Hospitality Blog

Training to keep your hotel sales effort strong

Mary Miller — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:27:07 -0600

The thoughts below may seem like basic ideas, but you might be surprised how many people forget these three little rules. It is always good to take the time to refresh your thoughts. It may help close your next deal.

Face negatives that come up along the way. It is always safest to tell your client "please let me look into that and get back to you." Have the client focus on priorities and let them know it's in their best interest for you to investigate appropriate information.

Know how to "close" the sales call. It's a special skill to turn your conversation with a prospect into an action that takes the sales process to the next step. Do you end your call with a request for a follow-up meeting, or ask permission to submit a proposal?

Negotiating is simply part of the process. The sales manager needs to insure your client that you have the best product out there in order to begin any negotiation. If the sales manager enters the discussion unwilling to negotiate, chances are the deal will not happen and no one moves forward in a win-win situation.

To read the full article click here.

“2008 Food for Thought”

Mary Miller — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 15:08:52 -0600

eHoteliers, Bert van Walbeek, wrote a fun article on the importance of common sense for the hospitality industry (or for pretty much anyone lacking in that area).

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile in your future hotel career are first “hard work”,
then second “perseverance”, and third, “common sense”.

Take a glance and give us some thoughts to chew on for the New Year.

Happy Holidays from us at New Media Gateway!

Domains - Pick One Favorite and Stick With It

Tyson Kirksey — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:59:04 -0600

Many of the CVBs we work with here at NMG own multiple domain names that point to their city's website. In fact, many businesses and organizations with any kind of web presence have secured multiple domain names, and there are many good reasons to do so. Domain names are very cheap, easy to own and represent future marketing opportunities.

Unfortunately, the use of multiple domains on the web can sometimes interfere with SEO efforts. You may understand your website to be a business tool, but search engines know websites by one thing - the domain name (or URL). If your website's domain name is constantly changing, or there are multiple domain names that display the same website, search engines start to get confused. At this point, they are presented with a choice - which domain to include in the search results, and which domain to ignore as a duplicate entry.

I should explain further why using multiple domains online can impact SEO. First, history and longevity are a part of today's search engine rankings. Search engines feel comfortable listing websites that have stood the test of time, or sites that have built up credibility over the years. If you change your website's domain name every year, it's going to be hard to get ahead of your competition.

Second, credibility can be split between two domains. If your organization uses www.visitmycity.com and www.mycitystate.com simultaneously, your credibility is split between those two domains instead of being compiled together on one. We know that the more links your website has from other websites, the greater chance your website has to rank well in the search engines. But if half of the links are pointing to www.visitmycity.com and the other half are pointing to www.mycitystate.com, you may only be realizing half of your SEO potential.

If this is the situation you find yourself in, don't worry. There are ways to have your cake, and eat it too. The easiest solution is to simply redirect the additional domains back to the primary website domain name using a server-side redirect. With this redirect in place, you are still able to use the purchased domains for advertising purposes, particularly offline advertising. A user who types in the domain would just be immediately redirected to your primary website URL. This is an easy and pain-free process that your web host can setup.

If this doesn't work for you, or you'd like to actively market multiple domains in the online space, there are other ways to ensure that the search engines don't get confused with your approach. A competent SEO consultant can offer the right advice for handling your particular situation.

To recap, pointing multiple domains to your website can potentially handicap your SEO efforts. Speak with your SEO consultant about managing your domains properly, in a way that works for your organization.

New Google Analytics Features on the Way!

Tyson Kirksey — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:32:35 -0500

At eMetrics today, Google unveiled several enhancements to its free analytics software. Among those is native support for outbound link tracking. This should please many NMG clients, as I think the number one request I get from marketers is the ability to track the number of times a member listing link was clicked. With these new features, CVBs will be able to see exactly how many visitors linked from the CVB website to a member's website from the member listing page. Cool, huh?

Once again, Google comes through with a great product update. What's that old saying...if it sounds to good to be true, it's probably a Google product. Where else can you get these types of reports for free?

Starting the Week Off Right

Tyson Kirksey — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:50:51 -0500

Dennis Mortensen, COO of Indextools and author of the VisualRevenue blog, wrote a great piece this weekend entitled What and how to measure Online Travel and Hospitality websites. Go read it immediately...you'll be glad you did.

Here's an excerpt:

Knowing your visitors is an extremely important consideration for the success of your Web site or online marketing strategy. Addressing your key audiences and providing them with relevant information is one of the key aspects of any travel and hospitality site. If your site does not speak directly to each of these audiences, you will lose most of them to the competition.

Link to full post.

WIIFM - What all of your prospects listen to ...

Greg Colunga — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:48:47 -0500

So, has anyone heard of this WIIFM jazz before? If you have not yet, it should be something that is ingrained into your head as a marketer (or sales representative) for a DMO moving forward.

Like I said, WIIFM is not a radio station … but it IS something that all of your prospects will sit up, and listen to. It stands for: What’s In It For Me?

Each of you is a consumer in your lives outside of what you do professionally to marketing or sell your destination, so let’s put our consumer hat on for a minute. Think about the last time that you went to buy a car. How was your experience? Did the sales person listen intently to your needs, or the tips/hints that you were laying out there for them to pick up on? Have you ever purchased from someone that just pushed their own agenda, or basic product information that was not necessarily tailored to YOUR needs? Of course not!

So, how can you manipulate WIIFM to your advantage? It’s simple … just take a minute to think about it. Just like you when you’re the consumer – you want a personal and intimate sales experience so you don’t just feel like another number. Everyone loves feeling warm and fuzzy … it’s in the human genetics. In case you did not notice, your prospects are humans, too. :)

Knowing this is the case, put yourself in their shoes! Unless you are attacking a new vertical that you have never sold into, or had experience in – there’s a chance that your current customers are the best resource to share things with you that will help you (as the wolf) to get into the sheep’s (or your prospect’s) clothes. Building surveys, or simply taking the time to call them to discuss the most common challenges that they are facing will help you tailor messaging to attract more leads or opportunities.

When it comes to building your email marketing messages, newsletters, website, and/or your basic sales efforts – WIIFM is something that you have to remember, or risk your marketing database (and in some extreme cases ... even your customers) tuning you out.

It is extremely important to remember to provide value to your prospects AND customers in every touch point. If you can take the extra day or so to ensure the message or touch point is value-enriched, you will notice responses, click activity, calls, or contact form submissions from your website increasing each and every time you go out to market.

Today, more than ever, you have to fight hard to separate yourself from the competition ... and the best way to do that is listen to what your prospects are telling you they want to hear and speaking that to them. Once you have done that, you will soar above the crowd.

Until next time …

--GC

RSS Defined, Explained and Leveraged

Tyson Kirksey — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:23:13 -0500

I know...you're on the brink, and the last thing you want to hear about is another web acronym. Believe me, I feel your pain. I mean, I work in search engine marketing, which means all day I use PPC and SEO to drive traffic and then measure the CR, CPA and ROAS for all of my SEM clients. Nevertheless, I think it's important that all web / e-commerce marketers understand RSS.

RSS, or real simple syndication, is basically just an XML text file that contains the latest content from part or all of a website. I really can't do a better job than Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger, so I'll point you there for RSS 101. Don't forget to come back, though, because I'm going to explain why you should care about RSS next.

Are you back? Good. Let's walk through some scenarios of why RSS is a good choice for CVB and destination websites. The truth is, any content on your website can be syndicated in the RSS format, but you really only need to syndicate items that change regularly. For a CVB website, this might includes items such as:

City News
Calendar of Events
Hotels Deals
Vacation Specials
Blog Entries
Blog Comments

For example, a user may be interested in keeping up with the latest events in your particular city, but they are unlikely to bookmark your website and then browse to the calendar of events page every day looking for new events. However, if they could subscribe with their RSS reader, they would be assured to get any updates without having to spend time looking for new events manually. Do you see the benefit? Visitors get the new content they are looking for automatically as soon as the content is updated.

Of course RSS was fueled by the explosion of the blogosphere, but now RSS is used for almost every type of content. Visitors get the content they are looking for, and website publishers stay engaged with their visitors.

Now that you know what RSS is, why don't you try it for yourself and subscribe to this blog using the RSS link at the top left column?

Questions? Comments? Let's hear 'em!

Buyers = Irrational!

Lou McErlean — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:05:00 -0500

To my fellow salespeople...

Here is information from a technology sales guru named Paul DiModica. He concentrates in the technology arena, but the points he makes in this entry are pertinent and important to salespeople in any industry, including destinations. This information provides an "inside -the-head" glance of meeting planners and other decision-makers so you can understand other key emotional factors which affect whether they buy from you or someone else.

In understanding that the purchaser may place more emphasis upon emotional factors, it is important to surround yourself with tools, and processes to more effectively communicate with them at all times. If you are looking for technology solutions that can help you as a destination marketer to communicate more effectively while at the same time minimizing the amount of time and effort to do so, you should consider broadcast (email, or other) systems that provide you with campaign automation capabilities. Another option could be a system that has a library of pre-approved messaging for milestone phases of the sales cycle.

Anyhow, it is a great read, and felt it would provide some significant value to you ... regardless if you are selling technology, or a destination.

--Lou

Like you and I, senior executive prospects are just people. They have physical, financial, security, emotional, and psychological needs that must be met on a daily basis for them to function in their personal and professional lives.

When these needs are not met, an imbalance happens in their daily functions and they (like the rest of us) adjust their behavior to compensate for those missing elements.

Many times, sales and marketing team members believe prospects base their purchase decisions on the rationale of having the most system features or the lowest price, or even because the salesperson has worked with the prospect for 12 months and developed a "relationship" with them.

Selling and marketing to senior management buyers
is not a rational process.

Provided to Paul DiModica by eMarketer.com under contract.

Many times, they do not spend money based on the obvious rules of engagement or logical criteria as a result of objectivity, but in fact irrational reasons that would not be a factor in another deal.

Have you ever lost a deal to a competitor whose product or service was inferior or more expensive than yours?

The reason for this is the higher you go in the organizational chart to sell management, the more emotional and complicated the sales process becomes.

That's why selling to senior management is not easy. It is not a mathematical model of steps, actions and reactions . . . and that's one reason why most sales methods fail.

Salespeople assume if they take a senior management prospect through specific sequential sales steps that at the end of the buying cycle, the obvious conclusion would be to obtain a purchase order, but this is incorrect.

Instead, selling is a premeditated process of trying to reduce illogical reactions and walking the prospect through the pain management decision process to give you a purchase order based on their rational and irrational needs being met.

Below is our Value Forward Business Pain Decision Funnel that will help you identify both the rational and irrational decision processes that senior management goes through in the sales cycle.

By viewing this funnel, you notice the primary rational elements of a decision must be met usually before the irrational needs are met.

But even this sequence of decision making is suspect with some buyers. What happens in most senior management buying cycles is the prospect moves from a rational to an irrational position when weighing the maximum achievable pain management benefit (rational) against the maximum acceptable risk conditions (irrational).

So, in order to sell more, salespeople must identify the irrational behavioral risks the senior management team will be experiencing during their buying process. Just because you and I may categorize their behavior as irrational does not mean that it is irrational to them. Their behavior (although unplanned) may be based on actual internal issues that have been verbalized to them.

Provided to Paul DiModica by eMarketer.com under contract.

Irrational buying behavior manifests itself in two ways: 1) visibly and 2) invisibly.

Visible Irrationality is when a prospect openly identifies to you (usually by verbal communication) business fears of managing their business pain.

"Paul, if we do not select the right system to manage our applications, the board will take corrective action."

Invisible Irrationality is when a senior management prospect displays irrational actions without giving input to the seller as to why they are responding this way. At times, this may appear to be a sales negotiation tactic, but it may be irrational behavior based on their internal or personal corporate issues.

Here is a list of several factors that generate irrational behavior during the sales cycle by a senior management prospect:

Fear of losing their job based on an incorrect decision;
Fear of embarrassment in front of their peers;
Fear of embarrassment in front of their subordinates;
Fear of embarrassment in front of their management; or
Fear of not getting a bonus.

How to Manage Irrational Behavior In Buyers

Irrational is defined by dictionary.com as: 1. Without the faculty of reason; deprived of reason. 2. Without or deprived of normal mental clarity or sound judgment; 3. Not in accordance with reason; utterly illogical: irrational arguments.

When selling into a complex environment with multiple decision makers and influencers, it is important that sales, marketing, operations and senior management are all aligned together to capture revenue as a team. When departments or executive management teams hold back corporate resources or do not participate in the revenue capture model, irrational behavior becomes internal (your company) as well as external (the client).
Be more proactive instead of reactive in your anticipation of having irrational clients. Why are you surprised that many clients make bad buying decisions? Do you think all clients know how to buy correctly?
Create proactive communication devices up front to give to prospects like engagement outlines, consequence management directives and sales objection white papers in anticipation of prospect issues before it happens.

If you are seeking to sell more products or services, study the Value Forward Business Pain Decision Funnel and do not ignore irrational behavior by the buyer. The more you understand or identify non-fulfilled segments of the funnel, the faster you can close the prospect.

In sales and marketing best practices execution, it is not what prospects say -- it is what they do!

Paul R. DiModica
President
Value Forward -- DigitalHatch Group
(770) 632-7647
http://www.digitalhatch.com

Genius idea to build an email database?

Greg Colunga — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 10:28:38 -0500

Hey Destination Marketers –

I was on the phone with my girlfriend earlier today, and she mentioned something interesting to me about how she bought a Dr. Pepper at the store while out this afternoon. At first, I didn’t think much of it, but as her story kept going on, I realized that destination marketers should take a few tips from this Dr. Pepper promotion to attempt to build their email databases.

The campaign they are running currently is to print out a promotional code underneath their bottle caps out in the market place, and drive you to their website.

My girlfriend was bored, so she decided to go to the site this afternoon and check out what “cool promotional item she had won,” and when she did … she got suckered in.

This is what she found on the Dr. Pepper website (http://www.drpepper.com/goformore/):

If you notice, for her to claim her "cool football prizes,” she had to register on the site. Hmm … interesting, huh?

Well, here’s the catch – she went through the whole process of signing up only to find out that she didn’t win anything. Nada, zip, zilch.

Nothing.

The real winner here was Dr. Pepper marketers, as my girlfriend gave them her name, age, and email address. Interesting concept, right? All of her demographic information AND her email address … just to tell her she didn’t get squat.

So, if we think about this from a destination marketer’s perspective – we could get some great information out of people. When you have the guest stay at your hotel, or meeting professional attend a conference in your city … they’re not necessarily inspired, or compelled to fill out your complimentary “email opt-in card” you may (and in the destinations that I have talked to, may not) have.

The concept here would be ideal for a destination to build out a promotional item. Perhaps it could be a free weekend at the spa, or maybe a weekend stay with free tickets to the local theme park. What about a shopping get away in the city, with a hotel room and free dinner at a local restaurant?

You see what I’m getting at here? When you put together packaged goods, and allow registrations to sign-up, you’re getting their demographical information AND interests.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure Dr. Pepper is going to be sending my girlfriend some coupons or some such via email in the coming days, of which they will be generating more and more revenue.

Until next time …

-- GC

Welcome to the Hospitality Blog

Tyson Kirksey — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:32:45 -0500

Allow me to officially welcome you to our new hospitality portal! The NMG staff has been burning the midnight oil preparing this website with one thing in mind: the hospitality industry. Whether you are an existing NMG customer or a first-time guest, we hope you find what you are looking for.

As a part of this shiny new website, we've decided to jump into the world of blogging! We thought it would be rude to hoard the knowledge of industry veterans like Dave Whitney and Dave Radcliffe, so we've created this special section of the website to keep you updated with news, ideas, articles, opinions and product updates from a number of NMG staff (yes, Lou McErlean might even make an appearance if you'll promise to be nice). Expect to see posts from a number of different topics, from destination marketing ideas to NMG product updates to article discussions and more.

To get the most benefit, there are a couple of things to take note of. First, be sure to register for an account so you will be able to login and comment on the day's blog post (see the button below). Blogging is meant to be interactive, so we definitely want your feedback on each and every post. Second, if you use an RSS reader like Bloglines or Google Reader, you may subscribe to this blog using the links on the left side of this page.

Again, for everyone here at NMG, welcome! Feel free to leave a comment to say "Hi!". We'll talk to you soon...