About Us:
Sunwing Vacations Group is home to North America’s largest vacation brands, comprised of the leading Canadian leisure tour operators Sunwing Vacations and WestJet Vacations, along with the growing United States based tour operator Vacation Express, together with the Group’s own travel retail businesses SellOffVacations.com and Luxe Destination Weddings. Our culture is driven by our EPIC Values (entrepreneurial, passionate, innovative, and customer-centric) and our teams work together to deliver our purpose “passionate people making vacation dreams come true”.
The Opportunity
We are looking for a Groups Sales Manager to deliver on group travel sales performance targets while keeping customers satisfied and developing a high performing, motivated sales team. This role will convert leads with strong product knowledge and excellent sales and customer service skills, drive value to the customer through quote follow ups, directional selling, negotiation and group specific promotions. The role reports to the Director, Groups and will be located in Toronto, ON.
What You’ll Do:
- Lead a fully staffed, high performing, empowered, motivated and passionate team, building a customer centric service culture and delivering on sales performance objectives
- Effectively communicate sales objectives and performance expectations to the Groups team.
- Ensure the sales team have the tools, training and processes needed to respond to customers needs quickly and efficiently
- Employee recruitment, training and development
- Provide on-going coaching and re-enforcement of processes, procedures, customer service, negotiation and selling skills to the Group Sales Supervisors and their teams instilling a positive, fair and steadfast working environment
- Track performance by employee through the development and monitoring of KPI’s. Acknowledge high performers and address performance concerns to continuously develop the Group Sales team.
- Have oversight on workloads, balancing as required to ensure team success
- Foster open communication and collaboration with the Group Sales team
- Work with Group Sales Director to develop a seasonal group sales plan for English Canada, retail and direct consumer, including strategy for quote generation and improving close ratios for retail and direct sales.
- Identify key group accounts, foster relationships and promote Sunwing as the first choice for group travel. Ensure customers feel appreciated for their business and long-term relationship.
- Represent Sunwing in a positive and consistent way, to grow customer confidence and nurture loyalty. Attend trades shows and road shows, make occasional sales calls to key agencies
- Liaise with the Sunwing Business Develop Team, the Weddings team and Nexus on a continuous basis to ensure strong associations in the marketplace, support for niche markets and ancillary sales, staying current with competitive activity and driving the development of new sales opportunities.
- Continuous process review to effectively manage department costs and productivity. Identify opportunities using technology to improve efficiency and increase sales.
- All other duties assigned by Management
What You’ll Need:
- 2 years of Management experience
- TICO certification
- Good inter-personal abilities, able to develop strong working relationships with employees and management peer group.
- Highly effective written and oral communication skills
- Strong negotiation and problem-solving abilities
- Demonstrates initiative and commercial awareness
- Comfortable with establishing, measuring and analysing performance metrics to drive performance improvements
- A sales professional with a passion for a seamless customer experience
What You’ll Be a Part Of!
- Hybrid Work Opportunities
- Grow your career with challenging and rewarding work that makes a difference
- Opportunity to give back through our social responsibility initiatives
- Work with a fun, passionate, travel-loving team!
- Great travel perks!
- Free Parking
- Open concept, collaborative workspace
- See for yourself! @sunwinglife
We are also committed to employment equity and to fostering an inclusive, accessible environment. We welcome applications from everyone. We will accommodate all applicants throughout the hiring process. If you are an individual who requires accommodation to apply to this position, please email [email protected]
Skills Required
- 2 years of management experience
- TICO certification
- Strong interpersonal abilities and relationship-building skills
- Highly effective written and oral communication skills
- Strong negotiation and problem-solving abilities
- Initiative and commercial awareness
- Ability to establish, measure, and analyze performance metrics
- Sales experience and passion for customer experience
What We Do
Sunwing Vacations Group is the WestJet Group’s vacation division, uniting Canadian leisure tour operators Sunwing Vacations, WestJet Vacations and WestJet Vacations Québec with U.S. tour operator Vacation Express and travel-retail businesses SellOffVacations.com and Luxe Destination Weddings. The group offers all-inclusive packages to sun destinations and broader travel and destination-wedding services. Sunwing Vacations traces its origins to a family business established in 2002; the Group itself was launched in 2023.
