“I do not really know how to iron a shirt,” he says. “I hate ironing shirts so much that I would rather do just about anything else — even torture myself on the treadmill.”

Mekitarian and Michael Lake, a business traveler from Auburn, Calif., say free ironing is a “great” policy.

“Most hotel irons do not work properly, leak or stick to clothing,” says Lake, who works in the transportation safety industry and spends up to 150 nights a year in hotels.

Packing dirty clothes

Mekitarian says he carefully packs his bags to keep clothes wrinkle-free, but they still wrinkle or are wrinkled during airport security searches.

To avoid ironing, he sometimes packs his bag with dirty clothes and pays for laundry service after arriving at a hotel.

Such a charge may be avoided at an increasing number of North American hotels that offer washers and driers for free for guests who do their own laundry.

All 213 Candlewood Suites hotels and all 155 Staybridge Suites properties provide washers and dryers without charge, but guests have to bring or buy detergent.

At AKA’s eight hotels in New York City; White Plains, N.Y.; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; and Arlington, Va., the use of washers and dryers is free, and complimentary detergent is provided.

Washers and dryers are in every room at the chain’s hotels in Washington and New York’s Times Square.

The laundry room at AKA’s Central Park hotel has a lounge area with a flat-screen TV.

Hotels’ free clothing and grooming services appeal to many travelers.

But Marla Juliano of Birmingham, Ala., says she travels three to five days a week, and they won’t influence her hotel choice.

“If they are going to send someone home with me to wash, iron, cook and clean after a long trip,” says Juliano, a sales director for a hair care manufacturer, “now, that is a different story.”

Nagib Lakhani-RevMax Hospitality Consulting Services
O: (425)677-7866 C: (425)445-7750 F: (866)508-7866

nagib@RevenueMaxConsulting.com
4313 245th Avenue SE
Issaquah, WA 98029

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Nagib’s Corner: The Best $73 I ever Spent

Monday, June 15th, 2009

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen,

A truly do-able function with higher returns than other functions we may spend our time at. From the founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels.

As we work our way through his environment, it is the commitment of those who lift the load for us that will allow us to emerge on the other side with a minimal of bruising.

A simple technique I learnt from a veteran commenting on how little effort we spend on appreciating and thanking our teams:

Place 10 pennies in one pocket at the start of the day.

Every time you appreciate a team member, transfer one of those pennies to the other pocket.

Make sure you transfer all 10 by the end of the day. Surely you come across at least ten occasions to be grateful to someone on your team.

If you don’t, then you don’t have the right team!

Enjoy the day!

Nagib.

The best $73 I ever spent

By Chip Conley, HWN Contributor

Originally printed on The Huffington Post, Joie de Vivre Hospitality founder Chip Conley shares his beliefs on how to manage and properly treat employees

Close your eyes for a moment and consider the collection of bosses you’ve had since you joined the workforce. I remember my first boss, Mac, when I suffered through six weeks at the fries and shake workstation of McDonald’s. He helped me understand that “boss” was a four-letter word and spelled backward it’s what I felt like doing when I came home from work each day (SOB also is how I described Mac to my friends).

Chip Conley

But, I also remember Larry Keating, who mentored me with great patience and wisdom in my summer internship between college and business school. Larry helped me realize I had more ability than I thought I did so I could accomplish more than I thought I would.

My hotel company, Joie de Vivre, has a more than 10-year tradition of celebrating “Employee Recognition Week” just as we’re going into our busy summer season. We started this tradition as a means of helping our maids, bellmen, bartenders and managers realize that we truly appreciated how much life they gave to our enterprise. While we initially were thrifty with our expenses during this week, with time our generosity grew to include tickets to theme parks, baseball games or cruises on the bay.

More recently, we spent nearly $100,000 on these various recognition-week activities, which may sound lavish. But when you realize this is only about $35 per employee (or about $1 per hour that each of our employees worked that week), you come to realize the good feelings that are generated about our company culture are probably worth it. Heck, you could spend $100,000 in legal fees in California just settling one wrongful termination suit of an employee who didn’t feel properly recognized.

While employee recognition week may be a wise investment, this year we don’t have the cash to invest, and we’ve had to make cutbacks. Sound familiar? Does that mean we can’t recognize our people? Compensation is a right, but recognition is a gift. What gift could I give my staff that would be as meaningful as what Larry Keating gave me that summer 27 years ago?

Yesterday, I decided to write each of the 80 people who work in our headquarters a handwritten, heart-felt thank you card. For less than a dollar per card and about six hours of my time, I could give the ultimate gift that we all are looking for. Cancel your round of golf this weekend and plant yourself in your favorite chair watching the NBA Finals and pen some thankful prose to those who work for you. As William James once wrote, “The deepest hunger in humans is the desire to be appreciated.” I don’t know about you, but I’ve saved cards that old high school flames wrote me as well as those employees have written me over the years. The power of genuine, customized appreciation will never lose its value—even in a gloomy economy … in fact, it’s probably what we’re all thirsty for in this desert of a depression.

The Gallup organization found that the single most important variable in employee productivity and loyalty is not the pay, the perks or the benefits. It’s the quality of the relationship between employees and their supervisors. Isn’t it ironic that pay, perks and benefits all cost your company at the bottom line but authentic recognition, especially when it’s most unexpected, costs very little and gives the most impressive return on investment? The $73 I spent on those cards was the best investment I’ll make in 2009.

Chip Conley is founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality. To read more of his thoughts, visit www.chipconley.com/musings/

Nagib Lakhani RevMax Hospitality Consulting Services
O: (425)677-7866 C: (425)445-7750 F: (866)508-7866

nagib@RevenueMaxConsulting.com
4313 245th Avenue SE
Issaquah, WA 98029

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Nagib’s Corner: Stop Using the Economy as an Excuse!

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Roberta Chinsky Matuson has some excellent points we often overlook, both during down turns and upturns.

Certainly, the economy has its part to play but a sharp focus on what the guest is responding to, extra effort to recognize and acknowledge shortcoming within our systems and processes can go a long way to mitigating the impact of a slower marketplace.

Take the example of what guests are purchasing – it isn’t just what is cheapest. Quite the contrary, many are very mindful of the value proposition and they will move to a higher quality of service and product if the value package is appealing.

SALES: it’s about VALUE.

HR: It’s about empowering and challenging your department heads, and your line team members, to be creative, to live the culture of hospitality and exemplary guest service.

Remember, it isn’t always going to be this way! Truly, there will be an upturn and there is no time better than now to motivate your teams to raise the bar at every level. Profitability is always higher on the upswing of a cycle than on the downturn. You can make up for some lost ground if your teams are efficient, motivated, guest-centric and unforgiving on the pursuit of achieving the very best that they are able.

Most important – IT STARTS WITH YOU – you lead, you set the bar, employees follow the example. Make this an opportunity.

Enough sermonizing!

Nagib

Stop Using the Economy as an Excuse! - By Roberta Chinsky Matuson
Date: 2009-05-20
Industry: -Hotel-Restaurant- Category: Features

Leaders are using the economy as an excuse on a daily basis. Don’t believe me? Just ask your managers why now it’s okay to lay-off those employees who haven’t come close to meeting their performance objectives over the past several years. Perhaps your company could have avoided lay-offs if the entire team had been operating on all four cylinders. This is just one example of how companies are using the economy as an excuse for poor decisions. Here are some others.
Poor planning

You can blame employees for a lot of things. However, at some point you have to take responsibility for what is in your control. Here’s an example. Have you ever heard of a fast food restaurant that sells only pizzas, at an airport location, running out of food at 3:00 PM? According to those employees staffing the counter, this is not an uncommon occurrence. So who is to blame? Certainly not the people who are popping the frozen pizzas into the convection oven.

This is a planning and inventory problem. Not an economic problem. However, if you look at this company’s declining earnings and recent interviews you will hear them say that business is down because less people are going out for pizza. Maybe less people are eating their pizza because there is no food to be had. Is this really the way to increase profits in a down economy?

Creating new expectations

Everything appears to be on sale these days. It has gotten to the point where people will not make purchases unless there is a discount associated with the price. Is this really the fault of the economy? Or have businesses created an expectation among customers and clients that has created this new reality?

What if you were to offer a product or service that people felt was worth the purchase price, regardless of what this number was? What would that mean in terms of increased revenue and profitability? In spite of the economy, people are still purchasing luxury vehicles and are patronizing restaurants where they perceive the experience is worth the money spent. Customers are choosing cool electronic equipment over cheaper less innovative products.

Stop blaming the economy and start looking at your offerings. Are they appealing? Are you creating ‘must have’ products and services? Are you providing consistent service? Are people invested in your product or service? Or have they moved over to you because you are the cheapest guy in town?

Improving your people

Companies used the excuse that there was no time to invest in performance improvement programs when the economy was humming. Now many of these companies have nothing but time on their hands. Would this have been the case if they had provided training for their leaders on how to effectively manage through periods of change?

These organizations can emerge from this recession even stronger than where they were before the decline. How? By preparing their organization for the recovery. This means investing in the training and development of managers and those individual contributors who are on the front lines with customers.

It certainly is a heck of a lot easier to blame the economy for the decline in your business. But by doing so, you will miss out on the opportunity to build an organization that can sustain itself and thrive in any economic climate.

Roberta Chinsky Matuson is the President of Human Resource Solutions (www.yourhrexperts.com) and has been helping companies align their people assets with their business goals. She is considered an expert in generational workforce issues. Roberta publishes a monthly newsletter ‘HR Matters’ http://www.yourhrexperts.com/hrjoin.cgi which is jammed with resources, articles and tips to help companies navigate through sticky and complicated HR workforce issues. Click here to read her new blog on Generation Integration. She can be reached at 413-582-1840 or Roberta@yourhrexperts.com.

This article comes from Hotel News Resource
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article38936.html

Nagib Lakhani
RevMax Hospitality Consulting Services
O: (425)677-7866 C: (425)445-7750 F: (866)508-7866
nagib@RevenueMaxConsulting.com
4313 245th Avenue SE
Issaquah, WA 98029

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Nagib’s Corner: Maximizing NOI

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

We have good news but it sure is sprinkled with some tough stuff as well.

Reports have predicted around a 30% decline in NOI.

Companies are generally slower to cut costs at the onset of a slowdown and slow to add expenses back on when we’re on the upswing. The result is better NOI on a rising market, worse on the decline.

What can we do to ensure you maintain margins as best possible?

1. Avoid compromising on your marketing budgets. However, you must demand more accountability and returns on your marketing expenditures. Many ways to do this.

a. Track the performance of your sales team – for those who do not, you are missing out on the most powerful tool to manage your sales effort. It does not require fancy software or dedicated time from scarce human resources: USE YOUR NIGHT AUDITOR to track and manage who is in your hotels, the companies they represent and if your sales team has a communications trail with that organization.

b. Monitor the return on your marketing programs – your Front Desk can/should already be asking all guests the reason for their visit – add how they heard of you and record the responses. Also, add calls to action on your marketing programs that will make it easier to recognize/track the source of the guest visit.

2. Labor, labor, labor – mucho bucks here. Set your budgets to identify fixed vs. variable labor – Housekeeping, restaurant, catering, housemen, etc, are all examples where significant portions are variable. Identify the variable component, educate the department head of the relationship and then hold them accountable to maintain this relationship between revenue and labor-weekly, not monthly.

a. Reward success in maintaining this relationship of variable costs to revenue. It will force accountability and you will come out ahead, every time.

3. Cross training – this is a great time to make this mantra a reality. Front Desk cross-trained with housemen, Housekeeping, restaurant and catering, amongst many. More variety for the individual thereby making them more valuable team members while causing the performance bar on what it takes to be a long term player to rise exponentially.

4. Communications – everyone is mindful and aware of the situation. Let them know your challenges and engage them in solutions which they will be so well versed in identifying. Keep this ongoing, share results, successes and frustrations. Make sure you define what success looks like so they recognize it when they get to it. Simple but often overlooked.

5. Tighten reporting intervals. Check labor performance weekly (actual vs. projected on a proportional basis - % against catering revenues, $ POR for HK, etc). This can be done for almost all departments and will allow you to track progress towards achieving your labor goal.

6. Utility costs. There are very economical energy management systems that require minimal installation, minimal purchases and yet deliver stellar results. You can achieve recovery within a year or so. Huge savings possible.

7. Most of all, INSPECT WHAT YOU EXPECT. When results are expected, and you look for them, you will get them. Expecting without inspecting will always leave you wanting (I can be poetic too!)

Feel free to call if you wish to share thoughts on your approach or if you want to bounce off any ideas on process or strategies to manage the areas mentioned.

Call if you want to learn of the Trends for hotels in your regions.

Also remember, pontificating is easy, doing is tough. It never comes easy – but it has to come.

Thank you and take care.

Nagib

Nagib Lakhani

RevMax Hospitality Consulting Services
O: (425)677-7866 C: (425)445-7750 F: (866)508-7866
nagib@RevenueMaxConsulting.com
4313 245th Avenue SE
Issaquah, WA 98029

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Get a Head Start on the Economic Upswing by Art Sobczak

Friday, April 24th, 2009

The stock market has been steadily inching up over the past few weeks. Economic indicators are showing signs of improvements. Economists who study such things are even whispering that things are getting better.

And NOW is a great time to plan for the level of success you want three months, six months, a year from now, and beyond, when this train is really storming down the tracks. Let’s look at some ways to do that.

Protect Your Best Accounts
First, maintain and grow what you have. Your competitors might be reading this and are targeting your best accounts. Don’t assume everything is OK if you don’t hear from them. Be proactive and ask what else you can do for them.

Call Your Inactive Accounts
They became inactive for a reason. Find out why and fix it if you can. If things were not going well for them and they struggled during a downturn, be there when they ride the wave up.

Exploit Your Strengths
Differentiate yourself and your company. Specialize. Sell into niches. Become an expert in a certain area.

Ask for More Referrals
When making your regular “Value Added” calls, make it a point to ask who else they know who might also be able to take advantage of the same types of benefits/ results they receive from you. People who run businesses that are thriving now likely know similar people.

Presell for the Future
Sure, you’ll still hear, “We can’t do anything now.” And when it is legitimate, get as much of a commitment as you can today. Ask them, “When do you anticipate moving forward?” “Can we be the ones you’ll work with?”

Stay in Touch
For the people who aren’t buying today, be sure you’re the one they think of first when they are ready. Email regularly with value-added ideas, tips, and industry information. Send articles. Personal handwritten notes. Get on a regular card-sending program http://www.soclink.com/businessbyphone

Smart Prospecting
Get more in your pipeline. But don’t just “smile’n'dial” for the sake of activity. Target wisely. Learn about them before speaking with them. Tailor your opening and questions to their situation.

Provide Personal Value To Your Buyers
One of the strongest human motivators is survival. And it applies in the work environment. You likely know more than one person who has been downsized. Take interest in your customers personally, and help your buyers on a personal level “How has your job changed in the last six months? Three months?”

“What can we do to help you?”

Follow the Dollars
Some businesses are unaffected by the economy, and others are doing better than ever RIGHT NOW. Where are these opportunities in your world?

Upgrade Yourself
If you were going to run a marathon up a mountain, you’d probably work out get yourself into better shape. Well, if you’re going to thrive in this economy, you need to have your skills and attitude in top shape as well. Are you on a regular “sales skills self-improvement” workout schedule?

Stretch Your Creativity
Say “Why not?” a lot more. Why couldn’t you go after a bigger sale than you’ve ever made up to this point? What’s the most unusual way you’ve ever found a new customer? Try it again.

Negotiate for the Long Term
Keep in mind that today, it might be worth it to be a bit more flexible in negotiating a first sale with a new customer, IF there is long-term potential.

Work Harder
Sales success isn’t like the get-rich-quick shows on cable, or the “Make Money in Your Sleep” spam emails you get. Show me the sales rep thriving today, and I’m wagering he or she is out-hustling everyone else. Can you kick it up a notch?

Ask More
I don’t believe sales is “just a numbers game,” but I have proved to myself many times over that the more you ask, the more you get.

Set Goals
If you want to reach a destination, you first need to know what it is, and where it is. Let’s face it, there are no secrets here. The key is in doing something. Now get busy!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Dreams are powerful reflections of your actual growth potential.”
Dr. Denis Waitley

About the author:
Art Sobczak, President of Business By Phone Inc., specializes in one area only: working with business-to-business salespeople–both inside and outside–designing and delivering content-rich programs that participants begin showing results from the very next time they get on the phone. Audiences love his “down-to-earth,”entertaining style, and low-pressure, easy-to-use, customer oriented ideas and techniques. He works with thousands of sales reps each year helping them get more businesses by phone. Art provides real world, how-to ideas and techniques that help salespeople use the phone more effectively to prospect, sell, and service, without morale-killing “rejection.” Using the phone in sales is only difficult for people who use outdated, salesy, manipulative tactics, or for those who aren’t quite sure what to do, or aren’t confident in their abilities. Art’s audiences always comment how he simplifies the telesales process, making it easily adaptable for anyone with the right attitude.

Posted in Operations, Revenue Generation, Sales & Marketing | No Comments »

Tom’s Take: Increasing Sales—Today

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Start a discussion today with your employees. Ask them what your hotel/business can do today to increase sales equal to a $1 per employee.

The goal of course is to get your employees thinking about small ways they can help increase your revenues. Hopefully those ways can become consistent revenue producers.

Very few of us are smart enough to come up with an idea that will increase sales by $10,000 or $50,000. But we each can think of small things that can help revenue…starting today.

A few ideas:

Put a special on some item in the gift shop that has been hard to sell.
Put something else on a salad or desert that costs almost nothing and increase the price a buck.
Put top selling (or bottom selling) spa items at the Front Desk as a “Close out special” or “Favorite products from our spa.”
Have couples checking in tomorrow? Call and find out if they would like to provide surprise flowers, candy, a bottle of wine, etc.
Have singles checking in? Ask if they would like to take a gift home for someone special. A small stuffed animal for a child perhaps?
As a parent, I always had to take back a small present for our daughter. It was often a pain on a busy business trip to find something I hadn’t already bought in other hotel gift shops. A small stuffed animal with the hotel logo, or hotel name as the name for the animal would have always worked.
Housekeeping employees can tell you guests most frequent requests. What could you charge for that would be welcomed by the guest? Have perceived value to the guest?

Guests appreciate suggestions that appear spontaneous and caring. Guests dislike having their arms twisted in an “up-sell.” Guests also dislike having the above delivered by rote, or as an obvious canned sales pitch.

How much would your revenues increase over a year if your hotel averaged an additional $1 per employee per day? Your profits? A $1 per employee per day is doable. Get creative. Encourage employees with contests, drawings, gift cards to Target, Walmart, or a grocery store.

The path to enhanced success starts with a single step. Let’s jog!

Posted in Food & Beverage, Operations, Revenue Generation, Tom's Take | No Comments »

Are you a Talent Attractor?

Friday, April 10th, 2009

Even hourly employees need to be highly skilled to enable hotels, clubs, restaurants, and other hospitality companies to succeed. Our industry does hire a lot of people at minimum wage. Those minimum wage employees still need to have the skills and attitude that our guests can identify with and appreciate. Most organizations emphasize skills for their management employees. Service businesses need highly skilled employees in both areas.

Characteristics of People who are Talent Attractors:

Have personalities that people “naturally” are attracted to. Good attitudes, ready smiles, and a true interest in the well being of employees and guests.
Daily demonstrate the ability to teach employees core competency skills and attitudes. Talent attractors help people develop their skills fully. It’s not enough to teach/demonstrate the basics. Talent attractors take the extra steps to assure their employees are developing skills to take them to the next step in their career.
Talent attractors get people excited about their jobs, even if the job is dishwasher. How? By making sure each employee knows they are important to both the mission, and to the talent attractor. Employees find it easy to get excited about doing their best when they know their boss is excited and truly cares about the employee.
Measure the performance of their employees, explain the measurement and why it’s important, and then talent attractors give employees praise and feedback on how they can do better.

Talent attractors run Departments and businesses that “feel good.” The operation appears to run like a well oiled machine.

Organizations with talent attractors have less turnover and feel the impact of economic downturns less.

How? Because employees are motivated and excited, service standards are superior to competitors. They have more business to start with, and they lose less of that business in a downturn. Many find that business actually increases. Satisfied customers come back, even if the cost is slightly higher.

How do you become a talent attractor?

It starts with a “can-do” attitude.
Next develop the strategic direction for your Department or business. Part of that strategic direction is how people develop and gain additional skills.
Then be sure you understand the overall goal of your hotel, restaurant, etc.
Last, be sure you understand where to recruit to get the skill sets you need in your employees.

Each new employee needs to improve your profits every single week by a minimum of 10% their annual salary. (Sales people by 20%.)

Different jobs respond to different recruiting techniques. Different generations respond to different information in recruiting ads. If you don’t know which recruiting techniques to use, reach out to organizations, like Securemploy to find out.

Talent attractors are in very high demand as employees. They are always ranked by employers in the Top 20%. Improve your promotional opportunities by improving your skills as a talent attractor

Posted in Finance, Food & Beverage, Operations, Recruiting & Training, Revenue Generation, Sales & Marketing | No Comments »

Will you do what it takes to be the best of the best?

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

By Hal Becker

In my book “Can I Have 5 Minutes of Your Time?” I talk about doing what it takes to be the best.

During this brutal economy, it makes sense to talk about it again. Now, more than ever, is the time for every salesperson to be at his or her best.

POINT 1: DESIRE, ATTITUDE ARE VITAL

Whenever we start something new, it’s uncomfortable. What was it like riding a bike the first time? When you first diapered your baby, were you scared? What about your first lesson in learning a foreign language?

The key is practice, and most salespeople don’t practice. To practice is to be in training. I can train people to sell, but there’s just one catch: You have to want to learn, to practice, to excel.

I can’t train desire. And without the desire, there isn’t a ghost of a chance of training anyone.

Attitude is vital. Truth is, if you have a great attitude, it’s so easy to be the best. So often when we go out to buy, to eat, to do whatever, we get bad service.

I’m sure that if you think about what happens day in and day out, you will realize that almost every day you have an experience that’s bad or leaves a lot to be desired.

It’s easy to be the best. All you have to do is have a better attitude and be a little better than everyone else.

POINT 2: EVERYONE SELLS EVERY DAY

If I could ask you right now whether you are in sales, the chances are only 50-50 that you would say yes.

You might say no, tell me that you’re in accounting or technical or maybe you’re the owner. Regardless of your answer, this information can help you.

If you are in sales, we’re discussing the lifeblood of your livelihood and your contribution to your company.

And if you are not in sales, you still will find ideas and tools that will help you do your job or run your business more profitably. And the topics that don’t apply to you directly, such a prospecting, still will be informative and useful. The ideas and tools of sales are useful in accounting, marketing, shipping, anything.

Whatever your job or business, if you deal with a customer or client in any way, you are selling.

That’s why some business owners and managers have their entire company or division attend sales seminars.

All of us are selling every day: We’re selling a product or service. We’re selling our company. We’re selling our ideas. We’re selling ourselves.

POINT 3: PICASSO, RENOIR, JONES

Let’s talk for a moment about art forms. Cleveland, my hometown, has one of the most magnificent art museums anywhere. You can see some of the greatest - and most beautiful - artwork at the Cleveland Museum of Art: masterpieces by Renoir, Monet, Picasso.

These three of the world’s greatest artists all share three things in common: paint, brushes and canvas.

But yet their works are completely different. Why? Because of the creativity and uniqueness of the artist. The same thing is true of all of us.

You can’t expect to be like me or the next person.

You have to use your creativity, what’s inside you, along with the basic tools - the paint, brushes and canvas of the art of selling.

You have your good points. I don’t care what your situation is - how much experience you have, what you’re selling or what your personality is.

You have good points, and they work well for you. Build on those good points, and then develop your distinct style.

POINT 4: THE CREAM OF THE CROP

Three things make the top salesperson. This applies to you whether you are 100 percent in sales or not, whatever your title or position.

1. Top salespeople are organized.

2. Top salespeople are persistent.

3. Top salespeople are incredibly honest - this is most important.

What exactly is selling?

I’m going to give you a definition of selling. Before you look it up in a dictionary, let me save you the trouble. You’ll find at least a dozen definitions, but I guarantee you won’t find the real one: Selling is asking, not telling. Selling is listening, not talking.

The true pros who are in sales know those words and, in fact, become those words. They know that their job is not to sell but to listen and find out what the customer wants, and not just what they want to sell them.

The truth is - and it’s a shame - that most salespeople do a terrible job. They are not organized. They are not persistent. They are not incredibly honest. Worst of all, they do not ask. And they certainly do not listen.

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Are You Cultivating “Brand Sirens?”

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

“Brand Sirens” drive bottom line.

What are “Brand Sirens?” Satisfied customers who sing your hotels praises.

Hopefully they are singing your praises on your own hotels blog, but singing your praises on Facebook, Twitter, etc., is also valuable.

Do you have a comments section on your website? This is a great place for satisfied customers to sing your praises. Encouraging customers, employees, and vendors to sing your praises on other websites can help drive additional guests to your hotel, help attract employees, and encourage vendors to give you the best discounts available.

What is your hotel and company doing to build “Brand Sirens?”

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