A leading 5-Star Hotel in Chennai invited us for a discussion to understand their sales process as they were facing a severe downturn in terms of their sales as a result of low occupancy rate. We met and had a detailed discussion about their current sales process. Their sales process is good, but it is good enough only for good times. The key element of their sales process is the sales executives will be in the hotel for two shifts and meet the walkin prospects and explain them about the services, features and pricing. This was beautifully working in the normal times, but not a suitable one during the troubled times. So we recommended a change in the process. That part of the city has around 7,000+ companies within a 15 kilometre radius and each company has at least three dedicated functions or festive events in a year. So rather than waiting for the company to knock the hotel door, go out to those companies who have such upcoming events and talk about it with them. On selecting a hotel for a program, the key decision makers are the HR Manager and PR Manager in most companies, of course it need to have the blessings of the top management. Conducting a high profile program such as an annual event like founders day or annual general body meeting is a stressful one for the HR or the PR Manager as they have to take care of all the high profile personalities. Any slip on these events will have an adverse impact on their career and fortune in those companies. So they want to work with a hotel that gives them a greater level of comfort in terms of managing the program. Meeting them well in advance, gave the hotel sales executives a good enough time to build the relationship and at the same time allowed the HR or PR Manager to mentally accept the hotel as the venue.
The specific things we did in this project are as below:
1-First we took the city map and drew a circle for 15 KM radius and called it as the Zone of Influence, meaning those companies that are in this circle are most likely to conduct their event in this hotel.
2-Then we identified all those companies (about 7000+) that are in this circle and collected the details of events and key decision makers along with company profile.
Within a month, the hotel saw a complete reversal and tremendously improved their occupancy rates. It sounds magical, but it is logical – have the list of names in front of you whom you have to market to!