Until a few years ago, this question was not asked in commercial management meetings. Everything has gone so well for many that they went to work without knowing why they had clients staying in their hotels, golf courses and resorts.
Let’s be honest, many, due to the location of their complex, due to the large advertising investment, due to the facilities, due to the “tailwind” they have had, have dedicated themselves for many years to what we call “dispatching” in common language.
Why did they sell in their complexes? Why did customers choose your complexes and not other competing ones?
The point is not to lament or be alarmed, the current circumstances are these and the only thing left for the properties is to entrust themselves to their commercial and marketing managers of their complexes and analyze the commercial structure of their products and their sales team.
Before starting to make changes to the commercial structure, we will have to ask ourselves a series of questions, which will undoubtedly help us know what mistakes we have made, what relevant aspects of the sale we have ignored and what are the possible solutions we can adopt.
Hotel, Golf and Resorts: Why don’t we sell?
Analysis of our accounts and clients: Do we know which accounts and clients generate the most production? As you know, 80% of the total production of your income statement is produced by 20% of your accounts. An illuminating fact to classify your clients and know who we should dedicate more time to, and of course converting non-productive accounts into loyal ones.
Analyze our clients’ trends: I hardly see this type of analytics in most resorts. In many chains there are select clubs where databases are created from the forms that customers submit with their impressions and trends, which we do not know if the companies analyze and then adapt in their sales strategies, and on the other hand, others do not have access. to this type of analysis due to lack of trained personnel.
Analytics of web sales portals: Although, to know the reason for satisfaction, dissatisfaction, reasons why they have bought from us or why they have not, it can be done from the satisfaction and CRM surveys, if they are carried out. . Web analytics will answer questions such as what customer profile I have, what they are looking for, why they have selected us, why they stop visiting us on certain dates. Segmenting these types of questions will be vital to know where to sell, how and to whom.
Publish customer satisfaction: Word of mouth is essential, although it is clear that our communication network is limited in certain aspects, we have online portals or even our own that give us the possibility of publishing our customers’ comments. The decision to opt for our product or our competition will depend on these influential comments. Who hasn’t visited Tripadvisor or other websites to find out what the hotel we are going to stay in is like, and based on the references, we choose one or the other.
Customer segmentation by seasons and markets: We have to have identified the dates and periods in which our customers come to visit us based on nationality and sector. From this analysis we will know who to target depending on the seasons, and above all, have customized promotions prepared for those segments.
Structure your sales and commercial team. Fundamentally, do you have your team well structured? Do they know exactly what their mission is? Do you have the ideal and experienced profiles in your sales and marketing department? If the answer is affirmative, what you cannot do is assign missions. If you have a salesperson for acquiring new clients and accounts who is dedicated to this, it is not advisable that you assign operational or administrative tasks to them. Making good use of the profile of your manager or commercial director is essential, as long as you are well structured. Better to do one thing well than two things halfway.
If your decision is to renew the staff, the advice is to select with criteria knowing the structure you want to organize, the profile is essential and a good selection policy together with an effective and solid structure will obtain the results that your company aspires to obtain.
