Hotel Sales Blog

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

For urban and suburban hotels that rely on their local market to produce most of their business,  the territory reprot was  a tool to ensure that every rock worth turning over had been turned over.

The territory report was a street by street, address by address report of every business in the local market with the apparent potential of hotel business.  It ensured that each had been contacted and qualified.  This used to be accomplished by walking into every door.  The  security procedures of most businesses prevent this and there was a great deal of inefficiency in that process.

However, the territory report as a valuable tool has re-emeged but with a twist in the process.  Google tools now make it eaiser and more efficient to discover every business with potential in the local market.  Google Maps, address searches for large buildings and zip code searches make this process easier and more efficient.

Print out a Google map of the ‘territory’, idenitify the target buildings on the map, highlight each geopgraphic area, street by street, as it is qualified.   Have a running report in the database on who has been qualified and their potential or not.  This becomes a ’snapshot’ of the local market and the degree of penetration.

Make sure that you are ’squeezing’ every bit of business out of the local market!