FaceBook as a Sales Tool

April 25, 2010 at 6:46 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
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In a recent Power Selling seminar for a hotel management company, I had a participant who had totally incorporated her FaceBook page into her sales process. She blew me away!

It goes something like this. First of all, she built a robust ‘Friends’ network of clients. Secondly, one day she and her GM were brainstorming on how to get business for the upcoming slow season. They thought of an idea to promote the winter season on FaceBook to scrapbookers.

After they began their campaign, a strange thing happened. Other client ‘friends’ responded saying that while they were not scrapbookers, they did have business during the winter and could they have the same deal?

Sabrina responded yes they could and when would be a good time to come and see them? Then a tour operator posted tour series dates on the wall and asked her to repsond if she could accomodate them.

Sabrina then began posting her sales call schedule and asking her ‘freinds’ if she could come and see them. She soon had her appointment schedule filled with new prospects and existing clients that wanted to see her when she was in their area.

This is a perfect example of how a social network can be integrated into the sales process. Considerations for success:
1. Don’t invite your competitors to be Freinds or Fans on your page.
2. Push out promotions but also things of interest about yourself, your hotel and your area — it shouldn’t always be about pushing business.
3. Use your page as a service to your clients — give them opportunities to be part of your business such as asking if you can come see them during sales calls in their area.

BTW, she never booked one scrapbooking group but the other clients that saw the post and booked other groups more than made up the difference.

Congrats Sabrina Bowman on a job extremely well done!

Unconstrained Demand: Denials, Regrets and Lost Business

April 19, 2010 at 12:13 am | Posted in Hotel Sales Training Issues, Information, Webcasts | Leave a comment

Now that demand is increasing and Revenue Managers are able to begin moving rate, it’s time to revisit the area of what unconstrained demand can tell you — info about who didn’t book may be more useful than info about those that did! 

One of the reasons most sales people and Revenue Mangers don’t check those reports from the PMS is that they are imperfect.  The res team member has to be in the reservation screen an terminate it prior to the completion of the reservation — reservation interuptus! However, training can alleviate some of these by instituting  the low tech system of hash marks under the most common denials and regret category.

You should be regreting some reservations as your rate moves higher. If you have no denials, your rate is too low.  It’s delicate balance that we all have to relearn as demand increases! 

However incomplete are some info is better than none.  For example, how many were rate related, how many were availability related and how many were amenity related — an inability to book the desired room type, having an indoor/outdoor pool, etc.    

The info can assist in rate setting for rooms & packages, training opportunities for offering different room types and asking if the customer has flexible rates, etc.  If you are geting rate denials for a certain arrival/departure pattern and you aren’t filling, should you take a look at limited ‘specials’, reduce the BAR or enable another strategy.    

Sales usually learns more from why they didn’t get the business than why they did.  It can also assist in training.  Ddi the sales person  engage the propsect in conversation about their group or did they just quote a rate and fail to value add to take the conversation to another level? 

You get the drift — how much business did you actually book versus how much business did you deny or lose and why? 

Join us on Thursday for a webinar “Social Media Drives the Meeting
Business” in conjunction with i-Meet.  We are bringing in panelists
– a hotel sales professional, a meeting planner and a
representative from PhocusWright to talk about they successfully use
social networks in their sales processes, venue selection and the
future trends in social networks.
http://cts.vresp.com/c/?CarolVerretConsultin/c40634ba38/TEST/a12cc49a47/t=a&d=927889188

STR Predicts that Demand will Grow by 4% i n 2010

April 8, 2010 at 1:57 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment
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“Contrary to previous thinking, STR now believes demand growth will be stronger in 2010 than in 2011. The company said demand will grow 4.1 percent in 2010 and 2.9 percent in 2011. When STR crunches March 2010 data in the middle of April, it is expected that it will emerge as the fourth consecutive month to show demand growth.” (AHLA, 4/07/10)

This is the best news in 18 months but does it mean that Rvenue Managers will use this opportunity to begin moving the needle on rates? It’s time to put the floor under discounts and rates.

Don’t be bullied into locking in rates for 2011 and beyond — we may not be at 2007 rates but it has to start somewhere. Let rate increases, gradual increases, start here and now before the summer season!

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