In my opinion, one of the most overlooked, and perhaps under-appreciated jobs in the casino is the casino host manager. There is a lot of focus on improving casino hosts’ performance. There are seminars and conferences dedicated to the host skills. I think if you really want to see sustaining improvement, focus on their leader, the manager. In my experience developing teams, this is the key in establishing a productive, consistent culture in casino marketing.
Don’t get me wrong I think the host is important. As I mentioned in my book (Understanding Casino Marketing) some years ago, they are the “rainmakers” of the gaming industry. But the success of the group is in who leads it. Tom Watson Sr. of IBM fame once likened the effort to get sales people working toward the same goal as ducks in formation, “We want wild ducks, but we need them to fly in formation.” Consistency is one aspect of success in a host team. Consistency regarding player and event assignments, and measurements as well as coaching up a host. These are all tasks accomplished by the host manager.
We have all made mistakes when hiring a manager for hosts. Some general practices are to pick the most outstanding performer, for obvious reasons! They know how to host players. Or we hire the host with the big player for fear of losing the host and the player. However eventually we have to let that host go because they were not a good manager of people and tasks and the player leaves as well. We should be hiring for those qualities we need in a leader. We should not diminish the need or the importance of this position to mentor, teach, guide and organize a host team. It’s bound to be difficult to succeed if we do.
Host Coach
When you hire a potential manager, one trait you should look for is the ability to coach hosts to success. I believe that you need someone with the understanding of what hosts deal with, what they need to fix in hosting and the ability to make them better. Too often we leave training to another host to do. They are a host and not a manager for a reason. What you need is someone with a vision, organization and not afraid to share ideas. You need a coach.
I use the word coach because that is what the casino host manager is, they are coaches. Some years ago, as we were creating a centralized hosting program we wanted to establish a culture where, in theory, we could take a host from one regional casino and put them into another and everything would be similar for the host to perform except of course for the players. We were successful I believe, in part, because we established a culture of coaching or mentoring by the managers.
We required the manager to meet in what we called goal-setting meetings with each host, periodically through a quarter. The idea was for the manager to coach the host to accomplish small goals related to the overall revenue goals from meeting to meeting. At the end of each meeting were follow ups for both manger and host. The result would be learning as well as revenue production. At the outset of building the program, we referenced an article written by H. Gordon Selfridge about the differences that a coach and a boss bring to an organization. It became the roadmap for teaching our managers how to interact with their team. It provided the standard we were seeking with our host teams and greatly moved us forward. It sums up my point about the importance of the role as coach for the Casino hosts and not simply someone to direct them day to day, such as a boss.
- A boss drives his people, coaches lead them.
- A boss inspires fear, a coach inspires enthusiasm.
- A boss says “I”, the coach says “we”
- A boss fixes blame for a breakdown, a coach fixes the breakdown.
- A boss knows how it’s done, a coach shows how it’s done.
- A boss uses people, the coach develops people.
- A boss orders, a coach asks.
- A boss lets people know where the boss stands, a coach lets people know where they stand.
- A boss takes credit, a coach gives it.
When I was being asked to create a centralized player development program at Ameristar, I had some friends in the industry who advised it cannot be done. But what we found as we built this program, the manager was the key. If we were successful at creating a similar culture property to property, through them, we felt it would be successful.
Central System
At the same time when we looked around for a “model” program to copy in gaming, there really wasn’t any. We started looking at how other industries organize and motivate sales people. We came up with a blend of a couple of companies as a role model. We emphasized the same things that other industries’ sales teams do. Establishing qualitative as well as quantitative drivers became part of the culture that helped us see where our hosts succeeded and where they needed help. We used a coaching approach to ensure the hosts were learning and motivated to succeed. It worked.
It’s been a long time since hosts were determined as “good” just because they were seen on the casino floor. At least I hope so. The use of metrics has taken the guess or gut feeling out of determining the effectiveness of a casino host performance.
Good managers will use drivers to determine how a host is performing. These drivers are inherent to the success of the group and individual host financial performance. Some of these come from things like; visits, room occupancy, drop/handle, inactive player reactivation or new players added to a host list.
Two factors I recommend using that were very important to the relationship hosts need to build as well as revenue. I call it the Visitor Index. It is simply the total number of visits by Host A divided by the total number of Hosted players assigned to Host A. It would be a driver for visits; where more visits equal more revenue opportunities. We looked for turns in that host player list. It was not unusual to see 10 to 15x in this index. Another is the Face Time Index. That is the total number of “greets” of Host A to their assigned players. This was divided by the total visits of players assigned to Host A. one thing that I advocate, and practice, is to compare these drivers between the hosts, and share them with them. The visit index makes sense when comparing it to a host in the same market.
One more thing, like a sales team I like to rank the hosts performance quarter to quarter using the drivers. Of course, I share the results with the host. The manager uses these rankings and drivers to help the host get better at what area they are falling behind their peers in their goal setting meetings. Numbers don’t lie. We also practiced what jack Welch of GE fame advocated about spending time on the “stars” He believed you rewarded well your top 20 percent sales people. Nurtured and mentored the next 70 percent of your sales team, and you looked to replace the bottom 10 percent. Our practice was to look at this decision over the long term—15 or 18 months to make this determination.
Measuring Success
You can’t manage well what you don’t measure. For years I have had a strong feeling about this statement. If you are not measuring effort and results how do you know who is contributing, and are they at their potential? Metrics help. Fortunately, as an industry, we appear to have moved on from the practice of thinking a host is performing well “because we see them on the casino floor”. At least I hope so.
The primary reason for the value in metrics is that it is a set of tools that measure success or the path to success for a particular business effort. In this case, casino hosts. There are two types or kinds of metrics. They are (1) results driven and (2) activity related. The results driven metrics are things like revenue generated, or cumulative ADT per host. Activity related metrics are things like phone calls, mailings or visits. These should be associated or related in some way with the core activities that are used to generate desired results.
There are a couple of host activities that I wanted to explore. The first of these relates to calls. It is common practice for casinos to assign a volume of calls for hosts to make. For example, Host Jim has as a goal to make about 50 calls this week. This happens a lot. This goal doesn’t go far enough in its effectiveness. Wouldn’t it be better to ask the host to “make sure you reach all of your players by phone over a 90-day period.” This may be more effective than to make 50 to 200 indiscriminate over the same time period? I was always concerned about the player relationship and its build that a host has.
Creating an activity that has a positive influence toward that revenue goal makes much more sense to me. I look for hosts to “penetrate” their player list of players with calls—not make 25 calls to their favorite player and ignore others, as some hosts do. With an adequate contact management system in place, all this is trackable. But this also brings up another factor. Activity metrics, if not tied to results, these metrics are useless. Measuring whether or not a host is contacting players is only good if we can tie it to results. Why? Because with some level of effectiveness on this activity provides the manager with the ability to help make the host more valuable in one way or another.
Survey Solution
What I have done in the past is to couple this phone activity with a semi-annual host survey to the hosted player list. The combination of the measured penetration into the total hosted player list and survey gave us an idea how impactful the host was with players building the relationship. These surveys were not a secret. We encouraged the hosts to tell their players that they would get a survey about how the host was servicing them. The objective was to ensure that players were satisfied with the level of service the host provided and the casino offered. What we found many times was the survey was an opportunity by the players to praise their host with positive feedback about them. We shared results with the hosts each time. The survey became part of the mentoring process Managers held through the year with their staff and became part of the host annual evaluation as well.
The other activity that I wanted to discuss was visits. I found that using or measuring visits became an important business driver for results metrics. But not just counting visits. I referred to it as the “visit index”. Each host has a visit index. To calculate this, you use the total number of Host X visits over a quarter divided by their total number of players assigned that quarter. It is similar to any turnover ratio. In this case, how many times can we turn over the host player list with increased visits. I liked it because it is easy to compare performance, host by host. Driving more visits equals more revenues. Looking comparatively when a host has a depressed visit index coupled with some other supporting metrics, it can help identify a condition that needs to be addressed by the manager with the host. These are examples where a core activity such as calls and visits are used to generate the desired results, goal achievement.
All that I have touched on regarding this subject of a casino host manager or director and use of metrics really just touches the surface of what opportunities metrics offer in moving or guiding a team to success. This is not complete by any stretch. It really works well when you measure your hosts and you share this information with them. They only get better if they realize where they have opportunities to improve, and a guiding hand in this is the manager, as coach to help them improve. I encourage you to look at how sales programs work. Retail and B2B businesses have been at this a long time. They can give you ideas on what activities to measure, what techniques to teach and how to motivate a group of people with the responsibility to generate sales.
The manager or director in casino marketing plays a key role in attaining revenues, through motivation, organization (processes), and measuring through relevant metrics. Given the right situation they can move mountains for your casino!
