Sales Manager and Time Management……
I have one word…Time Management. This is the skill that I will have to conquer this week with the Opera Training for this week. I’m not sure what to expect……I’m not sure if I will have to go to every class…..I’m not sure about the program at all. This is going to be interesting.
I start tomorrow with 7 days of Opera Sales Training. Plus, afterwards, the assistance of inputting data. All of the future bookings from group rooms to catering events, accounts and traces and God knows what will need to be entered. So, I’m hoping that I will have time to “Sell”! This is where the Time Management Skills will come in. No goofing off, limited smoke breaks and focus.
We are picking up now in the groups and banquets. It is going to be very busy. Hopefully the Management Team will hire the additional Sales People that we are in great need of in the Sales Office soon. I know that they are getting close to their decision on the Catering Sales Rep and the Corporate Transient Sales Rep.
I’m still getting used to the new formats and contracts. They take me so long to complete and so far everyone one of them I submitted to my DOS to sign off on, had a typo. They are so detailed and I’m not saying that’s bad, but boy it takes some time. I haven’t worked with that many of them but I changed my format so that I will be sure not to hand in any more contracts with mistakes. It’s embarrassing. A contract should always be reviewed anyway.
I’m struggling with this attrition deal. This effects both banquets and rooms. I have never worked with attrition before. We did shop calls on some of the other local hotels and yes, they do attrition too. So it was interesting to me to see how they sold it because when I first heard we were applying that to our contracts, I frankly panicked a bit. The clients will be accountable for 80% of their room block for banquet event.
I have found this policy to be a challenge with the brides who are looking to block rooms for their wedding guests. But, I remind myself that my competition is selling to them the same way.
Although it isn’t fair that the hotel takes their rooms out of the inventory lets say for 20 rooms and they only pick up 7. They should be held accountable. Brides make me laugh, don’t they make you laugh too? They always request a million rooms and truly they have no idea where their guests are going to stay. I have learned to ask them how many invitations they are sending out to get a rough idea on how many rooms that they may have. And it also depends on where the families are coming in from. So when I ask……how many invites…..and they say 100, what makes me think that they are going to pick up 50 rooms???? LOL. It’s not there fault, they really don’t know.
And another question…..learned from my own personal experience……I always ask now if they are going to list more than one hotel? Why do I ask? Well, some of them will note multipal hotels to choose from in the area. When I noticed that a couple of my blocks weren’t picking up, I called and one of them told me that they also listed another hotel. Sure enough the other bride told me the same thing. What? Well, this attrition will certainly assist in making sure that I book my share. If they are going to sign a contract with me then I will need to make sure that they hold to their end of the bargain.
Selling a farewell breakfast is a piece of cake to these types of groups. They will only meet in your restaurant or at another restaurant to meet for breakfast and wish each other farewell anyway. Why not Sales get credit for it? Give them a small meeting room that is their own, and sell them the deal. If you ask I would bet that you will get at least 50% of them wanting to do this and they will love you for it.
Well, I’ll keep you updated on my Time Management Skills and the Opera Training.
Have a great Monday!
Pure Energy
