Hotel & Motel Management - November 19, 2007 - (Page 10)

10 Sales Clinic IN THE details Customer relations are key First calls get no response Failure to call occurred often Human contact valued more H&MM November 19, 2007 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition Sales managers fail to respond to inquiries t is a wonder that we do not know how much group business is lost on a daily basis because of sales personnel not responding promptly to telephone inquiries. We have known this problem has existed for some time with electronic requests for proposals because we reported on this several months ago. Meeting News magazine I By Howard Feiertag H&MM Columnist did a study and found that the No. 1 complaint from meeting planners was that hotel sales departments were not responding promptly to RFPs. Since we reported on this, we have received a number of responses from our readership with information on how some companies have installed new high-tech devices to take care of that prob- lem. We will cover this new information in a future column. Now we have found some notso-new information regarding telephone inquiries getting similar poor attention. Group sales are a signiﬁcant source of revenue for most hotels, yet according to a test completed by Quality Track International during the month of September, ho- What you can imagine, we can create. Why stop designing when you get to fixtures? With Signature Design Studio™, from Symmons you don't have to. While everyone else is choosing someone else's fixture from a catalog, we'll work with you to turn your design idea into custom-manufactured bathroom fittings. So contact us, and be amazed how simple and fast it is to turn your imagination, into reality. tel sales departments fail terribly at the most basic function: Responding to initial customer telephone inquiries. Fully 25.5 percent of initial customer contact inquiries go unanswered. Quality Track International, a leading provider of group sales mystery shopping services exclusively to the hospitality industry, placed more than 3,000 test calls to more than 750 on-property sales departments in North America and tracked responses. Across all tiers and brands evaluated, a sales manager was available to handle customer inquiries just 49.4 percent of the time. If a sales manager was not available, a detailed inquiry message was left. Sales managers failed to respond to these messages before the end of the next business day more than 51.7 percent of the time. So, when we look at this from a standpoint that almost half of the 3,000 calls did not get a call back, how much business could that possibly represent? It sure looks like a lot of money left on the table. Results were tracked by brand and tier (deluxe, upscale, and midprice). Surprisingly, little or no difference was found in the performance of sales managers across tiers. It appears that in most cases where messages were left, it was accomplished via voicemail. In some cases, messages for sales managers were left with a person. In cases where messages were left with a person, callbacks occurred at a higher rate; 54 percent vs. 49 percent via voicemail. In our business of hotel sales, we know that it is not unreasonable for a sales manager to be unavailable maybe even more that 50 percent of the time. After all, the job function entails a lot of being out of the ofﬁce or even busy elsewhere on site. More speciﬁc results of the study are available by contacting Donald Bundock, c.e.o., at (416) 693-5426 or by e-mail at Don. Bundock@qualitytrack.com. hmm@questex.com Howard Feiertag is on the faculty of the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Va. He can be reached at howardf@vt.edu. 1- 8 0 0 - SY M M O N S | w w w. s y m m o n s .c o m /s i g n a t u re CIRCLE NO. 131 create http://HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition http://www.symmons.com/signature http://www.symmons.com/signature

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - November 19, 2007

Hotel & Motel Management - November 19, 2007 Contents Torrid Hotel Sales Pace Persists Boykin Takes Steps to Regain Foothold Best Western Sets 10-year Plan Perspective At Your Risk HotelWorld Update Sales Clinic Events Trends & Stats Charting H&MM's Top Lodging Design Firms Fitness Equipment Supplier News PMS Software Provides One-Click Solutions High-Quality Linens Require Higher-Quality Cleaning Despite Slow Market, Condo Hotels Thrive Ad/Editorial Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - November 19, 2007

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