Your Buyer Is Already Deciding Before You Ever Call
Hospitality sales has always been a relationship game. Make the calls. Work the trade shows. Stay in front of your accounts. Build the Rolodex. Be the person they think of when an opportunity comes along.
None of that suddenly stopped working.
But something pretty significant happened while we were busy measuring calls, emails, meetings and proposals: buyers stopped waiting for salespeople to tell them what to think.
Today, a prospect may encounter your company, your CEO or one of your sellers months before anyone raises their hand. They see a LinkedIn post. Hear a podcast. Watch a video. Ask a colleague. Google your name. Visit your website. And, increasingly, ask AI who they should be talking to in the first place.
As hospitality marketing strategist Scott Eddy told Cory Falter on a recent episode of the InnSync Show, “The buyer doesn’t care whether the first thing they saw came from your marketing department, your salesperson, your CEO, a podcast, or a LinkedIn post. They know they started seeing you.”
That changes the job of the hospitality seller.
Selling can’t begin when you finally get the prospect on the phone. By then, the sale may already be underway.
Why AI in Hospitality Sales Changes the Game for Sellers
Your Buyer Doesn’t Care Who Owns the Funnel
Companies love organizational charts. Buyers couldn’t care less about them.
They don’t categorize an article as “marketing,” a LinkedIn post as “sales,” an executive interview as “PR” and a conference presentation as “thought leadership.” They simply accumulate impressions. Every interaction either gives them another reason to trust you or another reason to keep looking.
That’s why sales and marketing can no longer operate like neighboring countries with a heavily guarded border.
Sales is sitting on some of the best marketing intelligence a company has. What questions keep coming up? Why did you lose the last deal? What misconception do you explain over and over? What are prospects worried about right now? Those conversations are not just sales conversations. They’re your content strategy hiding in plain sight.
Scott’s point is simple: sales has the buyer intelligence. Marketing knows how to turn that intelligence into something useful, visible and repeatable.
Put the two together and something interesting happens. Your sellers stop having to introduce themselves from scratch.
Don’t Stop Prospecting. Stop Prospecting Cold.
Here’s where this argument usually gets twisted: “So we shouldn’t make calls anymore?”
Nope.
Pick up the phone. Send the email. Go to the conference. Ask for the meeting.
But there is an enormous difference between getting an email from a complete stranger and getting one from someone whose ideas you’ve been seeing for six months.
That’s the opportunity.
If a seller consistently talks intelligently about the problems their buyers actually face, shares useful ideas, answers questions and shows up where those buyers spend time, the eventual outreach doesn’t feel quite so cold anymore.
The goal isn’t to kill prospecting. It’s to warm up the prospect before the prospecting begins.
You Don’t Need an Audience. You Need a Reputation.
This is where the phrase “personal brand” tends to send perfectly reasonable hospitality sellers running for the hills.
Nobody is asking you to become an influencer.
Scott makes a much better distinction: “I would replace the word audience with reputation.”
If only 500 people could realistically buy what you sell, being trusted by the right 100 is considerably more valuable than entertaining 100,000 strangers.
Talk about what you actually know. Answer the questions customers ask you every week. Explain something complicated. Share what you’re seeing in the market. Challenge an assumption. Have an opinion.
Especially that last one.
As Scott put it, “Thought leadership actually requires an actual thought.”
The internet has plenty of professionally polished content that says absolutely nothing. Sellers who are willing to be useful, specific and recognizable have an opportunity to stand out without posting three times a day or turning themselves into a “creator.”
Your Rolodex Still Matters. It’s Just Not Enough.
Hospitality will always be a relationship business. Relationships get meetings, create trust and open doors that would otherwise stay closed.
But people leave companies. Accounts change hands. New decision-makers show up. Buying committees expand. And the person you’ve known for 15 years may no longer be the person asking AI which companies belong on the shortlist.
Scott said, “Relationships can get you access. Relevance gets you considered. Results are what get you retained.”
Modern hospitality sellers need all three.
A relationship gives you a head start. A reputation gives that relationship somewhere to go.
Your Trade Show Should Last Longer Than Three Days
Hospitality companies spend a small fortune getting people to conferences and then squeeze the entire ROI calculation into what happens between registration and the flight home.
Scott has a better standard: “A three-day conference should be able to fuel three months of marketing, if not more.”
Talk to customers on camera. Interview your executives. Capture the questions people keep asking at the booth. Turn presentations into clips. Turn conversations into articles. Turn customer stories into case studies.
Don’t just come home with leads. Come home with intellectual property.
Because after the booth comes the research.
Someone meets you at a conference, likes what they hear and decides to investigate. What happens next? Do they find useful ideas, customer proof, active experts and a company that clearly knows its stuff?
Or do they find three press releases from 2023 and a LinkedIn page celebrating National Donut Day?
Attention gets you noticed. Evidence keeps you in the running.
And Then AI Walked Into the Funnel
This is where things get really interesting.
Cory raised a scenario that should make every hospitality seller pay attention: You work your ass off to get the meeting. You have a great conversation. The prospect likes you. The deal advances.
Then they go research you.
They Google the company. Look at your LinkedIn profile. Compare competitors. Ask AI which providers are credible, who has demonstrated results and which companies are considered leaders in the category.
Suddenly, your sales pitch is being fact-checked by your digital footprint.
If what the buyer finds reinforces what you just told them, fantastic. If they find almost nothing, confidence can disappear surprisingly quickly.
Scott’s response gets to the heart of the problem: “You can’t suddenly manufacture authority when somebody is ready to buy.”
Authority has to be built before you need it.
Case studies. Customer stories. Useful articles. Smart videos. Third-party mentions. Executive expertise. Seller expertise. A clear point of view. All of it creates evidence that buyers can find and, increasingly, that search engines and AI systems can understand.
Visibility compounds. So does invisibility.
The Seller of the Future Thinks Like a Marketer
At the end of their conversation, Cory gave Scott three choices for the seller of the future: hunter, marketer or creator.
Scott chose marketer.
That doesn’t mean tomorrow’s great sellers stop selling. Quite the opposite. They still prospect, network, build relationships, negotiate and ask for the business.
But they also understand attention. Positioning. Storytelling. Psychology. Distribution. Reputation. They know how to contribute before they ask, educate before they pitch and build trust before they need it.
Most importantly, they understand something the old sales funnel never really accounted for:
The buyer may be deciding whether you’re worth talking to long before you know they’re looking.
So yes, keep the relationships. Keep the calls. Keep the trade shows.
Just make sure that when the buyer, Google or their AI assistant comes looking for evidence that you’re worth the meeting, there’s something worth finding.
Would AI Recommend You?
Your prospects are already researching. The question is whether what they find makes your sales team’s job easier or harder.
Lure’s Visibility Graders looks at your digital sales ecosystem through the eyes of today’s buyer, from visibility and positioning to content and conversion, to uncover what’s helping you get found, trusted and shortlisted…and what might be quietly costing you opportunities.
See How Your Sales Ecosystem Stacks Up →
1. How is AI changing hospitality sales?
AI is becoming part of the buyer’s research and vetting process. Hospitality buyers can use AI to discover vendors, compare solutions, research individual sellers and validate claims made during a sales conversation. That means a company’s digital presence, customer proof, expertise and reputation can influence a buying decision before and after a salesperson ever speaks with the prospect.
2. Do hospitality sellers still need to cold call and prospect?
Yes, but prospecting works differently when the buyer already knows who you are. Calls, emails, networking and trade shows still matter, but sellers can make those activities more effective by building familiarity before reaching out. Useful content, visible expertise and consistent engagement can turn a completely cold introduction into a warmer conversation.
3. Why should hospitality salespeople create content?
Content allows sellers to demonstrate expertise before a buyer is ready for a sales conversation. Answering common questions, sharing industry insights and talking about real customer challenges can help sellers become recognizable and credible to the specific buyers they want to reach. The goal isn’t to become an influencer. It’s to build a reputation.
4. How can hospitality sales and marketing teams work together more effectively?
Sales teams should regularly share the questions, objections, challenges and trends they hear from buyers with marketing. Marketing can turn that buyer intelligence into articles, videos, emails, social content, case studies and other resources that help sales educate prospects and stay visible. Sales provides the intelligence. Marketing helps make it scalable.
5. How can hospitality companies become more visible in AI search results?
There is no single tactic that guarantees inclusion in an AI-generated answer. Companies can strengthen the signals available to AI and search platforms by consistently publishing useful, specific content, demonstrating expertise, earning credible third-party mentions and reviews, sharing customer results and clearly communicating what the company does and who it serves. The stronger the body of evidence across the web, the easier it is for buyers and AI tools to understand where a company fits.
