Hotel Sales Blog

The Worst Sales Call Ever!

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!

Hotel Revenue Management — Rate Parity

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!

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