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Hotel Marketing Coach ™ Neil L. Salerno, CHME, CHA Marketing & Management Articles |
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Building Traffic (SEO)
Revenue Management
Featured Article "What the Heck is Hotel Revenue Management, Anyway?"
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How Healthy Was Your Last Forecast? by Neil L. Salerno, CHME , CHA When a professional golfer hits a slump in his game, he usually consults
another professional to help determine the problem. When someone is unfortunately
diagnosed with a serious illness, it’s always sound advice to seek another
opinion. The common ingredient in these scenarios is that they both recognize
the benefit of seeking “fresh eyes” to view the situation.
Fresh eyes provide a viewpoint, which is not clouded by assumptions
or past circumstances. Often, the view from outside the immediate problem
or situation tends to be the clearest view of all.
Good sales leaders and sales teams are prone to hit a slump, from time
to time. We are, sometimes, victims of our own routines, good and bad.
It is certainly comfortable falling into routines. Changing routines is
made more difficult because of their sheer comfort. Exploration and thinking-outside-the-box
is difficult to achieve when we are immersed in our daily activities.
It’s May and a great time to schedule a sales tune-up. World events
are changing the marketplace at an unprecedented pace. A small tune-up
investment now could prevent a costly lack of production later. Find some
fresh eyes to review or audit your sales operation. Large companies accomplish
this with regional or corporate sales specialists. If this option is not
available or has not been effective, consider a consultant or someone from
outside your immediate market.
If you cannot hire someone from the consulting arena, consider a sales
& marketing friend or acquaintance, from another hotel, to perform
the sales audit. Do one or the other, but get a “fresh” new and honest
viewpoint.
Create a list of the information you would like to collect to determine
the basic health of your sales effort. Don’t forget to include your electronic
sales program on the Internet. Many consultants already have a checklist
with step-by-step procedures for conventional and electronic sales reviews.
Start your tune-up with how people are spending their time. How much
time is actually being spent in the pursuit and booking of business? Are
your sales people performing daily tasks, which actually take-up time,
which would be better-spent soliciting business? Automated sales systems
are the best thing to ever happen to sales offices in our industry, but
they tend to place formerly administrative support tasks into the hands
of the sales person. Can a support person take on some of this burden?
If you want higher sales levels, give your sales team more time to sell.
True, we are in the age of minimum payroll levels. In the immediate
aftermath of 9/11, many hotels scrambled to combine and reassigned many
tasks to reduce payroll. Revisit those non-sales tasks, which were assigned
to or even taken on by each sales person over the past two years. Reassign
any tasks, which do not involve direct contact with potential clients.
Many experts believe that adding just a half hour a day to a sales person’s
solicitation effort will dramatically improve production. Improved production
makes for a happier and more fulfilled sales team and a better bottom-line.
Your tune-up should include a thorough review of market segments responsibilities.
Is the time, devoted to each market segment, proportionate to the potential
business from that segment? Are your sales targets being adjusted to changes
in the marketplace? Is your view of the job the same as the person who
is actually doing the job? You would be amazed how often there is a major
difference.
Are individual sales goals clear, achievable, and well understood by
each member of the sales team? Does each member of the team have a clear
overall vision of the global goals of the hotel?
Many sales teams contain various levels of experience and training.
Do you have a good consistent coaching program in place to provide guidance
to each individual on the team, on all levels? Coaching is the ingredient,
which makes training more effective because it provides continuous reinforcement
of the training principles.
A sales tune-up should become a periodic ritual to maintain a
healthy and productive sales effort. We all learned that a maintenance
auto oil change and tune-up every 3,000 miles could save huge repair costs.
Preventative maintenance to tune-up your sales effort will prevent breakdowns
and produce big rewards. ###
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