A New Dawn for The Screamin’ Sales Manager
Today I was pretty busy. I did some soliciting over the phone this morning working on trying to get some appointments for next week. Finally all of my letters went out and are completed. And my traces are caught up. Since we don’t have any sales program in the office, I still use the old trace system writing down the group name on index cards. We even still use the big “bibles” for our function bookings. Pretty amazing and what a pain. I waited for my tour bus to arrive tonight…est 5pm…just 16 rooms and found out that they weren’t arriving until after 10pm. Everything was all ready for them so I left to go home about 6:30pm.
I have almost 16 years experience in the hotel industry and I have worked in every department with the exception of Housekeeping….can’t even keep my own home clean! My most recent hotel – full service mid class – is just under 350 rooms with 15,000 square feet of flexible meeting space.
We are located 2 miles of an airport so we draw a lot of business from the airlines and distress passengers. The hotel is newly renovated but still has area’s that could look better and there are projects that we are still working on. They renovated for over 3 years so a lot that has been done is looking worn now. There was no preventative maintenance program ever in place. Yes, I have never experienced a 3 years renovation plan either until now.
I’ve been there almost 2 years to date working mostly as Director of Sales in a 3.5 man office – p/t secretary, 2 catering sm and me the DOS…by 2008 we were down to 1 catering sm (1 had to be let go) and myself and finally I got more hours for the secretary to work with the Catering sm. I mostly booked SMERFE groups. We did increase sales but not enough although we did make budget 9x out of 12. Still many service issues and rude staff. When the new GM came aboard about 2 months ago, I simply was tired of being beat up by my guest’s and the back stabbing, gosh. I asked to be a Sales Manager and for them to bring in someone new to handle this mess.
My new boss is pretty cool and I like her. So I was asked to work in Corporate Transient Segment which I did for 2 weeks and then I was asked to take on the SMERFE Sales Manager position that they were interviewing for. Although at first I was a bit offended, but when I thought about it I realized that I really enjoyed working with the groups….so I’m settled now and plugging away. I have the gift of patience and I’m very friendly so I fit well with all types of SMERFE clients.
Most of the Management Team was let go and new people are being brought in. At first I felt like I was walking on eggs shells each day as these new people were so hard to read. They were and still are always behind closed doors and you just don’t know what is going on or if you are going to be the next one fired. I’m in my 40′s now and I simply want to settle down, book tons of business and have some fun.
I don’t have an interest in hotel hopping anymore as like I did when I was younger simply to make a few bucks more. I did think about looking for a new sales job but my positive benefits list simply out weighed the negative. I like the staff and I know the product and I want to be a part of the team that turns this hotel around. I don’t feel like that everyday though….
Good luck selling tomorrow. I’ll be back.
