How to Work with Hotel Catering / Sales Managers

Catering / Sales Managers at hotels work with large groups that have booked rooms inside the hotels. They make sure that their meetings, events and catering are taken care of. That means, they try to sell them as much food and beverage while they are in the hotel as they can.

These groups are everything from small 20 person single day meetings to 500 people from a company staying multiple days.

Inevitably, these groups want to get out of the hotel after their day of work and experience the city. Becasue they work closely with these catering and sales managers they will ask them for recommendations on where to go.

How to Get Referrals
So, these managers are great sources of referrals for us; it's something that we have seen work over and over again in many markets. Like all other forms of referrals and sales, they need to know you and trust you so relationship building is very important.

Ideally, you meet these people, invite them into the pub and you talk to them about what we do for events and explain to them our capabilities.  Always talk in terms of what we have done for past clients to build credibility (name dropping is good).

Sales = Asking Great Questions

You should also ask them these questions:

- Do you work with places like ours? What works best? How often do you work with places like ours?
- What do you think we would be good for for your customers?  How could you use a place like ours?
- How can we help you?

Here are some other ideas:

- Setup a happy hour for them and their staff

- Monthly email communication letting them know about recent parties you have done (to build credibility) with an offer to help them on any events they might be looking at outside the hotel

- Seeing them on a regular basis when you do hotel visits

In general, keep these people top of mind when you are thinking about the benefits and the results from your hotel program.