Boosting your sales

Q: We are a 60-bedroom hotel based in near a city centre. I employ a sales team to support group enquiries, but they aren’t converting a lot of the opportunities. More training or a new team seems to be the choice. What do you think?

A: On the surface, the business sounds ideal for hosting group stays, and if you have a sales team in place then theoretically, conversions should not be a problem. However, it sounds like they aren’t converting as much as you want and as owners and managers, this can be exceedingly frustrating.

Before you go all out and replace the team with some new dynamic players, it is absolutely essential that you review how and why this low conversion is happening; there are thousands of reasons conversions can be low and it might be that some small changes with your existing team reap huge rewards with your conversions. If this was my business, here’s what I’d be looking at.

What truly does and does not convert?

On the surface, reports might show you that you are failing to convert groups, because you are only converting say 20% of enquiries, when in reality the metric is not the type of enquiry (groups), but the source. It’s essential that you delve more deeply beyond the surface stats and look at how the combining factors are impacting your sales. For example, it might be that of the 20% group bookings you are converting, 100% of those which are converted are from a group directly; people who have done the research themselves and have the buying power.

Instead, it might be that what your team aren’t converting is the third-party agent bookings, which tells you that either, you aren’t providing what the agent needs in the way that they need it or possibly that your business model and commission aren’t suited to agency bookings. Looking at the stats this way provides you with a tangible opportunity for change, to either improve the way that you are converting for a specific audience, or even decide you aren’t going to pursue that type of booking. The true understanding of your business portfolio is essential here.

Consider their KPIs

The next thing to review is how you are targeting (and motivating) your sales team and whether this has any impact. Frequently, I see sales teams targeted by sales value, with commission. This is a double-edged sword as it can motivate good sales and focus initially, but it can also cause your team to sit back once a target has been met.

Putting targets in the context of the wider business, and rewarding them through performance related pay can provide additional motivations where you need it. For example, targeting your team with converting 25% of agency enquiries puts the focus not on overall value, but on consistently delivering against expectations.

How are they prioritising?

One of the key challenges within workforces is to get them prioritising in the right way. For example, direct bookings are important, particularly if they can connect to repeat bookings, but agents can potentially bring several bookings per year. Take a look at where their priorities lie and if needs be, set targets for responding to opportunities. I work for a number of DMOs and regularly take group booking enquiries; I recently took an enquiry for Christmas 2019 and offered the opportunity to 32 local hotels. Of these, 27 responded to the initial enquiry to say that they would get something across, but only three actually delivered a proposal before the deadline.

As an agent, this is a real let-down and those businesses missed out on the opportunity. There’s one other consideration here too; of those businesses who did ultimately respond (pre- and post-deadline), only two actually put together a proposal that sold their hotel to the ultimate booker. The rest provided only a few lines with prices, which doesn’t really inspire bookings.

What are their ideas?

Ask, don’t tell. Once you’ve established what is failing and where, ask them for their ideas on how you can improve. Sometimes, it’s as simple as getting stuck in a rut and doing what has been done before, so having a review and asking for their ideas can really fire things up.

Appoint a mystery shopper

Last but not least, appoint a mystery shopping service like the one provided by Quality in Tourism. Explain the challenges you are facing with conversions and ask them to do an objective study of your business. They will make a seemingly genuine enquiry to your business, and to your competitors’ businesses, and will also provide you with best practice guidelines to improve what you are doing too. This is objective and invaluable and in my mind, a must.

In summary

Before you go replacing your team with a whole new one, consider this. What are you doing within the business to facilitate the issue and how can you change that? I usually find that replacing teams creates a short-term boost, but that ultimately if the priorities within the business are wrong, the majority will slip into the patterns of their predecessors. It’s time for an introspective look I think.