Categories: BUSINESS & FINANCE

Best 5 Hotel Sales Training Exercises for New Recruits

Having a properly trained sales staff is crucial to a hotel’s success. After all, a hotel’s room inventory is perishable. If a room isn’t sold for the night, that revenue is lost forever. So what can a hotel owner do in order to ensure that his new sales staff is up to snuff? For starters, he may want to try having them participate in a few sales training exercises. I happen to know of several that tend to work well. I had to participate in them when I was in training and I used them later in my career when I became the sales trainer. Here’s a quick rundown on five of best ones:

Time Management Drills

Does your sales staff know how to prioritize and manage time? If you are not sure how to answer that question, you may want to try running a time management drill. My mentor had a time management drill that he used a lot. It involved handing out a packet of items that a hotel salesperson would typically find in their in-box. Some of the items that he’d put into the packets were copies of phone messages, e-mails and snail mail. Once that was done, he’d set a loud and obnoxious timer in front of the class and tell the students that they needed to complete all the tasks before the timer stopped. In most instances, there was no way that the students would have been able to complete all the tasks. What he really wanted to learn from the exercise was what tasks the students felt were the most important and how accurately they were able to complete them while under pressure. Seeing what tasks they chose to complete and how well they performed helped him decide who needed more training before being sent out into the field.

Group Sales Calls

Another sales training exercise that I took part in during my hospitality career was the group sales call. It involved sending a seasoned salesperson on an actual sales call with a new salesperson. The new salesperson took control of the sales call while the seasoned pro silently observed the transaction. At the end of the call, the seasoned pro would provide feedback in a classic “pat, slap, pat” format. Just in case you are not familiar with the “pat, slap, pat” format, it starts out with the seasoned pro telling the rookie salesperson one thing that he did right. The pro then proceeds to break down what the rookie needs to improve on and ends the conversation by mentioning another thing that the rookie did well.

Simulated Sales Calls

In my experience, simulated sales calls are also a great way to train hotel sales staff. In some cases, the simulated sales calls are videotaped, played back for the students and critiqued. I have found that having the video tape available really helps when it comes to making new salespeople aware of what role non-verbal cues play in the sales process.

Communication Games

Communication games can be helpful as sales training exercises as well. Over the course of my career I have participated in a variety of them. Some of the exercises included team building aspects and others were straight communication exercises. One of my favorite was the snowflake game. At the start of the game, the instructor provided verbal instructions to the class on how to make a paper snowflake. Then he gave sheets of paper to each student and asked them to follow his directions and make snowflakes. If the students followed the directions properly, their snowflakes would match his. If they didn’t match, it meant that additional training was needed.

Analytical Games

In my opinion, analytical exercises are as entertaining as they are informative. Most involve giving the sales staff a fun and challenging problem solving task. Some of the tasks involve manipulating objects like toothpicks and others are word problems that require written answers. Watching the salespeople work through the problems should help the hotel owner determine which salespeople may need to work on developing their analytical skills.

Source: Personal Experience

Killeen Gonzalez has a degree in hotel and restaurant management. She has since retired from the industry.