Title
Project Manager, Specialty Sales
Location
Rockville, MD
Description

I. Summary Statement

The Global Sales Government & Diversity Sales Manager is a key member of the Segment Sales team responsible for providing strategic leadership to Choice Hotels International's business to business distribution channels. This position will play a lead role in developing the strategic plan for the Government, Diversity and Membership sales segments by establishing preferred partnerships with key customers and leading industry related organizations. This position will assist in designing and executing global business to business solutions leveraging outside sales, inside sales, marketing and Choicehotels.com channels in order to acquire, grow and retain the right customers to support the long range RevPAR Index growth target.

II. Organization

Reports to Global Sales Government, Sports and Diversity Segment Leader. No direct reports. Interfaces with other departments, corporate staff and outside vendors and, most importantly, customers.

III. Primary Duties & Accountabilities

Strategic Sales:

1) Provide exceptional business leadership to drive superior business results.

2) Work in tandem with the Director to champion business transformation and change efforts in support of Sales and Marketing strategies.

3) Support the creation of a 3 year rolling strategic plan which is focused on growing the government, diversity and membership business while leveraging CHIs demand generation channels of outside sales, inside sales, marketing, partnership marketing and choicehotels.com.

4) Major focus on increased incremental revenue generation from government organizations utilizing central channel such as GDS and choicehotels.com.

5) Become the expert for demand generation from government, diversity and membership organizations.

6) Industry involvement leverage a role in an influential government and/or diversity industry association in order to drive CHIs awareness.

7) Customer Centric account management of the top 20 30 government, diversity and membership influencing accounts.

8) Leverage key organizational channels including the Global Sales department, marketing & e-commerce departments, Brand Performance Consultants and CHI leaders to assist in the creation and execution of the segment strategies.

Operational Excellence:

1) Execute a world class segment strategy that includes: account deployment ranking for outside sales and account attraction ranking for inside sales.

2) Oversee the rate solicitation, data submission and rate loading processes for the key government programs including, SATO, Fedrooms, and LSTATE. Ensure our hotels are well represented in these programs to drive increased room nights to our hotels to maintain and increase our share of government business.

3) Working in tandem with the Rate & Selling team - spearhead the strategy and improvements for the standard rate programs for these segments, specifically the SGV rate plans.

4) Support the design and delivery of a long term plan to acquire new customers through an acquisition and retention strategy and service customers via a growth and service strategy with government, diversity and membership segment specific solutions.

5) Secure hot qualified leads and develop the most efficient inside sales solution to drive bookings from government and diversity organizations.

6) Partner with Sales Support on the periodic evaluation and assignment of accounts and determine the appropriate sales service engine to deploy.

7) Monitor current and future customer needs, goals and attitudes including competitive activity to guide targeted government, diversity and membership segment strategy development.

8) Achieve segment revenue goals as defined by Global Sales Leadership.

9) Drive the implementation and sustainability of enterprise-wide initiatives.

10) Work with the Director to define appropriate metrics to identify and measure sales, marketing and e-commerce business results.

Franchisee Relations:

1) Develop appropriate Franchisee relationships by leveraging the BPCs in order to build support for key initiatives and customer needs. Ensure team is viewed as the industry experts in the business to business global sales segments discipline.

2) Design and deliver Franchisee sales training to be delivered at National Convention, Fall Regionals and via Choice University.

IV. Skills, Educational Background & Experience

- Bachelors degree or equivalent required.

- Minimum 2 years sales leadership experience with a proven successful track record.

- Minimum 2 years experience in segment sales with proven positive results.

- 3-5 years experience as a successful direct sales account manager.

- Must have strategic sales skills. Includes ability to support and execute the Global Sales vision, demonstrate flexibility in approach; influence and motivate others to achieve desired results; ability to address difficult issues.

- Ability to support the Director in overseeing the department P&L and must have the ability to understand basic business acumen skills in order to understand customer trending.

- Must be an energized self-starter who can work independently; comfortable challenging organizational norms and accepted thinking to improve effectiveness.

- Has the ability to inspire inter-departmental work groups in order to achieve a common vision.

- Ability to evaluate business trends and develop successful solutions that enhance business performance.

- Ability to collaborate, develop and maintain effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders.

- Brings a global perspective to ideas and solutions. Has cross-discipline and cross-regional understanding and is knowledgeable about CHIs brands, sales and marketing strategies and service offerings.

- Ability to balance creativity with pragmatic business considerations and bring ideas to market.

- Active learner able to enhance personal, professional and business growth through new knowledge and experiences; pushes the organization to learn from other industries standards and practices.

- Results oriented; delivers results under difficult conditions and demonstrates balanced judgment under pressure.

- Strong communication skills includes oral (one on one and presentations to large audiences) and written.

- Ability to travel 20% of the time.