Recently, and by recently, I mean in the very near past and in the ages of the Internet and climate change, I was at the office of a meeting planner providing virtual on site virtual sales training. After the meeting, we were talking, and as we were talking, the meeting planner was sorting her mail. This meeting planner tossed 5 unopened hotel paper sales packets in the garbage that had recently arrived from various hotels. I asked how many of those larger, paper hotel sales packets came in the mail each week, and to my surprise, the answer was five.
Take a moment to consider some important things about paper sales packets distributed by hotel sales and catering departments to prospective clients.
If five sales packets are snail-mailed, weighing 6.5 ounces per packet, then that is 2.03 pounds of fancy, glossy paper mailed to a single meeting planner - in just one week.
Now consider that Meeting Planner International (MPI) has over 20,000 registered event planners within its organization. Based on an average of five packets per week, meeting planners could be discarding 1,050 tons of material each year (and $104,000,000.00 in lost revenue) - while having little impact in the sales process.
The hospitality, hotel and event planning industry must look at its sales material and begin presenting cost effective and environmentally friendly information while providing virtual sale information under traditional sales standards and personal attention.
Sales 101 tells us the importance of building rapport, education, communicating accurate information quickly and providing special personal attention above and beyond the competition. This practice no longer exists with online resources. Web sites often are built to reflect a web designer's technical goals and restrictions instead of the goals and needs of the sales Industry.
Sales 101 also tells us the importance of things such as client name/information displayed, communicate quick and accurate information and provide special personal attention above and beyond everyone else. This no longer exists with traditional web site service sales and provides no personal attention (instruction/
