By Jeff Schmidt

Event sales generate substantial revenue for hospitality organizations. To compete effectively, hotel and venue properties must find ways to differentiate their brand, and more importantly, qualify and dis-qualify opportunities faster. But the sales process that worked in the past doesn’t work as well today. Buyers are no longer traveling to properties – they expect a more personalized approach and a richer virtual experience.

The good news is that with the right approach – and the right technology – you can increase sales of both smaller events and higher-profile multi-day conferences with substantial room blocks. All it takes is the ability to recognize how buyer needs have shifted and the right insights to be more consultative. Here are four tips that can help:

1. Engage with buyers differently. According to CEB research, the average B2B buyer is 57% through a purchasing decision before engaging a salesperson. This means sellers need to engage with prospects very differently – selling in a way that maps to the buyers’ journey and expectations. Give your sales team tools that help them identify, target, and interact with the right context at the right time. Sales Engagement Platforms allow sellers to track genuine customer interactions across channels, giving them the insights they need to accelerate sales cycles.

2. Use Modern Tools. When presenting in person or online, the delivery needs to be flawless. We’ve all been there – meeting attendees quickly lose interest if they spend the first 10 minutes of a meeting fumbling around to download special software or need complicated login instructions. And presenters lose credibility when they can’t get everyone on the same page quickly, where they struggle to find the right file to present and can’t figure out how to give the demo.

Research from CSO Insights shows that over 60% of sales leaders say the lack of proper tools lengthens sales cycles, and nearly two-thirds of salespeople don’t effectively leverage content during web-based meetings. These challenges require organizations to invest in – or move dollars to – more modern, cloud-based solutions over traditional web conferencing tools.

Look for solutions that can instantaneously launch web-based meetings right from email (like Outlook and Gmail), CRM records, or mobile devices. To further increase sales teams more productive, make sure your meeting solution automatically logs all engagement activity for each meeting back to a CRM system like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. When all meeting information is captured, Sales Leaders have insights to make smarter decisions and know where to best prioritize their time and where they need to coach their teams.

3. Content at your fingertips. Research from Aberdeen shows that sales reps spend on average 440 hour per year searching for and creating content. This is a massive productivity hit, and can even impact your brand when reps create their own (off message) content. Today’s customers require information specific to their unique concerns and needs at every stage of the buying process. If you can pull from a library of rich content instantly – from presentations to videos to web pages –you can address questions quickly without additional meetings, site visits and lengthy negotiations.

Having all relevant content accessible at your fingertips means that it is readily available on mobile devices. But according to CSO Insights only 35% of salespeople report that they have full access to content on mobile devices– which is problematic given the 24/7 nature of selling. Having an approved library that every can access at anytime also helps with messaging and branding consistency.

4. Personalize the Pitch. All meetings can benefit from personalization. Research from the Aberdeen Group shows that top performing salespeople are better at personalizing presentations and, increasingly, videos than their peers – ultimately leading to higher lead conversion and win rates. The most effective salespeople adapt to whatever situation they find themselves in to ensure meetings are successful. Market leading organizations are solving this personalization challenge by investing in broader sales engagement platforms versus single-point tools.

In summary, there is opportunity for forward-thinking event sales professionals to increase revenue even with more competition and in a challenging economic environment. If you can recognize how the buyer landscape has shifted – and follow the four above tips – you can differentiate your offerings, shorten sales cycles, and close more deals.