Bring hotel sales teams together and quickly uncover new room nights

After 2 ½ years of organizing and executing over 150 hotel sales blitzes, I feel like we can say we’ve seen it all from comical to downright scary and everything in between. The one thing that is for certain… it’s a challenging task. It takes hotel sales managers out of their comfort zones and thrusts them into sometimes stressful situations. We’ve seen huge success stories and major disappointments all in the same hour! Sales blitzes are a great way to bring hotel sales teams together for a common goal and quickly uncover new business potential. When conducting a hotel sales blitz it’s important to keep the following key factors in mind:

1. Set common expectations & be relentless about it – Ensure that everyone involved in the planning stage, the execution stage and the follow-up stage is on the same page. Whether this is a large scale hotel sales blitz with multiple teams or just a one-hotel sales blitz with a few people participating, chances are not everyone will be involved in all aspects of the sales blitz. At some point, the group needs to come together and discuss the expectations. It is important to keep coming back to those expectations and goals, as the larger the sales blitz event the easier it will be to have some veer off course.

2. Plan ahead – This goes hand-in-hand with setting expectations. Key pieces of the puzzle that make a successful sales blitz are planning the following aspects:

• Target Market – Who are you going to call for appointments & why?

• The customer call-to-action – Present a compelling reason to meet & during the appointment extend an enticing offer for next-step

• The customer message – Make it clear, concise and consistent

• The quantitative goal – How many appointments do you want to strive for, how many cold calls in between appointments and how much revenue do you hope to uncover. Keep it realistic based on size of market, timing of the sales blitz and number of teams

• The qualitative goal – How do you want participants to walk away feeling? (this also comes back to setting proper expectations)

• The follow-up plan – Who is taking control of the follow-up, how, and what is the appropriate timeline. We believe sales follow-up makes up 90% of the success of a sales blitz. If you don’t set proper follow-up actions you will certainly not see a return.

• Logistics – Use maps and divide territories so sales blitz teams do not duplicate efforts. Communicate frequently between teams and a central point of contact to alert of any changes throughout the day. Ensure notes and information from appointment calls are clearly communicated to the teams, to minimize surprises by and to the customers

3. Be flexible – Understand that clients’ schedules will change, there will be logistical challenges in any blitz regardless of the pre-planning, and it’s important in a sales blitz to not let one disappointment cloud the entire event. Always come back to the main goals of the event to determine if it was a success.

4. Keep it light and entertaining – Incorporate friendly competition, allow teams to use social media throughout the day to share funny stories and successes, post videos on Youtube of teams between appointments discussing their day, give away prizes, celebrate successes throughout the event. These ideas are just scratching the surface.

GitGo would love to hear your ideas on what makes your sales blitzes successful and less stressful for all involved!

Want to learn more about Hotel Sales Blitz tips?  Check out a more recent blog HERE!