3 key areas to focus on to improve sales force performance in the travel and tourism industries

The role of business development, account management and sales teams have never been more critical to the travel industry. Not only are they your organisation’s biggest drivers of revenue, they are the face of your company to customers, key clients and partners. As the travel industry faces even more disruption and competition, the performance of your sales force is critical if you want to rely on anything more than organic growth.

A sales force properly managed so it sells the right products at the right prices is the best weapon to drive growth. With access to the right data (inventory, product details) and real solutions to customer issues and most importantly properly structured to ensure maximum motivation for the whole team can achieve incredible results.

Based on research for EyeforTravel’s upcoming Sales Force Management in Travel Event, I’ve identified 3 key areas to focus on to dramatically improve sales performance:

1. Sales force management systems

Getting the right information to your sales teams is a major driving factor of their performance. Whether they are on the road or in the office on the phone and email, the information available to your sales teams will have a major effect on what they sell and who to. How you mange this is key to your success:

a. The information your top seller has in his head could radically change your company’s marketing effectiveness and brand - but getting this information shared can be a futile task involving big sticks and even bigger carrots.
b. The right analysis of the customer could enable the sales director to ensure the best sales approach is used for each individual customer. Obviously the decision makers need to be identified and then approached directly. But the right analysis will enable the right type of sales executives to be hired, trained and deployed and ensure use of the right sales approaches to get the contract in.
c. The huge investment in gathering, analysing and using this information is a considerable cost. Many CRM and sales initiatives have failed because they fall down on the people side. It’s pretty obvious why. You hire hard nosed, sales hungry execs and then expect them to spend half of their time filling in what they see as data forms. A job they became hard nosed sales execs to avoid! Top travel companies like IHG and Disney (both speaking at the event) have successfully managed to overcome this “fault” by training their marketing and product teams to use the feedback, measure their own success and implement changes. 

2 The Structure and Strategy

Choosing the best structure for your sales teams is now harder than ever before. This is because the demand for travel products and their supply chains have been in a state of near constant flux in recent years. It’s a continuous battle. Each layer of management increases the complexity of the organisation leading to potential inefficiencies. But structural complexity also allows for a more detailed management of more complicated products and so more sales.  You need to know the optimum number of sales execs for each sales team and manager. For your product you need to ensure the right level of attention, expertise and motivation is given to your sales execs.  In addition you need to have an adaptability to scale up and down as markets and trends dictate.

You also need to identify what your sales teams should be doing. Create the right standards and strategies for calls, meetings and emails. Work out how much time they should be selling and how many resources they need to achieve these sales levels. At the Sales Force Management Event, Cheapflights and Expedia will discuss how they tackle their sales strategies and set the right management structure for maximum returns and flexibility.

3 Incentives and Recruitment   

Ask any sales person why they do the job and they will say they get up, hit the phone, email and road for money. They want to be rewarded for their hard work with cool cash. Our sister publication, EyeforPharma who are at the centre of Pharmaceutical sales strategies, recently surveyed over 100 sales directors, managers, and analysts from 29 companies. The results showed that whilst nearly all respondents have an incentive scheme in place, the majority of those programs are not having a positive impact on sales-force retention or loyalty to their organizations. In fact, respondents signaled particular concern at the difficulty of establishing challenging but fair targets, of gauging if a program is working, and of motivating middle performers. Other key findings reveal that most incentive schemes distribute financial rewards on a quarterly basis, are based on sales-related parameters, and stay relatively consistent from year-to-year.

At the Sales Force Management in Travel event next April, this contentious topic will be debated to enable you to work out what really works and how to apply it to your organization.

Account Managers, business Developers and Sales teams work best when their director understands that frustrating and curious balance of what technology and people can do when they are blended together. There are hundreds of consultants out there who tell you they can fix your underperforming sales team, but for a fraction of the cost get the low down from the people that actually manage some of the biggest sales forces in the travel industry: people responsible for the performance of teams that sell billions of euros worth of flights, hire cars, hotel rooms, holidays and destinations.

The event will look at the technologies, structure and strategy you need to increase your sales team effectiveness and give the latest facts on the role of big sales teams in the travel supply chain. Attendees already confirmed include: Disney, Expedia, YHA, Air New Zealand, Sol Melia, Sofitel, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Hertz, NH Hotels, Avis, Starwood, Transavia and STR Global. To find out more go to http://events.eyefortravel.com/travel-sales-force-management/