Doug Kennedy’s Next Staff Training Webcast: Five Crucial Things Hotel Group & Event Salespeople Should Do With Every Inbound Lead

Sponsored By Travel Outlook, Track Hospitality Software, and Matrix by M1Intel

Register your team and participate live, or view the recording of Doug Kennedy’s next 40-minute training webcast scheduled for Friday, March 20, at Noon EDT. REGISTER HERE

 Do your follow-up habits help you close—or quietly cost you deals?

With continued uncertainty in the economy, the focus for this month shifts back to sales. Join us to learn the best cadence, personalization techniques, and prioritization strategies to grab more share in a flat market.  

“Demand is going to be flat, at best, in most markets,” says Kennedy. “Any gains in market share and revenue are going to be hard-fought.”  Prospecting is of course an essential part of the solution, but properly responding to buyers who are literally handing you a hot lead is the best place to start grabbing share. “Simply being the first to respond with a generic quote sheet is no longer enough,” Doug added, “Keeping hospitality at the heart of hotel sales still matters most.”

 Highlights include:

• Keeping the “people parts” at the heart of your hotel sales process.
• Sorting and prioritizing the hottest leads, while remembering every inbound inquiry is worthy of a personalized response. 
• Personalizing the reply and contextualizing the wording of the proposal or response. 
• Organizing your “sales flow” process so you can follow up in a way that is tenacious and personalized.
• The best cadence and methods for follow-up action steps.

Recordings of previous webcasts are available on KTN’s YouTube channel and are now also being distributed on your favorite podcast channel or on KTN’s Spotify channel.

Everyone who registers for this and all KTN webcasts receives a link to the recording, even if they cannot attend. The 40-minute format is perfect for “lunch and learns,” or excerpts can be shared at staff meetings. The target audience is anyone who is interested in upskilling themselves or others, and the topic areas are broad enough to be relevant for all sectors of the lodging industry.

“We are grateful to the generosity of our sponsors who have allowed us to offer complimentary admission,” said Kennedy. “It takes a lot of time to design, promote, and deliver these events, and so we would normally charge a registration fee, but this series is now completely free to all.”

Sponsors include: Travel Outlook, the only KTN Certified call center, Track Hospitality Software, whose products include a Track PMS and Pulse reservations CRM, and Matrix by M1Intel, a hotel sales CRM.

Complimentary registration can be accessed at www.KTNwebcast.com. Here are the additional topics scheduled so far.

Why Guests Who Are Shopping Online Still Call Prior To Booking – And What To Do About It

Friday, April 17 (Noon ET)

REGISTER HERE

Lodging leaders across all sectors may be noticing that while online bookings continue to drop, the number of actual calls continues to hold steady or possibly increase. In this KTN webcast, Doug explains not only why that is, but what your staff can do to turn what appear to be questions and general inquiries into confirmed bookings. Each month, KTN’s quality team accesses and listens to hundreds of recordings of real calls recorded by various cloud-based recording platforms for our diverse list of lodging companies, providing us with the unique opportunity to identify what real-world callers actually say and ask. Whereas such conversations used to start with “Hi, I need to check rates for these dates…”, today’s callers more typically ask specific questions. If left untrained, staff tend to politely answer these questions and let the callers move on to booking online, possibly through an expensive OTA channel. Here’s a chance to have Doug train your staff on how to recognize that these questions are actually opportunities to put a human imprint on your brand logo, create positive first impressions, and start conversations that result in confirmations.

Topics include:

• Who ARE today’s callers, and WHY does anyone still call when they can so easily book online?
• What does it feel like to be a guest who is shopping online these days?
• Has the proliferation of online images, reviews, and distribution channels made the researching and purchasing of lodging more stressful, not less?
• What are some simple things voice reservations (and even front desk) staff can say and ask to convince shoppers to book now vs. going back online?

Intentionally Communicating The Vibe Of Hospitality

Friday, May 22 (Noon ET)

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Whereas previous KTN webcast topics have often covered a philosophical approach to hospitality excellence, this month Doug will dig into the interpersonal communications habits that can be used daily to communicate the vibe of hospitality. Whether engaging with guests, coworkers, or internal customers, these tangible, real-world suggestions will help exude their aura of 5G Positivity.

Proxemics and kinesics.

Wordless communication speaks silently but loudly.

Vocalics and paralanguage can convey more than actual words.

Telephone hospitality essentials.

Communicating hospitality textually.

The language of hospitality.

Listening loudly, with intention.