What Makes a Hotel Sales Legend?

What makes someone a hospitality sales legend? You tell us. No, seriously, tell us. HSMAI is accepting nominations for its Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hospitality Sales, which will be presented at HSMAI’s first-ever Sales Leader Forum on Nov. 5–6. Nominations are open through Sept. 6.

This is just the second year that HSMAI is presenting a lifetime award for hospitality sales. The first honoree was Stephen Powell, retired senior vice president of worldwide sales for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), who last year talked to us about his long, distinguished career last. You can read the entire interview here, but here’s an excerpt to inspire you about the importance of a certain kind of selling:

“When you get to the B-to-B customer, that has not changed. The needs of business-to-business customers have changed, the way they do business and the way they do meetings and the way that they purchase their business travel have changed. But it’s still a customer, it’s still a face, it’s still someone who wants another face to talk with, someone who wants a solution provider. The customer wants someone that has authority and can make decisions and be creative and provide solutions and make the whole relationship happen. And that has not changed. That’s what I caution the people who are inclined toward the distribution model a little bit too much. That may work somewhat on the consumer side, but on the B-to-B side, you still need to be talking to one another and developing those relationships.”