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COURTNEY’S TIP: “If somebody is kind enough to give you feedback, you take the feedback, and you take it well and you leave with a smile on your face and you say thank you, and you action on it.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Today with me, I have Courtney Broadwell. She is VP of channels at Geordie. Welcome, Courtney. 

Courtney Broadwell: Thanks, Gina. Thanks so much for having me today. It’s really wonderful to be here chatting with you. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Our pleasure. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to be where you are today. 

Courtney Broadwell: I actually started my career at a startup. I’m currently a serial startuper. But my first startup was one that I think most people have heard of. It was a company called Veeam Software, that’s still kicking today. They’re doing very well and they’re the leader in the space. But started off there transitioning from a different industry. I started off in a role, cold calling and dialing for dollars. Those days were some of the most fun of my career. 

I spent eight years at Veeam, where I did multiple roles. I started off in sales. When I saw what a true partner leader could do, I was very interested, because it brings so much more scale than your average seller. It’s not for everyone, but I knew immediately that it was for me. I took the opportunity that I had to grow at Veeam. I did multiple partner roles. I worked with a lot of different types of partners and I helped our sales team and our company grow and contributed in a very big way. When I left Veeam, they were over a billion dollars in revenue and had half a million customers, which is just crazy in today’s world that we’re in with all of these different companies popping up every single day. 

Then after Veeam, I feel like I had a pretty good foundation for a good breadth of understanding of the partner space. I went over to a small company in the application security space called Snyk, which is a pretty big brand name in security today. I started the partner org there, had a ton of fun at Snyk. After five years, went to a company called Cyera, which was, still is, a data security company that was leading the pack. I think really nailed making that data security category a true category versus a feature, built the partner team there. 

In April of this year, I really just knew that I wanted to move into a company that was addressing AI security, and specifically agentic security. I found the team at Geordie, and Geordie is the leader in AI agent security and governance that’s built for enterprise teams that are adopting agentic AI at scale. It’s a really fun time to be building with Geordie right now. Right now, we’re a 50-person company. We’re addressing one of the world’s biggest challenges right now, how do you secure agentic AI as everyone is starting to adopt it? It’s bringing a ton of risk to organizations and we are just having a ton of fun doing it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It sounds like you’re not only in a fast-paced startup arena, which is not for the weak of heart, but you’re doing something that is so cutting edge at this point, and really such a focus. It must be insane there at days. 

Courtney Broadwell: It is. I was talking to a partner recently who is an AI specialist and he said, “If someone really tells you they’re an AI specialist, they’re just full of it, because things are moving so fast in this space you can’t keep up, even when it’s your whole job to keep up.” It feels a bit overwhelming at time, as I think everyone feels a bit overwhelmed by AI, but it’s really meaningful at the same time when you’re really helping address this huge problem that I think is really an existential crisis that the world is facing, when you think about it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: You are so right. We hear that a lot, that it is almost impossible to keep up with the changes. So many companies talk about they’re buying all these tools and they’re telling their salespeople, “You have to use them.” It’s almost too overwhelming. I think people just end up relying on your basics. There needs to be like a whole industry, which could be your next startup maybe, just trying to help people wrap their minds around it long enough to use it before it changes. 

Courtney Broadwell: I think that’s a really good point. I think you just have to take it one task at a time, figure out one thing that you feel like you can automate a bit with AI, with little risk that comes with it, because with everything that you’re automating with AI, there is risk that comes with that. But just think about the little mundane things that you do where you could become a super version of yourself. 

I feel like with every company I’ve gone to, I’m always more impressed with their tech stack than the last, but here at Geordie, just all of the different tools that we have that we’re using, it’s very cutting edge. I feel super cool when I go to work every day and I play around with different things that I never thought I’d do, never thought I’d be coding in my life. It’s just really fun to learn. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That is the cool thing about startups, is that you get to try things that you probably wouldn’t in an established company, because those roles are very well defined. You’re clearly drawn to the build-it-from-zero. When you get into these roles, what’s the first thing that you tackle when you go into a startup with no partner program? 

Courtney Broadwell: You just hit something that’s so true. There are two different types of people. There are builders and there are people who like to maintain and refine, and I don’t think one is better than the other, and I think they’re both equally hard in their own ways. But to me, I’ve done both, and it’s extremely rewarding to build, because I wake up every single morning just so energized and have the ability to see oftentimes a pretty massive impact even from the day before in what I’ve done. It’s almost like a little high that you get every day just from what you’re able to do. 

I think that when you start thinking about the weeks and the months that pass by, you’ve really impacted the entire trajectory of the company, like every single person has, and it’s powerful. There’s just a real sense of team also at this size. When you’re working together towards a common goal, it just feels so satisfying when you hit those goals. 

Some days I wake up and I just can’t believe that I get to do this job with such an awesome group of people, and I tell a lot of them a lot, especially the people who are younger in career, like, “These are the days. Three years from now we’ll be talking about these days we’re in now, so we need to stop and smell the roses a little bit,” because it does go by fast when you’re moving so fast. 

When I join a company like Geordie, I think the first thing that I do is align internally, because even though we’re small, we have company goals. I need to make sure that I’m aligning myself to our company goals and what my actions are, because there’s not a repeatable playbook that you take to every company in the partner space. It’s super complex. I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time to be in partnerships with what’s happening with the AI providers really shifting everyone’s role. 

I also think that founders will have a limited understanding of partnering and what the real potential of that is. They might have perceptions from the past, and it’s my job to either validate or prove them wrong. I also can’t help our broader team identify the right partnerships and also align with my strategy if I’m not aligned with every single stakeholder in the business. I think the work we do in the technology space is also hyper-competitive and I have to get everyone marching towards the same goal and aligning to our broader company goals. I’ve learned that doing this, getting buy-in, articulating my value back to the company and to the leaders of the company is the most important thing that I can do to be taken seriously and to continue to grow in my career. 

Gina Stracuzzi: You’ve touched on so many things that I would like to continue down those paths. I remember having really heady jobs, a couple of them over my career, and you are absolutely right about the excitement and the feeling like you’re just doing something so monumental. It’s a great feeling. 

I want to turn the conversation a little bit and talk about women in roles, because so often in companies, women will get funneled into individual contributor roles for years before they get considered for strategic or leadership tracks. How did you make the jump from direct sales into channels and partnerships? What would you tell women who are early in their career who want to make a similar move? 

Courtney Broadwell: It’s a really good talk track because, I will be honest, I got stuck in that slump for a few years and was frustrated and didn’t really understand why. I had a mentor, who is still just a really good friend and mentor to me, that really showed me that I just wasn’t being impactful enough with how I was using my time. I wasn’t being impactful enough with how I was articulating my value back up, managing up. Also, I didn’t know how to say no. I was just a workhorse. I don’t think that’s super strategic, when you’re just saying yes to everything with no focus. 

One of the things that I also have noticed is that women are often mentored to focus on things that they’re already good at. You’re taught, leverage the power of your network, and maintain relationships, and other soft skills. I do think that most women’s brains are built differently than men, and we’re naturally good at those things. My blood boils a bit when I hear advice like this to women, not because it’s not good advice, but because that’s not actually what helps you grow within a business. It’s a part of it, and you absolutely need relationships in a network, but if you’re just seen as that workhorse and you’re not highly impactful, and you’re not aligned to the business objectives, someone else is going to get selected for that promotion you want, or the role that you’ve been chasing. It’s hard. 

I have personal experience living through that, and once I got over that slump, I feel like I moved so fast and I accelerated. I do think women have a little bit of a superpower in this regard. If you can get that business acumen and the self-promotion right, and use those soft skills you naturally have, I really believe women can do just about anything they set their minds to. 

Gina Stracuzzi: You hit on something that’s really crucial to that, and that is strategically saying yes. You need to raise your hand, you need to be seen, you need to put yourself out there by the same token, as you were alluding to, that when you say yes to everything, that’s not giving you a chance to really shine at something really strategic or important. It’s just, “Courtney is the person we can go to to put out a fire or clean up a mess,” and that’s not what you want. You really want to get known to be something like the go-to person for something, and that’s advice that Fred Diamond, my business partner, gives to young career people all the time. Get to be known for something really important so people know that, like in your instance, Courtney is the person you need to talk to about this. That really can change the trajectory of your career. 

Courtney Broadwell: A hundred percent. I think it’s hard though. It’s hard to figure that out. I also think at the same time, you need to ask for feedback and you need to be willing to take the feedback. Because when you think about it from the view of someone who gives feedback, it’s hard to give feedback, especially when you don’t really have skin in the game with that person, if you’re just being asked for feedback. If somebody is kind enough to give you feedback, you take the feedback, and you take it well and you leave with a smile on your face and you say thank you, and you action on it. 

I think that’s also equally important, because we’re surrounded by people who are equally or better than we are at some things. I’m a big fan of you find people to surround you that have different strengths, and you ask them for feedback constantly. You’re not going to be good at everything. Nobody can be good at everything, but I think if you have certain people that you trust that are good at the things that you’re not good at, it helps you grow as well. 

Gina Stracuzzi: There are times too when people can give you feedback and you may not know how to action it. I hope that if you are brave enough to ask for feedback, you will be brave enough to say, “How would you suggest I fix it? What would you suggest I do? How can I do this differently?” Because if you don’t know where to go with that feedback, then it’s just words. 

Courtney Broadwell: Yeah, it’s such a good point. I think that’s how you develop really good relationships and mentorships. I think being brave and being bold and continuously digging and asking more questions, those are always good indicators when I have people doing those things. It makes me super happy when people trust me enough to come and ask for those things. 

Gina Stracuzzi: We talk about that in our programs all the time. It’s kind of like professors and teachers. They love it when people ask questions and want help, rather than everyone sitting there going, “Yeah, I get it.” 

Courtney Broadwell: I heard a funny quote once that was like, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question, just a dumb answer.” I like to tell people that, like don’t be afraid to ask things. It’s how you grow. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s great advice. When we spoke previously, you had talked about how startups give people a chance to touch every part of the business. That is so true, and I’ve been in a few startups myself, and it is exciting. Can you talk about the moment when there was a breadth of exposure that ended up being the right thing for you that really accelerated your career, or told you like, “I’m really interested in this piece?” 

Courtney Broadwell: It is crazy how just you can get a breadth of experience and it’s because startups operate just with so much speed and more tolerance for risk than large organizations. Part of that is because they’re small and they’re not publicly traded companies, but most of it is because you’ll just have a lot more responsibility on your plate. In my role, I interact with every single team at the company. I interact with our legal team for contracts, our HR team for hiring, multiple areas of marketing, the sales team, operations, customer success, products, executives, I probably left some off, but you name it, I have to work with them in some capacity. That’s just when we’re building partnerships. 

I don’t think there’s an area I don’t touch, but when you’re an IC, you’ll be tossed into things at a startup that you typically wouldn’t be at a larger company just because we need feedback on what you’re seeing in the field. I’ll come to you and ask for help building certain documents for partners based on the feedback that you’re hearing from customers and the challenges you’re seeing. You’ll get to interview candidates that you probably wouldn’t get to if you’re at a larger company, and you have the ability to learn and absorb so much. Again, really understand more about the business, which is hard to do sometimes when you’re at a large company and you are working on a very specific goal. 

I think also, when I talked earlier about how it feels like an extreme version of a team when you’re small, everyone’s interested in what you’re doing, everyone’s getting feedback and giving feedback to each other. It just doesn’t scale as well when you’re large. I think it’s hard. Sometimes things get lost a bit in just the numbers. 

It’s so funny. I think about the first time I had to help prepare for a board meeting at a previous company. It was so eye-opening, because you go to sales kickoff or company meeting and you hear the company goals and the objectives and the revenue targets. But I think really seeing how the board thinks about the business was really impactful for me, because it’s just different. It’s not just like, “Hey, here’s the goal. Let’s go chase it. Here’s how you individually do it.” But it’s really how do we think about this at a much larger scale? How do you think about it beyond just this quarter, beyond this year? 

It really helped me understand how to get a bit sharper with how I self-promote, like what I was talking about earlier. Also, the saying no thing. Everything I do needs to be tied back to this. If I’m not doing something that ties back to a board level initiative, I probably shouldn’t be doing it, because my time is limited, just like everybody’s is. 

This helped me just be punchier with my messaging to my executives. It helped show my impact better. It also really helped my communication with our executives, because when I sent something over, they knew that I was articulating a message that they needed to look at, and they needed to listen to, and that it was something important. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That is a really good point, that quite often in a larger company, you don’t get those opportunities to interact with the board. That’s a pretty rare experience. That really will make you, well, it should anyway, stand up and take notice and present your A game the whole way. A lot of times when we’re working, we’re just part of a collaboration of stuff and we do our input and somebody polishes it up, and then maybe the executive level sees it. Having to present at that level is just invaluable experience. 

Courtney Broadwell: Yeah, it pushes you in a really positive way, but definitely pushes you. I like to be pushed and I think that’s how you grow. It’s a good way to do it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: The tech space, even at large companies, is still heavily male dominated. Certainly, in venture capitalism and even the startup world, it’s still heavily male. It’s turning, but you’ve been in this space for a while now. What has it been like navigating that space and what’s changed? Or even from the start of your career, what have you seen changes and where do you think we’re headed with this? 

Courtney Broadwell: We’ve come a long way, honestly. I went to a concert when I was like 25 years old, and this is going somewhere, hear me out. There was an all-female band on stage and they gave a shout out to all the women in music that had paved the way for them to be on that stage and have the big stage and the audience that they did. I still think about that today. 

I think about it as it relates to the world that we’re in. Everyone has a responsibility to the women around us, the women that are starting their careers, the women that will be here after we’re all riding off into the sunset. I think the good thing over the last, I would say, eight-ish years, is that there’s more intentionality about being inclusive, about thinking about that. I do see many large companies and startups alike focusing on this. 

However, I always like when I’m the only woman in the room and I call it out. Oftentimes I am the only woman in the room. I don’t think men think about it until it is called out. But honestly, it starts a good conversation. I really do see a lot of empathy for men that I work with both internally and externally at the companies I’ve been at. I’m lucky now that our company has prioritized putting women in leadership when we’re small, because it will scale with the company. It brings diversity and thought, and I think stronger outcomes for the company when you’ve got good diversity and thought. 

But I think ultimately, calling it out in a non-combative way is a really good way to just get the conversation started, and ensuring that we’re drilling it into the heads of our colleagues and our allies that surround us. Because being a good business partner and a good friend really makes people want to listen and help. I think we also have to mentor and sponsor other women, but we have to encourage men to do that too, because I think they have a different perspective, and it’s important that we understand everyone’s perspective. 

Gina Stracuzzi: As a matter of fact, Fred and I spoke to a whole class of brand-new salespeople yesterday. That was one of the points that I brought up, was seek out mentors, but make sure that they are male and female. You need both perspectives and we need the allies, and made sure all the young men in the group knew that they need to be strong allies too. 

To your point, it’s quite interesting how quite often men who really mean well don’t even recognize what’s happening in a room until it’s called out. I had a guest on the show recently and she was talking about how she was in a meeting that was primarily men and she was trying to get even a chance to speak and she wasn’t getting that opportunity. She leaned to the gentleman next to her and told him her idea. At first, I was like, “Don’t give it away.” She said, “I just want you to say this out loud,” and he did and he got the floor immediately and they were like, “That’s a great thought. Great idea. Thanks so much,” and he’s like, “Yeah, it’s not mine. It’s hers. We’ve all been sitting around here talking over her and not giving her a chance to speak.” He told her later, he’s like, “I never realized how much that happens, and ever since then, I’m so acutely aware of it. It’s painful.” 

To your point, when you call people out in a non-combative way, it really does make a difference. If you get the good allies and they are everywhere, ask them for help. Ask them to listen up and watch for these things happening, because it can change everything in a heartbeat if a guy speaks up on behalf of the women in the room. 

Courtney Broadwell: Absolutely. I totally agree with you. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Let’s talk a little bit about someone who might be listening, who’s considering a startup. Now, a lot of people have been let go with big riffs at these much larger companies. They just come in and clear the field, so to speak. It leaves a lot of good people, one, trying to figure out what happened to their careers, but two, trying to consider what to do next. When you and I first spoke, you were suggesting that maybe those people should start looking at startup opportunities. 

I really liked the sound of that, because I think for people of a certain age, startups are really hard. I can appreciate that because it takes an energy level and you have to be able to do the chaos. What would you suggest to people who, especially women, who might find themselves in this situation all of a sudden? 

Courtney Broadwell: I think you’re right. I think that big tech is actually less stable than the startup space. When I poked my head out there to start looking for new roles in this space in April, I couldn’t believe the number of founders that were getting just a great amount of funding, really solving hard problems, and getting great traction. I think that there is more stability in the startup space. But I think you have to figure out what makes you feel fulfilled and satisfied with your work and ultimately what your goals are. I also think you have to remember that there’s different stages of startups too. You can go to an early one like Geordie, which is Series A, 50 people, or you can go to a larger one like a Series C or D company that have a thousand people. It’s a very different type of experience, but just as impactful. 

I’m a big believer in working for startups because they’re solving some of these challenges in a really dynamic way. We always need different schools of thought. We have people from large companies, we have people from other startups, we have people from mid-sized scale up companies. I think that that’s important. It’s important that we also consider people that are not serial startupers and that we also hire from outside of network. Because I see people in the startup space getting trapped in that like, “We’re just going to bring everybody we know over,” and it’s not super dynamic, honestly. 

But you’re right, the pace can be pretty hard. I have a family, I have children, and I’m in a hotel today, I’ve been gone a lot of weeks recently. I think that some weeks are harder than others. I’m thankful for technology and FaceTime and things like that when I’m away. This is kind of a controversial statement, but I don’t think there is such a thing as work-life balance. I really don’t. AI and phones and computers and just after COVID, I feel like there was no tolerance for downtime. I think it’s made it impossible. You just have to figure out what works for you. What is sacred time? How do you build that into your day? At the end of the day, you need to put 110% into it and be proud of what you do. 

I don’t think that most big tech companies, they’re working any less than we are. I think they’re just doing a different kind of work. There can be burnout in those types of companies too. You just have to be conscious of taking care of yourself and feeling passionate about what you’re doing. My three-year-old told me the other night he wanted to work for Geordie when he gets older, and that made me super happy because I’m like, “It’s infectious even to him, and he doesn’t know what Geordie does.” 

I do encourage people who are getting laid off, look at this space, find something interesting, and really push yourself hard to learn. Because I think that the skills that you bring to a startup can help them really up-level what they’re doing. Most of these companies are in a constant up-leveling motion. You try to move from one stage to the next and add a little bit more process, add a little bit more refinement. You also have to keep in mind, you can’t come in and everything’s perfect automatically, but just moving at the pace that the company is, and listening. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s interesting because in the Women in Sales Leadership Forum that I run, just the last cohort, there were three women in there that had left big organizations and gone to startups and then went back to big organizations. Two of them absolutely loved the startup environment, but then got hired back by the companies that let them go. One was just like, “Absolutely not. It’s just not for me.” To your point, you really have to know your own temperament and know if you can handle the kind of organized chaos that can be a startup environment. It’s good advice. More people should probably look at it without the trepidation necessarily. I hadn’t actually thought about the tiers of startups before. How does one find out information about where a startup is in their growth? 

Courtney Broadwell: It’s a great question. Typically, you can just Google it. You can look at their website. They’ll always have information or a blog or press release on when they’ve gotten their latest round of funding. You can see where they’re at in their journey, you can look at the number of employees, the types of customers they have, and that’ll give you a really good indication on where they’re at in their journey. Then be bold, reach out to the founder, reach out to the sales leader or the technical leader or whatever role you’re looking at, and just get more information about the company. 

I also keep in mind when I’m interviewing people to come work for me or to work for Geordie, it’s a big decision for the candidate as well. I make sure that they feel very comfortable and have talked to all the people within the organization that they would like to, because you’re right, it feels a bit risky sometimes when it’s early on, when you might not know people at the company. 

You made a funny point about people who’ve gone to startups and gone back. I’ve also seen people who have felt like they learned so much at a startup, about the broader parts of the business, they were able to go back to their previous company and take a role much higher than what they would have done in five, ten years at the company they were at. I think it can also help accelerate things for you in a way if you want to go back to a big company at some point. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s a really great point, especially if you feel at all stuck in your career. It could be just what you need. 

Courtney Broadwell: Good kick in the rear end. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Exactly. Well, this has been just a fabulous conversation. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. We are now at the part of our conversation where we like to ask our guests for one piece of final advice, something that people can put into place today to take their careers to the next level. What would you suggest? 

Courtney Broadwell: The biggest thing that you should do is think about how you want to grow, work on a plan, figure out where you want to be, and work backwards on a plan to get there. I think that you should be bold, you should be brave. You should try something new, whether it’s asking for feedback, asking for someone to be your mentor, going to look at working for a startup. You’ll be really amazed with what you’re able to accomplish and what you’re able to learn. 

You, the listener, you’re incredible. I think that there are so many women out there in the world that just aren’t doing enough, aren’t maximizing their potential. I want you to go out there, take a deep breath, roll your shoulders up, and go do something really awesome today to help yourself grow. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Thank you very much, Courtney Broadwell. We really appreciate it. I hope you’ll come back and visit us in a couple of years and let us know what you’re doing. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 878: Being the Workhorse Won’t Get You Promoted with Courtney Broadwell first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is a Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Bina on LinkedIn.

BINA’S TIP: “No matter where you are in your tenure, showing up every day with authenticity and the work ethic to do the best you can, and how do you uplift the organization. In those important boardroom meetings, in those important C-level meetings, internal or external, what brought me credibility is talking with a point of view backed by data and standing up for myself.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Today we’re talking with Bina Shah. Bina was with Oracle for many years, and like many of us, she found herself on the sad goodbye end of a layoff, but she is not letting that stop her. I wanted to have her on this podcast because I think so many of us get sidelined when things happen. This is really about positivity and intentionality and what you can do when you are handed those lemons that we all get. Welcome, Bina. I can’t wait to talk to you about what you’re doing with your life and how you faced this layoff. 

Bina Shah: Thank you, Gina. Appreciate it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Tell us a little bit about your history and your background and how you got to where you were in Oracle, and then we’ll go into what you’re doing now. 

Bina Shah: I’m an engineer by training, so computer science degree development. I entered Oracle in 2010, and across two stints with a one-year gap in Splunk, I spent 16 years at Oracle, both in pre-sales engineering, sales leadership, most recently having a very large STR organization, sales development organization, creating lots of friendships, partnerships, and it was a terrific journey at Oracle, and I’m thankful for all the experiences it gave me. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It sounds like you really liked it there, and that happens. What I really love about you is that there’s no hard feelings. 

Bina Shah: No, I’m very thankful for all the knowledge I gained, all the experiences I gained. I think big thing about Oracle is because it is so large, you can pivot into many different angles and gain those experiences. I had five different roles in my 10 years at Oracle, and it was the law of attraction where the people that were in leadership in different orgs said, “Hey, Bina, do you want to come try to do this?” That’s how I ended up in most of my roles, is in trying new things, and I like a challenge and trying things I haven’t done before. I’m thankful Oracle gave me the opportunity. 

Gina Stracuzzi: From what you and I were discussing before, you’ve led 100-plus person SDR organizations at both Oracle and Splunk, and you’re really into how AI is genuinely changing that go-to-market landscape. We’ll get into that in just a moment because even what you’ve learned there and where you’re taking it is going to be of interest to our listeners. 

Let’s just talk about how you reframed this career transition. Sometimes things are gifts, even though we might not know it at the moment, because they take us in a new direction and that can be really exciting. 

Bina Shah: Gina, I want to be honest with you, when I got that email at 6:00 AM, like many others, the first moment was panic. I am pretty sure my blood pressure, I don’t have blood pressure, but it went up high. I don’t want to make it sound easy, because it’s not. Once the news settled in and the reflection started, which I encourage everybody, reflection is a part of what I do in any activity, I went for a yoga session. I think that helped me clear my mind and it helped me reflect and I took it on as an opportunity, as a sabbatical that many people take that, hey, there’s a 30-day sabbatical, 60-day sabbatical. Mine was an involuntary sabbatical, but it gave me an opportunity to reset, and honestly, just to reframe. One thing to remember, if you’re going through this, this is happening at not just Oracle, in many, many other organizations, is nobody’s coming. The first move does need to be yours. It’s you who has to get started.

Gina Stracuzzi: Let’s talk a little bit about how you got started. Once you cleared your head and you realized no one’s going to be knocking on the door looking for you, what did you do next? 

Bina Shah: I am an organized human being. I like to stay busy. I like to stay challenged. From a learning perspective, I divided up my week, my day into learning AI. Just a quick topic on, AI is not going to take our jobs, but not knowing AI certainly will, so upskilling myself, and I’m a lifelong learner. I love learning. Education is something I just constantly do. 

One of the things was I had more time to dive into AI and I was already an AI champion when I was at Oracle and I led my team, Oracle women’s team, my peer group certified 350 leaders and individual contributors on the agentic AI talk track. But what I was able to do in the last few months is I’ve learned more than I did probably in the last two years, just because I had the most important thing, and that was time. 

The other piece of it, my goal was to make sure I make it the most memorable summer for my kids. I did work on that and we’ve been doing a lot of outdoor activities enjoying the summer. Then slowly and surely your biggest asset when the title goes away, I’m no more senior director of sales, I’m no more at Oracle, what remains are the human connections, the true connections and network that you’ve built, your friends, your family, your peer group. I slowly made a list and a few people at a time started having meaningful discussions, not to go do the same thing I was doing, but just talk through that, hey, here’s what my goal is, and how do I come up with a plan? 

What I want everybody to think, as you go through it, the plan that you thought day two of this happening versus I’m in day 90 or day 100 of my plan, it’s shifted and it’s evolved. Be open to that. Reach out to your network, spend time with your family, and make sure you upskill yourself. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I actually love everything about that, first and foremost, that you’re actually having a bona fide summer with your kids, because you don’t get those opportunities very often. I love that you’re using it to spend time with them in ways that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. But the upskilling, that’s really something, because you will land on your feet and you will figure out how to make this all work. Continuing to learn in the moment is only going to help things as you progress down your journey. 

Let’s talk a little bit about as a woman who’s held a senior sales leadership role, what does it actually take to earn credibility in enterprise sales? You hit on it a little bit because you had those relationships in place where you could reach back out and say, “This is what I’m thinking. What’s your thoughts on this?” which really, I applaud you so much, because not everyone can do that. How are you using that credibility? How did you build it and how did you build great teams with it? Because someone’s listening that might be able to give you a job. 

Bina Shah: Number one, I’m thankful for all the leaders that have been directly or indirectly my mentors and provided me the guidance, my mindset. I’m a servant leadership mindset when it comes to leadership. Answering your question, how did I do that, it wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t catered to me on a silver platter. I had to earn my spot. If you’re early career, if you’re mid-career, or if you’re senior career, I think no matter where you are in your tenure, showing up every day with authenticity and the work ethic to do the best you can, and how do you uplift the organization. It was yes, doing your day job is table stakes, but it was, hey, what can I do to help my peer group? What can I do? That was just organically as a servant leadership, I love just doing that. 

It came naturally to me and it was showing up every day and then I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. I wasn’t afraid to get help. But in those important boardroom meetings, in those important C-level meetings, internal or external, what brought me credibility is talking with a point of view backed by data and standing up for myself. No one else would do that. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Using your voice, it’s imperative, and standing your ground, also critically important. There’s two words you used there, work ethic, that you don’t hear a great deal about anymore. Part of it is sometimes it’s just sorely missing and it’s an old-fashioned language in some respects that people don’t use as often, and I think it’s something that is so vital to doing well and to being a servant leader. You can’t be a servant leader if you don’t have a strong work ethic. I really appreciate you using that vernacular. 

Let’s bring it full circle now and talk a little bit about where you’re going and what you’re doing, because it might give other people ideas if they’re in the same boat. 

Bina Shah: I think because the world is changing so much, most of us, if you’re restarting, you’re not going to rebuild what you had created or what you left behind. You’re going to be doing something new and it’s going to involve fear. For me, what I’m working on are three things. One is the constant upskilling, which I think even when I go back, I have to carve out time otherwise just to stay relevant. It’s table stakes to upskill. 

The second is I am looking for my next full-time role where I can continue to serve, apply, build trust with customers, teams, and wherever that may take me, and an opportunity to just show my level of initiative. But what I’m very also excited about is I am grateful and had an opportunity to be the co-founder of an organization that’s going to bring better health to people. It’s a performance healthcare startup where we’re bringing five clinicians where it’s metabolic health, sleep, nutrition, ET, stress, and anxiety, all of it to our members where you get it, and it’s preventive health, so it’s for people that are feeling good. It’s called Outliveme. I’m excited, we’re looking to launch in the very near future, it’s outliveme.com. 

I’m excited because I think it continues to serve the greater purpose of giving back, and I also get to use a lot of the sales, the engineering, developing the platform, working on technology, marketing, sales, operation. I’m actually living and breathing in the startup world. Since I’ve done that, and on my four-month sabbatical, I’ve had a lot of friends reach out to me to help them with their sales. I’m just supporting them in helping them get started with their companies and sales. This sabbatical has been great for me, the journey has been amazing, summer has been beautiful in Boston, but that’s what I’m working on right now. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s very exciting. As somebody who actually is a functional health coach in my spare time, I really applaud that, because I think as a culture, we tend to look at health care as reactive. Rather than trying to prevent things and the effects of stress, all of that takes such a toll on the body, and certainly, these are stressful times. I can’t wait to check that out. outliveme.com, that’s so interesting. Well, you might find yourself doing a whole bunch of things. 

We get caught up in the title and the companies and the bennies and all that kind of stuff, which are important and have tremendous value. If you’re someone who doesn’t necessarily need those benefits, maybe because your spouse or partner has them or whatever, and you can do what you’re doing, which is a whole bunch of really exciting things, I think that’s pretty amazing. 

Let’s talk a little bit about what’s one belief about sales leadership that you held early in your career. The reason I’m switching back over to this is a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are card-carrying salespeople, and sales leaders too. We love to hear about different philosophies or beliefs that have guided you throughout your career. 

Bina Shah: I started as a sales leader in 2013, in my first stint as a leader. I didn’t always do this, but it was definitely learned through experiences and successes and failures. My philosophy is, yes the numbers will come, and I think as a first-time leader, my goal was numbers, which the numbers are always important, we’re in sales, table stakes. But as I’ve evolved in my leadership journey, it’s leading with empathy, making it where the team is looking forward to working due to respect not fear, and then applying whether it’s the empower coaching model or the grow coaching model is helping them get to their goals and empowering them, and whether they need a player, they need a coach, or they need you to model. As hands on or as hands off as they need, I think meeting them where they need me versus going by my principles and my models, that’s what I would say, but I think at the center of it, my goal is empathy, earning their trust, and joining them where they are in their journey. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I think fear is something that has left the building, so to speak, for the most part with really good leaders. We do still see them, and we talked about it in the forum just a couple of weeks ago. One woman had a boss that just yells and screams, and she said, “It’s really hard to stay positive in that environment.” She was sharing some of the things that she does. I think as a leader, if you use those as guiding principles, you’re going to get what you need out of those people, because they feel like they’re part of something rather than just a number. 

Let’s just talk about the biggest lesson you’ve learned as you transitioned into this next part of your life. What have you learned about Bina? 

Bina Shah: I think the art of the possible. Art of the possible is don’t limit yourself, whether it’s achieving a different health goal, personal goal, professional goal. If I had confined myself that, “Hey, I’m a leader in sales,” I can build apps now with leveraging AI, and I do have a development background, so I’m not using that. I can run marathons that I never used to. I can still do the leadership roles, but I am being head of sales and guiding teams that I didn’t realize I even have the potential. Even today, yesterday I think, I still go through some of that imposter sometimes. I did not know I could do this and this opportunity has really opened up my nervous system to being open to everything that comes my way. I didn’t think I could cofound a health organization. That was not on the agenda by any means. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s exciting. As somebody whose marathon days are behind her, I love that for you. It is such a sense of accomplishment and it really shows you how strong you are and what you’re capable of. There’s nothing as humbling as running a marathon and finishing it. It is something, for sure. 

As we like to do, we like to leave our listeners with one final piece of advice, something they could put into place today to take their careers to the next level, or help their selling out. What do you have for us, Bina? 

Bina Shah: I think it goes back to what I was saying, no one’s coming, and so what’s one thing you’ve been holding off on, whether it’s AI, whether it’s reaching out to your network, whether it’s posting on LinkedIn. By the way, I highly encourage folks to post on LinkedIn, make yourself visible, build a brand, but what’s one thing you’ve been waiting for permission? Treat this as permission. Start on it today. For one minute, ten minutes, one hour, make it easy, make it frictionless, but just start today. I think that level of initiative you start, continue on it, because it is about your level of initiative for yourself. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s not only great advice, but rather profound as well. Bina Shah, I know we haven’t seen the last of you in the lovely PubSec world, or maybe you’ll go out on commercial, but whatever you do, I know you’re going to be tremendously successful. When you get there, come back and see us or come back and talk to us about how the health company is taking off. We really appreciate your time, your honesty, and your vulnerability. Thank you so very much. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 872: Bina Shah on What Remains When the Title Goes Away first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is a Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Kristyn on LinkedIn.

KRISTYN’S TIP: “Know where you want to go. You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there, you don’t have to know exactly what it is, but have a big crazy dream of where you want to go, invest in the relationships and people who are going to push you and help you get there.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Today, my special guest is Kristyn Hogan, global vice president of partner sales at Cisco. Welcome, Kristyn. 

Kristyn Hogan: Thank you, Gina. Happy to be here. 

Gina Stracuzzi: We’re happy to have you. I always like to start with our guests telling us a little bit about how they got to where they are today, and then we’ll go into some deeper questions. 

Kristyn Hogan: As you mentioned, I lead our global collaboration partner sales team at Cisco. If you think about Cisco, big company, most often known for really being that networking infrastructure, powering the AI era, but the other part of our business, which I lead, is collaboration. When you think about what is collaboration in the context of Cisco, think about the video conferencing and how we’re re-imagining work with our customers. Think about something that we’ve all experienced, which is calling into a customer support, really powering how our customers engage with their customers, and then obviously enterprise calling. All of these things make up the collaboration business. I look after really accelerating all of that through our channel, which for those of you who are familiar with Cisco, you know that over 90% of our business goes through the channel. That’s what I do. 

How did I get here? It’s an interesting year for me in that this coming February, I will celebrate my 23rd anniversary at Cisco, and not to age myself, but interesting anniversary for me in that it will mark over half my life will have been spent at Cisco, which is unbelievable. Time flies. How do you put 23 years into a 30-second blurb? I was really fortunate, I joined Cisco right out of college. Cisco has a new college hire training program that we actually just brought back. It’s been on hiatus for a couple of years. Just quick plug, if there are any listeners who know a new college graduate who’s a star, we’d be lucky to have them. 

Nevertheless, back in 2004, Cisco handpicked, you couldn’t have cast a better reality show, 25 sellers, 25 engineers from around the country, brought us to North Carolina, where we really had this great fortune to get what I call a masters in Cisco and a masters in sales. Truly, I look back and that has been the foundation, that year, foundational to my career. That’s how I got into Cisco. 

Left that program and moved home to Houston, Texas. I did commercial sales in Houston for a number of years where I quickly learned that the key to my success was figuring out a way to have more than 24 hours in a day. How do you do that in sales? By activating the channel. I spent a significantly, probably disproportionate amount of my time as a young seller at Cisco, really engaging with our channel partners, using them to scale myself. Then it was just a natural progression to move into the channels organization at Cisco. 

Moved into the channels org on the collaboration side of the business, which funny enough, wasn’t called collaboration back then. I was tasked with really building practices at our partners for this cutting-edge brand-new technology at the time, IP telephony. Did that for a number of years and then really got to a crossroad where I thought to myself, “If I stay on the partner side, it can’t be in collaboration. If I stay in collaboration, it can’t be on the partner side.” 

Cisco had just acquired a company called Meraki, and really interesting turning point in my year. I often say I had this this opportunity to both leave Cisco and stay at Cisco, in that I truly turned in my Cisco laptop, reissued a new Meraki laptop. Even after a decade of being at Cisco, went to Meraki new hire training for two weeks. Did a number of years at Meraki. 

Then fast forward in 2020, we all know what was happening in the world in 2020. I got a call saying, “Hey, we’d love for you to come back to collaboration.” I think we all know, I don’t like to revisit these years yet. Collaboration had an interesting time in 2020 in that we were not the company that became the verb and noun for the virtual meeting during the pandemic. Got the call to come back and lead this global collaboration channel. Fast forward six years, that’s what I’ve been up to. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I get that you’ve technically been at the same company, but I like how you moved around and gathered more knowledge, which is always good for a career, the more knowledge you can have. It’s something that comes up in the forum quite a bit because sometimes women get little tentative about making a lateral move. Sometimes that’s the best thing for your career. I like how you embraced new opportunities and made them work for you. 

That’s a nice lead-in to what I want to talk about channel sales. We know that channel sales is built on influence rather than direct control. It’s all about the relationships. What have you learned, and certainly with collaboration, what have you learned about getting people aligned and moving in the same direction when they don’t actually report to you? 

Kristyn Hogan: It’s funny, and my answer to that question would be the same. I feel like the same attributes that can drive that success of the channel are candidly foundational to being the steward of one’s career. Number one, it really comes down to being able to build solid relationships built upon trust. When I think of that, both in the context of leading a channels organization and even in the context of my own career, if you look across Cisco, 80,000 plus employees at Cisco, we’re lucky to have a disproportionate number of people who are remarkably smart, bright, doing the work. What I’ve learned is, again, in terms of a career and in terms of leading the channel, it’s not enough. It’s foundational to do that remarkable work. But the real differentiator, and taking this to the next level, is that ability to build the relationships inside of Cisco, outside of Cisco that are going to equal parts, back to what you mentioned, to expand your thinking, push you outside your comfort zone. 

It’s interesting, in this long career I’ve had at Cisco, I often share, I’ve interviewed two times. I interviewed to come to Cisco and I interviewed when I made that Meraki rotation. Every other move I’ve made at Cisco, and I’ve made a lot of them, has been because I built relationships and trust with people who opened a door for me. Those same two tenets I think are what differentiates being a good channel leader and building good channel relationships. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It really goes to people knowing your work and being willing to be an advocate for you when you’re not in the room, like, “We need to be looking at Kristyn for this.” That’s an important part, that’s something I talk to women about all the time. It also makes me think about the new program that Fred is standing up, the Partner Revenue Academy. It’s really all about how those roles have changed. Partner selling is not the beast that it once was. It’s a very different beast. It seems like you’ve really managed to leverage every change in those relationships and make it work for you and for the company, which I love. 

Now, let’s talk about the roles, talking about how you’ve moved around within the company. You’ve had direct sales, business development, distribution, global partner sales, you’ve done it all. What did you learn from those responsibilities and as your leaderships go through, but what did you have to unlearn too? 

Kristyn Hogan: That’s such a great question. In terms of the unlearning, you’re going to see some common threads. I think it’s that to not really believe your own limiting beliefs. I’ve often told folks, “Don’t believe everything you think.” Specifically, and again, goes back to these relationships, there’s two folks who I credit as both driving two unique turning points in my career. 

Earlier, the story of my very first leadership job at Cisco is an interesting one in that I had moved into the collaboration business at the partner business for having done sales and was working for a wonderful woman, Kris Zimmerman, and simultaneously was building my career and I also had my very first baby. I’m out on maternity leave and Kris Zimmerman calls me to check in, and I’m holding that newborn first baby, and she’s like, “How are you?” 

I tell her, “I’m great. Kris, I don’t know if I’m going to come back. I think I’m done.” Kris is a mom. She had twin girls. I thought she’d be like, “Great,” and see me off into the sunset. 

She was furious. She was like, “I know you, absolutely not. Not only is that not your path, but as a matter of fact, one of the reasons I’m calling you, what I’d like for you to do is interview while you’re out on maternity leave for your very first leadership role. Disclaimer, Kristyn, don’t worry. No one gets the first manager role they go for, but this will be great. Let’s go for it.” 

She pushed me. I interviewed for the role. Spoiler alert, sometimes you do get the first leadership role that you ever go for. I think that first unlearning was sometimes don’t trust yourself. Trust others sometimes who might know you and have that ability to push you farther than you might think is possible and push yourself and figure it out later. 

Then years later, when I stepped back into this collaboration business, we were in the depths of the pandemic, like day two, this newly brought together collaboration SLT was pulled into our Cisco headquarters, at the time, Building 10 San Jose. Parking lots empty, it is COVID, the office is technically closed, two conference rooms full. It’s dark in the building. One conference room, our CEO and his ELT prepping for an earnings call. Second conference room, this deer-in-the-headlights collab team who’s tasked with turning around this business. 

I’ll never forget, Chuck Robbins popped in, he’s like, “You guys got this.” I remember thinking like, “I don’t know if we’ve got this.” Jeetu Patel, who was at the time our collaboration security product leader, now our chief product officer and president, he was at the front of the room. Really and truly, it was that moment where what I had to unlearn was every single reason why I thought we couldn’t do it, and had to relearn. Again, this is what I call like, “You got to figure it out.” That was another level-up moment where it wasn’t so much of an unlearning as a like believe that anything is possible type of moment. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That was such an unbelievable time for everyone. I think we all learned a great deal about what was possible, and look at us now. Ten years ago even, if you had said to somebody, “90% of the workforce is going to be talking through screens,” everybody would be like, “Forget about it,” especially sales, right? 

Kristyn Hogan: Yes. I walked out of that meeting, flew home, and it was game on. It took a little longer than we thought, but we had a Cisco earnings call last week, the collaboration business got a little shout out, record highest year on record for collaboration in seven years. We did it. Full circle moment. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s really awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about those partner relationships and how you build on them to make sure you get to numbers like those. Now, partner relationships are often described as strategic. Even when the day-to-day is still pretty transactional, it’s still built on strategic relationships. In your estimation, what separates a genuinely valuable partnership from one that just looks good on a slide when you’re presenting? 

Kristyn Hogan: I have what I call my money slide for explaining, what does the channel do? What is the power of the channel? It’s one of those classic iceberg images where I’ll start with, people who haven’t done a partner role or are deeply ingrained in a partner emotion, when you ask them, so what does a channels team do? What do you think about a partner team? Nine times out of ten, you’ll get, “They show up, they do like lunch,” and it all looks very glamorous, the top of the iceberg stuff, “They meet with their partners.” Yes, we do spend a lot of time enabling partners, but the internal mechanics of running a partner organization are a lot more strategic and there’s a lot more depth that’s building that transformational three-year plan, five-year plan, what routes to market will we need to have to support our business years down the road? 

I often say that channels and the partner org, we are busy planting the seeds for revenue dollars that will sprout, not this year, not next year, but we’re driving the business of the future. First and foremost, I think there’s a whole strategic element of running a partner business that unless you’ve done it is unknown or underappreciated. 

From there, when you look at it through the lens of a partner and what sets apart our most strategic partners from those that are more transactional, I always come back to really four key pillars. These pillars were tried and true for me 10 years ago. They were relevant when I led the Meraki channel. They’re relevant in collab. 

Number one, it’s on, in our case, Cisco, to provide to our partners the world’s best technology platform to go sell and go wrap their services around. Number one, we owe our partners that. But number two, we’ve all been there, our partners, they’ve shown us, are willing to go sell the world’s second best or third best technology platform in the world if it’s more profitable. If you can make more money selling the second best, that’s the path we’re all going to take. I find our most strategic partners are those that are maximizing these profitability programs that we put in place to drive their success. 

Third element, the onus is on Cisco and our most strategic partners, is mind share. We have to earn it every day and it’s not something you do once a year. I’m a little more of the above the iceberg, but waking up every day, ensuring that we have the mind share at our partners from the highest executive level all the way down to that frontline seller and everything in between. When I look at our most strategic partners, these are metrics that we look at. They are the ones who top to bottom are investing and most enabled. 

Then last but not least is this pillar around really simplicity. Listen, till the day I die, my time at Cisco will be spent, like we aren’t necessarily always known for our simplicity, and it’s not something that you can master, but the degree to which we can make it simpler for our partners and our partners can also make it simpler on their end of working with Cisco, engaging with their customers, that’s an area that I believe really sets our partners apart and can set us apart. Platform, simplicity, profitability, mind share. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Those are good tenets. I would think that keeping those in mind would bring you to this level of success that you’re knowing. We have to throw an AI question in there at some point, because who would we be if we’re not talking about AI. We know it’s changing how companies are selling and some are doing really well with it and others it’s rather scattershot and they’re not knowing the same success. How do you see it changing in partners and what they need from vendors? Where do you think channel leaders need to rethink the old playbook rather than simply adding AI to it, which is something that really comes up? We have people who are just like, “Yeah, it comes down from on high. We have to use AI.” There is no strategic thought to it and there’s five or six or seven tools that companies have bought with no direction. What are you doing and what are you seeing? 

Kristyn Hogan: I’ll use an analogy that we’ve all heard in that AI is the icing on the cake, and AI strategy can’t be the cake. I’ll go back to those four tenets. If you don’t have a rock-solid platform that you’re arming the partners with, a profitability story, winning their mind share, and a maniacal focus on simplicity, if you don’t have those four things in place, AI is not going to get you out of that. You can’t AI your way out of a foundational solid partner strategy. 

Number one, I think is not an over rotation to thinking that AI is going to solve everything. You still have to have this foundation. I think where both Cisco and our partners can really shine and then kick it up a notch is layering innovative AI on top of that rock-solid foundation. When I look at even just some of the interesting ways, it’s evolving every day. We’re in this super charged cycle, but there’s a productivity pillar of AI, and I’m fascinated. I love productivity hacks, and for me personally and for my team, we’re always looking at ways of how can AI, again, it can’t be the cake, but how can you layer it on top to be more productive, get more time in your day. 

The other area that I think is fascinating is this reinvention of managing and engaging with partners across a sales process. Cisco recently has rolled out Gong on the sale side, it is now our forecasting tool. On the partner side, it has really reinvented how we’re engaging with partners. A real-life example, I love it in that lead a big team, global team, big business, first thing I log into every day, I log into Gong and I see a snapshot of what the whole organization is up to. If I have a meeting with partner XYZ today, Gong sees that I have that meeting and says, click here to catch you up. Instead of having to call my team and bother them for some briefing doc, I can quickly scan through and understand all of the meetings, all of the deals this partner is working. Again, just two ways of how we’re leveraging AI, and we’re just getting started, but AI is nothing if you don’t have that foundation in place. You’re way out of a bad strategy. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I have to say that is probably one of the most definitive answers that I have received anyway, I can’t speak for Fred, on how teams are using it. Even leaders don’t seem to be able to wrap their minds or their hands around everything that’s available and how they should be using it to really elevate their teams. But it sounds like you’ve got a great handle on it, which is awesome. 

You’ve been recognized as the channel leader and you publicly champion women in the field, which I absolutely love. What helped you become such a visible leader? What do women in the channel need to recognize about making contributions and making sure they’re recognized? 

Kristyn Hogan: It goes back to what I mentioned previously, which foundationally, remarkable work. Table stakes, deliver remarkable work. Number two, invest in those relationships that I think are mutually beneficial, that are going to push you outside your comfort zone. It’s funny, literally just this week on Monday, if I could spend my whole day mentoring rising star talents, my favorite thing to do, I never say no. I actually found myself on one of those calls on Monday with a rising star at Cisco, 28 years old. She’s in our PR and AR team at Cisco and is getting curious about what she wants to do next. She’s about to get her masters, has these big plans for her career, but a little tentative. Halfway through the call, we’re on a video call, and I stopped me in my tracks, I truly felt like I had been put in a time machine and I was looking in a mirror at myself, which 20 years ago, time flies. 

To answer your question, for me, the differentiator, it’s been specific, there are freeze-frame specific people and specific moments where I was pushed. I was pushed to do something I didn’t think I could do. I mentioned Kris Zimmerman who not only said, “You’re coming back to work and you’re going to be a working mom and you’re going to be a leader,” I was pushed outside my comfort zone to do something I’d never done, which was be part of the team to turn around this collaboration business. 

Number one, do great work, invest in these relationships, and then if there’s one quality that I look for in who I hire, who I mentor, who I coach, who I want to be, I call it the figure-it-out factor. I’d never done any of those things before. I don’t look for people who have done the thing. I look for, do you have the figure-it-out factor? Do you believe in yourself or do you have someone who believes in you and is going to push you to do it, and just go figure it out? 

Gina Stracuzzi: If I could add something to that too, it’s don’t be afraid. Don’t hesitate to talk about what you’ve done. 

Kristyn Hogan: Or what you want to do, for that matter.  

Gina Stracuzzi: Another one, yeah. Don’t keep your aspirations to yourself. No one can help you if they don’t know what you want. You’re aligned on quite a bit of what we talk about in the forum. I absolutely love that. 

We are at that point in our conversation, which has been really fabulous, where we like to ask our guests for one piece of advice, something that anyone listening can put into place today to take their career, their selling to the next level. 

Kristyn Hogan: You teed it up perfectly in that number one, know where you want to go. You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there, you don’t have to know exactly what it is, but have a big crazy dream of where you want to go, invest in the relationships and people who are going to push you and help you get there, write it down. I stumbled upon this document I wrote in 2009, old style word document where I mapped out. I had the beginning, I didn’t really have the middle, but it ends, the document ends, I wrote down, as I thought life ended at 40, because it said, “By the age of 40, I would like to be a VP of sales at Cisco.” Probably need to write the next chapter, but have a goal, write it down, invest in the relationships with people who are going to push you, and above all else, hone that figure-it-out factor. Figure it out. This is corporate sales. This is not curing cancer. This is not solving world peace. There is nothing that we do that isn’t figure-outable. Figure it out. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That is fabulous advice. Really great. There’s always a solution. There’s always an opportunity. You just have to figure it out. Thank you, Kristyn Hogan, and we hope you will stay in touch with us. Thank you everyone for listening and we’ll see you next time. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 869: Stop Waiting Until You’re Ready: Kristyn Hogan’s Blueprint for Career Success first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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AMANDA’S TIP: “Mentoring circles are important. Fill your circle with quality of individuals, ask for help. If you’re doing all these things and you’re not respected at that table, go build a different table, go find a different table. A lot of times we hold on in roles way too long, and you have a choice.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: My guest today is Amanda Brown. She is senior VP for XFERALL. Welcome, Amanda. 

Amanda Brown: Thank you, Gina. It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I like to have my guests introduce themselves and tell us a little bit about how you got started in sales and if this was your chosen career or something you fell into and just decided this was for you. 

Amanda Brown: Interesting enough, out of high school, I thought I wanted to be an interior designer. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Me too. 

Amanda Brown: Quickly realized that was probably not my path and we all have our own stories and we’re all writing our own stories and chapters. Right before I graduated high school, moved out on my own, thought I could rule the world as a young adult, and started working in corporate America at the age of 18. I did a lot of admin jobs trying to figure out and navigate what I wanted to do. I enrolled myself in community college and went part-time at night. Started working a lot of administrative functions, customer service, order entry for someone who had little to zero experience. 

The first company I ended up landing my feet in, we had a female sales leader there and I worked in customer service, completely different department, and I was so inspired by her. She was so strong the way she came in and she just commanded the audience and I wanted to work for her. I had spent several years in another department just doing everything I could to outperform my roles and responsibilities and finally got the opportunity to join her team. 

It was an inside sales position. It was a lot of cold calling, a lot of outreach. I was very green and early in my development, but I wanted to prove to her that I could do it because she gave me an opportunity, and then ultimately prove to myself. That’s really how I got started in sales. She gave me that opportunity and I never looked back from there. It’s been quite a journey. 

I’m about 25 plus years into sales leadership, operational roles. But from that early on period, in those first few years, I outperformed my team. I was the youngest professional on the team. I made the most amount of calls. I drove engagement. I started cross training my colleagues and peers. They wanted to see what I was doing. By the age of 22, I was promoted into management leadership role of the sales team. It was really about learning and listening and seeing what was working. I’ve carried a lot of those skill sets in my career. But that’s really how I got started in my sales journey. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I love that you had someone to look up to and aspire to be, because that’s not always the case. A lot of my background is aligned with yours in that I went to community college, I moved out early, worked for companies, and I was like, “I could do that job. I could do that job,” kind of thing. 

Amanda Brown: That’s a rarity too, to have a woman in sales as a leader. Thinking back and reflecting, seeing her, everyone thought she was super tough. I looked at it, I was like, “She’s super disciplined,” and her strength and just watching her navigate. I’ve stayed in touch with her for many, many moons after, but she really was the one, she said, “You know what? I’m going to give you that opportunity.” I didn’t have any experience, but she saw that I was willing to put in the work and learn and really just listen and learn from others. It was a rarity at the time, and now I will do everything I can to encourage everyone, but also rising women who are also looking to enter into sales careers and leadership as well, whatever I can do to support. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I love hearing that. My theory about women is if we don’t all rise, nobody rises. You got to bring people along with you. That’s a great story. I love that you stayed in touch with her for such a long time, too. 

Amanda Brown: She’s a wonderful human. That’s for sure. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That is really great. You’ve spent now more than 20 years leading growth in healthcare technology. Let’s talk about how that field has changed over 20 years, and how you used what I consider some of women’s superpowers like empathy that comes naturally to us. How have you used that to do the growth of yourself and others on your team? 

Amanda Brown: Empathy is the perfect word. I use it often. Interesting enough, early in my career, the first six or seven years, it was a completely different industry. Having a family member that had also worked in healthcare, I realized I’d outgrown and didn’t feel as connected to the prior industry I worked in, and so I started looking at healthcare opportunities. I was second pick for an opportunity at a Fortune 500 company to manage an early-career sales team. 

Once I joined the company, I really started to look at these were early-career sales professionals, I was building up this sales leadership development program for the company, is being able to connect and really listen and empathize with others the more I learned about healthcare and who you are partnering with on the other side. A lot of times it’s clinical leadership, they are thinking about patient care first and foremost, they’re thinking about their staff that are taking care of patients. There’s a vulnerability and a human connection in that aspect of patient care, that you really have to take a step back and understand, what am I selling to them? If you’re thinking about selling a widget, or you’re thinking about your number, all of these other areas from a metric perspective, then you’re missing the mark. 

I started building my teams to really want to understand and connect with the individuals that we were selling to and empathize with them, put yourself in a day in the life of a clinical leader, who’s got patient care, patient escalations, patients dying, patients sick, nurses calling out, nurses with family members that are sick. Empathize with them and understand that they are thinking about a lot of different areas, all while trying to make sure that patient care is being delivered at the highest level of quality. 

All of the teams that I’ve had the opportunity to lead and build, I always encourage them, find a connection to the human on the other end, it’s really, really important. Also, find a connection with what you’re selling and the impact it can make. Historically, in the last 20 plus years in healthcare, I have gone to work for companies that I feel are high impact to the work that we do, that I can feel connected to the mission, I can feel connected that we’re actually helping improve the system, versus a widget. There’s a whole role for widgets and selling from that perspective, but for me, being personally connected. 

When I hire talent, I’m looking for individuals that also feel personally connected to wanting to make a difference. That empathy becomes really, really important that people can connect to at a human level. It’s something special and all the teams that I’ve had the opportunity to build, and I can speak on behalf of my team now, every individual is connected to our mission. They’ve seen someone that’s been affected in the healthcare setting and they want to be part of making it better. Empathy is really, really important in the healthcare arena, especially really understanding the enormous amount of constraint and pressures these healthcare leaders are on. 

Partly why I’ve stayed in healthcare, it’s just so many areas. The healthcare industry has been faced with funding cuts. We have our baby boomers are retiring. We don’t have enough nurses to clinicians to support the care that’s needed. On top of that, we’ve got technology that’s rapidly changing way beyond these organizations can realistically adapt to that change. As partners, we can help them through that journey. 

Gina Stracuzzi: What you’re describing in so many ways are traits of a really great salesperson. You step away from what you’re trying to achieve and figure out what your client or potential client needs to achieve. What are their pressures and what’s happening to them? We do so much work with technology companies, a lot of them who deal with the government, and it has been a wild ride for the last 16, 17 months. It made me think like, that patient is on lifelines, some days it feels like that. I can see the parallels there very much. 

Something you said when you were talking about how things are changing so rapidly in healthcare technology, do you have a sense of how AI is impacting healthcare technology and how that changes how you sell to the healthcare field? 

Amanda Brown: I do. It’s probably one of the hottest topics. I actually just left an event last week, it was a conversation around AI and technology and innovation. We were at the same event the prior year and it was the healthcare ecosystem, it was really focused on, how do we governance? What does it mean? How do we make sure AI is not making decisions and our clinicians are making decisions? How do we make sure it’s used in a way that doesn’t disrupt care, but it supports our clinicians and the work that the teams are doing? It was more on governance and structure and a lot of fear over the last few years AI is going to replace. Now we’ve shifted beyond that. 

The conversation is, how do we bring the right change leaders between IT, clinical, and operational together and make sure that the AI that we’re implementing has meaningful impact to our patients and our staff and our organization. Many of them had already finished mini pilots and are widely adopting. Almost every healthcare organization is adopting AI in some form or fashion. 

Understanding those shifts, AI is also very expensive for these organizations. They have to be meaningful. They really have to think about where are they using it and the impact that it’s making. As we think, even as far as selling and bringing AI solutions into the healthcare ecosystem, you really have to know the value and the impact that the AI is making. It has to be measurable. It has to be ensuring that it’s not making decisions on behalf of patients, it’s supporting our clinicians, the medical staff and their roles so they can continue to do the great work and do it even faster and better and with more quality. 

When we sell AI solutions out, we really have to be thoughtful, because you could go in and say, “This is going to reduce your staff time by X,” and all of the clinical leaders, it was like, “I can’t get rid of my staff,” immediately. You have to be thoughtful in what’s the value and impact. But these organizations that are going through, almost all of them, as I shared, they’ve adopted some form of AI. Even on the vendor and the partner side, every company is using AI. But what does it really mean for patient care? What does it mean for the clinicians? You have to really tie back to the impact that you can bring in all these organizations, because they have so many AI projects that they’re piloting or looking at, they have to also prioritize. Where you can align with what’s important to them and their goals, that’s first and foremost, for sure. 

Gina Stracuzzi: This might be a good point in the conversation to tell us a little bit about your products and services. Not a commercial standpoint, but just give us a sense of what you do as a company, because then I really want to get into how do you coach your salespeople in this changing market? 

Amanda Brown: The current company that I am, and I’ve had the opportunity to be part of the journey for almost five years, we are a healthcare technology partner. Our platform is really designed on helping patients get from one level of care to the next in this care coordination network. We do a lot of work in behavioral health. In behavioral health, one in eight patients that show up in emergency department front doors is facing a psychiatric crisis. There’s a lot of clinical administrative burden that these individuals are having to, once they determine the patient needs to get to a higher level of care, they’re calling and faxing to try to find an available facility to transfer this patient to. Then on the other side, these receiving psychiatric hospitals, they’re getting all these calls and faxes. 

You can just imagine the call, someone sitting there with calls, faxes, walk-ins, patients right there. Our platform provides a real-time care coordination platform that helps them clinically locate and gain acceptance, exchange securely in real time to get that patient transferred so they can get the care that they need. We create these networks that connect everyone together and it’s really helped reduce the ED boarding time, patients getting out of crisis, into appropriate level of care. We’ve seen tremendous growth because it’s been such a high need. 

Every patient that comes into a hospital and the four walls of their emergency department is getting care faster by moving the patients that are not in the right clinical setting to the appropriate level of care faster, regardless whether it’s behavioral health and others. We’ve seen a rapid growth from helping patients and helping these health systems and behavioral health providers become connected for better patient access and care. 

Behavioral health is a conversation for a different day, but it’s definitely a demand in our country and people need access. They need access to services and care. We need to be helping our clinicians locate so they can get back to the bedside of caring for patients and not spending their time on administrative burden. As we lean into how we partner with these organizations and how we leverage our sales team, it really is about understanding where those bottlenecks, where those impacts are. The more we can understand that, the more we can pathway into helping these organizations help those patients get to where they need to be. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I can imagine, it’s a big need, and sadly, growing. Let’s talk a little bit about how you’ve helped the organizations that you have been with achieve significant growth. Really, one of the things we like to talk about on the podcast is how leaders build really successful teams and bring them up and get them ready for leadership or for greater roles. How do you go about it? 

Amanda Brown: I’ve actually had the opportunity, several times now, to build net new teams from scratch. One of the first areas when I join a company is I really want to make sure I understand what are we solving and what’s the impact, and who are we selling into and what the dynamics are. I actually like to roll up my sleeves and actually work some opportunities with partners first. I’ve done that at the last few companies. I’ve had the honor to lead and grow teams at where I wanted to go sell the solution first. 

It’s not something that can always be done, but I like to really understand, and really understand who the buyers on the other end are and what they care about and start to determine what is the skill set of the teams and the talent of the teams that we need to develop and build that can really understand, empathize, and align with the partners that we’re looking to expand into from a growth perspective. 

Even when I joined my current company, I wasn’t quite sure. Building out care-connected networks, there are two different sides of that. It’s an ecosystem. If you go look on a sales resume, you’re not going to find a lot of ecosystem connected networks where they’ve built up in a very complex, and healthcare is very complex, and so it’s not a transactional sale. I started to look at building up a team of individuals that had that relationship. They knew how to connect relationships and found meaning and understanding, well, this CNO makes an impact here. This then impacts the COO from an operational perspective, and how they navigated. 

I diversify my team, their experiences. I’ll look and see, do they have a nursing background? Have they worked in this field? Every team member has a different experience and perspective that they’re bringing to the team, and strengths that they’re bringing to the team. When you do that and you bring them together, it’s pretty significant of what you can get accomplished, and everybody is rowing at the same beat. I’ve got individuals that are very, very strong on their communication skills and articulating value and they can go present at a large conference and present to executives. I’ve got individuals that understand the daily life of a nurse and what it means at an in-user level and being able to connect at that level. 

I’ve always tried to build out and blend those teams from a strength perspective. The sales leaders and growth leaders, there’s a couple of times I feel like in your career, you hit a special point where everyone is working together, helping each other. You’re in this sweet spot of a company growth that everything is moving at a very healthy pace and the impact that you’re making feels really, really good when you put your head down on the pillow every day. Even if you didn’t accomplish everything today, the next day you are just as excited to wake up and make an impact. 

When I look to build teams, I really look at a variety of experiences. I also try to make sure that we’re sharing those experiences and creating opportunities for the team. It’s not my role as a leader to go tell them what to do. They are the experts. I’m there to support them, to help elevate them, to bring strengths when they need strengths, and to help strategize with them and giving them that runway to do that has allowed me to maintain higher attention on all my growth teams and even bring individuals and leaders along with me. That’s been a special part of the journey of just building out growth teams at multiple healthcare technology companies thus far. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I like that approach. You are in a unique situation team wise, where having people with lived experience in the medical field is probably crucial to their success and in your success as a company. Whereas quite often in the straight technology sales, it’s on-the-job training and on-the-job learning about how the end user might be using the product. This is really quite fascinating to me. 

What advice would you give to women who are especially in their early sales career, and especially if they’re aspiring to leadership roles? What lessons do you wish maybe that you knew before you learned them the hard way? 

Amanda Brown: Definitely they were learned the hard way, not having a forged path ahead. Some of the lessons that I would share with rising women who are looking to either go into sales or in leadership, one of them is start to look around and observe the leadership around you. There is so much that you can learn through others. Find those qualities that you’re like, I want to be like them when I grow up in my career, and go meet with them, connect with them, build a mentoring circle around, having a strong support system. I often felt like I was on an island alone. It wasn’t until probably the second half of my career that I realized and really started to take advantage, where I had a strong mentoring circle, and both men and women. Those perspectives are equally important. 

Being able to build mentors around you, and you also have a role in that, because you can be a mentor to others. A lot of women think, “Well, I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where to begin,” but you can begin by helping others too around you. I spent a lot of my early years, and that’s how I went into management and then really developed my leadership skills, was through helping others. Instead of saying, “I want to be the top sales performer,” and all I care about is me and my numbers and my financials, I wanted our entire team to be successful. I was willing to sit down and happy to just share what I was doing, and not in an egotistical way, but help them. When people genuinely want to be helped, or they’re like, “I’m not meeting my number. Why don’t we just sit down? Maybe we can brainstorm and come up with some ideas.” 

Definitely start to build a mentoring circle. You can also learn from the traits of individuals that don’t make you feel good. You can learn just as much from those individuals, whether they’re leaders of the company or colleagues or you see the tactics, learn what not to do, put that in your toolkit. I have learned just as much from those experts and carried those forward and I’m like, “That is definitely not what I want to be like. What would I do differently?” You have to ask yourself because you can always point out things that you don’t like, but what would you do differently? You start to change your mindset and how you think and you’re like, “Well, I would do this differently.” 

I’ve always said, I’m CEO of myself. But if I was running my own company, even to this day, I know things that I will do differently. I’m excited about those opportunities. But mentoring circles are important. Fill your circle with quality of individuals, ask for help. If you’re doing all these things and you’re not respected at that table, go build a different table, go find a different table. A lot of times we hold on in roles way too long, and you have a choice. You can make that choice any time to leave, and there’s a strategy and a process to do that. If you network and you have that strong mentor circle, they can help support you through that transition. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Amanda Brown, thank you very much for this conversation. Give us one piece of quick advice that people can put into place who might be listening to the podcast, or something to start thinking about today? 

Amanda Brown: One piece of advice is when you sit down every day and you’re thinking about, what did you accomplish? What were the goals that you set? What did you accomplish? Maybe you didn’t accomplish everything you thought. Reset yourself. Don’t get lost in that. Or if you had a deal that went wrong or something that just went away, I have found if you can reset quickly and redirect those moments, it fuels your acceleration in whatever you’re doing. But a lot of times we get stuck because we didn’t accomplish something, or we lost a deal, or something went awry. 

I’ve seen talent over the years that have gotten stuck in that moment for way too long. It’s okay to acknowledge it and find your lessons learned, but just find that reset button quickly. Next hour is a new hour. Tomorrow is a new day. When you can reset and use that as fuel, you’ll just accelerate so much quicker and faster and accomplish your goals faster. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice. Acknowledge what went wrong and move on. I love it. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you, everyone, for listening and we’ll see you next time. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 864: Amanda Brown from XFERALL on Building a Successful Career as a Woman in Sales first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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ELISABETH’S TIP: “Don’t let the little voice in your head tell you, ‘You can’t do it. It’s too early.’ You should really not allow all these self-limiting beliefs to stop you. You should be bold and ambitious in terms of what you’re able to achieve and what you’re able to do.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Hello everyone and welcome to the latest installment of the Women in Sales segment of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. I am really excited to have my guest today, Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, all the way from Belgium. She is the senior vice president of Cisco Partner Program. It’s taken Elisabeth and I a little bit of time to get this all together. Welcome, Elisabeth. 

Tell me a little bit about yourself, and the audience, how you got to where you are today and a little bit about your career journey, and then we’ll go from there. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: You already mentioned a couple of things and maybe for those of you who can recognize accents or even family names, I live in Belgium and I was born in Belgium as well. I’m actually from what we call the Flemish part. I speak Flemish, which is the same as Dutch, which is the north of Belgium. I was born and raised here and then I went to study in the US, I went to study in Germany, etc. I’m actually a lawyer by education. I studied law and I started my career as a legal trainee in all kinds of commercial work, so I did a lot of negotiations. 

Around the time just before Y2K, and I’m mentioning that because my career was very much shaped by those early years around, well, first the internet bubble bursting and then Y2K and all of that. I spent a lot of time in tech, in commercial law. From there I was contacted by a client who had just moved to Cisco and he asked me if I was willing to join as a company lawyer and join Cisco. That happened in 2000. I joined Cisco in 2000 as a sales lawyer, at the time working on legal negotiations in the Netherlands and Belgium. 

Then I had multiple roles in the legal team until somebody asked me whether I wanted to join at the time channel operations because we saw the first fake products popping up in China. I was asked to join a team called Brand Protection, which was part of the channel organization at the time, to do something about that, which I did. That actually brought me to Hong Kong. I moved to Hong Kong. I spent a few years there working on a range of activities going from explaining to our customers and partners on how to recognize fake products, how to recognize genuine products, but also working with manufacturing to make sure we tighten up any scrap leakage procedures and all of that, so very different activities. 

Then I missed the sales environment, and that’s actually a common theme. I think I’ve always really enjoyed working in sales and the adrenaline of trying to make numbers and working with customers and partners and the negotiation piece as well and the activity of selling. I applied for a role in Middle East and Africa, sales operations. It was a little bit crazy at the time. I just had my first child, I think he was probably one year old at the time, I was living in Hong Kong, and I applied for the role. I got the role. 

I moved to Egypt as the sales operations leader for Middle East and Africa, which was really interesting because I did strategy and planning, sales operations, but we were also investing in offices across Africa. We were implementing Salesforce. We were defining growth strategies, etc. I learned a lot. 

Then from there, I moved back to Hong Kong, back in the legal team, negotiating some huge contracts in the region. Then for personal reasons, I came back home. That’s now probably about 14 years ago. Then I had more legal roles, but this whole appetite for sales and working with the sales teams and with customers and partners always felt close. I volunteered for all kinds of projects as I was the head of legal in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, I was an executive sponsor for different customers across the region. I was in charge of competitive campaigns and all kinds of things. 

One day, the regional channel sales role came up and I applied for it and I got the role. That was in March 2020, which you probably know by heart what happened that week. I went back into sales in an executive role, and in the same week that I was told I had the role, I was super happy, I think the next day we were told we were all in lockdown. I spent a year and a half in that role from this office. That was really interesting. From there, I joined a corporate transformation team and then back in the global partner sales. Then I led the transformation of the Partner Program over the last two years. 

Now I’m part of the global partner sales organization in Cisco. Cisco is very partner-centric and partner-led. 90% of our business is sold through and with the ecosystem. I’m in charge of the entire value proposition of us as a vendor to the ecosystem. Most of my career with one company, but different countries, different roles. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s very exciting. You seem to have made a lot of the right decisions. I always love hearing women talking about they basically raised their hand for different opportunities or committees or whatever the case is to really get themselves out there, which is something we talk about a lot in the Women in Sales Leadership Forum that I run, because it’s so critical to your career goals to do that, and look at all the places that took you. That’s fabulous. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: I always say it’s the advantage of growing older, that you can actually look back and there’s still some lessons learned and understand better why you did what you did, or didn’t do what you didn’t do. But when I look back, I think a common theme is that I am someone who enjoys change, I’m quite adventurous as well. Obviously, more adventure when I was younger than as my kids were there and then they grew older and all of that. But I think this motto of, yes, you can, is really important. 

Very early on when I was asked to join that Brand Protection team, I was so nervous because I was trained as a lawyer, I worked like a lawyer. It was my education and my identity, let’s say. I was asked to join that other team and I was very nervous. I asked an executive that I admired at the time, and he said, “Well, at this age,” but in the broad sense, he said, “It’s all about learning and getting more experience.” He said, “You should take as many jobs as you can, one year to learn, one year to deliver, and one year to move on.” Still today, that was excellent advice, because it’s true. You can’t really go wrong. 

Even if you take on a new responsibility or a new role and six months later, you think, “Well, that’s not quite it,” which happened to me, I went back to legal and then I missed sales. Still, it’s all experience. You can’t really make any mistakes. If you have that mindset, it’s all one big journey and growing and experience. To my point, the beautiful thing about growing older is that you get to know yourself better and better. You get to know your strengths and typically what you’re good at is what you enjoy most. What you enjoy most is what you typically get better at. The more you get to know yourself, then the more deliberate you can become in picking and choosing the right roles for you. Of course, the more senior you become, the better that is. I think that’s a really important theme. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I really like to coach women to think about lateral moves as well, because when you learn as much as you can about the business, one, it opens your eyes to the unlimited possibilities, perhaps right in your own company. But it just makes you a more well-rounded leader in the end. It can be scary, especially if you’re already taking time off for maternity leave or helping elderly parents or something. Then you think, like, “Ooh, this is just lateral. There’s not an increase in title.” But I think your point is just keep raising your hand. Anytime you’re learning, you’re growing. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: I’m a very firm believer. My team and I, we just let this huge transformation of Cisco’s Partner Program, the biggest change in the last 20 years. I think there are multiple reasons, but one of the reasons I was able to do that is precisely because I had such a broad experience, operational, strategic sales, legal finance, compliance, everything really. All of that together meant that I knew a lot, and I had a huge network, so to learn something that was so impacting across the enterprise. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice. That’s a key word too, the network. Your network inside of your company and outside your company in the industry are so critical to career growth. You hit on all points without me even coaching you. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way in all of those really pivotal roles for your career? 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: There’s a couple. I think the first is the one we already said. I think don’t be shy, lean in, don’t let the little voice in your head tell you, “You can’t do it. It’s too early.” We have a tendency to be, “I first have to study all these things. Then I have to try all of those. Then I have to prove all of that as well. Then maybe five years from now, I’ll be ready.” You should really not allow all these self-limiting beliefs to stop you. I’m not saying that you should be arrogant, of course, not. But I do think you should be bold and ambitious in terms of what you’re able to achieve and what you’re able to do. 

I am convinced that you can apply yourself to anything really. That’s the next lesson. You need to always be open to learning. People often tell me, “Well, how is it possible that as a lawyer, you managed to now be a leader in a global partner sales organization?” Then I always say, “Well, it’s not like I woke up yesterday morning and I said, ‘Let me now go and do global partner sales.’” Obviously, all along the time that I was a lawyer, I was always very curious and interested in the business. I always volunteered for things in the business. I was always very close to my colleagues in the business. It’s not like I made some kind of day and night switch or I suddenly came up with this idea. It was a journey where I’ve always been considered as a lawyer who was extremely curious and interested and engaged in the business. 

When I said, “Well, I would like to move into the business,” all the people said, “That makes a lot of sense.” I think being open, being humble, always willing to learn. I would argue, I used to say this years ago, but even more now, the world is changing fast. It will only go faster. We should all just accept that, the role of AI, all these things. That’s something else one of my mentors said years ago. At the time, I was going to work on marketplace and cloud and all of that. I said, “Well, I don’t really know much about cloud or marketplace.” He said, “I didn’t hire you because you know a lot about marketplace and cloud.” He said, “I hired you because of your character.” Meaning it’s not about everything you know, because everything you know by tomorrow is outdated, or after tomorrow, it’s not anymore about that. Plus, knowing things, you can catch up, you can learn, you can study, you can teach yourself, train yourself. But it’s about this ability to adapt, this ability to be very open minded, to be humble enough that, “Gina, what you just said, I don’t quite understand. Can you explain it to me?” 

I see a lot of people are, especially at senior levels, people may take on new roles. Then they are, I think it’s probably misplaced, they think that saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand what you just said. Can you explain that to me?” it shows weakness, but it’s not. Showing vulnerability and an appetite to learn, first of all, it will get you to understanding and knowing very fast. Second, it makes you more human as well. I think that’s really critical also. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Honestly, you’re saying everything I want women to know and to hear. We’re naturally curious by nature, I would say, and yet, and this is what I see, the higher women go, the less likely they are to say, “Wait a minute, I don’t quite understand that,” as if they’re supposed to have all of that knowledge walking in. To your point about the gentleman who didn’t hire you for knowledge, he hired you because of who you are. You’re naturally curious and you don’t mind saying, “Wait a minute, I don’t quite understand that.” 

When you do that, it also shows the people that work for you that they can say it too, like, “I don’t understand this,” or, “This is new to me. Can you explain more?” That is such a brilliant thing because it allows everyone to feel that and it gives you the opportunity to grow. I could use you all the time in the forum, come in and talk. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: Again, talking about when we designed the new Partner Program, I made it a point, and this is how I lead as well. I’m picking up on something you said. I believe strongly in the wisdom of the crowd and I believe that the answer is always somewhere. Somebody knows the answer. It’s all about putting your ear to the ground and listening to it. If you create an environment where I can say, “I’m sorry, can you repeat? I didn’t quite understand what you meant.” You can call it the Socratic Method. We are doing a lot of that because there’s always something that somebody was thinking that then leads to something else that leads to a really, really great idea. If you didn’t do that or you don’t allow for that, you miss all these great ideas. I’m a very strong believer in that. 

I’ve always said also, it’s not about, when I had managers doing these performance reviews and say, “You’re doing a great job.” I said, “Well, I’m not here to do a great job. I want to do an excellent job. I want to be the best lawyer you’ve ever had. I want to be the best Partner Program leader you’ve ever had.” I use the word excellence, I’m here to do something extraordinary, not to do something mediocre or something safe pair of hands and all that. I want to do something extraordinary. If you want to do something extraordinary, you need to go and look for the extraordinary ideas, and they’re always there. 

You just have to allow people to say it, like, “Gina has something she’s been thinking about for years, but nobody ever listened,” and maybe her idea is like 60% there, but if she is allowed to express, then somebody can say, “Hey, but if you do this, Gina,” then we actually solve it. A lot of the things that we are doing in my team come from those kinds of discussions. Then people are starting to enjoy themselves because that’s a very natural human need. We all want to feel like we’re doing something useful and interesting and impactful. Then it adds fun and job satisfaction and then suddenly you have a highly-motivated team that is striving for excellence. 

I’m also very focused on identity. I do it with my kids as well, like, this is who we are. We are the team that delivers excellence. We are the team that respects each other. We are the team that goes looking for these nuggets and these ideas, and people are picking up on that. I believe that’s how you can deliver extraordinary results. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I love everything about that, Elisabeth. Even a few seconds earlier when you were talking, I was thinking that it’s very much like when you were in grade school and you were learning all these new things and everyone was just looking around, little kids like, “Oh my God, I don’t understand.” As soon as one person was brave enough to raise their hand and say, “I don’t get this,” then everybody was like, “I don’t get it either.” You open up the floodgates of thinking and understanding when you actually ask for clarification or more information. To your point, you can just extract some extraordinary thinking when people feel like, “Okay, this is a safe place. I can share what I don’t know and then add what I do know.” That brings you to extraordinary, I think. I love that. 

Let’s switch gears a little bit, and let’s talk about what you see happening in the industry. Yes, AI is everywhere and now it’s how can sales teams really engage AI in a way that is a little bit uniform so everybody’s not going off in different directions using things differently, but really to advance what they’re doing and how they’re approaching sales. Certainly, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t know, the customer is a different animal today. They’re much more educated. They don’t need you to come in with a glossy PowerPoint and try to tell them what they need. They know what they need and they have lots of ways to get it. How are you working with these changes and how are you guiding your team? 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: An excellent and a pretty philosophical and strategic question also. There’s a couple of things. First of all, the basic human value of if you want to deliver something that the customer needs, you have to listen. The basic human principle is still very much standing. Again, I’m not so much selling to customers than I’m selling to partners. That very basic first thing about what does the ecosystem need? What can I drive as a value proposition that is compelling, differentiated, and driving their preference for Cisco? That’s still putting your ear to the ground. Again, that’s why we did co-design. I think that still very much stands and we have to keep doing that. 

I think AI, it’s a lot about agility and being able to keep up, and being able to keep up is not so easy. People sometimes feel overwhelmed. You will probably quickly see that I’m very much of a people person, so maybe that’s why I’m coming at it from that angle. But I think with AI as well, we do a lot of things in my organization, just listening to each other on what people are doing in terms of best practice and how they’re using it and how it’s making their work better, their relationship with the partner better, etc. We are doing a lot of that, like sharing and exchanging best practices and learning from each other, which is back to my earlier point about having an open mind, being humble, and constantly learning and being open to learning new things and discovering new things and keeping up, because that’s important. But this very basic human need of delivering what the customer needs and assumes understanding it, and in order to understand it, you always still have to listen, being prepared, listening, and all of that. That still all stands, I think. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Yes, and I really believe that that is true. It goes back to being curious. Customers need that. It is a little harder sometimes to get in front of them. It’s something that we hear quite a bit at the IEPS, that the industry is changing and not all sellers really know how to keep up. But I think your point is well taken, that when you just imagine that the humanity of it all is pulled out of the equation, and now we just have to machine to machine, that’s not it at all. It’s really, as overwhelmed as we might be, they are too. You have to come at us with that humanity. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: Yeah, I think so too. That basic principle about let me understand where you’re coming from and what you are worried about, that still stands. Back to the point, Gina, if you’re talking to a CIO who is worried about Mythos and who is worried about AI and who’s not keeping up, and who has to maintain the same budget year over year, and who has their CEO asking about what are we doing about this and what are we doing about that? Then you have to be understanding on, how can I help this person be more successful? Then from there, everything else will follow. I think that very basic principle is still very much there. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Yes, I think so too. It’s interesting listening to different sales teams, how they’re trying to incorporate all this new rapidly-changing technology and feel like they can talk about it in a very educated way, which is I think where part of the problem is. Even some customers don’t necessarily know what they want and what they need. Staying curious, asking questions, and bringing that in I think is a great approach. Hopefully it will still give us all lots of opportunities for growth, which I think are there, and to your point, keep learning. Keep learning is really critical. 

Let’s just tweak that a little bit. I don’t know in Europe, you work for an American company, but do you see a lot of the same things happening in the European market as you do the US market in terms of how sales is changing and what it takes to keep up? 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: Yes and no, because the world is becoming smaller every day, I think. A lot of themes, especially in the technology sector, then it’s a small world, even if it’s a big world. I think in that sense, a lot of trending and the themes are very similar. I do think that in Europe in particular, and you could argue to some degree, APJC as well, the geopolitical piece around the concept of sovereignty and digital sovereignty, and in Europe, for example, there’s a lot of thinking about how can we create more technology independence. There’s a lot of investment going into promoting European homegrown technology. That’s a topic that is very prominent here. 

Cisco, as a US HQ’d, company has to think about that. We have launched a series of critical sovereign infrastructure solutions, specifically for customers that are sensitive to think about national security, defense, government, and all of that. But on-prem solutions, solutions with special legal privilege and protection to allow that protection and that national sovereignty type of concern. That’s a typical topic that is different from the US and outside the US. That is super interesting also, because again, from a philosophical point of view, as the world becomes smaller and smaller and more and more interdependent, there is also this emerging, I want to protect inside my borders. 

It’s just a very interesting balancing act, because we are absolutely in favor of open technology, open internet and all of that. We can all benefit from ongoing technology developments, but at the same time, there are these concerns from national governments or European institutions to have that right balance in terms of technology developments. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I just was listening to a really fascinating talk on how keeping the security of things now is so vastly different than it was even a year ago. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: Even three months ago. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Yes, even three months ago. To me, it is quite amazing and quite exciting and a little terrifying too. I think we all have our work cut out for us. Well, this has been a fabulous conversation, Elisabeth, and I’m sorry it’s coming close to an end. One thing that we really like to do on our shows is ask our guests for one final piece of advice, something that sellers can put into place to advance their careers or perfect their selling game, shall we say, that they can start today on. What do you have for us? Any thoughts? 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: I love talking about being fearless or fear less. I think we are often self-limiting because we have the little voice or we are afraid of things going wrong, or we are afraid to being fully ourselves, or we’re afraid to proposing things, or we’re afraid to raise things. I think it’s really important to be fearless or just fear less. I think that’s really important because if you think about it, you should live your life to the fullest extent. Maybe in private life, that’s more difficult or more scary, but at least in your professional life, you should. I think that’s really important, especially in today’s environment. We live in such exciting special times. I think don’t let fear stop you. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I absolutely love that. As one guest I had on a while back said, what’s the worst that could happen? I think that’s really a great way to think about it. Be fearless because what’s the worst that could happen? You make a mistake. It’s not the end of the world. 

Elisabeth De Dobbeleer: No, no, no. I would say fearless in combination with humility, because that’s how you will be open-minded and grow and learn and always get better and better. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Wonderful advice. Elisabeth De Dobbeleer, thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to hearing more from you in the future. Thank you everyone for tuning in. See you next time. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 854: Inside Cisco’s Monumental Partner Program Transformation with Elisabeth De Dobbeleer first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is a Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. 

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

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Find Kristy on LinkedIn. Find Carli on LinkedIn. 

KRISTY’S TIP: “There was a gap in how we were delivering our cyber services, so went to leadership and said, ‘The cyber leadership role doesn’t exist, and it should. I’m the one to run it.’”

CARLI’S TIP: “You have to be willing to say yes, especially as you’re trying to grow and navigate opportunities. Unless it’s detrimental to you or your family, there’s no reason to say no.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Today, I have two guests, so that’ll make it even more fun. Carli Evantanto, who is the director of business development for the government consulting arm of ABS, and Kristy Huang, who is the global director of cybersecurity at ABS. Welcome. I gave them your titles, but let’s get down to who you are and how you work and how you came to be the team that you are. Kristy, do you want to go first and tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are? 

Kristy Huang: I’m the Director of Global Cybersecurity Business Development for ABS Consulting. I’ve been in this role for about six months now, something like that. Prior to that, I led our government growth practice, and prior to that was specific to DOT. I’ve been in sales the entire time while I’ve been here at ABS doing that hybrid capture business development role. Prior to ABS, I was at a lot of different organizations, some large systems integrators, some small whether it’s digital transformation, but really have lived in the government space for a majority of my career. 

In my current role, I do both commercial and federal. That has certainly been a learning experience for me, but really exciting to be able to support both sides of the organization. Then I bullied Carli into joining ABS a little over a year ago at this point, so excited. Carli now leads our government practice. Carli, if you want to tell us a little bit about how you got here and why you chose me after I bullied you into it. 

Carli Evantanto: I’m Director of Business Development for the Government Sales Sector here at ABS. I previously was brought into ABS to be a capture manager or sales representative to grow out our FEMA and Department of Homeland Security portfolios under Kristy. Then a little bit over six months ago, Kristy was extended the offer to go lead our cyber sales. As a result, she pulled me up alongside of her to lead the government sales team. It’s really cool because she brought me in and then she continued to advocate for me and bring me up. 

Previous to coming to ABS, I worked for a small government contractor doing government sales. Before that, I was in B2B traditional sales roles as a BDR, as an account executive doing that very standard cold call software sales process. But my career started in higher education. I made a career pivot after about two and a half years when I had a female mentor at the university that I worked for sit me down and share with me that she appreciated my energy. She thought I had great ambition and talked to me about different ways that I can utilize the strengths I have and helped me discover what the sales world is all about. 

It was interesting because that was a mentor and a supervisor who said, “I think you’re great here, but I think you’re going to be greater somewhere else.” That kickstarted my whole sales journey and led me to here where, yes, Kristy, she sold me to come to ABS and it was a pressure that was highly welcomed and her leadership was really what brought me here. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I love that somebody saw something. We hear that more often than you might think, for how people started in sales, it was like, “Yeah, I know this is your interest, but you really should be looking at this.” That gives you, I think, that extra courage that you need to be resilient in those first years of sales, because it’s not for the weak of heart. I often kid that if I was coming into sales now in the current environment where a lot of people are working from home, if I didn’t have the energy of a sales department around me, I don’t know that I would have stuck with it, because it’s really the energy that keeps you going. I like that you two are a team and that you hold each other up and that you’re accomplishing great things. This is great. 

Let’s get into some of what you all do. Especially now, what does it look like to sell government consulting and cybersecurity services to this administration? How is that different from other roles that you might find yourself in, sales roles anyway? 

Kristy Huang: It’s funny because prior to this, I sold more software type of solutions where there was a hard solution to sell. I think it is a completely different world now to do just services because we’re a vendor-agnostic company. While we can work with any platform, we don’t sell a platform. Quite honestly, I find it to be a lot more challenging to do the consulting side because it’s really more about partnering with your customer to really understanding what they need and what that end goal is, and then figuring out a way to say, “Okay, here are the services you need on top of it.” 

I think right now we’ve seen a shift in how the organization or how the administration is buying services. A lot of it really is like, what is actually needed here? What is the critical path forward? I think when you hear consulting, you think, “That’s extra. We don’t need that. We can just buy this solution and that’ll solve all our problems.” But historically and more so now than ever, I think that’s just not the case. The consulting is what’s needed because you can have the best tools in the world, but you need to understand how to apply them, how to use them, and how to make them work for your workforce. 

We’re seeing a lot more engagement from our customers in that aspect of their willingness to have the conversation about their end goals. Whereas before a lot of times, I think we had to fight it out of them, or really I’ll say talk it out of them over multiple conversations trying to get to that. Now I think there’s a lot more emphasis on, here’s the goal, how do we get there, and openness in those conversations. I don’t know if it’s made it harder or easier because almost everybody’s remote, or at least in a hybrid schedule. When you’re talking with customers or they finally respond to that 10th email of yours, I’m like, “All right, let’s do this.” It makes those few times that you do meet with them in person that much more critical of, “Okay, this is my one shot. I have 60 minutes to explain why they need us, how we can help them.” 

I don’t know that things have been a little bit more challenging from getting in front of people, because I can just ignore you because you’re not walking the halls like we used to when you reference what it used to be like. We used to be able just to have an office, have a desk within Department of Transportation or wherever else, and you could go by and say hello to everybody. 

Now you can still go in, but you’re not sure who’s going to be in there that day. That makes it a little bit more challenging, but it’s certainly, I think for me personally, just the consulting side, it’s more of a challenge to me to figure out that, “Okay, here’s their end goal. We could do 50 different things for them to help them out, but what makes the most sense for their specific challenge?” I know Carli is really high energy as well, but there’s that brain function that just clicks, where you’re like, “I know exactly what you need. Here’s this, we’ve had a similar client.” I don’t know, Carli, for you, if you’re experiencing the same. Again, products are products, but the services side has certainly been interesting, especially when you put the word consulting into the mix when we’re talking to our clients now. 

Carli Evantanto: I think our game has become much more strategic and collaborative than ever before, because as Kristy said, you get maybe one person who can go walk the halls and you don’t know who’s going to be there that day. Instead of Carli being in charge of my portfolio and looking at myself and going and doing my work, I now have to communicate with Kristy and the other team members who also have the ability to talk to clients. We all have to be on the same page because it might not be me that gets to talk to my client. It might be Kristy who gets there first and it’s not in a way of beating each other, but in a way of how do we leverage the team of resources that we have to best support and serve our clients and really work on getting this win together. That’s the environment that I feel like I’ve noticed in a shift this past year, is that it takes really way more than one or two people now, especially as we’re growing within the government and in the commercial sector. 

It’s super collaborative. It’s highly strategic. You can’t just cold call as much anymore. It’s really what’s the game plan. As Kristy said, getting the clients what they need, and in today’s environment, they don’t often know what they need because they’re moving so fast. We’re all learning together and establishing what is the need at the same time. Really it is difficult, but in a really exciting and positive way. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I like that there’s an overall tone of positivity that yes, it’s complicated dealing with the government, but there are opportunities there and it really is all about a team effort, as you say, because otherwise it would be so hit and miss if it was just one person trying to connect with one person who might be there next week or might not be. I like that approach very much. 

How have you two advocated for yourselves to move into these director level roles? These are important questions for women in sales. I’m just finishing up a book that we’re about to publish, which is all about stories of women who have bucked the trend or had that wakeup call that, “Okay, I need to be advocating for myself and not waiting for someone else.” Talk to us a little bit about how you have advocated for yourselves and each other. What advice do you have for the women listening, how they can handle things? 

Kristy Huang: I think one, we are lucky that there are a lot of women in positions of power at ABS in a way that is very encouraging and in a way that we have people who are both our equals and above us who are always advocating for other women. I do really appreciate that about the culture here of just having people who, especially coming from our government group, a lot of the people who started as consultants in our government space are now leading their own P&Ls and have moved over to commercial, or instead of being a project manager, they are now leading government operations. We certainly have a lot of women who we’ve seen them move through the organization. I think that gives you that comfortability and confidence you need to advocate for yourself because you’ve seen other women do it. I do think that that is important to surround yourself and be aware and have relationships with other women within the organization. 

But for our specific roles that we’re in now, it’s interesting but challenging environment within the government space. I saw that there was a gap in how we were delivering our cyber services. I went to our senior VP and I said, “Hey, this role doesn’t exist. I think it should. I think I’m the one to run it.” I’ll be honest, I think I surprised him in this conversation. I called Carli the next day and I was like, “I did something.” 

Gina Stracuzzi: Good. I like hearing this. 

Carli Evantanto: No, because I was like, “Oh, no, you’re quitting. I can’t do this without you.” My heart sank because we’re already in an extreme environment and Kristy is like, “I just have news for you.” I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to brace myself.” 

Kristy Huang: I just paused for a second and Carli is like, “You’re quitting.” I was like, “No, no, no, opposite, actually.” Ultimately, we don’t necessarily have a ton of control in large organizations. Where you see the moments, my best advice would be, take it. If the answer was no, then I’d continue in my last role and I would have found ways to get creative. It was a surprise to me, honestly. It wasn’t one of those like I’ve been thinking about this for months and months. I think I was just really excited about a couple of very specific cyber opportunities that we were growing. I was just looking like, who can I turn to for advice on this? I was like, “Hey, I actually think that person’s me,” and that’s how this thought came to me. 

With that, having that conversation with Carli of, “I think you’re ready, Carli,” I was out for a couple of weeks last year and Carli had stepped into the role and I had that conversation with her of, “Hey, I know you haven’t been here for that long. I know I brought you in to work with me and I was really excited about it, but I think you’re the right person for this role. I’m going to tell them that.” I didn’t want to throw Carli into it if she didn’t think she was ready and she didn’t want that and really was like, “No, I just want DHS.” That’s perfectly fine. You got to know yourself and what you want. I do think that that was a, and I’m sure, Carli, I’d love to hear your reactions to how and what level of nervousness you were when I was like, “I think you’re ready, you should do it.” 

Carli Evantanto: Well, I had no thought. I just said, “Yeah, of course,” because as Kristy said, you just have to be willing to say yes, especially as you’re trying to figure out and navigate any opportunity, unless it’s detrimental to myself or my family, there’s no reason to say no. You just say yes, if the opportunity presented itself to you. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Clearly, Kristy is a hell of a salesperson. 

Carli Evantanto: Yes, that’s a trick in it, because I said yes, and it moved very quickly. Both of our equal transitions moved very quickly. There was, I will be honest, a moment, because as anybody who watched the news in 2025 learned, the government landscape shifted a lot. There were dramatic changes, better, worse, net neutral. There was a moment a week or so after I said yes that I was like, “What did I get myself into? Did Kristy trick me? This is crazy.” I very quickly got over that and saying, “Yes, this is challenging. Kristy is walking into something challenging. She’s giving me something challenging. We’re both gifted with this opportunity to be a part of really positive and impactful change.” Challenge is not inherently bad when you have a team of people around you. It wasn’t easy, yes. 

As Kristy said, there’s a lot of women in leadership here at our company, which does make it easy to say yes, to step up and do hard things. In fact, when I was interviewing with this company and going through my options and what I wanted to do, I remember one of the last conversations with Kristy, I said, “I’m just so nervous because I’m so determined and I’m really passionate about my career and my growth. But I’m also a mom and can I do both?” It was if she timed it, if she planned this, her daughter barges in to our interview and was like, “Mom, mom, mom,” and Kristy was like, “This is literally my daughter. This is how we operate here.” 

Other women in leadership, they’re not necessarily in sales, but they’re still in leadership here, we’re all walking a similar path together. Being offered a chance to stand next to the women here was a no brainer because we’re all juggling, whether we’re moms or not, our own families, our own personal lives, our own personal aspirations that it’s hard to do what we do every day, but it’s easier when you’re doing it in a team. 

Gina Stracuzzi: There’s so much there to unpack. One, you hit on something really important, the idea that if you see it, you can be it. If you’re in a company as a woman where there’s no women at the top, or there’s just one and she’s hanging on for dear life, it makes it really hard to imagine that there’s opportunity for you. That’s really demoralizing and it leads to the why am I here feeling. When you do have rough days, it’s only that much more profound. 

For both of you, Kristy, I think when you went into your boss, the sentiment, the emotion, the idea was so genuine and so authentic that there was no way to say no, because it wasn’t a theory. It’s like, “This is what we need and I’m the person for the job.” Honestly, I could retire tomorrow if every woman that I come across would do that. Just believe enough in yourself to make statements that there’s no denying them. Rather than, “Maybe this is a good idea,” or, “I’ve been thinking, I don’t know what you’ll think,” that hesitation is what gives people an opening to say no. But when you, “This is what we need, I’m here, I’m ready, let’s do it.” Who’s going to say no to that? 

Carli, I love that you jumped head first, too. It’s always good when things make you a little nervous because that’s when you’re going to grow. If it all felt really comfortable, then it’s not a lot of growth. 

Carli Evantanto: In the sales division, Kristy and I are the two women within leadership, but we are surrounded by men who also equally let us be ourselves. Kristy and I are often the loudest voices in the room by nature. You always know what Kristy and Carli think, but also surrounding yourself with people and finding a culture of everybody who listens to each other, regardless of your positionings, I think is really important in making sure that we all have an equal chance to advance, and particularly in sales, which is generally a male-dominated field. Then Kristy and I have the ability to work with the women who are on the sales team or on the sales floor who are entry level or beginning their career. They can look to us and we can help them navigate what we navigated before. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It sounds like a perfect scenario, or as close to perfect as you can get, when you’re also dealing with a lot of volatility and uncertainty. What routines or boundaries help you manage the demands of global and government sales? There are long cycles, there’s travel, time zones, kids, as you pointed out, other demands on your time. How do you do this without burning out? 

Carli Evantanto: For me, it’s about recognizing and knowing myself enough to say, “Hey, I’m going to burn out.” Even just yesterday, somebody requested to have a quick conversation with me, which never happens, they’re never quick, and I had to say, “Hey, no, I feel like I’m really at my end of the rope and I need to take a little bit of time and just step away. Can I call you first thing tomorrow morning?” If you have that awareness of who you are, it helps you advocate for yourself. Then if you’ve already built really strong rapport with the people around you, this individual, I work with them frequently enough that they can say, “Okay, if Carli’s saying this, she means it and I respect that.” Being able to know who you are, say no, and know what my priorities are. We both travel frequently. Kristy travels far more than I do, but being able to recognize like, “I’ve been gone X number of days and I can’t do another one,” and just knowing when the right time to say yes versus no, is really important. 

Kristy Huang: I think boundaries, knowing yourself and the personal boundaries are really important just so that you don’t get burned out. Honestly, I think the best thing that I did, and this is a very tactical response, but I got a work phone. I have a work phone and I have a personal phone. I think COVID really challenged that notion of where does work end and life start? I think it happened in a rough way. I live in D.C. proper, so my house is tiny. It’s going from my desk and then five feet away is my couch and my kitchen. There was no separation. I do think that literally separating that is good so that when I leave the house, I don’t even have the option to respond to my work emails or to people from work. 

Obviously, people have my personal phone number as well. If there’s something real serious going down, you can call me. But in the end, sales to sales. The people that we’re selling to are likely going to be working in the same time frames that you are. I’m not expecting a call of like, “I really need to buy X, Y, Z at 2 a.m.” I think it’s not a real fun response, but I do think that that helped me personally to make sure I was compartmentalizing this is the work day and this is where it bleeds over. 

I do think too, it’s good when you appreciate the people that you work with and you have that rapport with other people, because you can say things like what Carli said, “Tomorrow’s going to be better.” For me, similar situation of people understand that when I need time, they give me time and they can respect that. Similar, you’re on PTO, give people that time to actually take PTO. They need a break, give them that break. We’re salespeople though, so if we need to be on that one call, if that’s how we close the deal, I’m never going to say no to that. That’s the slippery slope of where do you decide to say no, like which ones? But I think boundaries are important. I think it’s being flexible on those, but also making sure that people understand when they’ve crossed that line or when they’re asking for too much, to make sure that you maintain that balance. 

Carli Evantanto: I think the boundary internal is easier to protect with clients. Typically, I will answer the phone for my client, maybe not at 2 a.m., but if the deal is there, know when to prioritize and who to prioritize with. Client calls always come first, unless there’s a situation that I can’t talk for whatever reason, that’s the call I always answer. Kristy’s calling to talk to me for five minutes, that might not be the call I need to take right now. Actually, I answer 99% of the time, but knowing the prioritization of what it is that you need to get across the finish line and what your goals of the day are, and managing those also helps protect your own boundaries as well. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice, ladies. We do like to leave our listeners with pieces of advice they can put into place today to help their sales career or sell better, whatever the case is, or hit up that client. What do you have for us? 

Carli Evantanto: I actually was just thinking like, what advice would I have given to myself? There was a question I got asked not too long ago, and I think it’s of similar vein. For me, it’s intentionally do hard things, intentionally put yourself in challenging situations so that when real-life hard things come up, they don’t feel as challenging, and you won’t be as scared to make that phone call. For me, that’s in working out in the mornings and doing the hard run, or trying something different, and the safe environments where you safely can try hard things. When the difficult conversation comes up in real life, it doesn’t feel as intimidating because you know that you have the strength to do it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I love that. That is really great advice. Try to top that one, Kristy. 

Kristy Huang: I think it’s different for everybody, but for me, the thing that has helped me out most in my career is being your authentic self. I think at the beginning of my career, I felt the need to look at other people and say like, “That’s what I need to look like. That’s how I need to go to this networking event,” and try to emulate the success that I’ve seen. Then that showed in how I was selling. That showed in how I was interacting with clients, where I was nervous, I wasn’t sure of myself because I was trying to copy somebody else’s delivery. 

Now, maybe I’m a little bit too much myself in meetings, so I could probably find a balance there. But I think that’s how you gain your customer’s trust. That’s how you gain people you work with trust, by being yourself and saying like, “Yeah, here is my limitation,” or, “I don’t know the answer to that, but I know somebody who does and I can get back to you.” Instead of saying, “Yes, we can do that,” and making something up on the fly, or just trying to be more robotic because you feel like it’s more professional. I think you can be a professional version of yourself. 

It shows you’re more comfortable, people are more willing to open up to you as a result. I’d say look to others for guidance in terms of what’s worked for them, but try to maintain that version of yourself that shows, because that will feed into your confidence. Selling is impossible if you don’t have the confidence and you don’t stand behind what you’re saying and how you’re saying it. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Great advice. Thank you both. It was such a pleasure having you and a great conversation. I look forward to hearing more about what you’re doing. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 829: Advocating for Yourself So You Advance Faster in Sales with Kristy Huang and Carli Evantanto first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is a Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

Find Louise on LinkedIn. 

LOUISE’S TIP: “Bring your best self every time. If you’ve done everything you can, then the outcome isn’t failure, it’s just part of the journey.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Louise McEvoy is the Senior Vice President Global Channel Sales at Keyfactor. Welcome, Louise. 

Louise McEvoy: Thank you, Gina. It’s a real pleasure to be here. I appreciate the invitation. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Tell us a little bit about yourself, and go in to some of the things that you do in your off time, but we’re going to dig deep into that as we speak further. Give us a little bit of you background and then well go from there. 

Louise McEvoy: I would say my brand is channel and cybersecurity. That’s where I’ve spent the majority of my career. I recently moved to Keyfactor, it’s a cybersecurity company focused on cryptographic risk. You think, what is that? It’s all quantum forward. If you want to talk quantum later, it’s a fascinating discussion. It’s also very, very scary. But we can set that aside for now. 

Spent the majority of my time in the channel with IBM and a number of big companies. I’ve just really enjoyed cybersecurtity. It’s a fascinating place to be. I didn’t realize you could have a career solely based on cyber and channel, but it’s possible and I’ve really enjoyed it. I moved just six months to Keyfactor and really had my eyes opened to the quantum space and just what’s coming and what we should be prepared for. It’s a fascinating discussion. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s interesting to me that you used the word scary because you do a lot of public speaking, which is scary to people too, and your other little side hustle, exciting thing you do, is climb mountains. It seems that you have a predisposition to scary things and you take them on with a lot of enthusiasm. I love that. Before we go into the mountain climbing, just give us a brief synopsis of what quantum cybersecurity is. 

Louise McEvoy: People talk about cybersecurity about protecting their email, their endpoint devices like laptops, iPhones, etc. But beneath all of that are these certificates, public key infrastructure or cryptographic certificates. These certificates have been in place, those standards have been in place for years and years and years, decades even, and they haven’t quite changed or been updated. There are millions all over. In any one organization, you will have enormous amounts of certificates. 

As we get more and more into AI, and AI gets better and better, at some point, we’re going to hit this tipping point, and it’s going to be quantum. Quantum will be able to decrypt cryptography, or these public key infrastructure, the PKI. We need to update that so that everything that we have in this underlying layer is secure. Right now, everything that we do has these certificates from decades ago in places we don’t even know exist. We need to make sure that we have a cybersecurity layer on top of that. We offer that to our customers. 

People are thinking AI and cybersecurity, but they’re not quite seeing the bigger picture from what we’re seeing and talking to customers and partners, that this quantum forward mindset needs to be in place because there’s a risk involved if we don’t take care of what’s going to happen at quantum. Who knows when quantum breaks? I’ve been talking to a lot of thought leaders around this and we’re seeing it not in the next decade, but in the next few years. When quantum hits, when all these computers have gotten so, so smart and they can break these encryption codes, there’s a lot of information that will be out there for public consumption, lots of information. That includes public consumption that could be taken by threat actors, bad threat actors. What do they do with that data? What do they do with all the information? It could be a different world and we just need to be mindful that quantum is coming. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Color me scared now. 

Louise McEvoy: I don’t mean to scare you. It’s more about there’s preparation ahead. In the channel world, it means there’s a lot of opportunities for partners because we need to talk to our end customers about what quantum looks like. There’s enormous services engagements with everything that we’re doing. There’s a lot of opportunities, but we need to start now because eventually, we will get to the point where AI has gotten so smart we’re now looking at quantum computing. 

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s the next thing forward. My husband is cybersecurity as well. It’s an evolution. You’re absolutely right. There are ways to protect ourselves, but preparation is everything. 

Now that we’ve talked about the sales part of things and the work part of things, let’s talk about the really exciting stuff that you do. I know you have a public speaking company with your sister and you do a lot of public speaking, but before we talk about that, because it is what you talk about in those opportunities, that is the real exciting piece, and that is mountain climbing, but not just any mountain climbing. Tell us about what you do and how you got into it. 

Louise McEvoy: Thank you for thinking so much about that journey. I do high altitude mountaineering. A lot of people get confused that it might be rock climbing or it might be hiking, but it’s the high altitude. I’ve climbed the highest mountains in the world. If you name pretty much any mountain, I may have climbed it, including summiting Mount Everest in May of 2018. It started as a very, very different type of journey, and part of the speaking I do is that we’re all on a journey and sometimes bad things happen to really good people and that puts us on a journey that we may not have realized. 

I moved countries, I had a life change and I needed to break away. I started reading a book about Everest and it was fascinating. I didn’t know that people like me could go on these types of journeys, like climb high mountains, and I became fascinated with it. I made a promise to myself I’d one day see Everest. I saw Everest from base camp. I made a second promise, one day I would climb Everest. I spent the next 14 years climbing all over the world in pursuit of that goal so that I can get used to that high altitude, the training, the expeditions, different conditions, mountains, weather, and I made Everest on my first try. 

Since then, I’ve gone on to many more mountains and I’ve been asked to speak a lot about this and so it’s a little joint venture between my sister and I, she lives in Canada, I live in Southern California, really just to bring us closer so we get a chance to talk every day, week, whatever. It’s been very fulfilling. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s wonderful. You read a book, you got intrigued. You started doing high altitude climbing. Did it not strike you to start smaller to begin with? 

Louise McEvoy: I did start smaller. I did a trek to base camp at Mount Everest, which was a three-week journey. From there I decided I want to try something more. I climbed Mount Rainier, which was a little bit more technical. From there I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and then it just became something more and more and more and I just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and took lots of different climbing courses, technical courses, avalanche courses, wilderness first aid, just in pursuit of getting better and better and better at this passion of mine. 

I don’t even know if you’d call it a sport, but it’s definitely a passion. It’s something I wake up to every day and I’m excited to know what the next story in the news is around climbing and who’s doing what, and what the next goal is, and where the next trip will take me. It’s been very, very fulfilling and I would encourage anyone just to find that passion and it could be in some far-flung way that you never even expected. I didn’t grow up in any way in high altitude and it just became something that I got introduced to, from moving countries and not knowing anyone and someone suggested I read a book just as something to do that weekend, and from there it took off. I had no idea that journey was ahead of me. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That is so exciting. Let’s combine the two things that you do. I know you started, with a friend, you started a community of women in IT, I believe it was. Now you do retreats for these women in this community. The first question that came to my mind was, did you start this as an IT community and then it expanded into the climbing, or did you decide, these are women that could really benefit from pushing themselves and really trying something different? How did those two come together? 

Louise McEvoy: I firmly believe everyone’s on a journey and sometimes these journeys start in the most benign ways and ways you don’t even expect. I’ve been climbing for approximately 15 years, doing this high altitude climbing. An acquaintance of mine in the industry reached out to me and she heard me speak about Mount Everest and she said, “Do you want to go hiking sometime?” and I said, “Yes, of course.” We met months later, we didn’t know each other that well, and we started hiking together. 

From there, we did it a lot more and I introduced her to what’s called a 14er, which is a mountain over 14,000 feet. There are only mountains in four states in the U.S. over 14,000 feet, a 14er. We did a 14er together and it was her idea, she said, “Well, what if we invited other women to hike a 14er?” In my mind, “Who wants to hike a 14er? This is just my little world,” but I introduced her to that world and she said, “Let’s make this bigger. Let’s expand this to other women.” 

We invited women to join us on a long weekend in Breckenridge, Colorado. We hosted in a big house and we brought in a private chef and we had swag, and it was just a fun thing and we had nine women join us. Then we realized, “Wait, there might be other women who might want to join us,” and more women joined, and then the next year more women, and now we’re hosting teams 13, 14, and 15 in September. We’ve had already 12 teams of women and there’s approximately 12 to 16 women on each team, and we hike a mountain, non-technical, and we hike it over 14,000 feet. It’s a little oxygen, it’s a long day, it requires some training, and we do that together virtually. 

Then these women meet and they become friends and there’s great networking opportunities and just friendships that have been formed in ways I never expected. I sit back and I’m so proud of the women who come together, women who don’t know one another. They decide to go on this retreat and we all share a house and rooms. We had one of our teams last year who they bonded so well they wanted to, as a team, come back again this year, and these women didn’t know each other. Some come with friends and others just come alone, and they bonded so well, so quickly, so strong that they asked to have a trip just for them. We’ve set up a trip and there’ll be over 200 women who have come through this by the time this year is over, and so many interesting stories from this. I’m really proud of it. As my friend, Erin Figer, says, it’s a labor of love. It takes us some time to put this together but it’s something that is very fulfilling, nourishing, and we get a lot out of it as well. We have a college SheSummits14ers. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I did rock climbing once and I have a tremendous fear of heights, and I made the mistake of looking down. Now, I’ve done some hiking and climbing mountains, and I didn’t have that experience when I would hike a height necessarily, it was something about looking over and there’s nothing there. Do you find that people adhere to the situation pretty quickly, or do you have people who get up there and just find it really difficult? How does that work for most average humans? 

Louise McEvoy: It’s a mix. Some people really embrace that challenge and they don’t have that fear. We had one woman last year where we had a pretty narrow traverse on rocks and she was terrified, absolutely terrified. I’ve got a lot of experience in this and we handheld her through this narrow section. At the summit she was freaking out about how does she descend through this narrow section that was really tough for her. She started descending and she realized she’s already made it to the top, she’s just coming down, that’s the easy part, and she flew down and she was so proud of herself when she got back to the trailhead. She couldn’t believe she did it. She couldn’t believe she overcame that fear. It was wonderful to see that bright light in her and how she could conquer that so quickly. It took some effort, but she made it through and she was so proud of herself. We were all proud of her. 

When you get a community together who are proud of you for an accomplishment, it just feels good. We’re all very supportive of one another and people wait for each other. We just do whatever we can to make sure everyone is successful, because it’s a team. This isn’t an individual approach. It really is, let’s all make the summit as best as possible, and we go back to the house and we celebrate with lots of festivities. We have a number of those successes. 

I also think it’s a mindset too, and I talk about this, is when I’m climbing Everest, there’s a lot of scary things when you’re climbing, like climbing over those crevasses on those rickety ladders, but I also think you got to accept that fear. Once you do it often enough, you overcome it. “Okay, now I’ve done it.” Now it gets easier because you know you can overcome hard things. But if you don’t take that first step and you say, “No, I’m too afraid,” then you’re stalled. But if you’re like, “I’m going to try it, and I’m going to try it again, and I’m going to try it again,” before you know it, it becomes muscle memory and it’s no longer fearful. I try to use that in life in general, just, “Okay, it’s scary, but I know I can do it. Just step forward, just keep moving forward.” If I step back, then I’ll be stepping back in things. I try to use that mindset in everything I do. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I’ll make a generalization here that sometimes women tend to let their fears rule them. Fear of not being accepted, fear of sounding silly, or whatever the case is, whatever environment you’re in, you have those little voices that talk to you. Doing something like this and stepping far beyond that voice, that fear, that thing that holds you back has got to be incredibly liberating. 

Louise McEvoy: It is. When I first started mountaineering, it’s a very, very male-dominated sport. Kind of like our industry, channel sales, there’s a lot of men in the boardroom. It is a little intimidating. When I started mountaineering, it was hard. Sometimes I’m the only female in the team, so I get my own tent. The guys bond on their own because they’re together and there’s a different type of environment. 

One of the life lessons I learned when climbing Everest, we had nine people on that team. Out of the nine people, we had four women and five men. When we think about the numbers, you’d think most of the men are going to summit. No. In fact, all of the women summited and only two of the men summited. I say this because it’s not to say men or women are better or whatever. It’s that we’re different. Everyone’s different. We all have strengths in different ways. When we think about Everest, it’s an endurance mountain versus a strength mountain, because you’re going for very, very long periods of time. Women are really good at endurance. Men are really good at strength. Where there is a mountain that requires you to carry heavy, heavy gear, sometimes the men will be stronger there. But in the endurance mountains, the women are stronger. 

I always try to make that distinction. We all have a strength that may not be visible, but we do have it, and not to judge people and not to look at anyone different. When it comes to the SheSummits14ers, it’s a community of women. There’s a different mindset and we all want to make it to the top. We all want to do it together versus individually. We come together as a team, we go together as a team, we look to summit as a team. It’s a different type of feeling and it’s not about rushing to the top. It’s about getting there together and we want that team picture, we want everyone to succeed. It really is a supportive environment in that way and it just makes the difference when we’re all in it together. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I can appreciate the difference in mindsets. Sometimes people do things just for the glory of it. From what you’re explaining, for most of the women that go on your retreats, it’s the journey. It’s the process of overcoming fear, of doing something as a group, for the experience of it, not for the glory of it necessarily. 

Louise McEvoy: Sometimes glory is okay. That’s fine. But in this environment, it’s about supporting each other, becoming friends, and growing together and doing hard things together. I think it’s a lot more satisfying when you’re doing it with someone else, with your team, versus, “I made it to the top and nobody else did.” It’s a lot more fun when you’re in it together. You support one another. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s really awesome. We will make sure that in the show notes, and when we post this, that people know how to reach out to you, because I’m sure there will be other women that will want to join. We have a lot of women in IT in our group, and sales, not that it’s necessarily limited to those. 

Louise McEvoy: We have people who bring their friends and they may not be in IT. It’s moms who might be needing something different, or someone outside of IT who just wants to go on a retreat weekend. It’s not limited to women in IT. We started there, and it’s grown, but our main connections are women in IT, but it’s definitely not limited to them. It’s just a retreat for women. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Most of the women that listen to this are in sales and they’re in IT sales, so it’ll be a natural connection, but hopefully they’ll share it with their friends and bring them along too. 

One of the questions that came to mind too is, how does all of this translate into how you approach sales? Has it changed your approach to it or your thought process about winning? Because it’s all about winning those big contracts and winning the sale. How has this impacted that? 

Louise McEvoy: That’s a good question and I think I’m still learning every day. It’s not like I’ve got this fixed mindset and therefore this is how I’m going to do it. I really look to surround myself with people who have a growth mindset and I want to have that as well. I do think what the lessons from the mountain have taught me is that I can do hard things, I can take risks. I have to set myself up and allow failure to happen, but know that I can go back and try again. 

Sometimes the best reward is from things that have been hard and things that I’ve had to learn. Sometimes setbacks are also a teaching moment. I recognize that. When I’m in an environment at work, I try to bring my best self. When I’m training for a mountain, I am not going to not summit because I haven’t trained enough. I am absolutely at my best capacity. It’s something else that has not allowed me to summit, whether it be the weather or conditions on the mountain. I try to take that mindset with everything I do. 

In business, I am the best I can be. It’s some other extenuating factor that allows me not to have that success at that moment in time. That’s okay as long as I bring my best self to the business, to our partners, to our customers, it’s only so much you can do. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s true. It’s a great mindset too. That makes me think of one other question that came to mind. I noticed that you have a lot of speaking engagements, and you mentioned like Boy Scouts and school groups and what have you. I was wondering, what message do you deliver to them? Both as a sales professional, do you push the industry too? Like, “You should think about sales.” Also, from the climbing piece, what do you share with them? 

Louise McEvoy: Interesting. It just depends on the audience. I look at the audience and what message that people want me to deliver to them. If it’s a women’s group, it could be around women in the boardroom and we can do hard things. If it’s schools, I look at what’s the main message that they’re looking for. I present to a kinesiology department at a university, so it’s the effects of the body on high altitude. It may not always have that sales message in it. It might just be the motivation, the inspiration, things like you get out of bed every day and you have that mindset, put two feet on the ground and go, “Okay, I’m going to reach my Everest today.” What is your Everest? It doesn’t have to be a mountain. It could be getting that next job, getting that house, something. What’s your Everest and how are you going to get there? 

When I talk to industries, schools, community groups, I always say, “What is it that you’re trying to reach and how do you get there?” Sometimes it’s a mindset. You have to do hard things. You have to train, you have to plan. You’re going to have setbacks. How do you get over setbacks? I really try to break through all that. There’s so many lessons that I’ve learned from the mountain. Sometimes there’s a setback, you have to go back down to base camp, but that doesn’t mean it’s a failure. You can still go up again. You have to read your environment. You’re on the mountain, you have to read the weather, the snow conditions, the team, who’s sick, who isn’t, and figure out a different plan. 

I try to get them motivated in different ways and it really is just the audience and what is it that they’re looking to accomplish? If I look at the Boy Scouts, when they were trying to summit Mount Whitney in California, “What does your training look like and what are you going to do when you hit hard times and hard things?” Those breakthrough moments and what I did to break through and reach that summit. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Those are good lessons. I’m sure, as you say, you have a wealth of them across a number of audiences. That’s really fantastic. Tell us a little bit about your next big challenge. 

Louise McEvoy: That’s my Achilles heel. I sigh heavily. I’m trying to finish what’s called the Seven Summits, which is the highest mountain on every continent. When I started off climbing, I had no idea I was on this journey to the Seven Summits. I did Base Camp, I did Kilimanjaro, I met someone on Mount Rainier who introduced me to Mount Elbrus, which is the highest mountain in all of Europe located in Russia. Just through a series of events, people, and different things that I came across, I was on this journey to the Seven Summits. I had no idea the Seven Summits even existed. I started climbing and climbing and I realized, “Wow, I’m halfway on the Seven Summits, let’s keep going.” 

The last and final, I’ve had six of the Seven Summits completed, that’s the highest mountain on every continent. I still haven’t completed North America. Highest mountain in North America is called Denali, also known as Mount McKinley. It’s in Alaska, very, very cold environment. The weather holds you back most of the time. A lot of crevasses, a lot of avalanches, and just high winds, extreme cold. I’ve tried it twice now and we didn’t make the summit due to weather. I’m going back again in May for the third time to hopefully finish Denali and complete my Seven Summits. It’s an extraordinary amount of training. When I talk about endurance mountains versus strength mountains, this one’s strength. We don’t have porters, Sherpas, cooks to support us on the mountain, you’re carrying your own gear. 

I was there last year and we carried 50 pounds in a sled that we pulled and 75 pounds in a backpack, so 125 pounds of gear going uphill at altitude on what’s called fixed lines. Those are the ropes in the mountain on a rope team where you’re all climbing together. It takes some effort, some coordination, some training. I’m really, really, really hopeful that the weather gods are on my favor and I can summit Denali. If I do, I will have summited the Seven Summits, and there’s a lot of women in the world who have done the Seven Summits. I’m hoping to be part of that very elite club. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s exciting and a little terrifying, just listening to it, to be honest. Mostly the cold and the icy conditions, that would take a lot. Hopefully the third time’s a charm, as they say, and this will be your crowning effort. But then one must ask, what’s next? 

Louise McEvoy: There’s a lot of mountains still left to climb. There’s a lot of 8,000-meter peaks in this world that are over 28,000 feet that I would like to climb before I get too old. I always say it’s more of a sport for younger people. It’s hard on the body when you’re sleeping in a tent. Denali, it’s over three weeks in a tent. Everest, it was seven weeks on the mountain, six weeks without a shower, and you’re eating really bad dehydrated food. It’s very hard on the body being at high altitude in that kind of stressful environment. I want a couple of more big mountains under my belt before I do something that’s not quite high-altitude mountaineering. 

Gina Stracuzzi: Maybe then you can start teaching it or something. You could become a coach. 

Louise McEvoy: Maybe. 

Gina Stracuzzi: I will say those last bits of information are not key selling points for talking other people into it, but you might as well know what you’re getting into. This is really fascinating and I am really excited for you and what you’ve accomplished. As someone who works with women sales leaders, I work hard to get them to understand their own innate power and strength. I hope they’ll all do at least a 14er. It’s exciting stuff and I am thrilled to have spoken to you about it. 

We like to leave our audiences with one piece of advice that they can put into place today to take their career, their sales, their life to the next step, something they could do right away, what would that be for you? 

Louise McEvoy: I love that question. I alluded to a few things, like we’re all on a journey, so you might be already on a journey that you don’t even know is ahead of you. I would say, embrace things, say yes to hard things, say yes to new challenges. You may not even know that that challenge going forward will lead you into your Everest. You don’t know. I would also encourage people to try hard things. Yes, things are scary, but things are less scary when you do them over and over again. It becomes muscle memory. Crossing a crevasse on a rickety ladder, no big deal anymore. 

It doesn’t have to be on mountains. I think just life in general, just embrace that challenge and just say yes to doing new things. Opening up that opportunity will give you insight into something you didn’t even know was there. I didn’t realize high-altitude mountaineering would become part of my life. I didn’t realize that my high-altitude mountaineering could open the doors to women experiencing a mountain over 14,000 feet. I had to be introduced to someone who had the idea, and from there, it just became a thing. New people, new experiences, just say yes. I would really encourage that. 

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice. Absolutely great advice. Thank you, Louise. I appreciate you joining us. It’s been a fabulous conversation. For our listeners, we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for everything. 

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 822: Climb Higher in Sales and Life with Women in Sales Leader Louise McEvoy first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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ERIKA’S TIP: “Always choose yourself  because that’s when you become your most trusted, authentic leader. In the channel, trust and relationships are everything. Without them, you never get past the first conversation.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. This is a Women in Sales segment. I am super excited. My guest today is Erika Irby. She is director of Americas channel marketing at Veeam Software. Previously, Erika was the go-to-market director at Microsoft across global partner solutions and device organizations, owning the strategy and channel marketing direction across US and Canada. She is well-versed in all things channels. She has over 20 years’ experience in education, global IT distribution, vendor marketing, and she’s been named CRN’s Women of the Channel list and one of the 100 most powerful women of the channel. She’s a speaker, a writer, and a leader in the IT industry. Welcome, Erika.

Erika Irby: Thank you, Gina. I’m so glad to be here with you.

Gina Stracuzzi: Me too. I know as we were talking a little bit off camera, it’s taken us a while to get this organized, but those are usually some of the best conversations. I know I gave the audience a brief little introduction. Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself before we get into our conversation?

Erika Irby: I’m super happy to be here and I think it’s interesting the way that we got connected, was because of an Ultimate Partner Live event with Vince Menzione, who connected me with Fred, even though I didn’t really know we were connected until he approached me. But this is exactly how the channel works. This is how the network works. We go to these events, we come together, something sparks something, we have that conversation, and then boom, we’re connected, and then things happen after that. I think it’s such a great example of how a channel works and how it can bring us all together.

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s something that comes up in the Women in Sales Leadership Forum that I run quite often, just the critical importance of your network, both internally and externally, and getting visibility like this. You’re not going to get these kind of opportunities if you don’t network like you did. It’s a good example.

Erika Irby: Absolutely, a hundred percent.

Gina Stracuzzi: I want to really dive into both your background and what you see as opportunities for women and the value that women bring to customers, partners, companies, and let’s just talk about the layered nature of it all. Based on your experience leading go-to-market and channel marketing across organizations like Microsoft and Veeam, what are some of the specific behaviors that you see women consistently bringing that actually change outcomes with customers and partners? Not just in culture, but in revenue, trust and those long-term relationships?

Erika Irby: I really love this question. I really try to think about women are definitely unique, but as a whole, I think we bring a lot of empathy, patience, and attention to detail, I think are three huge qualities that, in general, I think women tend to really bring to the table. I think we’ve mastered those soft skills required for good business relationships a long time ago, long before people called them soft skills. That was just something that women naturally exuded. I think that we also have the ability to be super savvy, keen, mindful. I think we also lean into our natural situational awareness. Often, we can pick up cues and things that maybe others may not notice.

Just like men of course, though, women are absolutely unique. Some of us bring a very strong financial acumen or a strategic insight background or a really keen business discernment. I think others bring incredible creativity and these big bold ideas and bravado and swagger. We hear in the industry a lot of times referring to people as a badass, but a lot of times it’s talking about a woman. Nowadays, we call them a baddie, which I think is really hilarious, but they bring that attitude and that persona a lot of times. I think often, some women, they’re just sitting there at the table and their physical being just exudes this sense of strength and power. That in itself can really endear customers and partners to a company, to an idea, to a strategy, to a path forward, simply based on their belief that that leader is trustworthy and informed and is capable of handling their business, and they really feel confident in that.

Gina Stracuzzi: It absolutely shines through. I need to ask, because you’ve been in some big rooms, are there ways and areas where you think organizations still fail to fully recognize or utilize that innate power, those innate strengths that women bring to the table?

Erika Irby: I think sometimes. I think there’s still a notion in our society about women being very emotional. I think there’s some negative connotations around that, because the truth is, when I’ve been in rooms and there’s been emotion, and especially if it’s a frustration or an anger, it is often coming from a man. But that is seen more as them being aggressive and passionate and wanting to push the business, and they’re expressing their frustration as they should be, and things like that. Whereas if a woman demonstrates any frustration, then she’s too emotional and she’s upset and she’s not handling the situation and not reacting well.

That sometimes is just part of this stereotypical society feeling this way. But I think there are many cases where in an event like that, if a man sides with the woman or expresses a similar sentiment or suddenly normalizes what she’s doing, then the conversation can continue and then everyone realizes, “This was a valid reaction or a valid thought,” or, “We need to go back and revisit that,” or, “Let’s work together to have a path forward. But it was okay that she brought this up in such a way.” I don’t think it’s companies necessarily that are doing this. I think it’s really about the folks in the room, what kind of leaders they want to be, and then are they setting aside any type of societal biases and instead just looking for the situation for what it is and then reacting as if they would react that that person is a completely competent person regardless of their gender.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s very powerful, Erika, because I think you’re right, it is situational and it’s interesting because when I talk to men and I say, “Do you support the women in the meetings?” or, “Do you stop people from talking over them?” or whatever, and they’re like, “Wait, what?” I think it’s just that we’re thinking about the next thing that needs to be said in a meeting or taking notes or something. We’re not paying attention necessarily to the dynamics. Your point is so valid because there’s a lot of allies in every room, it’s just sometimes they’re not paying attention to what’s actually happening in terms of dynamics. They’re more focused on, “Okay, she said that, now I’ve got to say this to drive the deal home,” or whatever the case is. I like the way you said that, and I hope that every man that listens to this will pay attention when they’re in meetings and really bolster the power that’s there with your female colleagues.

Erika Irby: Some people it feels really overwhelming, your point about allies where they think, “Oh my gosh, what do I have to do to be an ally? What do I have to say?” It can become almost this overwhelming task, like a part-time job, but really to me, because the truth is women have to be allies too. We should all be allies to anybody in the room who may not be getting their fair share of their voice time. If you just approach it, even very small things like if the leader is a man and a woman actually owns the business, she’s the one that is leading that team, if he says something like, “Well, I’m going to defer to Erika. Here’s my opinion,” that little comment of saying I’m going to defer to her indicates to the room that while he is sharing his opinion, and it is very valid, the ultimate owner of the business is Erika. When she speaks, that’s what we really need to keep in mind. It seems like such a small thing, but it helps to shift the folks in the room to just know where the decision is going to lie and then nobody is questioning it.

Gina Stracuzzi: You’re right, it’s just little things, like, “I have an opinion on this, but ultimately it’s Erika’s decision which way we go.” Those little things mean the world. That’s a great coaching opportunity there. I’m glad you took it.

Let’s talk a little bit on sales and marketing evolution. We’ve been reading more and more, and we even have a podcast now as part of the Sales Game Changers Podcast lineup. It is really the intersection of marketing and sales. This next area that I want to talk to you about is really timely. We know that the intersection of sales and marketing, it’s always been a little bit of a struggle for the two entities, but now it’s absolutely essential that they’re working together. How have you seen that relationship in the channel world between sales and marketing evolve and how complex is it in the channel area?

Erika Irby: I think that that is a really great question. I would say first of all that sales and marketing are no longer these bifurcated orgs that they used to be. Now more and more we actually see that sales and marketing are together and they create a go-to-market team or a go-to-market strategy and execution team. This isn’t groundbreaking. I think people in sales and marketing would say this, that since the beginning of time, that the intent was that they would work hand in hand to create and drive and close pipeline seamlessly as one team.

This can be very complex, and I experienced this at Microsoft because it was such a massive company, but I even see this at Veeam too. It can be a very complex matrix organization because it’s critical that we all move in this complimentary action, but folks have different jobs, and that’s why this is created this way, that they’re supposed to have different jobs, but we are supposed to work really closely together. Ways to make that happen, we are seeing marketing teams now gold on sales pipeline, because having that direct connection when it comes to compensation is a surefire way to get people to work together. We also see some sales development rep teams gold on certain marketing pipeline. I think that this is important because we’re seeing a shift from MQLs and SQLs really to goals that better align with each organization’s position in the funnel or customer life cycle. That way we all are interconnected along this journey and everyone has their place. Then one action feeds into the other.

Marketing is no longer seen, in my experience, as this event planning, party planning money bags. Sales is also not seen as this just die hard, we’re going to get every single deal and we’re going tell marketing, “We don’t need you.” It’s really not like that anymore. I do think in the past there was a little bit of this tension between sales and marketing and sales didn’t necessarily maybe feel the value of marketing, and then marketing was frustrated because they had leads that were just sitting there in the queue that sales wasn’t touching because they had their own priorities. But now I do think that has changed and marketing really is seen as more of a strategic investment managing all that investment, driving demand gen that is in alignment with sales priorities. I think we have evolved.

I think it’s now a true partnership. Even for companies that are still struggling with that, that’s what they strive for. We can see this a lot. We can see even some go-to-market teams actually have marketing and sales on the same team, and they’re rolling up to the same leader instead of being in two separate orgs. We also see go-to-market sections mandatory in QBRs and marketing folks invited to different critical sales meetings, and marketing teams ensuring that their sales teams are in lockstep with all their marketing plans and not moving on any investment until the sales folks have agreed and have signed off. It’s truly this combined integrated plan. I think all that is really super positive and I do see marketing being very tight with our sales counterparts and vice versa. We’re seeing huge success with that. I will say at Veeam, we blew our sales target out of the water for FY25, and we also blew our marketing target out of the water as well, and that’s no coincidence, that both teams over-achieved and really worked hard together to hit that final goal.

Gina Stracuzzi: That is amazing and really great advice. It’s a true-life example of what can happen when pretending they are and but aren’t really. Looking forward, if you were advising a chief revenue officer and a chief marketing officer, what would you tell them to stop doing if they weren’t working in alignment such as your teams are?

Erika Irby: The first thing I would advise them to look at is their team targets. Always go to compensation. That is such a driver. If folks are compensated on two totally different disparate things, that would be an immediate thing to fix. Then from there you can look beyond compensation, but also goals, targets, prioritization. Sometimes what happens is if the marketing team is totally focused on just pure top-of-funnel demand gen, that’s lovely, but the sales team is focused on nurturing, but then also closing. That leaves a gap in the middle sometimes because we can have a million leads coming in the top of funnel, but they’re quite cold. To get them down the line, we still need marketing to have multiple touch points and triggers to get them to continue to demonstrate their interest to make those leads hotter and hotter so sales can actually jump in there and then take us all the way home by closing the deal.

There’s also a lot of pre-sales activities that marketing should be involved in. That goes hand in hand with sales. Also with your engineering teams, you need to make sure that they’re also involved and making sure that we’re there helping with those pre-sales activities, that there’s investment there from both marketing and sales to help that. Then finally, I would also say, look at your programs. Those should be built in conjunction between marketing and sales to make sure that partners, “Hey, we have to have these value incentives.” That absolutely needs to be in there, but marketing shouldn’t be creating those alone. They should be incenting the activity that we want to ensure that that product or whatever it is, that that is the prioritization of sales. Priority, alignment on programs, I think alignment on campaigns, alignment on compensation, and then making sure that you’re not leaving big gaps in your funnel.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s great advice. Really powerful advice. Let’s talk a bit about if you were looking back over your career, and this is turning things back to the women in sales piece of this, what’s one lesson you wish women knew earlier in their careers and what they understood about influence, credibility, power in the partner-driven organizations? Because you’ve had a very specific kind of career, and it happens a lot that we think to ourselves, “Gosh, I really wish I’d known this 20 years ago, because I would’ve done this differently.” What advice would you have along that line if you were looking back?

Erika Irby: That is a great question. I think I would have two main things that really stick in my mind. One of them is from a purely career standpoint. One of the mistakes I made very early in my career, I had a company say, “Can we see your latest pay stub from your company?” I was so naive, and I was so eager to jump into a bigger role that I shared it, not realizing that there was zero reason for me to do that. I just was so eager to move forward and get this new role. Because of that, I started off at a lower salary than I probably could have negotiated, but I didn’t have the confidence and I didn’t have the awareness at the time. I was in my early 20s.

Looking back on that, there was no reason for me to do that. I should have been like, “This is my salary expectations. What are you offering me?” Instead of them looking at my pay and being like, “Great, this is a big raise for her,” and then I just took it. I would say if you’re super young in career and have a salary requirement, don’t be afraid to stick to it. If a company asks for your previous, which I don’t even know if they do this anymore, but if they do, the answer is no and this is your range, and there’s that.

Then from a partner perspective, I remember very early on hearing that the most critical element of success in the channel is relationships. In some of my jobs, I was actually dinged on having that quality because it was considered like, “That’s an easy thing. You should have more financial acumen. You should have more strategic acumen. You should have more business.” Those things are all super important, and you will never be able to drive a successful business without those things, but I will die on a hill that when it comes to the channel, the utmost important element I think in success is absolutely trust in relationships.

I think in the channel, one thing we, and if you work in the channel, you’ll a thousand percent agree with me, but it’s actually quite small. Even though there are just thousands of companies, billions of dollars, the channel itself is a pretty tight-knit org. We see this all the time because folks go from job to job. If you’re a channel chief here, you’re likely going to be a channel chief somewhere else. We see this with, this is a simple thing, but it is a huge indicator, the CRN Channel Chiefs list. People vote on that from your own community, from your own ecosystem.

You’re a channel chief at Veeam, it’s Kevin Rooney, he’s known throughout the ecosystem because he’s worked at other companies and those channel leadership, they know him as well. It permeates throughout the ecosystem. Everyone knows the channel chief that’s at Microsoft, everyone knows the VMware channel chief, etc. All these folks, HP. It’s because so many of us have these connections with one another because we go to these industry events together, we work together, we invite these people to our partner advisory councils. We are included in other boards and other advisory councils because we all work together. Clearly, we compete, but we also are driving technology together and ultimately what is really best for our partners, which are shared across the ecosystem.

Having these relationships and really being able to connect with somebody on that level ultimately lays the foundation of trust and then will ultimately help you be more successful with that business because they already know that you’re on their team. They already know that you’re somebody that they can trust and believe in, especially if you’re going to convince them to do something that maybe is outside of their box, or ask them to try something new. You have to have that element of trust and relationships or you will never get past the first discussion.

Gina Stracuzzi: I have often joked at the kind of incestuous nature of public sector.

Erika Irby: That’s even smaller.

Gina Stracuzzi: People move from employer to employer and everyone knows them. You really cannot burn a bridge or even smoke it, because to your point, it’s quite small and I think there’s a lot of opportunity in there for women. But to your point, once you get that trust, you have to keep it and you have to earn it. It is not something to be taken lightly. That’s where your influence and your credibility comes from and your network will expand, and that gets you visibility in the industry as well as visibility in your company. That is all great advice and keeping in mind each time that it is a small community, so you have to keep that credibility up. That is really important.

One of the things we like to do is ask for any remaining advice you would like to give, and then I will ask you for one piece of advice that listeners can put into place today to help bring their career or their selling up to the next level. First, if there’s anything else you would like to share with us, we would love to hear it.

Erika Irby: One thing I think is super critical from both a sales and a marketing standpoint, I think this is really critical from a company standpoint, is storytelling. At Veeam, you may have heard through the channels that we have a new CMO, Allison. She really has introduced to Veeam the story of Veeam about where we originate from and why we’re different and all these unique factors and even weaving in our culture. It’s an incredible story, and I really cannot wait for it to be honed so we can go and tell it. We have to tell it internally first, and then we’re going to go tell it to the world.

The truth is, when you’re in any job that you have, you’re telling the story. That’s what you’re selling. You’re selling either the story of how this product will drive your business, or how this service will save you money, or how what you can do will change the world. This is what we’re all doing. I think honing in on that ability to not just speak about features and benefits of a product, but to tell the story of what you do for the world, what you stand for, the difference you make in our ecosystem and how you are going to contribute to someone’s success is a way more powerful way of selling than just traditional success stories. Really telling that true story. It also helps endear your customers and partners to you because it’s something that they can believe in.

Gina Stracuzzi: Years ago, when I first got started in selling, I was a commodities broker, and that means you have to really get farmers and producers to believe that you have their best interest at heart in how you’ll approach the markets and trade for them. I just very naturally talked to them about my immigrant grandparents and how they struggled and grew things and really appreciated the value of things. Without even realizing, I was telling a story that they could relate to and it served me so well before I even realized that this was a thing. That’s how you build trust. It’s always been a great lesson for me and it’s something that stuck with me. I love that you’ve driven that home for a whole new generation of people.

We hear about storytelling, but it’s that relationship to trust building that I think is so critical because we all have biases, and a similarity bias is something that people can see in a story, even though we don’t want necessarily to perpetuate bias. But when they can see that you care about something, and perhaps that’s something they care about, and really that’s ideally what’s going to happen in the sales situation, you both are trying to achieve the same goal. It’s really important to keep all of that in mind when you’re telling stories and align it with what you’re trying to achieve. It is probably one of the best ways to build trust that you can do. I love that.

What piece of advice do you have for our listeners that they can put into place today to start telling better stories or propelling their sales career?

Erika Irby: Your comment about bias, you’re right, we don’t want to perpetuate negative bias, but we do want to perpetuate a bias for our products. Everyone wants to do that in the channel. They want to drive a bias for their product and services. If you keep that in mind, the stories you’re telling are to drive that, nothing negative, but to drive that focus, that natural inclination to what you’re selling, and you can do that naturally with your storytelling.

My piece of advice, and this is going to sound super selfish, and people might be like, “Oh my God,” but I would say always choose yourself. What I mean by that is you are your best and most validated and the best version of yourself to everyone around you when you choose yourself. What I mean by that is you’ll be a trusted leader when you follow your own instinct. Because when you’re authentic and when you make a decision based on what you think is best, and maybe despite other pieces of guidance, in your heart, if you’re like, “I think this is the best decision,” you’ll be a more trusted leader than if you decide to make a decision that somebody else thinks is right, but you don’t totally believe in, and then you’re only half invested because another part of you is like, “Ugh, this is not what I wanted to do. I can’t fully give myself.”

Every time that you’re in a situation, just be super mindful of what your gut is telling you, what you think is for your best, and when you do that, you will not end up letting other people down because you said yes when you really wanted to say no. You will always be in a position of confidence and accountability when you choose what you think is best, even if what you choose turns out to not be the best decision, or maybe it didn’t go according to plan, you will be able to take accountability for any of the missteps or mistakes or missing the target or whatever, with a true and open heart because you made the decision in the first place.

It just comes down to it, and also for your own mental health and physical health and all those things, even with your family, and again, this sounds selfish, but if you have children, you cannot be a good parent if you are not putting your own wellbeing first, because you’ll become exhausted or frazzled or stretched too thin. Then you will not be a good parent, you will not be a good partner, you will not be a good friend, you will not be a good coworker if you are not fortifying yourself first.

Gina Stracuzzi: That is phenomenal advice, and something that most of us women need to hear again and again, because it is very easy to get stretched very thin and to put everyone in front of your own needs. That’s why they say put on your own oxygen mask first.

Erika Irby: Yeah, exactly. It’s hard to do that. It can be super challenging.

Gina Stracuzzi: It can be. Erika, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so very much for your time and your expertise and insights. We look forward to talking to you again sometime in the future.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 813: The Power Women Bring to Channel Leadership with Erika Irby of Veeam Software first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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On today’s “Women in Sales Leadership,” show, Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership President Gina Stracuzzi interviewed Jessica Baker from AchieveUnite. AchieveUnite is an Institute for Effective Professional Selling Selling Essentials Marketplace partner. She was a presenter at the October 9 Women in Sales Elevation Conference.

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

Find Jessica on LinkedIn. 

JESSICA’S TIP: “Women are uniquely positioned to help with this because we bring empathy, opportunity, and creativity to thrive in an environment where the shiver of sharks is coming so quickly. Our ability to step into leadership roles with AI is not only unprecedented, it’s essential.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Gina Stracuzzi: Welcome, everyone. I’m so excited for the next segment of the Women in Sales Leadership podcast. Today, I have a really phenomenal guest. She was a speaker at our recent Women in Sales Elevation Conference. What she talked about was so well-received and interesting that I thought, “I’ve got to share it with a larger audience.” Sit back and listen to my guest, Jessica Baker. She is Chief Innovation Officer at AchieveUnite, which is a partner of the IEPS.

Welcome, Jessica. I always like to let our guest talk a little bit about themselves, give their background, and how they got to where they are. Then we can take the conversation off from there.

Jessica Baker: I’m the Chief Innovation Officer for AchieveUnite. We are a partnering success and AI company. We help a lot of companies enjoy success when it comes to a go-to-market model that uses partners, channels, ecosystems, things like that. My career has been suited in all of that working for many different companies over the years. About 10 years ago, I came together with Theresa Caragol, who’s our CEO, to start AchieveUnite.

Here at the company, I oversee a lot of the strategy and program work that we do. I also lead our AI practice which has been a really interesting thing for me for the last three years or so. I like to work with clients. I still help with strategy and program, and things like that, but I have a very much AI-focused or AI-forward lens on everything that I do these days.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s exactly what you talked about at the conference, which was really all around AI, and in particular, how women can use AI to advance their careers and why it’s important that we’re involved in these discussions. Why don’t you start us off and talk to us about what you’re seeing in selling? We are at a crossroads between traditional selling and what’s happening with AI, and what’s happening in a hybrid world. Here in the DC area, we have the federal chaos to contend with as well. Buyer expectations are changing, so much has changed. How are you seeing all of that through your lens of partnerships and AI? Then we’ll go into some real questions on AI piece.

Jessica Baker: We’re still at the very early edge of that adoption curve. I don’t think that companies have really gone to the depths that AI can deliver in terms of seeing a real return on the investment that you do, and embedding AI into your company. As a salesperson, I think this manifests itself as maybe an icon on your desktop. A lot of clients that I know have a copilot icon, or maybe their company has a ChatGPT that they’ve spun up just for their organization. Of course, it makes a lot of sense because when AI first came on scene, everybody was really careful and cautious about preserving their confidential information.

The way that AI works, the more that you interact with it, the more it learns. It’s learning off of your chat. If you were to have chats in a public forum like a ChatGPT or a Gemini, your interactions usually go back into the model to have it continuously learn. That’s great for the model, but not so great if you’re trying to talk about corporate secrets or anything like that. What we do in sales is a lot about programs, positioning, pricing, and stuff like that. A lot of these internal applications make a lot of sense because it does preserve some of that privacy, but also because of that, I think people haven’t really gone to that next step in taking AI and really feeding it into their workloads that they do, and having AI be more than just a content generator.

AI is fabulous at things like helping you brainstorm or just being a thought partner, helping you get really prepared for things, a learning and development partner. There are so many things that AI can bring to you, but what I see right now are just surface-level use cases that are happening. “Give me an email, give me an outline for a presentation…” Those types of things. There are a lot of skills that need to be associated with this use of AI. Prompting skills is the first thing that I go to so that you really understand everything that you can do just from prompting. You can get really deep into understanding a buyer’s perspective or understanding how to overcome objections, anticipating what you might say to a CEO versus what you might say to a frontline manager. You can really get smart about how you’re using AI to make you a little bit more efficient and let AI do some of the things that are more administrative that we have to do as salespeople.

As an individual contributor, you can’t really take it much more than that. What I really start stressing in these organizations is how do we embed AI into the workflows so that things can be done on your behalf? That feeds into the whole agentic layer that people talk about. That is where I think we’re going to see real cases of ROI and real adoption and use cases that everyone’s going to be very excited about. It’s where we are at AchieveUnite right now, but we’ve also been in this game for about three years. We’re still there in the early adoption with everybody, but this year, 2025 has been crazy with people wanting to learn and wanting to expand their skills. That is, in my mind, just the note that this is going to start to take off in 2026.

If you don’t have AI skills in 2026, you’re going to be left behind, no matter what. Whatever occupation that you’re in, the writing is on the wall. I encourage people to jump in and start to look at the things that you can do. A lot of predictive analytics as well in sales. Understanding what your funnel might look like in six months based from where you are now. Understanding who the players are. There’s so much you can do, but we’re still at that very early stage.

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s funny to think about companies and people still being at very early stage because it just seems like you can’t turn anywhere without some new AI tool or someone wanting to talk about it. I know that there’s still a lot of fear that we’re going to be replaced by AI, and to me, if you embrace it and learn it, you’ll be invaluable. What do you say to your customers or partners that feel that way? Like, “It’s taking over the world!”

Jessica Baker: You’re right. You can’t hit a golf ball without seeing something about AI. My feeds everywhere, all of my social media is all about AI, so we are being bombarded a little bit by it, but I think there are a lot of people that are still trying to figure out how to make a quick buck on it. I see a lot of those people selling prompts or doing something that people think, “That’s going to be my saving grace.” But it just doesn’t work because I think that that fear is the fear of the unknown. A fear of, “Well, if I give up this little thing that I do in my company and I have AI do it, then I’m not going to be valuable anymore.” But I think the opposite is actually true.

Let me tell you a little bit of my perspective here. AI has brought in a new era for us. We’re living in it now, and it’s going to be here for another 10 or 20 years. We are leaving the knowledge-based era. The last 20, 30 years it’s been the knowledge that you have in your head, the experiences that you have, those are the things that are of value when you walk into a company or you’re working with clients. I think AI and the advent of having everything that you need at your fingertips is leveling that playing field. Now, as humans, we need to learn how to be much more resourceful in how we access information because anything that you want to learn about is on the internet.

Any kind of Gen AI makes it super easy for you to learn any topic that you want. If you want to learn a language, you want to know about geography, you want to know about guard rails… Anything that you want to learn about is there. What is really of value going into this AI era are those human characteristics that AI can’t do. Trust, creativity, one-to-one relationships. Those things cannot be replaced by AI. Will you be replaced by AI? No, I don’t think that you’ll be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by someone who knows how to use these resources to their advantage, and knows that, “I really have to capitalize on how I build trust with people, the relationships that I have, the creativity and problem-solving, my ability to be resourceful and bring new things to the table.” Those are the things that are going to be of high value for us going forward.

Absolutely, AI is going to change how we are all working, not just working, how we go about our daily life. When the cloud first came, everybody was really concerned about the security of their data. “I’m going to have it in my data center. You’re never going to have it.” Well, see where we are today. That all has changed. But that was really driven by a business culture. AI I think is really driven by a consumer culture of understanding what this can do for me personally and how I use it. Now, I want to bring that same thing to my business and the work that I do. There’s a push-pull that’s happening there. You have to really dive in and learn it and use it because if you don’t, you will be one of those statistics

There was another report about Amazon laying off ten or fourteen thousand people today. All these things that happen. Some of it is just normal course of business, people trim, trim percent, they just want to be healthy. I think the Covid trim has already happened. Definitely, workers, skills, and positions are changing. You either can go along with those changes and be a part of that organization or not. So, it’s up to you about where you want to find your source of value, but I will say that those human characteristics are going to be more important for us going forward.

Gina Stracuzzi: Let’s transition and talk specifically about sales in practical terms, and we’ve talked a little bit about workflow, but how do you see AI changing the traditional sales playbook?

Jessica Baker:  I think there are going to be opportunities to use AI to do a lot of the grunt work of sales like putting together presentations or quotes, writing content that is specific for that customer. A lot of the things that we’re going to be doing now are going to be so specific to one person, hyper-personalized. So, in sales where you typically do a business development motion where you could fire out a bunch of emails or do something, and you could do a lot of things the same, AI, you need to twist it for every single person and make it hyper-personalized. But that is easy to do at scale with AI.

There are going to be things that you can do. Let’s talk about presentations and how those are all pulled together. You can easily adapt presentations with company information and customer information and create a net-new presentation or solution or quote or something that is really specific to what you’re doing and what you’re using. AI can take all of that data and do it for you. If you’re ever responding to RFPs or RFIs, all of that can be automated. Something like, “Here’s a question. Now, take this information and create an answer for me for the question.” That can be done very quickly, in seconds. It doesn’t take long at all.

Some of these things that have taken our time with fingers on keyboards, that can go away and be put into an agentic workflow. If you are in a position where you’re in sales but you have an existing customer, an account, maybe you’re doing continual cadence of working with them, providing big solutions, QBRs, things like that, all of that can be done for you. You can have assistance that sets up calendar meetings for you based on, “Hey, we known it’s the new quarter. You’ve got to go check in with your top 10 customers, I’ve already emailed them, scheduled them, and they’re all on your calendar. Done.” You don’t have to do any of that block and tackle. You spend your time doing more of the strategic things. The relationship building. The understanding. The creativity. Building that trust. That’s where you will need to focus going forward.

There are a lot of point products right now that do things. I think I’m going to see that collapse under bigger solutions going forward here because you can’t end up paying $20 a month for every single little thing that you want to do. We’re going to come into more of an enterprise solution. I think people are also lightening up a little bit on restrictions that we use Gen AI. I’m seeing more and more companies that at first, took that very clear, “You’re not allowed to use them” stance. Now, they’re starting to open up and wanting to have people be creative. There’s still a fear, though amongst people that, “I don’t know what this is and I don’t want to try.” There has actually been a lot of research that’s been done. Earlier this year, a writer put out a document that said 40% of AI initiatives within companies are being sabotaged in some way, shape, or form.

Gina Stracuzzi: Purposely sabotaged?

Jessica Baker: Yes, sabotaged. Intentionally not signing up for training. Intentionally not using it. Intentionally putting company confidential information into a public space. That kind of thing. Derailing these things. You see that, but then you also see some people that are super onboard this train and they want to go as fast as they can with AI. They’re bringing everybody along with it.

Gina Stracuzzi: Something you said there made me think. We’ve all probably at one time or another been that person very young in our careers. Certainly, we’ve witnessed them. Those are salespeople who don’t want to be on the phone or whatever, so they keep themselves busy with that busy work that you were talking about, “This can be done in a heartbeat.” I’m thinking that is really going to separate the producers in a big way. The ones that are embracing it and don’t want to be tied down with that busy work that other people who are like, “I don’t want to get on the phone. I’m so busy making this calendar thing.” It popped into my head that you’re going to really see the separation there.

Also, it dawns on me that, to your last point about enterprise level solutions for smaller and medium-sized companies, that’s really going to be difficult. It’s almost like depending on how it rolls out and what the subscription costs to those things, and probably, they’ll be very tailored to each big company because they can afford it… The rest of us who are building things, it could leave a lot of companies behind in certain aspects. That was a really interesting thought that you shared with us.

Jessica Baker: Small and medium businesses are the lifeblood of commerce. There are the big players that do it, but I think a lot of the innovation comes from these small and medium businesses. They’re more nimble. It levels the playing field between a big enterprise and a smaller or medium-sized business. AI can scale you extremely fast and make you capable of things that before maybe you had to have a 50- or 100-person sales team. Now, you can scale it with a lot less in terms of those people. The small companies now can look almost as good as those bigger enterprises. It’s just a matter of how you are using the technology, how you’re adapting, how you are really putting your value proposition out there, and the things that you can do with them.

When we talk about AI, everybody thinks about ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude… Maybe they think about Llama or Grok because there are these household names for AI LLMs that everybody knows, but there are actually hundreds and hundreds of them. There are some that are really fit for purpose. We call them SLMs or Small Language Models that can be super beneficial for a smaller company. Think about having like a ChatGPT but have it be completely trained on your company, all the information, all your products, all your value props. Everything that you know about your company, now instead of doing keyword searches or something like that, all of a sudden, AI can get you exactly what you need, how you need it super fast. We’re going to have some leveling at some point of what SMBs can contribute versus what enterprises can. Enterprises are still trying to find their way with those big solutions.

Gina Stracuzzi: I like to hear that. Let’s talk a little bit about how partner leaders and sales leaders can balance technology and trust to drive sustainable growth. You gave some examples at the conference that were mind-blowing. The whole audience gasped. To your earlier point, that is that initial lack of trust because of examples like you gave. Maybe you could give one here in just a second. It makes people leery. My husband used to be in cybersecurity and he’d always say, “The bad guys are busy today.” They’re working 24/7 to break into everything. How do you handle that desire to keep up with current technology and have sustainable revenue growth, but also protect what you need protected?

Jessica Baker: Let’s just put some of this into perspective. ChatGPT.com actually came onto the internet in November of ’22. At that point, it was widely available to anybody that was on the internet. It became a real interest with people. As people started using it, soon after that, companies really started hammering down in terms of security and things like that because we did see some cases of it going badly. In ’23, the year it came out, companies like Samsung, Amazon, and Chevrolet all got hung up in some pretty public oopses about what has happened with some of their private company confidential information. Samsung had their entire source code that they were working on completely leaked out into the internet. Amazon had some confidential documents leaked. Chevy’s AI system got gamed and a guy actually bought a car for a dollar because he convinced the agent that it needed to happen that way. There are all these things that happened, but then you look in history.

In 2024, I think that was the year where everybody went, “Okay, I am not going to do this,” and everyone put a lid on it and said, “No, we really have to control this.” If you look at what happened in 2024, there were not these examples anymore. I would go and do my talks and I would be able to say, “Look, see? We’ve learned our lessons. We understand how to use it now.” This spring, the thing that broke that time, the Chicago Sun Times published an article on their website about the ten books that you need to read this summer. You would think that’s a good thing for a newspaper.

Gina Stracuzzi: Yeah, the Washington Post does it every year.

Jessica Baker: But the problem was that the books weren’t real, the authors weren’t real, the synopses of the books weren’t real. It was all made up by AI. They published it thinking that it was the truth, and they learned very quickly that this was wrong. They took the article down. I don’t know where that journalist is these days, but what I say is that you do have to be a human in the loop. You have to bring your brain to work when you’re doing anything like this. Since then, there have been many other examples.

Just this year, Replit, which is a code company, had an internal person working on their base code going back and forth with an agent. I guess the conversation got a little heated and the person was saying things to the agent and the agent got upset. We’re still talking about a GenAI agent. Got upset, deleted the whole source code, recreated it from scratch, and then lied about the whole thing. It took everybody offline while they scrambled to bring everything back from the backup until they could actually go and do it again. Think about governments, how we’re interacting with these things and what we give them access to. The control that they could potentially have over all of these things. There are many things that have happened since then.

As much as these are use cases of what’s gone bad, there are also hundreds of use cases about what has gone good. While these are a little sensational, I use those as a setup to say you have to have three elements of trust when you are doing anything with AI. You as a person have to have these three elements of trust. One, you have to be able to trust the platform. That comes from where is the information coming from? Is it a public source like a ChatGPT or am I really diving into my own company’s proprietary information? Can I trust the information that I get out of the GenAI model? Can I trust that agent? It’s trusting in the people that are giving this to you. Do you know really who has given you that information if you’re using a public setup? You don’t really know, because it’s been created by somebody else, it’s been fine-tuned with somebody else.

I think there are some inherent biases that you see in every LLM because humans are fine-tuning these things. But if it’s your own IT department who’s saying, “Here’s the tool. We’ve sanctioned it. It has all the information about our company. Please feel free and use it.” Now, all of a sudden, you’re like, “Okay, I can trust the information. I can trust where I’m getting it from.” That third one is do you trust yourself in using it responsibly, sustainably? Do you have the skills to be able to use it to your advantage? If you can put a ring around those three different levels of trust, I think some of that fear of the unknown starts to go away. You start to almost feel powerful over the tool instead of the tool having power over you. I try to encourage people with the speaking that I do, with the classes that I give, I try to give people that confidence in those three areas that you really can use it very well. Trust is a very big conversation when it comes to AI. Those are the three points that every individual needs to be aware of.

Gina Stracuzzi: Great stuff there. Let’s talk about one piece of advice that you would give sales professionals. I would like you to answer this two ways: for sales professionals in and of themselves, but sales organizations who might be hesitant. They probably feel like, “I don’t have time to integrate all of this.” What would be your advice to them?

Jessica Baker: To the individual person, I say stay curious. Be curious, become curious if you are not already that kind of a person because you do have to understand a lot of these things yourself. I don’t think companies are doing a great job at educating people across the board. Be curious. It does move very fast in terms of the AI market that’s out there. I’m in it all the time. I’m in it every day, so I know what’s going on, but if you just take the time to be curious, to understand the technology a bit, have a bit of AI fluency or literacy and being able to understand what all of this technology is and what it can do for you, be curious there.

For the organization, I see this. We have our own AI platform that we use within for our clients. I usually give demos. I can show clients what it is that we do and how we do it. Beyond a conference call and giving my demo, I can look and see because there’s a moment when the person that I’m giving this demo to, they disengage and stare off into the void for a little. I know that in their mind, they’re thinking, “Oh, my gosh. It can do this, this, this, this…” And they just multiplexed everything that it could possibly potentially do for them. They get overwhelmed and they get shut down because we don’t have an infinite amount of time. When that happens, I say, “You’re not solving everything right now. If your corporation isn’t giving you some of these things, then let’s find one thing in your organization. Let’s find a group of people that really want to see AI succeed, and they want to be experimental and curious. Things like that. Find out what that process is that has friction or that has people tied up in front of their laptops instead of in front of clients. What is that? Then mapping that whole process end to end and seeing, where could we plug in AI to help here?”

I’m just talking about one process. You really have to start that specifically and intentionally. Find the one thing. Let’s solve for this one thing. Let’s see how it works. Does it work as you intended it to? Are people liking it? Does it really relieve some of that frustration or busy work time? If it doesn’t let’s go try to do it again and fix some of those things. Once you get it right, now you have a blueprint on how to do the next thing. It does need to be intentional. The first time that you are trying to do this, it could take months. Whatever it is could take a very long time, but the second time you do it, it’ll be shorter. The third time will be even shorter. Now, all of a sudden, you can look at use cases and get things solved in a matter of hours because you’ve just done the play so much and you understand how it works.

Pick up the reigns. If your company is not bringing you solutions, pick up the reigns and find one place where you could be innovative. Get a tagger team. Solve that. Publicize the heck out of it because people want to go where they’re finding success. If somebody’s like, “Oh, my gosh. This just saved me four hours this week by using this one thing.” Four hours? That’s a lot. You can get a lot done in four hours. People will start to gravitate toward those solutions that are working. Definitely, if you have an IT team in your company that is trying to be experimental or is forward-thinking, pair with them. Find somebody in IT that you can work with because there’s a lot that can be done. You just have to do it one step at a time. Put one foot in front of the other.

Gina Stracuzzi: Honestly, you could get a little group together. Get a little AI committee within your organization. That’s a great idea to find fellow people who are intrigued and come up with a use case inside your company. Working with IT is a really good idea because then you make sure that it doesn’t have any holes in it.

We always like to leave our audience with one final tip that they can put into action today. Then talk to us just a little bit about your company’s platform because this came up a little bit at the conference. Thinking about that, if you’re a company that doesn’t know exactly where to turn, it fits right into the IEPS’s  Selling Essentials Marketplace of which AchieveUnite is part of. How can companies use a company like yours to maybe get their feet wet or really think about how they’re going to move forward with things?

Jessica Baker: We have three legs to our AI offerings. We do have a platform that is a private GenAI platform that we can use within for our clients. If you wanted to have a solution where you had your company information that was in a confidential database and you wanted your team to be able to interact with that content in a way that is secure and private, that’s the type of platform that we offer. We also offer a couple of things that support that motion. One is the training. I talked about that third element of trust and being able to trust yourself.

Prompting in how you work with a GenAI platform is really the key to unlock a lot of this productivity. A lot of us came up in the internet era. I can remember the very first time that I saw Google, or that I was like, “A webpage? Why do I have to do H-T-T… What is all this?” I can remember that. We got really good at googling. The company became a verb. We became really good at searching. We searched across our Dropboxes, our SharePoints, keyword tags, we did all of that. We have to forget that and relearn the skill of prompting. Prompting is really about how you put together your questions and get the agent to act a specific way. What is it that you want the agent to do? What is the context of the situation that you’re talking about? What is the end result that you’re seeking?

When you have a proper prompting format and you understand the different techniques, you can get really a lot done. We do a lot of training with individuals, groups, and things like that to give them those basic and advanced prompting skills. We have the platform, we have the skills, but we also do outsourced development type things. If you have your own platform and you’d like an agent to be able to do X, Y, or Z, we can work within your platform and get some of those things created for you. If you needed an agent that was really great at doing RFPs or creating custom content for client meetings, filling out account plans, or whatever it is, we can do that for our clients as well. We do it for Achieve, we do it on our platform, but we also do it on other platforms as well.

Gina Stracuzzi: That’s a lot.

Jessica Baker: It’s a lot. It’s a practice that we built solely over the years, but I’m really proud of where we are right now because I do think we have an awareness, skillset and capability to help a lot of people get into this AI era that we’re in right now.

Gina Stracuzzi: Absolutely. We are super excited to have AchieveUnite as part of the Selling Essentials Marketplace. Any listener could reach out to us and we can connect you. For the end of this wonderful program, what would you like to leave our audience with that is one piece of advice that can start today? Maybe you can lead us into a prompt or something.

Jessica Baker: If you’re sitting here today and you still really haven’t quite adopted it, maybe you’re fearful or something but you just haven’t quite taken that leap, go search on the internet for some introductory things to AI and prompting. Give yourself the ability and some grace to be able to learn a new skill. If you can commit that to yourself in expanding your skills, at least you’re starting to step in the right way. If you’re already there, just keep going. There are so many places out there that you can learn about what’s happening. I published a monthly newsletter that’s all about AI. I call it AI Unpacked. It does not have to be as technical as some people think it is. You start talking about LLMs, tokens, agentic… Sometimes that can be really scary for people, but if you can type a sentence, you can prompt. I know you can do that. We do offer training, so if you’re interested, go to the Marketplace. Reach out and we’ll connect you with that.

Gina Stracuzzi: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I have used some of what you talked about at the conference. I was pretty good, I thought, at giving prompts, but the “imagine that you are…” changed everything. I was still talking to it like my mind works. That doesn’t necessarily help it to use its mind. You have great stuff.

Jessica Baker: There’s a lot to be done with personas. The first thing that you should be doing when you’re talking to somebody is making sure that they have a role. Making sure that you give that agent a role. It could be one role, it could be three different roles. That right there is the power move. “Imagine that you are…” It could be an enterprise salesperson, but it also could be, “Imagine that you are the CEO of this company,” that you’re about to go talk to. What is that CEO concerned about? What are the main things happening in their market? What are the things that your company can provide value with? Structuring your content per audience. This is what I mean by hyper personalization. If I’m going to talk to you, I can say the same thing but in your language and then I could go and say the same thing to a marketing person, a technical person, or a finance person. Say the same things, use their language, and it all seems hyper personalized but it’s all just done with AI in scale.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 805: These AI Skills Will Define Sales Leaders in 2026 According to Jessica Baker first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

This is the 800th episode of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast! If you’re here, send Fred a congratulations message on LinkedIn and he’ll send you a special gift.

Thanks for everyone who listened to at least one listed of the show!

Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.

The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.

FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!

Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!

Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!

On today’s show, Fred and Gina, host of the Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the podcast are interviewed by Darryl Peek. VP of Public Sector partnerships at Elastic.

Find Gina on LinkedIn. Find Darryl on LinkedIn.

FRED’S TIP: “If you want to be successful in sales, you have to be known for something. Sales is hard, and that’s why professional selling matters.”

GINA’S TIP: “If people don’t know your aspirations, they can’t help you grow. You have to raise your hand.”

DARRYL’S TIP: “Business is a contact sport. Every handshake, every meeting, every follow-up. That’s on you.”

THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE

Fred Diamond: Welcome to another episode of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast. Gina, we’re here. This is our 800th episode of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. I’m the Cofounder of the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, and Gina Stracuzzi, the President of the Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership, and also the host of the Women in Sales Leadership sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. Gina, this is our 800th episode.

Gina Stracuzzi: I know. Amazing. Really amazing. I can remember when you started it.

Fred Diamond: Yeah, and I used to have hair. Actually, the people can judge what episode by the length and color of my hair. But seriously, I just want to remind people, we’ve transcribed, believe it or not, every single episode of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, from episode number one. Go to salesgamechangerspodcast.com and you could read all the transcripts, listen to all the shows. Gina, we’ve posted about the last 70 shows on YouTube. We didn’t do it originally because we did audio the first 200 episodes. Then during the pandemic, we shifted to the online, but it’s been the last 60 or so shows that are on YouTube. We’re getting a lot of traction with the YouTube channel. I know a couple shows that we’ve posted recently have had a couple hundred views and it’s great. We’ve won a couple of awards, Gina, along the way.

As we were thinking like, what can we do special about the 800th episode? We both said we need Darryl Peek to come on and interview us. We’re thrilled. We have Darryl Peek. He was one of our panelists at a recent Institute for Effective Professional Selling, we call them the Mainstage Live programs. Darryl, I know you’ve been at a couple places and you have such a huge following. I saw you on the panel at our good friend Vince Menzione’s Ultimate Partner Summit. We had known of you a little bit from LinkedIn and various things. Then when we had you on the panel, it was in November of 2025. We’re doing today’s interview in middle of December 2025. You had so many nuggets of wisdom. I said, “Darryl’s got to get some exposure here.” You have a great exposure, you have a great following on LinkedIn particularly, and probably other places as well. Thank you so much for being our guest host today.

Darryl Peek: Thank you so much for having me, Fred. I’m so glad to be here. This is an amazing accomplishment, 800 episodes, which is absolutely incredible. I’m so happy to be here with you and Gina today. You two are two powerhouses in the sales ecosystem, and just really leaders in the space, not only from a B2B, but also business to government perspective. I thank you for your consistency, your contribution, and your thought leadership throughout this process. I’m just glad to be here to interview you both, to ask a few questions, to give the listeners some insights on things that you are seeing, what it takes to get to 800 episodes, as well as, are you still having fun? We want to make sure we cover that.

Fred Diamond: Introduce yourself, tell people who you are if they don’t know who you are.

Darryl Peek: My name’s Darryl Peek. I’m the Vice President for Partner Sales for US Public Sector here at Elastic. I’ve been at Elastic around three years now. Really excited about what we’ve been able to accomplish over three years. I am responsible for our partnerships across our federal as well as state, local, and education space. I work with a lot of the system integrators, the value-added resellers, the cloud service providers, as well as our distribution partner and our technology alliance partner. What does that mean? It boils down to a few things.

One is going to market with our partners within the government space, as well as working on developing opportunities with those partners and looking at enablement opportunities to teach them more about Elastic and what Elastic does, as well as creating a plan. My grandfather used to tell me, “You have to plan your work and work your plan. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” That’s one of those nuggets, Fred, that we talked about in some of our previous panels.

Really what Elastic does is we are a search platform but we also do something called observability, which is looking at your environment as well as we handle security. Those are things that we do very well in the space, and definitely excited about what we’re able to do in support of some great missions throughout the US public sector.

Fred Diamond: We’ve covered a lot of partner relationships on the Sales Game Changers Podcast over the years. The partnership world, the ecosystem is going to be so critical in 2026, particularly in the federal marketplace and other public sector because of the changing nature of the customer. 2025, everybody knows, who’s listened, has been a very transitional year, for lack of a better word, transformational year. For some people, it’s been a traumatic year, but the partnership ecosystem with the various players is going to be so critical for companies to optimize and to discover. Good luck for you and the team at Elastic and actually all the companies who are serving the federal customer.

Darryl Peek: Absolutely. I really appreciate that, Fred. Once again, I’m just really glad to be here and really taking cues from you because you’re seeing the pulse of what’s going on in the industry and making sure that we are leaning forward, is really important. With that, let’s ask a few questions and kick this off. Fred, I want to start with you, because this is 800 episodes. I’m sure over those 800 episodes, the podcast has evolved. Can you talk about that evolution and what it takes to get to 800 episodes?

Fred Diamond: The reason I started the podcast was for two reasons. One is I used to be a DJ, so I enjoy speaking into a microphone, and I enjoy interviewing people. I thought I was going to go into journalism. I’ve been thinking about how have we gotten to 800 episodes. There’s a word that we use a lot on the podcast, it’s curiosity. I’m interested in what a sales leader is doing, how they’re working with customers, how they’re leading teams. But we started the podcast originally in 2018. Perfectly frank, I needed to meet more sales VPs who are my customers at the Institute for Effective Professional Selling. I needed to figure out a way to get into their office to spend time with them.

Originally, I created the podcast to interview sales VPs about their career, their big wins. I had my ATR2100 mics. I had a bunch of filters, some lights that really didn’t do anything. But I just engaged in these conversations and it gave me a chance to be in their office. As I’m setting up the mics, “How many salespeople do you have? What are some of your goals? Okay, good. Now let’s do the podcast.” If it weren’t for starting the podcast, there wouldn’t be an Institute for Effective Professional Selling. One of the key things in sales is you need to be where your customer is.

Then the pandemic happened, and Gina and I started doing webinars every single day. Every day, Monday through Friday, we did a webinar and we were getting hundreds of people because we made a quick pivot, as they say. We took those webinars and transferred them in the podcast. Then eventually we’ve created a couple of sub-brands, which I’ll talk about, including Gina’s show. But it’s given us exposure to sales leaders all over the world. With the IEPS, we focus on not just B2G but B2B enterprise selling, and we’ve been fortunate to talk to so many great leaders.

Darryl Peek: How have the stories evolved? Because I’m sure after 800 episodes, the environment has changed, the conversation has changed. What are some of the evolutions that you’ve seen over those episodes?

Fred Diamond: Obviously, a lot has changed. Again, 2018, AI has become big. The pandemic. The reality is, the pandemic changed everything. Not just how do we communicate online, but how do we get to customers now? One of the results of the pandemic, and Gina has become one of the leading thought leaders on working from home versus the office, and the challenges that it’s brought women that she’s worked with at the Center for Elevating Women in Sales Leadership, but getting to customers has been hard.

One of the things that the pandemic has led to is everybody’s had the same challenges. We’ve all had to figure out what do we do now? How do we evolve? How do we work with our customers? Now, how do we get back to an effective way to communicate with customers, to interact with them, to show them that we can bring them value? There’s been a lot of challenges.

Real briefly to one quick thing. Before the pandemic, we would just talk about stories. Tell me about your great sales success. Tell me about a mentor. Tell me about a deal that you turned around. Then when the pandemic kicked in, and this has continued to this day, the communications have been, what are you doing today? How do I be successful today? How do I get a deal closed this week? As compared to, tell us some stories from the beginning of your career. It’s, I’m a sales professional, I’m struggling, or I’m working on an opportunity. Sales Game Changers Podcast, give me some ideas that I can implement today.

Darryl Peek: Gina, let’s pivot to you. Opportunities for growth and improvement is really important. You work with a lot of women in sales. Could you talk a little bit about the opportunities for growth and how do some organizations fall short of achieving that outcome?

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s been interesting over the 700 episodes and where we are today. There are a lot of opportunities for women, and AI being front and center, and that we focused our entire conference on it earlier this year in that, as women, we have to be in that conversation. We have to be part of the planning, part of the process, adoption of AI, and really for women who start to embrace it, we can really lead, because it’s been proven already that women are actually better with AI because we look at a totality of a situation, and perhaps even over prompt, telling AI what we need from them. How are we going to use this information? Who’s going to benefit from it? We give a bigger picture rather than, how can I improve sales?

That’s where the biggest opportunities lie for women. We still have a lot of ground to cover in things that should have been further along than they are, say, leadership. But all the women I talk to, while they have frustrations on certain levels, they are super optimistic for the future. IT sales in particular, they’re really excited about and where AI is taking us. What I see a lot of women doing is finding their niche inside of these opportunities. Each company looks a little bit different. There has been a little bit of, how do I get myself into that? It’s like, raise your hand and join a committee. Think what you want to do with it. It’s really got women excited. I think there’s going to be a lot of AI related positions that are held by women, the women that raise their hand and dive in head first.

Darryl Peek: What are some of the signals that a woman should look for when they are ready to take it to the next level or go for a promotion?

Gina Stracuzzi: Darryl, that is something that really still is very difficult for women. Because there are double standards, let’s put it that way, because it’s very obvious to see quite often what a man’s doing, because men are just different. I always joke like, Joe comes in and he’ll say, “Darryl, don’t get too comfortable in that seat. I’m gunning for your job.” They make a game of it, where women will sit and I’m going to work as hard as I can and someone’s going to notice and I’m going to get my opportunity. It is really about raising your hand, making your aspirations known. That’s why it’s so important for women to get on any AI board within their company, planning, strategizing, anything, even if you don’t know it. Nobody knows more than somebody else at this point. We’re all making our way through.

Like always, it’s the ones that make the most noise that get the opportunities. Women are just by nature a little more relaxed in their approach. It is making sure that the people that can help you know what you’re interested in. If I worked for somebody like you, Darryl, I would be knocking on your door all the time. You’d be like, “Shoot, here she comes again.” But it is that kind of thing, you have to let people know of your excitement and your interests and raise your hand for those stretch projects and, “We’re putting together a committee to figure out what we’re going to do about this.” Take it on, and make sure you get in the office, too.

Darryl Peek: That’s really important, and hopefully for the listeners, that is a value bomb that just got dropped. Please take key to that. Make sure you engage early if you are looking to take it to the next level.

One of the things we talked about, Fred, on the panel was the three Es, and we talked about the engage, enable, and execute, but effectiveness is really big on your mind and entire conversation. What are some of the things that folks should think about when they talk about effectiveness in sales, and what does that mean for you, and what should the listeners listen out for?

Fred Diamond: That’s a great question. We used to be known as the Institute for Excellence in Sales. At the end of 2024, we interviewed over 200 sales leaders, B2B, business to business, and business to government. What are the biggest challenges you’re facing? What is going on in your organization? The word that kept coming up time and time again was, “I need my sales professionals to be more effective,” at the leadership level, the mid leadership level, and people entering the sales force, at the SDR or BDR level. Need to be more effective in account development and communications, and relationship building, and using technology, and figuring out how to partner. Just effectiveness just coming up time and time again. We actually changed the name of our company to the Institute for Effective Professional Selling, and there were three Es that we talk around it.

One is engage. Sales leaders said, “I need my people to engage their customers.” They need to engage their partners more readily, and I, as a sales leader, need to engage my team. I need to bring my people more into the leadership roles and more into how are we going to grow the business coming out of a challenging time? The second word was elevate. A lot of people, it’s like, how do we elevate our leaders? How do we train our people?

One of the challenges that happened at the beginning of the pandemic is a lot of people were promoted in 2022. We always say the hardest job in sales is first time sales manager. There’s very few classes, there’s few people in a company who get promoted, so there’s usually nothing internally. It’s kind of, “Go figure it out.” Here we are working from home, it was very challenging for these new managers to get advice and mentorship from those above them, because they were also struggling with, “How do I help my organization at my particular time?”

We’re all about helping them elevate their leaders. At the end of the day, it’s all about empowering success. The reason that we’re in professional sales is because our company is depending upon us to grow revenue, to grow revenue into new markets, to cross sell our new products, to grow relationships with partners that can get us into new customers and expand. The big three that we like to say is we help organizations engage their teams and their customers, elevate their leaders, and empower revenue success.

Darryl Peek: Based on that, and really great insights, what one of the Es are our leaders struggling with the most that you’ve seen over the years?

Fred Diamond: It’s obviously effectiveness. We’ve talked to so many sales leaders at great companies. We’re very fortunate at the IEPS that we have blue chip companies like Amazon Web Services, Hilton, Salesforce, Cvent Software, Oracle, Microsoft, and even these companies that have been well established with world-class organizations, times change, customers change.

Gina mentioned AI. Obviously, AI is throwing a big monkey wrench into the selling process as customers are getting their information before they even need to talk to a sales professional. The challenge is you have to be effective at so many ways as a sales professional. You have to make that first meeting go really, really well, and not just the first meeting, but the follow up.

One of the moments on the Sales Game Changers, I think this was episode 120 or something, I had a guest on whose company records sales calls, and his company had recorded 10 million sales calls. I asked him, I said, “What is the number one thing that you discovered from all these sales calls?” He said, “70% of the calls didn’t have a follow up.” Not, “Hey, can we meet next Tuesday with your CIO?” Or, “Gee, I’d like to schedule a meeting in a week to talk in a little more detail about that question.” Follow up, being effective in that. It’s great to have a great meeting, but as you know, you’ve been in millions of them, you got to get to number two. Sales is always about getting to the next conversation.

Darryl Peek: When we talk about getting to the next conversation, Gina, you mentioned at the end of your answer to the previous question, that being in the office and being visible. However, Fred also mentioned COVID and us being in remote situation. How do you balance the difference between being virtual and making sure that you’re effective remotely, as well as making sure you’re showing up in person and making the most of that moment?

Gina Stracuzzi: I’m going to tie it into some of what Fred was just talking about, because from my standpoint, what I took away from some of the conversations Fred talked about earlier with sales leaders is the effectiveness or lack of it is because people aren’t as engaged as they once were. This is the underlying current of what we talked about with these sales leaders. What comes up in the forum, the Women in Sales Leadership Forum, all the time is women talk about the people they’re leading. I’m sure you find this true. There isn’t the level of engagement that there used to be. Something got left on the road after the pandemic, this fire that we all had. We were going to burn out if we kept going at that rate, but now, we just don’t have that rhythm that we used to.

Part of it is because we’re here, we’re there, we’re way too often on screen, even if somebody’s in the office, somebody else is not. For me, you lose the juice of selling when you’re not around other sellers. There’s an energy, and honestly, if I had to come into sales at this point, and I was working from home, I wouldn’t stay in sales. It is hard when you get started. You are trying to get your own energy going. It’s just different. What gets left behind, especially for women, is when you are in your house all the time, your mind’s on, “Oh my gosh, I got to pick up the kids. I got to take the dog for a walk. What am I going to make for dinner?” that kind of thing.

That’s mostly for women with families. But when we get to a certain age, we all have families, or most of us. It is something that I am seeing a lot where women are struggling with the convenience of being at home, because it does make life a lot more convenient. But you lose that engagement, that level of engagement that you get when you’re in the office. You also lose visibility. I hear women all the time talk about, “It’s so much easier. I just don’t want to go in the office.” I’m like, “Let me get this straight. You leave the house to take your kids to school and pick them up and go to the grocery store. That was my mother.” We have to be very careful that we don’t slide backwards. The growth that women had appreciated over the last 20 years, they reckon that after the pandemic, we’d lost like a decade. If we are not careful and we keep choosing to not be present in the office, we are going to continue to get passed over for promotions. It’s just different.

Darryl Peek: You just talked about proximity. How does that impact opportunities? Because we talked about growth in the previous question. Now, how does proximity and being visible impact that? As well as what are some of the things that are created from a perception perspective for those who are not in the office versus those leaders who are in the office?

Gina Stracuzzi: You pretty much answered your own question in your question, because it really is, if I’m sitting 20 feet from you, and you see me working and talking to people and doing things, and we go to get coffee together and it’s like, “Hey, Darryl, what’s going on?” I’m going to be top of mind if an opportunity comes by. The people that are on camera, and you only see at very predictable times, half those people don’t even want to be on camera. There is no way your career is going to grow. If we go with what we see, we go with what we know, especially there’s constant reorgs and people inherit teams. I work with people who have never physically met the people on their teams. You cannot expect your career to grow if your boss doesn’t know who you are. You’ve got to be there.

I know it’s a pain in the butt a lot of times. Back in the DC area after being a while, I’m like, “Oh my God, how do people do this?” It’s just so much, but it is so necessary if you have aspirations for growth. If you are fine where you are, and your life is humming along, and it works for you, no fault, no blame. There’s no shame in that. But if you have aspirations for more, you’ve got to show up.

Darryl Peek: Really, it comes down to the mindset of the person, of the individual. That really does drive those outcomes and the awareness. Sometimes we talk about the emotional intelligence, sometimes we talk about executive presence and what that means, but mindset is a major thing, Fred. What does that mean and why is it foundational to how successful sales leaders come to market?

Fred Diamond: That’s a great question. There are a couple words that have permeated the 800 episodes, value. You need to bring value to the customer. Passion is one that comes up a lot. Listening is one that comes up a lot. We put a lot of these in our book Insights for Sales Game Changers. But the reality is this, especially in some of the markets, the B2B markets. I remember I had a guest on one of the early podcasts who said that selling to the federal government is like being in the NFL. It’s the top performers. You’re selling to one of the most important customers. Not just the federal government, but major financial institutions and healthcare institutions, and huge retail operations, and huge online operations as well.

Sales is professional selling where you need to be optimistic, you need to be positive, you need to remember that you’re bringing value. It’s wrought with challenges along the way. Everything could be going great and then there could be a major macro event, like a pandemic or a terrorist attack or something along those lines, and a lot of micro things. Gina had mentioned before, your customer retired, or your customer was laid off, your customer was just purchased by another entity. You’ve been working with them for 10 years, then they got purchased by a larger organization with their own infrastructure, so, “Gee, do we really need your product anymore?” and a lot of things that are out of your control.

But what’s in your control is preparing, it’s being of customer service. You and I are both quote guys. Two of my favorite quotes, which go to mindset, is the Henry Ford quote, “If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” I used to think that was just about accomplishing something. That permeates everything in your being. Am I going to be successful? Well, yes. Okay. Now, what do I have to do to be successful? What are the action steps I need to do? As a leader, how do I need to lead my teams?

The other quote that I’ve gravitated towards in the last couple years is the Einstein quote, “Only a life lived in the service of others is a life worth living.” Sales is about service. The customer needs you if you’re going to help them achieve their mission. You need to be really smart. You need to be a couple steps ahead of them. You need to understand where they’re going. It’s no longer about, “Hey, I got these three things. I got a discount. What do you want?” It’s about, “Gee, I know that your agency or your company is looking to do this in the next two years. Here’s some ways that we can help with some partnership relationships that can help you grow.” The mindset of being of service, of being of value to your customer, and of being someone who’s going to help your company achieve what it’s bringing to the marketplace.

Darryl Peek: Within that mindset, it’s always easy when you’re hitting your quota and you’re getting those win wires, you’re getting sufficient pipeline. You got the workshops going with your customers, you got an effective plan, your MQLs are off the meter. But there’s time when there’s pressure and conflict. How does mindset show up in those moments when you’re not getting the pipeline, you’re not booking the deals, you’re not meeting quota, you’re not getting enablement, you’re not prospecting well?

Fred Diamond: It’s interesting. I remember at the end of almost every episode, I’ll thank my guest for giving us such great ideas and giving us 10 things we can do. Then I say at the end, “Give us one action step that sales professionals should do right now, after listening to the show or reading the transcript.” Darryl, and Gina knows this, you’d be surprised at how many sales leaders have said, and these are people who are 20, 30 years of success, “I meditate every day,” or, “I take time off,” or, “I spend time talking to a mentor,” or, “I have those types of relationships,” or, “I have a group of three other sales leaders that I call if I have a challenge.”

One of the great things that’s happened over the seven, eight years that we’ve been doing the podcast is that there’s been an openness to that. We’ve done a couple shows on breathing. Just breathing and how that can help you stay grounded. I remember one show that we did, it was with a sales leader from LinkedIn. Her name is Alyssa Merwin. She actually won our Women in Sales Leadership Award. This was before the pandemic. She is the Senior Sales Leader for LinkedIn. She talked about how she’s vulnerable and how she’ll tell her people, “Things aren’t going great right now. Here’s what we need to do.” A lot of times sales leaders or professionals think that everything’s got to be rosy. It’s like, “Gee, everything’s going great. We’re doing great. A hundred percent. We’re going to get our a hundred percent quota,” when your biggest customer just announced that they’re cutting all budgets. There’s ways that you need to be mindful, you need to be grounded, and you need to bring in the support network of people who will help you get through those challenging times. Great question, by the way.

Darryl Peek: Thank you so much. In regards to that moment, and Gina, you’re a subject matter expert when it comes to women in sales, what are some of the things that women wish employers understood about them being in the office and being in the role that maybe they should consider going forward?

Gina Stracuzzi: It’s an interesting question, Darryl. Even the women who work from home, women tend to take on a lot of extra tasks. They will quietly say, “Just give that to me. I’ll take it. Just give it to me. I’ll make sure it happens.” I think because women still are not really great at saying, “Did you know I’m handling this, this, and this, as well as this?” That’s just not in our DNA. A lot of women that I speak with wish that their bosses knew without them telling them. I think what I would say to people who lead sales teams is be aware of what all of your team is doing. You don’t have bottlenecks for a reason. What is that reason? Who is that reason?

Because there’s been studies done on the value of the quiet work that women do that they don’t even talk about. It’s staggering. If every woman just started following her job to the tee, we would be in a world of hurt, because there’d be a lot of things that don’t get done. It’s a different kind of visibility. It’s being aware of who is doing what and to what degree. When you have your one-on-ones, ask. “Tell me what you’re working on, the totality of it, not just the things I know about.” There’s that piece.

It’s making sure that women have the same opportunities for visibility as well, and that they’re not held to different standards. In other words, if I’m doing everything that I need to do, and then some, but my role is hybrid, let’s say. I don’t come into the office, and then I try to come into the office and I spend more time there, and you have more visibility, make sure that I am still getting the same opportunities for promotion. Women are looked at with the same potential meter that men are. Like, “I can see where Darryl can go. He could go here.” Women, it’s like, “Well, they may need to take off to take care of kids, and they may need to take off to take care of aging parents. We’re not sure about her potential.” It’s in the back of minds, even if it’s not a conscious thought. I think what women would like is to be measured by the same potential meters as men.

Darryl Peek: What does a woman risk when she does not speak up and when she does not represent herself and her brand in the organization? What is that risk? Is that something that you’ve experienced as well in your conversations with women?

Gina Stracuzzi: All the time. The reasons that women don’t speak up are myriad. Sometimes they get talked over, sometimes they even get scoffed. Like, “Really? You think that’s a good idea?” Sometimes there’s just stunned silence, but you have to find your moment and find your bravery. Maybe you enlist other women to help you, kick you under the table. Like, “Hey, you just talked about this. You have an idea.” It comes down to that visibility. If there are guys who are always speaking in meetings and the women that are there are staying quiet, maybe because Bob’s always going on and on and on, and Bob never lets anybody else talk. It’s when you say, “Excuse me, Bob, I’d like to get a word in here. Your ideas are always great.” But what that does is it puts you on the map, but you got to keep doing it because you’ve got to let people know your ideas. If you have stunned silence, so be it.

Sometimes you can even address that. You and I have that kind of smart-ass energy. If I met it with stunned silence, I would say, “Have I blown your mind? Is that it?” You have to figure out your time. But if you don’t do that, people don’t know that you have ideas and they don’t know that you have a sense of what could be done. Like, “I have a solution for this,” or, “I believe that this is the way we should be going. I think this is a mistake.”

We had one woman in the forum who she’s like, “I knew this wasn’t the right way for us to go. I knew it. I knew it, but I just couldn’t find my entrance to say something, and the whole thing blew up, and we lost the deal.” She said, “I have been kicking myself ever since, because that could have been my moment. Maybe they wouldn’t have listened to me anyway, but now I’ll never know.” It’s kind of that if you see something, say something. If you know something, say somethin

Darryl Peek: That’s very interesting. Fred, what are the listeners looking for? Because Gina talked about speaking up and really articulating the challenges and also the opportunities, but what are the listeners looking for?

Fred Diamond: We’ve done some surveys. 60% of our audience are sales professionals, B2B or B2G. That’s what they do for a living. There’s no doubt. 20%, 25% are sales leaders, people who are director or above, typically B2B, B2G, or enterprise selling. About 25% of our listeners are maybe small business owners, consultants who know they need to sell better. But what’s happened over time is people just like to listen for the stories and for the examples. Now, people need ideas. I tell people this, I tell my guests, this isn’t a class, it’s a podcast. People are typically listening as they drive, as they mow their lawn, as they walk the dog, as they’re out for a run or on the treadmill. Very few people are sitting in front of their computer watching and taking notes. But they will stop if they hear something and they will listen for an idea or something that’s going to spur them.

Like I told you, people are looking for solutions for today. They’re looking for more information too. Every single show that we’ve ever done has had a guest, some cases, two guests. Every Women in Sales show, every Sales Game Changers show where I interview a VP. A lot of times, one of the great things about the podcast is I’ll bring on a VP of sales at Amazon or Salesforce or Hilton, and people will listen for what that person is saying. Maybe they’re a partner. I always tell my guests, the prospects who I’m looking to have appear on the show, being a guest on my podcast is a great way for you to be shown as someone people want to work for or work with. They’re looking for an idea or two or some information.

Darryl Peek: Now that we’re about to wrap up, there’s so much value that came out of this conversation. We got a chance to talk about effectiveness, opportunities for growth, mindset, being able to really talk about how to show up authentically, which is definitely important as well as how to manage virtual and in-office works. Definitely a lot of value in this conversation. I hope the listeners got a lot to gain. But as we close out, what are some of the takeaways that a leader should use as a result of this conversation of the 800th episode? What would you like to share with the listeners?

Gina Stracuzzi: For the listeners, if you are a woman, make sure that people know what you’re capable of, what you want. People can’t help you grow in your career if they don’t know your aspirations. Don’t keep them to yourselves. Make them known. I know it’s a little scary sometimes, but it’s like your vision board. Let people help you.

Fred Diamond: One of the tips I give people who ask me for advice on how to be more successful in their sales career, I say be known as someone. Be known as the guy who is the AI expert for defense agencies, or be known as the woman who is the insurance leader in Northern Virginia, whatever it might be. You got to be known for something. A podcast is a great way to do it, or a video series or something. How do you become top of mind? How do you get people to want to pay attention to you? It’s really hard. One of the key things I’ve learned over the years is sales is hard, being a professional seller, but that’s why you get paid if you do well, that’s why your company will achieve, you’ll get industry recognition, but it’s really, really hard.

It’s like one of that guests that I mentioned before, you’re a professional athlete. That’s why we changed our name to professional selling. Think about ways that you can distinguish yourself. You could be shown as the leader. You’re one of the go-to guys in the industry for partnerships, and you’ve worked at some great places, and you’re out there hosting events and being on panels and talking about excellence. The way that you have communicated your body of knowledge is great. You pick a letter and you have three things that apply to the letter and people gravitate towards you. People listening, how could you be someone that people gravitate to because they want to work with you?

Darryl Peek: One of the things I would like to say, and my major takeaway here, is business is a contact sport. Every handshake, every meeting, every follow up, every opportunity, that is something that you’re responsible for in really having a successful career in sales. Thank you so much, Fred, thank you, Gina, for the great conversation. I’m just looking forward to episode 801 and 900 and 1,000. Thank you so much for having me today.

Fred Diamond: I want to thank you, Darryl Peek, for being our guest host today. Gina Stracuzzi, I want to congratulate you on being part of all the 800 episodes that we’ve produced. My name is Fred Diamond and this is the Sales Game Changers Podcast.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 800: How High Performing Selling Professionals Can Become More Effective in 2026 first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.