The saying “time is money” is especially true when it comes to sales. For a hotel sales team to be effective, they need to have enough time to actually sell. However, many hotel sales teams are bogged down with administrative tasks and other duties that leave them with less time to sell.
The HSMAI Sales Advisory Board met to discuss how hotel sellers can be more efficient and have more time to sell. Here are the key takeaways for you to take back to your sales team.
Three Tips to Give Your Sales Teams More Time to Sell
- Go remote for at least your top sellers so they can’t be pulled into non-sales activities on property. One AB member reported their small remote team contributed 34% of the profit.
- Determine what percentage of time a seller should be spending doing sales or sales activity and then give the team the resources they need.
- Protect the sales team’s time and minimize role pollution.
Four Ideas for Protecting Your Sales Team’s Time
- Use automation and AI tools for tedious tasks that don’t add value. This can free up time for your sales team to focus on developing relationships and building up the customer base. Minimizing tiresome tasks has the added benefit of increasing the happiness of the sales team and lowering turnover.
- Review your processes. For example, are meetings at the right time of day? Do all attendees really need to be there?
- Review the roles. Does your organization have the capacity to separate the sales roles? If you can have some staff specifically assigned to respond to inbound leads, you can deploy full-time sales “hunters”, to be out in the field finding and developing new business.
- Create a high-performance sales culture. When everyone understands the value of a salesperson’s time, the salesperson is less distracted and can focus on the essential duties of bringing in more revenue.
Katie Davin is an Associate Professor at Johnson & Wales University. Connect with Katie on LinkedIn.
About HSMAI
The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) is committed to growing business for hotels and their partners and is the industry’s leading advocate for intelligent, sustainable hotel revenue growth. The association provides hotel professionals and their partners with tools, insights, and expertise to fuel sales, inspire marketing, and optimize revenue through programs such as the Adrian Awards, HSMAI ROC, Marketing Strategy Conference, and Sales Leader Forum. Founded in 1927, HSMAI is a membership organization comprising more than 5,000 members worldwide, with 40 chapters in the Americas Region. Connect with HSMAI at hsmai.org, HSMAI Facebook, HSMAI Twitter, and HSMAI YouTube.