Nominees/Partners

Don Farrell began his career in hospitality services at the Milwaukee Marriott when he was just 17 and took a job as a dishwasher for the hotel. In a classic young-man-dreams-bigger scenario he took less than 3 years to work his way through other hotel corporations until, in 1976, he became the Director of Regional Sales for Holiday Inns, Inc.

Entrepreneur at 30

Don's entrepreneurial career began 10 years later in 1986. After realizing that he could accomplish so much more with his sales skills combined with service training programs he had designed, he left the corporate world and headed for the newly seized space in his master bedroom at home. For the next five years his office moved into larger spaces throughout the house as he pushed his passion for providing legendary sales and service training to hotel/motel clients. From his true belief that improving customer service levels absolutely bolstered the bottom line with more revenue, Don had offered a money-back guarantee. He knew that with properly installed and reinforced training a hotel would see measurable results. This guarantee is still in place today and has made Signature a training company like no other.

Don and Steve 

In his early years of the business, Don had connected and maintained close touch with Steve Wolever. Steve began his career in 1966 at Macomb Motel, Inc., as a General Manager and Director of Operations. In this role, he developed and operated two Holiday Inns in Iowa. In 1982, Steve's love for food drew him to the position of President of HJS where he developed and operated eight Happy Joe' pizza parlors.  From 1987 until 1989 he was back in the hotel business as Director of Operations for Gulf Shores Hotel Management where he was responsible for six hotels in Mississippi and Alabama. Steve left Gulf Shores in 1989 to serve as General Manager at the Hilton Inn in Columbus, Ohio. He partnered with Don in 1991 as co-chairman of Signature.  Together-in 1995-Signature contracted with Hampton Inns to provide training at 575 independently-owned properties. This began Signature's rise from an $80,000-per-year company to 2001's $11.5 million in sales.

Type of Business

Just picture it... working as a consultant to The Sandestin Inn in Destin, Fla., in an office just behind the front desk, Don would overhear the reservation agents as they responded to calls coming in to the hotel. Day in and day out, he would hear room rates quoted with no other information being volunteered before the agent would give their standard "good-byes." No details were asked of the callers, no benefits of the hotel were offered.

The golden opportunities to care for the prospective guest and make a sale were being lost to lack of service. Don realized that without taking time to inquire about the caller's interests, welcoming their visit by sharing hotel features rather than simply telling rates, a relationship would never come from the call. Worse yet, the caller was pretty much invited to continue shopping and finding a better fit with a competitor.  Don realized that hotels were overlooking the human side of service and its value in striving to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. With what he saw and heard of the hotel business at the time, Don began his sales and service training company at home in 1987. Knowing the limitations of a one-person business, he enlisted the help of Steve Wolever. Although they didn't have investment capital, didn't take salaries and split what revenue was left after expenses, their risk paid of in 1991 when Signature became a corporation.

While the idea of Signature was simple--training staff to convert inquiry calls into sales through exceptional customer service--the launch of the company was not. Signature had to prove to hotel managers that the front-line staff played an integral role in the bottom line. Don and Steve derived an equation to show potential customers the actual return on their training investment. They still use this equation today, and include it in training classes to prove that training is not an expense but, rather, a revenue generator.

Today, Signature is the largest sales and service training company to the hospitality industry in the United States and Canada. Signature has trainers throughout the U.S., Europe and Canada. Its Dublin, Ohio, headquarters has 185 employees, with the rest of the staff stationed near their regional training areas.