• “They will only send email to their friends or surf the net for personal reasons on company time” 
• "It allows the GM to screen email they are sending” 
• “It is too expensive to upgrade the hardware to make it worthwhile for everyone to be connected”.

With regard to number three, I would like to make a case that the benefits of providing everyone in the sales office with competent hardware and a modem are many times the cost of providing the equipment.  The proper use of internet based technology not only saves time and makes the salesperson more efficient but the revenue potential of this tool is enormous if only the sales staff and the General Manager truly understand the opportunities it affords and how to manage it to maximize revenue.

Let’s begin with the basics.

Email   

Email is the most efficient tool for communication and correspondence yet developed.  Most business people use it instead of mail for correspondence and only use ‘snail mail’ for original documents.  It is significant that President Clinton just signed a bill which will make email signatures as legally binding as hard copy originals.  FedEx and US Mail look out!

However, there is a definite etiquette to email.  All emails should be acknowledged within seven to ten days and if the recipient is out of email communication for longer than that, an automatic response should be sent indicating that. 
 
Sentence structure, grammar and spelling are as important in email as they are in traditional correspondence.  Spelling and grammar check are not enough and it requires proofing for words and usages that fall through those cracks.

Because email is so immediate, it is tempting to become too casual or informal in tone and address.  Don’t make the mistake of assuming too much familiarity.

Fax 

Most computer based contact management systems (you do have an automated contact management program, don’t you?) have word processing and an internal fax function.  What can demonstrate a sense of urgency and timely follow-up more effectively than faxing a contract or proposal within minutes of hanging up the phone with a client!  All documents are neatly stored and transmission records are available to anyone who needs to see them.

Web Site Design and Management

At a time when even six-year-olds have web sites and ten-year-olds can design and build them, what differentiates yours from the masses?  How does yours get noticed in the plethora of sites that appear when the key words ‘hotel’, your franchise and your location are entered? Does your site look like a brochure that was scanned in or has it been given sufficient thought so that the design conveys the impression of your property that will appeal to your customer demographic?  How are the pages arranged – do you give enough information to differentiate you from the competition or do you simply repeat the obvious? Upon what server does your site reside?  Have you built in enough hyperlinks, to which sites and what response mechanisms have you built in?  Who monitors responses?  Does your host server ensure that your site is refreshed monthly with the major search engines so that it continues to appear within the top fifty to one hundred responses for the key words you have selected? 

Now that I have overwhelmed you with questions, you can see that an effective web site requires more than hiring someone to design it and send it out into cyberspace.  This is a subject for an entire article.

Maximizing the Internet connection for sales
 

Do you need more reasons to justify connecting sales to the net?  I can think of many others, not the least of which is access to cost effective training (watch this space for more on that) which is still in its infancy in this industry.  You have provided high-speed access so that your guests can do business more effectively, go look in the mirror and ask yourself if the sales department isn’t worth the same consideration. 

Carol Verret and Associates, Consulting and Training specializes in results training for sales, front desk and customer service and consulting for the hospitality industry. 

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