A venue sales manager plays a crucial role in helping any kind of event venue attract clients and generate bookings. It’s an exciting role, as it involves many different skills and responsibilities.
Quite simply, a good venue sales manager can make all the difference to any venue’s success. Let’s explore exactly what this role involves and what you need to become one.
Definition of a Venue Sales Manager
While it can be a versatile role, a venue sales manager is responsible for renting out event spaces and keeping clients happy.
They cover all key event management roles, like meeting with potential clients, giving venue tours, negotiating contracts, and helping plan event details. A venue manager role can also involve marketing the venue, managing bookings, running a post-event debrief, and providing great customer service to resolve any issues.
Basically, sales managers are the key people in charge of securing, confirming, and managing venue bookings. Venue managers could manage sales for multiple venues, or focus on a single location.
Importance of Venue Sales Managers in the Hospitality Industry
An event sales manager plays a crucial role in bringing in new business and ensuring events are successful. Their main role is to attract clients who want to host events and generate revenue for the venue. Needless to say, this is essential for any event venue.
Sales managers also play an active role in negotiating contracts and planning out event details. By doing this, they make sure everything runs smoothly and clients are happy with their bookings. This leads to positive reviews and repeat business, which are vital for any venue's reputation and growth.
Their role is mainly focused on securing and managing a sales funnel.But sales and venue managers may also have to supervise in-house staff and work closely with front- and back-of-house staff on the event day. This is to ensure all special events meet the client’s demands.
Responsibilities of a Venue Sales Manager
A venue sales manager role can be pretty multi-faceted, depending on the venue. However, their main responsibility is to secure bookings and generate revenue.
Here are some key sales manager duties that go into this.
Meeting Clients
Sales managers meet with potential clients to understand their needs. They explain what the venue offers and how it can meet those needs. This means they always need to be prepared with in-depth knowledge of their venue to answer questions and solve problems clients might have around live events.
Giving Tours
They give tours of the venue, showing different areas and venue amenities to potential clients. This helps clients visualize their event at the venue. It also provides a prime time to share more sentimental information about different aspects of the place. This might be the final nudge a client needs to decide on one venue over another.
Negotiating Contracts
Sales managers discuss and agree on rental terms, prices, and services with clients. They help create an agreement that the client is happy with.
Marketing the Venue
While this isn't always a responsibility for them, some sales managers promote the venue through various marketing channels. Their goal here is to attract more clients and increase bookings.
Planning Events
Sales managers aren't event planners, but they do play an important role in helping clients organize their event details. This can involve coordinating with other staff and vendors and making sure that everything is organized and runs smoothly based on the client’s needs.
Providing Customer Service
Venue sales managers are the key point of contact between the venue and the client. They handle any issues or special client requests to make sure that everyone is happy when booking the venue.
Skills Required for a Venue Sales Manager
As there’s a lot that goes into being a venue sales manager, you need to have a diverse skill set for this role. Here are some of the most important skills sales managers should possess.
Communication Skills
A venue sales manager needs to be good at talking and listening. One of their most important responsibilities is to clearly explain the value of your venue and fully understand the client’s needs.
Negotiation Skills
Like any salesperson, they should be able to effectively negotiate contracts so that both the venue and client are happy.
Organizational Skills
Venue sales managers need to keep track of many details and tasks at any given time. Good organizational skills are essential for smoothly managing bookings, events, and finances. There are so many different tools that can make organizing complex event calendars a lot easier. Perfect Venue seamlessly brings together a multitude of helpful tools for any stage of the sales funnel.
Customer Service Skills
As the sales manager is the key point of contact with the client, they must be able to offer excellent service. This includes easily handling any issues and making sure that clients are satisfied.
Marketing Skills
Sales managers should know how to promote the venue to attract new business. This includes using various marketing channels and using their networks to attract clients.
Financial Management Skills
A good sales manager should be able to manage budgets, payments, and expenses. This ensures the venue remains profitable and financially healthy.
Education and Experience Needed
To become a venue sales manager, having a bachelor's degree in hospitality management, business, marketing, or a related field is always useful. Having a venue management certification would also be ideal. However, as with any sales role, experience is more important.
Ideally, you should have some experience in sales and event planning. Hands-on experience in customer service and working with event coordination can be very helpful.
Conclusion
A venue sales manager plays an incredibly important role in helping to grow events venues. If you have the right skills and drive, it can be a highly rewarding career path.
If you’re looking for a smarter way to manage your venue bookings, then you’ll want to use the right venue management software. Take a look at Perfect Venue to see how our platform can help you grow your business.
