Telesa Via is a vice-President of Sales at Kimpton Hotels and Resturants, a division of IHG. She is based in Washington DC with global sales responsibility.

On the Sales Game Changers Podcast, she shared the story behind her rise to sales leadership, discussed her mentors, and gave advice for how you can take your sales career to the next level.

Listen to the Sales Game Changers Podcast Episode 20: Kimpton Sales Executive Telesa Via Reveals What Leads to Exceptional Success and read the transcript.

Here’s an excerpt from the podcast:

As a sales leader, what are some of the marketing challenges that you believe are biggest challenges?

Telesa Via: To answer your question, it is all things. And so, we’re looking at ‘what does a sales person need to have so that when they’re going out to sell to the customer they have the correct information’. For example, we have a sales app so that a customer, if a Sales Manager is meeting with the customer we have a sales app and that will take them through the 66 plus hotels that we have. If they ask a question they can actually e-mail right then and there the information that they’re looking for.

But, it’s also what’s on our website. It’s also how do we proactively market to customers that may not have been introduced to us in the past. Sales leads are extremely important to businesses however people often ask, what is a sales lead? And then, the other piece of marketing could be our internal customer and how do we get them to come back and things are so different than when I started twenty years ago and how leads come in, now we are working with systems that are more electronically based. And so, we have to market digitally to them and that wasn’t the same twenty years ago so that part has changed and are we marketing to the right people electronically as well.

It’s a big job. We do have representation in our team of individuals at our home office from a marketing perspective who’s responsible but I think that it takes a team to be able to make sure that we have solidified the correct and right way and while my expertise may be in sales, theirs maybe in marketing but together we have to work together to make sure that it’s the right sale to the right customer.

Telesa Via is the Vice-President of Sales for Kimpton Hotels and Restaurants. She has global responsibility for helping grow the brand’s business to Corporate accounts, Individuals, and Associations. She runs a team that provides services all around the globe. Telesa started her career with the Ritz Carlton, eventually moving to the Hyatt brand and then moving to Kimpton, where she became the VP of Sales in 2016.

Listen to the Sales Game Changers Podcast Episode 20: Kimpton Sales Executive Telesa Via Reveals What Leads to Exceptional Success and read the transcript.