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Today’s show featured an interview with Shawn Parker, Executive Director of Strategic Accounts and Corporate Group Sales at Hilton.
Find Shawn on LinkedIn.
SHAWN’S TIP: “Be hungry, be curious, be humble. That’s how new opportunities appear.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Welcome to another special episode of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Today is a special episode, it’s a Sales Story and a Tip Podcast. We’re going to have Shawn Parker here from Hilton. He’s going to tell us a great sales story and he’s going to give us a tip that he learned from the story. We’ve also had our good friend, Kim Napolitano, on the show. The very, very first show that we did with a Hilton leader was Frank Passanante. We actually did that show in-person. I actually interviewed Frank Passanante at the Hilton headquarters in McLean, Virginia. That was great. He’s made a couple of appearances on the show as well, as have some other Hilton executives.
Sales Story and a Tip, I bring on a sales leader, I ask them to introduce themselves, then tell us a great sales story, and give us a tip. Shawn Parker, why don’t you introduce yourself?
Shawn Parker: I am the Executive Director of Strategic Accounts and Corporate Group Sales for Hilton. Been with Hilton for nearly seven years. I’m based here in Atlanta, Georgia, and happy to be on the call today.
Fred Diamond: I’m very excited to hear your story. Shawn Parker, tell us a great sales story.
Shawn Parker: A lot of times we think that a great sales story is a multimillion dollar closing or booking, but we’ve really talked to the team a lot here recently about celebrating those small base hits. Those base hits, those consistent moves of progress are really what big wins are made of. The story that I’ll tell today is more in that category, and it’s really around there was one of our major premier marquee accounts, big corporate, spends lots of dollars for travel and meetings. We are well positioned with this customer. We know a lot of the key stakeholders, but what we realized was that a lot of our opportunities from a meetings and events standpoint were coming from a few key departments, training, sales kickoffs, and things of that nature. But we realized we were only really at the tip of the iceberg of what truly existed in terms of meetings and events with this large multinational company.
In a sense of humility, we’ve really been talking about business development within our key accounts all the time, and inside sales within our accounts. We started to really dive into LinkedIn to find new customers, new contacts that might be booking meetings, specifically within the luxury space. We were looking for certain titles. We found this excellent title, head of executive meetings, and we were really trying to drive business into our luxury hotels.
I always connect and reached out through their direct message, introduced myself, this is what we do, we manage your account, we’d love to talk to you about luxury meetings. Responded instantly and said hey, we called, we followed up, connected her with the team member, come to find out had a RFP for the Conrad Nashville that was coming up within the next month. Short-term business during a need time that we needed it. It was some might say a stroke of luck, but when you really break it down, it’s that commitment to being hungry, to being curious, to be humble, to acknowledge we don’t know what we don’t know, and to have the tools and the research ability to go and find it. I was really excited about that win that resulted in a booking, a new contact, and in her message it said, “There’s a lot more where this came from.” It points to the magic of being, we talk about being humble, hungry, smart, having the tools, having the curiosity, and it can turn up big and we celebrate those base hits for sure.
Fred Diamond: I’m just curious on a couple things. Was that a title that you were aware of? Or how did you come up to know to search on that particular title?
Shawn Parker: Great question. When we’re looking for new contacts, we often are searching keywords, events, meetings, et cetera. But we have found that many times there’s specialists that are specifically doing meetings for the C-suite. When we’ve added executive meetings or we might add a keyword of incentives or things of that nature, it’s pointed us to a very niche area of those that are specifically searching for luxury business.
Fred Diamond: How much time do you direct your people to spend on LinkedIn? Do you train them? Because that’s brilliant, to use those various keywords to uncover people, and that’s become probably the greatest tool. I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn and I’m seen as a “thought leader” in some segments. But really the best value of LinkedIn is finding people and understanding their history, seeing where they’ve come from, what are they posting about, et cetera. Has this shifted how you’ve directed your team to use LinkedIn? Or were you guys always power users, but now you just found a new angle? Just curious on that.
Shawn Parker: That’s a great question. I would say that I’m always encouraging the team to really embrace social selling. I think LinkedIn is my favorite platform of choice, but really encouraging the team to use the tools such as ZoomInfo, or some people are more leaning into Instagram or other channels of that nature. But for me, a business platform where all of the buyers are, I like LinkedIn, and I’ve had a lot of success there. I would say I’ve really been encouraging the team to develop and strengthen their social selling muscle. I think it’s a key component of top-performing sales professionals today.
It’s really challenging the team to commit to always learning, always evolving. I’ve told them, “I’m not expecting you guys to be social selling experts.” I think LinkedIn has a measuring system where you can be 80, 90, 100, or whatever, but there’s a way to lean in and participate. There’s a way to grow your network. There’s a way to have a platform and have a message, and there’s a way to find new contacts. I’m encouraging them to develop that muscle and lean into it because it’s a marketplace and a platform where our customers are.
Fred Diamond: Everybody who’s listening to this story wants to know, is it LinkedIn Navigator you’re using or is it Premier or just basic free LinkedIn?
Shawn Parker: You can use both. I’m a big fan of Sales Navigator. But even without Sales Navigator, some of these basic functions are available to us all.
Fred Diamond: You’ve given us a couple of tips already, but is there a specific tip that you’d like to leave us with on the Sales Story and a Tip Podcast?
Shawn Parker: I’ll close with a shout out to our leader, Frank. Humble, hungry, smart. When you’re focusing on business development and inside sales, be humble. Don’t assume you know everything about the account. Be open to learning, even if you’ve managed the client for years. Be hungry. Keep prospecting within your accounts using the tools that we’ve mentioned. Last, be smart. Be emotionally intelligent, read the room, know when to push and when to listen, and use data and insights to guide your outreach and not just your gut instinct.
Fred Diamond: Thanks for that story. It’s interesting as well. A big part of the Institute for Effective Professional Selling is what we call our Selling Essentials Marketplace, where we work with best-of-breed partners in a couple different areas of sales, and one of them is LinkedIn. We work with a woman called Jessica Samuels with Evolve. We’ve had her on the podcast, she’s one of the leaders, as is Kim Napolitano, at our Women in Sales Leadership Forum. There’s a lot of things that you can uncover. I really love this idea that you found some new search terms, because I always search VP of sales. Then of course in our world, there’s enablement and there’s other things that are brewing, CRO, et cetera. Just some of those little twists allowed you to find some people that hopefully have led to a lot more business for you and the team at Hilton.
Once again, I want to thank Shawn Parker for being on today’s Sales Game Changers’ Sales Story and a Tip Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo