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Competing Against Yourself: Hospitality Sales Professionals
Lesson #13 from Olympic Gold Medalist Phelps
(Thirteenth in a series)
By David M. Brudney, ISHC, August 2008 �Do you think you�ll have any competition in London in 2012?� asked NBC sportscaster Bob Costas of Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps. �I never concern myself much with competition,� said Phelps, winner of eight Gold Medals. �I�m always competing with myself. My goal is always the same. I�m always working on getting better, on improving.� While very few of us may even come close to achieving what U.S.A. swimmer Phelps did during the XXIX Summer Olympic Games in China, the message we can take from him resonates within us all: raising the bar on our own performance, our personal expectations, no matter what vocation, what activity, what endeavor, so that we are always improving, always getting better. Kaizen - - Japanese word meaning
The very best hospitality sales professionals I have known over the past four decades have always competed with themselves first. They didn�t need monthly or quarterly bonus plans to measure personal performance. Nor did they need corporate or G.M. oversight. I suspect that each had a little voice inside that said, �I know I can do better here� or �I should have done better there� or �Hey, I know I�m better than that.� With Michael Phelps it may be working on getting off the swimmer blocks quicker or maybe on shaving tenths of a second off on his turns. For hospitality sales pros it could be something as simple as booking more group room nights or more revenue per group room night. Maybe it�s just more room nights booked over hard-to-sell periods? How about quicker selling cycles? Improved contracts, faster turnaround time, reducing cancellations or room block erosions? Just a few tips to get you started Here�s a few suggestions on some areas for you to consider:
The very best are always challenging themselves to shorten the cycle, to do whatever they can to close as much business as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next account, the next solicitation. It makes good sense to set up your own timetable for your own selling cycle to revisit on a monthly basis to see how you�ve done - - and to learn from that. Sweet spot(s). The term, �sweet spot� comes from
a sports analogy - - I�ll use baseball and tennis here. A batter
in baseball knows there is a spot on the bat that when contact is made
with a pitch either a line drive or a ball driven high over the outfield
fence typically follows. In tennis, there is a special spot in the
center of the racquet that when contact is made with the ball, it can result
in a difficult-to-return, point-winning shot. A sweet spot in selling
can be the outside personal sales calls you make. It could be a high-yielding
vertical market or even a geographical location. For whatever reason,
my �selling sweet spot� was Chicago. While representing mostly larger,
upscale, group-driven properties on the West Coast, I had a tremendous
amount of success making very good sales calls and booking lots of groups
- - corporate and association - - out of Chicagoland.
Track your selling activities so you can be aware of what is it you do, where and when, that has provided you with your greatest productivity. Ask yourself, �Am I getting all I can out of my sweet spot?� What can you do to get more and what can you learn from your sweet spots that you may be able to transfer over to areas where you are least productive? Nothing ever stays the same. You�re
either
Self-Monitoring. This is all about your taking personal ownership for your own performance measurement. With telephone calls, personal outside sales calls, appointments made, and site inspections, there is a direct correlation with your production numbers end-of-day. You should begin to monitor those numbers closely and see if by increasing those numbers, your production will improve.
© Copyright 2008
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David M. Brudney, ISHC, Principal
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