CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — As more and more hotel companies align their sales, marketing and revenue-management teams under the larger umbrella of a "commercial" department, leaders of those three discrete disciplines say it's vitally important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of people within those roles and how they can best complement each other.
Each of the three fields have grown immensely over the past three decades and now thrive on "mutual respect," said Lori Kiel, chief commercial officer at The Boca Raton.
"That requires trust and vulnerability, two words that do not come easy," Kiel said during the "Orchestrating Excellence: Crafting a Unified Commercial Strategy in Hotels" session at the HSMAI Commercial Strategy Conference.
She said the "core" of commercial strategy is understanding and developing the various expertise included in it. Kiel came up in the industry as a revenue manager, but to operate as a leader, she has to understand the other two fields, as well.
"I've got to know enough about sales so that when I use my own expertise, I know how to optimize using my salesperson's expertise, as well," she said. "What is the segment that they're after? What are the feeder markets? Do we all know the need dates? ... In marketing, it's the same thing. What are you marketing? Are you marketing what I need, or are you out there just marketing what you want to market? It matters."
Kiel compared the efforts of a modern hotel commercial strategy leader to being an air traffic controller.
"You're at the helm," she said. "You are responsible for executing the strategies — the flight plans — for the different departments. When you're in air traffic control, planes are landing, planes are taking off. They're moving about the runway flawlessly. The minute you get down on the tarmac because you, the leader, know better — 'I can do it better, faster, stronger, easier' — there are no more planes taking off. There's no more planes landing. Everything stops."
Cogwheel Marketing & Analytics CEO Stephanie Smith said the different disciplines have specific roles that influence different parts of the customer booking journey — through inspiration, research, planning and booking — with marketing having the most impact higher up in the funnel.
She added most of the credit for business is attributed to the booking phase, which amounts to a single day, while the other three account for — on average — 71 days of the customer journey.
"If we wait to use marketing in the booking window, it's too late," Smith said. "We really need to focus on the full planning window to make a substantial, long-term impact on our commercial strategy goals. So don't come to marketing halfway through the month and say 'We're short.'"
Hotel commercial teams work best when they have a "feedback loop" between the disciplines, so that their strategies are aligned, Smith said. That means sales managers sharing customer feedback with marketing, and revenue managers being clear about what segments marketing should target and what time frames need to boost demand. At the same time, marketers should be helping the other disciplines understand the value of that full customer journey.
"Make sure you have a plan before you start throwing tactics at the wall to see what sticks," she said.
Gissell Moronta, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Atrium Hospitality, said one of the major challenges commercial teams must navigate is the fundamental personality differences between the disciplines.
"The best salespeople have both creativity and analytical skills, however, more often than not, they have more of one than the other," she said. "The key here as great commercial leaders is to know that both can be extremely successful."
She said revenue managers are often on the analytical side of the spectrum, which can make communication more difficult between sales and revenue.
"Don't be disheartened if your sales partner is not as analytical as you are," she said. "You need to ensure that you appreciate and take advantage of how they supplement your skill set."
Moronta agreed that alignment of goals and continual upskilling and training for the three disciplines are key for broad success. But that can be difficult when success for each discipline is oversimplified; this might happen when sales is only measured by sales productivity, marketing is viewed through the lens of return on ad spend and revenue is only judged by market share.
"If we continue to be measured by our individual impact, we will never build a commercially focused organization," she said.