How I Get Corporate Hospitality Bookings 🚀

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Welcome to season seven, episode 21 of the Boostly podcast. Today I have got someone very, very, very special. We're very lucky to have Jessica Lorimer on as a podcast guest. Now. I've been following Jessica for about three years now. I've worked with Jessica. I hired Jessica to coach me for the Boostly business and for the family. Business has just been an amazing journey of working with Jess. We've, I say we've known each other for a while, we've been in Facebook groups together and I've followed the podcast that Jessica has for a number of years now. And it is one of the best free podcasts that you will find out there that will help you take your business forward. And she's pivoted last year to talking about B2C, but then more into like B2B and corporate world. And I have been wanting to do a corporate and a business booking episode for a while. So it just made so much sense to reach out to Jess and ask if we could get her onto the podcast, which she kindly said yes. And we were able to put a date aside in February and we did this amazing episode where we broke down having that mindset shift from not being confident enough to go to a corporate company to being able to like what you can do personally and the importance of doing a daily sales activity, a daily new business activity doesn't matter what it is. And there's some tactics and tips, things that you can be doing right now. This is a fantastic episode for you to do if you need to fill up those midweek buckets. I can't stress this enough, you'll be wanting to make loads of notes. So wherever you are and whether you're driving, you're walking and you can't get a pen or you can't take some notes on your phone, please just go to boostlee.co.uk podcast scroll down to season seven. You're looking for episode 21. Look for Jessica's name. Once you go in there, there'll be all the links that you need to her podcast, to her Facebook group, to the episodes that she mentioned that you can go and tune and listen into after, and so much more. All I ask in return for this amazing episode for free, we've given up our times is that you share this podcast with a friend, somebody in short, stay accommodation owner. Whether it's a Facebook group, just go share this link, put it in a Facebook group, tag somebody in to watch it, and that's all I would like for you to do as a thank you for putting on this episode at no charge. So whether you're watching this on YouTube, whether you're tuning in in the car or walking the dog or whatever you are doing, enjoy it. It's going to be a really good one. Please go reach out to Jessica afterwards and say thank you before I let you go. This is the final day that you can enter the Hostfully competition to win loads of amazing prizes, as well as a marketing review from me and a book from Danny at Airbnb. Optimize my Airbnb what you need to do very, very quickly. Stop this podcast right now. Go to hostfully.com contest and enter in the link to your guidebook. Just pick one. If you've got loads, just pick one. We're going to enter into a competition. There's loads of different categories we're going to judge and we're going to pick out a few of our favorites and those are going to win Hoodies Tops premium listings. There's loads of stuff that you can win, so please go and do that. If you've not yet got a guidebook, very quickly go to hostly.com go and sign up to one free guidebook. Everybody gets a free one. And then if you want to go further from there and expand to their premium sections, type in Boostly2M to get two months free. Right now we go straight into Jessica.

So I started back out in the corporate world in 2009. I had been in a sales role since I was 16. I started out selling jewelry for one of the UK's biggest jewelry firms and I got headhunted while I was at university by a big B2B sales firm. And I turned out to be quite good at business to business sales, which was lucky for me and obviously lucky for them. Profitable for both of us and I made a lot of money for the companies I was working with. I went on to later specialize in luxury fashion and helping luxury fashion brands set up different sales divisions around the world, which was really interesting. And then I was diagnosed in 2014 with me. So I took the decision to leave my corporate job and set up a business so that I could build something that was a bit more lifestyle focused. And for the last six years I've been teaching online entrepreneurs how to sell in their businesses. Lots and lots of different sales skills around sales, psychology, funnels and the basics behind selling to corporates. And then last year, last June, I decided to make the pivot and publicly start teaching entrepreneurs how to sell B2B how to sell to corporate organizations. It was something I've been doing with private clients for a couple of years, but I hadn't been doing publicly. And so we did that and made that move last June. And so far I've been able to convince a whole bunch of people that selling to corporates is a good idea and they're selling, thriving, doing it. So I'm excited to share some info today.

The new Facebook group for anybody that is wondering is called Selling to Corporates. It's thriving, I'm part of it and there's loads of really amazing conversations going on. So I do recommend everybody go and check that out. If you just type in Selling to corporates in Facebook search, then you'll be able to join and get rocking with that. So we're going to be talking a lot today obviously about selling to corporates. Corporates, B2B, business bookings, whatever you want to want to call it. I think that the first way to sort of bridge this is the mindset of it doesn't matter whether you do short stay accommodation, doesn't matter whether you've got any business. I think for a lot of business owners when it comes to selling B2C, so like business to guest or business to customer, that's more easy. But when it comes to approaching businesses or going B2B, people sort of get freaked out a little and they, they get overwhelmed. And just like with everything, when you get too overwhelmed, just leave it. Why do you think that people might have that sort of mindset, the sort of, the scared of sort of selling to corporates? And why do you think would be really beneficial specifically for people doing short stay accommodation to sort of open your eyes to it a little bit more and sort of bring it into your marketing?

Yeah, completely. I think it's a really normal reaction to not want to sell to corporates. So for anyone out there who's thinking, oh my God, I have never wanted to sell to a corporate, I totally hear you. Nobody else does either. You know, it's always the first reaction that people have. I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that generally people have had a bad experience working for a corporate in a previous life. You know, most people have come from an employed background and so they've dealt with the red tape and the politics and they didn't enjoy it and that's why they've gone on to create a hospitality business. And so they can't see themselves working with a corporate because all you see is the negative remembrance, like the negative memories of that. The other reason is that rejection is something that terrifies people. And I think that we have this immediate association that when you are pitching to a corporate, you're going to get rejected more often. And I always think that's really interesting because, let's face it, when you're sat on Facebook and you're creating a post that says, come and stay at our amazing Airbnb or come and stay at our amazing holiday cottage, you're not looking at all of the people who scrolled past your post and didn't react or didn't buy. Instead, you focus on the positive. You're like, oh, cool, I got 30 likes and two comments and one booking, and life is good. But when we're selling to corporate, corporates are very transparent. So the conversations that you'll have are much more direct and some ways that can be more difficult. So effectively, you might go to a business and say, we noticed that you bring in a lot of people Monday to Friday, and we'd love to offer you a room rate discount that corporate might turn around in your face and say, nope, not interested, thanks. And that's it. And people are really worried about that. I think it's a big part of your mindset is learning to be more resilient, you know, and people worry so much that they're going to publicly face rejection, that they'd rather be doing all of the social media activities and staying busy because it doesn't necessarily have as direct an impact or on their mindset and on their emotional.

I think maybe just like as a generation or just where. Where we are right now, where business owners are really stuck in that reactive mode, it would be lovely if all of our businesses was 100% passive. We just, you know, money came in and life was grand. But it's not like that. That's not the dream world that a lot of people paint. So I think that specifically in hospitality, what I notice is that people get reactive because they're. They just wait for that email to ping up, that they've got bookings. And if there's one thing that I have, I have learned from you more than anybody else when it comes to running a business and growing a business and scaling the business, it's about that proactive about being proactive about not just waiting, about going out there and finding bookings or pot sales, wherever it may be. And what would be awesome at this point of this podcast would be, do you have just a real simple tip that you could recommend specifically when we're going down a sort of business booking route or Corporate booking route. What could be something that someone could be doing right now, going out in their local area and finding these businesses and just sort of going from finding them to then starting a conversation. What sort of tactics and tips could you share here for somebody?

The first thing is it's really important to segment your marketing and I really like what you said that, you know, most people don't do a lot of proactive marketing because we think it's sleazy or salesy or that it's going to be a burden or that it's going to feel gross. And to be honest, when you first start, probably well. But the difference with selling to corporates is that it requires two types of content. So one is proactive where we're directly outreaching and starting a conversation. And that's infinitely easier and it's much, much easier to generate revenue doing that. And the second is broadcast content. So if you're more comfortable, you can always use some broadcast content on a platform like LinkedIn where you're not trying to sell B2C and you can talk about, you know, having bulk rates for long term lets or bulk rates for Monday to Friday, let's and things like that. You can absolutely use that. You can absolutely use case study content on LinkedIn as a platform for selling B2C. B2B. Sorry. When you are looking at proactive content, you want to be doing that once a day initially. So if you are somebody who is not currently fully booked with business, let you want to be making sure your first activity of the day. And I say this to everyone, so Mark must be sick of hearing it by now, but your first activity of the day has got to be a sales activity every single day. If you want your business, whatever business, you have to be profitable every day, you've got to start with something that is going to make you money because that gives your business the opportunity to be profitable. So what you want to start with is look at the top five companies in your local area who are regularly bringing people in. So if you live in the north of England, for example, the US military has a military base in Yorkshire I believe, and it's got one down in Suffolk as well. And they're always bringing people over who need places to live. Funnily enough, the US military does not have a mass of barracks outside North Yorkshire. I don't think there's anything actually outside North Yorkshire. Lots of people are going to be very offended by this that I just not know the north. I'm very, very south of the Thames. If I go north of Watford, I like curl up and get highs. This is one of those things. But you know, you could be looking at local organizations that do the same. You could look outside the box like a military organization. You might look at bigger firms, you know, you might have international consultancy businesses or finance businesses that are local to you and you would simply approach them one every morning. Look for a stakeholder, so look for a director of HR or director of relocation or something like that. And you would send them a really, really simple connection message on LinkedIn to connect with them that says, hi, my name is, whatever your name is, I've got a few properties to let or a room to let or you know, one property to let for a Monday to Friday booking or a long term booking. And I thought it might be relevant to you because it's in the area of when would you be free to chat. That's it. It's super, super transparent. If you do that once a day, every day, you're going to find that you're going to start having these conversations, it's going to be a lot easier. And companies will start knowing your name because you're going to be coming up at networking events, you're going to be coming up in peer to peer conversations. And so you'll start to find that actually companies do then approach you and say, okay, we know that you've got maybe one property or two properties or however many you've got or, and that will generate the leads for you via word of mouth referral. And also that proactive outreach that you're.

Doing something that anybody can start doing. And you are right, it is ingrained in my head every single day. Doesn't matter whether it's my family business or whether it is boostly, every single day is ingrained in my head what you say the first thing that you do has to be some sort of new business. And every day if I haven't, the last thing that goes into my head before I leave the office is you saying, have you done something new business today? But you've got to do it every single day. You've got to get it into your routine, you've got to get it into your mindset to be doing something. And I know there's going to be a lot of people either listening to this on the podcast or watching this back on the video who will be thinking, well, I don't really know where to start on this, but what everybody you need to realize is that you have got and if you're lucky enough to have previous bookings, you've got loads of potential business guests you can go back and look on right now. So you can go into your reporting tool. So whether you use free to book Avivo, Toke, Zevu, whoever you use, go back and look at your guest and try and pick out those that will come in for business. Now you should be asking the question, are you coming for business or leisure like everybody else does? And if you can go, right, this person came on business, I remember this guest. This is somebody that was arriving for work. Your life is a whole lot easier because you can just reach out, give them a call or send them a quick message or an email or wherever and just ask a question. Just say, I remember you came here for work, what was the business? Do you come here regularly? Is it other people from your company that does? Or even better, do you have the name of the contact for HR relocations of your company? So I can just send them a quick message and introduce myself. So everybody, I guarantee that everybody watching this will have that. So you've got two little tactics you can do right there and the other.

Thing you can do with somebody who's staying there is if, if when they actually come to stay and you know that they're staying there on business because you've got that question, you can get your front of house staff to simply ask, oh, are you planning on coming here often? Oh, this is your second stay. Oh, you know, would it be worth us contacting your company to see whether we could give you a volume rate or do you have any other colleagues who are planning on being in the area? You know, there's always questions that you or your front of house staff can ask to find out a little bit more that you can then use later on. Because if a company is, you know, spending money on multiple different hotels or B&Bs for its staff, it would be better for them ultimately to get a discounted volume rate on somewhere else and it would give you those, those extra bookings and regular bookings, which is really important. You know, when you're a small hospitality owner, it's really important to have consistent regular bookings. And then of course, when it's the weekend and they all go home, you can charge whatever you like for lovely weekend visitors like me.

Exactly, exactly. So it's all about again, this time of the year, everybody who I do like coaching calls with or you can see the post in the hospitality community or the Boost Lee Academy. It's all saying along the same things that it's Quiet, you know, we need more midweek bookings and everybody says we want those midweek bookings. Well, this is one of the best ways of getting those midweek bookings because like Jess says, they leave on the Friday so you've got your accommodation back for the weekend. So a quick change around and then they come back on Monday and again you've got a guest coming to stay, maybe it's for a week or you've spotted a trend that they're coming back for a few weeks in a row and then Monday to Friday. Well, there's a large chance that they are coming for business. So give them a call, ask them a question.

You could even look up like conferences in your local area. And look up, you know, I work in the sales industry, we're always having conferences because everyone loves beer and wine. So like it's basically just a bunch of people getting together to drink alcohol for a week. But you could absolutely look up conferences in your area and then approach the conference organizers and say, look, we know that people are going to be coming in for accommodation. Like could we be a preferred, you know, accommodation supplier or something like that? That's a really easy way to do it. And you can book that year after year if you know it's a regular thing. You know, I just did it recently for. We put on an event in November, we're putting on the same event or a similar event this November and we went back to the same venue, we went back to the same accommodation places and said, would you do the same as you did last year? So they're getting that repeat business every single year and you could absolutely do the same.

There's going to be. Because the corporate world is so transparent, you will, there's a large chance you're going to get a no or a no thank you. But the main thing to remember is don't get personal. It's not personal against you. You know, just brush it off and then go to the next one. And if you're doing it on a daily basis, like Jess says, you'll start to get a name for yourself, you'll start to be recommended to other people. And don't be scared if you don't hear back to do a follow up. You know, don't obviously try and do it every hour. Just become spammy Pete, because that's not going to work. But if you can just make a little note, maybe create a Google sheet and just go, right, we contacted this company on 1st of the month and then I'm going to do it if I've not had anything back, get back in contact, say on the 10th, that's absolutely fine. You know, don't be scared to reach out again because people just miss messages, people miss emails, people miss for what, whatever reason.

You want to do a minimum of three follow ups, a minimum of three before you give up on something.

So where would be the best place for somebody to find out more about it? What's some of the couple of podcast episodes that you've done previously that would be a good place to get somebody start if they're sort of thinking about doing this, they're going to think, right, I'm going, I'm going to get on this, but I need a little bit more help and guidance. Where can they find the podcast and is there any episodes in particular that stand out in your mind that would be a good place to sort of get started? Specifically with that sort of the mindset shift of selling to corporates, where would you recommend people sort of start from?

So the podcast is everywhere, thanks to the lovely Scott Doucet, who spends most of his time uploading it everywhere. So you can find it on any major podcast player, Stitcher, podbean, itunes, all that kind of stuff. I would probably recommend starting. There are a few episodes. So one is the very first episode I recorded last June and that's all about business development. So if you are thinking I want to get started with this, but I'm not really sure on the process or how I need to do it, that's the best episode for you. It gives you a couple of little scripts and templates that you can use in the episodes that you can start approaching companies and it explains how business development works. If you're new to selling business to business, it's a really good one. The second one is an episode that I recorded at the beginning of January actually, or the one out at the beginning of January, talking about the foundational pieces you need to sell to corporates. So that really lays out for you the time that it's going to take, what kind of work you need to put in and what kind of activities you need to do and how long they're going to take you. So if you're somebody who's like, I'm interested, but I don't necessarily want to go all in yet, I want to find out a little bit more first. Go and have a listen to that. And then if you are somebody who really does struggle with the mindset piece, and I hear you, we have an episode coming out in about two Weeks time that is all about mindset and resilience and why you should be not afraid to change your mindset in 2020. And sell B2B so you can always be an early bird and, you know, catch the episode when it comes out in a couple of weeks time.

This is being recorded on 11 February and by the time that Jess episode comes out on the boosted podcast, that will be out. So we'll make sure that we get everything in the show notes, we'll link it all in on the blog post and you can go and find everything there. So if you go to boostly.co.uk podcast, scroll all the way down to season seven, find Jessica's name, and then in there you'll be able to find everything, including links to the Facebook group and the podcast and anywhere else that you want to go. Now, at the end of every podcast, I like to ask some quick fire questions. This terrifies me a little bit more into the world of Jesse.

Is this going to be one of those things where you say a word and I have to just say the first thing that comes into my head? Because that could be very dangerous. I feel like we should have a list of words that you should not ask.

We will, we will refrain from that because then we could just open up a whole rabbit hole.

I wasn't warned.

Okay, so we'll start off nice and easy.

Okay.

Do you have a favourite podcast?

Yes, I do have a favourite podcast. I always listen to Ambition Radio with Ali Brown. That's my favorite business podcast. But if you are driving the car with me or walking along the beach, you will always be listening to My dad wrote a porno because it's hilarious. It's the funniest thing I think I've ever listened to. And it's about three flatmates. One of them, his dad happened to write an erotic novel and they read it out. It's incredibly cringy and it's the least erotic thing I've ever heard, but the commentary is brilliant. So give it a listen.

Really good podcast there. I have tuned into both and I am not in my head going, Yep, 100% okay. It's amazing. So, okay, next. Nice, nice simple one. Again, so in the last year, so it has to be in the past year, have you got a favorite purchase under a hundred pounds?

Yes, I do have a favorite purchase under £100. It's actually my socks. Do I need to show you they're on my feet.

Well, for video, you're gonna get a treat. For audio on iTunes. You're have to go to the YouTube channel to check this bit out.

Those are my socks. I bought them. They were £7.99 in Norway and they are the warmest thing ever. They were £7.99 for a pack of five. So if you go to Norway, I would highly recommend these socks. I cannot pronounce the name of them, but they're woollen and they're very jazzy and they come in lots of different colours and they're 7.99.

So next time you're in Norway, just ignore the northern lights, ignore all the beauty of it, but make sure that before you leave, pick up a pair of these amazing woolen socks.

They're on the high street, people.

Okay, I'm gonna enjoy this one. This is the first time that I've asked this as a quick fire question. What is your guilty pleasure? Whether it's a TV show, movie, song, what's your, what would you say would be your guilty pleasure?

Eating Nutella with a spoon out of the jar. That's the best thing ever. I can't even have it in the house anymore. I just, I just can't. It's gone in like a day. It's so embarrassing. I love it.

All right, let's finish on one more. Now normally I wouldn't ask non hospitality people this question, but you've been in and around my world and I've been in your world for so long now, but I'm gonna ask this. So what would be your one tip to pass on to a short stay accommodation and getting them more direct bookings? What would be the ones? One thing that you could recommend that you would encourage people to go and get those direct bookings.

For me, it would be take bold action related to sales every day. You know, I think, you know the really important thing for short sale hospitality owners. We're in a really challenging climate right now, economically and politically and I think we can't ignore that, unfortunately. So there are lots of opportunities out there for people who are willing to take them. And if you're a short stay hospitality owner and you're not seeing the opportunities, or worse, you're seeing them and kind of letting them drift past, you need to be taking massive bold action right now. Now is the very best time for you in a whole world of social media and technological advancements to really be making use of tools to help you go and make more direct bookings. So whatever you do once a day, just do one sales activity where you're super direct and super transparent with your audience about why they should absolutely 100% book a short stay with you right now, today. You know, you can make it as original and unique and interesting and fun as you like, but it's got to have a really clear call to action at the end to actually book.

Thank you very much for that. And I got pinged on my phone today, but it was too two years to the day that we did our first interview for. Well, that was for the hospitality community, but I'm counting that as an interview. This is the second one and we will try and make it where it won't be another two years until we.

Do the next two years, I'll be old and grey. I don't know what.

Who knows doing what. Probably going to other Scandinavian countries and checking out their socks.

Yeah, it's a big sock war out there. That's what I'm focused on.

You've got to get on top of your sock. So sell into corporates is the Facebook group. Please, please go and join it. Go get hold of the podcast. You've got loads of things that you can get started and getting into Jess, as well, you will not regret it. I know that in the last two years of just coming into the hospitality world, I know a lot of people have joined Facebook groups and podcasts before because a lot of people do reach out and, you know, give feedback. And so I say what they've done since listening to that episode. So it's awesome. So thank you very much and thank you everybody for tuning in to this episode. Before you leave, please make sure you go and rate, review and subscribe on itunes, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcast. The boosted podcast has just passed 10,000 downloads, which is awesome. And it's going to go up and up and up in the chat, but it needs your reviews to do so. And if you are watching the video, please go and subscribe on YouTube and do all the things and share it around with other hospitality owners. There's so many other episodes that you can get caught up on because there's seven seasons of it now. So if you want a season that is dedicated to direct bookings, go and find that. That if you want a season that is just dedicated to other hospitality owners stories and interviews on how they increase their direct bookings, you can go and get that. Everything is at Boostly Co UK podcast. I'm going to be back very soon with another episode, but until then, thank you so much for tuning in and we'll speak to you all very soon.