Prospect Intelligence

Prospect Intelligence is enabled per property by our support team. Email us at support@salesandcatering.com to turn it on for your property.

Prospect Intelligence is our AI assistant designed to help you find and qualify new business. You can find it under the Prospect Intelligence tab in your main navigation, divided into three main areas:

1. Enrichment: Research a specific company to build a complete profile with verified contacts, then import them directly into STS Cloud.

2. Second Chances: A live worklist of past group business, cancellations, and lost leads from your own database that are worth contacting again.

3. Market Data: Reports you run on demand to find new prospects outside your CRM, including similar companies, local market events, government RFPs, and associations.

Our three guiding rules for how this works:

- The AI suggests, but you decide. Nothing is imported or changed in your database until you review the research and click the import button.

- Your data stays yours. Suggestions in Second Chances come only from your own property history. We never share your data with other hotels.

- Every detail is cited. Every fact the system finds includes a link to the source website so you can verify the information yourself.

Enrichment takes a small detail, like a single email address or a company name from a business card, and builds a complete profile you can import into your accounts and contacts.

How to start research:

Click New Prospect on the Enrichment tab. You only need one of these pieces of information to start:

- A company name

- A website URL

- A single work email address

You can also add any contacts you already know or leave notes like "met at chamber event" to help guide the search. Click Start Research, and the system runs the search in the background. It usually takes under a minute, and you do not need to refresh your browser. Running or failed searches will show in an In Progress strip at the top of your list. If a search fails, the system displays the reason and gives you a Re-run button.

What your research shows:

- Company Profile: An overview of what they do, their industry, size, and details useful for hotel sales, like annual meetings or company milestones. Every fact includes the source URL. If the company website cannot be read, the system tells you and uses general web search instead.

- Confidence Badge: Rated high, medium, or low based on the strength of the company's online footprint.

- Sales Context: A brief summary you can use as a talking point when you make your first call.

- People: The contacts you entered, plus other personnel found online who are likely to book events. For very large organizations with hundreds of employees, the system skips automatic contact gathering so you do not get cluttered with irrelevant names. You can use the Add a Person button to search for specific titles.

We only show email addresses found on public web pages. To confirm they are deliverable, select the contacts you want and click Find and Verify Emails. The system checks each address and assigns a status:

- Provided: The email address you entered yourself.

- Published: Found on a public web page.

- Verified: Confirmed as a live, deliverable inbox.

- Unverified: An address was found, but confidence is low. Use your judgment before emailing.

- Not Found: No reliable address was located, though you still have their name and LinkedIn profile.

Verification only uses credits for the contacts you select. Verified contacts also pull in additional details like phone numbers, location, and photos.

When you are ready to import, the system shows you a plain-English preview of what will happen. You have two options:

- Create New Account: Builds a new account with the researched company details, adds your selected contacts, sets the lead source to Prospect Intelligence, and saves the research summary in the account notes.

- Enrich Existing Account: The system looks for matches in your database by domain name or contact info. It will only fill in blank fields. It never overwrites your existing data, and it skips contacts you already have.

Use the sidebar to filter your prospects by Sales Manager, Status (Ready or Imported), and Researched Date (defaulting to this week, with options for the last 30 days, this quarter, or custom ranges).

Second Chances scans your own STS Cloud history to find past clients worth contacting again. This is not a static report; it is a live worklist that updates as your team enters data. It is active by default once Prospect Intelligence is turned on.

What it looks for:

- Lost Bookings: Groups lost during your chosen timeframe whose accounts have not rebooked. The original loss reasons and notes are displayed.

- Cancelled Bookings: Cancelled business within your timeframe that has not rebooked.

- Lapsed Repeat Accounts: Accounts that booked with you multiple times in the past but have not stayed with you recently. Since they already know your property, these are often your strongest leads.

- Annual Groups: Organizations that booked meetings during the same month over multiple years, but have nothing on the books for that month this year.

- Unconverted Leads: Past leads that never turned into bookings.

To keep your list clean, the system automatically filters out weddings and generic house accounts like "Walk-In Group" or "In-House."

How to use the worklist:

Each row shows the company name, website, the reason they are on the list (such as "Lost booking Oct 2024, $18k value"), a link to their CRM account, their total past bookings, and their lifetime value. You can filter this list by:

- Category (the five types listed above)

- Cooled-off period (12-24, 12-36, or 24-48 months ago)

- Specific lost business reasons

- Market segment

- Past booking frequency (2+, 3+, or 5+ stays)

- Historical meeting month (useful for filling soft spots in your calendar)

- Sorting options (most recent, highest value, or most bookings)

Your active filters save in your browser's URL bar, so you can bookmark your filtered view or copy the link to share with another manager.

Every row has two options:

- Research: Runs the Enrichment process on the company to find updated contact details and job changes. This uses one credit from your monthly allowance.

- Dismiss: Removes the company from your list. An Undo button appears immediately, and the system logs who dismissed the lead and when.

Reviewing dismissed leads:

If you want to bring back a lead you removed, click the Dismissed link in the sidebar, find the company, and click Restore.

Market Data helps you find new business outside of your database. Because this tool searches external databases and paid services, it runs as a manual report that you generate on demand so you always have fresh data.

The four data sources:

1. Lookalikes (Active by default)

This tool finds organizations similar to your best existing accounts. The system looks at your top accounts with websites, finds matching business types, and uses our AI to filter out consumer businesses, personal blogs, and directory sites.

You define what a "best account" is before running the report:

- Rank seeds by: Total revenue or number of bookings

- Active within: All time, past 24 months, or past 60 months

- Market segment: Seed only from a specific industry or segment

- Sales manager: Seed only from one manager's accounts

The sidebar shows a live preview of which accounts will be used to generate the lookalikes. Adjusting these filters is free; your monthly allowance is only used when you click to research a specific result.

2. Market Events (Enable in Settings)

This tool monitors group business coming to your area. It scans local public calendars like your convention center, tourism bureau, and sports arenas, alongside a web search for upcoming conferences and tournaments.

While these events already have their main venue booked, they are excellent opportunities for room blocks, overflow rooms, board dinners, and social events. For recurring events, you can use this data to pitch for their next open year.

3. Government RFPs (Enable in Settings, US properties only)

This feed pulls open government requests for proposals for rooms, conferences, and meeting spaces in your state directly from the federal database. The list only shows active RFPs with response deadlines, and they disappear automatically once the deadline passes.

4. Associations (Enable in Settings, US properties only)

This search finds trade and professional associations in your state that have active meeting budgets, based on public tax filings. The report displays their estimated annual conference spend. Because public filings usually lag by a year or more, use these numbers as a guide to the group's size rather than their exact current budget.

Select the data feeds you want to search in the sidebar, choose your criteria, and click Generate Report. The screen will show the progress of each search, then load your new list.

- Newly selected data categories will replace your old results.

- Unselected categories will keep their previous results, stamped with the date they were last run.

- Dismissed items will not reappear in future reports.

- Like Second Chances, you can click Research to enrich a prospect (using one credit) or click Dismiss to remove it.

Managers can adjust these tools under Settings, then Prospect Intelligence. These settings apply to the entire property.

Data toggles:

You can turn individual data sources on or off. If a source is missing a requirement (such as a US address for government RFPs or specific administrative API keys), the system will display a notice explaining what is needed.

- Second Chances: Toggle each of the five categories. The screen shows a live count of how many matching accounts currently exist in your database for each category.

- Lookalikes: View the default list of seed accounts used to find matches.

Market Event Calendars:

Manage the websites the system monitors for local event leads.

- Find calendars for me: Automatically searches for local convention centers and arenas, verifies that they have active calendars, and adds them to your monitoring list.

- Add your own: Paste the web address of any public local event calendar.

- The system displays the status of each calendar, when it was last checked, and how many events were found. If a calendar stops listing events, it will flag it for your review.

- Your CRM data is private. Second Chances and Lookalikes only look at your own database. We never share your account details or booking history with other properties.

- What we share with partner services: To run research, we send the target company name, website, or contact name to our verification and search partners. For government and association searches, we only share your state.

- Metered usage: Every search is tracked by property so you can see your usage.

- Human-driven: The system never creates accounts or sends emails on its own. A person must click to approve every import.

Why is a booked convention considered a lead?

The main convention hall is booked, but attendees still need hotel rooms, off-site dinners, and hospitality suites. If it is an annual event, it is also a warm prospect for your hotel for next year.

Why doesn't the Market Data list update automatically?

Searching external web databases costs search credits. Running the report manually ensures you only use your credits when you are actively prospecting and ready to review the results. Second Chances runs on your own database, so it is always live and free to use.

How do I retrieve a lead I accidentally dismissed?

Click the Undo link in the green confirmation message, or go to the Dismissed list on that tab and click Restore.

What counts against my monthly credit allowance?

Clicking the Research button on a prospect uses one credit from your monthly allowance (which resets on the first of each month). Browsing lists, adjusting filters, and generating Market Data reports do not use credits.

Why did the system skip automatic contact discovery for a company?

Very large corporations often have thousands of employees. To keep your CRM clean and avoid importing irrelevant contacts, the system leaves these blank and lets you use the Add a Person button to search for the specific planners you need.

Why is a specific Market Data source grayed out?

Some feeds require setup by your administrator (like adding API keys) or are restricted by region (Government RFPs and Associations are US-only). Second Chances and Market Events are always available.

Why can't I see the Prospect Intelligence tab?

The feature may not be enabled for your hotel yet, or your user profile may not have sales permissions. The Settings screen is only visible to system managers.

How accurate is the research data?

Every fact found by the system includes a link to the page where we found it. We also show a confidence badge on the profile. If we cannot find a verified email address, we will show "Not Found" rather than guessing.