Sales transformation: leading & selling within and beyond the organisation

In this context statement, I draw on my professional work in the public domain (i.e., public works) to highlight how sales can be transformed to sell within and beyond an organisation. I interpret my three bodies of public works. My first body of public works generated the first luxury travel agency facilities onboard a major brand cruise vessel, where employee-based travel agents would sell and rebook existing guests onboard so that they would walk off the ship with their next cruise vacation experience already in place. This programme is called ‘Future Cruise Sales.’ In my second body of public works, I built and established the first office of Diversity & Inclusion within the cruise industry. Until this time, Royal Caribbean Group and her cruise brands, are the only cruise brands in the world to officially have this post of an established leader for Diversity & Inclusion and Engagement championing Employee Resource Groups, an Executive Diversity Council and measuring Diversity & Inclusion along with Engagement giving a voice to all employees. My third body of public works focuses on my launching the first office of Sales Transformation that through a partnership with Consalia Sales Business School, offers a scientific and psychological approach towards selling via sales education.

I view my public works through the theoretical lenses of intrapreneurship, narrative hermeneutics, and transformational leadership; these can also be interpreted as tools to be used in the practice of sales transformation. I focus on the organisational and industry context in which my three main public works came into being within the cruise and hospitality industry to explain their impact and significance for sales transformation. The key question driving the analysis is: How does a person sell within their organisation and beyond its limitations? This, I propose, requires transforming sales by becoming an intrapreneur, a hermeneutic who interprets the brand as a text, and a transformation leader with these approaches being leveraged together rather than separately. This contribution to both practice and (scholarly and professional) literature is evidenced by a close analysis and criticism of the three main bodies of public works that I have generated within the cruise and hospitality industry. In the last chapter, I propose a new working framework towards utilizing these three tools to develop the sales transformation capacity of practitioners in the field. I advocate narrative hermeneutics as a methodology that facilitates sales through re-interpretation of the brand and storytelling, and I contextualize transformational leadership theory within my practice to demonstrate that one can lead within an organisation regardless of their title, position, or level of authority.