The speed of sales has accelerated � no longer is it good enough to get back to a client within 24 hours.  It is no longer good enough to get a proposal off to a client in two days.  It is no longer good enough to blow off third party planners.  It is no longer good enough to do sales this year the same way you did it last year!  

�It�s not the big that eat the small, it�s the fast that eat the slow.� (Jennings and Houghton, 2003).  If you want to understand what the authors were talking about, think Google.  While Microsoft was busy pounding Netscape into the ground, Google quietly developed and took ownership of Internet search until they rapidly became a verb, a wealthy verb.  

Think Mapquest, when Rand McNally and AAA were still busy printing road maps and selling hard copies, little Mapquest made it easy and free to find your way to almost anywhere � online and instantly.  By doing that it also became a verb.  Have you heard anyone say �I am going to Rand McNally that�?   

Think about what that really means, not in an abstract way but what it means to a hotel sales person every day, the habits they need to have in terms of developing new business and servicing existing accounts before the competitors get to them.  Relationships are begun in the speed of an email and the sales process, if not dead, has been compressed and put on the life support of brief communications by email, voice mail, etc.

The article Habits of Highly Successful Hotel Sales People that appeared in Hotel Online last September continues to be one of the most read articles in that publication every month.  Those habits need to be ramped up for 2006 and 2007:

• Web Enabled Cell Phones.  Blackberries, Treos whatever the brand make sure that every one of your sales people has one.  This is the phone number that should appear on every sales person�s business card, electronic and hard copy.  Highly successful hotel sales people have their alerters set to be notified of new email and messages. They acknowledge the correspondence within minutes or hours.  If they go on vacation to a deserted island, they make sure that a competent person is checking and responding like they would if they were there.

• Research.  Prior to responding to an inquiry either from voice message or email the successful hotel sales person makes it a habit to log onto the prospect�s web site to research more about them so that they can craft their response appropriately. 

• Masters of Communication.  Not the college degree but the ability to use electronic communication to craft emails and deliver voice mails that get attention and appeal to the customer in such a way that the contact is eager to enter into a dialogue with them.

• �Natural� Selection.   Not exactly Darwin but Darwinian in the way that the highly successful hotel sales person is able to develop, evaluate, pursue and book only that business that is aligned with the revenue management strategy.   Not all inquiries and accounts will �survive� the selection process � only those that meet the criteria necessary to maximize revenue for the hotel.  

• Natural Selection and Relationships.  The highly successful sales person understands that time is their most scarce and precious resource.  Relationships have always been based upon mutual benefit.   In the age of speed, relationships are built in 15 seconds and the ability to choose which relationships to nurture is critical -- not only for proprietary accounts but also third party planners.  The successful sales person doesn�t wait to be contacted by a third party planner, they qualify and pursue those planners that represent accounts that have the potential to enhance the property�s revenue management goals.  

• Google for New Business Development.  The successful hotel sales person does not wait for inquiries to come through the door; they aggressively seek accounts that fit the Revenue management strategy.  They conduct Internet searches based upon the DNA of accounts that they want to develop.  They are not passive receptors but knowledgeable aggressors.

Do you want your hotel sales department to be the diners or dinner?  Remember �... it�s the fast that eat the slow.�

copyright © Carol Verret, 2002-2003 -2004 -2005 - 2006