Sales prospecting automation for hospitality

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hello everyone and a very warm welcome for another session of hospitality sales the topic that we are going to cover today is the hospitality sales process in that process the first step is the prospecting of new customers is what we are covering today my name is chavi sahai and i work as an assistant professor at ais sms college of hotel management and catering technology so the learning objective of this session are to learn about the various methods of prospecting what are the various things that we do while prospecting so these are the steps that are a part of the hospitality sales process starting with prospecting pre-approach approach towards the customer the negotiation that happened how you overcome the objections closing in on the deal and then follow-up for the session today we are covering prospecting and in the subsequent lectures we will cover rest of the steps so what is sales prospecting sales prospecting can be defined as a process of searching for a or identifying a potential customer or clients for the purpose of generating new business for the company sales prospecting involves reaching out to multiple individuals to find out which amongst them could be a potential customer the goal of prospecting is to develop a solid database of people who are interested in your business or who are qualified as to fitting in a certain criteria and then we reach out to them in hopes of converting them from potential customer to new customer so what's a prospect or who's a prospect a prospect would be a potential customer that has met your following criteria first that he falls in your target market for example if you have a five-star deluxe hotel probably you would not be targeting a company that has just the strength of maybe 10 to 15 employees because they will not have any uh function of that scale to be doing it in a five-star deluxe hotel not to comment on anybody's financial situation just that their budget would be not that much then the prospect has to have means to buy what you are selling so the financial aspect of the business also has to be considered third the prospect should have the power to make the purchase decisions the people you are speaking to should have some power in making the decisions otherwise we are wasting our time so once we have identified who meets the criteria we move the prospect to the next step in the sales cycle so third we come to what is the type of various types of prospects in the sales language or the sales parlance that we say first is the cold prospect somebody who's just not interested in your product or services that you are selling another would be a warm prospect somebody who's shown some interest while doing the sales call when you are speaking to them they have shown somewhat interest in your product or services that you are selling third would be a hot prospect somebody who's really excited about the products that you are selling so this sales of the process of sales prospecting involves categorizing the prospects into these categories next we come to what's the difference between lead and a sales prospect okay before planning a sale we have to do our research to identify the people or company who might be interested in your product so first a lead is a potential buyer somebody who you see may become your customer later on and a prospect is that kind of lead that has qualified or which seems to be ready or willing and able to buy the product or service that you are selling next we come to the difference between a lead and prospect a common confusion in sales and marketing world is the usage of words like leads and prospect any potential customer or client who hasn't been qualified as a prospect yet is your lead okay for example if you go to suppose you're selling apps in the technology sector so you will go to a trade fair where you you will show your app to a lot of people so many people will be interested in that particular app so all those people will be ta you can term them as a lead but then these leads align with the persona of your target the people that you are targeting then they will become your customer so lead is a potential customer or a client who has expressed interest in your company or services and a prospect is a lead that becomes a prospect if you match the criteria of your buyers persona which means the financial and all the other aspects that you want to target in a customer next we come to why sales prospecting is important what is the importance of it sales is the lifeline of any company naturally sales representative play a crucial role in bringing in the cash flow by finding new prospects and converting them into customers prospecting is absolutely crucial because it keeps the sales pipeline occupied means there are always leads and prospects which are lined up when sales people are always on the lookout for leads and prospects the chances of getting them converted are much higher okay sales prospecting needs to continue it cannot be that you think now i have lots of customers so i don't need to do prospecting no because business has to keep growing so the prospecting has to continue this will ensure that the company has large enough customer base and it outshines its competitors even in the times of slow growth or during a recession now we come to the various techniques of prospecting so fifty percent of this time generally as per a research is wasted in unproductive prospecting so the most important aspect would be that we do not waste our crucial time which will be again disastrous for business that is why businesses need to be aware of proper sales prospecting techniques to kill off any unproductive hours and make the most of the time of the sales people sales prospecting techniques can be broadly classified as outbound prospecting and inbound prospecting so first we come to outbound prospecting it is a traditional form of sales prospecting in which the sales representative conduct a lot of research on their target market and they reach out to the prospects with the intent of converting them into customers outbound prospecting involves things like cold calling which means uh you know making unsolicited calls to sell a product or a service to a prospect it is a fairly outdated method of selling something to customer sometimes the customers get annoyed rather than being interested in your product okay so sales cold calling is not adhered to so much nowadays next is social spamming which involves sending a lot of unwanted social media messages or emails etc to sell a product or a service third is a drop-in which just means simply involves it means that showing up at a prospect business in hopes of you converting them into a customer so you just land up at their office or they're from the place of business and you just introduce yourself and you start selling your product so all these are known as outbound techniques of prospecting next we come to inbound prospecting inbound prospecting is where the customers come to your business due to some information that they may have found about you so it's like a reverse process this includes social media platforms and other places across the internet where they've come across your name a big part of inbound prospecting is the use of crm which is your customer relationship management tool which gives you a detailed outlook of how the cross prospect first exited your website what pages they viewed what actions they have taken have they downloaded anything from your site etc so all this knowledge helps you in uh getting to know the prospect's intent whether he intends to buy or not second would be warm emailing prospecting can start off with a sales rest representative by introducing themselves via a warm email we don't just jump right in with the sales page you know start selling your product you just spend some time to introduce yourself and how do you find a found out about the prospect next is the social selling which is the very in thing nowadays which involves use of various social media platforms to nurture the leads and find out whether they can qualify as our prospect next we come to prospecting criteria how do we decide whether somebody is our prospect or not so we only target the prospects that are willing to buy or fit in our ideal customer profile okay in terms of financial status in terms of their personality in terms of their spending power various other things what class do they belong to etc so some of the questions that you can ask yourself before you um approach them would be what industry are they in where are they located in their office etc what is the title of the decision maker the person who's making all the decisions whom you are speaking to what is his title what can they spend as in what would be their budget and what challenges if any are they facing in terms of having an event in your hotel or any other things in terms of rooms booking etc so these are some of the questions that help you decide next we come to the prospecting strategy the strategy that a hotel sales representative or as a department we should adopt is you create a list of potential leads by conducting a research to find out the the information about your prospect sale representative and you know use social media their exact existing network reference to create a solid lead okay but if you already have a solid customer base you should spend some time creating an ideal customer profile but is that your customer should look like okay in terms of various aspects all these different types of outreach work better for different types of prospects next we come to various steps in prospecting first is to define your target persona okay remember the criteria we talked about earlier for being qualified as a prospect the first step would be to define what the criteria is for your company whether the lead that you are pulling falls in your target market or not he has the wings and the means to buy what you are selling and also does he have the power to make purchasing decisions next step would be to do your research once you have a clear image of your ideal customer you should start researching from different sources you should try and find out whether this person qualifies as a prospect or not it can be social media it can be customer referrals trade shows business magazines etc third would be to prioritize the prospects once you have decided that this is my list you prioritize so that you can save time and effort while ensuring that you only go after the prospects who have the highest probability of being your customer next would be the first contact okay how do you first contact the customer you can use any of the above mentioned ways of inbound or outbound sales prospecting to make the first contact next is the step is building relationships the outbound uh outcome of prospecting is to open up and explore the relationship between the company and the prospect and to determine whether both parties can benefit from such a mutual relationship or not a key takeaway from this process is always to record the exchange between the sales representative and the prospect as in you make a report you report to your sales manager anything that happened during the meeting we can always go back and check what was it look like earlier and how it is now next we come to sources of prospecting very important how do you source various prospects if the list is not very extensive it can be referrals from the past and present clients somebody who is already your guest you can ask referrals other departments which are there in within the large corporation or groups that are related to the property where you are currently serving suppose you are you know approaching tata as a company tcs as a company for your sales prospecting but any other company that is a part of the tata group you can ask tcs to give you a referral for say a company of uh you know voltas air conditioner okay because that also is a tata company so probably you can approach them using this reference third would be a local organizations and companies you can ask them for the prospect that you are looking for next would be the community so community contacts would mean uh getting referrals or any contacts of prospects from the community the area where you are based in next would be a front desk personnel because front desk people come in contact with a lot of customers so they can probably give some leads to the sales department regarding the customer who can become your potential customer in terms of bank with booking or other future bookings etc next would be your other property employees like if you are a chain hotel then people from other properties can give you some prospects next would be the properties competitors because we all as a chain are a part of the same sector say or five star deluxe hotels other hotels suppose they are not doing very well and they are half percent occupied so they can also give you some prospects there are some days in the winter months when we are all very busy so that time probably they can give you some reference for that you have to have good contacts and there will be some other sources people who you come across with in terms of your sales calling etc can give you contacts next most important would be the networking that you have with all your peers your colleagues your employees when you go out in the field and last but certainly not the least would be internet because there you get the information about everybody so all these sources you can employ then you use all of the above mentioned strategies also sometimes in sales field you are still going to hear a no from the customer but relationships including business relationships are built over time so the key is to be consistent in your pursuit of gathering amazing prospects and converting them into customers so we come to the end of this session i would like to thank you all for listening in please follow the link which is there in the description box and attempt the quiz i would also like to give credit to the following sites from where i have sold some pictures for this presentation thank you everyone