Would you like to dramatically increase meeting, event and group sales in your hotel this year?
Read on to discover how you can do exactly that, for under £400, without losing your salespeople for days at a time…
As a hotel GM or sales leader, you and your team face ONE big challenge.
Overcome it and good things happen: greater job satisfaction, the joy of hitting your budget and a happy, engaged sales team.
Fail to rise to the challenge, and you’ll get the opposite – difficult conversations with senior management, the pain of being behind budget, and a sales team under pressure.
What’s the challenge?
Simple: Converting enough enquiries into sales, and maximising the value of every single sale.
Sales is the lifeblood of any business, and the simple reality is that converting enough enquiries into sales and revenue is the most important thing you can be doing.
Without it, frankly, your role (and that of your sales team) becomes much more challenging and stressful.
For more than 25 years, we’ve successfully helped hotels across the UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa and even China differentiate their sales approach and continuously develop their team through an ever-changing landscape.
Our clients include brands such as IHG, Marriott International and Accor, and we’ve used all of that experience to develop a solution that breaks down the challenges you and your team face into easily-digestible, bitesize chunks.
Trouble is, equipping your sales team with the skills they need to convert more enquiries is easier said than done.
The last few years have come with their fair share of challenges, and the biggest has to be the great exodus of talent that left the industry post-COVID, never to return.
- You aren’t converting as many sales as you could
- You’re not maximising the revenue opportunities from the sales you are making
Inexperienced staff don’t just struggle to make the right sales, they also struggle to identify the right upsell opportunities.
But here’s the thing: it’s not their fault.
They’re just playing the hand they’re dealt, doing their best with their limited experience.
Sure, you get bad apples everywhere, but in my day-to-day life, training hundreds of hotel staff to sell more effectively, I’d say that attitude is not the issue here.
Instead, in the vast majority of cases, most struggling staff have the right attitude but could dramatically improve their performance if only they were given the right training and tools.
It’s not your fault either, by the way.
You’re spinning a load of different plates, pulled in every direction, with event sales just one of the balls you’re trying to keep in the air, after all.
The problem is that senior management look towards you for the performance of those salespeople. If they don’t perform, it’s not good news for you.
Typically GMs try to solve this issue one of three ways:
- Do nothing and hope for the best
- Task the team leader or internal L&D teams to train your sales teams
- Bring in external in person training
You and I both know that doing nothing and sweeping the issue under the carpet isn’t really an option.
You may have asked the team leader or the internal L&D trainer to put together some training, but they have other priorities or lack the expertise to design and deliver sales training.
Which means that the default option for most GMs is external in person training, which also comes with significant challenges.
I’m regularly asked to conduct in-person sales training for hotels and hotel groups, and given the exodus of talent leaving our industry over the last five years, that training is more in demand than ever.
But there are a few problems with in-person training:
It isn’t cheap.
A day’s in-person training starts from £4,000 + VAT. For the right hotel, that’s an investment that’ll return many times over, but the truth is that with budgets trimmed, there are fewer hotels able to justify that upfront cost.
It requires time away from the day job.
There’s no getting around it: if you’re hiring a trainer to come in and deliver a course, your salespeople do have to down tools for a day and come and soak up the learning.
Content is squeezed
One day is one day. We know that GMs don’t want their team out for more than one day at a time. If at all. And squeezing everything your sales team needs to learn into one day can be challenging and easily forgotten.
You need results NOW
Following on from the previous point - scheduling a day’s training is great, but the reality is that you need to upskill your sales team now. Waiting weeks or months, is no good when you’ve got sales targets to hit.
Coordinating dates is a nightmare
If your calendar is anything like mine, it’s absolutely chock full of stuff. Managing to coordinate diaries to get enough of your key people there is a nightmare, which means that - inevitably - you end up kicking the training down the road weeks or even months, which means you don’t make progress anywhere near as fast as you could.
There is some good news though: we can help you quickly, easily and dramatically upskill your salespeople, so they can convert more of the enquiries you get AND increase the value of many of those enquiries without being in the classroom.
The reluctance to pick up the phone
There’s an overreliance on email in hotel sales. While there’s always value in it and there’s no doubt it’s the main mode of communication, there’s a time and place to pick up the phone to move the conversation on to where you need to get it to. Prioritising the right client at the right moment to do that can make all the difference.
The changing face of sales in 2025 and beyond
Let’s face it, hotel sales has changed. It’s become much more transactional than it ever was before. Being equipped with the tools to be able to deal with all manner of situations and build relationships is crucial to the success of you and your team.
The sea of sameness
Hotel salespeople often find it very difficult to demonstrate difference. To the untrained eye, many hotel offerings feel very similar, and it’s your salesperson’s job to make you stand out. Trouble is, if you don’t show them how, they won’t be able to do it.
Failing to understand what really matters to the buyer
Sales is about personalisation. We all know that. But despite this, we’re sending out salespeople into the heat of the battle without educating them on why customers will and won’t buy, what’s important to them, and what levers you need to pull and which questions you need to ask to get them to take action.
These are just a few of the reasons why SO many hotel salespeople are struggling right now. The good news, as we outlined above, is that we can help you and your team meet all four of those challenges.
It’s those exact challenges that we work with some of the most renowned hotel brands in the world (including IHG, Marriott International and Accor) to meet head on.
Right, that’s enough bad news. Here’s the good news we mentioned earlier and how we can help you solve the problem:
Our CPD-accredited Meeting & Events Sales Training (MEST) gives you ALL the sales training you and your team will ever need, for one annual subscription of just £369 + VAT per seat.
What are the MEST courses?
The on-demand training consists of five online courses, with a total of 27 videos covering every single element of hotel sales from a meetings, events and conference perspective.
At the end of each video is a call to action, asking your team to do something, which helps you measure whether they’re putting the learning into practice. On top of that, there is a 10-15-minute memory quiz after each course, ensuring that they’ve understood and retained the training.
Forest of Arden Marriott Hotel & Country Club
Is the content relevant?
Absolutely. Every word of this course has been written by yours truly.
I’ve been working with hotels for over 30 years and some things that worked then, don’t work now – but some things have stood the test of time, which has allowed me to help make my clients hundreds of thousands in additional event sales.
We only work with hotels, and as such we’ve created and curated this course specifically for them.
And we’re not new to creating effective online training either – we’re the proud owners of a “Sales Training Team of the Year” award, as well as being placed as a finalist at the Learning Technologies Awards and Sales Management Awards.
Put simply, when it comes to hotel sales, we’re perfectly placed to add serious value to your operation, and MEST allows us to do that for you in a cost-effective and easy-to-consume format.
Here is an overview of the 5 courses and the problems and challenges they can solve:
Identifying your Target Market
Identifying your hotel’s ideal enquiry, ideal customer or ideal agent. The focus is on generating and converting enquiries that are right for your hotel sales strategy
Responding Online
How to prioritise your enquiries, write stand-out email responses and generate attention-grabbing follow-up emails
Responding by Voice
Having conversations, asking the right questions to qualify your lead and gaining commitment by proposing next steps. This is where we train people to be really effective on the phone
Managing the Price Conversation
Dealing with discount requests using questions, cost logic, market logic and trading concessions
Selling on a Site Inspection
Best practice approach to site visits and showrounds. Tailoring the site visit to what is important to the customer, to increase the possibility of conversion.
Manchester Airport Marriott Hotel
…MEST courses can help. It’s got all the power of that £4,000 a day sales training, but with none of the drawbacks:
Consume anywhere, anytime
Modules are bitesize and can be consumed online at any time, making them easily accessible. Your whole team can be fully trained on the specific elements they need in just a matter of months.
New starters get instant access
If you’re bringing new team members in, you just get them a seat, and they’ve got instant access to all the training they need; no waiting weeks or months for the next in-person course
Easy to get started
In most cases, a GM or sales leader can sign off on a £369 spend, so no need to wait for sign-off on high to get started
Unlimited access
An in-person training day is great, but when it’s done, it’s done. MEST courses let you go back, time and time and again, to clarify points, refresh your memory and hone your technique.
CPD accredited
Not all training in the hospitality space is, so you know it’s good quality training that meets the required CPD standards and benchmarks.
No time wasted on travel, accommodation or time out of the office
It’s there, wherever you are, whenever you need it
Transferable Licence
If an employee leaves and they need replacing while you still have a valid licence for them, you don’t need buy a new licence; we’ll just transfer the time you have left onto your new starter
Get regular re-engagement and reminders
In-person training is great, but off the back of it, performance can often peak and then dip back down. Each week, we’ll email out a short bulletin video focusing on a particular topic or story that is relevant to MEST. This bitesize video keeps your team engaged and focused on the latest sales tips for hotels. With a 12-month licence, you can keep your staff engaged and reminded of what they need to do
And one final, BIG one - Your satisfaction GUARANTEED.
We’re so confident in our MEST courses and their ability to help you generate additional event sales, that we’re prepared to guarantee your total satisfaction.
Click the button below, invest in the training, and if you get to the end of the training and you think it’s been a waste of your time, or it’s not what you thought it would be, we’ll give you every single penny back.
Your Investment
Getting started with the MEST courses is incredibly easy. At £369 per seat, this is incredible value but I also know how important it is to get this learning in front of as many people as possible. So, until Wednesday 30th April, we’re discounting each seat by £100 with the code MEST100, meaning your investment is just £269 (plus VAT) per seat.
And just one deal closed off the back of our MEST courses will pay for the licences several times over.
Just click the big button on this page, fill out the checkout form, and you can follow the instructions to get all the access you need for you and your team.
We’ll be in touch the same day by email to confirm your access details to the Sales Gym platform and the MEST courses.
Once your colleague(s) is online they can watch a Welcome Video that explains everything and they can also contact us if they need any help.
As mentioned, your investment for a MEST licence is just £269 + VAT before Wednesday 30th April for 24/7, 365 access; a drop in the ocean in comparison to that one day’s training from £4,000 + VAT.
Even if you were to get 10 licences for your sales team, you’re still paying out less, and each of those salespeople will have a full 12 months of access to EVERYTHING they need to make better and more effective sales.
Newcastle Gateshead Marriott
Decision Time
If you’ve read this far, you know you’ve got a problem. You know your sales team needs to be more effective. MEST is the solution to that
problem. And we’re that confident that that’s the case that we’re offering a 100% moneyback guarantee, which means you can’t lose – either it works for you, or you get your money back.
So, it’s time to take action. To boost your team, convert more enquiries, to achieve your budget.
