Top 5 Tips to Grow Group Sales

Top 5 Tips to Grow Group Sales

Picture of hands together

Want to grow your group sales? Don’t even know where to begin? Sales can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. This week, we put together our top tips for growing group sales.

Have a Sales Champion

There is nothing more important to growing group sales than a dedicated sales champion. A sales champion inspires the whole center to be the best to keep guests returning time after time for events. Imagine calling your food purveyor to inquire about a new product. How would you feel getting someone on the phone who doesn’t know what they are selling and couldn’t answer your questions? Even worse, what if no one ever answered the phone? When booking events, parents say they look for these things:

  1. Someone has to answer the phone. In today’s busy world, parents don’t have much time; if they call now, answer now, or if not, they move on to the next venue on their list.
  2. The person who answers the phone needs to be friendly, know the product, and be knowledgeable, or they lose trust.

The sales champion may be one of the most important roles in the center. How do you make sure they are staying on track and increasing sales? They have to be involved with the goals and that leads us to tip number 2.

Get a Scorecard with KPIs in Place

KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. It is your goal broken down into mini-weekly goals. KPIs are what keep us on track toward achieving our objectives. A scorecard is a place where we put those goals and track them each week. Make sure they know what their goals are,  and have them tracked. It’s easy to see when you are off track and get ahead before it’s too late.

Outbound Efforts

Don’t wait for business to come to you. There will always be clients who call the center to book events because they are already guests and know how great you are. Reach out to new businesses and expand your network! Plan each day with a power hour to kick-start your day. Nothing is more important than to plant the seeds and watch the harvest come in. If we allow sales to come merely through inbound efforts, it will be too late to recover when the phones go silent.

Call Everyone!

What do arcade games, laser tag, or bowling have to do with a dentist’s office or mechanic’s business? EVERYTHING! It doesn’t matter what industry people work in; everyone has holiday parties. Even more have team building events, summer picnics, team appreciation, and more. If they don’t, why not put the thought in their head? Avoid the temptation of thinking a certain business would never use your facility for their small, medium, or large events because you may just be surprised.

Get Out in The Center and Talk to Guests

Our sales teams shouldn’t stay in an office all day. A great way to get a break and be productive is to get out of the office, into the center, and talk to guests who are already there.
Summer is a great time to be out in the center. Look for parents on laptops, for example. They may be working from home, and you could talk with them about what kind of events their company has and even get contact information for the person who plans the events. The point is you will get loads of feedback about why they love your center, what keeps them coming back, and maybe even a recommendation to a friend or business.

Building Group and Party Business

Building Group and Party Business

people-at-a-party

Four Important Moves to Make Now!

Building group and party business is an “all the time” job. Planning, consistency, prioritization, and focus are four key moves that create “business on purpose” rather than relying on the phone to ring.

Planning

Zig Ziglar challenged audiences with a great question that went something like this, “Do you want to be a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?” I love the clarity of the question. It’s easy to be all over the place and simply react to what comes your way. Busyness feels like work, but too many days of wandering around without a specific plan can leave the group and party sales pipeline empty.

However, when a business takes the time to plan for new business, implements that plan, and then works the plan, the busyness of the prior time becomes far more effective and sales improve dramatically.

Take Action: Here are a few easy things to do today to plan for new business growth:

a. Plan now for summertime business. Decide what your group and birthday party sales will be for Q 2.

b. Set the Q 2 group and birthday sales goal and share it with the team.

c. Plan the time that it will take to visit 50 potential locations on a weekly basis. You may call on the phone or visit in person but the plan needs to be to connect with 50 people who will potentially set up a group or party during a three- to four-week period.

Each of these suggestions is specific. I hope you agree each action is clear and if you commit to implement and work the plan, you will have a group and party business that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Consistency

Once the plan is in place, consistency is key. I know we’ve all had the experience of creating a great plan and then failing to execute it on a consistent basis. Sometimes it’s a lot more exciting to dream and scheme about what you want to do. But, the reality is that consistently working toward the goal, or understanding every little effort every day, is what ultimately generates the big result. (Losing weight comes to mind for me.) Distraction can be the saboteur of consistency. Something else comes up –– it is important so you attend to it –– and the plan is undone. The plan is difficult and, after all, answering the phone is easier than making an outbound call.

Take Action: Promise yourself (and someone else if you really want to stay consistent), that you are committed to the plan. Put a system of weekly or even daily accountability in place so you can track your progress. Remember, it’s every little consistent thing that produces the big results.

Prioritization

There are many things that need to get done on a daily basis. Deciding how to prioritize the day must be the priority of the day! I use a “forced choice” method. Start by listing your priorities for the day. An example of mine follows (and yes, there are many more things than just these five, but you get the idea):

checklist-for-group-and-party-sale

a. Connect with 10 decision-makers for summertime field trips daily.

b. Return any outstanding calls from yesterday.

c. Answer incoming calls.

d. Attend a 9 am sales meeting.

e. Check my LinkedIn account.

Now that you have your list, the next step is to create the prioritization. Knowing where or how to best start can be the biggest challenge of the day. However, if you are consistent (see # 2) and use this method daily, I promise you will be the most productive you’ve ever been.

Start at the top of your list and ask this question: Is it more important to me to accomplish a. or b. today? Place a checkmark on the one that is most important. Then repeat for a. or c., then a. or d., then a. or e. Now you move to b. and ask the same question and so on with c. and d. You’ll wind up with a list that looks like the one at the top of the page.

In less than five minutes, you have a more clear picture of what’s most important. It’s interesting, if I changed the 9 a.m. sales meeting to 3 p.m., it would not have been the number one priority. However, since it was the first, scheduled event of the day, it winds up at the top of the list. There’s a clue here that leads to focus.

Focus

I have found that when I set a plan in motion, commit to the daily activities that I believe create the results, and then prioritize those activities, I am free to focus on what matters most. Sure things come up, but when I am focused on why I want what I want, it’s easier to stay the course. Focus can get derailed when you are too tired, distracted or when it seems like the plan isn’t working. I believe the best piece of advice I can give here is to be patient. Often, things take longer than we expect.

Take Action: Focus helps clear away the distractions. Concentrate and try saying no to the stuff that didn’t make your list or isn’t part of your plan.

Dream big, create a plan that inspires, promise to consistently execute against that plan, prioritize daily in order to keep the plan in focus, and experience the best second quarter of your life!

Join us for our Birthday Sales Conference on Sept 1-2, 2021, and learn how to increase your party sales.

Reprinted From Replay Magazine: Party Professor – Mar 2020

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