f you’re a hotelier, you know the way essential group enterprise is to the underside line. It is advisable fill your rooms and house recurrently and profitably with one of the best items of enterprise.
The easiest way to attain these objectives is to guage and reply to the fixed inflow of digital RFPs—each single one among them.
However the resort trade has a critical, longstanding drawback: RFP response charges are dismal.
Primarily based on latest Groups360 trade evaluation, the typical response price is roughly 45%.
Out of each 100 RFPs planners ship to accommodations, 55 are fully ignored.
Nonresponsiveness is not only detrimental to resort income but in addition to model status amongst assembly and occasion planners in search of to e-book rooms and house. Lately, planners must supply 10-20% extra properties to safe sufficient responses to select from.
As longtime resort executives ourselves, we consider each lead is an efficient lead. Each RFP is a chance to construct relationships and generate income. That is a necessary mindset executives have to instill of their gross sales groups.
By responding to the entire RFPs you obtain, you considerably enhance your resort’s income alternatives, you will be extra strategic about securing one of the best items of enterprise, and also you keep goodwill with the assembly and occasion planners ready on you to reply in a well timed method.
LEADS ARE MONEY ON THE TABLE
Think about somebody introducing you to a planner, who tells you they’re all for studying about your property and probably reserving a gaggle. Would you ignore them? Waive them out of your workplace?
In fact not. So why do leads get ignored? A lead is a planner who hand-selected your property and requested you to bid on their program.
Most salespeople would assert that they do, in actual fact, reply to each lead their resort receives by way of the assorted channels—resort lead catchers or GSOs, e-RFP platforms, lead distribution methods like MeetingBroker and direct planner communication.
However the response charges and suggestions from planners say in any other case.
THREE COMMON REASONS HOTELS DON’T RESPOND, AND WHY YOU SHOULD
1. We’re too busy
Say there’s a bag of cash sitting on the facet of the street. Would you be too busy to cease and decide it up?
That pile of leads is a possible bag of money. In case you’re in search of enterprise, the simplest gross sales name to make is to reply the cellphone that’s already ringing. You might discover it arduous to make time to answer leads, however you’re assured to lose prospects if you happen to don’t.
Some leads require extra effort than others. In our careers, we’ve labored with salespeople who would let a posh lead age for weeks—or worse, they merely turned it down as a result of it was the quickest response.
Bear in mind, at present’s lead is tomorrow’s enterprise.
In case you’re too busy proper now, you received’t be busy sufficient later. By responding to RFPs on an ongoing foundation, you retain your pipeline flowing.
So, carve out the time. Or cross the results in somebody in your group who can. Your director of gross sales or normal supervisor, who’re deeply invested within the resort’s success, can (and will) assist create or regulate processes to make them smoother and extra environment friendly for the gross sales group.
Salespeople have a duty to reply leads. Gross sales managers have a duty to make sure leads aren’t falling by way of the cracks.
As administrators of gross sales, we pulled experiences to guage the standing of leads coming into the resort. We urged our salespeople to observe up promptly, and we investigated when a superb piece of enterprise was inadvertently turned down. As company gross sales executives, we urged our accommodations’ DOSs to do the identical factor.
This isn’t about babysitting your group—it’s holding them accountable to the KPIs related to getting responses out the door.
Responding to RFPs for bigger conferences requires extra effort, however the quantity of labor you place right into a bid is normally commensurate with the reward whenever you win it.
2. We not often win the enterprise anyway
An much more dismal proportion than response charges are conversion charges. On common, accommodations have a 3-7% likelihood of being awarded a gathering planner’s program.
We get it. Why put in a lot effort for therefore little reward? However right here’s the factor.
You’ll be able to’t win enterprise you don’t bid on.
In case you don’t reply to a lead, your likelihood of conversion is 0%. You’ll lose cash to a hungrier resort.
Among the many accommodations that do reply to leads, the overwhelming majority are turning down the enterprise resulting from lack of capability or availability. In case you can accommodate a gaggle, then by providing a adequate response, you enhance your likelihood of profitable the enterprise exponentially.
Reply to every little thing—and ideally inside every week or much less. You don’t know if you happen to’re one among 30 accommodations within the working or one among 10. Given how few accommodations reply RFPs—and what number of of these responses flip down the enterprise—you enhance the chance of creating the sale by being a kind of who do.
Then there are the occasions you constantly bid and nonetheless don’t win. Let’s say the identical planner sends you an RFP yearly. You reply, however you’re by no means chosen, so when the subsequent inquiry comes round, you merely set it apart.
The higher strategy, nonetheless, is to succeed in out to the shopper for suggestions—why are you requesting bids whenever you constantly select one other resort? It turns into a possibility to ask them to go to to allow them to expertise your property’s occasions straight.
3. We’re already hitting our numbers
In our expertise, there are salespeople who will bid on any piece of enterprise as a result of it populates the calendar and helps them meet their gross sales objectives.
Gross sales leaders could be tempted to shrug their shoulders about whether or not their group is clearing the RFP queue or responding promptly. What does it matter? We’re hitting our numbers. However this can be a short-sighted perspective.
In case you have been struggling to make your numbers on the finish of the month, you’d be responding to each lead. One of the best strategy to ongoing success is to view each lead as if you happen to’re struggling to make your quota.
Think about additionally the optics on the shopping for facet. Notion is actuality. In case you don’t reply, a planner might assume you don’t worth the chance. You not solely lose out on the present alternative to bid however fairly probably on any future alternative as effectively.
In case you reply each RFP, planners usually tend to supply you once more in a while since you’re one of many valuable few who paid consideration to their request.
AUTOMATE YOUR GROUP BOOKING PROCESS
Low staffing ranges have been one other longstanding drawback within the resort trade, exacerbated by the results of the pandemic. That is particularly difficult for smaller accommodations—the identical ones being inundated with the majority of planners’ RFPs.
In case you’re a normal supervisor of a limited-service resort, you could be spinning a number of plates. You’re not solely fielding gross sales calls but in addition checking in company, perhaps even stripping beds.
One of the best answer for smaller accommodations is to automate group bookings.
On-line group reserving platforms like GroupSync™, are one of many some ways expertise is filling within the gaps in resort operations.
The method of reserving small conferences is very similar to order taking, with a number of wasteful back-and-forth communication over particulars. The extra accommodations transfer their group bookings on-line, the extra they may liberate their gross sales departments to get their arms across the quantity of RFPs and maximize the effectiveness of their gross sales processes.
Accommodations of all sizes—from international resort manufacturers to independently owned properties—are benefiting from this revolutionary strategy to group bookings. On-line group reserving permits hoteliers to choose and select what and the way a lot to supply to planners for instant buy.
And with GroupSync, planners are lastly in a position to buy rooms and house on-line the way in which vacationers have been reserving resort rooms on OTAs for years.
About Groups360
Groups360 was created with a singular aim — to reinvent assembly planning by injecting innovation, transparency, and ease into the decades-old drawback of reserving teams. The Firm’s built-in expertise answer, GroupSync™, permits suppliers to distribute stock, have interaction with planners, and optimize group income. GroupSync additionally equips planners to go looking and store accommodations worldwide and to e-book rooms and house straight, on-line or by way of a simplified RFP course of. GroupSync is the primary distribution channel to supply on-line reserving for group resort roomsandmeeting house at scale.
Groups360 has places of work in Nashville, London and Singapore. Be taught extra at groups360.com.
Hal Hassall
Vice President of Advertising and marketing
Groups360
