Optimize Your Hospitality Business with airSlate SignNow's Sales Funnel and Sales Pipeline Solution

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all right hi everyone so now we're gonna begin the webinar already so before we begin just some housekeeping things for audio purposes please mute to your audio if you have any questions use the question module and we'll get back to you there will be a Q&A at the end of the session and if you're having any technical technical difficulties please use the chat module and we'll help you out there and after the webinar today feel free to look us up on Facebook and LinkedIn we'd love to connect about our hosts so today we have two great house for you Bob Graham is our CEO and co-founder of event temple and Rupesh Patel he is a president and CEO of Sydney hotels in his current role as president and chief operating officer at unique hotels Rupesh oversees the portfolios and operations as well as the company's acquisitions and developments being born and raised into hospitality his angle of conducting business by building relationships is a direct reflection of his father Raman Patel over the last decade repair has overseen the growth of Sydney hotels into a multi property portfolio as well as unique being rated one of the top destination hotels on TripAdvisor and without further ado refresh take it away thank you Amy a little bit about Sonique hotels we were a family owned and operated company we started in 1993 with our first development and went on to develop four more within the next 14 years in 2008 we sold two of our properties and remained status quo as everybody knows that was a really bad time in our industry and in 2011 is when Sonique was actually born when we acquired an additional property in San Jose we have many properties that are ranked number one on TripAdvisor and we just recently completed the development of our loft in Dublin and are working on a Hyatt Place in Paso Robles as a company our our motto is all about service it's not just about mediocre service it's about exceptional above and beyond service at the end of the day we're in the hospitality industry and we should be hospitable to that to the highest level and we we as well as many other companies understand that if your customer service is their success in your hotels hotels are inevitable so before we joined event temple or you know even electronic CRM as most hotels did in the past you know sales was all done on paper it was note-taking it was post-its even maybe emails but was very disorganized and once we got into the CRM world specifically event temple everything becomes much more organized for not only your staff but also for above property general managers and others that are not in the sales process day to day and allows us to be able to get a global vision on how our sales efforts are are being conducted and how efficiently they're being conducted so CRM is definitely a must-have in today's sales environment so strategies for effective management of sales and revenue growth you can go into the next slide so it's important for data collection you know let's talk about prospecting prospecting takes you know diligence persistence and organization it's our duty as the seller to follow up with leads and prospects many times in the past where people had things written down it's very easy for those things to get lost and then the follow up fails to happen if we wait for buyers to try to contact us we'll never win with our follow up state they'll see the value we have for them and it shows that we'll take care of them and that we're communicating with efficiently and a system like event temple easily organizes prospecting process and keep sales managers on top of all all business leads it allows us to to hold on to all the data that is there in one one bucket instead of having post-its in multiple locations within an office or even in even a hotel and sometimes even our sales managers cars so having something that curates all this data holds it for you allows you to be on top of your game and kind of creates a roadmap which we'll talk about later for what your sales manager should be doing data in business is king and having account history with with with a property it prevents repeating of information or asking the same questions to a client when when you are following up with them the last thing we want for a client is to think that we don't know what's going on or we don't remember something that was discussed this will give them the impression that we don't value them or that they're just another client so data allows sales managers to better focus and our better forecasts and understand what business segments they need more efforts in and this aspect of the software is critical for both sales managers revenue managers and others to understand what business is the best business for any given period date or season since the system allows us to curate data and provide the historical information as I mentioned it allows them to see who to target for specific periods and dates but it also allows them to better maintain relationships with the data that we have for their clients again showing them that we care and appreciate their business and it also allows our sales teams to better target clients for promotions or specials it will take for example you have meeting space within your hotel and you have specific meetings that come during the summer well if you're not getting the pickup that you normally see you can go into the CRM and see which which groups or clients booked during the summer it may be blast out an email to each of them talking about a special promotion to try to entice them to book back with you during that that need period and then the importance of the sales pipeline really helps with revenue management and the relationship between revenue management and sales which is what we'll talk about next with us each time we get an inquiry it is entered into in Temple no matter what whether it's closed or it's very cold or it's hot no matter what every single inquiry goes into event temple this allows us to have historical data on our closure rate as well as our opportunities for the future it also tells us why a client chose to select a different Hotel which we can use to enhance ourselves for the next opportunity once a client agrees to a deal we allow everything to flow through event temple it allows our team to stay on top of those that have been sent a contract sign not signed etc so we can effectively follow up and not allow anything to fall through the cracks our revenue manager also monitored these leads and ensures that we're following up when the system shows something has become stale or something that requires a follow-up from us from the property manager the relationship between sales and revenue management is is key in a successful strategy you know the sales manager's job is to bring in business the revenue manager's job is to ensure we capture that business at the correct rate it also allows us to ensure we don't over commit ourselves in any segment so that we're not you know so that we're able to maximize or revenues maximize our ADRs and distribute the business that we come in by get capturing rates in different segments this also allows us to capture business and kind of get an edge on our competitors I've talked about it a couple times but consistently following up with your clients really gives them the feeling of value it shows them that we care about them and we want to earn their business most competitors will wait for the client to respond instead of following up with them and as I mentioned before if we wait for the buyer to contact us we're pretty much never going to win next slide so sales is is a interesting position and interesting department within hotels you know think about any kind of product or service that you're offering it has to have good reviews from it so from the users that have already used it or have already in this instance that have already stayed with us so having high rankings on websites such as TripAdvisor or Yelp or even all the OTAs of Expedia Orbitz and brand calm you know travelers clients groups meeting planners they're all looking on these sites and so for them to see high customer satisfaction rating on these sites gives you and the sales manager a better chance of closing the deal and so for us you know we make it a priority for our company in all of our hotels that we strive to be in the top 10% of TripAdvisor if obviously our goal is to be number one but being in the top five to 10% makes a very big difference in your efforts of closing sales deals and allows your sales managers to reference the satisfaction rating that we have so we can't just rely on our sales managers to close every deal possible we also have to do our parts as owners and general managers that were once they close the deal that the hotel and the service the upkeep is able to keep them and retain them for residual income for many years to come especially for those that are that are annual type groups or meetings we have a we have one property our Holiday Inn Express in Modesto it's been number one a TripAdvisor for 12 years and we consistently are crushing the competition in retail rate production group business and more every time there's an event or youth sports group or team that are sorry tournament that's in in town we get so many calls and majority of them say we want to stay with you because you're number one on TripAdvisor so there's definitely a direct correlation between your customer satisfaction ratings online and your closure rate on sales but it also allows you to close at a higher rate people are willing to pay a little bit more when they're certain that their experience and the value that they're gonna get for the price they paid they're gonna get it and so I really urge everyone to really focus on achieving your your online presence of customer satisfaction and that happens from the actual operations that you have on site next slide corporate rate agreements so we continuously moderate monitor production we review them with our clients on a monthly basis it's especially our top ten and we stay in front of them we have to show them that we value them as a client and that we're here for them at all times this begins with the pitch to to the close to the maintenance of the count and event tempo allows us to stay on top of them on on all communication with clients and track their production it also allows us if let's say you have turnover in your sales department or they're on vacation it allows somebody to go into that account profile and see exactly where the communication has been what has been communicated to the client so that there's no repeat or wasting time of the client on trying to reinvent the wheel things that were already discussed when it comes to RFP season or rate negotiation season we're able to see what clients produced and if they made a positive impact on a revenue or if they displace revenue depending on the outcome of the analysis of the data that we have an event temple will be able to decide on how we will negotiate and how we will explain the increase to the client based on hard data the account tracking tool that that event temple has is going to be a game changer in the CRM world because it will allow us to see you know what day of the week are our accounts actually producing and is it actually displacing revenue because again being sold out doesn't necessarily mean that you've won if you are sold out at the highest rate possible in your market that's called a win and so being able to analyze data in more detail will allow you to achieve that that goal of capturing the highest rate and also maneuvering year-to-year because things do change market demands change and sometimes you do need to increase the client's rate or you know instead of a flat rate you may have to shift them to a dynamic percentage discount just because of the way market trends are working so trying to do that manually is very very difficult and having a software like a Ben temple makes it easier for your sales managers your general managers your revenue managers and you know even your property owners or executives to be able to really look in detail and see are we looking at this or are we taking the right approach with each of our clients and when we do talk to our clients it's not just hey you know for 2020 we have to increase your rate $5 because we didn't see the production we thought we would well at that point it becomes very subjective but if you can give them hard numbers hard data that they can relate to and explain things then they'll be much more receptive and understanding of why their rate is being increased nobody likes to have subjective reasons for why they're gonna end up paying more and that's why we always use hard data and not only the way we explain it to clients but we also use hard data on how we create our strategies we don't like to make anything subjective because then it's just you know in opinion at that point hard data is what everyone should be making their decisions around at this point I'm going to hand it over to Bob Bob is a wealth of knowledge in CRM process and he's also the CEO and co-founder of event temple so Bob I'll let you take it away from here yeah thanks for pastor I was just trying to unmute myself appreciate it so we can jump to the next slide here so one thing that we've found and I've been in sales for a long time myself before founding a venn temple over the last six years or so but um you know sales reps can't magically hit quota if they could they would and instead we found that we really want to be doing the right activities that are going to generate a result your passion I know we've talked before when I interviewed you for the ultimate hotel sales guide we touched on all these things right right people what outreach looks like accountability data but what I found when I chatted with you is that you know the pipeline management process is the team stream of stress for both the salesperson and management because basically the salespeople are now gonna have a playbook of how to win clarity on how performance is measured and then they understand a clear correlation between okay if I put on the effort I'm gonna get the result and then from management like you said before it's not subjective anymore they're managing the activities not their feelings about their sales team they're just looking at the inputs they're doing and the results they're leading to so the emotion is out of it there's no more guesswork and we can start to use the data that you mentioned to chart playbooks and do more of what's working and less of what is and so refresh I wanted to just touch on this for a second in your experience like have you you know found a clear way to move away from the all-star salesperson instead you know create some play books or maybe find some tools and processes that enabled you to get someone who's maybe less experienced or less naturally talented up and running yeah absolutely I mean you know all stars are all stars and there's there's not a tremendous amount of them that are out there and us as management companies or ownership or even general managers you know it's really our job to develop our people and when you develop somebody you really positively impact your life where they may not have had these certain skills before and the weight of the way that we've done that is once we have a vent temple that has these steps these traces these activities that each of our sales managers can log you know we're able to create a roadmap how to go through the process of sales from the lead to the pitch to the clothes to the maintenance and etc and we can show them exactly how to do it in a vent temple with job aids on step-by-step now even with skills managers that have been all-stars you know sometimes it can be by luck sometimes it can be by marketing but having a clear roadmap will set them up for success if we just hand them over the keys to our hotel and say sell as much again at the highest rate you know that's that's pretty unclear it's too general of a guideline and so with a with the vent temple we we have steps we have procedures and then were able to track those by reviewing things like the activity report to see are they putting in the effort because like I mentioned before you know we're not going to close everything and that's just the fact of the matter you're not gonna win every piece of business and sometimes general managers or above property managers will put emotion into it and find ask the sales manager well why didn't you close it why did you know the hotel next door capture it well if we have those notes an event temple that you know maybe they went to the hotel next door because they had complimentary breakfast and we don't or maybe it's a newer hotel and we don't have that or they were number one on TripAdvisor and we were number five those types of things like you mentioned will take the emotion out of it so it's also a security and accountability but it also allows for a road map on you know what step do I need to take right now as a sales manager in this sales process and once I finish that step it shows them exactly what the next step is all the way through closure and maintenance gotcha that makes sense let's get to the next slide here and yeah stop right here so we've talked a bit about technology and you mentioned the importance of Syria I'm a couple of times let's wanted to highlight you know today's sales professionals spend only 34 percent of their time selling and let's face it some hotels don't have dedicated sales people on site the GM will be doing their sales and you know unsurprisingly 57% of sales people won't hit their quota this year so you touched on it before we touched but what was life like before using any serum at all and you know what you say just a high-level benefits to having one are in terms of data tracking or saving time I mean I think it's all of them for one the biggest factor I can say is organization of data you know our salespeople should be out on the road they should be in front of our clients and this should be me talking to them and that kind of forces them to just take notes and those notes can easily get lost especially if you're doing 10 20 calls in a day or in a week it can easily get you know lost and lost in the shuffle and so having a vent tempo allows them to put in their their activity immediately and also like you mentioned not all properties have dedicated sales efforts or dedicated sales manager and so they have to utilize other people within their company or within the hotel such as front desk agents to input in data and so it's very easy for you know a sales manager to walk out of a meeting with a client quickly email whoever it is that's assisting them with data entry and that person can go in an event temple and type it in so that it's ready for anybody to look into there and for the sales manager when they get back to the office before you know again it could easily get lost or forgotten especially when you're doing multiple calls in the day gosh yeah let's jump to the next slide here so you know we found in our research that even the most driven ambitious salespeople they can have a tough time staying on track that's why pipeline management is so effective for everyone because it's going to refocus energy on what actually drives result you know creates that predictable playbook in sales especially prospecting really is a numbers game so for every one we want to hit those numbers as quickly and as efficiently as possible we talked a bit too about the all-star salesperson how sometimes you can't find that person and it might always you know not always be the best choice either so I wanted to ask your pêche you know when you're looking and interviewing potential salespeople what are some high-level things you look for and you know what tips can you give on just maybe little qualities and characteristics that they might have when you're hiring sure so you know now that we have a roadmap we have a playbook for what the sales manager or sales team needs to do we really try to focus on culture for one to personality you know our sales managers need to be personable and they need to be a likeable person for one we don't want timid people but you also don't want somebody that's over over the top sales so what we really look for is somebody that fits our company culture and somebody that understands sales but may not have the full experience of how sales works and and the ability to learn and retain information from us within the company you know using something like a vent temple really maps out exactly how they can do their job now when it comes to talking to the client and pitching that's where their personality comes into play and being a being a lack of a person ends up building the relationship with the client or potential client and at the end of the day people like to do business with people they like and people like to do business with their friends and if your sales team is effectively maintaining clients and being in front of them and and just touching base with them they're more likely to stay with you so we again we really look for the personality of the person if they have the ability to retain knowledge and learn and they fit our culture that that's really what we look for not not necessarily somebody that has 10-15 years of hotel sales experience it's it's really about the person that we look for that makes sense and then I was also gonna ask you know cold calling and prospecting let's face it for someone new it can be a little bit scary and tall reluctance is a real thing people can put it off and focus on easier tasks so when you develop your prospecting and your outreach planning strategy like how do you design that and what sorts of activities you have them do and how do you make that process maybe a little bit easier for them so that they're you know I've heard I've talked to some will tell you that they're like yeah just don't make cold calls I assume that's not the best approach can you contrast that with how you do it it danique yeah so cold calling is still there whether it's in person or over the phone or whether it's or email but nowadays nothing has to really be cold because we have so much data at our fingertips you know guests that are actually staying with us in our hotel or hotel against reports and and just knowing what the market dad is like now when you actually reach out to somebody that you know is either staying at your hotel or you know is staying in the market you can actually reach out to the client via phone email or in person and have data that you can you can talk to them about immediately right there your your now cold call is a warm call because you're coming with data that you can talk to the person about you know nobody likes somebody that comes in and just says hi I'm from hotel a and we want to earn your business you know every single Hotel does that but if you come in there and say hi I'm from hotel a and we've had you know a few guests specifically you know Bob Rupesh Amy and Joe from your company I've stayed with us in the past couple months and we want to see if there's the opportunity for us to earn more of your business or if there is more business in the area and right there now you've made it a warm lead because a you've name-dropped somebody that has stayed at your hotel from that company and so that you're not just anybody that's coming into the door and so those types of things really help in prospecting but the pipeline management of it is what's so important because prospecting you know you can have 10 15 20 prospect at any given time or you know even more than that but trying to have a Sales Manager remember all that or organize all that is nearly impossible and there's always going to be something that falls through the cracks but event temple having the pipeline dashboard allows you to see when you contacted somebody and when you should be following up and not trying to remember it all in your head because you know we're all human and things can get overloaded in our brains which make our productivity much less that definitely makes sense let's jump to the next slide here so just touching base on always be hustling and the importance of outreach you know we talked a little bit about how that process looks and how you motivate the team is learning till you just mention a few of the data market intelligence tools that you use you know you said intelligence I don't know if you're using og8 insights or star reports but could you just mention some of the tools that you use and just a quick summary of like how you use them so people that don't know them and haven't use them have a bit of an idea sure so we actually use a multitude of reports we use Hotel agents 360 we use demand 360 we use our star reports and we also use other internal reports that we create but the value isn't in any individual report it's really about combining the data between all of them so you know we'll use demand 360 to see a forecast of you know what market segments are our competitors booking in and how is their occupancy looking like in the future are we picking up on the same pace as them are they generating more L&R business and we are from a percentage standpoint of total inventory and or do they have a group block on the books you know demand 360 even allows you to see you know if your comp set has a block and how many has picked up that gives us the opportunity to be able to see you know let's say there's 50 group block rooms and the said well that might trigger us to say hey there's there's got to be something happening in our in our market what is that and can we try to go and capture that and potentially other business that's coming in so we we utilize all those reports and kind of use them hand-in-hand together as well as our PMS I mean we we look at report we look at the hotel agents report and we may see a specific agency that's booking a tremendous amount of business for a concept but not us and sometimes we'll see that they've stayed with us one or two times once you have at least one reservation that has stayed with you from an agency you can look up that IATA number in your property management system or most property management systems and be able to see you know what company that is you know dependent on your front desk agents capturing that company name at check-in which is also very very important but if they do capture that you're able then to see what company that is that's producing all those room nights from that agency and then you can you know then you have to hustle and try to dig for data on trying to find the right contact for that company but now you have data again when you do find that contact you can reach out to them reference the data you see in hotel engines 360 where you can see what production you're the top hotel on the market is getting how many room nights at what rate at what revenue you know how many roommates they have in the future and now again you're you're reaching out to this contact with data so it becomes more of a warm call than a cold call so you really have these days you really have to hustle not only in trying to reach out to the clients but really digging in for data so that you're working with true numbers you're working with true data and not just going subjective on trying to sell something that the person you know may not have ever experienced before or knows nothing about right and I'm just thinking of your example and I'm kind of picturing a situation where maybe I look at my PMS and I see the guest has been at my property in the past then I check event temple and I see they actually inquired for a group or corporate rate business with that and didn't book and then I can go on these other tools and see oh they've gone to my competitor what went wrong starts put stories together and you know is this business we want to go back and reach out to but I think it's an important point that all these different sources you need to really sit down and analyze the numbers but then make the story yourself and you know add that human element of reading into it a little bit absolutely Lissa let's jump to the next slide so one thing we founded a Venn temple that can be helpful is when you are doing outreach you want to make it personal ritesh touched on it earlier but people want to work with people that they know and like and I think part of that is caring about them and being empathetic towards their needs and what's going on with them so making it highly personal highly relevant and timely is key so you know if they're renegotiating a corporate rate agreement you know they're at a competitive low tel you know and that agreements coming for a Newell you've got that in your CRM you set a task for two weeks thirty days ahead of that and you decide when you're going to reach out so understanding the timeline of everything these days is really critical obviously if they're in a very busy time they're an event planner for a tournament you're not going to reach out during these as you see there and you're not going to send blanket emails or just drop in knowing nothing about them so definitely personalize it make it relevant and timely it one thing that Rupesh I think is great at then you definitely humble about but I know it to be a fact is he's really focused on relationships not selling and so it's about doing the right thing treating people how you'd want to be treated these simple things but putting the focus back on hospitality I read a really funny story last night about a guest when it was on I think a blog on LinkedIn and this guest was staying at a hotel and the security guards knocked on the door in the middle of the night at 4:00 a.m. and said hey I need you to come to the front desk your credit card expired and he's like what's going on four in the morning and such an example of what bad hospitality looks like and you know how to destroy a relationship so I think it's really important to remember that sometimes in this business two small things can become big things so I guess comes in the state of your hotel now you reach out you get to know them and they're bringing their whole tournament or their whole company here and then this be conversational and listening so we have a saying at our company that telling is not selling you want to think like a doctor right so when you go to the doctor he doesn't just go here's the cure and here's your prescription you take the time to go why did you come in today let's take a look at what's going on ask you some questions to make sure if you agree and only when he's 100% sure and you're both in agreement about the diagnosis do you prescribe and I think it's no different with hotels you want to really listen get a sense of their specific needs treat them like the unique person they are find out their main goals and then only offshore solution when you've really built that trust relationship yeah I mean one thing that's is you know you said listening is key and listening is key but also remembering is key so let's take a group for example that you've secured for this year and they have a lot of requests on how they want their group whether it's room locations or billing or you know maybe a special breakfast that's set up you enter all those notes into that account profile and when it's time for them to come back again and your sales manager is reaching out to them you can be in front of it and say we're looking forward to having you again if you're coming back to the area we understand that this is how you would like your billing your rooming list these are the special requests that you have and we'll have all that taken care of for you so that makes that personable cell where a year later or months later you already know exactly what they wanted it's like going to your favorite restaurant you walk in and the waiter already knows you already knows what dish you're gonna order and everything is very streamlined for you more than likely that's why it's your favorite restaurant granted the food probably tastes good but also because they know you and they know what your your preferences are and that's the same here with us as hotels is we have to remember what groups preferences are it's similar to how hotel loyalty programs work where they put in a lot of their preferences well when it comes to groups or meetings and things like that CRM is where you're gonna be hosing hosting all that data yeah definitely I think that's the essence of hospitality right being remembered having people care about you enough to keep your likes and preferences in mind well let's jump to the next slide so we talked about a process and clear systems of executing these processes so that again a sales team is focusing on the activity is not the result because they know that if they do the right activities at the right time consistently the results are going to come and so this is really around accountability I wanted to ask can you speak a little bit about why accountability is so important in this entire process and how do you keep the team accountable and on planets anique you know what are some key metrics you track or meetings that you have or just anything you do to keep the team aligned and focused really they're fully held accountable on the activities that they do in event temple because anybody can say they did something or they didn't get a piece of business because of something but everything needs to be put into to event temple so two things that we've done is or two things that have occurred from our accountability and event temple is one it kind of forces their adoption into the CRM so they are going to be inputting in everything that they do and how we kind of explain to our sales managers is don't think about what is good info to put in and what's not good info just put everything in there because it may not be valuable to them but it may be valuable to somebody else on our team such as a general manager or a catering manager or the revenue manager so we have them put every data in there so two things that allows it to do is self accountability for sales managers to see am i doing everything step by step the way I should you know what is my closure rate how long did it take me to follow up with somebody and then on the other side of the table it allows general managers above property man owners to be able to look into things like the activity report to see are they actually putting in the effort to closing business and if for those businesses for that time for those business that we don't close what was a reason for us not closing so everything is there and nothing becomes emotional on holding somebody accountable because people take accountability in many different ways a lot of people think accountability is discipline and accountability really isn't discipline accountability is more so are you fulfilling the responsibilities that you're hired to do and sometimes from a sales manager that doesn't always directly translate into revenue even if they're putting in the efforts because of multiple variables such as you know property upkeep or service and many other things so sales managers get held accountable for a lot of things that in my opinion I don't think all fully footballs on them and this this allows them to to have that data to show their superiors on what they've done and for the team as a whole where they need to get better I'd agree completely you know in my experience there's two forms of Management and when you manage sales team over time you start to learn that okay if I just hold them accountable to nothing but the result I'm gonna I'm gonna churn through sales people right I'm I have a lot of tough meetings there's going to be a lot of stress but I think when you manage the activities then you review that data and you go okay did we do the inputs we said we would yes we did and we still didn't get the results then it's not a person's problem to go hey magically fix it which just creates pure stress and honestly they don't know how or they would instead we're going okay now it's a team problem right we did the activities we said we would we didn't get the results let's brainstorm Newark as a group make a new list of activities and issues go actually huge them and see what you know what changed of course I also think learning from other people like talking to you in your experience on this webinar is a secret to kind of hack that and get there faster and then if you look at the data in the CRM you're going to be able to see what's worked in the past and have those playbooks to go okay we won this top account what was everything we ever did with them now from the moment we first connected till we sign that corporate rate agreement they you know produce that group of 500 roommate you know what what did that look like from start to finish play them out the key to data and from there let's just jump to the next slide of course there's a ton of data you can track and I know in our system we've got different types of reports we've got reports out of the box we've got custom reports graphs all sorts of stuff but from a high-level Rupesh what are some things that you would touch anyone listening to this webinar to be tracking and what do you measure for one when it comes to activity we we measure how much new business is being input into the system how many enquiries have we received and how many did we actually close how many property tours are we doing how many client follow-ups and are they doing the top 10 account follow-ups every single month those types of things is very important that that it's in the system and a recap of you know for example the top 10 client review calls on a monthly basis did they actually add in notes and and what was discussed on that call if your sales manager is just putting in you know had a call with company a and everything is fine well it allows us to go back and coach that sales manager initially and say you know that type of information being put in the CRM isn't that valuable we want to know more about you know how did the call go what things were discussed and what was the result of that call how was the feeling of the client at the end of the call and those types of things and once we're able to coach them you know we're able to monitor that again the following month and see how how much quality what quality were their notes that they added in and if they're still not putting in those quality content in there well then you know you might have to change sales managers and get somebody else because potentially they may not be actually performing those calls so the data that's being put in there and having a consistent review from a general manager or an above property manager to review those things allows you to coach them and then also hold them accountable on you know are they actually fulfilling these responsibilities because I think many many owners in the past they they never had direct sales efforts because they said they don't do anything you know all the leads come inbound and we know that that's not that's not true but also it was hard to hold sales managers accountable because if they said they're out on sales calls you don't really know where they are maybe they're having coffee with a friend or maybe they are actually having coffee with a client and so for them in putting in data into here will allow us to to see if they actually did what they did now we can't 100% ever hold anybody to be 100% honest but at least it's it's it's an effort to try to get there yeah absolutely and I imagine you pretty clear performance strands and patterns over time so that you can you know establish a history performance with different people right yeah and you know again turnover is big in our industry and you know if you have turnover in sales you can really lose a lot of accounts and for a new sales manager to come in and try to work from scratch it's going to take a long time for them to build that relationship back up with each of the clients because they have to earn their trust but if a new sales manager comes in studies event temple and sees what the history is and all the accounts it was communicated what potential issues there are when they actually reach out to the client to introduce themselves as new sales manager for that property well now you're not starting from scratch that the client will feel more comfortable that this person will take care of me just as good if not better than who the last sales manager was because they are up to speed on Who I am how we work and how my reservation process works how my billing works and all of that important all those important facts it helps retain business even through turnover that makes sense you want to have that data on hand so that if you hire someone new it's right there um let's jump to the next slide so high-performing sales teams are 1.5 times more likely to base four cats on data-driven insights and you know the inverse is also true it's going to go the other way and unfortunately only 46 percent of sales reps have data insights on customers so one of the key things that I want to ask you about refreshes sometimes I'll meet hotel owners and managers that will say like you know I don't know if we need a salesperson I don't know if we need a CRM or sale tool you know things aren't terrible it is extra money to spend is it really going to make that big of a difference what would you say to say to that and you know if I had to take that away from you how to affect how do you think would affect your hotels performing you know from my perspective it's I was I would look at it and say wow there's a big opportunity in this market because there's no sales efforts maybe I should build a hotel there but CRM is it's a must-have and if you haven't started using it then you definitely are not getting the efficiency from your sales team I mean and and they're also not able to be efficient because they don't have the tools to be efficient so take for example a group that you were trying to close didn't book with you they ended up booking with a with a property down the street well maybe the reason was because they want a full-service hotel in your select service hotel and that's their primary want well it'd be very inefficient for your sales manager to try to reach out to them again the following year and spend you know tremendous amount of time trying to close that business because we're not able to meet their needs and so having data and being able to see why we didn't close a certain group or what the group's wants and needs are will allow them to to focus their efforts on areas that will actually allow them to get a close or to to generate revenue if not they could be spinning their wheels and trying to capture business that you may just not have the right stuff for them or what their needs are for selecting a hotel so I think it's very important for any property to have that to set their sales managers up for success and then overall for the property sales efforts to be successful that makes sense well let's jump to the next slide and I think here I like to share my screen so if you can give me access to do so okay so I'm going to share my screen here and we've been talking a bit about pipeline management but I want to show you what a pipeline actually looks like in event temple and so let's spend a couple of minutes here not to your arm but the basic idea is that you've got all these different stages and these stages can be whatever you want but they're basically the sales process broken into steps and what I teach our sales team is don't try to jump from someone being a new inquiry to a booking try to move them to the next logical step in the process you can see here this is a very visual and drag-and-drop and this is designed to actually teach the salespeople how you want me to execute this process want to use it so it essentially gameís by a sales they're going to see every new inquiry they need to respond to where new prospect here in this stage they'll obviously qualify that business and see if it makes sense for the property and for the customer create the proposal which they can do by just clicking here send your document the emails connected to event up to date really nice-looking proposal email us the customer that they can sign it online without leaving the program and that's the key as well because if you're responding to requests for proposals quickly and they can find them online the sales process moves much faster means you're about 50 percent more likely to book that business and then of course when they booked it's going to turn green right here in become destiny we've also got a history of all of your accounts they've ever inquired with you done business with you you can track corporate rate production we can see all of your contacts we can manage tasks for the sales team the key here is everything we've talked about on this call of pipeline management and activity tracking and building playbooks and storing can be done in a vent temple and the whole idea behind this program is we wanted it to be something that would be affordable enough so that every hotel can use it because as we rush that if you're not using a CRM or if you don't have a sales team you're leaving big opportunities for your competitors or someone new to come in and build a hotel and take that initiative that you're not and it's going to put everything in one place so if you switch salespeople nothing is going to be lost and the key is just it's affordable to buy it's easy to onboard and start using it's not only programs in the past where you have someone come on-site for three days this is something that within half an hour you can show someone how to use they can watch the online videos and just start logging accounts logging tasks running reports sending proposals so whether it's a GM or a salesperson it's going to save them a lot of time and if you're managing them it's going to show you what are they actually doing every day and help you manage them so that they're happier at work they're getting results and your hotel is driving more revenue and more profits so that's an idea of how it is but I guess it's high-level drag-and-drop and everything the salesperson needs to do with this account or deal is right here so they can send them emails they can log tasks they can send documents they can track the taps by tight you know say what they're going to do and track the results and you can report on all of this in one place so I'm going to jump back now we can go back to Amy thank you Bob thanks for the presentation and thank you again refresh this fall we're gonna head into our kind of Q&A section here so I'm just gonna quickly look over to our question bank and give any questions about the presentation so far feel free to go over to the question Bank and type in your question there and then we can shoot those off to Bob and Rupesh we'll just take a moment for questions to get did all right we have one here for you - what do you think was one of the biggest factors in growing your sales revenue really at the end of the day it's it's organization without having being organized you kind of run around like a chicken with its head cut off and you're not sure where you need to focus or a sales manager is not sure where to focus your above property leaders or your general managers also don't know how to direct your sales managers so the key for us really was a CRM to not only keep things organized through a sales process but also for the historical data to go back and see what was booking when and be able to reach out to them prior to like I said we were doing a lot of paper sales managers would have to go into the property management system to try to go back you know run reports in the past but PMS is don't really have detailed information like a CRM so I think the organization that a CRM brings really catapulted our sales efforts awesome thank you repent I hope that answered your question there and we have one more question from one of our attendees this one's for Bob when looking Sales Manager for the hotel industry is it always important they come from hospitality industry or just something good sales trip lorem good salesperson that for sales history work history yeah so for that one I'm going to agree with what Ritesh said earlier we obviously meet a lot of salespeople at event temple throughout North America and also you know in Europe and Asia so I get to see it all over the world and I would say it really depends on who you work with and how you're coach so if you can find someone who is a great culture fit you know at our salary range you can afford and make sense and by all means take that person if they seem like an all-star it's not a bad thing it can be a great thing so experience is obviously very valuable but like the test said if you've got the right playbook and they have the passion in the drive and curiosity and they're hoping to be coaching and you have an organization that has a bandwidth to do it it can definitely work and sometimes it can also get you someone who's maybe going to stay a little bit longer being more loyal to your hotel or brand because they really respect and appreciate the opportunity that you've given them um repair that is that in line with what you were saying earlier yeah exactly I think you know another factor is it depends on what type of sales efforts your hotel needs you know in some markets that are you know tertiary markets they have a different type of sales effort or in a Highbury entry market let's take Silicon Valley for example it requires a lot more detailed and and enhanced sales efforts with data and digging and all those sorts of things so you know when it comes to the level of experience that somebody has it it does depend on your market but secondly the key point is how well your company's bandwidth for a training program is now having a CRM is definitely a big step in that because it is a roadmap for them but somebody that's not coming from the hospitality industry you know you do have to spend time when training them how to read a Star report what does what are the numbers mean Hotel agents reports how do you read it what do you use how do you use the data and those types of things which is not a bad thing because somebody that is good really good person doesn't in sales and just doesn't understand hospitality for you to be able to train them in that does definitely create some loyalty and appreciation for for training them to bring him up to the level of what your expectations are thank you for passion Bob and so today that wraps up our webinar if you have any more questions for us you feel free to find us on LinkedIn on Facebook feel free to connect and if you're interested in a demo as well you can go to event temple comm or email our CEO directly Bob at a mental event temple comm thanks again for joining everyone