Professional Sales

Chapter-8
Management of Professional
Sales
• Success or failure within the hospitality industry ultimately rests on
the ability to sell. A roadside motel at an intersection of major
highways or a popular restaurant with waiting lines is sometimes
viewed as being above the need “to sell.”
• Discourteous front-desk clerks and cashiers who would impress
Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs are part of one’s sales force. In the best
cases, they can upsell through suggestive desserts, special drinks, and
even a gift certificate for a friend. Higher margin suites can be sold
instead of the lowest priced room. Successful owners and managers
know that they must sell continuously.
• Libraries could be filled with tales of lost sales or needlessly
fractured guest relationships because of a curt response or an
unsavory attitude on the part of support staff who mistakenly
believe that sales is not their responsibility. Everyone must sell, but
a few individuals have the specific responsibility for ensuring that
payrolls can be met, invoices can be paid, and a fair return on
investment (ROI) can be achieved. These are the professional
salespeople.
Nature of Hospitality Sales
• Personal selling
• Sales personnel serve as the company’s personal link to customers.
Personal selling is the most expensive contact and communication tool
used by the company. If managed effectively it can produce great
returns.
• Newly designed restaurants increasingly include areas that can be closed
off for private parties. Rental car companies maintain sales staff, and the
suppliers to industry hire salespeople.
• Many graduate of hospitality programs find themselves in careers with
personal selling. Cost estimates for making a personal sales call vary
depending on the industry and the company, but one conclusion
remains constant.
• Sales orders are seldom written on the first call and often require five
or more calls, particularly for larger orders. The cost of obtaining a
new client thus becomes enormously high. Despite the high cost,
personal selling is often the most effective tool available to a
hospitality company
Tasks of Sales
Representatives
• Sales representatives perform one or more of the following tasks
for their companies:
• Prospecting. Sales representatives find and cultivate new customers.
• Targeting. Sales representatives decide how to allocate their scarce
time among prospects and customers.
• Communicating. Sales representatives communicate information about
the company’s products and services.
• Selling. Sales representatives know the art of salesmanship:
approaching, presenting, answering objections, and closing sales.
• Servicing. Sales representatives provide various services to the
customers— consulting on their problems, rendering technical
assistance, arranging financing, and expediting delivery.
• Information gathering. Sales representatives conduct market research
and intelligence work and fill in call reports.
• Allocating. Sales representatives decide which customers to allocate
scarce products during product shortages.
• Maintaining strategic partnerships. Senior salespeople, including the
sales manager, provide valuable planning assistance to clients.
Preparing in Advance
• During product shortages, such as a temporary shortage of hotel
rooms during a major convention, sales representatives find
themselves with nothing to sell. Some companies jump to the
conclusion that fewer sales representatives are then needed.
• But this thinking overlooks the salesperson’s other roles: allocating
the product, counseling unhappy customers, and selling the
company’s other products that are not in short supply. It also
ignores the long-run nature of hospitality sales.
• Many conventions and conferences are planned years in advance,
and hospitality salespeople must often work with meeting and
convention planners two to four years in advance of the actual
event.
• Resorts in the United States have concentrated much of their selling
efforts on meetings and conferences, which by now represent 35
percent or more of their customers.
How to analyze and effectively use
the information by Salespeople
• This has become very clear as micro marketing, including
database marketing, online distribution, social media,
marketing dashboards, and competitive information are
readily available within the hospitality industry; salespeople
need to understand how to analyze and effectively use the
information.
• After viewing the importance of marketing information to sales, a
hospitality industry writer with Hotel and Motel Management
magazine concluded the following:
• Closing sales has more to do with professionalism than anything else.
• Understanding the identity of real prospects increases sales
productivity.
• Sales force members can save hours of time by having information
about prospect group clients.
• It is critical to know what groups have a history of booking rooms in
your type of hotel
Competitive Analysis and
Competitive Sets
• The selection of a comparable competitive set is, therefore,
critical to meaningful comparative sales analysis. Small bed
and breakfasts (B&Bs) usually have no difficulty defining their
competitive set. However, restaurants may not find this task
an easy one.
• As an example, should a family-owned-and-run catfish restaurant
be grouped with seafood restaurants such as Red Lobster?
Perhaps it should be grouped with family-owned restaurants, but
does this make sense to place it with Italian and Greek
restaurants? In the case of hotels, three common approaches are
used to determine which competitive set or cluster is most
appropriate.
Sales Force Objectives
• Sales objectives are essential for two reasons:
• 1. Objectives ensure that corporate goals are met. Goals may
include revenue, market share, and improved corporate image.
• 2. Objectives assist sales force members to plan and execute their
personal sales programs.
• Objectives also help ensure that a salesperson’s time and
company-support resources such as personal computers are
used efficiently. Sales force objectives must be custom
designed annually for each company.
• Individual sales objectives are established to support corporate
goals and marketing and sales objectives.
• Annual marketing and sales objectives are normally broken into
quarterly and monthly objectives. Sales force members break
them down further into personal objectives by day and week.
General Objectives
• Although sales objectives are custom designed, there are
general objectives commonly employed by members of the
hospitality industry
• Sales Volume
• Sales Volume by Selected Segments
• Sales Volume and Price/Margin Mix
• Upselling and Second-Chance Selling
• Market Share or Market Penetration
• Product-Specific Objectives
Sales Force Structure and Size

• Territorial-Structured Sales Force

•
Sales Force Size
• Once the company clarifies its sales force strategy and
structure, it is ready to consider sales force size. After
determining the type and number of desired customers, a
workload approach can be used to establish sales force size.
This method consists of the following steps:
1. Customers are grouped into size classes according to their annual sales
volume.
2. The desirable call frequencies (number of sales calls on an account per
year) are established for each class.
3. The number of accounts in each size class is multiplied by the
corresponding call frequency to arrive at the total workload for the
country in sales calls per year.
4. The average number of calls a sales representative can make per year
is determined.
5. The number of sales representatives needed is determined by dividing
the total annual calls required by the average calls made by a sales
representative.
factors that influence the size
of a hotel’s sales force
• Corporate/chain sales support
• Use of overseas independent sales reps
• Team selling
• Corporate selling
• Electronic and telephone sales.