Corporate Culture
Booking the best
How Bob Sturm keeps his customers happy by focusing on his employees at Professional Travel Inc.
By Kristy J. O’Hara
Smart Business Cleveland | March 2009
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If you’ve ever spent a long flight staring out of that tiny little window, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the world going on thousands of feet below. You see the houses and the cars, and everything seems so small and insignificant from up where you sit. But, the reality reveals another picture. The reality is that all of those people in those houses and driving those cars are doing just fine on theirown and lead pretty significant lives. Bob Sturm takes a similar view of his employees at Professional Travel Inc. Just as one would stare out that airplane window and know that each person is significant down on the ground, Sturm knows that every person below him in his organization is important. As president and CEO of the corporate travel management firm, he recognizes that he’s the pilot. But while some pilots may not recognize their reliance on their co-pilots and flight crews, Sturm makes no such mistake.
“Professional Travel realizes the importance of taking great care of its greatest asset — our employees,” he says. “While we, of course, value our external customers, in many ways, our most important customer is our internal customer — our employees, our co-workers.”
His employees are very important to him, as collectively, they bring in $230 million in total for the business, so he works hard to make sure he communicates with them, creates camaraderie among them and then develops their talent so they can advance in the organization.
“The better we treat and relate to our own employees and coworkers, the better they will relate to our external customers,” Sturm says. “What’s good for our employees is good for our customers and is good for our company.”
