CITY OF VIRGINIA BEACH
Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012 August 1, 2012
This overview is intended for the Sales Managers and their Assistants within the Convention Sales, Sports Marketing & Services Unit of the VBCVB and offers standards in creating new accounts within the sales process.
Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012
1. Purpose _______________________________________________________________________ Finding and developing good prospects that convert into Accounts for future overnight group business in Virginia Beach is a core responsibility of each Sales Manager. And how we capture and implement important information about the prospects builds the foundation upon which a future piece of business resides and therefore is extremely important for integrity of future reporting and ROI.
2. Scope _______________________________________________________________________ The following Procedures are intended for the Sales Managers and Sales Assistants within the Convention Sales, Sports Marketing Unit. Account development is a team effort involving all of the above parties.
3. Prerequisites _______________________________________________________________________ All Managers/Assistants should have access to/knowledge of the following: A computer and a telephone Access to USI/EBMS and have knowledge in use of this CRM Access to the Web & Destination Marketing Association International’s Mint data base
4. Responsibilities _______________________________________________________________________ Once again, account development for future overnight group business in Virginia Beach is a core responsibility of the Sales Manager with the assistance of his/her Sales Assistant. They must understand the protocol for entering data and work in concert to secure this information, to retain its integrity as best as possible.
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Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012
5. Procedure- SOP _______________________________________________________________________ Creating an Account The Account: One creates an account when they have uncovered a promising prospect. In building any structure one wants to make certain it is sitting on a solid foundation. Creating an Account is an integral part of the initial phase of the sales process and therefore is the foundation upon which the following segments of the process will stand. So once a worthy prospect has been identified, an account must be created to support this promising sales opportunity. 5.1 CREATING a NEW Account 1. Make certain you have the following known about a prospective Account: a. Legal Name of Organization b. Address and contact information re: where organization is headquartered c. Key Contact, title and contact information – is this contact part of the organization or are they a volunteer, a third party, etc… d. Market Segment is determined by Encyclopedia of Associations which follows DMAI’s listings for the most part 2. Check for a duplicate account first - AVOID DUPLICATION: When creating a new account ALWAYS search for the account first to avoid adding duplicates in the system. Type the primary subject of the account name (i.e., looking for Student Nurses Association of America – type in NURS not nurses or America). Refresh your screen and the system will search for the accounts that have all of these letters in its title. If no account appears or matches, right click and add account and type the first three letters – the System will show you all of the accounts that begin with the same first three letters. Look through the list before adding account. Remember not to abbreviate the name including national, association, etc… 3. Create Diary Entry - Account Background Information - Explaining why you are creating this account, how it was “landed” and what about the account is important at this stage… 5.2 How to Enter into USI – VBCVB’s CRM: 1. Type full name of account to right of Account. This will also populate the “Legal Name” field Address – type street address City – Type in City State – One of two ways: 1) Use drop down menu 2) Skip state and put in postal code/zip code and system will auto fill Country – US (in most cases) 2|Page
Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012
2. Communications = contact information for the Account (not a person) Select type from drop down menu (i.e., main, direct, fax, email, etc.) 3. Affiliations – are used to designate a particular association the account has with its development or a relationship it has with Virginia Beach. Affiliating an account can be used to designate a Holiday Greetings List or a “NO HQ Hotel” (i.e., found out prior to creating a meeting that we cannot bid until we have new development). To affiliate, right click on the word Affiliations. Select options from the screen on the left and add them to the screen on the right using the arrow buttons between the two screens. (Please note that we will be revising and redefining selections in this area in the near future) 4. Status Event Sales – This is where an account is marked as either Active, Prospective or Inactive: Prospective – beginning stages of development – contact has not been fully engaged or has accepted a sales appointment or requested additional information about VA Beach Active – Documentation exists showing that Account has been deemed PROSPECT ACTIVE and the SM has engaged the contact who is now requesting more information or a sales appointment/BITB/etc.. Inactive – Prospect has no interest in City and is not worthy of future follow-up 5. Acronym – EBMS will automatically complete this field with the first initial of EVERY word in the title (i.e., small words such as “and” “of” “for” will be included – you will need to revise manually accordingly for the correct Acronym – please double check) 6. Account Type – select from the drop downs that pertain to CVB (i.e., Association, GOV Entity, Corporation, Organization/non-association & Third Party…) 7. Market – this is the market segment that the account falls into according to Destination Marketing Association International and the Encyclopedia of Associations; select from the Drop Down menu provided 8. Region – Select from the drop down menu – these regions are based on the US Consensus definitions and correspond directly to where the account is headquartered and therefore corresponds directly to the Convention Sales manager’s geographical territory. Only use those with CVB in front of region 9. IACVB – Must be completed – get number from MINT
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Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012 10. Product/ Services – This field has not been built out yet. Currently it works similar to the affiliations field. Currently this is only being used for Hotel Partners but will also be addition information for Vendors and suppliers… 11. Account Rep: This is where an account is assigned to the manager, it usually auto populates depending on who is filling out so make sure you click on elipse and select correct accurate Sales Rep.
Always click Apply to save your changes and proceed to next step. 5.3 Creating a New Opportunity As accounts are established, new opportunity(ies) “a good chance for advancement” should arise; when creating an Opportunity, follow our current system’s protocol: a. Define Opportunity Type once an opportunity has been established: CSM FAM – a familiarization tour is a specialized site visit targeted for a number of clients where the City and its partners highlight the City and its offerings in a unique and condensed format. o CSM Meeting – (formerly Meeting Information) Once Convention Sales or Research activities have uncovered a specific meeting or event opportunity that is now worthy of pursuit, an opportunity is created under CSM Meeting; in most cases, the Opportunity Source should equate to the LEAD SOURCE on the General Meeting screen once the opportunity moves to its next stage of being a potential lead… o CSM Research - a meeting or event opportunity that has been uncovered by our Convention Sales Research & Database Strategy Manager and assigned to a Sales Manager (only to be used by the CSRDS Manager) o CSM Sports Event – a sporting event that is now worthy of pursuit o CSM Team Sales Mission – sales activity where the entire sales team and partners plan out a major blitz to a specific area (i.e., DC Sales Blitz, Indianapolis Sales Blitz) o CSM Territory Sales Calls – sales activity where a sales manager (with or without partners) generates a sales call or event in their specific geographic territory (i.e., Richmond Mini Marketplace Events) o CSM Tradeshow - Sales manager attends a budgeted tradeshow to uncover new prospects and build relationships – this is where yearly tradeshows are logged and managed by the sales manager in hopes of uncovering new prospect material (i.e.,RCMA, ASAE, etc.) ROI should be tracked by the Manager’s assessment of the show (Tradeshow/Sales Mission Recap Form – placed in folder) along with the type of opportunities derived by the activity. b. Identify OPPORTUNITY SOURCE – from where did this opportunity arise (ROI) o
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Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012 c. Create a diary entry notating such d. Create New Prospect Active (1 per account) when appropriate (Benchmark) e. Request an RFP that offers key insights to winning the bid (i.e., decision-makers, competition, decision date, preferred venue, hot buttons, budget requirements and trends… f. Once RFP is received, Mandatory Sales Activity Entry - Notate in file and move to the Bulletin Phase! 5.4 Establishing Relationships (Contacts) for Accounts and Opportunities (Responsibility of Sales Manager to add or direct SA how to add) In this system, one contact can be linked to as many accounts as necessary, eliminating duplication of contacts throughout the system. Therefore, you will be linking (Chain link icon) the Contact to the Account. This is especially important when entering Third Party Contacts as they may be linked to many accounts – so please always check to make sure that the contact isn’t already in the system before adding… DUPLICATION OF CONTACTS is our main concern here. Please note that Individual contacts flow from the company that they are attached to…there could appear to many duplicates of a contact in the system when in essence there is only one because he/she is linked to many accounts. Once you have a contact that you would like to link to an account, please first check to see if the contact already exists within the account and system. Future training on how to best check for duplicates will be given.
6 References _______________________________________________________________________
USI Training Manual – Modification Project 2012 FY’13 Sales Deployment Sheet - X Drive: Convention Sales/Sales Tool Kit/FY’13 Sales Deployment Encyclopedia of Associations DMAI - http://www.destinationmarketing.org/ Stages of the Sales Process
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Standard Operating Procedures Creating New Accounts Sally Noona/ August 2012
7 Definitions _______________________________________________________________________ Prospective Account – beginning stages of development – contact has not been fully engaged or has accepted a sales appointment or requested additional information about VA Beach Active Account – Documentation exists showing that Account is truly active and has received information from the SM or allows engagement like a sales appointment/BITB/etc.. Inactive Account – Prospect has no interest in City and is not worthy of future follow-up Opportunity – An opportunity in the broadest sense, is “a good chance for advancement”. An opportunity as it relates to Research Assigned is a meeting/event assigned to a representative that is not currently in the Ungerboeck database. An existing account can have a newly assigned opportunity. Opportunities are to be viewed as pre-qualified prospects. Thus an assigned opportunity will require additional background research and sales effort by the representative. Opportunities are created to increase the number of prospects to call on - which in return should increase the pipeline for bulletins (tentatives).
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