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crucial part of the planning process. “I feel RFPs are very, very valuable, and I think that there is not enough value placed on the RFP and its pur- pose,” she said. “The RFP really begins the whole negotiation process, so there needs to be a lot of forethought that goes into the RFP to make sure that it’s going to meet the program objectives and obviously the budget.”

‘If you’re waiting for the RFP to hit your desk before you make a relationship with me, you’ve waited too long.’

3 Sales professionals need to be more adapt- able. “There is no doubt,” Vonderheide said, “that electronic RFPs have brought a new way of doing business to us.” Dominguez agrees, to a point. “There is a huge learning gap for us, because it is a different way for us to approach the sell,” he said. “I don’t want to phrase this the wrong way, but I do believe it has created some complacency in our sales arena, especially with less veteran sales- people. I don’t want to say ‘younger,’ because it’s not an age issue, it’s an experience issue.” And yet, it wasn’t so long ago, Dominguez said, that 80 percent of leads came in via fax. “Why is that so different and earth-shattering that now it’s coming through an email or an electronic system that is automatically populated?” he said. “When we [say] people are doing more of it, what has changed is the breadth of our industry. Our indus- try has never been larger. We are seeing a lot more volume because of that. I really do think we have to get back to basics when it comes to selling.”

4 Everyone needs to remember the basics. One time during a meeting of Hyatt’s customer advisory board, a salesperson asked board mem- bers how he was supposed to build a relationship with them when their business was coming to him online and they wanted him to reply within hours. “A customer stood up,” Vonderheide remembered, “and said, ‘If you’re waiting for the RFP to hit your desk before you make a relation- ship with me, you’ve waited too long. You better get to know me and you better get to trust me and I trust you before the electronic RFP comes across, because when it comes back to me with a response, that relationship I had with you is going to be crucial to me deciding that your prop- erty is the right choice.’” That’s not just a lesson for salespeople. “I like to do business the way I used to do it,” Schultz said, “where I would send an RFP to a hotel, and then I would follow up with an email and a phone call and I would make sure they received it, and start

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