Success comes with a recipe, not by chance: Part 1
Successful businesses leave a footprint that reveals clues on why or how they thrive. If one were to analyse the ingredients that drive their accomplishments, it could well provide the ideal recipe to get a leg up on the competition. Let’s look at some of the key factors that are necessary to be successful.
Designing for success: Marketers talk about the "five Ps" - Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People. This has become the hallmark marketing checklist. Nothing is of course guaranteed, but if one paid attention to one’s five Ps, then you were more likely than not, to succeed. However, there’s an important new P to the list: A Purple Cow. Sounds Weird? Let me explain. Driving along the countryside you may see cows grazing in vast acres of farmland. At the beginning it all looks very picturesque. After a few minutes the sight of cows becomes common, soon turning to boring which, as your attention shifts elsewhere, becomes invisible.
Imagine suddenly spotting a purple cow. Wouldn’t that really stand out and be remarkable? We all know that something remarkable is worth talking about, worth paying attention to. The world is full of boring stuff, like the cows you saw - which is why so few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. And that’s the essence of the Purple Cow — the reason it would shine among a crowd of ordinary, even well-bred cows.
Hardly anyone visiting Dubai would leave without snapping a photo of the Burj Al Arab Hotel. Many are left in awe by its architecturally stunning appearance – both when viewed from the outside and seeing it in the inside. Confronted with rich views, even looking out of every guest room window of the Burj has been curated. Extraordinary design always gets mentioned, especially online and is a must-have ingredient in the recipe for success. But design alone is insufficient. It must co-exist with how the guest experience is engineered.
Service devotion: Guest service is really marketing: done well or badly, correctly or incorrectly. Marketing is often thought of as everything that happens before a sale; customer service is everything that happens after. But according to Allan Dib, best-selling author of The 1-Page Marketing Plan, customer service is marketing. The two sides are related and can work together to create a smoother experience overall. All of us have encountered service failures and that rare ‘standout’ service experience that it exemplifies marketing at its truest form. Those experiences really make an impact on how we perceive those brands. More importantly, customer service failings will also determine whether we ever do business with them again.
Like in marketing service is the strategy used to get your ideal customers to know your hotel or restaurant, to like you and trust you to become guests. “If you don’t treat [customers] well, when you first start doing business with them, you may not be doing business with them for very long,” said Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert and author. One cannot argue with that. However, treating guests well is only the beginning and is now no longer enough. When a hotel operates within the same cluster of hotels - all of them offering similar services, locations, amenities and treating guests well, how then do you stand out from the rest? The answer lies in providing a fanatical level of personalised service that is hard for others to emulate. That is one sure-fire tactic for winning the battle. And that comes with hiring people who love what they do.
Hire those who live their Ikigai: While not all staff activities are directly linked to marketing, many, those who interact with hotel guests directly contribute to the marketing efforts, (whether they know it or not). Marketing teams are responsible for developing and implementing strategies to promote brand awareness and drive sales. Human Resources in tandem with department heads focus on employee marketing. This aspect of marketing is crucial as it influences staff motivation, productivity and loyalty to the organisation. It can be a win-win situation – that creates a cohesive marketing strategy, benefitting the organisation, its workforce and most importantly, the customer.
Obviously, a prerequisite for this is hiring people that love what they do. Ikigai is a Japanese term that translates to “reason for being.” Ikigai explores what it means to be at your best and determines what the perfect role is for YOU in the world. Basically, one’s Ikigai is the sweet spot where the following four elements intersect: What one loves, what one is good at, what one can get paid to do and what the world needs.
To most people, their world is ‘normalised’ to “going through the motions” at work, and to just “have a job” to “pay the bills.” Lift your people to go beyond that. Help them ‘normalise’ by find their ideal role and to discover their Ikigai, by putting more money towards recruiting, training and retaining those who are good and love what they are doing. One study done some time ago, revealed that 90% of most marketing budgets are spent on persuading a customer to call and only 10% is spent on handling the customer’s call. How ironic is that?
Empower staff as Destination Ambassadors: Tourists are drawn to destinations in the first instance - staying at a particular hotel is a secondary consideration. A hotel’s staffs are local insiders. Let them showcase the hotel team’s favorite nearby attractions by enlisting them to share tips via videos, blogs or on social media. Their voices add a personal, trustworthy addition to your messaging.
The secret to success in social media can really be summerised in one line: “The inside story from a real person who loves what they do”. Obviously, a prerequisite for this is hiring people that love where they work at and what they do. Take heed though, storytelling from the inside out also requires alignment to the brand promise and to its authentic delivery. Hence, it is important that your staff realise the core message what your hotel is communicating and what makes your hotel, apart from the destination, a compelling choice. In other words, positioning the hotel as the idea hub for exploration.
To be continued
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Ex-Hotelier.
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