Hotel Sales & Sales Leadership Development

Helping hotel sales teams win the right business — at the right rates

Across international hotel groups, performance rarely depends only on market demand. More often, it depends on how consistently sales teams qualify opportunities, build relationships with Stakeholders, position value and negotiate commercially.


I work with hotel sales executives and Directors of Sales to strengthen the commercial side of client conversations - so that sales activity and effort translates into more profitable results.


My work has included tailored development programmes for Sofitel Luxury Hotels, Sofitel Bucharest, Novotel Prague and Rotana Hotels & Resorts.


Typical outcomes following Rapporta sales development:


  • More Efficient Sales Activity
  • Increased Revenue
  • Greater Profitability
  • Improved Customer Relationships
  • Increased Market Share


Common Challenges for Sales Leaders and their Teams

Sales teams are experienced, committed and relationship-focused — yet common patterns diminish potential results:


  • Price is discussed too early, before the client sees the full value
  • Pleasant conversations but limited discovery of real client drivers
  • Surface-level presentations of the offer, longer decision-making times, ghosting after proposals are sent
  • Inconsistent approaches across the Team
  • Managing activity without managing commercial strategy
  • Strong occupancy but weaker rate performance
  • Agreeing to price discounts and missing out on profit
  • Failure to Upsell and Cross-sell for increased profit 


The aim is not to change personalities – rather to create a consistent commercial approach across all sales executives and sales leaders that they can apply naturally and confidently.

What We Work On


Commercial Conversations

Structuring meetings, designed to understand decision-makers and their motivations before presenting the offer and asking for the business.


Total Account Development

Managing stakeholders and relationships with large accounts proactively and strategically, rather than reactively.


Negotiation Skills

Understanding that 1) Negotiation doesn’t start until the customer has decided they want to work with you and 2) If you’re only lowering the price, it’s not a negotiation. Building awareness and skills to negotiate on value to the customer, with confidence, focusing on win-win outcomes to maintain long-term relationships.


Sales Leadership

Helping Directors of Sales refresh and enhance their sales leadership know-how, coach their teams and prioritise the right focus, activities and decisions. All programmes use reality-based accounts and situations to ensure learning transfers directly into daily work.


How Engagements Work


Each project is tailored to the brand positioning, market segment and commercial goals of the hotel or hotel group and includes consultancy, research, programme design, in-person training delivery, online and in person workshops and follow-up support. The focus is on developing know-how and expertise, confidence and motivation and practical application — building capability that remains with the team to bring value long after the training.


The result:


Sales teams who win more business, and know which business to win.



Feedback following Rapporta Training


Increased Room Nights

“I have already (two months later) written a big wedding, 3-thousand plus room nights and there is another one in the pipeline.”


“I have started spending more time in building rapport and focusing a lot on the qualification of the business, to understand them and what they actually want. It started showing a good outcome in terms of room nights”


Winning Business from the Competition

"The techniques helped me a lot because the mix of information between open frank questions and open questioned helped me to understand and get the right answers on how we were going to close the business and get them to cancel with a competitor and move their business to Rotana; we are now in the contracting stage."


Effective, Consistent Sales Structure

“Yes, really applying these techniques helped me. I have been using the RUSPS sales approach: this helped me to really understand how their business works and I also summarised as we practised during the training session, gaining agreement to the next step at the end of each meeting."


Confidence, Impact and Listening

"We are also working on our account plans which is very good - with listening to clients more, we get as much information as possible, so that’s another great thing that is happening.”