Define Leadership

In my line of work, no one hires Aspire to maintain the status quo.  Our work in sales training, marketing strategy or team building, is about change and evolution.  The trick is to help people become engaged in the change and grow through the experience, so that a culture of endless improvement feels empowering and energizing.  Endless improvement…fancy words for more change to come.

Sound familiar?  If you are an effective leader and manager, this is your daily mission.  In the hospitality industry, the greatest opportunity for business/asset value growth is being fanatical about your culture, your strategic direction and building momentum from both.

FACT: Great strategy alone will not make you successful.

Yes, you have to have smart strategy for proactive change and growth.  Strategy is the focus of how you will actively leverage the marketplace, capitalize on client needs/opportunities, and grow market share to produce profits/asset value.  Culture is the glue that engages people to take action on your strategic direction, embrace change and grow.  None of this happens without extraordinary leadership.

Here are some tips on how to inspire change and lead market share…

1. Begin everything – and I mean everything – with defining the outcome(s) you want to deliver.  Be clear, specific and end-oriented.
2. Stop asking the same questions.  You get the same answers.  If you find that you keep talking about the same problems or same opportunities, you are stuck – and you need to change your questions.
3. Turn your management meetings upside down.  Most are boring and this gives you an opportunity to make these meetings momentum builders.
4. Understand that team building is done every day.  Focus on connection and communication.
5. Your organization needs more leaders.  Leadership training helps you tap into your peoples’ potential.
6. Training is a strategic tool that if done well can give you a competitive advantage.  Sales training, customer service training and process improvement all allow you to improve your team’s productivity against your strategic direction.  You must constantly re-tool your people to get the growth you want as an organization.
7. Never underestimate the power of momentum.  Just a little starts you moving…leaders keep it moving

If the market is changing…then you have to be changing.  Make change in your organization an experience that feels empowering, commits to new learning/training and ignites engagement.  Together these drive momentum.  Momentum is everything.

Renie Cavallari is CEO and Chief Inspirational Officer for Aspire, an international training and marketing consulting company positioning organizations to make more money through:

• Hospitality Training. Coaching Skills. Cultural Alignment. Team Building.
• Re-energizing Organizations. Strategic Planning. Sales & Marketing Consulting. Positioning. Branding.
• Customer Service Culture. Customer Service Training.
• Awakening the Passion within People & Organizations. Leadership Training.

If you would like to receive free leadership tips, join the conversation at Renie’s blog, www.tipsonleadership.com

Renie writes regularly for Hotel Motel Management magazine, in which this article first appeared (More Change to Come - July, 2010). For more insider tips on hospitality marketing, go to:  http://www.hotelworldnetwork.com/cavallari

Today the job of the salesperson is to create buying environments. No longer can salespeople focus on pushing their product; they must focus on the customer…the buyer.  Yes, the skills from sales training: opening, questioning, presenting and closing; are still the same. It’s the process and approach that have changed.

The internet has made the life of a salesperson easier is so many ways.  Understanding a potential customer has never been simpler.  Uncovering unique components of a client’s needs and business approaches allows salespeople who do their homework and focus on helping a customer buy stand out amongst the clutter.

And the real hook in today’s sales hospitality training is to ensure that salespeople are creating compelling customer buying environments.  The key ingredients are the art of staying curious, asking engaging questions and making it easy for the customer to buy.

In the past, questioning was a fact-finding mission and though the facts/features of the clients’ needs are important, they are a small part of the buying decision.  Questions that uncover real wants, desires and experiences are what matter most.  Smart questioning uncovers objections early and allows salespeople to position your hotel uniquely throughout the buying process.  This “stand out from the clutter” positioning is how a smart salesperson communicates your message and experiences through addressing customer needs specifically throughout each conversation.

Face it.  Today sales is just a customer focused conversation. Smart questions engage the customer into your world and allow you to identify and minimize objections throughout the process. Too often, salespeople are surprised by the decision of the customer and if a salesperson is doing more listening than talking they will hear what they are up against and how to move into the ideal customer pitch.

What is the ideal customer pitch?  It is answered in one way.  Did the customer say:  “…that is exactly what we are looking for.?”

Cliff Notes:

• Ask open-ended, feeling-finding questions and you will find out what your competition does not know.
• Stay curious.  The best customer question is one that is focused on the buyer, not your product.
• Bob and weave.  Take what your potential customer wants and desires and paint the picture that serves the vision they are looking for…one need at a time.
• Make it compelling.  Commoditization is insanity.  Stand out from the clutter.

Renie Cavallari is CEO and Chief Inspirational Officer for Aspire, an international training and marketing consulting company positioning organizations to make more money through:

• Hospitality Training. Coaching Skills. Cultural Alignment. Team Building.
• Re-energizing Organizations. Strategic Planning. Sales & Marketing Consulting. Positioning. Branding.
• Customer Service Culture. Customer Service Training.
• Awakening the Passion within People & Organizations. Leadership Training.

To have Renie come speak to your team on how to tap into new markets and make more money please reach out at renie@aspiremarketing.com

At Ardent, we aspire to be a high performance company on all levels within our organization. With that said, we invest a lot of time on our team member’s individual development plans and training in general. Over the past six months, we have conducted two sales training classes; one for our General Managers and Director of Sales and another for members of our senior sales team. On both occasions, we have used an outside company, Aspire Marketing to lead these sessions. Not only have we been pleased with the training they have presented, we believe their training style and message creates long term accountability within our team. We have been fortunate enough to have Keith Clark conduct both classes for us and Keith has a style that relaxes his audience and gives them confidence to be themselves during all aspects of their training agenda . . . which Ardent executives collaborated with the Aspire team to create. Also, prior to and in follow up, our team members who have attended these classes have received information that helps them to prepare for the class and tools that help them retain lessons weeks after the classes are over.

The bottom line for us is that our sales and training efforts will most likely always include the Aspire team, Keith Clark and their CEO, Renie Cavallari. The fundamental reason is their corporate values are similar to Ardents’ and their passion for their business always seems to make a difference for our team.

Sincerely,

James P. Evans
Principal/CEO
Ardent Hotel Advisors

Enroll in Sales Boot Camp Aug. 12 – 13 and come home with 5 new deals in your pipeline!

Several experts including PKF Hospitality Research, Hotel Horizons, Smith Travel Research and Cornell University have all weighed in on the state of our “hospitality” economy and it’s not as bleak as once predicted. All experts say, WE’VE HIT BOTTOM!

Given this new information the questions you need to ask are: What will you do now? How can you best leverage the upcoming opportunities? What should you be doing differently to capture sales? This is the time to make sure your sales people are selling at the top of their game.

• Tap into new business including stimulus package and new revenue streams
• Rethink your strategies concerning group and/or leisure travel (staycations)
• Rethink your sales skills & allow you to out position your competitors
• Improve your closing ratio/conversion
• Get a FREE Whitepaper What is Your Recession Sales Strategy
• Come home with 5 new deals in your pipeline

Sales Boot Camp^SM How to Drive New Sales

Date: August 12 – 13, 2009

Location: Aspire Lab, Phoenix, AZ

Cost: $445 per person and includes lunch daily.

For more information: Contact Keith at KeithC@aspiremarketing.com or sign-up at www.aspiremarketing.com. Space is limited.

We have all heard it and even said it — “sales is everyone’s job” and the real question is how do we do sales negotiation training to employees when most businesses have cut to the bone (and some into the bone).  There is only one solution moving forward and that is driving the top line. Those that get focused on it will win over the next 12-to-18 months and those who don’t will learn the lesson that sales performance is the ticket to marketplace success.

So how do you get everyone selling?  What sales negotiation is necessary for enrolling your team and getting them sales training? Here are a few ideas to consider:

Think “Blue Ocean.” There are positive things happening in the marketplace. Not all businesses are having a tough time. If you stay open you will start to see and hear things that will unlock new doors. I remember recently working with a hotel that had a huge dependency on the car industry. They had all but given up when fuel prices doubled and the talk amongst most of their clients was downright depressing. When we started to open our minds and started asking the question of “what are car companies doing to stop this pain and what is happening with the research and development areas,” we were able to target many untapped clients. We just had to stop thinking about the industry the same way. There are a lot of blue oceans out there and when you start looking and listening differently you will see opportunities. The Internet, the news, your key account market trends are just a few places that can help you get curious and explore.

What you focus on comes true and what you focus on they do! Start asking people what they are doing differently today to drive sales and improve client retention as compared to six months ago. You will be surprised (and maybe frightened) that many people are doing the same things and expecting different results. Check in on everything. Here are a few example questions:

• How are you networking differently than six months ago?
• What is your powerful and unique message? How has it changed from six months ago?
• How are we standing out from the clutter?
• What are we doing better today to help our clients/guests enjoy their stay as compared to six months ago?
• How have you personalized the guest experience more powerfully in the last six months?
• What guest leads did you turn over in the last month?
• Is there anything else we could do?

Different questions will help your managers think differently and create different and improved answers/solutions. Questions help them focus on how they affect sales regardless of their position. Look for incremental improvement and you will move the needle.

Change up your participation in the sales meeting. Ask one question that gets the sales team results focused. For example:

“Tell me about each new potential business you found this week and how you found it?”

This will get your people prospecting, networking and looking for new deals. Stop talking about activity. You want to know what the activity is yielding. If they aren’t delivering results they will be open to more coaching surrounding their activity. Accountability comes from placing responsibility “in the chair over there.” I have sat in on hundreds of sales meetings and the conversation is usually about how many calls they attempted/connected. The real focus has to be on how many potential deals they put into their pipeline, end of discussion.

Ask your front desk people individually (this is a critical coaching technique):

“Tell me about any new customers/business cards from guests today that I should speak with and personally thank for choosing us.”

Show them how to engage the guest on the other side of the front desk. And don’t forget to ask your front desk personnel how they think they would make the first 50 feet a more extraordinary first impression, so each guest was excited that they were staying with you.

Instead of a passing hello, find a way to set a culture of extraordinary. Individually ask your employees, “How did you change a guest’s day today?” Ask regularly and your guest comment cards will change exponentially.

At your staff meeting, ask each person to share how they personally drove new sales this past week. (You might want to have a medic on call!)

Sales is a community/team sport. Get everyone thinking about how they contribute to driving new sales and you can count on market share domination. Rest assured most people are still looking to cut more expenses. Keep your eye on the three critical sales balls:

Look for the blue oceans.
Ensure retention through extraordinary (not ordinary) guest experiences.
Stay all over the fundamentals – I’m not sure why we ever go back to them…we should just stick to them!

Renie Cavallari is CEO and Chief Inspiration Officer for Aspire, a global and domestic marketing, training and consulting company that specializes in resort marketing and challenges mediocrity and the status quo to allow you to optimize revenues, productivity and align your organization for optimal performance and profitability. For more information, visit www.aspiremarketing.com, call 602.392.0700 or email renie (at) aspiremarketing.com.

We have all heard it and even said it: “sales is everyone’s job.” The real question is how do we get everyone selling when most businesses have cut to the bone (and some into the bone). There is only one solution moving forward and that is driving the top line. Those that get focused on it will win over the next 12-18 months, and those who don’t will learn the lesson that sales performance is the ticket to marketplace success.

So how do you get everyone selling? Here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Think “Blue Ocean.” There are positive things happening in the marketplace. Not all businesses are having a tough time. If you stay open you will start to see and hear things that will unlock new doors. I remember recently working with a hotel that had a huge dependency on the car industry. They had all but given up when fuel prices doubled and the talk amongst most of their clients was downright depressing. When we started to open our minds and started asking the question of “what are car companies doing to stop this pain and what is happening with the research and development areas,” we were able to target many untapped clients. We just had to stop thinking about the industry the same way. There are a lot of blue oceans out there and when you start looking and listening differently you will see opportunities. The Internet, the news, your key account market trends are just a few places that can help you get curious and explore.
2. What you focus on comes true and what you focus on they do! Start asking people what they are doing differently today to drive sales and improve client retention as compared to six months ago. You will be surprised (and maybe frightened) that many people are doing the same things and expecting different results. Check in on everything.
   Here are a few example questions:
   1. How are you networking differently than six months ago?
   2. What is your powerful and unique message? How has it changed from six months ago?
   3. How are we standing out from the clutter?
   4. What are we doing better today to help our clients/guests enjoy their stay as compared to six months ago?
   5. How have you personalized the guest experience more powerfully in the last six months?
   6. What guest leads did you turn over in the last month?
   7. Is there anything else we could do?

   Different questions will help your managers think differently and create different and improved answers/solutions. Questions help them focus on how they affect sales regardless of their position. Look for incremental improvement and you will move the needle.

3. Change up your participation in the sales meeting. Ask one question that gets the sales team results focused. For example: “Tell me about each new potential business you found this week and how you found it?”This will get your people prospecting, networking and looking for new deals. Stop talking about activity. You want to know what the activity is yielding. If they aren’t delivering results they will be open to more coaching surrounding their activity. Accountability comes from placing responsibility “in the chair over there.” I have sat in on hundreds of sales meetings and the conversation is usually about how many calls they attempted/connected. The real focus has to be on how many potential deals they put into their pipeline, end of discussion.
4. Ask your front desk people individually (this is a critical coaching technique):
   “Tell me about any new customers/business cards from guests today that I should speak with and personally thank for choosing us.”"

   Show them how to engage the guest on the other side of the front desk. And don’t forget to ask your front desk personnel how they think they would make the first 50 feet a more extraordinary first impression, so each guest was excited that they were staying with you.

5. Instead of a passing hello, find a way to set a culture of extraordinary. Individually ask your employees, “How did you change a guest’s day today?” Ask regularly and your guest comment cards will change exponentially.
6. At your staff meeting, ask each person to share how they personally drove new sales this past week. (You might want to have a medic on call!)Sales is a community/team sport. Get everyone thinking about how they contribute to driving new sales and you can count on market share domination. Rest assured most people are still looking to cut more expenses. Keep your eye on the three critical sales balls:

1. Look for the blue oceans.
2. Ensure retention through extraordinary (not ordinary) guest experiences.
3. Stay all over the fundamentals — I’m not sure why we ever go back to them–we should just stick to them!

Renie Cavallari is CEO and Chief Inspirational Officer for Aspire, an international training and consulting company positioning organizations to achieve optimum performance. Aspire provides innovative learning, strategic marketing, leadership training and cultural alignment for increasing revenues, growth in market share, a re-energized sales force and lasting changes in attitudes and outcome. Founded in 1995, Aspire has headquarters in Phoenix with a network of inspiring professionals across the country.

For more information on community sales programs, visit www.aspiremarketing.com e-mail Renie directly at renie@aspiremarketing.com, or call Aspire at 602-392-0700