On 6th September I was invited to speak at the Straumann Sales Meeting in Crawley near Gatwick. Tom and I were discussing the mentoring programme and our education programme with an exceptional team of 35 sales professionals who are trying their very best to be the best in the market and provide exceptional service with an exceptional product.
I have been travelling to Crawley to the Straumann Head Office and the ITI Centre for ten years since I was opened by Simon Woodroffe in 2006 (the man who founded Yo! Sushi)
During all of that time there has been an arrangement with the Aurora Hotel where the majority of the team stay and where we stayed again on Wednesday 5th September.
The Aurora is quite a good looking hotel, particularly inside and it's always been extremely comfortable with great service and great facilities but it was obvious on Wednesday night that they had decided to cut back.
They have always provided rooms for Emirates flight staff, these guys are always around the hotel and they obviously have large corporate contracts with people like Straumann and others but they are clearly trimming their margins.
The room that I was in was a twin, there was no double (don't really have a problem with that) there is no fridge now; tea and coffee is with UHT milk, there was no laundry bag which I generally use to out my dirty clothes in. They are getting back, it's getting basic.
At breakfast the next morning Tom and I stood for a good five minutes while two members of staff walked back and forwards looking at us as if they didn't know why we were there before someone came to take us to our table. No one spoke to us again. Tea and coffee has changed from being a pot that gets delivered to your table to an urn that you serve yourself with. There is no jam at breakfast and there is no fresh fruit. It's not a problem really, generally staying in hotels for work is shit at the best of times, even if they hotel is good but clearly they are commoditising now and that's on the way down in the race to the bottom.
For the rest of us, in our own little business worlds, there are lessons to be learned from this. You choose to get better or you choose to get worse. You choose to make profit your only focus or you choose not to. You choose to be happy selling soulless widgets in exchange for tokens that allow you to go outside of your working like and allow you to do the things that you want or you choose to create something that you're proud of, that influences and changes people in return for a living.
I am not suggesting things should be wasted but i'm not the only person that missed the fridge (the WiFi didn't work either).
We don't get it right in our business every time, in fact from my position it looks like we don't get it right a reasonable amount of the time, but we try really hard to get it right. When we get it wrong or it doesn't go well then we treat that really seriously and we look after those people to the best of our ability. People are reassured by the guarantees that we give and we live the guarantees and look after them when problems occur. We now get an extraordinary amount of recommendations and self-referrals, I hope that's because of the way we look after people.
We don't cut corners (although we don't waste) but our patients are not numbers - we try to treat them as individuals.
If you choose to go up against Heinz making beans that's no problem, just understand the world you are entering. You'll have to make them crap and they'll have to always be a penny cheaper than Heinz. When Heinz find out about you then they'll go a penny cheaper than you.
If you choose to provide your dentistry in an NHS contract it's absolutely fine (I did it for long enough and we need NHS contracts to treat patients through the NHS) but understand that the price will be driven down and you will not be in a position to offer 'service'.
Overall though don't complain about the system that you exist in. If you choose to try to be the best then try to be the best, fight to get to the top, do the things and spend the money that that requires. If you choose to race to the bottom then race to the bottom; cut the corners, cut the costs, ignore the issues that are required but overall don't moan and don't complain about the system because the system you work in is ultimately your choice. You get to choose to go up, or you get to choose to go down. It's a fool's game to choose to blame the system that you yourself decided to occupy.
Blog Post Number: 1064
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