Women In Sales Awards Europe 2017 Magazine

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THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SALES WOMAN OF 2017 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7 1

CONGRATULATIONS TO A L L T H E F I N A L I STS A N D T H E W I N N E RS F RO M Z A RS M E D I A , P RO U D H OST O F TO N I G H T 'S C E L E B R AT I O N S

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The world of work is changing and this brings with it significant challenges”

The Women In Sales Awards has developed and grown significantly over the last 4 years. This year, as we celebrate the 5th instalment of the awards, I want to recognize the incredible contributions made by every woman working within sales. The world of work is changing and this brings with it significant challenges.

The year-on-year growth of the event means that this year's judging panel comprises no less than 26 judges.

We have also increased the number of speakers for the Women In Sales Forum to 18. The judges and speakers are integral to making the awards both possible and memorable. I would like to thank them all for their support and commitment to the event and for contributing so much to the success of the awards.

With that said, none of us would be here tonight if it were not for vision of the companies that nominated the incredible women working in their sales teams. To all the companies that nominated participants this year, thank you for showing your support of the talented sales women in your organisations. And thank you for being part of the process to encourage more women to consider sales careers.

Congratulations to this year’s winners, finalists and nominees. The buzz you helped create around this year’s awards was simply inspiring. I hope you will take that buzz with you on your next step in your sales journey.

Thank you, have a great Christmas, here’s to an incredible 2018!

AFI OFORI

Managing Director, Zars Media

Find latest news about WOMEN IN SALES AWARDS EUROPE and share your experience of the event at: LinkedIn: women-in-sales-awards Facebook: WomenInSalesAwards Twitter: wisawards Google +: +Wisawards

In this magazine

8 18 6

24

28

The Coming Sales Revolution

8

The Rebirth of Selling

18

How Today’s Sales Training Fails to See the Uniqueness Within Each Salesperson

92

32

94

34

96

36

98

Selling In a Digital Age

Could YOU Sell More Than a Robot

Women in Sales Awards Europe 2017 Judges

Addressing the Elephant in the Sales Room

What Will the Rep of the Future Look Like

The Judging Process

22

Bringing Women to the Forefront of Sales Leadership

Women in Sales Awards Europe 2017 Speakers

24

Why do I feel so strongly about gender diversity

26

Multicultural Understanding = Sales Growth

Storytelling to Improve Sales

41

Women in Sales Awards Europe 2017 Finalists

92

63

And The WINNERS Are...

32

63 THE

WINNERS 4 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7

100 THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER

MARTIN MORAN Managing Director, International Insidesales.com

104 Martin Moran has more than 25 years of experience in managing and growing business operations across a variety of industries in Europe and globally, with a proven track record for building high-performance sales organizations. At InsideSales.com, Martin is responsible for leading the company’s regional growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He plays a key role in helping to accelerate sales for Europe’s leading companies. Prior to joining Insidesales. com Martin worked for Lumesse Limited, where he served as general manager and senior vice president for EMEA. He was also responsible for sales and geo leadership roles at ServiceSource International and at Salesforce. As the first employee in Salesforce’s EMEA organization, he helped grow the company’s EMEA business to $300 million in annual revenue. Martin has also driven revenue growth for well-known technology companies like Oracle and Skype. He holds an accountancy degree from Brunel University.

100

The Hard Truths About Sales Coaching

104

How to Travel the World Working in Sales

106

Will Women Save The Sales Industry

108

Without Noticing Are You Guilty Of Devaluing Your Business

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THE WOMEN IN SALES AWARDS EUROPE MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2017 published by Zars Media 8 Heathfield Court, Fleet, Hampshire GU51 5DX England, United Kingdom Tel.: 01252612025, info@wisawards.com

Design by: Brandbees design.brandbees@gmail.com Photography by: Nina Assam Studios www.soora.co.uk Printed by: HART PRESS Ltd www.hartpress.com

On the Cover: EMMA LEIGH WATERS, THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SALES WOMAN OF 2017

THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SALES WOMAN OF 2017 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7 1

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The Coming

Sales Revolution

N WO ME

DS

BY

S A L E S AW

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here are some big challenges facing the sales industry right now. The industry is struggling to find good leaders to take on sales management and director level roles.

There are a lot of people in sales leadership roles now that shouldn’t be. There are also a lot of people hired into sales roles who shouldn’t be. You also have a large amount of sales people who are struggling to hit their targets and quota. Mix all of that with an information rich world that has taken power away from the seller and given it to the buyer, it paints a pretty poor picture for businesses across the world.

Without sales businesses cease to exist. If they can’t sell their products, they don’t have a business.

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It’s the heart and life blood of any company and so its success is massively important. With sales teams struggling and not operating at their full potential there is a lot of missed opportunity out there.

Put simply, change needs to happen and the data is showing exactly who can drive that change…Women!

Recent surveys have also shown that women hit target 70% of the time compared to 67% achieved by male sales professionals. That may seem a small gap, but when you add on the women tend to stay in their jobs for a year longer than their male counter parts that soon adds up to some serious revenue. It has also been shown that companies who employ a gender balanced sales floor often out perform their

1. BUSINESSES AREN’T HIRING ENOUGH WOMEN INTO SALES ROLES I am certainly not one to suggest you hire purely based on gender, you should always hire the right person for the job. However, it is worth making sure that your adverts are attracting enough female applicants and your interviews are built to be gender balanced as well. It is important to make sure your leaders and hiring managers are aware of the importance and value of a gender balanced team as well so that they lead it from the front line as well.

2. WOMEN DON’T THINK OF SALES AS AN OPTION There won’t be many women out there who wake up and think “I know, I’ll start a career in sales”. More often it’s either whilst looking for a job or through recommendation from a friend or colleague that they may take on a sales role. We need to help make sales a desirable profession for women by making sure we talk about it more. This can be through blogs, social media, videos and other forms of content that can help promote sales as a female friendly career.

3. WE NEED MORE FEMALE SALES THOUGHT LEADERS

competition by up to double revenue volume.

If we want to drive the change needed within the sales industry we need to start with driving more females into it. Women have proven to be a key component in sales success. They’re proven to be exceptional sales people, fantastic leaders and are far better aligned to the information savvy buyer.

There are some obstacles slowing this revolution down…

Whilst the sales industry is very much ready for this revolution there are some obstacles slowing it down. It’s these challenges that we need to face head on starting from right now if we want to see change so look within your company and see where you can help.

The gender split doesn’t just exist on the sales floor but online as well.

Most of the “Top 50” sales lists are taken up by men with sometimes a 15-20% female presence on there. We need more female sales thought leaders to help show that sales is a thriving role for women and to put out content that promotes that. This all starts with you putting some work into your personal brand and creating content. Step by step we will see more female driven sales content and more female brands coming through promoting the sales profession.

If we can start to see people and businesses push these areas then we can help drive and accelerate bringing more women into sales and transforming the sales profession.

Women are transforming the sales industry and we need this to continue if we are ever going to transform it from a profession that is feared to a profession that people can be proud of.

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The Rebirth

of Selling OB

IN MAR

BY

R

Formerly Director of Sales & Market Development at SSE @robin_mar

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We are living in one of the most transformational times in human history.

Urbanisation is affecting millions of people across the world, mass industrialisation is helping shift the balance of economic power and new political movements are testing the established norms.

A

nd all of this is happening faster than ever before. Technology is accelerating the pace of change. Communication is now instantaneous. Trends spread like wildfire and what happens in one country rapidly spreads to another. Machine Technology and Artificial Intelligence are embedding automation and predictive thinking into everyday life. From Self-driving cars to delivery by drone and voice activated home appliances, science fiction is quickly becoming science fact.

Six months ago I began working on a project sponsored by the Association of Professional Sales to explore what these trends mean for the future of Sales. Along with fellow sales leaders Alex Low, Kim Moloney and Adrian Hussey, with support from David Rutherford of EY, we considered whether these were just another wave of changes that Sales will deal with in its stride or are they things that will fundamentally alter the way in which we interact with our customers?

In this article I highlight four of our findings: 1. The way we make buying decisions has changed 2. Digital is not technology 3. All selling is now social 4. Sales is being reborn

The Way We Make Buying Decisions Has Changed

The first thing to recognise is that the way in which people make buying decisions has changed. Few people rely on a brochure or a salesperson to tell them about products any more and in some circumstances sending a salesperson would likely lose you business. In it's latest research the CEB indicated that only 17% of total buying time is spent meeting with potential suppliers.

In other research it was found that between 57% and 87% of the buying process is completed before a supplier is contacted. In an increasing number of situations consumers and business buyers are self-serving and will seek information from multiple parties, often online, remotely and usually without any direct contact with the service or goods provider.

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B2B Buying Today

Proportion of time spent on key buying activities

Other

16% Meeting with Potential Suppliers

Researching Independently.

Offline

Researching Independently.

Online

27%

17% 18%

Customers are no longer just passively consuming content but proactively demanding it. In this context the role of selling is not just about the one-to-one or face-to-face interaction. In this new world selling encompasses everything you or others do or say about your product, your brand and your customers.

22% Meeting with Buying Group

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Digital is Not Technology The digital revolution has been one of the key drivers in changing the way we make buying decisions. And whilst it has been enabled by advances in technology digital is not technology, it is a way of thinking and working where everything is interconnected, mobilised and becoming increasingly automated.

Digitalisation is changing the way in which many organisations think about how they create value. The world’s two largest software vendors, Apple and Google own no apps. Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider owns no property and the world's most valuable retailer, Alibaba, owns no stock.

But it’s not just new organisations that are being affected by the digital revolution, high street banks are already providing banking without the high street, car companies are considering a future where they might no longer make cars and utilities a future where they

generate no energy.

As digital changes the way in which individuals and organisations see and create value the role of Sales must be to enhance how each party conveys and captures this value. This means managing multiple interfaces, utilising intelligent data to predict customer behaviour and providing enhanced experiences that lead to sales outcomes.

These changes are not like the shifts we have experienced before. People will continue to make purchases but the way they make decisions and what they buy is no longer the same and this is fundamentally changing how sellers will interact with buyers. Business as usual is no longer good enough. The role of the modern sales leader is to understand these changes and develop strategies and organisations that will help deliver success.

World's largest taxi company

World's largest accomodation provider

World's largest phone companies

World's largest valuable retailer

OWNS NO TAXIS

OWNS NO REAL ESTATE

OWNS NO TELCO INFRA

OWNS NO INVENTORY

Most popular media owner

World's fastest growing bank

World's largest movie house

World's largest software vendors

OWNS NO CONTENT

OWNS NO ACTUAL MONEY

OWNS NO CINEMAS

OWNS NO APPS

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The role of sales must be to enhance how value is conveyed and captured

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You can either choose to be passive or actively manage it

6.8

PEOPLE ARE NOW INVOLVED IN THE AVERAGE B2B BUYING DECISION

57%

DONE WITH THE BUYING PROCESS BEFORE YOU KNOW THEY EVER STARTED

90%

OF DECISION MAKERS SAY THEY NEVER RESPOND TO COLD OUTREACH

Social Selling is Not Just B2C Digitalisation is enabling hyper-personalisation and the possibility of a seamless customer experience from the first understanding of a need through to fulfilment and thereafter. We are all consumers and we judge everything against our best buying experience.

You might be selling B2B but how you perform will be judged not just against your competitors but your buyers’ last Amazon experience.

The time when it was thought that Social Selling only applied to consumer products has long since passed.

90% of B2B decision makers have said that they will not respond to cold calling but 81% of buyers said they view content, especially thought leadership, as being critical or important during the early stage of the buying process.

The number of people involved in a business purchase is increasing and leading salespeople are using social platforms to identify, understand and engage with these decision makers in new ways. B2B buyers now spend almost 3 times as long researching your products independently as they do meeting with your sales people.

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To illustrate the impact of social consider the experience of United Airlines. In 2008 musician Dave Carroll’s guitar was damaged during a trip he took with United Airlines.

He wrote a trio of protest songs that were released on itunes and youtube titled United Breaks Guitars. They immediately went viral amassing millions of views (17.1 million as of Oct 2017) and it was widely reported that the airline’s reputation and stock price was affected. The power of social can be used to enhance your offer or destroy it and you can either choose to be passive in this process or actively manage it.

But social selling is so much more than this. Many salespeople’s first experience with technology would have been with a CRM system, the capabilities of which were often driven by the IT platform rather than their needs. Digitalisation is now providing a plethora of new applications such as Gong, Chorus, Passle, Profinda, Node, Squiz and Linkedin Sales Solutions that are enabling sellers to better manage intelligence, improve customer conversations and build relationships. The holy grail of the seamless integration of the cycle from social, lead generation, nurturing, prospect, opportunity management to win and servicing is within sight.

Nearside trends impacting sales

COMMERCIALLY ASTUTE Superior Sales Intelligence

THOUGHT LEADER Improving Sales Solutions

GROWTH MIND-SET Automatically Record, Transcribe And Analyse Meetings In Real-Time RELATIONSHIP BUILDER

Digital Marketing HIGH EQ

Node Knows Your Next Opportunity SOCIALLY SAVVY

SUPREME NETWORKER

SALES ENABLED TOOLKIT

SOLUTION ARCHITECT

DEAL FLOW EXPERT

HIGHLY SKILLED LISTENER

Build Relationships, Grow Sales

Marketing, Sales, and CRM Software

Best In Class Internal Knowledge

Employee Advocacy

CRM Software And Enterprise Cloud Ecosystem

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The Rebirth of Selling In 2015 Forrester published a report entitled the Death Of A (B2B) Salesman in which they predicted that in the US alone1 million B2B salespeople would lose their jobs by 2020. What Forrester were signalling was not the complete demise of Sales but a change in how salespeople sold. For example, they forecast a rapid decline in the number of salespeople who are simply walking talking catalogues and a growth in those who create value through providing insights. During our work with The Association of Professional Selling my group saw evidence of this but also other changes that were more far reaching.

1 million salespeople will lose their jobs by 2020 The fact is many customers simply don’t want to be sold to, they will self-serve and choose their own path. There are other groups of customers who do want help, either in navigating the myriad ways to create value or in cocreating new solutions. The role of the seller is to help facilitate all of these different approaches.

Sales is being reborn. Doing more of the same, of selling faster and harder, to bigger targets and shorter deadlines, will not lead to different outcomes. Today’s leading sales teams are not just about driving the bottom line. They

are taking a lead role in creating a seamless customer experience, in generating customer advocacy and loyalty.

They are integrating with colleagues in other functions to create new solutions and develop new business. This changes both the role of the salesperson and also the role of selling in an organisation.

For many years we have talked about the need for Sales and Marketing to be better integrated but it is now an imperative. The traditional definitions of selling and marketing are being blurred, for example, should Marketing have sole responsibility for social media? who is responsible for solution development? and should Sales be the only ones responsible for conversion targets?

We are operating in a world where buying behaviour has changed, where digitalisation is creating new ways to capture value and is enabling buyers and sellers to rethink how they engage. In this world sales outcomes are not defined by the actions of one person but by how the whole organisation engages, learns, enables, teaches and collaborates.

Leading organisations are recognising that these changes go far beyond simply changing what salespeople do.

They are rethinking their approaches and putting the customer at the centre of this thinking. The emergence of new senior Board level positions such as Chief Customer Officer is evidence of this and signals a new approach to marketing, selling and business development.

Boardroom of Tomorrow Data Scientinst

CEO

HR / Talent

CFO F2F Sales Digital Sales Customer (Commercial Director)

COO

Partner Sales Marketing Customer Experience

Chief Digital Officer

Legal

Corp. Affairs

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CISO

The role of sales is to facilitate these different approaches to creating value

As a function Sales has sometimes been accused of being myopic, with the deep understanding sales teams have of their customers and markets often failing to extend across industry boundaries. In a time of great change having a broader perspective can be crucial.

The Association of Professional Selling is promoting an agenda of increased professionalism and learning across industries and regions. Working with the APS allows sales leaders to share the challenges, opportunities and trends that are affecting everybody in the profession.

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There is an elephant in the room that we need to talk about today.

This elephant is currently sitting in most sales offices across the world‌ No one is talking about it but everyone knows about it deep down‌.

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Addressing the

ELEPHANT in the Sales Room

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THAT ELEPHANT…?

If you look around your sales team right now or look at your sales leadership team, how many men do you have compared to women? Yes, it’s time to start to face the reality and start talking about the fact that at the moment there is not a fair balance of women in sales roles compared to men. There are very few teams out there that either have more women than men or even just a fair split.

WHY ISN’T ANYONE TALKING ABOUT THIS? The challenge is whether your sales team or your company are talking about this. Have you looked at the gender split in your sales and sales management team? Are you talking about how you could change and improve it?

For a lot of sales teams, it will be ignored and it is important to help change this, to encourage more sales teams to stop, look at the gender split and start the conversation. Start talking about the split in your company and start working on how you can drive change to create a more balanced team. It’s been proven that not only are women exceptional at selling, but those companies who adopt a more equal workforce can benefit from up to earning double the revenue of those without a balanced team.

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TO HELP KICK THIS OF HERE ARE

TOP 10 TIPS

TO HELP DRIVE THE ELEPHANT OUT OF THE ROOM AND WORK TOWARDS A BUILDING A BETTER GENDER BALANCED SALES TEAM:

1.

HAVE THE CONVERSATION!

The first and more important tip is to start having the conversation. If you can see that there are more men working in your sales team than women, talk about it. Talk to your boss, talk to the directors, make it known that it’s a problem and get the conversation going.

2.

LOOK AT YOUR OWN NETWORK

Your team might have 5 sales people, it might have 500 sales people. The best place to start looking for more female sales talent is within your own network. Those 5 or 500 people will have networks so as a team you’ll be connected to in some way to great female sales talent. Reach out, get your teams to reach out and tap into what is quite literally sat on your doorstep!

3.

PROMOTE FEMALE SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT

Make sure you celebrate success not just within the office but online as well.

Help lead and show the way for other business and encourage the promotion of female success. A great way you can kick this of right now is to nominate someone for the 2018 “Women in Sales Awards”!

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4.

GET SOCIAL!

Most people are on social media so talk about this online. Discuss the challenges, discuss what you’re doing as a company to change it and talk about the great women you may have already working on your sales floors.

5.

LOOK AT YOUR CULTURE

If your sales floor is like something from the Wolf of Wall Street, it may not be attractive to female sales people or female sales leaders wanting to work! Look at your culture and make sure it’s built to support and engage female sales professionals as well as male.

6.

WORK WITHIN YOUR INDUSTRY

Start looking within your industry whether that’s software, medical, insurance etc for how other teams match up and start working together. There’s a big drive right now to get more women into Tech Sales roles and this is being driven by a number of companies.

7.

9.

RUN AN EVENT

Why not look to run an event bringing together local women sales professionals and leaders.

This can be a great way to network, promote and celebrate women in sales in your local area.

The group as a whole can then work together to help bring more women into sales.

8.

FIND A THOUGHT LEADER

There is a big gap in the market for more female sales thought leaders so why not look within your company. Find someone or a few people who can do a little work on their personal brand and start creating and more curating more social content. With more women out there talking about sales it will be seen as a great place for women to work.

CREATE A GROUP

Facebook and LinkedIn groups are another great opportunity to bring female sales professionals and leaders together. Have a look for ones out there already or look to create your own.

Again, these groups can help support other female sales professionals and help promote more women into sales.

10.

BECOME A FLEXIBLE OFFICE

We now live in a time where it is just as easy to work from home as it is to work in the office. Sales people can log into CRM’s, use their mobile phone and sell away. If you can create a more flexible office you will open more doors to great female sales talent.

As mentioned in the first tip the more important place to start is to address the elephant in the room and to start talking about it. If it’s not a fair balance in your team and company, challenge it. Unless you identify the problem, it will be difficult to solve it, so start today.

Look at your teams, look at the gender split and if it isn’t fair, start the process and drive the change.

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Bringing Women to the Forefront of Sales Leadership

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The gap right now between the number of women in sales compared to men is astounding, although numerous data suggests companies can outperform their competition by up to double total revenue if there is an equal gender split across the sales floor.

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T

he figures are staggering and in a modern age where gender equality exists across so many professions, sales is really lagging.

Let’s be fair though, there has been progress. Women do now represent around 39% of all sales roles out there today. The biggest problem however, lies within sales leadership positions where only 19% are occupied by women. With the rate of growth as it stands it could take over 200 years to see an equal split between men and women in sales leadership.

When you think about it there is very little logic to this. Women make amazing leaders and there are many effective female directors and CEO’s for some of the biggest brands across the world. With 39% of sales reps being female now it’s not like there isn’t a decent sized pool of people to work up the ladder into leadership roles.

There is an age old saying: "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got." Henry Ford Something needs to change. If your company is recruiting the same way and promoting the same way but still seeing a huge majority of men in sales leadership positions then the only way to change that is to change your processes. It’s often referred to as insanity if you believe you’ll get different results by doing the same thing. For us to bring more females into the world of sales leadership we need to make some substantial changes.

“If we want to build and maintain the pipeline of senior women leaders of today and tomorrow, we need to educate, motivate and guide young women (and young men) from the classroom to the boardroom" Afi Ofori A recent survey by The Guardian Life Insurance Company found that 60% of women surveyed had never considered a role in sales and 67% said that sales reminded them of a used car salesman. There are some

real challenges out there to bring both more women into sales roles but to also encourage more women into sales leadership roles.

How can we bring women to the forefront of sales leadership? What can you or your company do to help drive more women into sales leadership roles? We’ve identified 4 key areas for you to kick start some change and help drive more women to the forefront of sales leadership:

REVIVE YOUR JOB ADVERTS Start by looking at your job adverts for sales leadership roles. Look at how they present the role and which words are used in them. A lot of sales roles describe a highly driven, motivated, focused work floor which will make a lot of people think of Wolf of Wall Street. That’s not really going to be the type of company that many women will want to work at so try and describe a more balanced sales environment. It’s also worth making sure your requirements are fair, balanced and realistic.

Statistics show that men will apply for a job if they feel like they’re only 70% qualified for a specific role, but women won’t unless they’re at 100%.

Look at making sure your adverts encourage women to feel like they are 100% suitable for the role.

CHANGE YOUR SALES FLOOR CULTURE A lot of sales floors are built for male sales professionals and are often packed with games, sports equipment and games consoles. You’ll then often also find a lot of ego generate banter and joking around, which whilst it may help motivate and drive men, it sometimes doesn’t have the same effect on women. Going back to the reference above about the Wolf of Wall Street style sales floor, this isn’t somewhere that is going to attract or retain female sales talent. Create a sales culture that respects both men and women. This might include having different sections of the office, one where banter and fun is encouraged and an area for those who want to work in quiet. Mix the office

decoration to include a balanced environment. The best way to kick start this is to ask the women in your team what they would like!

UPDATE YOUR WEBSITE/ SOCIAL CHANNELS Think about the type and tone of content that you’re putting out there right now, is it male focused or gender neutral? Does your company look like a good place for women to work or does it look like a male heavy company? This can include the images you use or the way you describe it. Think about how you can make it more appealing to women.

This shouldn’t be about stereotyping anyone but by making the company and the roles appealing to both men and women. If you’re writing blogs for example, make sure some are written by women and about women.

Look at your LinkedIn company page, if someone looked at your employee section, would they see some strong female profiles?

BALANCE OUT YOUR INTERVIEWS Once you’ve created engaging adverts, changed your sales culture and put some work into your website and social content, another place to look is your interview process.

This can be for both new candidates coming in but also for candidates interviewing for promotions or senior roles. Try and balance out your interview panel with both men and women. A male heavy panel can be intimidating, in the same way a balanced team can help a company sell more, a balanced interview panel will help you recruit more!

AND FINALLY………………

To help drive women to the forefront of sales leadership is to acknowledge more female sales leaders. Put the spotlight on some of the exceptional female sales leaders out there right now to inspire women working in sales roles or considering going into a sales role. Consider nominating the women in your sales teams for the 2018 Women In Sales Awards.

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Why Do I Feel So Strongly About Gender Diversity?

Let's face it: nowadays, the uttering of the words Gender Diversity tends to evoke more negative than positive reactions, from both men and women.

Both view it as potentially divisive, threatening, even unnecessary. Yet I can't help but continue to feel that it's the right path to pursue for any woman, man and company that wants more from this world.

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If women worked to the same extent with the same responsibilities as men, by 2025 the world’s economy would grow by 26%

To me, gender diversity is about balance – for both men and women.

Balance at work and balance at home. Balance in politics and balance in our economy.

According to the likes of Catalyst Inc., companies with at least one woman on their board show higher financial returns, lower risk profiles, and greater ROE. Financial gain (rightly or wrongly) has always been the driving force of most businesses, so that’s good news then, too, isn’t it?

As stated by most studies, those countries that are the most gender equal are also the countries that score highest on the happiness scale. And what’s more important than happiness?

So why the negative connotation for something that brings positive influence in every aspect of our lives?

Are we programmed to sabotage everything that’s good for us? Are we so sceptical about the power of

So that’s why I feel so strongly about Gender Diversity, and my hope is that, someday soon, you will too.

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As reported by the Athena Doctrine, 66% of the surveyed adults (64,000 from around the world) agree that the world would be a better place if men thought more like women.

So we need more women to share

Because, from where I stand, I only want to world to become a better place for everyone. I want my children to have equal opportunities; I want them to fulfil their potential without encountering artificial barriers; I want organisations to benefit from the wealth of the diversity of thought that each individual – man and woman – bring when they are empowered to speak up and share their experiences freely; I want our economy to tap into the resource that’s not being fully utilised, that resource being the female work force; and I want us to value our differences and to grow stronger as a result.

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According to the likes of McKinsey, if women worked to the same extent with the same responsibilities as men, by 2025 the world’s economy would grow by 26% (that’s $12tn in real money!).

That’s a good thing, right?

According to Dr. Michael Kimmel, American sociologist specialising in gender studies, the more egalitarian our relationships, the happier both partners are. When men share housework and childcare, their children do better in school; their wives are healthier; and, most notably, the men themselves are healthier. Watch Michael’s TED Talk to hear the full story.

diversity that we don’t even want to give it a try despite ample evidence?

Is it the fear that women will take over that stops companies from embracing them as equal citizens and equivalent contributors? Tell me, what am I not seeing?

RINA G O

And what do we mean by ‘gender diversity’? Well, it’s not about promoting women over men, it’s not about tipping the scales so that women can run the world without men, and it’s not about drawing a line in the sand where all women stand on one side and men on the other. That would of course be very divisive.

in thought leadership, in politics, education and business.

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o why the negative reaction? ‘Gender’ is not specific to women. The very term defines both the male and the female, so how can a term so inclusive be seen to be so divisive?

Founder & CEO, Voice At The Table

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Multicultural Understanding = Sales Growth

Global Business Specialist

It has been proven again and again that strong interpersonal relationships result in higher customer satisfaction and sales. This is widely acknowledged both in practice and in theory. To quote one source, “Sales [teams] play a key role in the building of loyalty and trust between customer and business. Trust and loyalty are the main reasons why a customer would choose to recommend your company to a friend or family member, or write a great review of your product or service online.� (Oxford College of Marketing, 2014)

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ignificant corporate budgets are allocated to sales and marketing in revenue-driven organizations due to the need to attract interest and have multiple touch-points with clients. We work hard to evoke positive feelings surrounding our brand and our status within our customers’ communities.

We invest in market research to understand exactly what they want, create products that solve problems for our clients, and then use every asset at our disposal to complete the sales cycle and resolve the customer’s issues.

It all sounds so simple, right?

Research + product + sales+ marketing = happy customers and lots of money. While I personally believe that generally, organizations that are in tune with the needs of their patrons will get the product right. However, even if companies have something that the customer wants, the project might not always succeed.

While there are a myriad of reasons and causes to blame, there is one primary area that is frequently overlooked in global business: multicultural relationships across multiple levels. In most companies, we are working around the world, but how often do we review proper business protocols? What about basic expectations and boundaries in relationships? What is the level and type of communication that our overseas staff and clients expect from us? Have we done multicultural training only for those that have direct interactions with international

I believe that both direct and support staff should have multicultural awareness to better serve the client.

colleagues? Have we only invested in the C-level, assuming that the most powerful relationships will hold the keys to success? Are we looking at growth-focused training or just the bare bones diversity training for “non-essential” staff?

While each one of these questions are going to be specific to an organization, I believe that both direct and support staff should have multicultural awareness to better serve the client. For example, it’s known that the U.S. can have somewhat rigid deadlines. But, if the U.S. sales staff is closing a large deal in another country and requires some flexibility, all involved should be aware and working together to find the best solution that fully respects both cultures involved. It’s just too easy to create an internal culture of frustration. Even the best employees might not feel involved with an unfamiliar process that can seem totally out of control to

those involved in essential back-end fulfilment.

This article isn’t intended to go into detailed solutions for each potential scenario, rather to get us thinking and questioning our own attitudes towards global business and how multicultural training should be provided at many levels, with a focus on empowering staff to maximize growth. Knowing that a small misunderstanding can cost hundreds of thousands and set us back years in a specific country or region, we should carefully consider who is involved with multicultural education. Is the extra effort to train support staff worth it? Is it possible to arrange some face-toface visits between US and foreign staff? What level of education and company focus is needed? How do your foreign partners view you and your organization? Are there hidden internal negative attitudes slowing sales?

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How Today’s Sales Training Fails to See the Uniqueness Within Each Salesperson How many times in life are we tripped up by what we can’t see? There are plenty historical examples to illustrate the impact of what we can’t see such as the sinking of the Titanic.

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See the infographic on the next page ->

Yes it does take time to look below the surface for all those supporting talents. However, if execution still is one the most limiting aspects of sales success, then maybe now is the time to look below the waterline.

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Similar behaviours could be developed for the intrapersonal skill of personal accountability. A person with this supporting talent would not make any excuses for not completing a task or assignment. Also, those salespeople who have strong personal accountability usually have an accountability relationship with a coach, mentor, sales manager or another sales person.

Fail-Safe Leadership is a quick read to understand the impact of misalignment whether your organization is small or large.

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The hidden, supportive talents below the waterline contribute to the uniqueness of each human being.

When the supporting talents are combined differently, these different combinations help to explain how top sales performers achieve similar results, but their “way” of selling is viewed differently.

In looking to identify a behaviour associated with balanced decision making, one behaviour might be to actively listen to all input from all vested parties. Another behaviour could be conduct a cost/benefit analysis and how results.

The added bonus of identifying behaviours is this creates alignment between the job description and the performance appraisal.

Misalignment creates many of the poor sales to failed execution of strategic initiatives.

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For it is those hidden talents, what you can’t see, that are essential to be a top sales performer.

Unfortunately, it is those unseen talents that are ignored in many instances when it comes to sales training and sales coaching.

As with icebergs it is hard to see what is below the water’s edge.

What we can see are the behaviours.

Possibly by identifying the behaviours for the hidden talents may help improve them.

LE ANN

Today I would like you to consider those sales skills you see are very similar to an iceberg. Now what you can’t see, below the waterline are the supporting talents that work in tandem with those sales skills you can see as well as other observable and necessary professional skills such as time management.

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n sales today, there is incredible focus on improving sales skills. Most of those sales skills can be seen such as asking open ended questions or following up on sales leads.

Chief Results Officer ADVANCED SYSTEMS

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What would happen if we separate the skills ABOVE THE WATERLINE into these three general categories: PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT? SALES SKILLS? TIME MANAGEMENT?

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Now at THE WATER’S EDGE would be where one would find other talents supporting what some might call interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.

These talents are sometimes quite visible and at other times invisible depending upon the sea level along with calmness or roughness of the waves.

The BELOW THE WATERLINE would be the supporting talents for each of those general categories.

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT MIGHT INCLUDE THESE TALENTS:

SUPPORTING TALENTS FOR SALES SKILLS WOULD INCLUDE:

INTERPERSONAL TALENTS MIGHT INCLUDE SOME OF THESE:

AS TO INTRAPERSONAL TALENTS, THESE PROBABLY WOULD BE INCLUDED:

LONG RANGE PLANNING

HANDLING REJECTION

BALANCED DECISION MAKING

FREEDOM FROM PREJUDICES

PROJECT AND GOAL FOCUS

PERSISTENCE

HANDLING REJECTION

QUALITY ORIENTATION

PERSUADING OTHERS

EMOTIONAL CONTROL (EXTERNAL)

REALISTIC GOAL SETTING FOR OTHERS

SELF-CONFIDENCE

SEEING POTENTIAL PROBLEMS

FINALLY THE SUPPORTING

SELF-STARTING ABILITY

ENJOYMENT OF THE JOB FLEXIBILITY FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS INITIATIVE PERSISTENCE

TALENTS FOR TIME MANAGEMENT COULD BE: CONCRETE ORGANIZATION CONSISTENCY AND RELIABILITY

PERSUADING OTHERS PRACTICAL THINKING PROACTIVE THINKING ROLE CONFIDENCE

HANDLING STRESS PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY PERSONAL DRIVE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS SELF-ASSESSMENT SELF CONFIDENCE SELF-CONTROL (INTERNAL) SELF-DIRECTION SELF-IMPROVEMENT

PROJECT SCHEDULING

SELF-STARTING ABILITY

ATTENTION TO DETAIL

SENSE OF BELONGING

REALISTIC PERSONAL GOAL SETTING

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Women In Sales Awards 2017 Judges, The Judging Process and Speakers

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Women In Sales Awards 2017 Judges

Formerly Director, European Business Transformation, Xerox Europe

ANNA HOLNESS Head of Operations, Enterprise Sales, O2 (Telefรณnica UK)

BRIGIT TE McKENNA Founder, Talent Crew

C L A I R E C U R ZO N

We are thrilled that the event is growing. This year we had to increase the number of judges from 18 to 26. We would like to thank the judges for so generously taking time out of their busy schedules to participate in the 2017 Women In Sales Awards.

Without your support, dedication and effort, the event would not have been possible.

Managing Director, Brighter Directions

DAV I D E VA N S Managing Director, The Diversity & Innovation Company

I A N M OYS E UK Sales Director, Natterbox Limited

JA N E O R E M O S U Sales Director, Thomson Reuters Legal

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JA N E S N O W D E N

M AT T H E W G O D DA R D

R O WA N JA M E S O N

Head of Large Market Sales, Global Merchant Services, American Express, UK

Head of Field Sales, PepsiCo

Managing Partner - Industrial Markets at O2

JESSICA BETHUNE Regional Manager, The Netherlands, Northern and Eastern Europe at OSIsoft

JOHN ALLISON

(Telefónica UK)

MIRIAM M E I J E R S - VA N M A A S D E I J K Head of Strategy Europe, Nokia

Consultant Trainer and Performance Coach, Sales Activator

N I K K I W I LTO N Global Sales Director, Technology, Xchanging

Managing Director, Enable Sales Academy

K AREN MULDOON

SOPHIE STEEL

S U E P R E S TO N UK&I Sales Director, Hitachi Data Systems

PETE GILBERT Client Service Director, McCurrach

Regional Vice President - UK Commercial Sales, Salesforce

SY LVA I N E S M I T H Strategic Leadership, Solution Sales Specialist – EMEA, Panasonic

P H I L H O LV E Y K U N A L M E H TA

Group Commercial Sales Director, Apogee Corporation

TO N I R E D M A N

Vice President, Worldwide Sales Strategy & Operations, Infoblox

Director, Account Development – EMEA, Adobe Systems

R I N A G O L D E N B E R G LY N C H L E E C OT T L E

CEO, Voice At The Table

VA L É R I E M I LO N E

Vice President EMEA, Interactions LLC

R O S S FO R SY T H LO R N A L EC K

Group SVP, Global Sales Director – Infrastructure & Data Management, Atos

National Sales Director UK & I, ITW

Managing Director, Sales Activator

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The Judging Process THE JUDGES

THE FINALISTS TIME WITH THE JUDGES

A group of 26 senior executives from various industries were carefully selected as an evaluation panel of independent judges. Their objective was to review the nominations and interview each of the finalists.

This was an opportunity for the finalists to engage the judges by telling them the story of their success. Each judge awarded points across the same criteria. After the interview, all finalists answered one final question: “why they should win the award in their category?”

WHY AN INTERVIEW WITH THE JUDGES? A face-to-face interview allows the judges to further assess each finalist’s sales skills, strategies and process etc. The interview also complements their review of the submitted nomination forms.

THE JUDGING DAY The judges were organised into 9 groups; each group was made up of 3 judges and interviewed a number of finalists within their assigned categories. Nomination forms and any supporting documents were reviewed by the judges prior to a nominee being selected as a finalist. Each nomination was evaluated and scored out of a total of 5 points. The next stage of the process was a face to face interview with the judges.

All the judges scored each finalist on the final question.

Each finalist’s overall score was the sum of the scores from the interview with the 3 judges in their category plus the scores from all the judges on the final question.

The finalist with the highest score in each category was selected as the winner in that category.

THE DISTINGUISHED SALES WOMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD This award is for the finalist who impressed the judges the most and scored the highest among all the finalists.

Zars Media invites judges from countries all over Europe. Judges may be executives with social innovation expertise, business people, educators and university administrators and leading practitioners in the field.

HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE JUDGES? We usually look for executives with sales backgrounds and with more than 15 years sales experience. We actively recruit and also take suggestions from partners, mentors and past judges.

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FAQs WHO ARE THE JUDGES? WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?

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WHAT DO THE JUDGES EVALUATE? Judges review all the entries within their assigned categories and give their scores as per the guidelines.

This will include reviewing the nomination forms and any confidential supplemental documents and project information that is included in the application.

IS THE JUDGING BY INVITATION ONLY, OR CAN I APPLY TO BE A JUDGE? We recruit judges after screening their profiles using LinkedIn and other news sources. We are happy to consider suggestions. If you'd like to be considered, or suggest future judges, please email judges@wisawards.com

Women In Sales Awards 2017 Speakers The judging day comprised more than the judging itself. Finalists were engaged throughout the day in panel discussions made possible by this year’s speakers. The speakers kept the finalists engaged in thought provoking debates when outside of the judging room and we would like to express our sincerest thanks and gratitude to the speakers for contributing to the Women In Sales forum.

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A N DY W O L F E

GILL HOW

Co-Founder of Arcadia Consulting

Leadership Development & Culture Change Professional Buonacorsi Consulting

C A R O L E R A I LTO N Behaviourist: specialist in Business Body Language, Life After Branding

K AT I E DAY Director, RDP International

R O M EO E F F S

G I N I E KS T E I N H O L D E N Microsoft Sales Director, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Founder Empire Builders

RUPINDER BAHRA

C AT H E R I N E S C H A L K

H E N R I Q U E M O N I Z D E A R AGAO

Executive Director, Inkwazi Kommunications

Regional VP EMEA, Salesforce

Business Development Manager, MetLife

SAS HUNT WOOD C EC I L I A F U R N E R Business Development Manager, MetLife

DA RY N E D GA R Vice President, Digital Advisory EMEA, SAP

D E N I S E B RYA N T Group Managing Director, The Association of Professional Sales

IAN MILLS CEO, Transform People International

JAVA I D I Q B A L Co-Founder & CEO, Transformx.io

K A R I N A GA R C I A C A S I L Director, Global Sales Processes, AdobeStrategies

Sales & Creative Director, Sales Acceleration Strategies

TA N YA LU C A S Partner, Transform Performance International

VA L AG N E W Managing Client Partner, Verizon

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NOVEMBER 2017 S H E R ATO N G R A N D PA R K L A N E LONDON, UK

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Women In Sales Awards Europe 2017 in numbers

26 18 6+

SPEAKERS

EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

A P P R O X I M AT E LY

1

JUDGES

130

N O M I N AT I O N S

70

FINALISTS

13

WINNERS

DISTINGUISHED WINNER

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MEET THE 2017

finalists C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S from Zars Media prou d organ is er of the Women In Sale s Awards Eu rope 20 17

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BEST WOMAN SALES DIRECTOR

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JO P OW E L L

KIM MORAN-HOGG

“My career has been a Voyage of Discovery; with every role and challenge growing my experience and value”

L AU R E SAU T E R AU D

“Be ready to change your goals, but never change your values” — DA L A I L A M A

LIZZIE LEE

“We need to get women to the point where they aren’t apologizing. It’s time to take ownership in our success.”

— TO RY B U RC H

SA M SMITH “Sales offers such a rich and diverse mix on a day to day basis that no two days are the same. From a passion for aircraft to a passion for sales has been an interesting, fulfilling and extraordinary journey. I love it!”

“I've always thought of selling as a journey, not a destination”

SA M A I R A H C H O U DA H A RY

“Encouraging diversity in teams makes for a better business environment - diverse teams make smarter decisions!”

V I C KY C H U RC H E R

“Don’t fear the future, when women work collaboratively and creatively, anything is possible!”

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BEST WOMAN SALES MANAGER

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A L I SO N M E RC E R

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.

If you can dream it, you can become it” — W I L L I A M A RT H U R WA R D

CLAIRE THORNE

BREE COOPER “Put the customer at the heart of everything you do. Be respectful, empathetic & transparent & you are on a successful path to strong customer relationships & will ultimately earn their unequivocal trust.”

ELAINE G U EST

“When women support each other, incredible things happen.

Nothing is impossible”

“Passion and commitment is core to me and I always say if you are not growing, we are not growing.”

J OA N N A WISEMAN

JULIE J O H N SO N

“There’s no such thing as ‘luck’.

The only difference between ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ people is that ‘lucky’ people take action”

L AU R A DUNPHY

“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”

— COCO CHANEL

L ES L EY BRENTNALL

“Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be”

“Great leaders don't set out to be leaders, they set out to make a difference. It's never about the role, always about the goal”

— ROA L D DA H L

— L I SA H A I S H A

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BEST WOMAN IN FIELD SALES

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ANGELA WO O D

“Have faith in yourself, Think YES, not no, Live life to the full, NEVER give up” — R I C H A R D B R A N SO N

H O L LY EWING

CLARE McKNIGHT

“Don’t let negativity get you down, when you are positive it becomes infectious and is reflected in all you do and those that come into contact with you will remember you for it”

J ESS I CA ELLIS

“Health is your own; money belongs to others; power is temporary; and reputation is eternal”

“I learnt to always take on things I’d never done before.

Growth and comfort do not coexist” — V I RG I N I A RO M E T T Y

K AT I E MURPHY

L AU R E N J O N ES

“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire”

“Believe to achieve and keep your eye on the prize”

M AGA L I MEURIS

— JENNIFER LEE

N AT H A L I E T R E DW E L L

“Success doesn’t come from what you do occasionally, it comes from what you do consistently”

“Nothing will work, unless you do”

— M A R I E FO R L EO

— BY T H E WO N D E R F U L M AYA A N G E LO U

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BEST WOMAN IN TECHNOLOGY SALES

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ALANA B RO GA N

CLARE HILLIS

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do”

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life”

— ST E V E J O B S

— MOHAMMED ALI

J OA N N E CASSW E L L

J OA N N E C O R L ET T

“I feel very humbled to have been successfully shortlisted. To be able to work is a privilege. And it’s amazing to be recognised for doing a great job”

“I have been in sales for over 28 years and still maintain that success for me is down to my passion, integrity and being extremely driven in everything I do.”

K AT E S M A L LWO O D

K E L LY COLE

“With Dedication, Determination, support and application you can achieve anything you put your heart and mind to!”

S H A RO N GREEN

“Make the most of every opportunity”

V I CTO R I A H O LGAT E

“Opportunities are not offered.

They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage”

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make”

— I N D I R A GA N D H I

— JA N E G O O DA L L

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BEST WOMAN IN TELEPHONE SALES

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ANGELIQUE BENARD

DONNA R I G BY

“Think Positive, Strive For The Best and Have Fun!”

“Work hard, step outside your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to ask.”

R E B EC CA B RO C K H U RST

L AU R A WA R N E R

“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire”

“I've always believed that one woman's success can only help another woman's success” — G LO R I A VA N D E R B I LT

SA R A H M U RGAT ROY D

SHARMILA R A N GASA M Y

“Per Angusta Ad Augusta (Through Trial To Triumph)”

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says “I’m possible!”

— G R E E K P H R AS E

— AU D R E Y H E P B U R N

SO P H I E AGA R

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”

— W I N STO N C H U RC H I L L

TIPHAINE L E RO UX

“Being successful is about being surrounded by awesome people that bring the best out of you”

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BEST WOMAN SALES NEWCOMER

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C H A R LOT T E HALL

“Never be so busy making a living, that you forget to make a life” — D O L LY PA RTO N

EMMA S H A R P L ES

EMMA L E I G H WAT E RS

“Respect and believe in your people ‎and in return they will you. Only then will you achieve true success”

IONA S I M A KU

“Build strong relationships by selling your personality & passion for what you dothis will be key to your success.”

L A M E ES SHAFI

“Always do your best.

What you will plant now, you will harvest later.”

— OG MANDINO

ULRIKA RO M E L I N G

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”

“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”

— L AO TZ U

— S H E RY L SA N D B E RG

XAV I A

BY R N E L L

“I am delighted to have been shortlisted in the Women in Sales awards, it’s a brilliant forum to recognize individuals’ careers and achievements in a traditionally male dominated profession.”

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BEST WOMAN IN CONSUMER SALES

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LU CY DAV I DSO N

“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen” — M I C H A E L J O R DA N

R AC H E L D I XO N

“Aspire not to have more, but to be more” — OSCA R RO M E RO

SA R A H P I D D I N GTO N

“We need to nurture and empower women in the workplace, then champion them upwards through a business. Success breed’s success and this is our legacy”

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SA R A H FISHER

“I am a firm believer that every success starts with the decision to work hard”

ST E P H A N I E BA N C RO F T

“All you need is passion and energy. If you have these behaviours you will motivate and inspire those around you, which is critical to a successful business”

A M A N DA KU RY LOWS K I

GEMMA HALL

“Define success on your own terms, achieve it by your own rules, and build a life you’re proud to live”

“Passion is energy.

Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you”

— A N N E SW E E N E Y

— OPRAH WINFREY

K I RST Y M ac C R I M M O N

“Never stop chasing your dreams”

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BEST WOMAN SALES CAPABILITY MANAGER

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BU S E KO M U R

J E A N ET T E A H LST RÖ M

“Make a customer, not a sale”

“Success comes from hard work, persistence and building the right team.”

— K AT H E R I N E BA RC H E T T I

J OY M O RGA N

“Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come” — ANONYMOUS

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BEST WOMAN IN SOFTWARE SALES

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BEST WOMAN IN SALES SUPPORT

ANA R A M OS

“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

— M A R K T WA I N

CLAIRE B L AXA L L

“There is no substitute for trust.

If we build it with the customer and put the shopper at the heart of what we do, we will win”

HENA C H A N DA R A N A

“The future depends on what we do in the present” — M A H AT M A GA N D H I

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H E N R I ETA T I SSU

LO R R A I N E BA I R D

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”

Successful selling comes from being consultative, client focused and passionate!”

— W I N STO N S. C H U RC H I L L

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BEST WOMAN IN FINANCIAL SERVICES SALES

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BEST FEMALE SALES MENTOR

A M A N DA BOW M A N

“Skills can be taught, motivation can be driven, but the right attitude is everything”

DA N I E L L E C R AV E N

A M A N DA N U T TA L L

“Work hard, keep learning and believe in yourself”

E LSA BA H A M O N D E

“Success isn't just about what you accomplish in your life, it's about what you inspire others to do.”

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

— U N K N OW N

— E L E A N O R RO OS E V E LT

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BEST MALE SALES MENTOR

RO B MUKHERJEE

“Be your best child-like self.

Learn, play, imagine.

Break rules and get dirty.”

T E D ROY NEWELL

“Time is money.

Pace is more”

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ST I J N VA N CA LST E R

“I don’t TELL people how, I SHOW them how!”

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AND

the winners are...

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Sam Smith

Vice President, Global Solutions EMEA & Strategic Sales Lead, Kelly OCG

FROM REPAIRING HELICOPTERS TO SALES STRATEGY MY CAREER JOURNEY HAS BEEN ANYTHING BUT DULL. I never set out to be a salesperson. When I was growing up my goal was clear – I wanted to join the Royal Air Force and I was going to be an engineer. Throughout school, this goal burned so brightly that I never considered any other options. In fact, I neglected other areas of study because my drive was so strong! I joined the RAF at the earliest opportunity and my dream began to take shape. Before long, I was fixing helicopters and my long-held passion had become my career.

Serving my country as an engineer is something that continues to make me feel incredibly proud. This sense of pride has followed me throughout my working life.

I want to be the best I can be in whatever I undertake.

I also need to really believe in what I am doing. I feel immensely proud now to work for KellyOCG and everything our organisation stands for. It is also the landscape in which I learned about working as a woman in a field of men.

After my time in the RAF came to an end, I began to consider what would come next for me. And honestly, I wasn’t sure which direction to take. I stumbled into a role with small local recruitment company and unknowingly started on a path that would lead to an exciting and fulfilling second career. I had no idea that a job spent filling light-industrial roles would lead me to where I am today.

My recruitment career evolved and the roles I undertook became more complex and challenging as I explored a world outside of placing candidates. I thrived in sales and quickly learned I could talk the hind legs off a donkey!

I have now been with KellyOCG for 4 years and it is an amazing company to be a part of. One of the things I love about my job is just how much fun we have. Because if it isn’t fun, why bother? I have tried to move away from a corporate, rigid approach and bring a sense of cheekiness to sales that is underpinned with knowledge and expertise. I have the space to be myself, to not conform to corporate norms and this has allowed an entrepreneurial spirit to thrive throughout my team.

This ethos has helped us generate one billion dollars in contract wins so far in 2017.

For me, the most vital element in being a successful sales person is collaboration. So many people are involved in a sales approach! I have worked hard to promote a sense of community within our team and in the wider business and these relationships are essential to our success.

I like to think that good saleswomen are good salespeople, they can’t be defined by their gender. I’m a good sales person because I take the time to listen to my customers and I never adopt a one size fits all approach not because I am a woman. The industry does, however, remain male dominated and it’s important to take the time to celebrate women in sales. Events like the Women in Sales Awards are incredibly influential in attracting and retaining the best female sales talent. They help to show women that they can do it too.

Being shortlisted let alone winning the Women in Sales Award as Best Sales Director was an unexpected pleasure.

I feel proud to be considered as part of this group of extraordinary women. What has also been lovely has been the reaction of my team. Their support and belief has been tremendously rewarding. I hope to share my success story within the talent community and to be a positive role model for women in sales. I’m lucky that within KellyOCG we have some amazing female leaders and salespeople who continue to blaze a trail.

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For other women going on this journey, I’d say embrace it. This award has encouraged me to step back and consider the landscape for women in our industry. By learning from and 17 WIN 20 supporting each other we can drive greater equality and future success.

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2017 Best Woman Sales Manager 6 6 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7

Claire Thorne Business Development Team Manager, AIG Life

As soon as the event was over I got together with my fellow AIG Life WISA Europe 2017 finalists to brainstorm how we could maximise this experience to impact others in our organisation. It was important to act on this fantastic opportunity we had been given having a team of finalists at different levels is enough to inspire not just young women, but women across the whole company spectrum and also businesses too. I would highly recommend that my company highlight this event in their recruitment processes.

From the start I said I wanted to win this award to inspire young women not just to think of sales as a credible career choice, but also to believe they can have a family and a successful career and that they don't need to settle for just one! I believe the starting point is to instil an 'I can' mindset at a young age and therefore, that will be my focus. I am a successful Sales Professional and I am a Mum of two young boys, so this Award will let me lead by example and encourage my female team members to realise and believe they too can achieve both a successful career and a family.

As Sales people we are always stretching ourselves to achieve more - the whole experience really gives you a chance to reflect on what you have accomplished so far which is something we don’t do enough of. For any companies that are reading this - if you have fantastic women in your sales team - take this opportunity to nominate them and watch them grow! And at the same time watch your company grow – successfully!

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The judging day was a fantastic experience full of passionate women - what I loved the most was that everyone had such a desire to grow and learn (which is the manager in me coming out!). It was extremely interesting to network with these amazing women and hear about the similar challenges they faced in their day to day work, and I enjoyed being able to share my insights and experience back with them.

Having the privilege to listen to and learn from such a strong panel of Sales industry experts talking about their professional experiences was so inspiring. It was such a motivational day from beginning to end and I personally gained so much from it.

I will never forget that moment when I found out I had won Best Woman Sales Manager 2017 - I was speechless (something that is very rare for me!).

Having met some wonderful ladies at the judging day I knew that the standards were high and therefore I was truly honoured to have won! It was certainly an overwhelming experience that will stay with me throughout my career! It has given me the confidence to believe in my success and will drive me in my future career to achieve even greater heights.

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When I found out that I had been shortlisted as a finalist for WISA Europe 2017 I couldn’t believe it.

Recognition within your business is one thing - but to be selected as a finalist and potential winner across Europe was amazing and filled me with immense pride. Learning my top performing team member, who I had been progressing as a team leader and inspirational mentor to new recruits, had also been listed as a finalist in her category, had me beaming from ear to ear. I manage the Business Development Team at AIG Life and to have two of us from the one team as finalists was a major achievement and significant acknowledgement of our ability.

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Holly Ewing Intermediary Sales Manager, AIG Life

EXCITED AND INITIALLY AT LEAST, OVERWHELMED. THAT’S HOW I FELT WHEN I FOUND OUT I HAD BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN IN SALES AWARD. Whilst I’d had the recognition amongst my peers and colleagues, I hadn’t yet had the recognition from an external organisation, particularly a body independent from the financial services sector. I knew no matter what the outcome on the Awards evening, to have got this far was a testament to my hard work, the success of our team and the support of my colleagues.

The 16th November came around so quickly and I arrived armed with my material. The importance of preparation, as it is in the sales environment was critical, as my family and friends will testify, having had to listen to many practice runs! The day itself seemed to run on ‘fast forward’ although I tried to take in as much as I could. I met and spoke with women from all walks of life, Financial Services, Aviation, Media all the way through to Construction! One thing bound us together- our love of sales.

I want my customers to enjoy their buying experience as much as I do. This is a key part of the sales role and can help to build a relationship that goes beyond a simple transaction and establishes a culture between the customer and the sale team that endures.

To win Best in Field Sales surpassed my expectations.

I was acutely aware that the competition was tough and that all the ladies were deserved winners so I was genuinely surprised and honoured to discover I had won in a group of such talented people.

I’m incredibly lucky to have a family here at AIG Life that supports my career and celebrates my success. I know that the AIG team will be delighted for me and I readily acknowledge their support has been critical to my success. There is no doubt that winning this award has only inspired me to further my goals.

I look forward to seeing where this will 17 WIN 20 take me and returning in 2018 as an ambassador for Women in Sales.

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For me this love comes from the clarity and simplicity of the process. The beauty of sales is that all that really matters is are you good at your job? Can you sell products to customers who benefit from them and value your advice? Do you like Sales? If you are driven, innovative and care, the sky really is the limit! There was no truer representation of this than on the 16th.

Starting out in Finance at 22, I had no idea where this role would take me but knew that I loved meeting people and the buzz of providing them with solutions whilst furthering my own personal goals. For a professional sales woman, these two benefits are not mutually exclusive and we can enjoy the customer feedback as well as gain personal reward.

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What lay in store I asked myself? The answer came quickly and was simple - hard work and preparation!

I set to work asking my colleagues and customers to provide supporting endorsements and references as well as designing my presentation and pitch. The challenge of differentiating the presentation and holding the judges eye with the material was something to be tackled with imagination but without straying from the core message of the role of women in sales.

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2017 Best Woman in Technology Sales 70 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7

Clare Hillis Public Sector Director, Vodafone

MY JOURNEY INTO SALES BEGAN 17 YEARS AGO WHEN I LEFT A JOB AS A TRAINEE SOLICITOR TO PURSUE A CAREER IN SALES. I QUICKLY REALISED THAT I HAD A REAL PASSION FOR SELLING AND THE BUZZ OF CLOSING DEALS WAS ADDICTIVE.

It was Vodafone’s first year at WISA and the other Vodafone finalists and I were overwhelmed at how well the whole event was organised. My nomination was ‘Best Woman in Technology sales’ and I really wanted to get across to the judges some of the great work I’ve been doing in Health, leading the way with new mobile app technology to replace old legacy paging equipment, a mobile e-obs app for nurses to enable more time at patient bedside and a trauma application to reduce delay of medical staff dealing with emergencies. The judges were very interested in what I had to say and I enjoyed the short time I had with them. Although I was nervous, I also enjoyed the 1 min pitch on ‘Why I should win’ in front of all the judges.

I’d recommend WISA to any other woman who is passionate about her sales career. I didn’t expect to win my category as all the women were of an extremely high standard, however I was honoured to accept the award. When my name was called out I felt an immense sense of pride to have won this award, not only for me but also Vodafone where I have had a huge amount of support from my management team in giving me opportunities to continually learn and develop. This award has given me a boost to keep pursuing my dreams and help other women do so too.

Roll on next year!

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Given my passion, when I heard I’d been nominated to WISA I was thrilled. The day’s agenda was really interesting and I enjoyed hearing the panel experts share their personal journeys. The session on ‘Does Having a Mentor Impact Your Career’ really made me think about the importance of me getting the right mentor to help me develop and advance my career.

When I returned from the event I made a list of people I could approach and got my thoughts straight on what I actually wanted to achieve from mentoring.

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My career in sales went from strength to strength starting off in a local I.T company and within a short time moving into Telecoms to work for some of the World’s leading brands like BT, Cable and Wireless and finally Vodafone.

There is not a single day in the past 17 years when I have regretted my career choice. The passion and true grit I have for the sales profession has seen me through many challenging situations and contributed vastly to my success. Today I head up the Public Sector business for Vodafone in Northern Ireland and I still take an active role in selling to our customer base.

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Rebecca Brockhurst Business Development Consultant, AIG Life

I started my first Sales role 3.5 years ago when I moved from Customer Services to the Sales Team of AIG Life.

When the vacancy became available, I welcomed the opportunity with open arms. My older brother had established a very successful career within Sales and I remember always thinking – there was no reason why I couldn’t be just as successful. During my time at AIG Life, I have been fortunate enough to receive mentoring and coaching from very strong Sales women who have helped me develop and grow and I continue to be inspired by my female colleagues every day.

Hearing the news that I had been shortlisted as a finalist for Women In Sales Awards made me feel a mixture of nerves and pure excitement, all at the same time. To even be nominated was a huge achievement in itself but to think I would be standing alongside some of the top Sales women within Europe was incomprehensible. What an accomplishment! The first thing I did when I found out was call my family and friends and send them the link to my finalist card on the WISA website. The day was made even better as I was able to congratulate 3 of my amazing colleagues who had also been shortlisted as finalists within their categories. I felt incredibly proud.

Having been awarded the Best Woman in Telephone Sales, I feel honored to be part of such an amazing

initiative. The scheme has already increased my confidence significantly and has propelled me to develop and achieve further, assisting with my future career aspiration of becoming a leader within Sales.

When I initially started my Sales career, I joined a Sales Force where there were and still are, hugely successful Sales women. They were able to share their knowledge and past experience with me and I believe this is pivotal to the success I have had within Sales.

The WISA initiative has enabled me to act as a role model for other females, not only within my company but the industry as a whole. I take great pride in being a Women in Sales Ambassador and I intend to continue to use this achievement to encourage other females to challenge the status quo and to join all of the other inspiring women who are already succeeding and making a huge impact on the world of Sales.

The whole experience has been thoroughly enjoyable – after hearing I had been shortlisted as a finalist, the next steps and what was required was set out very clearly and although the thought of the Judging Day was a little daunting, I was very quickly made to feel at ease, with any questions being welcomed. The Judging Day was fantastic and one you should really throw yourself into. The day consisted of the actual judging process – your 5minute presentation followed by the interview before your 1minute pitch to highlight your achievements and explain why you believe you should win your category. During the day there were also various panel discussions such as the highs and lows of sales, the ability to network with other successful women in different industries from across Europe as well as the opportunity to hear from previous winners and finalists who shared their own personal journeys and experiences. This inspired me even more.

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I cannot recommend WISA more highly and strongly advocate any company to put forward their leading Sales Women. If I could offer any advice to finalists next year it would be to do your research and preparation, however, most importantly, make the most of the experience – what a huge achievement it is that you have got this far and one that 17 WIN you should most definitely be proud of.

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2017 Best Woman Sales Newcomer & Most Distinguished Sales Woman of 2017 74 W O M E N I N S A L E S AWA R D S / E U R O P E - D EC E M B E R 2 0 1 7

Emma-Leigh Waters Specialist Sales Desk Manager, Virgin Media Business

I started my career in sales eighteen months ago after nine years in finance and credit control. I always thought about moving into sales and felt that I had a lot of transferable skills that would help me be successful.

I accepted a position as Specialist Sales desk team Manager for Virgin Media Business.

When I joined, the team was underperforming and morale was low. In the six months that followed, I implemented a new operating rhythm into the team and embedded a new team ethos based on trust and winning together. I’m a firm believer that to create a high performing environment you need to have a highly engaged team and as such, I made employee engagement my number one priority. Nine months in we had our annual employee engagement survey and I achieved the highest score in Sales for Virgin Media Business of 85%. The team's performance soon followed this upward trend and in twelve months, performance had increased by 50% and we achieved an improved conversion rate of 50% from 31%.

This resulted in me being nominated for the best newcomer in the Women in Sales Awards 2017.

When I found out I was a finalist, I was absolutely overwhelmed with pride. To be nominated by the leadership team at VMB who had inspired and supported me in my successes was truly an honour.

I was so happy to see that five of my fellow Virgin colleagues had also made it as finalists.

women from different industries and hear their story of how they came to be nominated for an award.

Throughout the day we heard from inspirational speakers who gave us an insight into their successes and setbacks, we covered some very thought provoking topics and I felt the speakers spoke from the heart about their experiences.

I am eternally grateful and honoured to have been presented with this award, it has given me the inspiration and confidence to break through the glass ceiling and reach all new heights of 17 WIN success. I will continue to support and 20 inspire my female colleagues and hope to see more of them receive nominations and awards in the future.

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On walking into the venue, you could immediately feel the energy in the room, my nerves turned to excitement and curiosity and with my head held high, I made my way to my table to meet the ladies I would sharing this once In a lifetime experience with. My table was filled with passionate, strong and inspirational women from an array of backgrounds.

It was so valuable to spend time with like-minded

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The evening before the judging day I got together with my fellow finalists to share ideas and offer each other support. The morning of the awards arrived and as we prepared to leave the hotel and head to the Sheraton we offered each other a few last words of encouragement. I remember thinking that it was remarkable that we had forged such a strong bond in the weeks leading up to the awards and this was something I knew would live on long after the awards ceremony.

I found the judging process both challenging and inspiring. I plan to recreate the experience for the ladies I mentor as they have all taken a keen interest in the WISA process. My advice to businesses that are considering nominating women in their organisations for these awards is to go for it! It’s a truly remarkable experience that allows you to not only showcase your abilities but also learn and grow. I have come back from the experience feeling more inspired than ever before.

It is extremely important that we continue to celebrate the most successful women in sales and recognise the strength and perseverance it takes to get to the top of your game in a male dominated industry.

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Sarah Louise Piddington Senior National Account Manager, Diageo The first thing I did after hearing the news that I had been selected as a finalist was call my Mum! Then my husband (no sure if this is the right way round?!) and finally text my boss. All three of these people have had such significant influence in my life and have made me the person I am today.

It feels absolutely AWESOME to have won in my category! Extremely shocking and also very humbling.

Being a great sales person doesn’t rely on being a certain sex but there is an element of potentially over coming greater adversity as a female. I hope I can encourage women to share their successes and support each other to be the best version of themselves.

I plan to use this special accolade as a vehicle for women within my business but also our industry to recognise that I am an approachable and supportive mentor, who appreciates some of the many challenges they may be experiencing. A coffee and a listening ear can work wonders, the odd text to let you know that there is someone ‘routing for you’ and there is never a problem that someone hasn’t faced before, it is definitely true that ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ or solved! I am also involved in a steering group for empowering women in Diageo, especially within the on trade drinks industry, so I hope winning this award will help to shine a light on all the good work that has been done by a really committed group of women so far.

From start to finish the whole experience has been Fantastic! Lots of hard work too but it has given me the headspace to really ‘get out of the day job’ and evaluate how I can make a difference. To really document all the successes and adversities you have experienced can give

great confidence in your abilities and influence. The judging day was incredibly inspiring and the speakers in particular gave such a fantastic breadth of experience and context. To understand that past winners were ‘just like you’ and overcame similar hurdles and felt the same insecurities, gave such a great feeling of solidarity. To be surrounded by such a huge group of successful women gave an immense feeling of collective pride in what we had all achieved in our careers despite who would finally win. Everyone was also genuinely supportive and there was a great sense of reassurance and ‘cheerleading’ for one another in the room – the sense that we all belonged to the same ‘team’ regardless of the competitive element.

I would very much advise Diageo to make WISA nomination part of our DNA! For me, being involved in a very male dominated environment (sales, alcohol, the ‘on trade’ industry) meant that it was really important to celebrate female success and highlight our contribution to diversity and inclusion in a company. However, this is vital in any company, regardless of the makeup of its current workforce of the industry it operates in. To publically acknowledge the achievements of their employees shows a depth of gratitude to their commitment, passion and influence.

This then creates ‘beacon’s’ for female success within a company, which will provide inspiration not only for internal talent but for external talent too. Diversity is literally just a number and doesn’t mean anything without inclusion – to be involved in an annual event celebrating the successes of female inclusion and how this inclusion has driven your business forward really cements the value of all women in sales.

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My advice for other companies considering submitting 2018 nominations would be use it as a vehicle to highlight and celebrate success – it is a fantastic honour and should be ‘shouted from the rooftops’!

Equality and motivation in the workplace are both critical elements to a successful business. WISA not only highlights the quality agenda but gets everyone in a company motivated to celebrate not only themselves but also the overall diversity and inclusion agenda. It gives a platform for women 17 WIN to say ‘hey I am great’! Which may not 20 always come naturally”

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Amanda Kurylowski Category Controller, Pladis Global

Reflection. I think it’s something most of us struggle to make time to do on a regular basis, especially in Sales where we are always looking forward, reaching for the next target, rising to the next challenge.

I would encourage any business contemplating nominating individuals for the awards to take part – your nominees will get so much out of the experience and you will demonstrate your support and commitment both to them and their development but also to the broader diversity conversation.

My question to myself throughout this process has always been, if I win, what will I do differently? I have always felt strongly about gender diversity in leadership and supporting career progression of females within traditionally male-dominated environments but had somehow lacked the impetus to act.

My involvement in the Women in Sales 17 WIN 20 Awards has focussed my commitment to driving for and supporting change and I am excited to be an active part of that future within my business.

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I was completely taken aback by my nomination; very few of us do our jobs expecting recognition and I felt honoured that my contributions to the business were being acknowledged. This is the first year that pladis have taken part in the awards and I was immensely proud to be one of the four pladis finalists. I also take great encouragement from the fact that pladis, through its involvement in the awards, is taking a pro-active

Whilst preparing for the judging day was naturally nerve-wracking, I tried to take solace from the fact that nobody knows my story and experiences better than me - so it was all to play for! Trying to distil the messages I wanted to get across in my short presentation was probably the most challenging part. The presentation itself flew by and the judges were fair and friendly; the feeling I got was one of positivity, support and genuine interest rather than being ‘tested’! It was a great day and I found the panel discussions particularly engaging. It is always inspirational to hear from successful women and I personally took a lot of thought provoking content away from the sessions.

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When I looked back, I realised that I have spent the majority of my working life in one sales function or another, be it my first Saturday job in the BHS Christmas department through to selling holidays, cereal, yoghurts and latterly some of the nation’s best loved snack food brands at pladis. Whilst the products have changed over time, my desire to be in a fast paced, results-driven and people-orientated environment has always been the common thread. Yes, the hours can be long and the obstacles sometimes seem insurmountable but the rewards are great and it’s the ongoing desire to improve and evolve things that keeps me motivated on a day to day basis. Recognition, obviously also plays an important part in maintaining motivation and momentum which is where I believe the Women in Sales Awards have such a vital role to play in our industry. It is my personal opinion that, for various reasons, women in sales are often less inclined to make others aware of the great work they are doing and the new ground they are breaking. Therefore, the role that the Women in Sales Awards play to provide a platform for businesses to recognise their brightest talent is invaluable.

stance on recognising the challenges and supporting positive progression towards gender diversity in leadership and championing female talent from within.

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Personally, one of the most valuable experiences I gained through my involvement with the Women in Sales Awards was the opportunity to take the time to pause, take stock and re-trace the steps of my career journey so far. We often underestimate the power of our own backstories but the Women in Sales Awards provide the perfect focal point to recognise and be proud of our collective achievements. I’m sure every finalist will have reflected on their beginnings, their ambitions and the people who have supported and influenced them. Through this process, the Women in Sales Awards empowers all of its nominees to stand tall and share their successes and challenges alike. And this can only be a positive thing.

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Jeanette Ahlström Global Key Account Executive, Adobe (Sweden)

makes us more effective as a team, it also helps all of us to grow individually. Our customers would describe my team as: • Genuine • Reliable • Trustworthy • Innovative

What motivates me is seeing how our customers use the solutions and services we’ve sold to make their businesses perform better. A key driver for me is making things grow—whether that means supporting a customer to increase sales and meet their key performance indicators or scaling our account team to maximise impact.

Key to achieving results is planning and executing long- and short-term strategies for the customer, creating a clear plan that leverages existing implemented solutions and takes advantage of new opportunities.

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The day was filled with inspiring speakers and panel debates, giving me many new takeaways to enhance my personal development. The opportunity to network with the other finalists was priceless, and I am happy to report that I met successful saleswomen from many companies and left feeling energized. Overall, the experience with the Women in Sales Awards exceeded my expectations. It was full service along the entire journey, and it has been a great pleasure and honour to be part of this process.

My advice for companies considering submitting nominations for 2018 is “Just go for it!” The Women in Sales Awards is a great way to show appreciation for the work an employee has contributed to the company and to 17 WIN 20 showcase to other saleswomen your company’s appreciation for women’s potential in sales as well as its active diversity policy.

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My team and I are in it together, so I prioritise communication among team members. This not only

I think everyone was a bit nervous when they arrived at the Judging Day. However, the setting was so friendly, supportive, and encouraging that soon all of the candidates were engaged in discussions around the panel debates or sharing insights on how to approach the upcoming jury interview.

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To be able to scale, I always look to align and motivate the larger account team and management at Adobe, the partner ecosystem, and the customer’s key stakeholders. When we put people in positions where they can leverage their own strengths, we start to build a high-performance team that consistently exceeds customer expectations.

Judging Day was all about preparation, preparation, preparation! Just as when preparing for an important sales meeting, it was important for me to know who I would meet with and to prepare what I wanted to say beforehand.

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For more than five years, I have worked with one of the largest fashion retailers in the world and, together with my account team, have developed it into Adobe’s largest customer in the EMEA region – a solid account delivering significant new revenue each quarter. Through our work, Adobe’s relationship with the customer has transformed from tactical vendor to strategic partner.

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I have been delivering business-critical solutions to customers my entire career, in both sales and business consulting roles, and currently have the privilege of serving as Adobe’s Global Account Manager, working out of Stockholm.

I was proud to learn of my nomination for the Women in Sales Award 2017. I have always tried to lead and motivate by example to help other women—both on my team and organisation-wide—go as far as I have.

Adobe and my managers have recognised my results and achievements over the last five years in various ways, but being selected as a finalist for an external award with participants from all over Europe was something really special — certainly an occasion to be celebrated over a nice dinner with my husband and children.

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Hena Chandarana Trade Communications Controller, Pladis Global

I found out I was a finalist whilst I was on holiday – I saw my name coming up on LinkedIn! It was an amazing feeling to have got through and I was keen to learn more about the next stage. This final stage – the finalists judging day, came around so fast. I had been preparing in spare moments leading up to the event, however, it was the week before that I really felt like I was in the zone. As always, you always wish you had allowed more time to prepare and get ready, so if there is one piece of advice, it would be that. Preparing for the day has been such a valuable exercise; it meant that I had to take time out to reflect and draw out the big achievements - something you just don’t do on a daily or yearly basis!

As you’d expect, on the morning of the judging day, I felt very nervous! I kept telling myself that I’ve got this far, so just go for it and shine! The team at WISA made everyone feel welcome and the whole day just flew by. The speaker panels were so thought provoking and inspiring, I came away with my own list of things to focus on for my personal development. I really enjoyed sharing experiences with the other finalists, it was reassuring to know we all felt the same and the camaraderie between us was brilliant.

NE

I would certainly recommend all businesses to look at nominations for 2018. This is one award that is going to grow in interest and I am certainly very proud to be a part of it. Most of all, I hope that my achievement gives my two daughters the confidence to always reach for the stars and to know that nothing is 17 WIN impossible or out of reach.

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Leaving University with a BSc in Food Science; I never planned for a career in Sales, in fact, I didn’t even know it was an option! I joined a graduate scheme with Dalgety Food Ingredients and through one of the training modules, I had an introduction session into what the sales team did. It sounded like something I would enjoy and at the end of my training, I applied for a role and was successful! It was a Technical Sales job working for a Sales Manager, selling product and ingredient solutions to food manufacturers. I thrived on the challenge of winning a pitch and if I didn’t win, it spurred me on to understand what I could do differently next time round. This sales experience gave me clarity on my career path and from this day in, many opportunities opened up in the commercial world of food. I have worked from Customer Account Management through to Strategic planning to present day in Trade communications. On reflection and introspection, I know that being a sales professional uses all my strengths, stretches me out of my comfort zone and satisfies my inner drive for results.

I am so honoured to be winner of the Sales Support category – this has really shown me to always try to reach for something that seems out of reach. All I can ask is that others hear my story and that it gives them the confidence to believe that anything is possible. I want to use my win in this category to lead the voice for women in sales at pladis. My plan is to set up several initiatives to help Women in Sales meet their goals through mentoring programmes. We need more women in sales leadership roles – we need more role models of women from all walks of life, background and aspirations. I want to learn from the experiences from all the incredibly successful women I have met through WISA and go forward from there.

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LEAVING UNIVERSITY WITH A BSC IN FOOD SCIENCE; I NEVER PLANNED FOR A CAREER IN SALES, IN FACT, I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS AN OPTION!

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Henrieta Tissu Account Manager, Thomson Reuters (Switzerland)

FINDING A CAREER IN THE FIELD OF SALES WAS A RATHER NATURAL PATH FOR ME. Both of my parents have a sales background and were running their own company. With a background in business and diplomacy, I have found my way to a multi-national company in the finance sector as an Account Manager for Academia a year and a half ago.

I was immediately overwhelmed by the unique portfolio I was taking over. Developing relationships and selling our financial solutions to universities and research institutes across Europe, I have the unique opportunity to raise our future users and secure our sales results in the long term. Even though there is a necessity to deliver results in the short term, of course, I create awareness and stickiness to our services in the first place, which makes it much easier for other sales team members to sell our services once ex-students enter the job market. I build on a wide range of skills and knowledge in the company that helps me not only learn and develop myself and my role on a daily basis, but gives me an opportunity to create and apply innovative ideas on a daily basis. I am very grateful that I have the flexibility to try new things in my job, as I receive support for any project or idea that I bring to the table.

A lot of actions and decisions I make every day are highly influenced by my sports background – I have

been doing synchronized swimming for over eighteen years, and dealing with challenges, difficult days and even losing in the pool influence my approach to sales to this day. There are always times we are tested – that big deal you failed to close, that customer you were badly trying to reach not returning your phone calls.

It is very difficult to lose focus and motivation, and I have learned that having that perfectly mastered daily routine will keep you on track even when things get difficult. I have learned that fixing on my goal or that annual target sets me back. It stresses me out and leaves me frustrated when things don’t go the way I imagined. Rather, focusing on being the best in my daily routine, on the process I need to follow to get to my goal, helps me feel in control and gets me right back on track. Work backwards on figuring out what you need to do to do that sale and to achieve that target, and don’t forget to change it a little when necessary.

It is usually harder than you think, but if you are not struggling, you are not improving!

When I have heard for the first time that I was nominated for a WISA award, it was hard for me to believe. Being still relatively new in the team, this recognition definitely raised my level of confidence and credibility both internally and with my clients.

WISA gave me a chance to meet many fabulous and extremely inspiring women from the sales field, triggered interesting discussions and gain further valuable insights into mentoring and sales techniques.

Meeting women from different industries in the panel discussions, it also confirmed the unique and important female role in this traditionally male dominated field.

I am absolutely honored to have been presented with this award, and I would like to be an inspiration for other women to consider their career in finance and sales. I would recommend any company to honor their female workers with this 7 WIN amazing recognition.

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Elsa Bahamonde Managing Director South Europe, Criteo (Spain)

Actually, I’m in charge of all the South Europe Region, managing a tremendous team composed not only from sales and account managers but also with engineers, data scientists, creatives teams and sales specialists from 4 different countries. Leading Italy, Spain, Portugal & France give me the chance to be in an international environment where I can learn every day from other points of view and different way to face issues. It’s incredibly motivating to work on this multicultural day to day.

Finally, the part that I’m enjoying the most in my mentor experience is the women mentorship. The digital ecosystem is a male world where women are less present in all the functions: engineer, data scientist, coding, and leadership. The fact to mentor women for me is a way to show the example and to prove that even if we are few is possible to achieve our dreams whatever this dream is, the only thing that matters is hard work and never give up even if it looks difficult.

That means that is not always easy, but with a clear objective, the persistence and effort will pay.

My mentees have normally a lot of questions regarding how to position themselves in a male environment, how to balance personal and professional life, how to position themselves for their dreamed position, the particularity of being a woman leader… I think all the answers to these questions will be different for each person and the role of the mentor is to share experiences and ask the good questions to the mentees to help them to find their own answers.

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In the future, I want to continue showing to other women but also to my team members that the only limit is their own dreams and that they can achieve them. For example the fact to have been selected as a finalist in the best sales women award, I hope it will motivate other women to participate in this kind of event. My motto that I always keep in mind is that opportunities don’t happen, 17 WIN 20 you need to create them.

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ROPE

Since 2010, I am enjoying my time in Criteo, an ad tech company that has grown from 3 people to 2700 in only 12 years, from a small Parisian start-up to a Nasdaq quoted international company. In this fascinating environment, I have faced several challenges: firstly, launch all the commercial activity in Spain and Portugal, secondly hire, create and structure the sales and account management team and last but not least develop my team to achieve the company and clients targets but also accomplish their own professional objectives.

During all these years my key drivers have mainly been building strong client relations, develop a high performing team and achieve my company targets.

Actually, I’m really focusing on people growth thanks to management, leadership or mentoring depending on the situation. For that reason, I have been very honored to be selected as a finalist in the mentor category in the Best Sales Women Award. In my personal experience, mentoring has been essential to my own development, as a mentee, I have learned a lot with mentors that help me developing resilience and much more confidence in myself. They help me, sharing their vision, their opinion and asking me complicated and interesting questions. In addition, I had the chance to mentored several mentees, this time as a mentor I have also learned from my mentees, thanks to other points of view and vision.

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I HAVE SPENT THE LAST 13 YEARS OF MY CAREER IN THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM, WORKING FOR VERY FAST GROWING COMPANIES IN FRANCE AND SPAIN.

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Rob Mukherjee Head of North West, Vodafone

It was my passion for football that sparked my passion for feminism – and kicked off my love for mentoring.

A friend of mine had just become captain of the college women’s football team and she asked if I would be their coach. I was surprised, hugely flattered – and of course, I said “Yes”. What I learned about this group of women was that, unlike many men’s teams, none of them seemed to think they were the next Pele or Maradona. They had a selfless camaraderie, a hunger and drive to be the best they could be, and for some reason which I still to this day find incredibly humbling, they had an absolute and unconditional trust in me. We struck up a real “chemistry”. We learned together, had fun together, dreamed together and cried together. I became more emotionally attached to the fortunes of this women’s football team than any men’s team that I have ever played for. We grew… together.

There was only one other man who really understood how I could get more emotional standing on the sidelines at a women’s football match, than playing in a men’s game. He’d been coaching women’s football for a couple of years, so was able to help me by sharing his stories, experiences and challenges. I guess he was kind of my first mentor – and he actually went on to have a long and successful career coaching women’s football in Canada.

My career took a different but just as exciting direction, in sales. Like football, corporate sales is pretty male-dominated. Like football, there is no reason why women can’t have the same skills as men – and

unlike football, physical stature doesn’t give men an advantage when competing with women in a sales arena. Furthermore, empathy and collaboration are invaluable traits – and they happen to be traits that I find women tend to have in abundance.

It is now widely recognised that we will have more successful businesses, happier customers and a healthier economy if we accelerate more women through sales careers and into leadership positions.

For me though, my mentoring and wider activity in accelerating gender balance has first and foremost been about “doing the right thing”. I’ve always believed in campaigning for social justice – and I’ve always had an inner drive to be what people these days refer to as an “agent of change”.

So I’m really grateful to all the talented mentees who have allowed me to be part of their amazing growth stories - and to all the informal mentors across my Northern network who’ve been the sounding boards for my unconventional and sometimes controversial ideas. And I’m honoured that Vodafone nominated me for the WISA “Best Male Mentor” award.

I was on holiday in Italy when I got a WhatsApp message saying, “We’ve made it to the WISA finals!

Yaye!” I was absolutely made up, especially as a few of my Vodafone colleagues had also made it to the finals.

Then I tried my best to forget about it for a few days, as I passionately believe that when I’m on holiday with my family they deserve 100% of me and my attention.

Fast forward to the truly inspirational WISA judging day - great speakers, fantastic fellow finalists and judges who were really rooting for us to do ourselves justice. The fact that this was in the week leading up to International Men’s Day, the theme this year being the celebration of men and boys, felt kind of fitting for me.

Incredibly, I now find I’ve gone and won the thing! I have been privileged to win the odd sales award before, but this is one to be treasured like no other, as it goes right to the core of my beliefs around driving a cultural revolution. This award will be a huge asset as I seek to inspire more men to get actively involved in forging women’s advancement and gender parity. If we all take bold action today, there is no limit to 7 WIN the tomorrow that we can build.

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Congratulations to the next generation of WOMEN SALES LEADERS.

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Selling In A Digital Age

E CEN KD T IC

BY

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Digital is set to disrupt every aspect of life including business. So what’s on the horizon for sales and what’s already here?

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ne day in the not too far distant future, a wave of technological innovation will transform society: for instance, brain-computer interfaces will replace keyboards; there will be intention- decoding algorithms; communications devices will be embedded in humans; and we will have lifelong avatar assistants – that’s according to the futurologists as Imperial College.1 Of course, digital disruption is no longer just on the horizon; it’s here today as leading organisations seek to remodel entire businesses – not simply processes (as with the data-processing advances of past decades) – and this will transform employment. It’s no secret that many roles will be replaced by technology: elements of any job are automatable whether you are a sewing machine operator or a chief executive.

Equally, new roles will be created in developing, implementing and using this new technology.

David Autor, Professor Of Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology has this to say: “Often people only think of AI boosting growth by substituting humans, but actually

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huge value is going to come from the new goods, services and innovations AI will enable.” 2 Selling at a sophisticated level – where salespeople add genuine value – will thrive, albeit that humans will increasingly be supported by advanced technology; at the most basic process-driven level, where success can be reduced to purely a numbers game, we can expect selling to become increasingly automated.

POTENTIAL IMPACT So how do we see technology shaping the world of sales?

FIRST, many sales support functions will “go digital” and be enhanced with the help of technology: however, this will go beyond the numbercrunching solutions that have previously helped to streamline compensation management and other admin roles to provide new insights into territory and compensation management via artificial intelligence and machine learning.

SECOND, digitisation will extend

FOURTH, turning to areas closer

to other elements of the sales process (especially those that cross over into marketing). For instance, consultants such as Accenture and McKinsey highlight various areas that will help to enhance an on organisation’s profitability: segmentation analytics; pricing, profitability and cost-to-service analytics; commercial intelligence; and product bundling and assortment analytics among others – the latter being potentially useful in crafting value propositions.

to those traditionally seen as being within the salesperson’s remit, we understand that there will be advances in lead generation and new business development: for example, through the use of prospecting analytics and “propensity to buy analytics”.

THIRD, the entire learning and development model is being transformed via new technologydriven content creation, curation and delivery models. Faster, more-efficient, easier-to-assimilate delivery of specifically customerrelevant information such as business intelligence, product knowledge and business skills will convey a significant competitive advantage. In parallel, we see the rise of dashboards to help sales managers coach their teams and similar applications.

FIFTH , we expect innovative technologies to have a positive impact on the complex sales process by freeing up time for core selling components such as creativity and communications with customers and internally. At the same time, we see the capabilities of salespeople being enhanced via predictive selling tools (for instance, by shaping the components of an offer to align with what the customer values most), pipeline analytics, and tools to boost upselling and cross-selling.

Alex Ayad, Imperial Tech Foresight, Imperial College, http://www.imperialtechforesight.com/futurevisions/87/ vision/timeline-of-emerging-science-andtechnology.html.

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Mark Purdy and Paul Daugherty, Why artificial intelligence is the future of growth, Accenture, 2016, https://www.accenture.com/t20160929T140641__w__/ us- en/_acnmedia/PDF-33/Accenture-Why-AI-is-theFuture-of- Growth.pdf, 2

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DA

EL DISNEY

BY

NI

Founder of The Daily Sales www.thedailysales.net

Could YOU Sell More Than a Robot?

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he continued growth of AI and technology is drawing more and more customers to purchase online. Mix that with younger generations now hating the phone and preferring digital interactions, it's no surprise that some sales people are starting to worry about their job.

After all, if future buyers don't want to talk over the phone and prefer to live and buy online, what value could a sales person actually offer?

Let's be honest here, technology/ AI will replace sales jobs there's no question there. How many jobs they replace, with what products and what industries is questionable. Facing this reality though I think it's time to start asking....

COULD YOU SELL MORE THAN A ROBOT? If the day came and you had to compete with a technological

alternative, would you be able to deliver more? Can you offer a better service than the often-seamless experience that customers get online?

Let's look at why people chose to buy online right now. It's easier, it's faster, it doesn't involve human interaction, you're in control and often is more reliable. You can log into Amazon right now, find a whole host of products, get the full spec, read reviews from previous buyers, buy it and arrange delivery in a matter of minutes. There is no real place in these forms of transactions for sales people anymore.

Artificial Intelligence is now able to understand the customer and make suggestions and recommendations based on their behaviour and previous buying activity. AI also shares relevant content and insight depending on the buyer’s online movements. What was seen as the main area that sales people can add value through is now done digitally.

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WHERE CAN SALES PEOPLE COMPETE? The last area that sales people can use to their advantage is that right now people prefer to buy from people. Whilst this may not be the case any more for small value transactional items, it certainly remains for larger more complex sales. It will be quite a while yet before humans and digital engines build relationships to the same calibre that H2H (human to human). Although if a buyer/ seller relationship is actually just based on trust, insight and value, could it really be that long before technology replaces that?

Would you rather purchase from the incentivised sales person, or from the neutral computer? Would you trust the computer to give you genuine recommendations as there is less incentive for them to do otherwise?

HOW DO SALES PEOPLE REMAIN COMPETITIVE? In my opinion it's never been more important for sales people to up their game. Not only is there more human competition but if not already, you'll soon be competing with technology as well. Now is the time to make sure you raise your standards and ensure that you deliver the best service possible to all of your customers.

This includes:

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LISTENING

Whilst AI may be able to look back at buyer behaviour and previous purchases this won't compete with actually sitting and listening to someone. Listening to what they said, identifying real pain points and motivations will only be achievable through human to human interaction.

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TRUST & RELIABILITY

The best sales relationships are the ones that last for years, ones that no competitor or computer could ever compete with. These relationships are built on an unbreakable level of trust and reliability that reaches the levels of friendship.

INFORMATION

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It will be hard to beat a computer at memory and information retention!

Make sure you're utilising your CRM or spreadsheets to record as much information as you can. This will help make sure you have it all as and when you need it and you don't have to rely on what you can physically remember.

INTERACTION

A computer won't be able to take a prospect out for a coffee, beer, meal or to a sports match. A computer won't be able to attend a networking event or industry seminar. Whilst the digital world is creating more online conversations, to stay relative it's crucial to take those offline and create human relationships.

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VALUE

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It's not just down to your product to provide the value, it's up to you to make the difference. This comes in at every stage of the buyer journey, from providing valuable insight and expertise at the start, providing valuable solutions and valuable service.

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IS HORN

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B2 B SALES:

Chris leads Blackdot’s global product and marketing groups with the goal of continually evolving our SaaS, benchmarking and capability solutions to deliver optimal sales improvement outcomes for our clients.

What will the 'Rep of the Future' look like?

Today’s B2B selling environment is changing and it’s vital for organisations to adapt sales to stay relevant to evolving customer expectations. While the environmental shifts driving this are increasingly apparent, understanding what the ‘rep of the future’ will look like is far less clear for many organisations. This lack of clarity means preparing salespeople for the future is a key challenge for today’s sales leaders.

LET’S START WITH A BRIEF RECAP OF WHY THE LANDSCAPE OF B2B SELLING IS NO LONGER THE SAME. Conversations that customers once had with salespeople are increasingly happening online. In addition, these once traditionally sales-driven conversations are taking place across both sales and marketing channels.

Given the plethora of information available digitally, we’re also facing a much savvier buyer than before.

In order to deal with this new buyer, sales must be more strategic and engage in interactions that go ‘beyond the brochure’. Cost pressures have also created an inherent need for organisations to ‘do more with less’. Overall, it’s clear that sales must adapt to be more customer-

centric, more closely integrated with other functions, and more technology-enabled to keep pace with today’s buyer.

Amplifying the challenges of this new environment is the fact that there is fear and uncertainty in many sales teams around what a digital future means for them.

With marketing becoming more prominent, growing investment in digital platforms, and the implementation of new tools – such as marketing automation – the concern of the ‘reverse takeover’ from marketing replacing sales roles is a real concern in many organisations. As a result, preparing sales for this environment is a defining and imminent challenge in the life of the sales leader and wider business leadership teams.

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WHAT WILL THE ‘REP OF THE FUTURE’ LOOK LIKE? We believe that as long as they’re willing to evolve, the future is secure and exceptionally bright for salespeople, particularly in complex sales environments. They’ll unquestionably hold a vital place in B2B selling, but critically, they must be willing to evolve, and fast. We’re of the view that the ‘rep of the future’ will be much more empowered and enabled, with technology eradicating many low-value admin tasks and providing better understanding into customer thoughts and actions.

More time will be spent on valuable customer problem-solving, allowing tomorrow’s salesperson to be more innovative, effective and productive.

THE INFOGRAPHIC BELOW SUMMARISES THE KEY SHIFTS THAT ARE NEEDED FOR US TO SUPPORT OUR SALESPEOPLE AND PREPARE THEM FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE:

FRO M ROA D WA R RO R

Customer owner

TO C U S TO M E R E XP E R T

Customer advocate

Relationship and need-focused

Challenge and value-focused

Controls the sales process

Supports the buying process

Product / solution expert

Specialised thought leader

Views digital channels as competition

Bridges digital and physical channels

Burdened by admin

Absolved of low value tasks

Hamstrung by data entry

Driven by digital and customer data

MORE INNOVATIVE Providing genuine strategic insign and helping customers solve business problems

MORE EFFECTIVE Supporting the buyer's journey across channels to enhance engagement and progression

MORE PRODUCTIVE Leveraging technology and data to enhance prioritisation, preparation and precision

HOLISTIC THINKING AND EDUCATION ARE KEY In their response to the imperative to adapt, we often see organisations embark on isolated digital experiments in their sales teams, such as social selling. While initiatives like this have merit and can form a part of the solution, too many organisations ‘kick the can down the road’ and fall short of fundamentally transforming their sales model. To become genuinely future-fit and adapt sales for today’s buyer, DNA-level changes are required, which span people, process and technology.

The other key issue is that of sales education. In many businesses, entire digital transformations are taking place with marketing at the forefront and insufficient consideration as to how sales will be incorporated. If sales aren’t engaged in this process, then not

only will even the best-planned marketing transformation projects fail – concerns will be amplified in sales around their future, making the transformation far more difficult. Educating sales on the fact that their future is very bright is essential. The above model is a good blueprint to share with salespeople to educate them around what the future will look like and build buyin for transformation.

Of course, the big challenge is in stitching all this together and actually putting it on the ground.

Stay tuned for future posts, where we’ll talk about the most highvalue and practical initiatives which will help you accelerate sales transformation for the digital age.

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Storytelling to Improve Sales

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When people are asked what they do or how they decided to choose their career, they often give a short, to the point explanation. But, what we may be missing is the chance to form a connection with our customers.

When we choose to share the real story of how we became who we are and why we chose the career that we did, we open ourselves up to our clients by sharing personal details of our life. This is an effective way to build trust with your clients and allow them to see you as a real person, rather than just another sales person. To help you share your story and connect with your clients, I have listed some helpful tips.

KEEP IT SIMPLE When sharing your story with others, it is important that you keep it short and simple. This will ensure that the listener does not become bored, or lose interest halfway through.

BE REAL It is important that the story you are sharing is real and honest. People can tell when you are not being genuine with them. The more honest you are and authentic, the more your clients will connect with you and the message you are sharing.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE As you become more experienced in the art of storytelling, you will learn how to read your audience. This will allow you to structure your story so that it appeals to a variety of people. When you understand your audience, you will be able to tell your story in such a way that your form a connection with each person you speak to.

PAINT A PICTURE Use your words to create a story that will appeal to the emotional and visual parts of the human mind. This will help your client become invested in your story and imagine the details that you are sharing with them.

TELL A COMPLETE STORY

Storytelling is not a natural skill for everyone, some may have to work to perfect their skills; but once you do, you will see why the most successful salespeople use stories to connect with their clients. Telling your story is a great way to connect with your clients and build their trust, you have a lot to gain by perfecting the art of storytelling in business.

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It is important that your story has a beginning, middle, and end. When using a story to connect with your clients, it is important that your story is complete. Nobody wants to invest the time listening to a story just to be left wondering how it ended. If you want the payoff of a successful story, make sure you give your audience the ending that they have been waiting for.

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The Hard Truths About Sales Coaching

Chris leads Blackdot’s global product and marketing groups with the goal of continually evolving our SaaS, benchmarking and capability solutions to deliver optimal sales improvement outcomes for our clients.

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sk a frontline sales manager to list his or her most important tasks and with near-certainty ‘being a great coach’ will feature prominently. In itself, this point is hardly illuminating; hundreds of studies have shown coaching increases performance, lifts motivation and engagement, lowers flight risk and ultimately leads to greater revenue and profit.

While the importance of coaching is well understood, developing and maintaining the performance of frontline salespeople remains elusive for most sales organisations - across our database only two-out-of-five salespeople hit target between 2013-2015. Given coaching is such an important way to create and nurture

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talent, yet performance remains so unreliable, a key question for sales organisations is clearly - what is really going on with sales coaching?

ARE SALES MANAGERS COACHING? In the hundreds of companies we have benchmarked, managers certainly say they are; nine-out-of-ten sales managers state that they coach everyone in their team at least once a month. The average estimate is 2.1 hours per person per week.

At face value such a result should be encouraging, however the high confidence of managers does not align with the frontline’s much-lower perception of sales coaching, nor does it sit well with the generally low, volatile performance of salespeople.

DIGGING DEEPER INTO THE DATA REVEALS SOME STARTLING FACTS:

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A SIMPLE, YET NOT-SO-SIMPLE OPPORTUNITY The key takeaway for sales leaders is to not assume your sales managers are coaching. The data suggests many managers are either not coaching, or have devolved to a ‘low priority, when-possible’ mindset. It therefore comes as no surprise that satisfaction with 1:1 coaching is low; only 40% of reps report that the coaching they receive is ‘highly effective’ with 25% saying it is ‘ineffective’.

How then can a sales organisation address the situation? We believe there are five key steps to increasing coaching provision:

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Increase expectations and accountability of managers to coach.

Formalise coaching within the organisation’s operating rhythm.

Don’t stop with formalised coaching.

Mentoring, coaching and supporting frontline salespeople should be the core domain of sales managers.

Managers must be made accountable (and rewarded) for providing highquality coaching, otherwise they will gravitate to other tasks.

Make coaching obligatory and require managers to put aside time in their schedules to coach, effectively setting in stone when they are meant to be coaching. Combining the expectation of more coaching with regular, mandatory time invested will transform the attitude and behaviour into a high-performance habit - managers will quickly get into the rhythm of coaching consistently.

Elevating coaching and building it into the day-to-day rhythm of a team is the start, but not the end of increasing coaching provision.

Managers must be encouraged to take advantage of every opportunity to coach, particularly if people ask for more support. This type of opportunistic coaching needs to occur all the time - after sales calls, during informal catch-ups, via emails post an interaction with a client whenever the opportunity arises. The expectation from the organisation to its sales managers has to be - “never miss a coaching opportunity”.

Only 40% of reps report that the coaching they receive is ‘highly effective’ with 25% saying it is ‘ineffective’

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Coach everyone, not just people who are easy to coach.

There is a prevailing argument that managers should be choosy about who they coach - only focusing on high performers or the mid-runner core - with the aim of optimising return-on-effort.

This argument sounds compelling, but is often not a pragmatic solution. Firstly, it’s predicated on knowing who a high-performer is in advance. It’s very easy to say I will focus on Person A because she’s a ‘winner’, however often this insight will only be available after the fact. Significant value in undeveloped talent is put at risk by not coaching others who may very well succeed if coached more. Our benchmarking of the behaviours of successful salespeople have long proven that the skills and behaviours of high performers can be built - much of what they do can be replicated if the person is developed and supported by highquality coaching. Furthermore, given managers typically have a team which is fixed for a period of time, giving up on team members and cutting and changing team composition frequently is too costly and disruptive. The more practical approach is to invest time and coach everyone.

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Reconnect your sales managers with selling.

Many sales managers were strong salespeople who were promoted for their success on the frontline. With that said, we find that when reps are asked to rate if their manager ‘knows how to sell’, the responses to this question are positive, but certainly not as resounding as you might expect. While at first this seems surprising it is representative of a key problem we see in many sales organisations; sales managers bear the brunt of organisational ‘squeeze’ and are buried in administration, meetings and complexity, resulting in reps not having regular exposure to the selling behaviours of their managers. A key opportunity is to scale back the admin and non-selling aspects of the sales manager role and get them back involved directly with the frontline. They will demonstrate effective selling behaviours, quickly spot improvement opportunities and their opportunities to coach will greatly increase.

Combining the expectation of more coaching with regular, mandatory time invested will transform the attitude and behaviour into a high-performance habit

In conclusion, sales organisations should not see increasing coaching as an insurmountable hurdle. Often, simple and logical changes to how coaching is valued and administered will have a profound impact on its provision to the frontline. The second step in improving coaching will be to go from lifting provision, to coaching well – an entirely different, much-harder, but more rewarding outcome.

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How to Travel the World Working in Sales There are three ways in which you can travel the world working in sales.

The first is to sell a lot, make lots of commission and spend it traveling the world!

The second is to get a job where your clients are internationally based and travel the world as part of your role. The third way, which is to sell travel.

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et’s quickly look at the first two ways. Obviously the first way is to sell a lot, make a lot of commission and use that to travel. One of the best parts of working in sales is the ability to control what you earn.

If you work hard and achieve more, you earn more. You may equally have incentives in your company that include holidays away for top performers. This is a great way to earn a holiday and to travel the world just for doing a good job.

The second way is to get a sales job with international clients. There are sales people travelling all across

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the world to attend meetings, pitch deals and meet new clients. These will often be key sales roles within a company and will require high performance sales experience. If you think a role that includes travel for you then start to look at companies that operate internationally and look for available roles.

A unique way to travel the world whilst selling‌.

The third and final way is for those fortunate enough to work in travel and leisure sales. Their roles revolve around traveling the world and so it becomes a crucial part. You will often see those who sell travel and leisure able to benefit from free or

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heavily discounted travel as part of their job. Obviously if you have been there yourself you will have even more tools at your disposal to sell it.

You will be able to truly describe the destination, the way it looks, the way it feels and how amazing it is.

2 – YOU CAN EXPERIENCE THE PRODUCT FIRST HAND.

Whilst you have every opportunity to sell more or to get a job with international clients, working in travel and leisure sales is one of the best ways to travel the world whilst working in sales. It is a rare opportunity for a sales person to truly use the product they sell and to truly buy into it themselves.

LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER If you want to create their dream holiday you need to know exactly what they want, what their dream holiday looks like so you can make it a reality for them.

Here are some of the many benefits of working in travel and leisure sales:

1 – YOU GET TO SELL SOMETHING TRULY AMAZING.

Many travel sales professionals will travel to the destinations themselves being able to then describe it first hand to future customers. Most sales professionals might get a bit of training on the product they sell or be able to take part in a demo, but with this you can truly experience the product which gives you a huge benefit when it comes to selling it.

It is rare for someone to book travel that isn’t fun unless it is work related. Most of the time it is a couple’s trip, a boys or girls holiday or a family vacation. These things are fun and exciting making the sales process fun and exciting.

You get to talk about all of the nice things they want to do, the sights, the restaurants, the theme parks etc.

Yes, I’m sure we can all get excited about some form of technology, a car or many of the other wonderful things that sales people sell, but can you really beat selling a holiday? It could be selling the dream getaway to the Maldives or a family holiday to Disney world. These are things that people genuinely get excited about, things that mean a lot to people.

Here at the Women in Sales Awards we have met some of the best women out there selling travel and leisure and here are some of their top tips:

Whilst selling travel and leisure is truly rewarding both financially and through job satisfaction it is not easy. When the world is in recession and people are worried about what they spend their money on, getting them to spend it on holidays becomes more challenging. Your customers will be very demanding as you are often asked to go through hundreds of options, destinations, flights, hotels all to get the best possibly holiday for them.

USE VISUAL AIDS This can include pictures and videos that make their trip even more real and tangible so when it comes to closing the deal, they know exactly what they’re buying.

FIND THEIR EMOTIONAL DRIVERS This might be taking their family away, their honeymoon, a stag/ hen do, find why they want to go away and use that as the focus of the pitch.

BUILD TRUST If you’re going to ask for hundreds or thousands for a trip or holiday they need to trust you. Show them that you know what you’re talking about and that they will be protected.

USE SOCIAL MEDIA There are so many great pages and travel bloggers that provide a fantastic real insight into the world that you can use to sell.

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Will Women Save The Sales Industry?

A good salesperson can help their customers solve problems, save money, become more efficient and effective in what they do. Good sales people live to serve their customers, often pulling together everything in their power to ensure they provide the best possible product and service. Unfortunately, when you ask people what they think of sales people the above isn’t what is often described.

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f you were to ask someone today to describe a sales person, what do you think they would say?

Pushy, un-trustworthy, high pressure, misleading, target driven, selfish, talk the talk, unreliable? These are often the words associated with sales people which is far from the reality for most sales professionals working today.

Now if you were to ask someone to describe what a sales person looks like chances are they will describe the sleazy salesman in a suit. The man with slicked back hair who will make as many deals as it takes for you to sign on the dotted line! It’s the stereotype that haunts the sales industry and is the main reason so many people fear and are resistant to sales people.

WILL THIS EVER CHANGE? It will take a long time to eradicate this stereotype and unfortunately with so many sales people still putting pressure on customers it can be difficult to imagine it ever changing. Sales is a target driven profession with those targets managed heavily by sales managers and sales directors across the globe.

There is a lot of change needed from the very top of a sales organization to help slowly change the association attached to sales. There is however one other change that is rapidly transforming the industry, female sales professionals.

Imagine asking someone to now describe a female sales professional?

What words would come to mind?

How would they feel about dealing with a female sales professional against a male sales professional?

If you’re being honest with yourself they would probably feel more comfortable thinking about buying from a female, they probably wouldn’t feel that they would be untrustworthy or they would pressure them into buying something they didn’t need. Suddenly that bad stereotype of a sales person doesn’t apply, suddenly sales is seen as a good profession, one that can be trusted.

HOW ARE WOMEN CHANGING THE SALES INDUSTRY? Women are still a minority in the sales industry although this is changing. Recent LinkedIn data suggests that 39% of sales people across the world are women, which means we’re getting closer to an even split. The question is what impact is that happening to the sales industry due to this change?

A recent data survey done by Gong. io analysing 30,469 B2B sales calls found some fascinating insights. The data showed that men had a 49% likelihood of moving opportunities to the next stage, while women boasted 54%. What is even more impressive is that women’s win rates were 11% higher than men’s (on average).

A recent blog by Gong’s Senior Director, Chris Orlob, described an interesting story: Tonni Bennett, VP of Sales at Terminus, had an interesting observation to offer. She provided an example that highlights how quantitative data only tells half of the story. It’s important to also understand the quality of the call.

She once had two reps that both talked too much on calls: A male and a female.

When the male talked too much, he rambled on in a way that derailed the

conversation and hurt his credibility.

He would often answer simple “yes/ no questions” with a long-winded response that sparked more questions from the prospect.

While the woman also talked too much, she was usually making persuasive, strong selling points or sharing a customer story instead of rambling and going off on tangents.

WOMEN TO THE RESCUE The stereotype of a bad salesperson dominates the minds of people across the world. Back in the day when sales was a heavily male dominated industry they were trained to push anyone and everyone to buy. That stereotype now continues through films and TV’s making it at the front of everyone’s mind when they think of a sales person.

Women are now starting to have a far greater presence in the industry and are rapidly changing that perception. The data shows that women are proving to be greater sales professionals in closing sales, which added to the fact they don’t carry a bad stereotype or fearful association, means a lot for the entire sales industry.

Women are literally saving the sales industry right now, one customer at a time.

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Without Noticing Are You Guilty Of Devaluing Your Business?

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ost commercial businesses and ideas that fail do so because of cash flow. Not because of the idea, product or service offered, but because of inadequate cash flow. For those that succeed, we accept that eventually base sales targets have to be met.

But there is a deep problem. One that goes beyond a CRM system and that affects the complete commercial success of a project, product or even a company.

This positioning ties into an evolutionary perspective. The perceived status in itself may have given the profession less development miles than other more recognised professions. From these roots I feel the management evolution for sales has not matched that of other critical management disciplines. Yet every commercial service or product has to be sold in one way or another for viable outcomes.

We are now in a flurry of new technology, businesses, ideas, products and competition.

Business landscapes are shifting, companies are being divided into multiple agile business units, tech clusters are increasing, and there is a rapid rise of innovators and an escalation of single ownership businesses.

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If you are not selling then everything else, good idea or not, is performed in vain. If you are not achieving the sales you need, then all will inevitably regress or cease and will do so at a cost.

Founder & MD Assess Renew Collaborate (ARC)

We understand that sales does not happen in isolation. As with any well run business all parts interplay. All roles affect value.

Value sells. Perceived value sells. All businesses want their offering to be considered of value. How best to create value is often debated and no doubt, through many a philosophising brandy glass discussion. Suffice to say that all disciplines including sales plays a role.

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will find his viewpoints challenging.

In his work I see why for example, sales in particular has high turnover of staff. In my opinion, the major causation is more weighted to the adopted management process rather than the employee.

But I would like to highlight one aspect that I find defining. One in my experience that is totemic to both the problem and the solution to achieving the holy grail of sustainable success. That is sales feedback. “Value” and “feedback” are inextricably linked.

Feedback is the commercial elixir of the business world. It can keep a business current to actual market needs and helps to realise optimal business growth. Feedback can affect how you value your product and business commercially. Simply put, feedback can protect and inform your way forward. But feedback has greater validity the more accurate and relevant the information is. But you need to be extremely careful that you are not masking ineffectual operational performance, by basing action solely on the observations and data of sales personnel or a CRM programme.

An intriguing observation that gives pause was provided

by W. Edwards Demming, the revered legendary statistician and management consultant (author of the defining Red Bead Experiments), he said “every person in your company is a customer”.

This line carries immense weight.

It intimates that quality sells and that quality starts internally with processes, policies and enabling incompany frameworks. That sounds straight forward but Demming offered a rationale that completely challenged western convention to management; arguably, radically outperforming same.

Demming’s teaching is recognised for helping revolutionise Japan’s post war industrial revolution. Helping to institutionalise “quality control” within the Japanese manufacturing sector, taking them from low quality imitators to qualitative world leaders. An incredible reversal of fortune when you consider that from 1950 to around 1968, the super powers had little commercial competition as many other countries were rebuilding from a point of decimation.

He also said that “only 6% of problems industry can be traced to the workers... 4% caused by management or the system” and “no organisation can survive just with good people”. Deming’s “5 diseases” makes a very interesting study. In my opinion he turns management on its head providing a seismic shift in ethos and goal identification. Some

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Demming’s re-thinking of a management framework is purposed for greater success. Not one that unwittingly hinders.

This is applicable for sales as with any other discipline. A system of management that enables greater success seems an obvious desire that all organisations are seeking. But sometimes the limitations or shortcomings of a particular management system or style may not be readily evident. If a process hinders without you knowing, then the validity for the reasons given for not hitting targets may be skewed and therefore maybe misinformation.

In good faith, the misleading data will affect fundamental forecasting and planning. You may modify either the product, production runs, marketing, sales presentations, staff movement, management structures and the like, making strategic changes based upon misinformation.

Constantly trying to move forward on misinformation, at best, is not an efficient business practice and at worst can be devastating. What damage do you think this strategy can do committing resources of time, finance and effort proceeding on misinformation? What could be the cost to your organisation and to you as a result? For definite you are increasing the risk of failure and being very busy about it.

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