Carol Verret Consulting and Training Consulting Training Seminars |
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. . The Science of Hotel Sales* The Benchmarking Imperative for
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July 2008 - This topic may not rate high on the �sexiness� meter in a period where hotels are frantically seeking new strategies to generate demand but managers and owners will love it as it gives them information they need to evaluate sales strategies! It is imperative that we focus on new strategies based upon changing habits in the consumer�s travel buying behavior. The question is how will the implementation of these strategies be measured in order to evaluate their effectiveness? The hotel industry in general has not been as systematic as many industries in goal setting and measuring the sales activity of hotel sales departments. Most sales driven industries have benchmarking mechanisms in place to evaluate the success of marketing and sale strategies. In an ideal world, marketing drives the customer to a lead generation source; the leads are than picked up by the sales team and developed into �buys�. The measurement of the success of the strategy lies in the number of leads generated at the channel level and the quality of those leads is evaluated by the sales department�s effectiveness in converting those to customers. In many sales driven industries such as insurance, real estate, stock
brokerage, etc., the sales person is responsible for generating a large
proportion of those leads. Hotel sales falls somewhere in the middle
� advertising and promotions can drive leads to revenue channels but at
the same time, the sales department also needs to �prospect� for new business
within a strategic sector of the market.
However, the conversion of leads or the ability of a sales person to convert leads to customers may also depend upon the level of training that they receive. My first job in a �sales driven� industry was the result of graduating from graduate school with a degree that guaranteed nothing more than a ride on the bus for a dollar. The only company that would hire me was a commission based life insurance company. The company sent me and my fellow novices to training for three weeks before we were allowed to pick up a phone. After several months in the field, the call to appointment ratio was developed as well as our call to closing ratio. The assumption was that the more proficient we became in our sales skills, the lower the call to closing ratio would be. My call to appointment ratio started out at 26 to 1 and my call to closing ratio was 130 to one. That translates to 26 calls per day to get 5 appointments out of which would come one sale per week. Brutal! The point of that story is that I became more proficient in finding qualified prospects and developing a relationship that would lead to a close as I progressed. I left the life insurance job when my commission account floated back up to zero. My first hotel sales job followed where I was able to succeed not because I was the sharpest tool in the box (I didn�t even know what a room night was) but because I had been well trained and understood the importance of measuring the effectiveness of my own activity. In tough economic times, it is imperative to measure the results of sales activity so we can measure the effectiveness of sales and marketing strategies:
* Credit for the phrase, The Science of Sales should be given to Doug Farrar of the Arbor Day Foundation who in his wisdom decided to give his excellent sales team support! Carol
Verret And Associates Consulting and Training offers training services
and consulting in the areas of sales, revenue management and customer service
primarily but not exclusively to the hospitality industry. To find out
more about the company click on www.carolverret.com.
To contact Carol send her an email at [email protected]
or she can be reached by cell phone (303) 618-4065. Visit www.hotelsalesblog.com.
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Carol Verret 5910 S. University #C-18, PMB 374 Greenwood Village, CO 80121 Telephone: (303) 618-4065 [email protected] Web Site: http://www.carolverret.com/ Email: [email protected] |