How to qualifying your sales leads

One of the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of sales team in hotel industry is revenue which usually focus on room and catering & event and sometimes, other department too, such as, Food and Beverage, membership, etc.

Good planning, smart strategy and timely execution can definitely support the sales team to focus on the target market and to achieve the targeted goal. 

After conducting market research and competitive intelligence, sales team will have the list of companies that might be interested in the hotel product and services offered.  So, how to find out the interest of a company to try staying and using your hotel product and services.

This is the time when a good qualifying process of a prospected business must be implemented.  But what does actually ‘A qualifying process of your sales leads’ mean?

A qualifying process of sales lead is a process to assess the prospect client’s needs and wants and determine the next appropriate actions.  By doing this, it is expected that sales team are able to analyze and accommodate the client’s requirement.

Here, I will elaborate on how to qualifying your sales leads.

First. Identify the objectives

Create a SMART objective so you can focus on what information to gain from the client.  SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound.

Several examples on the objectives are as follow,

• To introduce your hotel function room facilities and attractive offer to a large multi-national bank that currently uses another hotel to held its meeting and social event.
• To increase long staying ratio of one-bedroom and two-bedroom unit type. You create this objective when you know that there is an upcoming infrastructure project in the city and one construction company has won the bid and will bring several experts for long term based.
• To increase the occupancy on weekend from leisure market.

Second. Recognize the client’s needs and wants by using question words to discover more depth information

• Understand the 5W and 1H question words. Those are What, Where, When, Why, Who and How.
• By using a question word ‘What’, you will be able to identify, such as, the client’s requirements, the budget they wish to spend, their preferences, their special request, their important factors in choosing a hotel accommodation.
• A question word ‘Where’ can help you to find out the destination and location they plan to organize the event or to stay, the hotel chain or brand preferences, any star rating preferences, a city or resort preferences.
• A question word ‘When’ can give the indication on the periods that the client plan to travel or hold an event, is it during slow, shoulder or peak periods, is it during a city high situation, is it on weekdays or weekend periods, is it during school holiday periods.
• Using a question word ‘Why’ can help you to gain information on why the client chooses a specific hotel. You can then understand the USPs of your hotel versus other hotel, product and facilities, quality of service, the attractiveness of loyalty program.
• A question word ‘Who’ can help you to identify who is the decision maker, who will be responsible for booking, who will influence the process of choosing accommodation, type of client that will stay or attend the event, is there a high rank personnel that will stay at the hotel.
• Use a question word ‘How’ can assist you to gain information, such as, to understand on the process of negotiation as well as the decision making such as the time required, the number of persons involved, the preference of method of communication such as using email, using WhatApps, using telephone, the understanding of response time.

To ensure that you will not miss several points during a business qualifying process, I would recommend to establish a check list on questions that you will ask.  This check list can be created with generic questions, then add more customized questions based on the market you aim to target.

Third. Review the finding

Study and review the result from all of information received based on questions you have asked. You will then determine whether or not the client is potential to your hotel or on the other hand, your hotel product and services might not suit to the customer’s requirement.  The finding will support the next action to be taken.

If you find the findings of a particular client are not potential to your hotel, you might want to consider storing this client information as part of a sleeping account for the time being.  Do note that a sleeping account might also become a new prospect in the future.

Happy hunting.