On The Business Philosopher Within You podcast, I recently sat down with Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group (FPG), to unpack a deceptively simple but powerful idea: the best sales happen when sales are framed and delivered as service.
Geoffrey is the leader behind a company that partners with more than 2,500 hotels across 100+ countries, helping frontline teams—front desk agents, servers, bartenders, valet staff—generate millions in incremental revenue. In this long-form write-up I synthesize that conversation, highlight the frameworks and stories Geoffrey shared, and extract practical guidance for leaders who want to scale culture without sacrificing performance.
Why frontline culture matters (and why most leaders underestimate it)
We start with a premise that should be obvious but so often gets lost: guests don’t experience a brand in a spreadsheet. They experience it the moment they enter the property. A piece of trash in the parking lot affects perception; the valet, the front desk, the bell person, the server—all of these touchpoints shape revenue and loyalty.
Geoffrey put it plainly: “Sales done right is actually service.” This flips the standard sales-first mentality on its head. Instead of forcing a transactional mindset on service teams, treat the interaction as an act of service that educates and aligns guests with relevant products and experiences. The result is better outcomes for guests and incremental revenue that is often two to three times more profitable than pre-booked room revenue.
The origin story: from hospitality roots to an outcomes-driven company
Geoffrey’s own career began in hospitality—as a car valet in Florida—and he rose through operations and service roles before joining and scaling startups. FPG’s founder, Ziad Khoury, started Khoury Consulting in 1993 and later rebranded the business to Frontline Performance Group as it moved beyond a founder-led consultancy. Geoffrey joined the company when it was still small and helped transform the business from a pure services model into a technology-enabled, subscription-driven company.
One early anecdote captures the grit and validation that shaped FPG’s journey: their first hotel client was the Waldorf Astoria New York—a high-pressure, unionized, prestige environment. Geoffrey remembers being told they were sent there to fail. Instead, they tripled revenue at that property. “We were sent there to fail,” he said. “We actually thrived. We tripled the revenue and it went great.” That win validated the approach and set FPG on a path of international expansion and productization.
Service-based sales: sell by serving, not selling to
Three phrases encapsulate how FPG trains frontline people:
“Sales done right is actually service.”
“Sales is not something you do to your customer. It’s something you do for them.”
“The best service you can offer your customer is to offer your best services.”
These aren’t just slogans. They shape training content, incentives, and daily dialogues at the front desk and in restaurants. Hourly workers often see themselves as order-takers. FPG reshapes that identity: the hourly associate is a revenue driver whose job is to enhance the guest experience with tailored offers—what Geoffrey prefers to call “guest enhancements” rather than upsells.
What makes incremental revenue so powerful?
Two defining characteristics:
Highly profitable — incremental revenue generated by frontline teams often has no variable cost (beyond the incentive payout), so profit margins are significant.
Perishable — if you miss a one-night suite upgrade, that revenue opportunity is gone when the guest checks in the next day. These are time-bound experiences.
For hotels, a modest increase in revenue per available room (RevPAR) is transformative. Geoffrey explained that a front-desk-driven improvement of 5-6% is realistic, and their clients typically see returns quickly: the subscription year is often paid for within the first two to three months. On average, FPG reports about a 20:1 ROI for their clients—an extraordinary metric for any service-driven transformation.
From consulting to SaaS: the strategic pivot
FPG’s evolution provides a playbook for other service businesses that want to scale without losing the craft of what made them successful. The steps they followed:
Document and digitize intellectual property. What do your consultants do that produces repeatable results? Capture it in learning modules and processes.
Build tools that support consultants and clients—analytics, learning management, and employee engagement features—so client teams can self-serve and sustain change.
Move from intensive on-site delivery (not scalable) to a hybrid and then primarily virtual model that amplifies the same human expertise.
Geoffrey recounted how the company began introducing basic technology in 2015 to make consultants more efficient. That technology ultimately became a client-facing platform with three main pillars:
Analytics: visualize performance at outlet, property, and individual levels.
Learning: a learning management system (LMS) that houses proprietary training—hundreds of hours and thousands of short video segments—covering everything from mindset shifts to sales dialogues.
Motivation & culture tools: incentive plans, contests, recognition, team feeds, leaderboards—mechanics that provoke the “pyon effect” (peer upward pressure) and make frontline performance visible.
Rather than being technologists who looked for a problem to solve, FPG was field-first: “We were on the ground practitioners who saw how we could digitize the toolkit,” Geoffrey said. That orientation produces better product-market fit because the tools solve problems consultants already knew how to solve in person.
Acquisitions in a crisis: strategic moves during COVID-19
Between 2015 and 2021, FPG acquired two established competitors: Drake Beal & Associates in the U.S. and TSA Solutions out of Singapore. Both deals helped FPG scale quickly into markets and client relationships they would have otherwise taken years to build.
The TSA acquisition was especially noteworthy because it closed during the pandemic when most hotels were closed and revenue had evaporated. Geoffrey described a creative enterprise-value construct that tied value to recovery—allowing both sides to weather the downturn and benefit as travel rebounded. He emphasized relationships: “We were pretty confident that if we got to meet their clients they would like us. We're very relationship-driven. Our greatest strength is our relationships.”
Who is the customer? Four personas to align with
FPG doesn’t target a single buyer. Instead, they design solutions for four interlocking personas inside client organizations:
Corporate executives — operational and revenue leaders with portfolio-level P&L responsibility who see the big picture.
Hotel general managers — accountable for property-level P&L and culture.
Department heads — front office managers, outlet managers—the ones who supervise teams daily and whose behavior changes determine success.
Frontline employees — the agents, servers, bartenders, and valets who interact with guests and execute the offers.
FPG aligns its own team to serve each persona: account executives and executives to corporate buyers, directors and managers to GMs, and customer success consultants to department heads and frontline staff. This layered alignment helps bridge strategy and execution.
Changing behavior: the Khoury Performance Equation
At the heart of FPG’s approach is a framework developed by Ziad Khoury, the founder: the Khoury Performance Equation. It answers the central question: how do you change behavior sustainably?
The equation has three components:
The right environment — culture, psychological safety, managerial tone, and explicit support.
The right actions — specific behaviors, dialogues, scripts, and accountabilities taught and practiced.
The right measurement — transparent metrics and feedback loops so people can see how they’re doing and compare to peers.
When you combine these three elements, Geoffrey explained, you begin to change mindsets and embed new habits. At the individual level FPG emphasizes three motivators: recognition (leaders noticing and praising progress), reward (top performers must earn more than bottom performers), and accountability (clear expectations and visible leaderboards).
Geoffrey summarized it this way: “If you put those three things together, which is what our technology does… you can then begin to change their mindset.”
Practical tactics to scale culture using SaaS
From Geoffrey’s experience I distilled practical steps any leader can apply when aiming to scale culture through technology:
Document core rituals and scripts. Capture the dialogues, prompts, and small procedural behaviors that produce results. Make them short, repeatable, and trainable.
Start with a minimum viable tech stack. You don’t need to build a perfect product on day one—create an LMS + basic analytics + recognition mechanics and iterate from real user feedback.
Make metrics visible to the players doing the work. Push performance data down to the frontline so they can see their own KPIs and how they compare.
Incentivize fairly and transparently. Ensure top performers materially earn more than lower performers; otherwise, you’ll have a motivational problem.
Use managers as proxies for consultants. If you can certify managers to coach daily, you get stronger results than intermittent external visits.
Preserve human touch. Digital tools amplify human judgment; they don’t replace it. Keep empathy and role-playing in training loops.
Leadership lessons from the crucible
Becoming a capable executive often involves going through what Geoffrey calls “the crucible”: multi-year stretches of hard work, long hours, underappreciation, and political friction. These periods steel leaders. Geoffrey’s advice for anyone aspiring to leadership:
Don’t resent the grind—use it to build resilience and judgment.
Find mentors who can shorten your learning curve and help you avoid dumb mistakes.
Learn to promote your work without being self-promotional—make sure the right people know the impact you’re delivering.
He summarized the career paradox succinctly: you are judged both on the quality of your work and on how people perceive it. Fix both if you want to progress.
Culture inside FPG: trust first, care with accountability
FPG had to send employees into client environments around the world—sometimes to tense, even hostile workplaces. To do that, Geoffrey argued, the company had to be a “safe haven” for its own people. The internal culture he built emphasizes:
Trust first — leaders give trust freely and expect people not to break it.
Care and fairness — give people as many chances as reasonable to perform; only separate people who violate the culture.
Transparency and accountability — be honest about expectations and quick to call out behavior that undermines others.
Geoffrey told a story that always lands in leadership rooms: he once told an exec team that “you can expect your guests to be treated exactly the way you treat the people you lead.” If executives are abrasive, your front line will reflect that tone.
Personal grounding: faith, legacy, and mentors
We touched on what grounds Geoffrey as a leader. Faith is a part of his life and gives him perspective; he also carries a personal drive rooted in family legacy—being the first in his family to reach certain professional milestones. Mentors also played a pivotal role in his development. These sources of grounding help him pick his battles and steer the company through difficult seasons.
Common objections and how to answer them
Many leaders resist digitizing culture because they believe high-touch service can’t be systematized. Geoffrey’s response is instructive: being practitioner-led changes the dynamic. If you are an expert at a domain and you thoughtfully distill your knowledge into a system that enforces process and accountability, you can scale 10x without collapsing quality. In fact, in many cases outcomes improve because local managers become daily proxies for consultants rather than episodic recipients of advice.
When to keep a human hand in— and when to automate
FPG still offers on-site consulting for clients that need intensive handholding. But Geoffrey emphasized the disproportionate value of certifying managers and delivering live instructor-led training via video. The coronavirus pandemic accelerated comfort with remote learning, even among hourly employees. The rule of thumb:
Keep humans in for culture-setting and difficult change management.
Automate predictable training, measurement, and recognition mechanics.
Use technology primarily to govern quality, not to displace human care.
Measures of success: what to track
To determine if a frontline transformation is working, track a blend of financial and behavioral KPIs:
Incremental revenue per month (upsell/guest enhancement revenue).
Payback period on the program/subscription (FPG usually sees payback in 2–3 months).
Return on investment (FPG reports ~20:1 ROI as an average).
Frontline engagement metrics: participation in training, leaderboard activity, peer recognition posts.
Manager adoption: frequency of one-on-ones, coaching notes, and verified certifications.
Practical checklist to begin your own frontline transformation
Map every guest touchpoint and list the revenue opportunities that are perishable (upgrades, experiences, add-ons).
Document the one-minute pitch for each enhancement—how an employee explains the benefit to a guest.
Create a simple leaderboard and recognition flow that highlights top performers publicly.
Build an incentive plan that ensures top performers earn materially more than bottom performers.
Capture scripts and training modules and deliver them via short video segments; supplement with weekly live coaching for managers.
Introduce analytics so everyone can see results—outlet-level down to individual-level performance.
Iterate weekly for the first 90 days and celebrate small wins loudly.
FAQ
Q: How quickly can a hotel expect to see results from a frontline program?
A: According to Geoffrey’s experience, clients typically see payback on an annual subscription in the first two to three months. The trajectory depends on baseline performance, but the combination of training, incentives, and measurement produces early wins that compound.
Q: Is it possible to digitize culture without losing the human element?
A: Yes—if you design digital tools to amplify human behaviors rather than replace them. Use technology to make expectations clear, to make recognition instant, to present leaderboards, and to deliver bite-sized learning. Keep coaching and empathy human.
Q: What metrics should leaders use to justify investment?
A: Track incremental revenue (upsell/guest enhancement), ROI (ratio of revenue gained to cost), payback period, and behavioral adoption metrics like training completion, contest participation, and leaderboards. A 20:1 ROI is possible when the program is executed well.
Q: Does this approach only work for hotels?
A: While hospitality is a natural fit, the principles apply wherever frontline teams influence revenue—retail, spas, theme parks, car rental, and food-and-beverage outlets. Any business with perishable experiential capacity benefits from the approach.
Q: How do you handle underperformers without damaging culture?
A: FPG’s culture prioritizes trust and second chances. Give people the tools, show them transparent metrics, and provide recognition for improvement. Only separate people who violate cultural values (dishonesty, disrespect). Don’t fire for initial performance; manage toward development.
Parting thoughts: start with service, scale with systems
Scaling culture isn’t about deploying software and hoping people will change. It’s about starting with service—teaching your teams how to genuinely help guests—and then using technology to sustain, measure, and multiply that help across a geographically dispersed organization.
Geoffrey’s journey from valet to CEO of a 300-person company shows how practitioner-led product design, anchored in trust and powered by transparent measurement, can turn front-line teams into consistent revenue generators. The ingredients are deceptively simple: clear scripts, credible incentives, visible metrics, and a culture that trusts employees first.
If you’re a leader wrestling with how to grow without losing the soul of your brand, begin by asking three questions:
Which guest interactions are perishable and under-monetized?
Can we capture and teach the small behaviors that convert those opportunities?
How will we make this performance visible and rewarding to the people who execute it?
Answer those, and you’ve started the work of scaling not chaos—but culture.
This piece summarizes my conversation with Geoffrey Toffetti on The Business Philosopher Within You. If you want to explore how these ideas can apply to your frontline teams—hotels, restaurants, retail, or other experiential businesses—look for partners who combine practitioner expertise, a learning-first approach, and lightweight analytics that make results visible and repeatable.
“The best service you can offer your customer is to offer your best services.” — Geoffrey Toffetti
Get In Touch With Geoffrey Toffetti
Geoffrey can be reached through his Linkedin account. To find out more about Frontline Performance Group, visit their website.
This article was created from the video Scaling Culture with SaaS: Lessons from a CEO with the help of AI.
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