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'And you think strawberries are for
eating . . .'
The following are excerpts from a speech first delivered as the
keynote of
The AMERICAN MARKETING ASSOCIATION annual meeting in New York City
in 1973. It was published the
Saturday Evening Post in 1974, October issue.
James Lavenson owned a marketing and
advertising company before being
invited to become a senior management executive with Sonesta
International
Hotels. He was given responsibility for the company's hotel and food
interests and some non hospitality businesses, including the famous
Mad
Magazine and Hartman Luggage. For the last three years of that
period he
was president and chief executive officer of the chain's 'flagship',
the
famous Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Unprofitable in the year before his assumption of the hotel's
direction,
The Plaza was profitable each year of Lavenson's tenure until it was
sold
in February 1975 to Western International Hotels.
The Speech:
"Across the street from the Plaza Hotel in New York is a movie
theatre,
and they were lucky enough to be one of the early ones to get to the
movie, 'Jaws' don't know if that happened in Chicago, but in New
York it
was a complete sell out. I wanted to get to see it.
I bought a ticket and went in, and I couldn't find an empty seat. As
a
matter of fact, the only thing I did see was one man lying prostrate
across five seats. So I went and got the usher and said, 'You get
that
guy to sit up so I can sit down'. So the usher went down and rapped
the
man on the feet and said 'Sir, would you mind sitting up so that
this man
can sit down?' And the most terrible groan came out of this prostate
-
prostate? - no, prostrate figure. He just went 'Ohhhh.' And they
couldn't
get him to move, he just groaned.
So finally they got the manager, and the manager came down - shone a
flashlight in the man's face and said,'Sit up. You are occupying
five
seats. You only paid for one, and this man wants to sit down.' The
man
went, 'Ohhhhhh.' The manager leaned close to his face and said,'Sir,
how
did you get here? Where did you come from?' And he said (in a hoarse
voice), 'The balcony'.
Well, that explains how I got in the hotel business, because for ten
years
I was a corporate director and marketing consultant for Sonesta
International Hotels, and I had my office in a little building next
door
to the hotel, and I went there every day for lunch, and I often
stayed
overnight, and I became in ten years a professional guest.
I'm sure those hotel men in the audience know that there is no one
who
knows more about how to run a hotel than a guest. But about five
years
ago, I fell out of this corporate balcony and had to put my efforts
in the
restaurants where my mouth had been and into the guest rooms, and
night
clubs and theatre, into which I had been putting my two cents.
In my ten years of kibitzing about the way things were run at the
Plaza,
the only really technical skills that I had developed was removing
that
little strip of paper without tearing it that says, 'Sanitised for
your
protection'. When the Plaza Hotel staff learned that I had spent my
life
as a salesman; that I was not a hotel figure; that I had never been
to a
hotel school - I wasn't even the son of a waiter - they went into
shock.
Paul Sonnebaum who was then president of Sonesta Hotels, didn't help
their
apprehensions much when he introduced me to my staff with the
following
explanation:
 'The
Plaza has been losing money for the past five years and we have had
the best management in the business. So we have decided to try the
worst'.
I don't know if you have ever heard the definition of the kind of
hotel
managers there are. If you have ever observed a manager close at
hand,
you will know there is one who walks through the lobby spotting
cigarette
butts, and the first time doesn't see them. The second kind of
manager
walks through, sees the cigarette butts and calls the porter and
asks him
to pick them up. And then there's the third kind of hotel manager
who
walks through the lobby, sees a cigarette butt on the carpet and
picks it
up.
I am the fourth kind. I walk through the lobby and I see a cigarette
butt
on the carpet, and I pick it up myself, and I smoke it. Well, that
was
actually all I knew anything about when I became president, and I
didn't
really know how to start on the job, so I just began wandering
around the
hotel looking for cigarette butts.
One day early in my career there I got a little idea what I was up
against
with professional staff when, in walking through the lobby, I heard
the
phone ring at the bell captain's desk, and no one was answering it.
So to
give a demonstration to my staff that there was no job too demeaning
for
me I went over and I picked up the phone and said, 'Bell captain's
desk.
May I help you ?' The voice came on the other end. 'Pass it on,
Lavenson's
in the Lobby.'
Now frankly
I think that the hotel business is one of the most backward in
the world. It's an antique. There has been practically no change in
the
attitude of room clerks at hotels since Joseph and Mary arrived at
that
inn in Bethlehem and that clerk told them that he'd lost their
reservation.
One of the executives in a new organization read a speech I gave
about a
year after I had been at the Plaza and the speech was called, 'Think
Strawberries'. Maybe, he thought it was some magic formula for
buying
strawberries out of season. Some of you may have seen it since the
Saturday Evening Post reproduced it in their October issue. And if
you did
read it, you know it wasn't about buying strawberries, or even
growing
strawberries. The speech was about selling strawberries.
At the Plaza Hotel, 'Think Strawberries' has become the code
words for
salesmanship. Actually, a team approach to what I consider to be the
most
exciting profession in the world - selling But hotel salesmanship is
salesmanship at its worst. So it is with full knowledge that I was
taking
the risk of inducing cardiac arrest on the hotel guests if they
heard one
of our staff say a shocking thing like 'Good morning, Sir or
'Please' or
'Thank you for coming' or 'Please come back' - I decided to try to
turn
the 1400 Plaza employees into genuine hosts and hostesses who, after
all,
had invited guests to our house. Secretly, I knew I didn't mean
hosts and
hostesses; I meant sales-people. But before the staff was able to
recognise my voice over the phone, a few calls to the various
departments
in the hotel showed me how far I had to go.
'What's the difference between your $85 suite and your $125 suite?'
I
asked the reservationist over the telephone.
The answer - you guessed it. 'Forty dollars.'
'What's the entertainment in your Persian Room tonight?' I asked the
bell
captain.
'Some singer' was his answer.
'A man, or a woman?', I wanted to know.
'I'm not sure, ' he said.
It made me wonder if I'd even be safe going there.
Why was it, I thought, that a staff of a hotel doesn't act like a
family
of hosts to the guests who have been invited, after all, to stay at
their
house? And it didn't take long after becoming a member of that
family
myself to find out one of the basic problems. Our 1400 family
members
didn't even know each other. With a large staff working over 18
floors, a
thousand guest rooms, six restaurants, a nightclub, a theatre, three
levels of sub-basement including the kitchen, a carpentry shop, a
plumbing
shop, an electrical shop, and a full commercial laundry, how would
they
ever know all the people working there - who were the guests? - who
was
just a burglar smiling his way through the hotel while he ripped us
off?
I can assure you that in the beginning if he smiled and said
'Hello', he
was a crook. He certainly wasn't one of us. Even the old time Plaza
employees who might recognize a face after a couple of years would
have no
idea of the name connected to that face. It struck me, that if our
people
who worked with each other every day couldn't call each other by
name,
smile at each other's familiar face, say good morning to each other,
how
on earth could they be expected to say astonishing things like 'Good
morning, Mr Jones' to a guest?
A short time after my arrival there, the prestigious Plaza staff
were
subjected to uncouth blasphemy. The Plaza name tag was born, and it
became
part of the staffs uniform. And the first name tag appeared on my
own
lapel, on the lapel of God Himself. And it's been on the lapel of
every
other staff member ever since. Every one - every one, from
dishwasher to
general manager at the Plaza Hotel, wears his name in large letters
where
every other employee, and of course, every guest, can see it.
Believe it or not, Plaza people began saying hello to each other by
name
when they passed in the hall, or in the offices. At first, of
course, our
regular guests at the Plaza thought we had lost our cool and we were
taking some kind of gigantic convention there. But now the guests
are also
able to call the bellmen, and the maids, and the room clerks, and
the
manager, by name. And we began to build an atmosphere of welcome
with the
most precious commodity in the world - our names - and our guests'
names.
A number of years ago I met a man named Dr Earnest Dikter. Maybe you
know
him. He was the head of a thing called the Institute for
Motivational
Research. And he loved to talk about service in the restaurants, and
the
lack of it. He had a theory that I just think is nuts. Dikter
believed
that when you go into a fine restaurant, you are hungrier for
recognition
than you are for food.
Now just think about that. It's true. If a maitre d' says to me,
'I have your table ready, Mr.
Lavenson',
I positively float over to my chair.
And
after a greeting like that, the chef can burn my rare steak for all
I
care.
When someone calls you by name, and you don't know his or hers,
another
funny thing happens. A feeling of discomfort comes over you. If he
calls
you by your name twice, and you know you're not world famous, you
have to
find out his name. And this phenomenon we saw happening with the
Plaza
staff name tags. When a guest calls a waiter by name - because it's
there
to be read - the waiter wants to call the guest by name. Hopefully
it will
drive the waiter nuts if he doesn't find out the guest's name. The
waiter
will ask the maitre d'. And if the maitre d' doesn't know, he can
see if
they know at the front desk.
Why this urgent sense of mission? What makes calling a guest by name
so
important? I am now about to tell you a secret which is known only
in the
hotel industry.
The secret is calling a guest by
name - it is a big payoff
- it is called, and you can write this down if you want, a tip.
At first there was resistance, particularly on the part of the
executive
staff to wearing name tags. I was suspected of being what the
old-time
hotel managers liked, being incognito when wandering around the
hotel. It
avoids hearing complaints and, of course, if you don't hear
complaints,
there are none. Right?
Don't ever - ever - walk up to a guest and ask, 'Is everything all
right?'
In the first place, he may die of shock before he answers.
We
only had one staff member at the Plaza, only one out of 1400, who
refused to wear a name tag. Not only was it beneath his dignity, but
for 16 years he had
always worn a little rosebud in his lapel. That was his trademark,
he
said, and everyone knew him by it. And he said he would resign
before he
would wear a name tag. His resignation was accepted along with that
of the
rosebud.
And just between you and me, there were times when I regretted
wearing a
name tag myself, especially on a Plaza elevator where guests can
become a
little impatient. You see, the Plaza elevators were built at the
same time
as the hotel, 1907, and they are hydraulic. They are not electric.
And a
trip on a Plaza elevator is roughly the equivalent of a commute from
Earth
to the Moon.
With my name tag on my lapel, all passengers held me personally
responsible just as they do the pilot of a plane in a two hour
holding
pattern over the airport.
I soon learned I couldn't hide, so I took the offensive, and feeling
like
a perfect idiot I smiled at everybody and said, 'Good Morning' to
complete
strangers, and this was in New York. Those guests who didn't go into
shock
smiled back. One man, with whom I had ridden all the way to the 18th
floor, really caught the spirit. He answered my 'Good morning', when
we
got on in the lobby, with a smiling 'Good afternoon ' when we
reached the
top floor.
About 500, almost a third of the staff of the Plaza, are Hispanic. I
don't
know if you know what that means in Chicago. That means they speak
Spanish. That means they understand Spanish. It also means that they
don't
understand English, and they don't read English. But all our
communications to the employees were in English. The employee house
magazine, with all those profound management messages, and my
picture,
were in English.
It seems to me that to say we had a language barrier at the Plaza
would be
an understatement. Before we could talk about strawberries, we first
had
to learn Spanish and put our house magazine in both English and
Spanish.
We started lessons in Spanish for our supervisors, and lessons in
English
for the staff. It was interesting to me to note that the staff
learned
English faster than our supervisors learned Spanish. With 1400 staff
members all labelled with their name tags, and understanding why in
both
Spanish and English, with all of them saying 'Good morning', and
smiling
at each other, we were ready to make salespeople out of them.
There was just one more obstacle we had to overcome before we
suggested
that they start selling: asking for the order. They had no idea what
the
product was that they were supposed to be selling. Not only didn't
they
know who was playing in the Persian Room and they didn't know that
the
Plaza had movies, full-length feature films without commercials, on
closed
circuit TV in the guest rooms. As a matter of fact, most of them
didn't
know what a Plaza room looked like unless they happened to be a
maid, or a
bellman who checked in guests. The reason that registration thought
that
$40 was the difference between the two suites was because he had
never
been in one. Of product knowledge, our future salespeople had none,
and we
had our work cut out for us.
Today, if
you ask a Plaza bellman who is playing in the Persian Room, he
will tell you, Jack Jones. He will tell you it's Jack Jones
because he has
seen Jack Jones and heard Jack Jones, because in the contract of
every
performer there is a clause requiring that performer to first play
to the
staff in the Employees' Cafeteria, so that all the staff can see
him, hear
him and meet him. The Plaza staff now sees the star first, before
the
guests. And if you ask a room clerk or a telephone operator what is
on TV
closed circuit movie in the guest rooms, they will tell you because
they
have seen the movies on the TV sets which run the movie continuously
in
the Staff Cafeteria.
Today, all
the room clerks go through a week of orientation which includes
spending a night with their husband, or their wife, or
(laughter) - just
like a guest. They stay in a room in the Plaza. The orientation week
includes a week of touring all the guest rooms, a meal in the
restaurants,
and the reservation room clerk gets a chance to actually look out
the
window of the suite and see the difference between an $85 and a $125
suite, because the $125 suite overlooks beautiful Central Park, and
the
$85 suite looks up the fanny of the A-Bomb building.
The Plaza had a sales staff of three men, professionals. They were
so
professional that they never left the hotel. They were good men, but
they
were really sales servicemen who took orders that came over the
transom.
Nobody at the Plaza ever left the palace, crossed the moat at Fifth
Avenue, and went looking for business. No one was knocking on doors.
No
one was asking for the order.
The Plaza, as you may know, is a dignified institution. It was so
dignified that it was considered demeaning to admit that we needed
the
business, no matter how much money we were losing. And if you didn't
ask
us, we wouldn't ask you. So there! We weren't ringing our doorbell
or
anybody else's. You had to ring ours. And this attitude seemed to be
a
philosophy shared by the entire organisation, a potentially large
sales
staff of waiters, room clerks, bellmen, cashiers, doormen, maids,
about
600 guest-contact employees.
If you wanted a second drink in the Plaza's famous Oak Bar, you got
it
with a simple technique - tripping the waiter, and then pinning him
to the
floor. You had to ask him. You'd think, wouldn't you, that it would
be
easy to change that pattern of Oak Room waiters. After all, they
make
additional tips on additional drinks. Simple sales training. Right?
Right?
I had our general manager for the Oak Room - the maitre d' learn my
new
policy. It was inspirational. When the guest's glass is down to
one-third
full, the waiter is to come up to the table and ask the guest if
he'd like
a second drink. Complicated, but workable. Couldn't miss, I thought.
About a month after establishing this revolutionary policy I joined
the
general manager in Oak Bar for a drink. I noticed at the next table
there
were four men all with empty glasses. No waiter was near them. After
watching for fifteen minutes my ulcer gave out and I asked the
general
manager what happened to my second-drink programme? And the manager
called
over the maitre d' and asked what happened to the second-drink
programme.
And the maitre d' called over to the captain, pointed out the other
table
and said, 'Whatever happened to Lavenson's second drink programme?'
And
the captain called over the waiter, and he broke out into a wreath
of
smiles as he explained that the men at the next table had already
had
their second drink.
If you asked for a room reservation at the Plaza it was very simple.
You
were quoted the minimum rate. If you wanted a suite, you had to ask
for
it. If once there you wanted to stay at the hotel an extra night, it
was
simple - beg. You were never invited, and sometimes I think there's
simple
pact among hotel men, it's actually a secret oath that you swear to
when
you graduate from hotel school, and it goes like this:
'I promise I will never ask for the order.'
When you are faced with as old and ingrained a tradition as that,
halfway
counter measures don't work. So we started a programme of all our
guest
contact people, along with all of our salespeople, using a new
secret oath
- everybody sells. And we meant everybody - maids, cashiers,
waiters,
bellmen, assistant manager, general manager, and me - everybody!
We talked to the maids about suggesting room service, to the doormen
about
suggesting our restaurants, not the one at the Pierre, to our
cashiers
about suggesting return reservations to the parting guests. And we
talked
to the waiters about strawberries.
Now I don't know how it is in Chicago, but in New York the waiter at
the
Plaza makes anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000 a year. The difference
between those figures, of course, is tips. I spent 18 years in the
advertising agency business, and I thought I was fast computing 15
per
cent. I am a moron compared to a waiter.
Our suggestion for selling strawberries fell on very responsive ears
when
we described that part of our Everybody Sells Programme to the
waiters in
our Oyster Bar Restaurant. We had a smart controller, and he figured
out
that if - with just the same number of customers already patronising
the
Oyster Bar - the waiters would ask every customer if he'd like the
second
drink, wine or beer, with his meal, and then dessert - given only
one out
of four takers - we would increase the Oyster Bar Restaurant sales
by
$364,000 a year.
The waiters were well ahead of this lecture. They had already
figured out
that was $50,000 more in tips, and since there are 10 waiters in the
Oyster Bar, I, with the aid of a pocket calculator, could figure out
that
that meant five grand more in tips per waiter.
 And
it was at this point that I had my toughest decision to make since
I'd been in the
job, which was whether to stay on as president, or become
a waiter in the Oyster Bar.
But while the waiters appreciated this automatic raise in theory,
they
were very quick to point out the negative: 'Nobody eats dessert any
more,
' they said, 'everybody is on a diet. If we served our specially,
the
Plaza chocolate cheesecake to everybody in the restaurant, we'd be
out of
business because they'd all be dead in a week.' 'So sell them
strawberries,' we said, 'but sell them!'
Then we wheeled out our answer to the gasoline shortage. It is
called a
dessert cart. It has wheels. And we widened the aisles between the
table
so that the waiters could wheel the cart right up to each table at
dessert
time without being asked. And not daunted by the diet protestations
of the
average guest, the waiter goes into raptures about the bowl of fresh
strawberries on the top of the cart. There is even a bowl of whipped
cream
for the slightly wicked. And by the time the waiter finishes
extolling the
virtues of luscious strawberries, flown in that morning from
California or
Florida - or wherever he thinks strawberries come from - you, the
guest,
not only have an abdominal orgasm, but one out of two of you orders
them.
We showed the waiters every week what happened with strawberry
sales. The
month I left the Plaza they doubled again, and so had the sales,
incidentally,
of second martinis. And believe me, when you have a customer
for a second martini, you have a sitting duck for a strawberry sale,
and
that is with whipped cream.
The
Plaza waiters now ask for the order. They
no longer stare at your waistline and say, 'You don't look like you
need
dessert'.
'Think Strawberries' is becoming
the Plaza's sales password. The
reservationist thinks strawberries and suggests that perhaps you
would
like a suite overlooking Central Park rather than a twin-bedded
room.
Bellmen are thinking strawberries.
Each bellman has
return reservation forms with his own name imprinted on them
as the addressee, and he asks you, in checking you out and into your
cab, can he make a return reservation for you?
The room service
operators were thinking strawberries. They ask you if
you'd like to watch the closed circuit TV film in your room as long
as
you're going to be there. No trouble, 'We put three bucks on your
bill and
you never notice it compared with the price of the sandwich'. Our
telephone operators think strawberries. When you leave a wake up
call,
they suggest a Flying Tray Breakfast sent up to your room. 'You want
the
light breakfast, no - ham and eggs; how about strawberries?'
We figured we added about 400 salesmen to the three-man sales staff
we had
before. Additional salesmen, at no extra expense, didn't exactly
thrill my
Board of Directors. But I will tell you what did tickle their fancy.
The
Plaza sales volume my last year there went from $27 million to a
nice
round $30 million. And our controller was seen giggling in his cage
where
we kept him, since our profits were double the year before's.
I'll tell you what pleased me most. The Plaza sold $250,000 worth of
strawberries in the last six months alone - $250,000 worth of
strawberries!
We created the Order of the Strawberry Patch.
It's a little strawberry
insignia worn on the employee's name tag, and any staff member,
except
those, naturally, in the Sale Department, who gives the sales
manager at
the Plaza a lead, just a lead, for rooms, or banquet business, gets
to
wear the little strawberry patch. He has joined the sales staff. And
if
that lead is converted into a sale, a savings bond is given to the
person
who suggested it.
Let me tell you what happened with that strawberry patch programme.
There's a captain in the Oak Room - his name is Curt, and he likes
savings
bonds. He also has a wild imagination, and he imagined that if a
Plaza
salesman would call on his wife's friend's daughter, who was getting
married, the wedding could be booked at the Plaza.
Obviously he was insane - the Oak Room captain's wife's friend's
daughter,
who lived in Brooklyn, with a wedding at the famous Plaza. The Plaza
salesman was persuaded to call the lady in Brooklyn. At first he
didn't
want to go. But he was given a powerful incentive like keeping his
job.
And, of course, you can guess the result, or, can you? Would you
believe a
$12,000 wedding?
And that's not all. Just before I left the Plaza, Curt told me that
his
wife's friend's daughter had a sister, not yet married.
I believe I mentioned there's a laundry in the Plaza. Thirty ladies
work
in that laundry, three levels below the street. When they are
working,
these ladies don't exactly remind you of fashion models. They wear
short
white socks and sneakers, no make-up, and I suspect, although I have
never
been able to prove it, that three of them chew tobacco.
You can imagine the skepticism which greeted one of those ladies
when she
asked if she could earn a strawberry patch for a lead on a luncheon
of her
church group. How many members? Only 500! At least 500 showed up for
lunch
at the Plaza dressed to the heavens and paying cash. That laundry
lady is
papering her walls with savings bonds.
An Oak Room captain, and a laundry lady, like hundreds of other
Plaza
staff members, they wear the strawberry patch on their name tag.
Everybody sells, and that includes me. I made sales calls with the
Plaza
salesmen, and I have only one regret. I got so worked up myself over
the
strawberry programme that I was indiscriminate about whom I called
on. And
one day I called on Western International Hotels, and sold them the
whole
place.
And lest I forget what I have been preaching. The Plaza staff
awarded me
this (indicating a strawberry patch on his tee shirt), the biggest
strawberry patch of all. They told me if I wore it, I would never go
hungry, and they must have been right, because I just had a free
lunch."
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