SELLING-HOSPITALITY

SELLING-HOSPITALITY

(& surviving the HoReCa industry)

After 31 years of rejection, as a career salesman that has sold any and everything in any and every business vertical and industry, I can confidently say that the Hospitality Industry is an extremely volatile segment to play in!

Why?  Because your clients are NEVER loyal to you as technology has made them impulse buy solutions that may seem cheaper on a mobile phone or a digital screen immediately BUT, are restrictive nightmares when one actually goes into the fine print. (that 100% of impulse buyers do NOT read) 

The Hospitality Industry even pre-covid has always had a defensive-aggressive approach where they spend an immense amount in ridiculous marketing budgets to create repeat customers and get them to embrace their Brand loyalty schemes. (like membership value / discount cards) 

Hoping to get a piece of the pie gigantic players from the financial segment also jumped in many years ago to try to support the Hospitality or HoReCa (Hotels, Restaurants & Café’s) industry.  This has been a great help but at what cost because everything adds to the cost of goods sold that are in the end passed down to the consumer! 

Having launched, introduced, created a demand and sold a HoReCa FMCG products for a major ISO pharmaceutical company, a bitter reality struck me that despite all our gimmicks and tricks of the trade the only way possible to ensure a solid sales pipeline is purely dependent on the entire industry working seamlessly together!  

However, that does seem possible but NOT on such a macro level!  The main reason in my research I found out was an extremely fluid, erratic and treacherous army of worker ants in this hospitality colony! The frontline staff or your waiters, bar tenders, bus boys, concierge staff in fact everyone involved have gone into a survival mode and rather than focus on upselling / creating client repeat loyalty to the brand they work for, are only focused on the “tip” or basically the financial element.

For a quicker and maybe a few pennies more the front-line staff make a dash for the next best option and rather than appreciating their careers vertically they move laterally and basically jump from the frying pan into the fire professionally because the grass always looks greener on the other side! 

As a business consultant that looks at everything from a sales perspective! Oh wait, I do not believe in marketing concepts as they do not guarantee any yield on the employers returns on their exiting investment to help them somehow curtail their cost of goods sold! 

My sales approach, I find is better because first I bring in the cash-flow and then I request the board of directors or any organization to only limit their ad-spend to maintaining a humble brand presence!  To me, with the way the world economy is evolving I find that advertising which was a necessity in the 1990’s and prior to the digital revolution is no longer worth it! 

 Everyone or every brand is struggling to be noticed and Billions are spent globally try to do just that however, they seem oblivious to the fact that everyone is doing the same and there is so much electronic noise out there in cyberspace that any amount of budget becomes rapidly ineffective to gain a steady yield from the consumer market.

My solution is simple! One should go back to the core ethos of the industry, then their own brand, run a complete SWOT analysis on their entire infrastructure and tie numbers down to any solutions that one may present! 

After that rather than implementing those solutions and begging the stakeholders for more funds to create funds (maybe) a sales approach needs to be identified.  Now here is where it becomes fun and odd enough simple! 

I strongly advise my clients to disregard fancy marketing plans written by some college kids or graduates with virtually no street experience and street smarts and can only quote some archaic theories that Kotler’s or some other academic literature has fused into their way of thinking! 

My approach is to take that entire marketing funds demand and hand it over to the HR department.  I always request my customers and clients to reinvest back into their HR department strengthen it and empower it to appreciate the existing workforce.  If your workforce is content (not happy) they will be the most loyal frontline soldiers that will do more than your bidding, and their redirected and invigorated focus to work as a team will be crucial and maximize your sales.

The day the HoReCa industry realizes that “people are sick and tired of all the gimmicks and crave for that personal touch” only then will they be able to understand that ‘people run businesses and industries and NOT big ad spends and unwarranted text book concepts!’

Should you desire to have a chat with me – I would be happy to discuss options with you so hit me up at any time – (my contact information is given below) – I would love to learn more about you and what you do!

Hoping to hear from you soon & let’s be professional friends – (Do check out my linked in Profile & see my endorsements & professional recommendations)  I really hope we can do something wonderful together to appreciate each other’s professional lives! - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amynaghulamali/

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If you would like advice or a direct FREE consultation please contact me here via e-mail - amyn@ghulamalis.com or on WhatsApp - +66 9444 20133