Over the last few months, I’ve heard the same conversation inside a few (they will remain nameless) large hotel management companies.
Lead volume is down. Group base is softer. ADR is under pressure. A hotel is behind budget. Too many need dates sit open.
And almost immediately, the answer becomes: "we need more sales activity and more accountability from the field." It's the calls and the roll outs of these, almost as if it is the magic bullet to fix all.
So the weekly activity expectation gets reinforced. Maybe it’s 25 activities. Maybe it’s 50. Hit the number. In some organizations, miss it and you can lose eligibility for a bonus even if the hotel ultimately earns one.
I understand the thinking. If inbound demand isn't producing enough revenue, sellers need to go find more business.
But there's a piece of this equation I can't get past.
What is the activity supposed to produce?
The answer I usually hear is more pipeline.
Great. Then my next question is: How much self-generated pipeline is each seller expected to create?
And that's where things go south, quickly. Every single call I've had with a management company this year or individual hotel, I ask "what self-generated pipeline goals is your team held accountable to?"
The answers are always: "we track sales activity and they don't have an individual self-generated goal". Me - why not? (see my old post on Job Descriptions that ask for hunters to find pipeline...)
There often isn't a self-generated pipeline goal. The seller has a booking goal. The hotel has a revenue goal. There may be RevPAR, ADR and other performance metrics attached to compensation. And now there is an activity requirement.
But there isn't necessarily a number connecting the two:
25–50 weekly sales activities → $X in self-generated pipeline → $Y in new revenue.
If we don't establish that middle number, how will we ever know whether the activity strategy actually works?
This matters even more when you look at what we're asking the average hotel seller to do.
For years, many hotel sales teams have been built around capturing existing demand. Brand leads and RFPs come in. Sellers respond, follow up and convert as much of that demand as possible. Dive back into the CRM, re-engage lost or TD opptys. Go to Knowland, fish around and see. CoStar - who is new in the area.
Now when that volume softens, we're asking those same sellers to create demand through outbound activity. That's all reactive tho.
Yet we haven't necessarily taught them how. That isn't a prospecting strategy built for long term success.
That's how "prospecting" becomes another need-date calendar, a "just checking in" email, an old account getting called again, a promotion pushed out on LinkedIn or another blitz.
The seller can complete 50 of those activities.
They can also create absolutely no pipeline.
And this is where the comparison to other B2B sales organizations is vital.
ATD research found organizations spending a median $1,000–$1,499 per salesperson annually on sales training, plus another $1,000–$1,499 per seller on sales kickoff meetings. The same research found 40% had a dedicated sales enablement function, increasing to 56% among high-performing organizations. ATD sales training research
DealHub's 2025 benchmark found organizations with 51–100 sales reps spending an average of $2,068 per rep annually on sales technology, while companies with more than 100 reps averaged $1,850. DealHub 2025 benchmark
That's potentially $4,000+ per seller between training, kickoff and technology before accounting for enablement people, RevOps, intent platforms, data, marketing automation, coaching and other support.
Hospitality doesn't have sales enablement. You know, the people responsible for ongoing training, onboarding, ramping, diving in with metrics go south to ensure the entire sales system from end to end is running. The team that goes in market, works along side teams on deep training and reinforcement of skills, that works with sellers on coaching and conversations, etc., etc.. That's a conversation for another article tho.
But we are increasingly asking hotel sellers to do work that other industries have built entire functions, technology stacks and training programs around.
Intent data. Website visitor intelligence. Account scoring. Social listening. Trigger events. Sequencing. Nurture. Modern outbound training. Tools that help sellers answer who should I contact, why them, why now and what should I say?
Then we wonder why telling a hotel seller to complete 50 activities doesn't suddenly turn them into a hunter.
I'm not arguing against sales activity. I'm arguing for knowing what the activity is supposed to produce.
If you have 300 sellers required to complete 50 activities per week, that's roughly 390,000 sales activities over six months.
Before you generate 390,000 of anything, I'd want to know what we're expecting back.
Let's say the benchmark is $35,000 in self-generated pipeline per seller in those six months just to start. You know, this is a new motion. That's $10.5 million across 300 sellers.
Now we have something we can test. Six months later, did sellers complete the activities? Great.
Did they create the $10.5 million?
If they did, you have evidence the activity strategy is working.
If they didn't, that's equally valuable information. Because now the answer can't automatically be more accountability, more calls, more emails, more activity.
Maybe we need to look at what happens before the activity: who sellers are targeting, how they identify accounts with intent, what intelligence they have, whether their outreach is relevant, how they nurture accounts that aren't ready and whether we've actually taught them how to self-generate pipeline in the first place.
I spent years managing sales activity in hotels. I know how quickly sellers learn to hit an activity number because their bonus depends on it. I can honestly say that in 10+ years of hotel leadership I do not remember ONE TIME that someone's activity = new pipeline.
Because the skill that has to be taught now is learning HOW to create pipeline.
So if you are in sales leadership and have read things thus far....my question to you is...
If every seller hits the weekly activity goal for the next six months, what number has to move for you to say it worked? And if that number doesn't move, what's Plan B?
We built for the Plan B. An always on reinforcement community that teaches sellers how to prospect in modern way and Warm Prospecting™ that uses intent data to laser focus your team to contact those searching in market NOW for hotel needs.
