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Sales Training Tips:

Are You Serious About Sales Training?

One of our Legendary Partners recently asked me for an agenda for a Sales Meeting for his Resort. I put together a one page document that detailed the components necessary for an effective meeting, but as I looked it over, I felt more explanation was necessary. So, I began to expand on the simple format and explain a bit about the "why" behind each item. It goes back to the old adage, "what gets measured gets done."

I see so many examples of sales opportunities being squandered for a variety of reasons including:

Failure to capture leads.

Lack of a systemized process to follow up on leads.

Lack of a specific plan to generate leads.

A salary versus a commission based system for compensating salespeople.

Lack of a formal, weekly meeting to create accountability for specific sales goals, future booking goals, and new lead generation.

Think about how much time you spend each week on various activities in your club or resort. Time is spent talking with members and guests, ordering goods and services, scheduling employees, processing paperwork, and dozens of other things. And all of these activities are necessary functions for the business.

But, to be SERIOUS ABOUT SALES, you must also formally devote at least a couple hours each week to the sales process to ensure that the focus is not only on servicing the business you have today, but bringing new business to the table for the future as well. So, how do you do that? Read on.

A Formal Weekly Sales Meeting

A Sales Meeting should be conducted weekly at an established time with every salesperson in your club or resort on a one on one basis and be lead by the club's or resort's General Manager/Sales Manager. The required reports for the meeting should include:

A weekly report showing actual sales from the week most recently ended with a comparison to plan and prior year.

A report detailing all new sales by revenue source booked for the future for the week just ended compared to the benchmark needed to ensure that planned sales are on track to be achieved.

A report detailing the new leads and prospects generated this week by revenue source.

A forecast of revenues for the upcoming 4 weeks compared to planned revenues.

Review of the quarterly game plan activities and the progress being made on their implementation.

The following are the steps necessary to conduct an effective sales meeting that focuses everyone involved in the sales process on the key indicators of success, keeps the quarterly game plan a dynamic, working document, and most importantly, creates accountability.

The Agenda

1. Review of Prior Week's Actual Sales

How did last week's revenues compare to plan and prior year? This is information that provides a snapshot of how we did last week and how our current financial reporting period is going to look; however, it is the least important part of a sales meeting. Why? Because it's over!

Great, good, OK, or lousy, it's over and nothing can be done to change it. It provides a historical perspective and that has value, but only value in that you hopefully learned what was done right, wrong, and what action you will take in response to the results. So, review what happened, but spend little time on this part of the meeting.

2. Review of Future Bookings

More importantly, review how many packages, room nights, private events, tee times, outings, or other relevant sources of revenue were booked this week for the future. This is as important as the actual financial results for the week because it is a key indicator of future success. Plus, it provides a sales manager with critical information about the performance of the salesperson.

Rather than simply reviewing the actual sales that occurred during the week that just ended, reviewing the new revenues the salespeople were able to secure for the future and comparing that number to an established benchmark that a club/resort needs in order to meet its plan is imperative!

For example, if your private events goal is $1 million annually, you must consistently book new revenues of $20,000 or more every week (or average that amount) or you won't be successful in reaching your goal. Similarly, if your closing rate on prospects for membership sales is 10% and you were successful in adding 10 new prospects during the week, you can anticipate one new membership within your club's sales cycle for memberships, typically a 2 to 6 week time frame.

These types of revenue benchmarks should be established for all relevant revenue sources in your club/resort. This will also give you specific information on the timing of the booking of new sales.

While weddings are likely to be booked 6 months to a year in advance, what is reasonable at your club or resort for a golf package, a round of golf, a room night, or a social function? Knowing how much business should be on the books in advance at specific intervals allows you to take action today that will ensure future success.

Celebrate the successes of the new sales that were booked even though those sales and revenues won't be coming in this week. They are your future and a good week of bookings deserves to be recognized now!

3. Existing Leads

Review how many leads are existing and what actions are being taken to close these leads. This involves going over each lead, one at a time, and determining what the next step in the sales process should be. This may be setting an appointment, inviting a guest for a tasting, setting up a tee time for a prospective member, or any other activity with the goal of moving the sales process forward.

And be certain that every contact a salesperson makes with a lead/prospect has a specific goal related to the contact. It doesn't have to be closing the contact on a sale, but it should be closing the contact on something, such as a club visit, a food tasting, a round of golf, the sale if at the proper point in the sales cycle, or any other relevant step that moves the sales process forward.

Savvy salespeople know this and do it routinely, but some people new to sales very likely need and would appreciate this kind of assistance in planning and coaching.

This is also the appropriate time for the General Manager/Sales Manager to ask the sales staff if there are any roadblocks or obstacles that are getting in the way of closing sales. This type of dialogue not only can take down those obstacles, but also in many cases provide a better club/resort experience for its members or guests.

4. New Leads

A key indicator of future sales success is the generation of new leads. All too often sales people become so obsessed with closing existing leads that the generation of new leads takes a back seat. This leads to an up and down cycle of sales success.

Carefully review not only new business that was actually booked and the leads that have been generated previously and are in the pipeline, but also the new leads generated during the past week for the products and services your club/resort offers. A sales management tool that keeps track of all new leads generated and follows the leads through the sales cycle to their logical conclusion must be in place in order to be effective in sales management.

To be effective a dedicated effort to generate new leads must be conducted concurrent with an effort to close those which exist.

An effective sale manager will ensure that the salesperson is staying in balance and focusing appropriate time on not only closing leads and moving pre-existing leads through the sale cycle, but on generating new leads as well.

And don't forget; celebrate the generation of new leads. These are your future revenues!

5. Forecast Review

How much in revenue is on the books for the near term, the next 4 to 6 weeks? Are forecasted revenues going to make plan, exceed plan, or fall short of plan?

If revenues are looking good, great! Ask what can be done to capture a greater share of the business that you are going to see over the next several weeks as bookings are solid and will allow you to achieve plan. What are we going to up-sell in every area? What in addition can we cross promote? If someone is planning a large party or outing, suggestively selling something additional to enhance the experience is always worth a try.

If revenues look like they will fall short of plan, what can be done to create some revenue in the short term? Most clubs and resorts have a database of members/guests/customers. What offer can you send to fill in the gaps and mitigate the revenue shortfall? So many clubs/resorts know that business is going to be slow and just sit back and accept it. Don't fall into the "woe is me" mode. Take action and develop a new offer to drive short term sales.

This also provides a "heads up" for everyone in operations. An effective General Manager, armed with this information, will reduce variable payroll in accordance with less revenues and spend only on necessities during this time frame.

6. Game Plan Review

This presupposes you actually have a game plan you are following each quarter for all relevant sources of revenue with activities specified to drive sales, goals established for the results you want to achieve, a responsible party designated for each activity, and a timeline set for implementation. If this is not in place, then discontinue reading this for now and start planning.

If you do have a game plan in place as described above, you should review each of the initiatives that are planned for the current quarter and determine the status of each. This should include a review of the deadlines for implementation, the leads, prospects, and sales generated, and any "tweaks" that should be made to improve the sales results.

As the quarter progresses, determine what was and wasn't effective in the current quarter and be certain that those initiatives that worked best in the current quarter are included in the next.

So, in review, establishing a quarterly game plan for the growth of all relevant revenues for your club or resort and then following up systematically as described above with a formal weekly sales meeting to ensure implementation, accountability, and ultimately sales success is key if your are SERIOUS ABOUT SALES!

Source: Bob Devitz link

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