“The phone isn’t a bad tool…the user can abuse it and really annoy potential customers, but the phone certainly still has value in the B2B engagement process and building your hotel’s sales pipeline.”

I was recently speaking to a young, bright, impressionable and very eager sales manager (we’ll call him Ryan) who just started in his position. The subject of prospecting came up, and he went stone cold on me. I could see the wall of resistance go up immediately, and sensed that he was absolutely against this. “Cold calling is so old school, Amy.” “I’m not going to bother clients by calling them, Amy.” I could tell that we needed to set the record straight about what he’d been taught about using the phone vs. what it really means to use the phone. I mean I’m in my 30’s…I’m not that “old school.” There is a right time and way to deploy the phone tactic that can be incredibly effective. We need to go beyond the headlines of “cold calling is dead” and understand what those articles are really talking about. So here is what I shared with Ryan:

Cold Calling refers to finding the needle in the haystack, and finding the B2B buyer at the magic moment in time when they happen to be making decisions. This approach is ineffective, and quite frankly a very unrealistic expectation. I’m not asking anyone to do that.

All of this talk about “cold calling” is giving the phone a bad rap! The phone isn’t a bad tool…the user can abuse it and really annoy potential customers, but the phone certainly still has value in the B2B engagement process and building your hotel’s sales pipeline. Phone is one tactic of a multi-faceted approach in the B2B sales process.

A modern B2B lead generation process works with the B2B buyer in their “Research Phase.” It engages the B2B buyer in their journey to discover their best options, and if you do it effectively, it gets your hotel in front of the buyer before they start engaging with the competition thereby even eliminating some of the competition by the time they get to the point where they are requesting proposals. Phone calls can make quick impact to gain information from a large pool of potential clients, yet remarkably, most of our hotel partners have all but forgotten or just haven’t had the resources or the most effective process to deploy the phone tactic.

I have hotel leaders calling me weekly, asking for assistance in this manner. They may call it prospecting, or cold calling, or even telemarketing, but what it really is quite frankly is research! Nobody wants to be “sold” over the phone on an initial call when they may have never even heard of the hotel before, but they certainly don’t mind answering questions about their business needs and their potential to partner. They don’t want to be bombarded with calls and hounded. So, sales managers have to learn to use the proper tactics to get the information efficiently. As well, we fully support and use the social media tactics to do whatever can be done to “warm up” a prospect, but at some point there has to be a conversation. Focusing on that conversation piece & what happens after is where hotels need the expertise to master it and use it for revenue generation. There is a method to this “madness”.

Here is a broad overview of our method at Plan B:

1. It starts with an understanding of what defines a strong business opportunity for the hotel. Each hotel is unique in this, and we work to truly understand and ensure the strategy of who we are looking for is sound. That strategy of course includes the beginning target list.
2. We provide bandwidth. Efficient calls making 20-25 dials/hour, and effective strategies for asking the right questions and gathering key data & insights.
3. We use a proprietary lead scoring system at Plan B Consultants. We’ve done away with hot, warm and cold leads because it leaves far too much gray area. Our lead scoring system clarifies where the client is in the pipeline and provides our hotel partners with a realistic picture of where the client is in their buying process.
4. We’ve built open-ended qualifying questions around the lead scoring system to quickly understand a buyer’s fit to the hotel.
5. We have a deliverable tool that takes the open-ended responses and plugs them into a business intelligence tool giving deeper insight into our hotel partners’ markets, competitive arena and realistic timeline of the sales pipeline
6. This year, we’ve added a layer to our Right Fit Lead® prospecting and can provide Plan B Activation™ Service, which offers lead follow-up and nurturing for our hotel partners to avoid the “leaky sales funnel” when a lead is uncovered that is not quite ready for total engagement.
7. Included in the layer of Plan B Activation™ Service is electronic and phone follow-up, as well as building and managing marketing automation programs for our hotel partners.

A couple statistics: By using our B2B Buyer Engagement Method, we have average phone contact rates well over 50% and positive response rates (meaning they are a fit for the hotel and have interest) of well over 20% of those we speak to. The phone tactic is a component of this! In addition, our hotel partners that contract the entire cycle with us experience a 20:1 ROI on their spend. A true joy of mine was sharing these statistics with this new sales manager, as well as showing him how it can be done & why it is critical for his hotel. At the end of the day, Ryan didn’t have the resources to do this all on his own, but he did see from our example that it is OK to make phone calls!

Ryan and his hotel are not alone. We see these challenges and speak to hotel owners, sales & marketing leadership and the sales managers every day. When you are navigating the B2B buying process as a hotel who is one of many, it can be a challenge to know the right tactics to deploy and the best timing for those tactics. We work with hotels everyday who admit to not having the time, desire, or training to use some or many of the tactics needed for generating a strong sales pipeline. The barriers are real, and sometimes even resistance is high. Establishing a campaign using even just the phone tactic entails several layers and best practices to set it up appropriately and make it effective. This is what we do at Plan B Consultants and I’d be honored to discuss further if your hotel is stuck in this area.

Amy Infante has been a hotel sales & marketing consultant for the past 10 years working with her clients to navigate the B2B buying process as it specifically relates to hotel sales team success. Amy has developed Plan B Consultants and Sales4Hire™ from her passion to provide solutions for business leaders and hotel owners that are tailor made to find top line revenue. Contact: Amy.infante@planbconsultants.com 312-636-7384