After retiring as Viking's vice president of sales and national accounts last year, Michele Saegesser has officially returned in the same role. She spoke with river cruise editor Brinley Hineman during her first week back in the gig about what she's been up to for the past year and what's on the horizon for the cruise giant.
Michele Saegesser
Q: What have you done in the past year?
A: You know, I never really left. I've been doing about a year of motivational speaking and training for the travel advisors -- which is probably a whole other interview we could do one day -- on how to help them build their business on databasing.
Q: What does that entail?
A: We fly the advisors to L.A., and they spend an entire weekend just with me in our headquarters office, and we do a whole training on how to build your luxury database, how to find Viking [customers] in the database. I felt that it was my giveback to the industry, because this is not what cruise lines are training very well on. They'll train on the marketing, but they're not training on how to find that client. And I think it's probably the hardest thing for these new-to-industry folks to do.
Q: You've helped advisors identify prospective Viking cruisers. What about advisors who already sell to those clients?
A: We have a whole list; if they took the Rhine, these are the five most likely cruises they're going to take next. And so we hand that information to an advisor and say, "Look, your client just got back from the Rhine. These are the five products you should be putting in front of them." Because it's not just what I'm saying they go on. It is statistically what they go on next. And so we're able to really help repeat that guest for the advisor.
Q: What brought you back to the sales role?
A: Viking, we're sort of the marketing [giant] out there. It was quite an easy topic for me to speak endlessly about. And then there was an opportunity of: What do you want to do? Do you want to come back? Is there more for you? Is there more for me? And it became a pretty easy decision of: all right, yeah, we miss each other. And I'm delighted. It was a really fun year to not have a lot of emails and stress, which this week changed.
The godmother, the christening and the naming in October [Saegesser served as godmother to the Viking Honir, officially the line's 100th ship] was just one of those, like, how could I ever leave this? It was just one of the greatest days of my life and an amazing honor from Tor [Hagen] and the executive team. So I'm still flying, I must admit, a bit on that.
Q: Will your role change at all this time around?
A: I'm really fortunate to be able to be more on the strategic side, so I'm able to help the team that we've had together for so many years. It's like the band is back together again. But I'm hoping that I'll be able to do a little bit more effective strategizing for the trade side to help our partners.
Q: What else is on your to-do list?
A: We have so much to do. There's just so much to get done and never enough hours. Competition has certainly changed in the last year on rivers. Viking is a very competitive company, as you know, so the more competition the better. It doesn't change any of our strategies. It just makes us really sharpen the pen and be better than we've ever been. So I wrap my arms around that every day; how do we become better? How does my team become better? I think if you're not trying to be your very best every day, this is not a good company for you, right? We are all about being the very best.