Increasingly, prospects who are planning weddings, meetings and events are foregoing traditional site tours and instead meeting virtually with hotel salespeople. Even those who do come by in person often start with a virtual meeting before committing to a visit.
All too often, salespeople simply do a screen-share during which they review the PDF or eProposal, focusing mainly on pricing and terms, missing out on a terrific opportunity to outsell the competition. Alternatively, top producers are always looking for new ideas for mastering remote sales presentation skills. Here are some training tips from our hotel sales training and webcam sales coaching that cover this topic.
First, do a quick audit of your hotel’s website inquiry form, which I covered last month in my column here for CoStar. Remember to minimize the mandatory fields to encourage completion and minimize prospect bouncing. Provide the option for prospects to upload RFPs if they have one or add an email address for them to send. Change the open text box label from “Comments” to “Tell us more about the event or meeting you are planning,” which will help you personalize initial responses as well as the presentation.
When fielding inbound inquiries, pick up the phone to acknowledge receipt. Even if you get voicemail, this helps to personalize the relationship and shows interest plus commitment. If they do answer, you have a chance to discover additional details that will make your proposal and sales presentation stand out.
Using online scheduling apps such as Calendly or Outlook’s Book With Me app make it easy to connect so you can hold a live, online presentation, rather than just emailing over a proposal like most of your competitors will be doing. Do not simply put the link in your auto-signature because it will be overlooked and underutilized. Instead, explain what it is and how to use these scheduling tools in the body of the email message.
When prospects book, make sure your confirmation emails let them know you will be on webcam and invite them to join you if desired. But also provide a phone number and instruct them to call if they have any connection issues or prefer a traditional voice call. Experience shows that most accept web meetings these days.
When preparing for each sales call, review your master “pitch deck” template and add, delete, and/or edit content to ensure relevancy and context for each prospect.
If you do not yet have a pitch deck, here are some suggestions:
- Slide one should have an external pic of your hotel, your logo, and if your prospect is from a company, non-profit organization, association, or sports team, then also include their logo.
- From there, your image “flow” should follow an in-person site tour, starting with the lobby and public areas, outlets, meeting space and recreational facilities as applicable, followed by the guestrooms.
- To make your presentation deck feel more authentic, include candid photos from your camera phone. Include pictures with people. Maintain privacy by not showing faces and/or blurring them.
Power up your app early so you can be relaxed and ready. Allow time for those unexpected “Windows” or “app” updates.
“Pro-tips” for webcam and lighting:
- Close curtains or blinds or do not sit in front of a window, else you will appear as a shadow!
- Raise your webcam slightly higher than eye level, as you would take a good selfie.
- Start by sharing only your webcam to provide a chance to build rapport, noting that once you share your screen, you will be reduced to a small image in the corner.
To keep participants engaged, be sure to pause and ask relevant investigative questions. During our sales coaching sessions, we often observe salespeople doing too much talking and too little listening. Intersperse the conversation with “How does that sound?” and “Any questions so far?”
When presenting to multiple participants, encourage the “quiet” attendees to participate, too. Often this might be either a very senior leader, who is the final decision-maker, or a very junior-level person who will be doing most of the work. Remember, they have given up their time to join in, so specifically ask: “Chris, did you have any questions for us so far?”
Use storified selling and descriptions that make presentations alluring and enticing. To spice up your descriptions, start by taking some of the descriptive copy from your website, email and social media campaigns, and drop it into your ChatGPT or other generative AI account for fresh ideas.
Always end your presentations by asking for the business in a way that makes them want to say “yes.” Be humble and grateful. Example: “Taylor, I am grateful for your time today to meet in person like this and I am committed to ensuring a successful (meeting or event). Let me know what else we can do on our end to win this opportunity.”
After the presentation, send your pitch deck in PDF format so they can review it and forward to other stakeholders. Be sure to compress any high-resolution images you may have included so that the PDF does not exceed 5MB and avoids rejection by their email server.
Doug Kennedy is president of the Kennedy Training Network, Inc. Contact him at doug@kennedytrainingnetwork.com.
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