Consultative selling in hospitality starts with a simple shift: stop selling what the customer asks for and start understanding what the customer is trying to achieve.
A customer asks for 50 people, two meeting rooms, lunch and dinner.
We prepare an offer.
Then the customer comes back:
"We really like you, but you are 15% more expensive than the competitor."
What happens next?
Far too often, the conversation immediately turns to price.
Can we give 5%?
Can we match the competitor?
Can we throw something in for free?
But perhaps there is another question we should ask first:
Why has price become the main thing the customer can compare?
If the customer sees two apparently similar products, price is an entirely logical way to choose between them.
Our job in Sales is therefore not simply to defend our price.
It is to understand what the customer actually needs, recommend the right solution and make the value of that solution visible.
We explore why consultative selling in hospitality changes the conversation from product and price to customer value, including:
A customer asks for:
50 people.
Two meeting rooms.
Two days.
Coffee.
Lunch.
Dinner.
What are we selling?
The obvious answer is a conference package.
But what is the customer buying?
Perhaps the management team needs to agree on next year's strategy.
Perhaps 50 employees need to understand a major organisational change.
Perhaps two departments have recently merged and the company needs to turn a "we and them" situation into one team.
Perhaps a sales organisation needs to leave the meeting motivated and ready for the year ahead.
The meeting room is merely part of the solution.
We are not selling the meeting room. We are selling the conditions that help the customer achieve their objective.
That distinction is at the heart of consultative selling. It is also where we begin to move away from competing purely on product and price.
An order taker needs information.
How many people are coming?
What date?
What time do you want to start?
Do you need lunch?
Which technology do you require?
We need those answers. But they tell us very little about why the customer is buying.
A consultative salesperson goes further.
What needs to be different when you leave the meeting?
Why have you decided to bring everyone together physically?
What did not work particularly well at your last meeting?
What absolutely cannot go wrong?
How will you know whether the meeting was successful?
These questions change the conversation.
They also change our ability to recommend.
Once we understand what the customer is trying to achieve, we can stop assembling products and start creating a solution.
Imagine that we send an offer.
The customer responds:
"You are 15% more expensive than the competitor."
There may be a perfectly legitimate reason.
The customer's budget may be fixed. The competitor may genuinely offer a comparable solution for less. Our pricing may be too high for that particular piece of business.
But there are other possibilities.
Is the customer really comparing the same product?
Have they understood what is included?
Have we understood which parts of our solution matter most to them?
Have we explained why we recommended this particular solution?
Or is the customer simply checking whether there is room to negotiate?
Before changing the price, we need to understand why price has become the problem.
Because if the customer cannot see a meaningful difference between us and the competitor, price becomes the easiest thing to compare.
There is another reason we should not immediately reach for the discount button.
A discount comes directly out of the money we have left after paying the costs associated with delivering the business.
Take a simple example from our consultative sales training.
A booking generates SEK 100,000 in revenue.
Direct costs are SEK 60,000.
That leaves SEK 40,000.
Now the customer asks for a 10% discount.
Revenue falls to SEK 90,000, but the SEK 60,000 in direct costs does not disappear.
We now have SEK 30,000 left.
We gave the customer 10% off the price, but the contribution from the business has fallen by 25%.
That does not mean we should never discount.
It means discounting should be a commercial decision, not an automatic sales response.
This is where understanding the customer becomes particularly powerful.
Instead of immediately asking:
How much discount can we give?
Ask:
What could we offer that has high value for this customer but relatively low cost for us?
Perhaps it is parking.
Perhaps an upgraded room for the organiser.
Perhaps an additional breakout space.
Perhaps better AV equipment.
Perhaps flexibility around arrival or departure.
But none of these things has an inherent value.
Free parking is valuable to a group arriving by car and almost meaningless to a group arriving by train.
An upgraded room may matter enormously to one customer and not at all to another.
That leads to an important principle:
Added value does not exist in the product. Added value exists in the customer's need.
And we can only understand that need if we have had the right conversation first.
Consultative selling does not mean saying yes to everything the customer wants.
Negotiation should still be a negotiation.
If price genuinely needs to change, perhaps something else can change too.
A different date may create more value for the hotel.
A faster decision may reduce uncertainty.
Less flexible cancellation conditions may reduce risk.
A simpler menu may reduce costs.
A commitment to several future meetings may change the value of the relationship.
The principle is simple:
Do not give something away before understanding what you can receive in return.
This shifts the conversation from discounting to finding a solution that works commercially for both sides.
There is one more side to consultative selling that is sometimes forgotten.
Understanding customer value does not automatically make something good business.
Imagine the same customer wants exactly the same meeting on two different dates.
One is a Tuesday in February when the hotel has plenty of available meeting space and bedrooms.
The other is a Thursday in September when demand is high and the hotel is likely to sell the same capacity to other customers.
Is it the same piece of business?
No.
The customer's needs may be identical, but the value of the business to us has changed.
That is where Sales and Revenue Management need to meet.
When evaluating business, we should look beyond revenue alone:
Revenue → Cost → Opportunity Cost → Future Value
What revenue does the booking generate?
What does it cost us to deliver?
What other business might we have to turn away?
And what could this customer be worth in the future?
The booking with the highest revenue is not necessarily the best piece of business. Equally, a booking that looks relatively modest today could be the beginning of a valuable long-term relationship.
There is a final step that is easily overlooked.
We have asked great questions.
We understand the customer's objective.
We have designed a solution around it.
And then we send a quotation containing:
Meeting room.
Coffee.
Lunch.
Dinner.
Price.
We have just turned our carefully constructed solution back into a commodity.
A consultative quotation should connect the recommendation to what the customer told us.
Instead of simply listing what is included, explain:
"You told us that the main purpose of the meeting is to bring together two teams that currently work separately. Therefore, we recommend..."
And then explain why the proposed solution supports that objective.
The customer can now see more than products and prices.
They can see the thinking behind the recommendation.
Consultative selling in hospitality is not about becoming better at persuading customers to spend more.
It is about becoming better at understanding what they are trying to achieve.
That means asking better questions before preparing the offer. It means connecting our recommendation to the customer's objective. It means understanding why price has become an issue before offering a discount.
And it means remembering that a good piece of business has to create value on both sides.
Perhaps the most important question is therefore not:
How do we convince the customer that our price is right?
It is:
Have we given the customer enough reason to understand why our solution is right for them?
Because if all we give the customer to compare is a list of products and a total price, we should not be surprised when price becomes the deciding factor.
Moving from order taking to consultative selling takes more than a new sales script. It requires teams to understand customer needs, value, pricing and profitability — and how those pieces connect throughout the customer journey.
At Taktikon, we work with hospitality businesses on Sales, Revenue Management and commercial development, helping teams create stronger customer value while making better commercial decisions.
Want to explore how your team can work more consultatively with Sales? Get in touch with us.
