Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Objective: Introducing personal selling in tourism and hospitality. Special emphasis will be given to Fam Trips.
Personal Selling
Concerned with direct interaction between the seller and buyer. Highly effective form of communication. Offers chance for the seller to respond to the individual needs of the customers, provide a tailored and flexible solution, answer questions, gain feedback immediately, and adapt the message.
Advantages
ability to close sales ability to hold the customers attention immediate feedback and two-way communications presentations tailored to individual needs ability to target customers precisely ability to cultivate relationships ability to get immediate action
Disadvantages
high cost per contact inability to reach some customers as effectively
Communicating; salespeople communicate information between the company and the customers. Selling; salespeople know how to approach, present, answer objections and close sales. Servicing; salespeople provide a number of services to customers including consulting on their problems, providing technical assistance, arranging financing, expediting delivery. Information gathering; salespeople do market research and fill in call reports. Allocating; salespeople decide who to allocate scarce resources.
Maintaining strategic partnership; senior salespeople including the sales manager provide planning assistance to clients.
Today, rather than just concentrated on selling, sales people should focus on customer satisfaction and company profits. They should know how to analyze sales data, measure market potential, gather market intelligence, develop marketing strategies and proficient in sales tactics. They should be knowledgeable about marketing (e.g. yield management) as well as selling.
Sales force objectives must be customer designed annually. Annual marketing and sales objectives are broken down quarterly and monthly objectives. These are further broken down by the sales force into personal objectives by day and week. Sales managers are responsible to assign objectives to individual salespeople. Common sales objectives include;
Sales volume, upselling and second-chance selling, market share or market penetration, productspecific objectives.
Sales volume; is measured in terms of occupancy, passenger miles, total covers within tourism. They all mean increasing number of customers. Emphasis on volume alone means price dicscounting, attracting undesirable market segments, and cost cutting.
Sales volume by selected segments; establishing sales objectives by specific market segment to improve revenue. Sale volume and price/margin mix; establishing sales volume objectives by product lines to get the desired gross profit. It is the basis for revenue management.
Upselling and second-chance selling; selling higher-priced products such as suite rooms through upselling. On the other hand, secondchance is about selling additional services to clients who have already booked some services such as a meeting room for 2 days.
Market share or market penetration; compared to sales volume, less important for most hospitalit operations. However, rather than the individual operations, corporate marketing departments of a chain is likely to be concerned with market share.
Product-specific objectives; occasionally sales force may be given specific responsibility to improve sales volume for specific product lines such as memberships.
Customers grouped into size classes according to their annual sales volume. The desirable call frequencies (per year) are established for each class. The number of accounts in each size class is multiplied by the corresponding call frequency to find out the total workload. The average number of calls a salesperson can make per year is determined. The number of salespeople needed is determined.
Today, there are two types of salespeople; inside sales force and a field sales force.
Inside salespeople; there are three types; technical-support persons, sales assistants, and telemarketers. Technical-support persons provide technical information and answers customers questions. Sales assistants provide clerical support to field salespersons. They call ahead, confirm appointments, carry out credit checks, etc. Telemarketers use the phone to find new customers. They may call up to fifty customers per day compared four or five that an outside salesperson contacts.
Field sales force; in hospitality, there are different types of field sales force as commissioned reps and salaried sales force. Commissioned sales reps are used for distant potential markets, since some may not justify to have a salaried sales force. These reps may represent several different properties or chains. Salaried sales force are paid a salary plus benefits. This one is the backbone of the sales force.
The person should be also right for the corporate culture of the organization. Especially new graduates with no experience should be trained. However, sales training is not a onetime process. Sales force require training regarding;
Product/service training Policies, procedures, and planning training Sales techniques training
Sales force tactics, in other words, these are the principles of personal selling. The ultimate purpose of a sales force is to sell. Sales people are trained in tactics to make a sale. Following are the major tactics used in personal selling;
Prospecting and qualifying Preapproach Approach Presentation and demonstration Negotiation Overcoming objections Closing Follow-up/Maintenance
Motivating the sales force; special incentives can be given to the sales force to make them work at their best level. The following may be used;
Sales force compensation Supplementary motivators
Evaluation and control of the sales force; sales force should also be evaluated on their performance. The following may be used in evaluations;
Sales quotas, time-and-duty analysis, cost/return effectiveness of trade shows, formal evaluation of performance, other control techniques (such as sales reports, customer complaints etc.).
Strategic alliances; are highly developed from relationship marketing. They are relationships between interdependent parties who agree to cooperate but still keep their separate identities. They may share databases, market knowledge, resources, risks, technology. In hospitality, there are three types of alliances;
One-night stands Affairs I dos
Sources
McCabe, S. (2009). Marketing Communications in Tourism and Hospitality: Concepts, Strategies and Cases. Butterworth-Heinemann: Oxford. Kotler, P.; Bowen, J. and Makens, J. (1999). Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall: New Jersey. Kotler, P.; Bowen, J. and Makens, J. (2010). Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism (5th ed.). Prentice Hall: New Jersey. Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (2010) Principles of Marketing (13th ed.). Prentice Hall: New Jersey.