Hotel Sales Blog

Hotel sales and Revenue managers are under a great deal of pressure to generate more revenue and many in senior management beleive that cutting rates is the way to do it. They’re right — it does generate revenue for a very short time until the next hotel in the comp set that is monitoring rates in the market undercuts your rate and then the madness sets in!

Hotel foreclosures and ‘troubled assets’ are on the rise as the current madness of rate cutting doesn’t allow enough ‘flow through’ to pay the bills.

Rate cutting ‘madenss’ has also led RFPs to book out of their agreement as we have trained them to know there will always be lower rate somewhere in the market on the opaques and OTAs. Groups that are booking now look for the lowest rate the hotel has to offer and want a discount from that to book their future business.

Instead of moaning about how bad business is it’s time to look in the mirror and realize that the prolonged hotel recovery is our fault in many ways. Demand is beginning to firm up but profitability isn’t. STR anticipates that it will 4-5 years to recover the rates we were driving in 07.

Listen to the Michael Jackson song Man in the Mirror. Look down at your feet and if you see blood oozing out of your shoe, it’s because we have as an industry have shot ourselves in the foot!

Join us for the web cast on Friday August 7 on Social Networks as Sales Tools. Click onthe link below for more info.

http://www.carolverret.net/viral/readtopic.php?id=43

We are back with the blog. Many thanks to Rakesh from the Metro Interactive Agency who worked a small miracle with WordPress!

I had the dubious distinction of being on the ‘buyer’ side of the worst sales call ever.

The ‘back story’.  While trying to figure out why the air conditioner didn’t work properly, it was discovered that the furnace had a cracked ‘heat exchanger’ — something I thought might be a golden opportunity to see if the carbon monoxide detectors really worked.

On to new furnace but from whom.  We scheduled three appointments one of which was a no show!  The second was from a large reputable company.  These two guys came to the house and after the first one said — ‘didn’t they tell you that this presentation would take from 60 to 90 minutes?’ I knew we were in trouble — what besides the  new super collider could take that long for a sales presentation.

The first guy pulled out a binder of laminated pages about a half inch thick and began with the first page which was a picture of an ad for this company sometime before the dinosaurs died.  After three pages, I asked if he was going to go through the whole thing.  He emphasized how he and his partner covered 5 regions of the country — forgetting that the only region I care about is mine and specifically my neighborhood and my house!

He then skipped to picture of a furnace — it sits in a small room in the basement and I don’t really care what it looks like.   Then he showed me how they work — again, I don’t really care how they work as long as they work.

When I asked about the tax credits for energy efficient furnaces, he and his partner was unaware of the total allowable and an addtional rebate from the utility company.  At that point, he made a snarky remark about politics and the government and I made my escape.

My husband who is nicer and more patient than I endured the rest of the sales call.

Bottom line — we bought the furnace because of the company’s reputation for quality and the price.  We bought the product in spite of the sales people.

Do you ever find your self not targeting your customer’s needs and want and only ‘feature spewing’ about you product?  Did you ever find yourself in the middle of the worst sales call ever?  Share your stories and comments!

It seems that this issue is coming up again!  For those that are not familiar with the term, rate parity means displaying the same rate across all channels.  The reasons for this is not to undercut your own rates on other channels — this means that the consumer can be assured that they are getting the best rate for  your hotel no matter where they go to ‘buy’ you. It becomes an integrity and trust issue.

With group rates now trending higher than mid week corproate rates it is critically important that nothing appears on the web site or OTAs that would lead group attendees to book out of the block at lower rates.

This does not mean that packages that disguise the rate can’t be posted on the web site or OTAs.   It also doesn’t mean that you can’t post weekend deals that have fences that will protect a group booked at a higher rate.  For example, if you have a group checking out on a Saturday, make sure that any weekend package you have that covers that Friday has a 2 night minimum stay, Friday and Saturday, so group attendees won’t be tempted to check out on Friday and then book another room at the reduced weekend rate for Friday.

Merchant Agreement relationships will also be damaged if one OTA finds that you have a different (meaning lower) rate on another OTA.  This does not apply to the Opaque channels.

Lack of rate parity not only confuses and gives a bad impression of the hotel to the consumer, it is the best way I can think of to ’shoot yourself in the foot’ by undercutting yourself!

Announcing the new Online Learning Lounge.  Click here to check out links to recordings of past web casts and Free Stuff like the Weekly Shots of Hotel Sales and Revenue Management Caffeine.

I’m from Kentucky so I like to pay tribute to my home town by watching the Derby every year. It’s usually a pretty routine race — one of the favorites usually wins. An expensively bred horse with a good blood line from a multi million dollar stable romps to the finish line.

This year was way different! A $9,500 horse comes from dead last to win the race by a ridiculous margin ridden by a jockey that couldn’t find a better mount for the race. The horse had great speed and the jockey had a great strategy! Both the horse and the jockey had a lot of ‘heart’! There are lessons for all of us here.

When everyone else in the sales dpeartment is not making their goals because the market stinks, one sales person can make a difference by working harder, smarter and coming from behind. One hotel can dominate the STR report comp set by refusing to buy into the ‘it can’t be done’ syndrome.

Independents, listen up! You have the opportunity to have greater sped in your marketing and sales execution than the big hotels — big ships take longer to turn than nimble independents. You may not have the budget and brand marketing that they do but with a great strategy and being prepared to turn your boat faster, you can out market and out sell them because they will not see you coming from behind!

Join us for this month’s web cast on May 15. The New Normal — The Impact for Hotel Sales and Revenue Managers
Click here for more info

http://www.carolverret.net/viral/may152009html.htm

One big change in Hotel Sales Basics is social media.  We can engage prosective clients through social media but some work better than others.  Maximize contacts through groups — Ask a question, post an acvitivy such as a convnetion you are attending.  The social media we really like are

LinkedIn –  more targeted to the business community, we all know why we are there

i-meet — a social networking site devoted to the meeting industry for planners and suppliers

Twitter — but do not post what you had for beakfast — we really don’t care!

Hotel sales professionals only have so much time — set a time limit and use it wisely!

Log into the Hotel Sales Basics web cast April 24 — clikc here for details.

http://www.carolverret.net/viral/apr242009html.htm

The hits on this article in Hotel Online were astonishing!   In it I indicated that we need to focus on new basics — things we were probably never trained to do.  Today, I am going to quote someone who agrees with me so you don’t hink I am the only sales trainer out there saying these things.

Geoffrey James in a BNET blog (I recommend it — I get it in my Inbox every day) entitiled what Worked Before Won’t Work Now says

“Because selling is a very human behavior, the elements that address human nature (like rapport building) remain pretty much the same.  But because selling is also a financial behavior, a massive change in the economy mandates MASSIVE change in your sales approach, pretty much from A to Z.

Failure to adapt can literally end your career.   Remember the dot-com boom?  Back then, times were so good in high tech sales, that there were plenty of reps who let themselves become mere order-takers.  When it all came tumbling down in the dot-com crash, many of those reps were unable to sell consultatively, or address the ROI issues that were suddenly crucial.”

For us hotel sales people, what this means is keep your clients close, set Google Alerts to stay on top of what’s going on with their comany, proactively contact them and if times are rough, offer to negoitate their contract.  A reduced rate for  something is better than losing the contract all together and when this turns around — they will remember what you did for them!

Excuse me, I need to go call a client that could use a ‘deal’!

Catch me in Tucson presenting a public sales seminar for the hotel sales community of the Tucson CVB on April 28.   If you think your CVB would like to partner with us shoot me an email at carol@carolverret.com.  It’s no cost to the CVB and only $99 for participants. Have you signed up for the free Shots of Hotel Sales and RM Caffeine yet? Shoot me a blank email to receive these short blurbs of sales tips and motivation at the same email address above!

I’ve been overwhelmed and gratified about the repsonse to this article.  I guess I was expecting some push back from some ‘old school’ sales basics guys but it never happened.

Here is one email and success story:

Thank you so much for your article “Back to Hotel Sales Basics: The Basics Have Changed Big Time!” in Hotel Online today.  I am a huge fan of Google and use it everyday in prospecting and then qualifying leads.   We even set up Google Alerts in our office such as “Arkansas * Association” or “conference

Arkansas” to find conferences in a particular market or that are going to our competitors.  In the morning I come in to an inbox full of leads.   I also use Google to find the program for a prospect’s meeting from another city or previous year. Then I can go to the client knowing that we can meet their needs in meeting space or anticipating the extra services they will require.  When I was in hotel sales I sometimes felt the company was looking at the effort more than the result.  The system rewarded lots of cold calls with no hope of bearing fruit more than less calls with a higher probability of return.  Thank you for bringing to light the validity of prospecting over the Internet as an alternative to opening up the phone book and starting with A.

Shelly Walters

Marketing Manager University Fayetteville Visitors Bureau
21 S. Block Avenue
Fayetteville, Arkansas72701

Don’t forget – if you want to receive the absolutley free Weekly Shots of Hotel Sales & RM Caffeine, shoot me a blank email (or your can write me a note if  you want).  It will arrive in your Inbox every Monday morning and your email address will not be used for any other purpose. carol@carolverret.com