Category Archives: Sales

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Staffing Your Venue Part 2: Promoters

Last week, we discussed the importance of properly staffing your sales team. Now, we’re moving on with how to staff and incentivize your promoters. The difference in this department vs. the sales department is that rarely do nightclubs understaff promoters. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The issue with staffing as it relates to promoters is not hiring the right people, not tracking results, and thereby not rewarding the ones doing the best work.

Promoters

Most clubs look to promoters to act as their marketing personnel. They’re the ones who keep an eye on trends, create a loyal following, and bring guests through the door. But too many venues give promoters too much operational leeway, including: 1) not looping them into their overall business objectives and 2) giving them access to the club’s general inbox to communicate with guests.

This is an issue for a number of reasons:

  1. They have their own interest in mind and not your venue’s as a whole. This damages your reputation and brand image.
  2. They may offer other services that benefit them personally, rather than upselling customers on specials your venue is running. This decreases your profit opportunities and hinders customer loyalty.
  3. They may not pass information on to management that should be passed on when working with a general inbox. This is when tables get double-booked, reservations are uncounted for, and guests aren’t given the experience they expect.
  4. They don’t know who your high-profile guests are or how to communicate with them in your brand voice, again damaging your reputation and brand image.

You wouldn’t bring in a server and not train or integrate her into your operations, so why would you do this with your promoters? It’s important for your promoters to know how your business operates and how all staff members fit together to create a successful venue. This helps them understand how they fit into your club and what they need to do to further your success.

It’s also important to convey your business goals and vision with promoters. It may seem like too much information, but this is what will allow them to identify marketing opportunities that align with you venue. They’ll know what trends match your vision, what performance acts align with your brand, and what messaging to use to get guests excited about coming to your venue.

Lastly, and most importantly, you need to track your promoters’ performance. Without tracking measures in place, it’s nearly impossible to truly understand how well your promoters are working for you.

There are systems available that give all staff members – including promoters – a personal login to handle guest management and point of sale. What’s more is this system has tracking measures in place to help you truly understand how well your promoters are working for you, tying an individual customer’s attendance to a promoter’s work. The system tracks the referrer of an individual customer, VIP reservation, or guestlist party. Once the customer is in the club, the technology can continue to track spending habits, such as product type and amount. This makes it easier for you to identify not only who’s bringing in the most traffic, but also who’s bringing in the best traffic.

This type of operational efficiency gives you insight on which promoters are bringing in the most customers, the best customers, and even the most money. All of this allocates you to make better, more logical business decisions while still keeping your brand intact.


Stay tuned for part 3, where we will go into staffing your internal team.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

Staffing Your Venue Part 1: The Sales Team

There are an incredible number of individuals needed to run a successful nightclub, all of which fit in certain divisions – divisions that promote the venue, divisions that run the venue, and divisions that produce the party when all the guests are in the venue. Yet, many nightclubs don’t think of staffing in terms of different divisions, and end up piling all the responsibility on a certain subset of people while eliminating other crucial teams. The reason? The misconception that it’s expensive to have adequate staff. But in reality, it’s actually more costly to improperly staff.


In this three-part series, we will discuss the three critical areas we see being the biggest staffing issues:

  • Part 1: The Sales Team
  • Part 2: Promoters
  • Part 3: The Internal Team

The Sales Team

It’s often the last thought on a club or bar owner’s mind: who is selling their venue? Most rely on the hype of being the newest and hottest venue to drive the most business. Then they layer on print marketing, public relations updates, and a few major events to increase awareness. Few clubs have the key component of an internal sales team.

Too many owners shy away from building an internal sales team because of labor costs or lack of personal knowledge. But in reality building an internal sales team is a strategic move that will increase your venue’s results month after month. Call them promoters, VIP servers, or VIP hosts – it doesn’t make a difference. At the end of the day, it’s all about their job function: producing revenue by continuously bringing more spenders into your venue.

And with today’s technology, it’s easier than ever to track your sales team’s results. There are systems out there that track the referrer of an individual customer, VIP reservation, or guestlist party, making it easier to identify who’s brining in the most traffic. Once these customers are in the club, the technology can continue to track spending habits, such as product type and amount. This makes it easier for you to identify not only who is bringing in the most traffic, but also who’s bringing in the best traffic.

Here’s what you need to do to set up your sales team:

  1. Take time to learn what makes up a good team, and put the right people in the right place.
  2. Build a sales process that will be in place for staff.
  3. Provide tools to succeed and monitor production.
  4. Give staff time to hit tangible goals and incentivize them when they do.

Building your team and processes are an ongoing process, so be patient. With a strong internal sales team, you own the relationship s with your guests and directly influence how people receive your message. Plus, with a tracking system, you know exactly how much money your sales team brought in, how much to compensate your team, and how much of an ROI that team is providing for your venue’s long-term success.


Stay tuned for part 2: promoters in next week’s post.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

3 Questions to Ask Before Hosting an Event

Hosting events is one of the best ways to get people through your door. Yet, many venues rush through the planning process and go toward the first third-party ticketing vendor they meet to help promote their event. This is a great idea, until you realize most of these third-party ticketing sites don’t fully set you up for success. Here are three questions you need to ask before signing up with a third-party company to ensure your event – and your club – gets the best return.

1. Where does my money go?

Most ticketing sites collect your customers’ payments in their own banks until after the event is over. Once the day of your event has passed, they’ll cut you a check for what you earned, but not until they’ve made sure to take any fees they deem themselves worthy to collect. Then, it takes a few business days for the remaining money to appear in your account, meaning you may not actually get paid until a week after the event happened (and weeks since your guests even purchased their ticket).


Instead, you should look to companies that ensure payment goes directly through your merchant services provider and into your bank account right from the get-go. That way, a guest purchasing a ticket to your event is the same process as that guest buying a drink inside your venue doors.

2. What will be on my event page?

Many ticketing sites have online-hosted pages about your event to help promote it and attract buyers. Yet, some of these sites don’t have the capabilities for guests to purchase tickets directly from the site. What’s worse is your event page is chock-full of advertisements and information about “similar venues” (aka competing venues).


Confirm beforehand what’s going to be on your event page and look for companies that don’t have competing venues or advertisements, that allow guests to purchase tickets directly from the website, and that have the capabilities for you to fully customize your page to your needs.

3. Will I have access to the data after the event?

It’s sad, but most ticketing sites don’t let venues see detailed information on who bought their tickets. Rather, they leverage this data to sell tickets for other venues on their own site. This is a huge missed opportunity and something you should never let happen.


Always make sure you’re given full access to your data. After all, data is one aspect you absolutely need to make better decisions and grow your profits. Your data should be able to tell you the number of tickets sold, the amount of revenue earned, a comparison of tickets sold and sales by event, the number of parties who attended, and who bought your tickets – including their name, gender, age, zip code, email, and phone number. This information lets you know whether your event was a success, what to improve on for the next event, and toward whom your marketing should be geared.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

How to Make More Revenue Without Doing More Work

A goal of any business is to drive revenue and translate it to money in the bank. What if we told you it’s possible to not only drive revenue, but also increase the amount of revenue you’re already driving without adding any extra work to your daily operations? We’re not pulling your leg; it’s possible.


Use a combination of pre-sales, upsales, and cross-sales to boost your club. Here’s what we mean by each one.

1. Pre-Sales

Imagine it’s hours before you open and your mind is at ease because you have thousands of dollars in pre-sold inventory. On top of that, your worries about cancelations are a thing of the past since your reservations aren’t simply guaranteed, but purchased in advance.


This is not a dream; this is reality, and it’s easier than you think. All you need is to quantify your inventory (table reservations, cover charges, events, etc), make that inventory available to purchase in advance, get the word out about the pre-sale items, and measure the results against your pre-defined goals. Now, you have revenue coming in before you even open your door.

2. Upsales

Most people think of upselling as obnoxious salespeople convincing customers of things they don’t need. However, when presented correctly, upselling is a value-add to your guests’ lives…that also happens to boost your club’s results. In fact, studies show the majority of guests appreciate upselling when it’s focused on their needs. It’s perceived by the guest as a premium, highly personalized level of service which enables them to stay longer, spend more, and come back often.


Perhaps a guest’s behavior in line alludes he will spend a lot in your club – upsell him to a VIP table. Perhaps you can identify a guest has visited your club every week for the past month – offer a free VIP table and upsell him to bottle service. There are technology services available that track most of this information for individual guests, including number of visits, average spend, and favorite liquor types. A VIP guest will appreciate the attentiveness of a server saying, “I noticed you ordered a bottle of Belvedere last time you were here. May I start you out with that and another bottle of your choice?” Now you have his attention, have made him feel important, and have likely sold him on a second bottle before he even finished his first.

3. Cross-Sales

Cross-selling is the act of suggesting a complimentary product to the one your customer just purchased. This can happen both when your guest is at your club and before he/she arrives (think enhanced pre-sale).


Most clubs already use the concept of cross-selling when consumers are already in their venue, such as suggesting the customer purchases a round of shots to go with his/her already purchased drink. However, most aren’t realizing the opportunity of digital cross-selling. Let’s look at an example of a guest purchasing a ticket for your event online:

  • Your guest goes online to pre-purchase a ticket for your event
  • He fills out the necessary form fields and hits the submit button to process his payment
  • He gets to a confirmation landing page thanking him for his purchase and recommending him to also pre-purchase a VIP table for the night and a limousine for his transportation
  • He pre-purchases both the VIP table and the limousine, putting extra guaranteed money in the bank



Cross-selling the VIP table and limousine (particularly if you create a partnership with a limousine company) on the confirmation page enables you to earn more revenue than you would have without the suggestion. Now you not only have revenue from three different areas of your club, but you have guaranteed revenue from three different areas.


Using these three types of sales tactics is simple to implement and the payout is huge. Don’t sell yourself short by only doing the basic sales inside your venue. Identify items that you can pre-sell, upsell, and cross-sell, and watch your profit soar.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing for BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottles.com.

Author Whitney Larson Posted on

How to Properly Manage Your Promoters

There’s no doubt promoters are a critical component to making the night a success. They’re charged with bringing the right people in on a consistent basis, building relationships with customers to keep them coming back, and marketing your major events. But too many venues are giving promoters too much operational responsibility, which actually hurts your night’s results instead of enhancing them.


The biggest mistake we see venues make when it comes to their promoters is giving them access to the club’s general inbox to communicate with guests. This is an issue for a number of reasons, such as:

  • They have their own interest in mind and not your venue’s as a whole. This damages your reputation and brand image.
  • They may not pass information on to management that should be passed on. This is when tables get double-booked, reservations are uncounted for, and guests aren’t given the experience they expect.
  • They don’t know who your high-profile guests are or how to communicate with them in your brand voice, again damaging your reputation and brand image.
  • They may offer other services that benefit them personally, rather than upselling customers on specials your venue is running. This decreases your profit opportunities and hinders customer loyalty.



Instead, venues should loop promoters in with their overall business by training them on operations, informing them of business goals, and providing them with the right tools – such as an integrated platform with a way to track referrals.


There are systems available that give all staff members – including promoters – a personal login to handle guest management and point of sale. Through this type of system, promoters can add guests to the guestlist, create a VIP reservation, or even sell a ticket to your event. It’s an easy solution for your promoters to sell in real-time and generate instant sales for your club without having them access your general club’s inbox and operational processes.


What’s more is this system has tracking measures in place to help you truly understand how well you promoters are working for you, tying an individual customer’s attendance to a promoter’s work. The system tracks the referrer of an individual customer, VIP reservation, or guestlist party, making it easier to identify who’s bringing in the most traffic. Once these customers are in the club, the technology can continue to track spending habits, such as product type and amount. This makes it easier for you to identify not only who’s bringing in the most traffic, but also who’s bringing in the best traffic.


Information about specific customers is clutch in understanding what is and isn’t working at your club. Information that ties back to each one of your promoters is even more valuable. This gives you more insight on which promoters are brining in the most customers, the best customers, and even the most money. All of this allocates you to make better, more logical business decisions while still keeping your brand intact.


Whitney Johnson is the global director of marketing at BookBottles. Contact her at whitney.johnson@bookbottes.com.

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