In 2013 IHG, Denham, England, saw an opportunity to revamp its sales approach.To find out more about the initiative, HOTELS spoke with Ingrid Quimby-High, director, groups & meetings, worldwide sales.

In 2013 IHG, Denham, England, saw an opportunity to revamp its sales approach. Previously the company had been sending a 150-page binder to each hotel for salesforce education on standards and policies for general meeting sales as well as specific, intricate verticals.

The goal was to differentiate IHG from competing hotels, set a standard of specialized service and drive revenue and repeat business, the company revamped it approach with “gamification” to improve the engagement of sales representatives.

To find out more about the initiative, HOTELS spoke with Ingrid Quimby-High, director, groups & meetings, worldwide sales.

Q: How does IHG “gamify” its sales?

Ingrid Quimby-High: In response to our clients’ needs for a simple and easy small meetings solution, we launched IHG’s Meeting Sales Strategy in 2013. To support this industry-first sector-focused strategy, we developed a comprehensive training portal to educate our hotel-based and regional sales people on each of the sectors with a high demand for small meetings solutions. Gamification elements have been integrated into the learning portal to provide recognition and rewards to highly-engaged sales people as they work to become trusted advisors to our clients and increase the quality of client experience. In addition, the data derived from gamification allows us to identify what content and activities resonate with our sales force and helps IHG to craft, refine and deliver content in a manner in which our teams find most relevant.

Q: What advantages does the gamification have over the old 150-page binder?

Quimby-High: Learning is delivered in a measurable and interactive manner to allow our salespeople to engage with the portal and each other in a meaningful and relevant way. Gamification has enabled us to not only reward the salespeople who have chosen to engage, but also recognize top performing individuals who are contributing both to their own success and the success of their peers within the specific sectors. The virtual learning environment allows us to update the content in real-time so that it stays current and also provides self-paced learning to a global audience in over 65 languages.

Q: Has this changes sales’ incentives package at all?

Quimby-High: No, that was not the focus of the initiative, instead we focused on engagement.

Q: Given that IHG is a global company, have there been some cultural issues in various regions?

Quimby-High: The initiative was designed through participation of all the regions and various types of stakeholders within each region.  While we were keenly aware that cultural nuances exist, our results have shown that cultural disparities have been fairly minimal.