Cluster Director of Sales & Marketing

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Education And Experience

• 2-year degree from an accredited university in Business Administration, Marketing, Hotel and Restaurant Management, or related major; 4 years’ experience in the sales and marketing or related professional area.

OR

• 4-year bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Marketing, Hotel and Restaurant Management, or related major; 2 years’ experience in the sales and marketing or related professional area.

CORE WORK ACTIVITIES

Developing & Executing Sales and Marketing Strategies

• Develops sales goals and strategies and ensures alignment with the brand business strategy.
• Executes the sales strategy and ensures individual booking goals are met for both self and staff.
• Coaches leaders of revenue generating departments in developing effective revenue strategies and setting aggressive goals that will drive the property's financial performance.
• Ensures the development of a strategic account plan for the demand generators in the market.
• Determines and develops marketing communication activities, in conjunction with Regional Marketing Communications.
• Provides customer intelligence in evaluating the market and economic trends that may lead to changes in sales strategy to meet or exceed customer expectations.
• Reviews the STAR report, competitive shopping reports and uses other resources to maintain an awareness of each property’s market position.
• Researches competitor’s sales team strategies to identify ways to grow occupancy and RevPAR and increase market share.
• Attends sales strategy meetings to provide input on weekly and overall sales strategy.
• Suggests innovative marketing ideas and proactively develops deployment strategies to continue to grow market share for each property.

Maximizing Revenue & Managing Profitability

• Evaluates and supports market sales account deployment.
• Monitors and evaluates event booking and market sales performance for each property.
• Ensures Sales teams understands and are leveraging customer/guest demand engines to full potential.
• Ensures focus is on proactive selling as well as reactive selling.
• Participates in sales calls with members of the Sales and Marketing teams to acquire new business and/or close on business.

Managing Public Relations

• Develops strong community and public relations by ensuring property participation in local, regional and national tradeshows and client events.
• Identifies public relations opportunities and coordinates activities to augment the overall marketing communication strategy.
• Supports the General Managers by coordinating crisis communications.

Building Successful Relationships

• Develops strong partnerships with local organizations to further increase brand/product awareness.
• Develops and manages internal key stakeholder relationships.
• Serves as the sales contact for the General Managers, property leadership teams, event booking, and market sales leaders.
• Serves as the property sales liaison with market sales/cluster sales, Event Booking, Revenue Management, Event Management, Regional Marketing Communications and other property departments as appropriate.
• Serves as property authority on sales processes and sales contracts.

Ensuring Exceptional Customer Service

• Serves as the sales contact for customers; serves as the customer advocate.
• Participates in and practices daily service basics of the brand.
• Executes exemplary customer/guest service to drive customer/guest satisfaction and loyalty by assisting the customer/guest and ensuring their satisfaction before and during their program/event.
• Serves the customer by understanding their needs and recommending the appropriate features and services that best meet their needs and exceed their expectations, while building a relationship and loyalty to the property and the brand.
• Gains understanding of each property’s primary target customer and service expectations; serves the customer by understanding their business, business issues and concerns, to offer better business solution both prior to, and during the program/event.
• Executes and supports Customer Service Standards and property’s Brand Standards.

Additional Responsibilities

• Works with Human Resources, Engineering and Loss Prevention to ensure compliance with all applicable regulations and/or union requirements.
• Executes and supports the operational aspects of business booked (e.g., generating proposal, writing contract, customer correspondence).