The “gravitational pull” of a lead funnel is gone.

Lead nurturing through a Lead Conversion Ladder is a must to win with the modern B2B Buyer.

One of the biggest challenges for hotels today is keeping a full and consistent sales pipeline.  It’s not staying full or consistent because we have this thing called “turnover” in our industry, but also because we employ a start and stop model only focusing on the sales pipeline when it’s not full.  And then we get this ugly pattern of starts and stops.  At Plan B, we call it the hotel sales EKG.  

It’s not uncommon for hotel sales leaders to come to me in a panic to assist their sales team in filling their sales pipeline.  What they ask for are “leads” that are ready to move to proposal or even contract.  Is this realistic?  Not really with today’s buyer.

B2B buyers are going through 60% of their decision-making process without  hotel/vendor involvement.  This is based on research conducted and shared a the Harvard Business Study.  This means they are deselecting your hotel before you even engage with them.  This is unless you deploy tactics that get you in front of those buyers during that decision-making process.  One tactic is proactive prospecting.  It’s not dead…it’s just done differently today to match the modern B2B buyer.  At Plan B Consultants, we are helping hotels to successfully fill their sales pipelines & KEEP them consistently full.  Nope.  We are not working miracles over here (although we like to think of ourselves more like the Mice in Cinderella, but I digress).   We are not miracle workers, because we don’t actually speed up the “Go-To-Market” Phase that the buyer has set, which is what our hotel partners would love if they could wave their magic wand.

Here is the misunderstanding about prospecting today as I see it: 

Many hotels are receiving an influx of inbound inquiries daily.  These inquiries are from B2B buyers that have gone through 60% of their decision-making process and now they are ready for proposals and sites.  Their business needs are pretty quick (3-6 months out is what our hotel partners are seeing most frequently).  So…there in lies the confusion.  You can’t expect that same “go-to-market” timeline with a prospect that you seek out.  With proactive prospecting, you will reach the buyers when they are still within their education process and defining solutions (see diagram of lead conversion ladder).  This is really a good thing!  Sometimes hotel sales managers and even leadership see this as a negative.  I assure you it is PERFECT!  It’s maybe not what you want in that moment, but it is what you need always.  Our Lead Ladder Conversion System™ is proven to convert more leads, because the hotel sales team is using their time on the compressed sales cycle wisely while “Gus-Gus and his team of mice” keep working on uncovering the needs & nurturing those leads through the cycle.

Oftentimes, I get asked why a sales team would employ a third party to handle prospecting when they have a sales team in place.  Well, the answer is pretty simple when looking at the chart.

The sales team must focus on a very compressed sales cycle, but there is much that goes into that time period between administration to closing business.  Expecting a sales manager to build target lists, hunt for new business (thousands of phone calls), nurture those leads over a period of 12-24 months & then close them, is just not realistic.  The ladder breaks and leads fall off when a lead that is not close enough to “vendor selection” stage is turned over to a hotel sales manager.  It’s not because that sales manager is bad at their job.  It’s their nature to focus time and energy on the business that is in their wheelhouse of closing, negotiations, overcoming objections, needs analysis, and trust building.”   With such a compressed timeline to do all of that…their energy must be spent on that.  The goal is to get them MORE of those leads.  An inconsistent approach to the lead ladder leads to the peaks and valleys and panic.  Our lead ladder conversion process ensures the ladder doesn’t break, and our hotel partners get a seat at the table with the B2B buyers before they deselect.

By following our proprietary system, we’ve delivered one client  sales qualified leads in Q1 2015 (stage 5 on the lead ladder), and they’ve converted 23% of those so far with more upside and a 20:1 ROI!