When it comes to managing your sales pipeline, the hospitality industry needs to have a clear understanding of their funnel in order to identify potential bookings and forecast revenue.
Like others, the hotel industry also has to rely on modern tools such as hotel CRMs and a venue management system to accurately track their leads, identify potential opportunities and drive valuable insights that can help managers make better decisions.
3 Core Insights For Managing Your Hotel Event Pipeline
A sales pipeline allows you to visualize your lead’s conversion journey – right from the initial contact to the point where they either close the deal or drop off your sales funnel.
Effective management not only allows you to close more deals, but also provides data-backed insights into bottlenecks, underlying opportunities and areas for growth; simply put, this is what makes niche-specific CRMs a valuable addition to any hotel.
If you're looking to manage your pipeline effectively, here are 3 core insights to look for:
A Complete Overview Of Your Lead’s Sale Journey
For hotel sales managers, having a comprehensive overview of every lead in your sales pipeline is imperative to making better decisions.
Modern hotel CRMs allow you to analyze how your lead moves from the initial point-of-contact, all the way towards closing the deal.
There are various stages involved in a sales pipeline and each one is equally important; while a closed deal may represent a guaranteed booking, a prospect that has requested a tour is also highly likely to convert. This means that you need to take the right measures to ensure that there is a vacant slot available for such a prospect.
Here are some of the questions that a quality hotel CRM or venue management system can help you answer:
- What percentage of qualified leads end up closing a deal?
- Where are most of your leads dropping off the sales funnel?
- What issues are faced by your sales team and where do they need further training?
Ability To Forecast Event Revenue
While closed deals bring in revenue in the short term, a hotel sales manager needs to keep an eye on the future.
This is where modern hotel CRMs provide unprecedented value; they allow a greater degree of visibility into the sales funnel so salespeople can visualize where the deals are present.
Additionally, sales managers can utilize historical data to ascertain what percentage of qualified leads end up closing. This will not only help them manage future bookings, but also give them a probable estimate of the revenue they are expected to earn in the near future.
With better insights into what you can expect in the future, managers can effectively take the guesswork out of the equation – allowing for better schedule management and provision of auxiliary services required to host such events and conferences.
Revenue forecasts are a crucial metric when planning for the next quarter, half-year or annual strategy. A modern venue management system provides precise information about the stage that the deals are at and allows you to track your revenue accordingly.
Greater Booking Visibility
As competition continues to increase in the hospitality industry, sales managers need to have instant access to real-time booking data. This is why a hotel CRM is not a luxury – rather, it is a necessity for operating in the modern hospitality industry.
Increased booking visibility for hotel sales managers is important for various reasons – they can either be facing a lucrative opportunity and need instant access to booking details to ensure that they are not over-booking or they may be devising a sales strategy and need information such as the booking details.
Whatever the case may be, enhanced visibility in event booking allows them to confidently bring in more group sales and market to event planners.
Equipped with real-time, accurate data, they can devise a comprehensive sales plan that fills in the date ‘gaps’ – effectively bringing in more revenue.
Without a hotel CRM, effective management of a sales pipeline in such a dynamic industry is an impossible task. From gauging forecasted revenue to having enhanced visibility into booking opportunities, you must have these core insights about your pipeline if you are to manage it effectively.
