Presentations | HSMAI Americas

Recovery Connections: Sales Strengths vs. Sales Skills

During a Recovery Connections session on Oct. 14 — part of HSMAI’s Road to Recovery 2020 program — Prism Hotels’ Allison Handy and Hilton’s Eric Kreins joined Johnson & Wales University’s Katie Davin to discuss how to “Leverage STRENGTHS, Not Skills, to Drive Results From Your Team.”

TAKEAWAYS

Collective goals first: “You really can’t figure out how you’re going to deploy your team until you have a true understanding of what your goals are,” said Handy, Prism’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. “In the past, every single person on the team was able to write their own goals for what they were going to be responsible for, but when you have a shrunken team, it’s no longer about the individual goals — it’s about the collective goals. You have to start with determining the prioritization of what your goals are, from the most important and the most critical to the business on down.”

The power of strengths: “Skills are learned attributes that you gain through practice, repetition, and education,” said Kreins, managing director of strategic accounts for Hilton. “Strengths are attributes that you’re born with; they’re your innate personality traits. You can refine them, but they’re really part of your personality. The reason they’re important is, a lot of us now are living in a world with reduced resources, smaller teams — less of what we used to have — so we have to really be flexible and maximize what we have today. One of the best ways you can do that is to really leverage the strengths you have at your disposal.”

TOOLS AND TIPS

StrengthsFinder: “It’s an assessment that helps identify your top five strengths and force-ranks your overall set of strengths,” Kreins said. “What I’ve really liked about StrengthsFinder is, because these are innate skills, if you do the assessment, it doesn’t really change over time.”

DISC Profile: “Each letter — D-I-S-C — is a different category of personality, i.e., strength,” Handy said. “It’s a tool we use religiously for all our management-level hires. It tells you what to expect when you hire a person — how you should expect to manage them, how you can motivate them, what you can expect to get out of them.”

Recovery Connections is a weekly program with sales, marketing, and revenue optimization tracks that mix best-practices presentations with interactive small-group discussions. Sign up to watch this session, access an on-demand library — and register for the next session, “Hitting the Bullseye When Your Target Shrinks and Expands,” at 2 p.m. EDT on Oct. 21.

Revenue Strategies for Recovery

Tim Wiersma, founder and principal at Revenue Generation LLC and chair of HSMAI’s Revenue Optimization Advisory Board, led a breakout session on “Revenue Strategies for Recovery” as part of the HSMAI Washington, D.C. Chapter’s State of the Industry event on Sept. 24. Wiersma highlighted the following points:

CONSUMER SENTIMENT: Consumer uncertainty has increased since COVID-19 began. More than one-third of Americans do not believe that COVID will be over until the end of 2021 or later.
FOCUS ON THE RIGHT MARKETS: Drive traffic is a crucial segment of business. Consumers are willing to drive longer distances instead of traveling via airplane. They are particularly interested in visiting outdoor attractions such as national parks. It’s crucial to home in on the most qualified audience with relevant, sensitive messaging related to those consumers’ behavior.
CUSTOMER NEEDS: While pricing will always be important, customers are more focused on assurances of safety, flexibility, and experience when making buying decisions these days.
ELIMINATION OF SILOS: Departmental silos should not exist any longer. Revenue optimization provides strategic analysis and communicating opportunities to sales and marketing as the three areas align their strategies.
DATA: Data needs to guide all recovery plans. Analysts should utilize market data as well as researching what competitors are doing to promote themselves.

View the Presentation

For additional information, insights, and tools, visit HSMAI’s Global Coronavirus Recovery Resources page.

Generation Alpha and Family Travel Trends

The Lightning Round is a signature program at HSMAI’s Marketing Strategy Conference — giving six marketing executives just six minutes and 40 seconds each to share a best practice, strategic insight, or big idea. At the 2020 Marketing Strategy Conference on Jan. 22, Derek Price, director of business development in North America for Expedia Group Media Solutions, focused on how families travel in a Lightning Round presentation called “Generation Alpha and Family Travel Trends.”

KEY TAKEAWAY: Generation Alpha is made up of kids born after 2010 — and they’re already having an impact in the travel space. According to Price, they love to travel and are actively involved in planning trips with their parents. Most families need help planning their trips, and the biggest opportunity is using appealing imagery in digital marketing which attracts Gen Alpha as well as their parents. “Everyone wants to be entertained and everyone wants to have fun,” Price said. “They’re making their decision based on the destination activities available.”