There is a fine balance between using too much technology and too little technology. Some sales people overdo technology and provide too much information. They provide proposals that include information on every aspect of their hotel – a technique known as “feature dumping.” On the other hand, there are sales professionals who still use long-winded, boring word documents as proposals for their potential customers.

The best proposals are one page documents with a professional look that incorporate video-rich media addressing a customer’s needs identified during the qualifying process. For instance, if a customer is interested in your hotel’s location, step up your sales game by incorporating video media that shows you have the best location compared to the competition. If the customer is interested in exceptional cuisine for their banquet, then go the distance and provide video media that shows off your chef’s culinary talents.

Consider this. How would you prefer to view a proposal? Which of the following are you more likely to appreciate?

A) A four-page word document that contains 12 to 14 paragraphs describing the hotel features and benefits

B) An email with 10-14 or more links describing the hotel you are considering

C) A branded web-based proposal with embedded videos and minimal text that directly addresses your needs and concerns

If you answered (C) then you might want to consider PDQ proposals. PDQ proposals allows you to include media, such as YouTube videos, each with a personalized caption tailored to the individual client. The text editor allows you to embed links and highlights right into the text of your proposal. You can include just the right amount of text to get your point across and address your customer’s needs. Best of all it’s simple and easy to use.

To start using engaging, media rich proposals today that beat the competition, click to learn more about PDQ Proposals & Promos.

Congratulations, you just finished RFP season and landed 14 major national accounts.  You’re excited, and your corporate office is impressed as well.  But now the real work begins, you have to get these new accounts to actually produce room nights.

It used to be a lot easier for hotel sales manager to get national accounts to produce room nights.  They would simply identify 20-50 or more travel agents, meet the agents, build relationships, stay in touch with them, ensure they were servicing their travelers, and the reservations would start rolling in.  If reservations started to decline, or better yet, increase, they would simply call the lead agent and have a conversation.

Times have changed.  These days, 3-5 or more hotels are selected to be the preferred hotel for any given city or geographic region.  These hotels are then listed on a company intranet web site for individual travelers to decide which hotel they want to stay at when they visit that destination.  The travelers are told they can select to stay with any of the hotels on the site – it’s their choice.

The question then becomes…

How do you reach each traveler and get them to stay at their hotel?   How do you develop relationships with 100 -500 or more individuals?

Below are some suggestions that will help ensure your success.

1.  Host a nightly or weekly reception where you can network with IBT Accounts and build new contacts and relationships.
2.  Ask your guests for referrals.  Reward the customer for their referrals.
3.  Ask your guests to email fellow travelers and recommend your hotel.
4. Develop a “live” customer newsletter for each National IBT Account.  Update the “live’ newsletter with promotions, contests, and prize winner announcements.  Make it fun and lively so that customers will save your newsletter to their favorites list.  Visit   http://www.aprinda.com/aprinda-pdq-promos to develop your “live newsletter.”  You can update the newsletter with just a few keystrokes.  Note:  This same concept works well to keep hundreds of Central Reservations Offices informed and updated about your hotel’s promotions and offers.
5. Include a link to your “live newsletter” at the bottom of your email signature line.  This will enhance awareness effortlessly.
6. Send a note with cookies/gift/amenity to the guest room of  National IBT guests.  Thank them for staying with you.  Offer to meet them for coffee to discuss their travel needs, and reward them for referrals.
7. Although travel agents are declining in numbers. (Most companies have 80% or more of their travel go through their intranet and individuals make their own travel arrangements) There are still agents to connect with so you can ensure you are maximizing your market share.  Ask these reservation agents to escalate information about your hotel to their travelers and fellow travel associates.  Use the “live newsletter” to keep your information update to date and current without having to continuously re-send information.

Implement the above suggestions, and you will be sure to see results from those National Contracts you worked so hard for during RFP season.

Looking for some specific action plans for driving revenue via social media?
Look no further…

Action Plan 1: Develop personalized web pages for your customers and demand generators

Develop a personalized “promo blog” web page for each account your hotel is targeting to capture from competing hotels. Example: A hotel is targeting MegaBucks, Inc.. The hotel sales manager develops a MegaBucks, Inc. promo blog that is routinely updated with specials and offers to drive MegaBucks travelers to the hotel ($10.00 Starbucks gift cards, $5.00 off in the hotel’s gift shop, free dessert with purchase of entree). The sales manager makes sure the link is shared with both MegaBucks travel planners and MegaBucks employees themselves to most effectively capture business from the account.

Use this tactic to drive business from numerous IBT and group accounts.

Action Plan 2: Develop personalized web pages for local demand generators

Share the link to your promo blog with key personnel and influencers that are involved with the demand generator. Frequently post specials and packages on your promo blog designed to attract travelers that visit the targeted demand generator. Examples of offers: 20% off your hotel’s best available rate, $5.00 rebate to the organization, third night free offers, and discounted group rates. Targets include, colleges, high schools, museums, entertainment venues, soccer fields, and more.

Be sure and ask your contacts to place the promo blog link on their web page. Update the promo blog frequently with specials, offers, and special interest messages to increase business for your hotel. The key is to avoid working with a webmaster that takes days or weeks to update your page.

Action Plan 3: Enhance the effectiveness of your facebook and twitter accounts

Insert your own hotel links , along with YouTube videos of your hotel, into your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Include personalized messages placed strategically beneath each YouTube video. Video is king in 2011 and increases conversion rates by as much as 40%.

Action Plan 4: Develop and manage your own free press releases

Develop and manage your own free press releases through www.prlog.com Promote your hotel’s recent events and newsworthy packages and promotions on this site

Enhance the press releases with personalized videos of your hotel and allow the consumer to email you back with comments, feedback, and business leads. By allowing visitors to send you messages and comments, your press releases will generate additional business leads.

Every now and then we have all thought about leaving our job. You might have a tough boss, work long hours, feel underpaid, or just bored of the daily routine. 

If you are looking for a new and exciting experience that pays well, and offers rapid advancement, you might consider starting a career in the ever-growing field of hospitality. Hospitality is the biggest employer in the United States with over 300 million workers and 4 trillion dollars in revenue worldwide.

The hospitality and tourism industry offers you the choice of working in the kind of environment you like best. Remember, hotels and restaurants are everywhere. No other industry can offer you the chance of working almost anywhere you choose, with interesting work, a chance for rapid advancement, people contact and stability of employment. The continued growth of hospitality provides a tremendous opportunity for employment.

When people think of working in the hospitality field, they often think of culinary positions. But did you know there are many high level and well-paid positions available at every hotel. Consider the following opportunities:

• General Manager
• Assistant General Manager
• Food and Beverage Director
• Director of Sales
• Director of Marketing
• Sales Managers (from 1 – 10 or more at each hotel)
• Director of Catering
• Catering Managers (from 1-10 or more at each hotel)

The most overlooked job opportunities in the hospitality business are sales and catering manager positions. Individuals can start in these positions at an entry-level pay of $40-$50 thousand or more plus bonus. There are rapid advance opportunities, and many individuals can earn from $75 -$100 thousand or more plus bonus in just five -seven years. Once you have a year of experience under your belt, many hotels will recruit you, offering higher salaries and attractive job opportunities. Many sales managers and catering managers have advanced to Director of Sales and Director of Catering Positions within seven or fewer years.

If you would like to start an exciting career in hotel sales, catering, and marketing, please visit us at www.aprinda.com

Asset Managers, Owners, General Managers, Sales and Catering Managers are all looking for the magic bullet of hotel sales.  What is it?  Has anybody found the critical product, technique, or service that will generate business and keep your hotel full with high paying customers and groups?

Successful hotel operators know there are number of bullets that need to be continually fired to ensure success. They know they must invest time and effort into multiple strategies, tactics, and products.  Of the 300 or more bullets you can fire on a daily basis, below are some of the more interesting suggestions given by hotel sales and marketing professionals with over 20 years of direct sales experience. We call them “silver bullets” – strategies known to produce results.

1. Answer calls to your sales office on the first call.  Don’t let the caller go to voice mail.  This costs hotels more business than most people can imagine.  Test this for yourself, call a hotel and ask to speak to the corporate group sales manager.  See if you get a live person or sent to voice mail.  Hotels that talk to their customers on the first call can increase their chances of conversion by over 30%.
2. Invest the time to train your front office in the art of hotel sales.  Help them uncover new business opportunities.  Make every hotel staff member part of the lead generation and sales process.  You don’t want to depend on just a few sales people to make your hotel successful.  Every team member needs to contribute and be a part of the hotel’s success.
3. Be sure your hotel PBX is answering the phone within three rings.   This seems obvious, but in calls to 10 hotels, five of them picked up the phone after 10 rings and one never picked up at all.   Studies have shown callers get turned off and  hang up after eight rings.
4. Respond the same day with professional proposals that incorporate videos and photography to land the sale.  Videos and imagery are critical to landing accounts.  In fact, it is estimated that inexpensive “shaky cam” videos can increase sales by 45% or more.  Video is king in 2011.
5. Invest in your people.  If you take care of your people, they will take care of you.  This is a tried and true practice. But in recent years, we have gotten away from this in the interest of reducing expenses.  It’s time to invest in our people again.
6. Hire sales people that can build true customer relationships.  Relationships always land the business.  Only hire people that you would still be able to tolerate after sitting next to them on a five hour flight.  (This was by far one of the more interesting suggestions).

There are hundreds of bullets that hotels need to keep firing to be successful.  The bad news is, none of them are magic.  The good news is there are plenty of “silver bullets” to select from.

• You work with Stealth Software. You are planning a sales training for new software product
• your company needs 25 rooms for three nights. You will provide a rooming list
• You require meeting space for 50 classroom, lunch for 50, and morning and afternoon breaks.
• Have specific dates for your meeting, but mention you are flexible with your dates if you are asked
• If the sales manager asks, (and they should) be sure to be prepared to state you are gathering proposals for three of their competitors,and that you do this meeting twice a year.

• …verify callers event/meeting needs? (if they missed this one, you might be in trouble)
• …identify which other hotels the customer is considering?
• …sell your hotels competitive strengths versus their weaknesses?
• …capture the highest possible rate, or did they just throw out a reduced rate?
• …capture the highest possible meeting room rental, or did they just discount?
• …sell/upsell your food and beverage services?
• …identify that the account had the potential to book twice a year at your hotel?
• …ask what is important to you when selecting a hotel and respond appropriately?
• …discover whether the customer was flexible with their dates and attempt to move the program to the hotel’s need dates?

• Effective sales calls that convert to sales
• closing the sale and maximizing revenue opportunities
• Negotiating effectively and capturing the highest possible rate
• Account saturation and uncovering all of an account’s business opportunities
• Upselling and capturing higher price points
• Improving catering sales and filling need dates

Remember the old days when we used to worry about one guest telling their best friend about a bad experience they had at your hotel.  We used to say that that one guest would tell five people and those five people would tell five more.  Soon enough, 100 people would have heard about the experience and your hotel’s image would have been tainted. You could have potentially lost hundreds of customers.   How times have changed!  Now, when someone wants to share their experience (good or bad) they just post it on the internet.  Social media serves as an amplifier, turning a whisper into a shout heard around the world. One positive or negative review gets exposed to millions of potential consumers almost instantaneously.

TripAdvisor and Yelp are two sites that are geared toward hotel travel and guest experiences.  Take a look at these two sites and find out what guests are saying about your hotel.  You might be pleasantly surprised even proud of the positive comments. You’ll surely be upset about the negative ones.  Either way, these sites are powerful because they enable your guests to have a voice to the world at large, which can positively or negatively impact your hotel’s revenues.

Let’s take a look at two postings on TripAdvisor:

The staff was warm and inviting. Victoria at the front desk was such a big help in getting settled.  We were running late for a very important dinner appointment and she offered to have the valet driver give us a ride so we could get there on time.   Thank you XYZHotel for making our business trip a huge success.  The rooms were beautiful and we slept well.  We will back.  Keep up the great work.

What a disaster.   The front desk was rude and told us we had to wait 15 minutes for our room.  It was 3pm and by 4pm they waived us over and said our room was ready.  When we got to the room, there was somebody sleeping in the room.  We went back to the front desk and explained our situation.  No apology was offered, and we were given a key to another room.  When we got there, the room smelled like smoke and the beds were hard as rocks.  Don’t waste your time at this hotel.  Find another hotel!

The comments above can encourage a guest to stay at your hotel or send them running to the competition.

With social media making it so easy for guests to post comments about hotels, it’s increasingly important for hotels to ensure their service teams are well trained on friendly and efficient service techniques.  All members of the hotel team need to be aware of how their actions can result in powerful positive or negative exposure in the social media space.  Service teams need to be trained to ensure guests leave your hotel ready and anxious to post positive comments, efficiently amplified by social media. Focus on training your hospitality team, and you’ll be one step further toward optimizing your social media marketing effort.

Smiling while on the phone can help make or break a sale. True, the customer on the other end of the phone can’t see you, but they can pick up on your smile immediately. Smiling makes you sound confident, friendly, positive, and approachable. This is because, when you smile, it actually changes the tone of your voice; and your customer hears it (whether they can see you or not!)

Remember, people do business with people they like. Think about it, do you want to do business with people who sound like they could care less about your needs? Even worse, what if they sound grouchy, or downright miserable? Our guess is that you would rather do business with a salesperson who sounds like they have a big grin on their face and are glad you called.

Let’s face it, we have all dealt with sales associates who answer the phone without a smile; and they sound terrible! It’s as if they’re doing you a favor for picking up the phone. But remember, these same sales people might spend hours pounding the pavement and making phone calls to find someone who will listen to them. When your phone rings, the customer has already saved you a great deal of effort, so put a big smile on your face, and make it obvious to the customer by the tone of your voice that you are glad they called.

Your success in phone sales starts with a smile on the phone. Your voice will tell the person on the other end of the line that something good is coming their way. And smiles don’t cost you anything. Give it a try now, say with a frown, “Good afternoon. Sales Department…” Now say the same thing with a big smile on your face. Can you hear the difference? Try the same thing on the phone with an actual colleague.

Who would you prefer to do business with, a grouch, an uncaring stranger, or a friendly neighbor? Remember, you only have seven seconds to make a first impression on the phone. So put a big smile on your face – and make the sale.

Social Media Marketing is the buzz word these days.  Everyone wants to implement it and gain market share by utilizing it.  There are numerous tools to implement social marketing media.  Facebook, twitter, and Linkedin are just a few of the most common SMM sites hoteliers are using. There is immense pressure to take advantage of SMM and turn it into a revenue producing application.  Where to begin is the most common question a hotel director of sales will ask themselves.

Before jumping into the social media marketing world, take a step back and ask yourself what you want to accomplish.

• Is your goal to interact with meeting planner?
• Is your goal to communicate with individual consumers?
• Is your goal to enhance your hotels image in the market?
• Is your goal to increase visibility and increase search ranking?
• Is your goal to entertain your existing guests and attract new ones with specials and promotions?

If you don’t have a specific plan for your SMM you will spend endless hours going in various directions without results.  Your plans must include a commitment of time and resources.  There needs to be plan for someone to interact with the consumers and keep your SMM fresh.  Nothing will be more counterproductive than a SMM effort that hasn’t had an update or PR activity in a week.  Be sure and keep your content fresh and don’t let your SMM plan become a marketing liability.

Some examples of interesting hotel SMM content include postings related to:

• Charitable events
• Green initiatives
• Healthy cooking
• Educating youth on hospitality as a viable career
• Internship opportunities
• Participating in a local colleges hospitality programs
• Local attractions and events

Include these types of postings in your SMM to ensure that your efforts do not come off as one-sided marketing messages that are only geared at benefiting the hotel.

There are numerous training opportunities available related to SMM.  The opportunities and challenges of SMM marketing change on a daily basis.  So keep yourself updated by continuing to learn and stay focused on what you truly want to accomplish with your SMM efforts.

Many hotel sales managers review with their Director of Sales, or at a business review meeting, the potential business on which they are going to bid. The DOS or business review team offers suggestions to the sales manager and then sends them off to negotiate the deal and hopefully generate a contract. In other hotels, the sales managers are given pricing guidelines and given the okay to negotiate a contract that meets specific guidelines.

Unfortunately, most sales managers have no knowledge of what negotiating is all about. Upper management assumes that the sales team is professional, and thus knows how to negotiate a contract and capture the best deal that benefits the hotel. But is this actually the case? Test calls have found that the vast majority of hotel sales representatives do not even attempt to negotiate. In fact, test calls show that the customers were actually stronger and more competent at negotiating than hotel sales managers or catering representatives! In the end, managers are leaving huge hotel revenue opportunities on the table.

Consider the following example where a customer has up to $180.00 per room to pay for guest rooms and $500.00 per day for room rental.

Customer: I’ll need 50 rooms arriving on May 8th and departing On May 10th. We will need a meeting room for 50 people and lunch and morning and afternoon breaks each day. Can you give me a price on that?

Sales Manager: Sure, we can offer you a $129.00 rate and room rental will be waived since you are having lunch and breaks each day.

In the above scenario the sales manager left over $5000.00 on the table. Basic negotiating skills could have easily captured the additional revenue and still left the customer feeling good about the price they paid. Let’s take another example. In this case, the customer and the sales manager have already verbally agreed upon a group rate of $189.00 per room and an $800.00 room rental per day. The customer is just about to sign on the dotted line.

Sales Manager: Bob, thanks for selecting our hotel, if you’ll just sign off on the paperwork, we’re all set to go.

Customer: Great, but before I sign, I was hoping you could also give our group transportation to the Downtown Theater. It looks like it’s just 20 minutes from here. Is that okay?

Sales Manager: Umm, sure we could work that out.

Customer: And one more thing, can we get two free suites for three days?

Sales Manager: Okay, we can do that for you.

In the above scenario, the customer (obviously a better negotiator than the sales person!) was able to negotiate over $2500.00 in last minute concessions. But by using just a few negotiating tactics, the sales manager could have turned the deal around, saved the hotel over $2500.00, and still landed the agreement. It is amazing how few hotel sales managers take full advantage of negotiating opportunities. In short;

Learn to negotiate – now!

It can land your hotel hundreds of thousands of extra dollars each year.