Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Daily Disciplines -- Eating the Elephant One Bite at a Time. Successful sales people take their goals, revenue, prospecting, calls etc. and break them down into monthly, weekly, daily activities. They have a good idea of their call to closing ratio, that is, how many calls, telephone or e-contacts, they need to make to close a contract. They know how many prospects they need to locate in a day and a week to meet their prospecting goals. They practice daily disciplines every day. Prioritize Activities. Not all activities, calls, traces, etc, are created equal. Prioritized sales people call on those prospects most likely to produce revenue before they do the trace calls to say hello to existing accounts they prioritize their calls. They will cancel the Chamber of Commerce lunch if a prospective client wants to see them. They make time to prospect and preapproach qualify prospects on the Internet AND they do that in non-prime sales time.
I always enjoy Rick Hendrie's articles on customer service. His recent article on "Smile, It Enhances Your Face Value" is dead on. Unfortunately, it begs the question that many managers express to me "How do I get them to smile?" In two other articles. The Case for "Smile" Training and Generation Y: Training a New Generation of Employees, I made the case for the "smile" and why it is important to transmit this to Gen Ys (and all the other ones we deal with). It amazes me that the Gen Y article of four years ago is still one of the most accessed on HotelOnline archives and it tells me that we, as an industry, have still not addressed some customer service training issues. It is mid-summer and the industry is experiencing record REVPAR increases driven by rate rather than demand. The attempt by many hotels and hotel companies to install and implement check-in kiosks indicates that they have given up on training employees to give great customer service to travelers who, on average, are paying 9% more in rate than they were paying last year. What many hotel marketers and Revenue Managers miss is the value of the repeat customer who is driven by customer service as well as by price. It is a matter of "the value proposition" -reaching the right customer at the right price at the right time with the right product! Customer service is a large component of that "value proposition" that attracts the "right customer" to return to the hotel.
It is not difficult or complicated when you apply "common sense!" (YIKES, did I say that!?) I think you will find that common sense is a direct result of the experience that the manager has acquired -- help your employees acquire that experience and you will find that they soon exhibit "common sense." Create a "Culture of Customer Service" in your department and your hotel and you will find that you spend less time and money on acquiring new customers and employees because you will have "repeat" customers begging to come back!
You may only have one chance to see this contact, make an impression and begin a relationship that could lead to new business for your hotel. The answers that you receive to the above questions will allow you tailor your property presentation to the prospects hot buttons or the things that are important to them in making a hotel selection. The key to a successful property presentation is to know your presentation so well that you dont have to think about what you are going to say next and not to dwell on features that are unimportant to them. A wise man once said that a rising tide floats all boats. In most markets the tide is going out and not rising. Those properties that dont mount a skilled and effective sales effort will find themselves beached. Attaining market share over 100% is about rising above the tide.
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Ok, now that business is starting to return to a normal level its also time for us to start returning to normal in what we consider acceptable business. So the first thing that has to go is the concept of 24 Hour Hold on function space.
I understand our clients perspective. They do not want to have to break down their events at the end of each day. But seriously, how much material do they really want to leave in the room overnight anyway? AV and Room setup is of no concern to our clients whatsoever that is what we have AV and Setup guys for.
Displacement of evening catering revenue is the problem here. Sure, the conference during the day may be worth tens of thousands of dollars in event revenue, but so is the banquet event for another organization that could have been booked in that space for that evening had the space not been on a 24 hour hold for the conference.
If our clients want the function space held for 24 hours then they need to be prepared to pay room rental that is equal to the displacement of a normal evening event.
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History is your only real indicator here of just how much banquet revenue you will be displacing, and it is for this reason that the catering team should always be logging any turn down business that they lose because of groups already in that room on a 24 hour hold. So let this be a lesson to catering if you arent logging your turn downs, expect to continue to turn down just as much business in the future because you cant change the future if you dont know your history! If you arent logging your catering turn downs we have no way of knowing what is being displaced by one of these ghastly 24 hour holds!
The lesson for sales here is this instead of selling your clients on space, sell them on service. Understand that when they are asking you for a 24 hour hold on the space, its not because they want that room for 24 hours its because they dont want the hassle of breaking down and resetting a room. Once you explain to them that their concern about the room teardown is not a concern of theirs because it is a service that the hotel provides then they will be fine. Explain that the Setup guys will break down the room AND set it back up for the next day exactly the way it was left. Explain that AV will break down the AV AND set it back up for the next day exactly the way it was left. Also explain that your Banquet Service team is on hand to pack away any materials that the meeting planner had put out etc etc. This is all part of the service and its the reason they are holding the event with a hotel and not a hall! Naturally the above conversations could all turn out to be for nothing if catering doesnt book any business in the room anyway but I for one dont want to be the sales manager that is always preventing catering from selling!
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Often management does not closely monitor sales effectiveness when things are going reasonably well. Market share is respectable, REVPAR shows improvement over the previous year, a perfunctory skim of the weekly sales reports reveals an acceptable level of activity, they always appear to be busy going out on calls and doing site inspections. Life is good! Or is it? When demand is high and the issue is one of managing the yield, sales departments can become confused as to the goals (Do you want the business or not?) and management is often less than clear on tying yield management goals to sales production goals and incentives. Sales people, sensitive as they are, become discouraged by what they perceive as mixed messages on rate versus occupancy. Let me just say at the outset that what follows is not meant to impugn the integrity of sales people. Sales people are my favorite people in the whole world next to Ops people who keep the guest happy and count the beans that sales brings in. However, the fact of the matter is that nobody does what nobody checks and employees only understand what is important to management by the questions that are asked. It is only human nature not to care about a part of the job that management never monitors which is consequently perceived as unimportant. There are three distinct areas that can assist management in measuring sales effectiveness; 1. Defining the areas to be evaluated; 2. Monitoring sales performance in relation to the above areas and 3. Designing incentives to reflect Managements goals for the property. Defining the areas of evaluation. How do you set sales goals? Do you establish call quotas or revenue quotas based on the success of top line room revenue in relation to budget and last year? The fatal flaw with call quotas is that they are easy to fudge (not that anyone on your staff would ever do that) and a lot of calls made without enthusiasm or with poor sales skills fulfills the quota but does nothing for the propertys revenue.
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Monitoring areas of sales performance. When a sales person comes victoriously into the office or calls to announce a great piece of business that has been booked, do you ask how this lead was generated did we develop it or was it an inquiry? One reflects skill, the other order taking. Are you assessing the mix of calls? How many are calls to new prospects, how many are routine traces, how many are outside calls? Of those that are traces, where in the sales pipeline are they at the qualifying stage, negotiating the contract or closing? Do you spot-check weekly reports? There is story about Curt Carlson, founder of Carlson companies (if I need to mention Carlson Travel and Radisson, then go back to hotel 101), that may be apocryphal but is a shrewd lesson for all managers to learn. It is said that when he held meetings with his division heads, he asked them to bring their P&Ls on overheads. He would then project them on a screen and pick several line items at random on each sheet and inquire as to what that number represented. His logic was that if a division head could explain everything that was in that number, they knew what was in the rest of their P&L. Do you routinely pick items at random on the sales reports and inquire as to how we got that prospect, what went on during that call and where we stand with that prospect?
Designing incentives to reflect Management goals. Is your sales department responsible for total room revenue of the property including transient and group? If not, they may overbook group blocks at the expense of transient to fulfill their group goals. Does your sales incentive program reflect your fluctuating seasonal goals, higher rates when demand warrants and higher volume in the off seasons? I have clients, Patrick Henderson, Vice President and Vicki Sare, GM at the Holiday Inn in Sheridan Wyoming who were looking for a way to increase the group rate and lower group volume in the busy summer season. Sales were booking a large volume of group business in summer at significantly less than rack rate. An examination of the incentive program revealed that the sales incentive plan was based on annualized group revenue and the demand for group rooms was significantly higher in the summer than in the winter. Therefore, if the sales department was going to make bonus they had to make hay while the sun shone in the summer. By re-weighting the sales incentive program so that group rooms booked for the summer months account for a smaller percentage of their annual bonus with a
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The competition for employees is intense with so many hospitality establishments trying to recruit from the same labor pool. There is a limit to the hourly wages we can offer. Most establishments offer wages in the same range so money is no longer a compelling issue for these employees. They are a bit spoiled in that this is a generation has never known unemployment. They also know that if this job isnt what they want, they can cross the street and find another job. In this kind of environment it is a matter of whats in it for me. When the wage is equal, why would an employee choose to work for you rather than someone else? In my article, Generation Y: Motivating and Training a New Generation of Employees, it was noted that the potential employees we are trying to recruit have motivations other than money for working in a certain establishment. They have choices. Its a buyers market. Hotel sales people are asked to formulate a brief value proposition with which to gain a potential clients interest in the benefits of booking rooms in our hotels. (What you havent done this!) This includes benefit statements tailored to the clients special requirements, not just features, of the hotel. For those of you who need a refresher on the difference between benefits and features, a feature is an amenity such as the fitness room or pool; the benefit is how that will enhance the experience of the guest. A classic example is the Michelin commercial with the baby in the tire. What is Michelin selling? Not just the feature of the rubber tire but the safety and security that it offers the buyer, the benefit. Micheline is not the least expensive tire on the market and your hotel probably doesnt offer the highest hourly wage. It is important to identify then why an employee would choose to work for you and your hotel. While this may sound easy, it does in fact require some thought. In my management seminars, I ask participants to compose a value proposition. Often the responses are a description of health benefits, the company, 401ks (like anyone is there long enough to for this to be compelling), comp rooms at other company hotels, etc. These are features tell your prospective employee what you can do for them. This is about more than the hotel; it has to do with you, your management style and the working environment that you create.
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1. What is your personal management mission statement? The chief engineers mission was to make the guest comfortable. 2. Do you provide training so that the new employee has the tools to do the job effectively as quickly as possible? Do you provide ongoing training opportunities and reinforcement for all of your employees? 3. Do you model your behavior in such a way that it transmits to your employees your standards of proficiency and good customer service? 4. Do you solicit, listen to and act upon suggestions and input from your employees? 5. Do you make the workplace fun with opportunities to laugh and enjoy the work with fellow employees? 6. Do you recognize and reward good performance even if it is only a pizza for each shift to say thanks for a job well done? An effective and honest value proposition can mean potential employees are eager to work for you. If employees are happy working for you, they will tell their friends and soon you will have potential employees calling you for an interview. How easy would that make your recruiting!
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Are you a talker? Chances are if you are in hotel sales and catering then you probably are. Lets face it most of us in hotel sales are pretty outgoing gregarious individuals that love being the center of attention. Is that a fair call? Those of you that know me know that I certainly fit this description and I think its fair to say that most of you do too. But is this trait a good one when it comes to sales? Certainly, being outgoing is a trait that we look for in sales people, but we all probably have to learn to balance this trait with the art of listening a little better.
Thats right listening. Did you hear me? I said listening! I know, I know we have all heard this, at the most basic of sales manager training classes out there. But how many of us truly listen ALL as much as we should? There are the obvious examples of sales managers launching in to their standard sales pitch about their hotel without stopping to ask their clients what is important to them first. So many of us are so quick to start selling that we forget to hold back until the prospective client has finished telling us what they actually want. I overheard another sales manager talking on the phone the other day to a prospective client. She was talking at length about the fabulous new bar that her hotel had just built out by the pool. She was doing a wonderful job of conjuring up images of these wonderful cocktails out by the pool in the Southern California sunshine. Just listening to her I had visions of Tom Cruise in Kokomo making a Pina Colada with a big umbrella!
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Problem was that the meeting planner was representing a group of Southern Baptist Ministers from Florida. Had she stopped to listen she would have realized that being Southern Baptists, this group has absolutely no interest in drinking, and being from Florida the sunshine really is no great novelty to them! All she needed to do was listen a little to this client before launching into her sales pitch and she would have known not to bother with the pitch about the pool bar. Ok, thats a pretty blatant example, but it makes my point. You probably have never made the mistake of trying to sell cocktails in the California sunshine to a bunch of Florida Southern Baptists, but I think its pretty safe to say that there have been times where you have not listened as well as you could. Its tougher than it sounds though. Its easy for us to say just stop and listen. But we are sales people we want to sell. So many times we are like racing cars at the Formula 1 and as soon as we have a telephone inquiry we think we are seeing the green light to start speeding around the raceway with our sales pitch. But the reality is that we need to put our foot on the brakes a little more. Dont worry about the brake pads, they can be replaced! Sit there at the starting block a little longer and listen to what your client has to tell you. When the client has finished telling you everything and you have collected all the information you could possibly need, then its time to start your engine! Problem is that even when the client is talking, we arent listening, I mean REALLY listening. Be honest here what is the first thing you do as soon as your prospective client has told you the dates that they are looking at? Admit it most of you are already looking at availability before they have even finished that sentence! WHY? Because you are already moving in for the sale! You have taken your foot off the brake way too early! How can you possibly be listening to all of your clients needs when you are scrolling through your guestroom availability and your function diary?! So here is a tip: Next time you have a client inquiry over the telephone, turn OFF your computer monitor. Free yourself from that distraction and pull out your notepad and start taking notes about what your client is telling you about their group. Then (no, dont turn your monitor back on yet!) ask them a bunch of questions. If you need to, prepare a list of standard questions to ask them. Then, when you feel like you know as much information as you need about this client you may turn your monitor back on and start your sales pitch while checking your availability. I guarantee your sales pitch will be far more effective, and your client will feel rest assured that they have a sales manager who gets them. This part is key! So be content to let your competitors start speeding off without you remain in your starting blocks a little longer while you listen. I guarantee your chances of seeing the checkered flag are greatly enhanced when you shut up and listen!
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So you are going out on the road for any number of reasons. Maybe you are off to drop off a contract (because you always hand deliver a contract when it is local, right?!). Maybe you are stopping by to see one of your top accounts. Maybe you are off to a NACE/HSMAI/MPI meeting. Maybe you are off to a Doctors appointment. Either way you are heading out of the office and you are in your car. Why not knock out some sales calls in the process? I know, I know Sales Calls are a pain everyone prefers to be sitting back at their desk and just waiting for the leads to flow in over the fax/email/phone etc. But as much denial as we like to live in, we know that the sales calls are a part of our job. So how to knock out a whole bunch of sales calls without spending all day at it? The easiest way to do this is next time you are planning on heading out of the office for any reason, do a search in your sales database for any accounts that already exist in the SAME ZIP CODE. If you have the ability to search for accounts in the same building even better! This way you can minimize the time and expense of driving all over town. And lets face it you were already headed to that part of town anyway what does it take to do 5 extra sales calls while you are already there. I am not suggesting that you call to set up these appointments. In fact in my humble opinion they work even better if you show up unannounced. The goal here is really to spend as little time as possible setting up and getting to the appointment. Really this is just a part of account management.
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The best thing about running regular training sessions like this is that no-one on your team will feel like they are being targeted and everyones skills can be further enhanced. Now, if you run in to the situation where no-one on your team knows how to prospect, now might really be the time to bite the bullet and pay for some sales training. I know everyone will complain that they dont have the budget for this but do you have the budget for not doing this?!
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But the chances are that you dont have a spy working in the sales department of each hotel in your comp set. Nor do you own a working crystal ball or magic mirror. (Side note: if you do happen to own a crystal ball there is a job opening in my sales team that I would love to talk to you about!)
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Number of guestrooms per night Amount of function space needed Name of hotel they ended up booking with
And this probably means you need to loosen your definition of Lost Business. Lost Business is truly the opposite of Won Business meaning that if you find out of a group that has booked at one of your competitors then you should be logging it as lost business. Yes, even if they never send you an RFP it is still lost business as you didnt win it! I am not necessarily suggesting you put the same amount of detail into loading all these lost bookings, but as long as you have the three pieces of information I listed above then you will be armed with some very interesting information. However you do it, you need to keep track of every group that has booked with your competitors. Arm yourself with this information and you will be ready to maximize your revenue when you know that your competitors are unable to take the piece of business. When the day comes that your competitors are sold out, you want to know it as far in advance as possible so that you can fully maximize your rate or even (gasp) sell rack!
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Seems like a pretty easy question to answer I am a Sales Manager therefore yes I am selling all the time. But am I really? Stop and ask yourself how much of your day really is spent selling? As Sales Managers in a hotel we are being paid for the primary purpose of finding business for the hotel which therefore translates into revenue. So why are so many of us finding ourselves spending large portions of our day in tasks that are not in any way contributing to more sales? You know the tasks I mean! Tasks like helping out the Front Desk check in a group because you want it to go smoothly, or helping banquets finish setting the ballroom so that it will be ready in time for the Wedding, or hand-delivering revised BEOs to the kitchen because their printer doesnt work. Why do we do all of these tasks? Well we keep telling ourselves that its because we are taking care of our clients, so we cant possibly let our friends in the operational departments make a single mistake. You know what we are? We are ENABLERS! So the end result is that we spend all this time in the operational areas of the hotel sharing their responsibilities. Sure we are being team players and we are there to make sure that the operations team looks good. But when was the last time your Banquet team offered to come and help with a Sales Blitz? When was the last time the Chef offered to come and do Prospecting Calls? When was the last time the Front Office team assisted with responding to RFPs? Being team players is very important but there comes a point where you lose the ability to perform successfully in your own role when you are so busy enabling other departments by performing their roles for them. Every hour that you spend down on the Banquet floor is an hour that you could have been prospecting for new business. Every minute you spend in the kitchen updating the Chefs copies of the BEOs because they havent read the change log is valuable time that could have been spent responding to leads. Every room that you help strip because housekeeping are behind with turning rooms for your big check-in is 15 minutes that you could have used to steal some business from a competitor. Sometimes you really do have to let go. Step back from Operations and let them run their own departments. Be cruel in order to be kind. Yes this could potentially cost you a couple of groups in the short term if your operations team is not rising to the challenge. But hold them accountable. Whats more your operations team may actually surprise you they may be way better than you actually give them credit.
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I suggest that all Sales Managers should keep a tally of how much time you spend on any task other than selling. Add that time up at the end of the month and determine what percentage of your time you are spending on actually producing business. Then if your operations team is not on-board, present them with the numbers. Let me give you an example. If you determine that you are only spending 50% of your time selling, and last month you booked $100,000 worth of business, that means you COULD have booked $200,000 of business if you werent busy enabling all the other departments. Is your hotel willing to miss out on that much revenue or are they now willing to force the ops teams to take control. I say let go let go now! Let the operations team run the operation and get back to selling! Its not easy to let go (ask any parent with a child learning to ride a bike!) but in an economy like this the stakes are too high. Get back to selling your operations team is depending on YOU to bring in the revenue!
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There are already plenty of hotels out there that are already doing this and it may seem tough to start doing this in a bad economy, but I would argue that this is the perfect time to start doing this. By removing fixed catering pricing now it becomes a lot easier to start charging more for catering once the economy does improve it just means that more customers are being quoted your D pricing at the moment than will be the case when things improve. And for those of you out there that are reading this and saying that it will never work, remember that many people said the same when hotels starting varying their room rates, and look at how successful that has been! So ask yourself again how much can you get away with charging for a gallon of coffee?!
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Are you converting all of your leads into definite business? That would be nice but more likely you have plenty of leads that you respond to, only to never hear from them again (If you are converting ALL your leads then I want to know what your secret is!)
Remember the days when an RFP would come through on the fax machine, the lead coordinator would log the lead and then assign it to a Sales Manager who would then put together a proposal and mail it out to the prospective client? That procedure has changed somewhat with the advent of technology but the principle is still very similar (side note: if that is still your exact procedure then you definitely need to read on!!!) There is a range of mind-blowing statistics being floated around the industry but the underlying theme behind all of them is that increasingly, small to medium sized group business is booking with the first hotel to respond. Some statistics state that up to 75% of group business is booking with the first responder! Translate this to mean that quite simply if you are not the first responder then you ARE losing business! To illustrate my point lets talk about plumbers. Imagine you leave work this afternoon and go home to find that you have a leaky pipe in your bathroom and you have water all over the floor. Your initial reaction is I just need someone to get here fast and fix this so I can instead focus on preparing my dinner or something to that effect. If you are like me you are not interested in spending all night researching all the different plumbers in town you just want someone to fix the pipe, fast! So you pick up the phone directory and call the first plumber that catches your eye. Imagine you get that plumbers voicemail what do you do? Thats right,
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Is your Banquet Service Charge a Gratuity or an Administrative Charge or a combination of the two?
Ok admit it, for a long time now we have all felt a tad uncomfortable knowing that for many of us, our hotels have been collecting a service charge on catering and not distributing the entire amount to our banquet service staff in the way that our clients are expecting Yes it feels wrong but we tend to just pretend we dont know about it right?! For those of you unaware of what I am referring to, let me explain
Typically catering charges will accrue a Service Charge for all Food and Beverage. Some hotels will also apply this charge to Audio Visual and Room Rental charges. Many years ago this amount used to be 15% but over the past decade or so it has crept up significantly - the going rate for service charges in the United States seems to be somewhere between 18-22%. Traditionally, the entire service charge on a banquet check was considered to be the gratuity and was distributed amongst the banquet wait-staff. However as hotels have increased the service charges, most have not increased the allotment that is distributed to the banquet team as their gratuity.
This in and of itself does not seem like such a big deal. Surely a hotel should be allowed to increase service fees at its own choice and whether it chooses to pass on increased profits to its employees in the form of raises is also a decision for an employer to make.
But the area that makes many of us nervous is the knowledge that our customers are concluding that the service charge goes to the wait-staff in its entirety. Ask any of your meeting planners, brides or any other clients what they are expecting will happen with the 22% Service Charge they are paying and I bet you that almost all of them will tell you that they are expecting that it will go to the banquet servers as a gratuity. Heck, ask the rest of your catering and sales colleagues and most of them probably dont know that the entire 22% isnt going to the banquet servers!
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For this reason, I personally believe that BEOs should all state what the breakdown is for the service charge. Its just a simple change required in the header of a BEO, and possibly also in the verbiage used in contracts. This has also been the advice recently given to a lot of large hotel groups recently but legal counsel but I am no lawyer, I just believe it is ethical to give full disclosure
And for those of you who think that this is something that you can just brush off, I suggest you do a Google search for Banquet Service Charge Lawsuits and take a look at the court cases that are springing up all over the country regarding this very issue. I am not going to name names, but there are some pretty famous hotels in New York, Boston and Hawaii currently facing the threat of class action lawsuits over this very issue.
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In my previous article I talked about how it in todays business environment it is absolutely critical that you are the first responder for all incoming leads. First response equals significantly increased chance of winning the business. In recognition of this, most hotels have written in to policy that Sales Managers must respond to all leads within a given timeframe (eg. Crowne Plaza has the 2 hour response guarantee).
Its all well and good to require Sales Managers to respond within this timeframe, but what can frustrate this process is if there are roadblocks that hold up the lead from getting to the Sales Manager as fast as it should. Many hotels have all leads coming through to one centralized person who then assigns them to the Sales Managers. But what happens when that person steps away from their desk? Maybe they only go to the bathroom and are gone 10 minutes, but that is a 10 minute head start just given to the completion! Even if you have a sales admin whose primary responsibility is to assign these leads, you are still adding valuable minutes to the lead response time. Because even if they work at lightning speed they are still not faster than the lead going directly to the correct Sales Manager immediately. In many cases that I know of, that central person is often the Director of Sales. Surely with all of their additional responsibilities this is the worst possible person. If you are Director of Sales you are the last person that would want to be holding up the lead response! I know there is no simple answer, but the goal always needs to be to get the lead to the responder as fast as possible. Meeting Broker (yes I know I am biased!) has fabulous assignment rules that automatically send leads directly to the appropriate Sales Manager (eg. assign all leads with a corporate market segment with more than 50 rooms on peak to John). One other way is set up your online lead channels to send the leads directly to a Sales person rather than a lead catcher. Sites like theKnot.com are a no brainer this site should absolutely be sending the leads directly to your Catering Sales Manager who handles the Weddings market. If 90% of your StarCite leads are for the Association market, then you may as well have them go directly to your Association Sales Manager.
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One other solution that is a little more out of the box is to give the responsibility of responding to all incoming leads to one dedicated individual. I have seen this managed in a many different ways and all have worked well. One hotel group that I know of split their sales team in to two separate teams Reactive Sales and Proactive Sales. That way the reactive sales team is entirely focused on responding to those incoming leads which in turn means a faster response. Other properties give the responsibility for responding to all leads to one person each day and rotate the responsibility around. One other hotel I know of has all incoming electronic leads come through to a generic email address. This email inbox is then shared (possible if you use Outlook) with all Sales Managers so everyone can see if there is a lead sitting there that needs a response. However you achieve this will depend on your sales team dynamic, but the goal absolutely has to be on minimizing the number of people that have to handle the lead prior to its response. If you have people that are receiving leads and then passing those leads on to other people to respond then you are definitely slowing down the lead response time. So have a look at your lead assignment process today cut out the middle man so that your Sales Managers can receive the leads as fast as possible. One less excuse for not responding to the lead FIRST!
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A recent discussion on the LinkedIn group about the make-up of the SMERFE market (thanks Tiffany!) got me thinking more about SMERFE versus SMERF and all the different definitions For those of you outside North America, SMERFE is an acronym used to describe group business that does not fall into the traditional market segments of Corporate, Association, Government or Tour & Travel (no, not the little blue men). The most common definition I have seen is as follows: S Sports M Military E Education R Religious F Fraternal E Ethnic
Some hotels will switch out the S for Social, other will replace one of the Es for Entertainment thats ok, its up to each hotel to define their own market segments. Essentially the meaning behind SMERFE is the same what Sports, Military, Education, Religious etc all have in common is that they are groups where it is highly likely that the attendees are paying for themselves and are attending outside of their regular work hours. In other words, being part of this group is not their job. This is a big generalization, but SMERFE groups are usually the most rate sensitive which is why we look to often use groups as fillers during time periods where we would otherwise be slow. This often works out well as the dates and times that a SMERFE group is looking for is often the opposite of when your Corporate groups are looking for.
The point that I am getting to, is to not lose sight of the fact that what truly defines SMERFE is far more than just an acronym. If your hotel merely uses an acronym to define what SMERFE is then you are bound to have some conflict at some point in the future. Think not? Consider this.
Military is the M in SMERFE, but isnt the Military part of the Government, so shouldnt that go to the Government market instead? What about a Teachers Association thats Education so is it SMERFE or is it the Association market? What about a training company is that Education or Corporate? What about a State College they are Education, but if they are owned by the State arent they Government? If S stands for Social does a Corporate Holiday Party count as
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As Papa Smurf said: Enough fighting! Lets all have a Smurfy day!
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Some tips:
1. Dont use the same video twice. The whole point of this is to tailor your site inspection to the client and not be generic. 2. Put the same amount of time and effort into doing your video site inspection as you would for an in-person site inspection. This should not be more work than a normal site, but it deserves as much effort. 3. Dont get too hung up about the quality of the video. Remember that the whole point is to make it very clear that you understand that your client couldnt get to the property so you produced a short video just for them. 4. Dont try to edit the video this will only make the client think that you have cut out the parts of the hotel you dont want them to see. Keep filming the entire site inspection. 5. Think you dont have access to a video camera? Think again there is bound to be someone in your office with at least a video camera on their cell phone! 6. File too big to email? Transfer it to a memory stick and mail that to your client (a hotel branded memory stick would have an even better impact!) 7. Follow up with your client on the phone to see if they want you to film any areas in more detail. Maybe they have a question about how far the walk is between meeting rooms go ahead and film yourself walking it! And finally have fun with it! Your clients will be amazed at the effort that you have gone to when in reality you have put no more effort into the site inspection than if they had actually come to visit. So while your competitors are complaining that they are never able to get meeting planners to their hotels for site inspections you will be able to smile knowing that EVERY meeting planner gets a site inspection at your hotel! So get to it try out this approach and let me know how it went!
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The thing is though, we often reserve the pre-con meeting for large (or VIP) groups only. Why is that? Surely the concept of a pre-con should be applied to all groups? Many operations people will tell you that its most commonly NOT the large groups that are the problem groups, instead it is those small groups not coincidentally, the groups that also dont have a pre-con!
So predictably, my recommendation is a pre-con meeting for all groups. Thats right every single group! Sounds impossible but its not I promise!
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he key here is to re-examine what defines a pre-con. For many people, the concept of a precon means blocking a function room, setting it U-Shape, inviting every department head, ordering hot beverages etc etc etc This concept is absolutely unnecessary for a 20 person corporate group, that doesnt even have a professional meeting planner involved. However, the on-site contact needs the orientation to the hotel just as much as a meeting planner of a large group would. They also need a thorough review of the group resume and the BEOs. And they most certainly need introducing to the key players involved with their group. So the best way is to have a second style of pre-con for your hotel. Keep doing the formal precon exactly the way you have been, but keep that type of pre-con just for your large (or VIP) groups. Then the second type of pre-con should be your Informal/Small Group pre-con. For my small group pre-cons, I arrange to meet the on-site contact in the lobby, where I introduce them to the General Manager, Front Office Manager, Banquet Manager and occasionally the Chef (if their F&B is extensive). We excuse the GM once he has said his welcome, and then all go and sit in the lounge where we review the Group Resume as well as a print-out of the rooming list. If there are no questions at that point we excuse the Front Office Manager, and then we review the BEOs. We finish the Pre-con by walking the space and making sure the client knows how to contact the key players and is familiar with where all the groups events will be. All-told, this small group pre-con takes no more than 15 minutes in total, but the amount of time it saves in the long run is many times that not to mention great customer service. So it may sound ambitious to aim to do a pre-con for every group, but it really isnt if you redefine the term pre-con so it is just as appropriate for smaller groups. Your clients AND your operations teams will thank you for it!
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Best practices for database management are great but only when people follow them. We have all been guilty at times in the past of declaring that we were too busy to log everything in the database. We always knew it was best practice to enter everything but while the leads just continued to rain down on us it was easy to turn a blind eye to these best practices. Do you log EVERY lead? Do you log EVERY turn-down? Do you log EVERY phone call/email/appointment? We always know that we should be logging all of the above, but its so easy when we are busy to fall into the trap of not doing so. Logging all your turn-downs, leads and activities really gets you no closer to making your revenue goals for this month which is precisely why so many of us tend to use the excuse that we are too busy to do so. Hotel sales teams that did log this in the past are certainly reaping the rewards of that diligence now they have a lovely database just full of potential prospects to call on. So if you werent logging everything before now is certainly the time to start! Surely we cant use the excuse that we are too busy now! The tough times like now really are the best time to go back to basics and redeploy the rule that If its not in <insert name of your sales system here>, it didnt happen.
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Cut off my arm, my leg - just don't cut off my room block...
It can be said that Sales Managers will protect their groups' room blocks more than even their own lives at times. So much stress and pain seems to come as a result of room block cutoff dates... So what can be done to prevent some of this pain?
Well, first of all - and this is the easiest part - make sure your group's cutoff date falls on an appropriate date. I know this seems obvious, but make sure its not on a weekend or a public holiday. Most sales systems will automatically assign a cutoff date for you (usually 30 days prior), but this is not set in stone - change it!!!! I actually know plenty of hotels that make it a rule that cutoff dates are not to be within 24 hours of a holiday or the weekend. This becomes even more important for hotels with front office systems that automatically drop room blocks once the cutoff date is reached. Nothing is more frustrating for a group reservations department than to receive a rooming list at 5pm on a Friday afternoon which is also the cutoff date! Sales Managers should really also discuss the cutoff date with their clients as part of the contract negotiations. Make sure that the cutoff date that you are giving them is realistic. Ask them about their past groups - do they think that 30 days prior is realistic. If not - negotiate where possible. And for those of you with sales systems that are interfaced with your front office systems, ABSOLUTELY make sure that your cutoff dates are not too close to end of month/quarter. I know of a Sales Manager who had a huge group drop out of the system on the last day of the quarter. She did not find out until the next day, by which time she had already taken a huge hit on her numbers on the last day of the quarter - she did not make bonus that quarter! I know of a few hotels that mandate that all cutoff dates fall on Wednesdays. Sounds funny at first, but its pretty logical, as we already have a BEO distribution day, yield meeting day, staff meeting day, resume distribution day - why not 'Cutoff Day'. Its so much easier when all groups cut off on the same day of the week - that way when everyone comes into work that day they will all be thinking of which groups need to get their rooming lists in, individual rooms cut off etc etc. Interesting concept hey?! Now of course there is the discussion regarding who should be managing the room blocks to make sure that the rooms pickup prior to the cutoff date - but that's a whole other discussion for another day!
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Are you recreating the recreation of the recreation of the wheel when you work with BEOs?
I think its fairly safe to say that typing up Banquet Event Orders is probably the single most time consuming task for any Catering Sales Manager, Convention Services Manager etc. After years of doing the job, many of us have our little routine and believe that we are fast as possible in doing the BEOs, but I think its worth revisiting processes every now and then to see if there really is an easier way
Are
you
copying
old
BEOs
as
much
as
you
could?
We all love repeat bookings because (among many other sales reasons) they offer the opportunity to copy last times BEOs. Crafty meeting planners often suggest copying last years BEOs because they know that there is an increased chance that when we do this that we will forget to change the menu prices on the BEO which probably have gone up since last years event! So a little piece of advice ALWAYS print up a copy of any BEO you are sending to your client and look it over before you email it out. You are far more likely to catch any errors that way. I personally prefer the method of having a buddy in the office that you swap BEOs with before sending to your clients as its much easier to catch other peoples mistakes. Its one thing to leave the flip chart off of the BEO, but its another thing altogether to charge last years prices for the coffee! Ok, so repeat bookings are the obvious chance for saving time through copying BEOs. But have you ever considered creating template bookings in your system with template BEOs purely for the purpose of copying to new events? Think about how many of your events end up looking so similar to each other. Consider weddings. A wedding BEO is probably the most detailed BEO that is prepared, yet most wedding BEOs contain pretty much the same information. I suggest creating a template Wedding booking, with a template Wedding BEO. Spend quite a lot of time putting this template wedding BEO together as its going to become your standard for all future weddings. So put insert all your standard setup information, and include items like Flowers being provided by: and Napkin Fold:.. leaving space to fill in the blanks when you are working on a specific wedding. From this point forward, for every new wedding you work with the first thing you will do is copy over the template BEO and from then just filling in all the blank spaces.
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Once you have copied over the template BEO to the wedding you are working on you can print it up and take it to your meetings/tastings with the Bride so that its a pretty easy worksheet/checklist. Never again will you leave your menu tasting and realize that you forgot to ask the bride which color table linens she wants! The other advantage for using a template BEO for weddings is that it creates consistency for all future weddings. Obviously consistency makes it much easier for the Banquets team. Now think about what other events you could create template BEOs for. If you do a lot of day meetings that are set u-shape, with a projector, water station, AM and PM breaks etc then go ahead and create a template BEO for day meetings. Same would apply for Bar mitzvahs, Breakout meetings, Holiday Parties any area that you see a trend. So lets be clear a template BEO: Saves time Creates consistency Decreases the likelihood that you will forget something Makes it easier to provide more detail Seems like a no-brainer right?!
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Probably the most common topic that hotel sales people complain about is how much work it is to enter a new booking into <insert sales and catering system here>. Often this is voiced as a complaint when discussing time constraints or the banality of loading bookings. Why am I paid a Sales Manager salary when all I seem to do is data entry is often a common complaint. The complaint is generally even louder for those that work at branded properties where the number of incoming leads requiring responses can be huge. I hate entering leads! I find data entry to be one of the most mundane parts of my job. I really wish we could return to the good-olddays when I wouldve had an assistant to enter my bookings for me. But alas we all know those days are not going to return! After years of staying back at work late into the evening loading these leads, I decided it was time for a rethink. There really must be a better (read: faster) way of getting those bookings into the system Good news: there really is a better way! The method that I am about to describe is based loosely on one particular sales and catering system (which for those of you that know me, will instantly know which fabulous Greekcharacter-named-system I am referring to) but I am sure the concept can easily be replicated in all systems. The idea is based around having template bookings that you always copy from when creating a new booking. Template (or dummy) bookings can be created purely for the purpose of copying. I generally create an account in my name, and then load template bookings of a Turn Down status. I rename the booking with my name and a descriptor of the booking. Common examples might be: Template Conference Group Booking Template Training Group Booking Template Wedding Booking Template Family Reunion Booking
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When I create the template bookings I fill in all the fields, then load the typical room block requirements, and common rates, and then most importantly load all possible events for the maximum number of conceivable days. Then whenever a new lead comes for a Conference, I just open up my Template Conference booking and copy it to a new booking. All I have to do is then delete the events that dont apply and make the necessary tweaks to the room block. Many people complain that loading all the events ( breakouts, breaks, lunches, general sessions etc.) is often the most timeconsuming part, so being able to just delete the events that dont apply is a huge time-saver. Obviously you could create different templates based on length of stay there really is no limit to the number of templates that you may way to use. Many people are accustomed to copying bookings, but most have overlooked the possibility of creating bookings purely for the purpose of copying from. Maybe its because many people are unaware it is possible to copy a booking from one account to another. This method it also ensures that I am never in trouble for forgetting to fill out certain fields or not enter all the details as they are already loaded in my template. I suggest you give it a try you will be amazed at the amount of time you will save, just by taking 15 minutes to create a few template bookings that you can copy over and over again. I know it sure rescued me from data-entry-induced-insanity more than once.
Less time doing data entry = more time to book business = finally making my numbers again!
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One of the ways that you can really differentiate yourself from your competitors is by wowing the client at the site inspection. So many of our colleagues have their standard site inspection routine that they roll out for every client. All of your clients are different so why the same site inspection for all of them? This makes no sense. Do you make the same prospecting phone call to every account? Of course not you always tailor your calls to the client so shouldnt a site inspection be tailored too?
Remember there is a good chance that your clients are going to site inspections at other hotels too and they can get pretty darn boring if they are all the same. Tailoring your site inspection to the client has the following benefits:
1. It tells your client that you really want their business because of the time and effort you have put into planning the site inspection. 2. It reminds your client that you understand who they are and what they stand for which means you will best be able to take care of their group. 3. Your client will still remember your site inspection when they return to their office.
A great place to start for inspiration is your clients website. Maybe they have a theme to their website. Maybe they have company values that could be helpful to you. Maybe they have background music
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Involve the rest of your sales team in preparing for the site inspection. At your next sales meeting tell the team about your upcoming site inspection and then have the team help you brainstorm for 5 minutes on creative ways for wowing your client at the site inspection. Its also a great idea to involve the rest of the hotel in your site. A Chef in uniform will almost always wow a client as will food samples along the way! Remember that one of the biggest gripes that clients have is over the check-in experience so imagine the impact of a Front Desk who actually knows who they are when they arrive at the hotel for the site inspection! One of the added benefits of involving the rest of the hotel in your site inspection is longer term. If your hotel team has been involved in helping secure a piece of group business then they are more likely to go the extra mile to take care of that group its like they have more of a vested interest. That group is more than just another group at your hotel to the operations team its a group that they helped win. So, what are some of your site inspection WOWs? Click on the link below to head to the Contact Me page and send in your best examples of things you have done to wow at a site inspection. I will publish a different WOW here each week (and yes you can be anonymous if you want just state so in your submission).
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Diagram Drama!
Ok, so for those of you in the wonderful world of catering diagrams are a major part of your lives right? Some of you create your diagrams by using stencils, some completely by free-hand, and others are lucky enough to have fabulous diagram computer programs. Either way its a pretty good idea for you and your team to come to an agreement over some pretty basic standards. I say this because every office has one person on their team that goes totally overboard with their diagrams. You know them we all know them maybe you are that person! That person creates a diagram for virtually every event and they label EVERYTHING! They (or you) think that they are being that much more detailed than everyone else. Problem is that they are making it hard on everyone else when really their efforts could have been better focused in other areas (like maybe more sales duh!) So here is the best way to cut down on all these unnecessary diagrams: Create a Diagrams SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) Binder. Within that binder create master copies of the standard sets that you do in each room. Common examples would be U-Shape with a Screen and Projector. Make sure you have a duplicate copy of this binder in the Catering and Banquets offices. This way when you have an event that is being set per the SOP then a diagram does not need to be distributed. Banquets should be trained that in the absence of a diagram then they are to set per the SOP. Next make a point of determining exactly what needs to be labeled on a diagram. Remember that we still want the banquet team to read the BEO, so if your BEO says 6ft screen, you should not need to label the screen on your diagram with the size. Obviously all this goes out the window if your client is asking for a diagram that is labeled! Oh yeah, and one last thing make sure your diagrams have a place for your client to sign off with a discussion about the implication of last minute changes (ie setup fees) no different to getting a BEO signed really! This could really have an impact on the number of last minute changes
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Companies get bought and sold on a daily basis. Mergers, Acquisitions, even name changes happen all the time. It can be very easy to be on a call with a top customer and have no idea that their company has just been acquired by another. Knowing such information is important if you want to be sensitive to your clients feelings. Conversely, this information is also useful when soliciting for more business. So how do you keep abreast of all the latest news regarding all of your accounts? My favorite way to do this is to use Google News Alerts. I had already been in the habit of using Google to look up the news on my top accounts, but this feature takes all the work out of it for me!
After you set up a Google News Alert, Google will email you with an alert next time your account is mentioned in the news. It really is that simple!
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So let me step you through how to set this up! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. emails. Leave Only the Best Results as the option for Volume Enter your email address Click the Create Alert button Go Enter For to the the Type following of website: your select http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en in the from Search the Terms field. drop-down.
name
account News
For How Often I would suggest you select the weekly option to avoid being inundated with
That easy! Give it a try and your will never be left out of the loop with the goings on at your top accounts!
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I know everyone is just itching for the weekend and Sales people are just about headed for the door, but consider this before you shut down your computer and head to happy hour. How many of your top clients have you spoken with this week? The week may be almost over, but surely there is time left to make 2 or 3 more calls. Go ahead, just pick up the phone and call 3 of your top clients that you didnt get a chance to speak with this week. If you didnt speak to them, there is a good chance that one of your competitors did, so dont let them start poaching that top producer from you. Pick up the phone end the week on a high note (and then head to happy hour)!!!
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Got Motivation?
In case any of you needed any further motivation to pick up the phone and make one more solicitation call consider this:
'A colleague recently shared with me that a 10-room night booking provides enough revenue to his hotel to pay one employee an entire week'.
I have borrowed this quote directly from a great article over on hotelsmag.com by Bart Berkey. Its a great article all about different motivators for sales people in today's economy. With so many sales people getting disillusioned by not meeting their sales goals at the moment it is really worth taking stock at what motivates us. Remind yourself why you got into this job in the first place and then remind yourself about all the other employees of your hotel that are relying on you to bring in the business. Imagine you are able to squeeze in one more solicitation call each day - you could just have saved one more hotel employee's job...
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Who am I?
Just another hotel Head of Sales trying to make my numbers for the quarter!
The articles of this book are my own and don't represent any particular company's positions, strategies or opinions.
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