Hotel Sales Habitudes For Booking More Groups, Conferences, and Events
Today's hotel and event salespeople work in completely different environments than most of their leaders experienced. Meeting planning and event booking sites have created a flood of leads, which can be overwhelming for salespeople working within a sales role still designed for the era when most leads came in by phone or website inquiry forms. When revenues drop, salespeople are required to meet prospecting quotas, based on a set number of calls, sent emails, or door knocks. Yet those calls go to voicemail, emails go to spam, and the office doors are either locked, or if open, there's no one at the receptionist station. Self-serving "thought leaders" are pushing RFP automation and AI-powered prospecting, both of which lead to generic, spammy-feeling sales correspondence. If these challenges sound familiar, join us as Doug shares actionable, real-world training habits and mind-shifting attitudes for booking more business.
- When Product, Price, and Place are all essentially the same, which they are these days, it's the People that make the difference. As a salesperson, YOU are your hotel's superpower.
- Embrace your CRM and make it work for you. It's the only way to follow-up in a way that is both tenacious and personalized.
- Sort and prioritize incoming leads. Craft more authentic, thoughtful responses to the hottest leads.
- Yet respond to all leads. This will require you to think creatively to get the help you need, and it may be outside of your "silo" of the hotel sales department.
- Use a "tech for touch" approach. Embrace tech solutions, but use them in ways that keep the human touch in hotel sales.
- Sure, subscription-based tools like Knowland and ZoomInfo can help, but you already own the best sources for contacts to prospect; previous clients and prospects, including those who did not book with you the first time.
- How to build the habit of prospecting into your daily sales routine, versus training to "find" that time when you can make all those cold calls.