8 Hospitality Sales Tips to Achieve Your Revenue Goals
Unfortunately, “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t work for the majority of industries, including hospitality. Even if you have the most incredible venue, food & drink options, and customer service staff in a beautiful location, you still have to create awareness and demand.
The competition for people’s disposable income is getting tougher and tougher, thanks to more goods and services entering the market each year combined with America’s declining savings rate. In the hospitality industry, you’re competing against other hospitality providers for business— requiring a strong sales & marketing strategy.
Looking for fresh new ways to accomplish your hospitality sales goals to boost revenue? Take a look at these 8 tips.
1) Keep Your Assets Up-to-Date
It may seem straightforward, but if your website, social media accounts, and proposals are full of dated photos, videos, and documents, then your prospects are receiving old information that won’t line up with your sales conversation.
To avoid this confusion, complete a large audit and overhaul of your assets across all mediums once or twice a year and smaller check-ins at least once a quarter. Brand, marketing, and PR teams perform a lot of hard work to provide updated, on-brand content, so be sure you’re leveraging the correct assets in your sales collateral.
By leveraging a DAM (digital asset management) system or a presentation platform like DIGIDECK with a central asset library, it’s easy to keep track of assets and update them in just a few clicks.
2) Focus on Speed to Lead
Whether you’re working with event planners, individuals, or corporate groups, two things are vital in the proposal process: speed and attention to detail.
Prioritizing speed to lead in the hospitality sales process gives you an upper hand to companies that take a long time to reply or don’t reply at all. In fact, 78% of B2B customers purchase from the company that responds first.
Set processes in place that allow your team to reply to an inquiry, ideally within 5 minutes, but no more than an hour. Consider leveraging automation to accomplish this for you. Some ideas include:
- An automated email or text response that their inquiry has been received
- Sending a custom, automated proposal based on the prospect’s form fills through DIGIDECK
- Send an automated message containing a video of what to expect
3) Virtually Showcase Your Space & Amenities
In today’s day and age, most hospitality sales processes are conducted virtually. Expecting a prospect to make a large investment without ever seeing your venue and amenities is almost impossible.
Go beyond photos and even videos by immersing your prospect in 360° panoramic tours of your location. There are a handful of virtual tour software brands commonly used in real estate, such as Matterport, CloudPano, 3DVista, and Kuula. DIGIDECK is another option— an immersive presentation platform that supports 360° virtual tours right in a proposal.
4) Leverage Analytics During the Sales Process
One difference between a good seller and a great seller is how they use data analytics. Analytics play a big role across the hospitality sales cycle, but especially in two areas:
- Understanding customer behavior
- Sales forecasting
Historically, a big pain point for sales teams is not knowing if a prospect ever even opens a proposal after sending. With a trackable presentation platform like DIGIDECK or even sales enablement software, sales reps gain access to the analytics of a specific sales proposal or pitch. By referencing this data, reps can make informed decisions on how to follow-up based on the prospect’s behavior.
Another great way to leverage analytics in the sales process is to analyze historical data, such as market trends and seasonality. Based on historical data, reps can leverage predictive analytics to better prepare for challenges and market shifts.
5) Get Creative With Upsells
To maximize revenue, don’t only concentrate on making as many individual sales as possible. Instead, consider how you can maximize an opportunity you already have in hand with upsells.
Some examples of common upsells in hospitality include:
- Rooms (upgrade to king size bed or room with a view)
- Food and beverages (adding a F&B package or expanding an existing one)
- Late checkout (allowing them to check out of their hotel later)
- Transportation & parking (upgrading to personal transportation or guaranteed parking)
As you refine your upsell strategy, know that every action you take in an upsell should benefit the guest. Guests are smart, and they’ll see right through you if they can tell you’re pushing something for the sake of profit. Get creative with how you prioritize impressing your guests.
Even if you don’t win an upsell on a guest’s first experience with you, know that prioritizing their experience goes a long way for customer loyalty and future revenue opportunities.
6) Collab With Marketing on Seasonal Promotions
We can’t all live in San Diego, where the weather is consistent year-round. The hospitality industry in many cities experiences busy and slow seasons. Vail, Colorado, is the place to be in winter, while Seattle sees the most tourists in summer.
One way to combat seasonal lulls is through promotions and special offers. Collaborate with your marketing team on the details of these promotions and how they’ll be advertised (paid ads, social media, email campaigns, etc.).
Pro tip: Only offer promos for a limited time to drive urgency.
7) Create a Referral Program
Referral programs are timeless. No matter how many sales and marketing initiatives you implement, happy customers who recommend you by word-of-mouth will always be a strong revenue generator.
Don’t have a formal referral program in place? Here’s your sign to start one.
Some customers will refer your hospitality business without an incentive, but many others will require an attractive incentive. Consider rewards such as:
- Discounts on future services
- Gift cards
- Free upgrades
- Electronic gifts
- Experiences (concert tickets, flights, etc.)
Get creative, and work with your marketing team to distribute the messaging.
8) Collaborate With Destination Marketing Organizations
Hospitality and tourism often go hand in hand. Creating a partnership with other local businesses like tourism boards or destination marketing organizations can increase your visibility and help you capitalize off of engaged prospects in similar industries.
An established partnership can be mutually beneficial for both or all parties, as the intent is to grow awareness and drive business to an entire area— including individual businesses in that area like venues, restaurants, hotels, retail stores, and more.
Boost Your Hospitality Sales With Help From DIGIDECK
One of the best ways to implement multiple hospitality sales tactics is by refining your tech stack. Your hospitality company is likely leveraging a CRM system, but how about your sales proposals?
DIGIDECK is the #1 web-based presentation platform for the hospitality industry since it provides customer behavior insights through viewership analytics, visibility with 360° panoramic tours, and speed to lead through custom, automated proposals sent directly to a prospect’s inbox.
Interested to see how DIGIDECK can support your hospitality sales like it does for top hospitality providers like Hilton, The Kentucky Derby, F1 Experiences, and more? Request a free demo today!
