Strong Demand, Short Attention Spans: Insights from HSMAI Commercial Strategy Week

Many in the hotel business right now are celebrating the pent-up demand driving record sales across the U.S. and Europe.

But while business is strong, attention spans are short. So persuading all of those eager travelers to come back next year, even as the economy slows, is the next big challenge.

That’s why leaders, marketers and sales teams—in the hospitality business and beyond—must know how to craft compelling messages that attract new customers and engage current ones.

So how do you make that happen?

I tackled that tough question in three keynote talks during Commercial Strategy Week in June for HSMAI , one of the largest hospitality associations in the world for hotels and their partners.

If you missed it, here are a few key highlights from my #CSW2022 sessions:

Keynote 1: Make Everything SOS

I kicked off the week by talking with a group of chief marketing officers, who said they still spend hours every day slogging through their inbox, trying to delete as many emails as possible without actually opening them. #NotFun

To save time and drive faster responses, I recommended they make sure every piece of content that goes out the door is Short, Organized and Skimmable.

That’s true for emails as well as everything else—from website language to sales proposals and news releases.

The need for SOS is even greater today because audiences aren’t just distracted. They are more distant and distressed. And brain science shows that when people are stressed out (and who isn’t these days) it’s harder to:

• Listen.
• Learn.
• Actually remember what you learned.

To break through, all of us need to use the SOS approach to make sure that our customers and even our own colleagues can understand and act on our messages.

Sounds simple enough. But it takes in-depth training and practice to do well. As the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal famously wrote:

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.

Keynote 2: Tell the Powerful Story of You

In my main keynote of the week, I built on SOS and also talked about the need to fully update your online presence—especially on LinkedIn. After all, people are looking you up online and making a quick decision about whether to meet with you.

After that session, several people came up and shared this familiar refrain: “I want to update my profile, but I don’t have time!”

I get it. When our team does LinkedIn Executive Makeovers , we spend over 30 hours per makeover to create a mini-magazine-style profile with compelling visuals, engaging content and smart keywords to raise visibility.

At first glance, that may seem like an incredible amount of time to devote to a LinkedIn profile. But think about it. LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. If your profile is half-finished, boring, or worse, contains typos and other errors, what message are you sending about who you are as a professional?

One quick tip: If you do nothing else, call up your LinkedIn profile and make sure that your About summary answers two key questions:

1. What can you do for me?
2. Why should I work with you?

Your profile should be less about building your resume and more about building relationships. Don’t use it to tell me why you’re great. Instead, tell me why it would be great to work with you.

Keynote 3: Show Me a Story

Closing out the week, I had a chance to talk with a group of senior revenue managers who shared one of their biggest challenges: sharing complex financial data, and doing it in a clear, compelling way.

So in my Design for Attention session, I shared five Fast Fixes for making data, spreadsheets and graphics easier to understand and act on. Here are two of my favorites:

1. Reduce the text, not the slides.
2. Animate the numbers as you talk so they are easier to see.

As I shared with the group: You should never again hear yourself saying, “I know you can’t really see this slide, but…”

When that happens, it’s time to rethink the slide.

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Events like Commercial Strategy Week are a vital reminder that even when things are going strong, we have to stay nimble and prepared for what’s coming next.

If you’d like to transform your content, or help your teams learn how, check out our website for information. We can either do the work for you, or help your teams develop strong communication skills that stick.

In the meantime, here’s a final #HSMAI challenge:

• Keep your next email shorter than 100 words.
• Use bullet points to make it skimmable.
• And include one, yes only one, call to action.

Because how fast people respond depends on you.

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Mindset Digital CEO Debra Jasper, Ph.D., is an international keynote speaker and award-winning storyteller. Forbes will soon be publishing her new book, Extreme Clarity: Break Through in a Hyper-Distracted, Hybrid World. Named one of the top female “Winning Women” Entrepreneurs in North America by EY, she and her team provide consulting and award-winning training programs to organizations in hospitality, finance, insurance and healthcare around the world, from Australia to Dubai.