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Today’s show featured an interview with Jennifer Kenney Smith, known as JKS. After a hugely successful career in enterprise sales, she now each leaders & executives how to Unlock their Power and Up-level their Life. She uses yoga to help manifest that.
Find JKS on LinkedIn.
JKS’ ADVICE: “In the corporate world, we are empowered, we can make new choices, but it’s going to take some new patterns, new programming, overriding the ones that drop us into comfort and keep us in fear. I can do my breath work. I can do some box breath here to override the discomfort or physiology. If I get up and I move my body, throw on an amazing playlist with your favorite songs, I promise you, you start to move a little different.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: We’re talking with Jennifer Kenney-Smith, who goes by JKS. A lot of people know her as that. I’m excited to talk to you today, JKS, and for our listeners, this is the first time in the history of the Sales Game Changers Podcast that we’re going to be talking about why yoga can be helpful for you in your sales career. A little background. I actually met JKS, this was before the pandemic, and I was taking your classes. A funny story, when you take someone through a yoga class, you take them through this journey from the moment you sit down on the mat till the end of your final namaste. You take us through this journey, you tell stories, and I remember I said to myself, “This woman here must be in sales.” I went up to you and I said, “What do you do for a living besides teaching yoga?” Of course, you said you are in sales, enterprise sales.
Give us a little bit of an introduction to you and then I want to talk about what you’re doing, and then we’re going to talk about how the sales professionals listening can use yoga to become better sales professionals.
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here and I think it’s such a great topic. I spent the last 26 years in IT hardware/software sales. The first maybe year and a half was commercial sales. Then I moved into federal sales. But even before that, I’d been in sales. I started young as a waitress, and then I sold high-end jewelry at a department store and at the mall. That started my college venture where I was making money while I was going to school. Then I got into commercial sales printing. That’s really the journey began there. I was just putting up a blog post on the motive of me moving into hardware/software sales is I learned from commercial printing that there was more money to be made in hardware/software. This was in early 2000s. I thought I would fast track my success ladder by going to grad school.
I graduated with an undergrad, and then six months later, went into grad school. In grad school met an engineer who got me an interview at a company called StorageTek. I lived in Colorado near Boulder, where the headquarters was, and went through their associate program. My first gig with StorageTek was the Department of Veterans Affairs. I had at the young age of 20 something, 200 hospitals, major data centers. I fell in love with selling to the government at that point in time. That’s where it really all began.
Fred Diamond: On the Sales Game Changers Podcast, I’ve interviewed so many sales leaders. I’m based in Northern Virginia, as are you. The big industry here is selling to public sector, federal, state, and local education. All of the big companies, the IBMs, Oracles, Salesforces, they all have huge offices here. I’ve interviewed a lot of their sales leaders on the Sales Game Changers Podcast. What is it about the federal marketplace that is attractive to sales professionals?
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: I believe it’s being a part of the mission. I believe that those two want to make an impact and to feel good about the work that they’re doing. For example, with the VA, one of my first introductions to the VA, a gentleman that had the cube across from me gave me a business card and said, “Go speak to this guy.” His name was Dr. Eliot Siegel. I assumed Bob, my peer, knew him. I called Dr. Siegel, who offered me a meeting, and I literally had no real training in this type of enterprise selling, but I didn’t know any better. I went and he offered me an opportunity to go to the RSNA Conference for Radiologists, this huge conference in Chicago, for me to meet all of his business partners.
To this day, I don’t know why he was so genuine and so kind to me, but he was. That gave me an introduction to a whole lot of influencers in not just the VA space, but in the medical space. We started designing major program pursuits together, and that felt really good. One of the things we were able to do was to shorten the meantime to the results that a vet was given to a condition or a biopsy so that it could potentially save their life. I felt pretty good about myself. Through different agencies that I had the opportunity to work with, I worked with House of Reps for a long time, the US Senate, with Walter Reed, really cool mission-critical programs. Deep inside of their mission work was the hardware and software that I was able to help them architect. That felt incredibly impactful and rewarding, and it gave a lot of meaning to why I showed up for work every day. I think that’s the difference from working in a commercial space and being a part of a service and a servanthood.
Fred Diamond: As I said at the top of the show, we’re talking today about yoga and how sales professionals can use yoga to better their career and to enhance their life. Talk about your yoga journey for a little bit. Why am I talking to you today? Again, we’re doing today’s interview in June of 2024, and I’ve known you, like I mentioned, I started taking some of your yoga classes in 2018, it probably was, maybe 2019. Of course, we connected on LinkedIn and followed you in your sales journey, but talk about why we’re talking about yoga today. Talk about your journey, and then let’s get specific into how our listeners can deploy some of these skills that you get in yoga.
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: The gift of the federal sales, we just talked about that, that service and that being a part of a mission. But what we didn’t mention is when you work for a commercial company that has quotas and shareholders and stockholders who like to see results based on quotas and forecast, these rules can be incredibly stressful. They’re incredibly demanding. As much as I enjoyed almost all of my journey, there were times where I was overwhelmed. I was high stressed. I did this for many years. I was also a single mom for most of my career. Add in that extra level of uncertainty and stress and trying to manage a schedule with children and travel, I traveled a lot.
I found that at one point in my career, I started having panic attacks because of the inability to manage all that stress. If I had known about yoga, I probably could have prevented them. But a therapist had recommended I go to yoga to learn how to breathe and the anatomy of the breath. When we’re overstressed and we’re living in that top 20% of the lungs, that short, it’s called the fight or flight breath, we’re not able to come into rest and digest where we’re more calm. Why this is really impactful for anyone, any role that they’re presenting or in front of an audience, I think most of us have a certain sense of stage fright or fear of speaking publicly. This breath practice can just give you the ability to calm everything down in the body so you have connection to the body.
Think of this, the anatomy is the diaphragm presses downward, so the belly has to expand forward. Then we fill the bottom of the lungs rather than the top. You bring in the inhale from the bottom to the middle of the chest all the way to the top, and then a slow, steady exhale, and the body starts to relax. It moves from that fight or flight into this rest. You can be present, you can articulate, you can expand upon thoughts, you can feel confident enough to raise your hand in a meeting and share your voice, “I have some ideas.” A lot of ways, just the breathing practice of yoga was able to help give me the tool to be able to be present and to not be afraid of, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to be nervous. I’m afraid to say something. What if I look stupid?” All these fears we all have.
I started doing yoga, and the beauty is it did help me with my anxiety, and it did help me override those old fear patterns that was causing the panic. But what it really gifted me was a personal relationship with myself that I just hadn’t developed. I’d been a high performer my whole life, which caused this external desire to please. I’m a former people pleaser, and in sales and high performance, it causes and contributes to great results because I want to perform and I want to hit the accelerators, and I want to get the recognition. However, it keeps a score in the body where we may not always feel well, we get really stressed, and then that leads to a whole bunch of dysfunction in the body.
Long story short, why I think yoga is really incredible for sales performers and leadership is one, the breath practice. Two, to help prevent future disorders in the body, future disease, because you start to build this relationship and cadence with you, with your body, that you may not have had before.
Fred Diamond: Let’s talk about what yoga is because a lot of people may not understand, and there’s probably a lot of myths. A lot of people who have never done a yoga class might be thinking that it’s about putting your body into the shape of a pretzel and they’ll be away from it. First of all, the word yoga, it’s a kind word, but it also can be an intimidating word if that’s what you think it is. Give us an overview of what yoga is so the people listening understand, if they decide to use yoga to help them get better at sales, which we’re going to talk in a little more detail, what exactly does that look like?
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: Great question. There’s eight limbs of yoga. The physical, or asanas as we call it, the postures, is just one limb. It is the one I love the most and that I do teach because I liked the cadence of moving my body and having the breath move through the body. Something for people that are in a stress role, whatever it is, it could be any, it doesn’t have to just be sales, but your stressed chronically. The way that you can move your body to move prana, life force energy, through the body to help energize it and awaken it, as well as this idea of letting stuff go. We hear these mantras, just let it go, but how? We can physically move through it. But meditation is a form of yoga. If you just find a few moments to just sit and come back into that breath, the diaphragm comes down, the belly expands, we breathe up, full breath, and it’s a yogic breath, that can be counted as yoga.
The word yoga translates to yoke, which means to union, which means to connect. We want to just think about it as, well, am I connected to me? Am I connected to myself? Where am I in this moment? Am I present? There’s a lot of mindfulness out there today, which is great. It’s this idea of when there’s lots of chaos and disorder in the world, in the office and life, can we just take a breath to come back, collect ourselves, and become present? Someone could begin yoga just with sitting in their chair, taking a moment before you jump on the Zoom call or grab your phone. The notifications can cause a lot of energy to stir up and stress.
I remember when I first left my corporate job, that Slack messenger used to make me so anxious. You hear the ding and then you hear the keyboard. I’d be triggered in a way that I’m like, “Oh, crap. Did I miss a to-do list? Did I forget to send a note back?” We can collect all of that chaos and drop into the body through yoga. Some meditation, any breath body practice. I’m teaching a walking meditation tomorrow morning. We’re going to meet in the area of my neighborhood, do a long hike, but we begin it with some breath work, just dropping into the body, and then a meditative walk where we’re allowing nature to be the guide and to be fully connected there. There’s a lot of ways you can experience it. If someone’s interested in that physical, the asana practice, there’s beginner yoga. You can begin with something that’s a little bit more accessible, where it doesn’t look like Cirque du Soleil. But if you’re ready for that, I can teach that too anywhere. Just begin, is what I’d recommend.
Fred Diamond: I belong to Lifetime Fitness, which is a health club. That’s actually where I met you. I had done usual stuff at the gym, and they had a studio there, and I noticed people coming out of it drenched in sweat. I said, “Well, I’m not sweating. I probably need a different type of a workout.” I started doing what they call the hot yoga. The class at Lifetime is called Flow. Basically, it’s an hour-long class, you’re in 92 to 95 degrees. The class is fascinating. You start out in a very calm place, and then you start doing some movements, and then you do a little more assertive movements, they call it Warrior One, Warrior Two, and then you go into a 10-minute intense flow to keep moving.
But the reason I’m telling people this is, and then eventually you reach a peak and then you slow back down, and then you get to what I call the dessert, the Shavasana, where you lie still and quiet with your thoughts for anywhere for two to three minutes. But I’ve noticed, JKS, that I would get ideas flowing through the yoga class, and I don’t know if you guys cared at all, but I would bring a notepad. In the middle I would write down notes. It’s like, call this person or present this on LinkedIn, or something.
I know you’re doing some work with corporations now and with teams. What does that look like? Getting into the hot yoga, a lot of people are afraid of that. I don’t recommend that for everybody, but for me, it just works. I try to do it five times a week, but it’s kind of intense and it really isn’t for everybody. If you were to bring something, like you’re doing now, to a sales team or a corporation, talk about what that looks like and how would you create something for them?
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: You are a very athletic yogi at this point, sometimes doing two a day. Definitely an advanced yogi and you’re so spot on. What I love about being in that flow, when we are out of the head and we drop into the body, all sorts of amazing ideas can come. Another way people can get into this flow is the shower time, water element. Sometimes you feel like this, I’m in the shower and I get these brilliant ideas. Yes. Calling in and honing into that connection to source greater than we can explain, that there’s ideas ever flowing to us when we’re open enough to receive, not heads down on our iPhone all day long. It makes me crazy when I see people walking outside with their iPhone or on a sales call. Go, just be in nature and connect. Thanks for sharing that.
What I’m doing with corporations there, what I’ve learned recently is there’s still a lot of fear. There’s a lot of programming that came from the pandemic that is still causing a great disconnection from ourselves, each other, the sales team, the environment clients, clients also on Zoom, not turning cameras on, it’s really hard to find that connection. The core issue there, the driver is from fear. How can we override fear? It can be there, but we can dance with it, we can address it. But how do we get to a place where we’re not just leaning in comfort and looking for the path to least resistance or maybe even easy? How do we understand what’s happening in the body? A little bit of that breath work I talked about and move into this deeper connection to, what am I in control of?
If I have an outcome and an objective I need to get to, it’s not just the gap to the goal, but the gap to the gain. What’s going well and how can I hone into my own skills, my own awareness, my own intuition, and setting new habits to work towards the goals instead of just being, “The customer’s not calling me back. I don’t know where it’s at. The partners aren’t returning my calls.” That’s very much external, “I don’t have any more control,” but we do. Dropping into the body and understanding where can we sharpen our own intuition, our own edge there.
Some of the workshops I’ve been working on is understanding what are the drivers in our day-to-day decisions. If we know now that the reason we don’t want to call that customer back or to “bother” somebody, or slide into somebody’s DMs on LinkedIn, that’s not super comfortable, but we have a duty and we have a purpose and we have a mission. We have a goal and we have an agenda to go do these things. How can we be embodied coming back into this presence?
Once we understand what are the drivers, overriding that, understanding it’s really fear at the root of everything. The reason that we’re looking for comfort is we’ve been conditioned to it. No one wants to go do the hard thing. Let’s just be honest. It would be easier to watch Netflix and order pizza and just chillax. But then there’s people going running ultra-marathons and doing polar plunges. That’s choice. They’re flexing that muscle of willpower and expansion. Where in the middle can we learn some practices like yoga?
Being super bendy, I’m sure in your first class you were like, “This is difficult.” Where can we initiate some more challenges in our own personal wellbeing, in a positive stressor, where we know we’re not going to get hurt? Some of it’s just overriding the old program. “This is hard,” yes. I don’t even use that word anymore in my language. Choose your hard. Working out every day is hard, but so is diabetes. I’m going to choose to work out every day.
In the corporate world of understanding we are empowered, we can make new choices, but it’s going to take some new patterns, new programming, overriding the ones that drop us into comfort and keep us in fear. Then say, “Wait, I can do my breath work. I can do some box breath here to override the discomfort or physiology.” If I get up and I move my body, throw on an amazing playlist with your favorite songs, I promise you, you start to move a little different.
I put together some knowledge in the workshops, really understanding what the data is, what’s happening in the body, because there’s truth to what fear will do to the body. It usually sets us in a course of procrastination and doing nothing. How do we override it? Then some simple practices, whether it’s breath work, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s some yoga. It doesn’t have to be the physical, but I would highly recommend, especially to your point, in a hot room where there’s music, where there’s a rigorous flow, you start to recognize the body can override old program of fear.
One simple example of this fear stuff. When we were little, we saw the commercial probably weekly, that, “Oh, I’ve got a back pain. Take Tylenol. The back pain’s gone.” We think when something is painful, we should just have the antidote. Well, there’s no growth in that. Practicing dancing in the fear with these types of modalities and overriding it, reprogramming, and a little bit of neuroplasticity, it’s changing the neuropathways in the brain is what’s actually happening.
Fred Diamond: I want to talk about two other things. As you’re talking here, I remember when I first started, I would hide in the back. The third row, maybe second mat from the end. Because there were people in the class who were amazing. I don’t mean the teachers, of course you were amazing, but there was a whole bunch of other people upfront who were doing these unbelievable moves. I said, “Why am I even here?” Then eventually it gets to the point where you realize there’s a point to this where you’re on your mat. Nobody cares.
I used to think people were looking at me and they’re saying, “What’s this guy doing here? He shouldn’t be here because he can’t do Warrior Three for 10 seconds.” But now I’ve come to realize that nobody cares. Everybody is on their mat and everybody is focused on what they try to do. A lot of the yoga teachers, they say, “It’s your practice.” What do you need to practice for the next 60 minutes? What are you hoping to achieve? They’re very kind, typically, the yoga teachers. They are like, “Do what you’re here for. What brought you here today? What are you looking to work on?”
We talk on the Sales Game Changers Podcast all the time about continuous improvement. About listening to podcasts and reading and studying. The great sales professionals right now are the ones who are doing the right research to bring their customers solutions. One thing that yoga is, it’s a way for you to continue to work on yourself. Now I can do Warrior Three for 10 seconds. There are days I don’t do it, and then I say to myself, “Okay, why am I not doing it today?” But you have that opportunity to work on yourself.
I want to talk about community for a second. One thing I started noticing is you used the word yogi in the beginning here. I noticed a lot of the same people would keep coming back. We’re having this conversation today on June 14th, 2024, because I met you in a yoga studio. Jennifer Kenney-Smith would not be on the Sales Game Changers Podcast if I didn’t go into the yoga studio on whatever day I went on and took your class every Thursday at 6:00, whatever it was. Talk about the yoga community and how that can also enhance the careers of sales professionals.
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: Great question. Especially in Northern Virginia, there’s a lot of folks from the IT space, whether it’s consulting, or sales, or government, as well as athletes. There was a lot of athletes in our space too that come in and are seeking a connection, more so than just that fear of, “Who am I and why should I be in this room?” I know when you were in the back of the room, and I remember right before the pandemic, you were up by the front where I teach by the speaker. You navigated that because you started to reflect on, “Wait, this is my practice, and this is about my own growth and my own experience and expansion.”
What’s really cool is there’s a point in time where people come, I think, for self-care and reflection and maybe curiosity. Maybe someone suggested they come to yoga, but then when you start moving into that daily ritual where you’re at that five-days-a-week, it moves into self-mastery. We move from just having a practice to it’s a devotion, devotion to you and in your own growth and expansion, which is really powerful. With that idea, when you come out of this movement practice, this breath body experience, when I started teaching, and the idea of me building community and fostering this connection to each other was when I was a student in yoga, I remember going through so much emotion on the mat because the body allows the space to open so the emotions can come through. Some were sad, some were anger, some were spiritual. I remember lifting my gaze out of a Shavasana and looking around and people packing up quickly and leaving.
Then I was like, “Wow, that feels awful.” Because I think there’s a beautiful part of healing when you’re seen, when someone else just sees you. It doesn’t even have to be an embrace, but just say, “Hey, I see you. I saw something.” You came in one way making a potato head angry face, and then you leave that yoga studio another way, changed. It only takes a few moments to completely change. I set the intention when I became a yoga teacher, “I am going to see every person and make sure they know that they’re seen.” I stand at the doorway so when they leave, I check in on everybody. “Hey, how are you? I saw you. Great job. You kicked up, you did this, or you showed up,” just to be seen. That fostered this beautiful synergy that then they started doing that to each other.
Sometimes people would show up on a mat and they’d have a new conversation. Or if somebody didn’t come for a couple days, they’d say, “Hey, where’s Jane? I haven’t seen her.” I’d send Jane a text, “Hey, we’re thinking about you. Are you okay?” They cultivated this beautiful family beyond this just yoga mat experience. Then we’re having dinners together, or connecting on Facebook, and then helping each other when there’d be a job opportunity or a speaking engagement, or, “Hey, can you network and help me connect?” Organically with the intention of community, of connection.
Fred Diamond: JKS, you’ve been very successful in enterprise sales. I didn’t realize you worked at StorageTek. When I started my career, I used to work for a company in the Gartner world that used to do analysis of tech companies, and StorageTek was one of the companies that I analyzed when I first started my analysis career. But you’ve been successful in sales. We have a lot of sales professionals listening today. Aside from yoga, what might be some of your advice for either the men or the women listening today who are looking to take their sales career to the next level? What might be some things that you’ve observed over the years that you would like sales professionals to know?
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: I loved building relationships, and it was always about the relationship over the deal, over the quota. To be able to be impactful and show up to connect. I think there’s different personality tests. I’m definitely a connector. The thing is, is that your team, your extended team, as well as your customers and your partners, one day they may be your boss. One day they may be your employee. To always show up in the most loving, kind, mindful way of connecting and serving. I think that’s done me well because it was never just about me extended through the team. I loved it. I still love to be in sales. I love helping people, and I love connecting. That’s really my agenda, my motive. Show up and help each other.
Fred Diamond: You mentioned public sector, there’s people who devoted their entire careers. A lot of people are listening to the show right now to the selling solutions to public sector. Some have been with the same company for 30 years, Microsoft or Oracle, perhaps. Others have gone from company to company. You meet the same people who have been in this industry for years. They might be working at a competitor today, and they may be your biggest partner tomorrow. You definitely want to keep forging those relationships and stay in touch and let people know that you know about them.
I want to thank JKS today. I’m excited for what you’re doing. I want to thank you for this conversation today. If anybody here wants to talk to JKS, you could find her on LinkedIn. If you want to talk to me about my experiences with yoga, I love it. I remember I was afraid of it. Then like you said, I stood on the back line and now I look forward to going at least three or four or five times per week. I’m actually going to go in about three hours after today’s interview.
JKS, you’ve given us so many great ideas. Give us one specific action that people listening to today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast should do to take their sales career to the next level.
Jennifer Kenney-Smith: I would say put on your calendar at least once a day to find time for you to connect back to you. Whether it’s a couple breaths, or turning off your phone, or going outside and putting your face in the sun, everything that you’re craving begins with you. Start there.
Fred Diamond: Once again, I want to thank JKS, Jennifer Kenney-Smith, for being on today’s Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.
Transcribed by Mariana Badillo