The industry that keeps on giving ...

The closer I’ve got to this milestone, the more I’ve wanted to mark it, this is because as 20 years ago this week, I started my sales career in the hospitality industry.?I appreciate this article is a little (ok, very) self-indulgent, so please forgive me for that. I have however tried to pull out a few anecdotes and several learnings too. I hope that these add value to some of you or at least perhaps pass some time.

My first role was at the Hilton Leeds Garforth, as a Conference and Events Sales Coordinator. I remember like it was yesterday, walking out from the interview with Peter Dodd & Nicola Burke thinking I’m so excited about the journey ahead of me! Little did I know then what that journey would be.

Hilton

I made many mistakes in my time here, the biggest was cancelling the wrong event and only finding out the day before. I won't go into the details, but thank the lord that the customer called up the day prior to ask if we wanted final numbers for their annual dinner. eek!

We had lots of fun too, from office fuddles, lottery syndicates and a quote book, one of my favourite (and probably the cleanest) was when a friend of a former team member that she left her phone in transit, only for my colleague to say ... Where's Transit? ??, OK you probably won’t see me on Live at the Apollo but it made us laugh … at the time.

I worked my way up the ladder in Hilton, received three promotions in five years and eventually became the Conference & Events Sales Manager at the Hilton Leeds City, after my first managerial role at the Hilton York, overlooking Clifford's tower.

Working on this role and hotel this was the best thing that ever happened in my life, let alone career, this led to my relationship with?my future wife Emily Butler (nee Cates) as we met at a Visit York Sales Managers networking event. We've since had two amazing children.?

Back to work, thank you to all those for believing in me and giving me the chance of my first and second?management role. Particularly Bernadette Gilligan & Anthony Worrall to you both, I realise in those first two roles I made a lot of mistakes. I learned a lot but hope I will be remembered for contributing to the financial performance of the hotels, and I thank my team, peers and managers for supporting me.

These first leadership roles were where I learned that as a manager (or should that be leader) you're only as good as your team. Just before I secured my next role outside Hilton one of my team resigned. She, however retracted her resignation once I resigned a week later. This was a massive eye opener for me. If I'm honest I'm really embarrassed and somewhat ashamed by this episode of my career. I'm happy to share however that I did sit down with the team member at the time, and ask her what I should be doing differently. I took notes, lots of notes and learned a lot from this. She explained that the team thought I didn't care about them, I absolutely did, but didn't show it or appreciate them enough, and feel that I am a better leader today for this experience.?

My Lesson: Show your team you care about them, and recognise their great performance.

Despite this, I’ve been on the right course since then, after a brief few months working for Best Western? Hotels & Resorts (pictured here). I headed up the conference team handling enquiries for over 285 hotels at the time. It wasn't the right role for me and I knew after a few weeks that I needed to find something else, back on property in hotels.

The 2008 financial crisis happened as I was working in this role; I remember being called in to a meeting after the then Chancellor Gordon Brown announced a change in the VAT rate to help households and businesses. As I said my time there was short lived, sometimes you apply for and get a role, that in reality isn't what you wanted or what you expected, that's fine, just don't do it all the time!

My Lesson: try something new and take a risk, but if it's not right, don't dwell on it, move on, quickly.

Oulton Hall, Golf Resort & Spa

I then realised that stepping across into proactive sales working at the stunning Oulton Hall was what I was destined to do. During this time I making friends to last a lifetime; Lizzie Harwood, Ian Hill & Marion West.

The chance to work in proactive sales, took me to London for several ‘impact weeks’ one such week I even took down a Yorkshire themed outfit to 'Standout' from the crowd, at deVere Venues Holborn Bars.

We were put into teams who could make the most calls, who could meet the most customers, and who could drum up the most pipeline. I'm delighted to say that on one of these occasions our team won the incentive trip which included a trip to the top of the gherkin and dinner in Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant at Grosvenor House.?

I loved my time in proactive sales at Oulton Hall, despite my whole time here being working through the financial crisis recession of 2009/2010 we had a great couple of years, putting the hotel back on the map.

This Golf & Country Club hotel was one of the best experiences of my career, learning all about Golf, MICE, Spa & Marketing eventually leading a team of 11 as Acting Director of Sales covering maternity leave. Something I later get back too.

As you can see from the word 'acting' in my title, this role was a fixed term maternity cover position. Although I was lucky enough to be guaranteed to return to my previous role of Sales Manager. Having the opportunity to lead my own team as Director of Sales was something that I could not give up.

My Lesson: Hard work and dedication pays off, you get out what you put in!

Marriott International

I took a chance and accepted my first permanent job as DOSM thank you to Tom Orange, John Farrelly & miriam cashen for the opportunity. My move to Marriott kickstarted the next step in my career.

Leeds Marriott Hotel was my hotel, my role as DOS. Marriott International was quite an organisation to navigate initially, but I got there in the end, thanks to my colleagues across the organisation.

In my time here, I discovered that I enjoyed playing squash this was often with my York Marriott colleague of the moment, from Scott Brown, Colin Swanston Jnr, David Russell and latterly Alan Malloy.

The challenges were not insignificant, trying to drive performance, especially in my first 18 months, it was tough. No matter what we tried we didn't seem to get that win we needed to start us off. However in January 2012, we got the green light for a ￡600k refurbishment of our hotel restaurant and bar and then the summer Olympics of 2012 everything seemed to be falling in to place Leeds was put back on the map!?

My lesson here: keep trying, everything will come good in the end, don't give up!

I was joined by Marion West, we worked together at Oulton Hall, and were back together again. During our time we had five years of sustainable growth in both top and bottom line and also our STR performance.?

We got chance to do lots of great activities during our time here one afternoon, my GM Tom Orange got a call, he said to me, Keith do you fancy going to watch Alan Carr in Halifax, absolutely, then we got chance for a back stage chat with the chatty man!

In 2013 I proudly picked up the Marriott Europe Marketing Leadership Award in 2013, this glittering awards ceremony hosted at the JW Marriott Ankara, Turkey was a great setting to pick up this honour.

Later in my tenure we collected the Catering Excellence awards in 2015. Our hotel couldn't have achieved this without the fantastic team I worked with (Marion & Matt Dutchak below), but also the reactive sales team, led by Leonie Padgett converting those enquiries especially our Christmas performance was one of the best the hotel ever had.?

In 2017 I was successful in achieving a promotion to my first regional role, as Assistant Cluster DOS looking after eight amazing country club hotels with a combined annual turnover of ￡65million.

This was my first experience in an above property role and as a leader of leaders. I must thank Katie Ramsay, Jirayr Kececian and Maria Armstrong-Gimblett for the opportunity you gave me the honour of working with some incredibly passionate Sales Leaders, a fantastic cluster sales team and my colleagues in the regional leadership team.?

This role came about after the reorganisation that took place in October 2016, and one of the reasons I was told I was successful was the way in which I approached the reorganisation and being in consultation.

My Lesson: Everything happens for a reason, and no matter how awful it might be at the time, something good will come from every challenging situation.?

Learning & Development

One thing I had the opportunity to do at Marriott was to deliver training. I started off delivering supervisor and manager training in Yorkshire, a eight month class called Essential Skills, it was so rewarding. I got the bug, I had the opportunity of becoming a facilitator of Marriott Sales Training, thanks to Ria Hudome, my first class was in Edinburgh, April 2015. This part of my job took me to several city's in Europe; Vienna, Warsaw, Paris, Madrid not to mention a few in the UK too.

Quite some challenge that first class was, there was a few moments I'll remember from these classes, the first one was a complete car crash. I thought I had prepared well for the class, oh, how was I wrong. During what I thought was a pretty simple activity, where team members were asked to change a closed question to an open question. The participants wanted some extra help. I didn't know the answer. I crumbled in front of these 42 people, stumbled my way to the back to the class to the facilitator table, and said to Ria, I can't do this, I'm rubbish. Thankfully she gave me a proverbial kick up the back side and sent me back out there, thank goodness she did as it's a part of my career that I absolutely love, without that kick I may have never trained again!

This time at the AC Hotel by Marriott Madrid Cuzco, I hosted my first international class, this was fantastic to be asked to be lead facilitator and also be considered as somebody to 'train' others on this class.

My lesson: Do something over and above your day job at work that you love to do, and feel the rewards there and in the future.

Splendid Hospitality

My time at Marriott came to an end in March 2018, simply because I wanted a role that meant I could continue to be based from my home town of York, but also continue to support leaders across the UK. Unfortunately such a role wasn't available for me at Marriott so I found a role working as a Sales Business Partner, working for Splendid Hospitality Group.?

Thank you to Louise Wright again for the heads up and Andrew Kendrick for believing in me. My time at Splendid was amazing I had the opportunity to really learn about myself, thank you to Stuart Bailey for mentoring me during this time and providing opportunities for us all to learn from Marcus Cauchi.?

I learned so much during these 18 months.

I took the opportunity to have Maz work for me again, and also had a great team in Lianne Fontaine, Lynn Muir, Lisa Newby

Lynn joined us at from Aimbridge Hospitality EMEA (or Interstate Hotels & Resorts as it was at the time) she spoke so fondly of that organisation, so when I got a hunch that it was time for me to look for a new role I looked up my current employer.

My Lesson: When you know it's time to move on (and up) get on with it.

Aimbridge Hospitality

In September 2019, I applied for a Sales Effectiveness Director role at Aimbridge Hospitality.?I wanted to join this organisation so much. Despite the fact I completely messed up (or so I thought) my second interview with Stephanie Pinto and Carol Dodds Thankfully they believed in me and trusted me to join Aimbridge in January 2020, just before the pandemic.

In November that year I was given an opportunity to expand my role looking after many more hotels and more complex ones at that. I am accountable a vast array of properties including some very important assets for Aimbridge. I have also had the opportunity to open and transition in fantastic additions to our portfolio. Some recent examples were Hilton London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 & Holiday Inn Manchester Airport UK (pictured here).

Not only do I have?a?great commercial and regional leadership colleagues to support me. The bond we all created between my peers especially during the pandemic was so solid.?

The respect I have for the sales leaders in my team from very senior on property DOSM’s with teams of their own to sales executives just starting their proactive sales role.?

I also have a career that has helped shape me as?a?person over 20 years. It’s been hard work, challenging, difficult, satisfying, successful, award winning,?emotional, but amazing, and often that can be just one day! ???

I was determined to ensure that my time at Aimbridge was not dominated by the pandemic.

I have been able to achieve so much during this time, delivering virtual LinkedIn Training to colleagues across the pond to over 350 Sales Associates, creating with colleagues two sales training classes to support our colleagues.? Thank you to Andrew Jordan , Carol Dodds , Stephanie Pinto & Jamie Grittman for trusting me with representing our division.

I created a taskforce framework to capitalise on the success and knowledge of our hotel sales leaders and industry knowledge. Leading then handing over the Sports Taskforce to my colleague. Mentoring former colleagues and helping them further their career.

It was such an honour therefore when I was awarded one of our core value awards in March 2022, the "Think We Not Me" award.

I was asked recently by a new team member what do I love about my job the answer was easy?"seeing my team succeed", winning that award, was only possible because of the hard work my team put in with my leadership. My advice to anyone starting out or on their career journey.

Believe in yourself, you don’t know what you can do until you push it.

I’ve always said it’s better to regret doing something and failing than not doing it and never knowing

Admit your mistakes and be vulnerable enough to ask for help.

This industry has given me some amazing opportunities, working with some of the most inspirational and talented people. To each and everyone of you, however our paths have crossed, I take this opportunity to say thank you and I would welcome you to share any stories of our time together too.

For me, my passion for developing my teams, harnessing talent and watching them succeed is so rewarding, celebrating our success together as a TEAM.

If you are thinking of a career in Hotels ….do it, it’s hard work but rewards are worth it.

In closing

I am sure with more self awareness earlier in my career, I could have done more but, for 20 years I'm proud of my journey so far, and I am not doing bad for a working class lad from Leeds!

Bring on 2023 and beyond…

#aimbridgehospitalityemea #hotelcareers #careeranniversary

My Article

This article is my own perspective and is not necessarily the perspective of my current or former employers. I'm sharing notes captured from my journal/diary of the key lessons I've learned in my career in the hope it will help others in their sales career.

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Keith Butler?is a senior sales leader who is responsible for driving ROI for owners through customer focussed sales professionals. He leads a diverse team of sales leaders across the UK and Ireland. When not visiting his hotels he is often seen in 'The White House', also known as shed at the bottom of his garden. His colleagues and team know him as 'The SED in the Shed'.

Reach out to him for advice or insight in the field of customer success, commercial analysis, sales, sales leadership, coaching, recruiting, hiring and hospitality.

A?Sales Effectiveness Director?for?Aimbridge Hospitality EMEA.?A division of leading U.S. based global hotel management company, Aimbridge Hospitality. They manage more than 125 hotels in the UK, Ireland, Europe, alongside a global 1400-property portfolio managed by our U.S. based division.