Joel McLaughlin

In today's competitive sales environment, time is money. Distribution and presentation of your sales material quickly and professionally - while providing personal attention to the client - can make the difference between the sale and lost business. Web sites should be a tangible sales tool, providing hotel sales professionals all the necessary items needed to present and close the sale efficiently. Combining old-school selling techniques with today's technology will allow you to outsell your co

The hotel sales, marketing and advertising industry must look at its sales material and begin presenting virtual sale information by traditional sales standards, while giving personal attention to each guest. Provide not only a virtual sales tool to your hotel sales and catering sales staff, but empowering them to up sell and cross sell your properties and services.

In these tough economic times the hospitality industry must look at new way to cut cost and attract new business. Hotel and catering sales professionals need to take a look at their sales materials and examine how they sell in the virtual world, virtually organizing your sales material and sales process will help you close more business, save your hotel thousands of dollars each month and give you a competitive edge in the industry.

Web sites are good marketing tools but they do not provide hotel sales, catering sales and the event planning sales professional with the resources and education needed to streamline the sales process to each sales and inquiry call.

The service sales industry has lost track of the basic fundamentals of selling. Sales 101, tells us the importance of building rapport, education, communicating accurate information quickly and providing special personal attention above and beyond the competition. This practice no longer exists with online resources. Web sites often are built to reflect a web designer's technical goals and restrictions instead of the goals and needs of the sales Industry.

The hotel and event planning industry must begin presenting sales information by traditional sales standards whereby web sites are virtual sales presentation tools to be viewed by the client under the guidance of a sales professional.

Hotel sales and catering sales industry needs to start thinking outside the box when it comes to web sites and search engines through virtual presentation of services.

Traditional web sites are built for marketing. Web sites should be built to CLOSE THE SALE! Web sites should provide instant presentations of your services and the ability to create customized web sites to each inquiry and sales call. Allowing the sales professional to sell above and beyond their competitors while saving thousands of dollars each year.

Recently, and by recently, I mean in the very near past and in the ages of the Internet and climate change, I was at the office of a meeting planner providing virtual on site virtual sales training. After the meeting, we were talking, and as we were talking, the meeting planner was sorting her mail. This meeting planner tossed 5 unopened hotel paper sales packets in the garbage that had recently arrived from various hotels.

Bluetooth technology can simplify phone conversations on the go. The inner ear receiver allows full reception of calls while it keeps your hands free to attend to little things like the turn signal.