The Key Performance Indicators You Need to Have a Successful Hospitality Sales Organization

Let’s talk about sales, more specifically sales reports to manage both sales and the sales team. In hotels and restaurants, it is so important to know your numbers. Without well-defined KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), you can not make the necessary adjustments and tweaks to make your business successful. Every restaurant and hotel sales organization has different KPIs but here are a few that should be used by everyone.

1. Lead sources
Who doesn’t love a lead? Leads are usually the responsibility of marketing, but many venues do not have a marketing department so this is left to the salesperson to implement and monitor. If you do not know where your leads come from (website, cold call, email, ads, etc.) then it is hard to determine which marketing activities are working and which ones are not. There’s often a gray area when looking at lead sources, so marketing and salespeople have a tendency to “throw mud at the wall” and see what sticks. This approach can be very time-consuming and costly with little payback.

So how do you measure lead sources? Within Tripleseat, simply add a lead source to every event and/or booking. Your lead sources should match your marketing activities. For example, if you receive a lot of leads via the phone, then have a lead source called “phone.” If you do email marketing, then you should have a lead source called “email marketing.” Don’t worry about a lead source from the Tripleseat lead form on your website; Tripleseat automatically adds the lead source for you.

Next, you need to use Tripleseat’s Lead Source report.

Remember, not all leads are created equal, therefore, you want to run a report that shows what leads convert to new business. You may have received a lot of leads from email marketing, but if none of them convert to actual business then it was not successful. You may receive fewer leads from a marketing activity, but if they all convert to business then that is a very good lead source. You can easily run a conversion report in Tripleseat. It looks like this:

2. Sales pipeline 
A sales pipeline (or funnel) allows you to understand where all your deals are in their different sales stages. Tripleseat labels stages as Prospect, Tentative, and Definite. With a sales pipeline, you can quickly understand if you need more business to make your goals or if there are a bunch of deals that can be closed. A salesperson wants to work their pipeline moving deals down the funnel to close, and all the while making sure there are enough deals on the top of the funnel. To see your sales pipeline in Tripleseat, simply go to your reports tab and select event funnel revenue.

3. Sales goals by salesperson
As the saying goes, “you can’t fix what you don’t measure.” If you don’t set goals for all sales managers, then you will have no idea if they are being productive or where they need improvement. Most event business is in the month for the month, with exception of hotels which typically book further out into the future. Setting monthly goals is a best practice as it shows success or failure quickly. Having quarterly goals usually allows more time to make your goals, but it can be a roller coaster and harder to forecast, as some months may be low while other months are higher.

How you set monthly goals is also super-important. Make sure you look at last year’s sales and determine if those sales can be achieved again. If yes, then also determine how much more you want to grow the business. If you make unrealistic goals, you will never achieve them and salespeople will get discouraged and owners will question the cause. Creating sales goals is as much art as it is science. Use all the data available to you via Tripleseat to set realistic achievable goals while keeping in mind how you want to grow your business.

Start with the basics, then add more KPIs
There are many more sales KPIs you can use to help understand your business with Tripleseat, but lead sources, sales pipeline, and sales goals are the building blocks of a well-run sales organization.

Get started now
If you’re a Tripleseat user, log in and use our features to master these KPIs. Need help? Contact Tripleseat’s Support team by submitting a request online, sending an email, or calling our Help Desk at 978-716-2862 between 9 am and 5 pm EST Monday through Friday.

If you’re not a Tripleseat customer and you’re interested in learning more about Tripleseat’s features, schedule a demo at your convenience to take a closer look.