Nailing your hotel venue sales process is no easy feat – in fact, realistically speaking, is it ever truly complete? Part of being in the hospitality industry is rolling with waves of change.
If you’re consistently struggling to get venue sales in the door (or converted to function bookings), there may be a few elements at play that you can identify and improve. Let’s take a closer look.
You Have a Blanketed Sales Approach
The world of hotel sales is diverse, and your sales team will likely focus on reaching an overall financial target rather than breaking it down into specific sale types. Alternatively, it may be the responsibility of your events team to balance venue sales with managing events. This lack of time and focus on meeting and event-specific sales can lead to missed opportunities and decreased revenue.
By specialising your sales strategies and assigning dedicated team members to handle venue sales for meetings and events, you can more effectively capitalise on the potential of your spaces. A specialised venue sales team with focused expertise can develop more compelling and tailored sales pitches, crucial for attracting a specific type of clientele. This improves resource allocation, allowing your general sales team to concentrate on other critical areas such as room sales and package deals while elevating customer service with a more personalised approach.
There are Unclear Venue Sales Processes
Time is money – and the more your team spends on administrative tasks, manual processes, doubled-up tasks, and asking for clarity on your hotel’s venue sales process, the more time and money is going to waste.
Automating and systemising your venue sales processes can significantly cut costs and increase productivity for your hotel. With automation, your venue sales team can focus on nurturing leads and closing deals rather than getting bogged down by administrative tasks like manual data input, creating quotes, and invoicing. Automated systems can also identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities based on customer preferences and booking history, increasing revenue potential for your hotel.
Having a unified platform for your venue sales also clarifies your team. With the right venue management software, leads come into one system, are assigned appropriately, and can be tracked with follow-up notes, specific event details, and task reminders. Templated quotes and RFPs make the process even easier, improving efficiency while adding consistency to the look and feel of your sales collateral.
Your Team is Suffering From Lead Fatigue
Planning meetings and events on short notice is increasingly common these days. Event planners often find themselves struggling to find the right venue within tight deadlines and specific requirements. To make matters worse, many of them inundate hotels with RFPs hoping to hear back from a few that can host their event. Unfortunately, the stakes can be pretty low and 50% of planners often go with the first hotel that responds. As a result, your venue sales team can be gifted with a ton of unqualified (and sometimes duplicated) inbound leads.
This creates a logistical nightmare for hotels. Your sales teams have to spend time sorting through unqualified leads, poor-quality data, and repetitive requests for proposals (RFPs), rather than focusing on converting the most promising ones. Sadly, this leads to low conversions, low ROI, and staff being bogged down with administrative tasks. It’s like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom – the effort may appear productive but ultimately proves inefficient and unsustainable. A constant influx of low-quality leads drains resources and demoralises your team, as they invest time and energy with little return.
Implementing more stringent filters at the initial stages of your venue sales process can help ensure only the most relevant and promising RFPs reach your sales team. This may involve setting clearer criteria for what constitutes a qualified lead and using automated tools to pre-screen RFPs based on these standards. Enhancing your venue listing information can also significantly improve the quality of RFPs received. By providing detailed information on your venue’s capacities, preferred event types, and unique offerings, planners are better equipped to match their needs with what your venue spaces can cater for, resulting in more targeted and actionable enquiries.
Your Venue Has a Slow Response Time
Getting good quality venue leads in the door is only the beginning – if your team is slow to respond, you risk losing potential business to competitors who are quicker on the draw. While instant is ideal, it can also be unrealistic, however, keep in mind that conversion rates are 98% higher when following up within 5 minutes. The long and short of it is – your response time matters.
Automation tools can be extremely helpful here, providing instant notifications for received RFPs and providing standard responses to frequently asked questions. This ensures planners feel attended to immediately, maintaining interest and engagement. Training your staff in effective time management techniques can also make a significant difference. They should be equipped to quickly assess an RFP’s potential and respond accordingly, prioritising those with higher conversion possibilities.
Setting up emails with regular updates and touchpoints throughout the decision-making process can also help to keep your hotel venue top-of-mind and demonstrate an ongoing commitment to potential clients. This level of attention can be the deciding factor in whether an event planner chooses your venue space over another.
Strategically Approaching Your Hotel Venue Sales
Revolutionising your hotel’s venue sales strategy is all about embracing changes and finding ways to continuously improve it. By fine-tuning your approach to venue sales, your hotel can substantially increase its sales potential.
How does your team currently prioritise venue sales leads, and is that approach yielding the best results for your hotel?
On behalf of IVvy
