Founders who are full of beans and self-doubt need go-to-market planning too

How to use all that lovely energy in the best way possible

“Every day I get two emails from tech companies that have clearly never bothered to understand the hospitality industry and think they can just solve our problems.”

If you’ve built a hotel or travel tech product and you’re getting ready to take it to market, you might feel like you’ve already run a marathon.

You’ve taken a leap of faith at least once. Maybe you’ve left a corporate role or another startup to build your own product. You’ve spent months (or years) developing it. Perhaps you’ve even secured funding. It feels like you’ve done an enormous amount of work.

And you have!

And now you’re standing at an interesting point; you’re at the finish line of building your product, and you’re at the starting line of selling it.

This is what I call the taxiing phase on the Commercial Velocity™ Map (read more here). You’ve got plenty of energy and excitement because you genuinely believe you’ve built something hotels or travel companies will love. At the same time, there’s often a fair bit of trepidation, a need for more clarity in your planning, and a lack of the precise knowledge and language needed to sell into hotels and travel.

If you’ve never created a go-to-market strategy before, never worked in sales, or you’re relatively new to hospitality, it’s completely normal to feel unsure about what comes next.

The good news is that there are a few areas that make the biggest difference when planning your go-to-market strategy.

First, understand the industry before trying to sell into it

This is the biggest mistake I see: many founders are convinced they’ve built a brilliant product, but they haven’t spent enough time understanding the people they’re selling to.

The hotel ecosystem is remarkably complex. There are owners, brands, asset managers, general managers, front office teams, commercial teams, operations teams. Every one of them has different priorities, different KPIs and different reasons for buying (or not buying) your product.

You need to understand:

Your ideal client profile (demographics and psychographics)
The different buying personas within that ideal client
What each stakeholder cares about
The language they use
The data and metrics that matter to them (what keeps them up at night)
How your product creates value for each individual decision-maker

When you do this well, you upgrade from selling the features of your product to directly addressing the problems hotels are trying to solve.

That makes it much easier for someone to say yes. It shortens sales cycles, builds credibility and positions you as someone who genuinely understands hospitality.

One senior commercial leader at a global hotel chain in Singapore summed it up perfectly when they told me:

“Every day I get two emails from tech companies that have clearly never bothered to understand the hospitality industry and think they can just solve our problems.”

You do not want to be THAT tech vendor!

Instead, align your messaging with hotel priorities. Speak the language your buyers speak. Whether that’s GOP, RevPAR, RevPAG or GSI, your prospects need to see the business impact and the return on investment, not just another piece of technology.

Then develop your consultative sales skills

Once you understand the industry, the next step is learning how to sell in a way that creates genuine partnerships (and doesn’t feel cringey for you!).

Hotels don’t need another salesperson pushing features. They need someone who understands their business and can help them solve real problems.

Learn how to ask better questions that help people move from being comfortable with their current situation to recognising why change might benefit them. Focus on selling benefits to specific buyers rather than functionality.

Your customers don’t really care that you’ve built an AI-powered assistant or an automated workflow. They care about what it actually does for them.

You’ll also need to become comfortable handling objections.

After working with hotels for more than 15 years, I can confidently say there WILL be objections and inaction.

That’s normal and the key is learning how to navigate them, qualify opportunities properly and avoid spending months pursuing deals that were never likely to close.

When you approach sales this way, you’re not selling smoke and mirrors, you’re building win-win partnerships. What’s more, with support to move away from that “cringey sales” feeling towards feeling bold and natural, the whole process is going to feel so much better for both you and your clients.

All of this creates trust, reduces friction during onboarding, lowers client churn and generates referrals.

Visibility matters more than you think

This is usually the stage that gives founders the biggest “ick.”

If you’re doing founder-led sales, you have to become visible, and become the ambassador and the pioneer of your company.

For most founders, that means posting on LinkedIn, networking at events and perhaps getting onstage.

I know how uncomfortable this can feel.

Many founders are perfectionists. They don’t want to post until everything is polished. They worry they’re not experienced enough. They wonder who they are to talk publicly about their product.

I’ve had exactly the same thoughts myself.

But waiting until everything is perfect just means someone else, probably with a less developed product, will be out there speaking first and let me tell you that is SO frustrating!

Creating thoughtful content helps you to position yourself as someone who understands hotels, understands the industry’s challenges and can solve meaningful problems.

At the same time, you’re building both your personal brand and your company brand.

That creates authority, generates inbound opportunities and makes future hiring much easier because your sales team won’t be starting from zero.

The biggest challenge I see in my clients isn’t creativity (they have endless ideas!) or inspiration (they know exactly the problem they’re solving). It’s changing the stories you tell yourself about why you’re just not ready to click “post” yet.

Finally, build a sales process that matches how hotels actually buy

Another blind spot I see repeatedly is sales process design.

Many startups have a CRM with stages like:

Prospecting
Proposal sent
Negotiation
Closed

But that’s YOUR process; it certainly isn’t your customer’s buying process.

Hotels involve multiple stakeholders, different approval stages and various internal conversations before a purchase is made. Not forgetting that at the same time they are running a hotel which is a military operation.

Understanding that buying journey changes everything.

Your pipeline becomes more accurate because you’re forecasting based on reality rather than hope
You know which stakeholders need support at each stage
You can anticipate questions and issues before they’re asked, setting you up as a trusted advisor
The onboarding experience improves because you’ve already prepared your customers for what’s coming next

Instead of scrambling to hit targets every quarter while deals endlessly slip into the following month, you’re guiding prospects through a structured buying journey that feels straightforward for them.

And when customers do buy, they feel supported every step of the way.

What this looks like in practice

One of my clients, Eccobell, is a hotel tech guest experience startup.

By repositioning their product around what hotels actually needed, and by understanding the operational challenges faced by front desk teams, we achieved some really tangible outcomes.

One hotel reduced calls to reception by 80%, simply by improving how staff were trained to use and promote the voice agent to guests.

And today, Eccobell has around 30 hotels using its platform.

The transformation wasn’t only commercial.

Daniel, the CEO, originally didn’t want to post on LinkedIn at all. I almost had to bully him into it (sorry Dan).

Now he’s appearing on podcasts, speaking confidently about hotel technology, discussing the future of hospitality and positioning himself as an expert in the industry.

When you understand the industry, know your customers deeply and become confident talking about the problems you solve, selling becomes much easier, and you grow as a leader.

You can hear more about Daniel and Eccobell’s journey here:

Go-to-market planning isn’t about following a generic checklist

It’s about understanding your customers, speaking their language, building your own confidence and creating a sales process that reflects how hotels actually buy.

When those pieces come together, everything else becomes easier.

If you’re the founder of a hotel or travel tech startup, or an early employee responsible for commercial growth, and you’re planning your go-to-market strategy, getting these foundations right will save you time, shorten sales cycles and help you build credibility from day one.

And if you’d like a little help with that, book in a call and perhaps I can help. I work with Travel & Hotel Tech founders to bring clarity, structure and most importantly real-life action to their business plans.

Book in a chat with Emily