Why Using The Right System Is So Important For Catering Sales Managers
I recently received an email from a friend who runs a large software company in Vancouver, BC, Canada. He knows that hotels and venues are our core customers and as a bit of an unofficial advisor, he forwarded me the email. This was a prospecting email sent from a hotel in an attempt to bring his company in to book an event/meeting space.
Here’s the email:
I hope that my e-mail does cause you any inconveniences.
My name is __________ and I am the Sales and Catering Manager at the __________ Hotel in charge of the promotion of our meeting space, guests rooms and newly rebranded restaurant, __________. I am also in charge of promoting our hotel to the IT industry throughout the province.
Located in the quiet __________ area and two blocks from the Harbour, the __________ Hotel is the best place if you are looking for offsite meeting with catering, guests room or just a quiet place to work close to downtown and away from all the hustle and bustle.
Our meeting space has natural light and can comfortably sit a maximum of 20 guests in board room style and the tables can be separated to create island seating as well.
Our newly rebranded restaurant, __________, operates as a café from 6:30am to 10pm every day and as a Bistro/Wine Bar from 4pm to 10pm.
If there is anything that I could ever serve of assistance, please do not hesitate to let me know.
If you are ever in the area and wish to see what the hotel is all about, please do let me know and I will be more than glad to give you a tour of our facilities.
Once again thank you very much for your kind attention and look forward to hearing from you. If you could direct me to the proper person in charge, I would be more than grateful.
With warmest regards,
Name/Signature/Contact Info__________
After reading this email, I realized that hotels need a better way to prospect at scale.
I know many hotels invite guests to their facilities for coffee/lunch/etc to spend time at the facility and the more beautiful the hotel, the easier that process is. Others meet potential and past clients in person and surprise them with gifts/snacks/coffee etc. But email prospecting can work if done correctly and Sales and Catering Managers are expected to do it to find new business. After reading this email, it felt apparent that this email could be improved upon.
More Effective Email Prospecting
Let’s start by breaking apart the introduction:
My name is __________ and I am the Sales and Catering Manager at the __________ Hotel in charge of the promotion of our meeting space, guests rooms and newly rebranded restaurant, __________. I am also in charge of promoting our hotel to the IT industry throughout the province.
I would immediately remove clutter from this email. Shorter messaging is better and potential customers only need the bare minimum. I would therefore change this email to read:
My name is __________ and I am the Sales and Catering Manager at the __________ Hotel. I wanted to introduce our space to you as we regularly host meetings and events for companies like INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE and I have a promotion I thought you might be interested in.
Now the introduction is short and to the point. If possible, I would also post a gif of myself to show them I’m a real person. The next two blocks of text, I would remove completely. Instead, I would post a picture of hotel and meeting space. I would also remove the section about the restaurant.
If there is anything that I could ever serve of assistance, please do not hesitate to let me know.
This is not a strong call to action. Asking to serve of assistance isn’t compelling.
If you are ever in the area and wish to see what the hotel is all about, please do let me know and I will be more than glad to give you a tour of our facilities.
Offering a tour in the initial email is also too soon. It’s best to ask an open ended question related to your call-to-action.
Once again thank you very much for your kind attention and look forward to hearing from you. If you could direct me to the proper person in charge, I would be more than grateful.
Finally, the last block of text is too much.
Realistically, this email needs to be completely re-written to be effective.
I would scrap the email entirely and use something like this:
My name is __________ and I am the Sales and Catering Manager at the __________ Hotel.
I wanted to introduce our space to you as we regularly host meetings and events for companies like INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE and I wanted to put us on your radar.
Do you ever book off-site meetings or events? If so, do you personally handle booking those or is it done by someone else at INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE?
Sincerely,
INSERT SIGNATURE HERE
The above email works because it’s short, to the point and easy to read. Secondly, it asks an open ended question which people are more likely to respond to. Rather than offering a tour, expecting them to read all about your restaurant hours etc, you are just asking if they are even in your target market. Then, you are asking them if they are the right person to talk to.
By keeping the email short and asking simple, open ended questions, it’s much more likely to get a reply. Better yet, the email is asking them to refer you to the correct person to speak with.
Now that the messaging is more concise and effective, it’s time to turn the process into something scalable and automated.
If you look at the email example above, it’s short and simple. Even so, the chances of it getting many replies is very low. In fact, getting a 20% response rate from a cold email is considered very good. In short, this is a numbers game. In order for cold email prospecting to work, you need to send a large number of emails at a time and follow up with all of them six times. Yes, I said six times. If you are following up any less than that, you can expect your reply rate to be closer to 0%.
Prospecting Works
The important thing to take note of here is that prospecting for hotels works. In order to prospect effectively though, Hotel Catering Sales Managers need to use software to scale their efforts. I was amazed to learn that the gentleman who wrote the email above was typing each email out manually and sending them one by one. That’s not only ineffective, it’s a waste of time that he could have been spending building relationships with real customers.
In order to scale this process, you need software that meets the following criteria:
- It can send through your hotel’s existing email provider
- It enables you to write your emails once, as templates, then re-use them
- Enables you to schedule emails to be sent at a later date in the future
- Assists you in following up, automatically if there is no response from a customer
- Allows you to upload a list of names, companies and emails (your prospect list)
- Allows you to manage a pipeline of prospects quickly (emails sent, replies, calls scheduled, tours scheduled)
- A system that isn’t only for prospecting but also enables retention
- A tool that easily integrates with your existing software programs to seamlessly connect hot leads into your CRM
- The ability to add custom fields to auto fill “name”, “company name”, your email signature etc.
- A tool that gives you the ability to email hundreds of prospects a week, follow up automatically and easily respond to replies without getting overwhelmed
The Solution Is Here
Many Hotel Catering Sales Manager’s are still using tools like Oracle Sales And Catering, Amadeus Hospitality, Delphi FDC or Hotel Sales Pro or some other Hospitality Catering Sales program. While those tools can handle many parts of the booking process, you need a tool designed for outreach in 2017. One that tracks if emails are being read, allows you to receive and respond to text messages, send automations at scale and track everything visually.
For that reason, we’ve developed Event Temple, which is the ultimate venue management software for catering sales prospecting and retention. It checks every box in the ten-point checklist above and allows hotels to send prospecting emails at scale in a way that feels personalized without having to manually type out each email and follow-up. Event Temple not only works well as a stand-alone catering sales software, but also as a banquet management system. If you already have those tools in place, Event Temple can easily integrate with those systems to give you the required functionality needed to prospect at scale without the need to enter data multiple times. It’s been designed specifically to either work as a standalone system that can power a hotel’s sales and catering departments, or it can seamlessly integrate with your existing system to extend your functionality. Oh yeah, it’s also really easy to setup and use and takes about an hour to learn and load with all of your data. The future of catering sales is here.
How is your hotel prospecting for new business?
What would you change in the email above?
We’d love to hear from you. Learn more at www.eventtemple.com
