Hospitality Sales and Marketing

An Evolutionary Journey with Howard Feiertag

Howard Feiertag

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429614682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

Grouped by general topic, this collection of the best "Sales Clinic" columns in Hotel Management written by Howard Feiertag over the course of 35 years provides an abundance of juicy nuggets of tips, tactics, and techniques for professionals and newbies alike in the hospitality sales field. Readers will take a journey down the road of the development of hospitality sales from the pre-technology era (when knowing how to use a typewriter was a must) to today's reliance on digital technology, rediscovering that many of the old techniques that are still applicable today.

CHAPTER 1

GENERAL MANAGERS’ INVOLVEMENT WITH SALES

FOR OWNERS AND GENERAL MANAGERS ONLY

January 1980

With a new calendar year approaching, the universal concerns in the hotel/motel business would generally be centered around sales. What will next year bring? Will the rooms still be around to eat up market ‘glut’ of hotel shares? How well prepared are the sales teams to bring in the new accounts and help increase occupancies and rates?

Perhaps in anticipation of fretting over the above, the owners and the General Managers should concern themselves with what their salespeople are thinking and what are their thoughts? Are they hampered in productivity as a result of corporate or an owner’s or manager’s lack of interest in what the salespeople think?

As a result of just a rough sampling, here are some thoughts on why salespeople leave one company for another, and some of their general concerns:

• ► They are looking for more promotion within. Some sales managers have been around for a while, and they think they are doing a good job and getting good reviews. Then the sales director leaves, they want the promotion badly, and some think they are going to get the job and even take over the responsibilities for a period of time. Then BANG, the General Manager brings in a brand new body from outside the company. No explanation even being offered.
• ► Many feel they are not recognized for what they do. They get little direction and supervision and feel unappreciated.
• ► Salespeople, in many instances, are not consulted about decisions that are made which affect the sales effort. They are left out of knowing ‘what is going on’ and don’t feel part of the team.
• ► Training is almost non-existent. This is especially true with new salespeople, and even experienced salespeople feel the need to be further trained. Many feel management won’t spend the money to send them to sales training seminars.
• ► Very few, if any, feel there are many career opportunities if they stay in sales. They don’t feel it’s the right path to a future General Manager’s job. There’s no management development by staying in sales at one property.
• ► More and more salespeople are starting to look for monetary, short-term incentives for the business they bring to a property.

The list can go on, but these are the highlights, so?—What needs to be done to correct some of the situations?

In fact, even if it does or does not exist at the property, owners and managers need to become more involved with the sales staff. These are the things that are really on their minds.

To improve sales productivity, someone needs to pay attention to the salespeople! Time needs to be invested by talking to them—find out what it is that can be done to help them do a better job. Involve them in the decision-making process as it relates to sales. Talk with them frequently formally and informally, let them know how they’re doing. Suggest how they can improve productivity. Discuss their work habits, their sales calls, their bookings, and their attitude. There’s a great deal to talk about.

Help them, and it will help you. You’ll have a better sales year coming up.

HIGH VISIBILITY: A GREAT MANAGEMENT SALES TOOL

March 1983

Observers of management practices in lodging operations should be able to report that those properties which reflect a high degree of management visibility are the ones that also reflect sales success.

Regardless of property size, whether a 2.5-unit or 2,500-unit, high visibility of management personnel is directly related to sales as well as profit success. We can all relate stories of visiting properties where you hardly see a manager ‘out front.’ That should become a red flag danger signal. If the owner/operator/manager or whoever the top person may be, if that person cannot be available to see what’s going on with the guests and how they are treated, then someone else, an assistant or other responsible members of the management team should be visible up front. Management these days of troubled times with high costs of doing business and drop off in sales just can’t afford to be out there where the business is being conducted. There’s plenty of time during the stay to be stuck in the office doing bookwork. The time for high visibility on the property is really all the time but to pinpoint specific hours, let’s just list the critical times.

• ► During check-out hours. Be right there at the desk, personally checking people out and thanking guests for staying at your property—giving them your calling card and asking them to come back as well as sending their friends and associates to stay with you.
• ► Help pour coffee in the restaurant. A great opportunity to let guests know you are there ‘looking after them’—a little chit-chat from the manager in the morning goes a long way in building goodwill.
• ► During check-in time. Greeting the guests as they come into the lobby. Walking them up to the front desk to check-in. Pleasant words of welcome can start off a guest’s visit with the right tone and make them feel glad they are staying at your property.
• ► In the lounge at Happy Hour time, not drinking with the guests but just ‘checking around.’ They’ll know you are there and will appreciate your attention into seeing that you are taking care of your business.
• ► A check through the kitchen to make sure all is going well and the food is being served properly. Then cruise through the dining room welcoming the dinner guests.
• ► Anytime during the day when there are meetings in the house, the manager should be visible to the meeting attendees. Being ‘around’ when they go into a meeting room, come out of a meeting room, or taking a coffee break.

Now, here’s what happens when you do all of this:

• ► Guests will recognize you as being a good business person.
• ► Guests know you are looking after their interest.
• ► You will observe problems that can be taken care of immediately before they grow out of proportion.
• ► You’ll come up with ways of improving service to your guests.
• ► Your employees will know you are ‘always’ around.
• ► Employee productivity will improve.
• ► Business will be better.
• ► Profits will be better . . . and most of all, you’ll feel good!

YOU DO NOT NEED A SALES DEPARTMENT . . .

April 1983

If it doesn’t improve results. It is not the effort that counts but the results of the effort. There are just too many salespeople and sales departments around in hotels and motels that are just not getting the job accomplished. The productivity of salespeople in many cases is not what it could be. A number of factors create this situation:

• ► Lack of direction and supervision
• ► No sales plan or procedures
• ► Poor time management
• ► Other functions delegated to sales staff
• ► Staff communication poor
• ► Untrained sales staff
• ► Too comfortable offices
• ► Non-responsive management
• ► Low sales budgets
• ► No job description

The solution to the problem is for the lodging owner or operator to accept the responsibility of being the chief in charge of sales. Objectives need to be established for the sales department, objectives that are results oriented. For example, goals for improved room occupancy, room revenue as goals for food/beverage functions. Goals that are measurable need to be established. Pie in the sky doesn’t work; all goals should be realistic.

Remember the objective must be an improvement. The measurement of the quality of a sales team is in its ability to improve sales regardless of the obstacles that be in the way. Usual arguments from salespeople for not improving sales come from a long list of reasons why we can’t get business:

• ► Many complaints about food service
• ► Highways have changed traffic patterns
• ► Product is dated
• ► Hotel or motel needs refurbishing
• ► Budget not large enough to do the job
• ► Too much changeover in managers
• ► Staff not courteous
• ► Complaints on housekeeping
• ► Need more help in the office
• ► Other jobs delegated to sales
• ► Newer competition in the area
• ► Lower prices at other properties
• ► Meeting room lighting is poor
• ► Meeting rooms, not sound proof
• ► Poor parking, etc., and the list goes on and on.

The items on the list sound plausible as excuses for not getting business, and many of the excuses or reasons are correctable by management. However, if the sales department is convinced that these are some of the reasons business can’t be developed, then there is no choice but to save some money by getting rid of the sales department and get business catch-as-catch-can.

More logically the salespeople need to be convinced that regardless of the property’s shortcomings there is a business to be had.

Proper management direction, better communication, a job description, a sales plan, and procedure, hard work, improved time management practices, some sales training, hard work, interested department heads, staff motivation, outside sales calls, telephone calls and lead development program, reasonable budgets, analysis of business needs, hard work sales reports reviews, discussions with staff on how to improve results, enthusiastic people on payroll, hard work, entertaining on property, civic affairs involvement, leading by example, hard work, good guest services, etc., are just some ideas on how to help maximize results from a sales department.

LET THE SALESPEOPLE SELL

July 1983

It’s happening all around us in the hotel business. Wherever we go, it can be spotted almost immediately upon entering a hotel or motel. Salespeople are busying themselves doing the non-sales productive activity. Just think of all the things that salespeople have had to do (whether voluntarily or not): work the front desk, be part-time hostess or cashier, bus tables, wait tables, answer switchboard, temp bar, clean meeting rooms, schlep tables, run room service, pour coffee at banquets, hire banquet waiters/waitresses, make out banquet bills, go to the bank, go to the post office, run errands, make table decorations, change the function board, talk to salesman/purveyors, interview applicants for various jobs, write advertisements, produce promotion pieces, run to the printer, stuff envelopes, type envelopes, and the list can probably go on and on.

None of these functions really is the job for salespeople. They all need to be done, but certainly not by sales. Good management on the property will want to see sales personnel out selling at every chance possible. In-house staff should be used for those little extra jobs that have been delegated to sales. Of course, it is not entirely management’s fault this occurs, in many cases, salespeople make themselves very available and look for reasons to stay in under the pretense of ‘helping’ out when necessary.

Management’s responsibility is to make sure that salespeople spend their time selling. The continual development of new business for the hotel/motel is what will keep a property healthy. Salespeople must be continually searching for and developing new prospects for business hotels/motels can’t survive on repeat business alone—no matter how good a product or service there is never enough repeat business to keep an operation healthy without new business. If we can all think about the sales department’s responsibility being that of bringing in the new business, we’ll be more successful in our operations.

In some smaller properties the sales manager is somewhat of ‘jack-of-all-trades.’ However, management in those types of properties should try to develop a program whereby other staff people assist the sales manager with various ‘in-house’ details so that more time may be spent selling.

General Managers should start taking over responsibilities for advertising and sales promotion. Too much time is spent at the property level, in all sizes of hotels/motels by the salespeople in these endeavors. Unfortunately, we have misused the title of marketing director or marketing manager and have saddled some very excellent salespeople with a title that now dictates they have responsibility for all marketing activity at a property. At very large properties, this is understandable as long as there is someone left to go out and sell.

Goals are an essential incentive for selling, and it also establishes an opportunity for measuring performance. Salespeople should be given targets to reach in increased performance periodically, as it relates to sales goals should be reviewed. This is one good way of getting the salespeople to spend more time selling and less time doing other people’s work.

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS FOR SALES-MINDED GENERAL MANAGERS

December ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Columns
• About the Author
• Howard’s Story
• List of Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1. General Managers’ Involvement with Sales
• 2. Developing Leads and Prospects for Hospitality Sales
• 3. The Working of a Hotel Property Sales Operation
• 4. Techniques for Increasing Sales
• 5. Working with Group Markets
• 6. The Travel Agent and the Leisure Travel Market
• 7. Sales Planning and Sales Calls
• 8. Hospitality Sales Training
• 9. The Negotiation Process in Sales
• 10. Attributes of Successful Salespersons
• 11. Helpful Tips for Hotel Sales Staff
• 12. Action Plans for Marketing and Sales
• 13. Working on Contracts for Groups
• 14. Everyone at a Property Is Involved in Sales
• 15. A Professional Approach to Hospitality Sales Along with Networking
• 16. Understanding the Features of Your Product, Especially F&B
• 17. HR in Connection with Sales Staff Employment