Speakers: Janice Zoeller, Senior Regional Director, Sales Operations
Janice Zoeller: Hello, my name is Janice Zoeller and I'm a Regional Senior Director of Sales Operations with Hilton. What that means is I support the sales, marketing, catering and events efforts for 26 of our Full Service Managed hotels here in the Americas.
Can you share a recent project or accomplishment that you're particularly proud of?
Janice Zoeller: So back in late spring, I was working with our hotels in the New York City market and we were starting to see the trend of a slowdown in what we had seen in the previous few summers. With all of the pent up demand, we weren't seeing quite that demand come in for the summer months. So we were looking for different channels that we could activate or, you know, different customers that we could engage with to help us build some room nights in New York City for the summer. Having a great relationship with our partners at HWS and the leisure team, I reached out and I said, look, this is a similar challenge that we're seeing at several of our hotels. Instead of running individual promotions, are there a grouping of customers who we know are still looking to book New York City for June, July, and August of this year that we can send special promotions and highlight what our hotels have to offer and we quickly got on the phone with all 5 of our New York City Managed leaders in both sales and revenue management and then we got our HWS partners all pulled together and we found 7 accounts that we could activate and not just with an individual hotel, but with a New York City market wide promotion. I was really proud of that and the fact that we were able to, you know, scale an initiative that really helped an entire market versus just one hotel.
Tell us about your career journey leading up to your current role.
Janice Zoeller: So I began my hotel sales journey about 25 years ago, graduating college, I thought I was going to be in advertising sales and I was moonlighting waiting tables when a woman came in and sat in my section one night and was impressed with my ability to communicate and, you know, my customer service skills and could tell that I probably had some sales skills. And she asked me if I'd ever thought about hotel sales and at that point, I really had no idea. I then went and applied the next day and this was out in Tucson, Arizona. I opened up a brand new golf resort and really the rest is history. I got bit by the hospitality bug quickly and from there I went on at various sales roles in Arizona. I then moved back to my hometown in Louisville, Kentucky and then that brought me up here to Indianapolis, which is where I currently live, where I've been for the past 17 years. I went from Senior Sales Manager to Director of Group Sales to Director of Sales and Marketing and then about 11 years ago with my former company that I was with for 15 years, I went into a regional role and that was a lot of fun. And I love that company that I worked for, but then Hilton then came knocking about 6 years ago and how could I say no to Hilton? So I started the interview process and ended up in my current role and absolutely love it.
How does your current role fit in to your career goals?
Janice Zoeller: As I mentioned, I knew pretty early on that I would be a good sales person. I took a class in college called interpersonal communication and I absolutely loved figuring out how people tick, what makes people tick. And then when I went into sales leadership, I took what I loved about learning and working with my various customers into learning all about what makes an individual sales contributor successful and just fell in love with developing and helping others be successful in their self journeys and then a lot of times leading to them being self leaders themselves.
What advice would you give to someone who is interested in pursuing a similar career path?
Janice Zoeller: One of the best pieces of advice that I received early in my career was to follow my heart and if I did so that everything else would fall into place and this has certainly rang true for me. One great example of that, that I can remember, I was in sales for about 5 years and working for a fabulous golf resort out in Tucson, Arizona when my daughter was born and I was lonely and I needed grandparents and, you know, I was a working mom. So I moved back home to Louisville, Kentucky and while I thought that could have been a career limiting decision, it ended up leading me to working on a Pre-Opening team for a brand new hotel, for a company that I then spent 15 years growing and developing with. Another great example is don't be so, don't necessarily be so stuck on getting a promotion that is moving you up the ladder. Sometimes moving across the ladder can be just as beneficial, really, you know, opening you up to varied experiences, giving you a stronger resume in the end.
