Engineer Turned Sales Leader: Why You Don’t Need to Be Loud to Lead

Sherry, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you. I’ve been excited all week to talk to you.

Oh, I’m so delighted that you reached out and, uh, it was a bit of a blast from the past for me because, um, you work in, in the field of professional electronics and I actually started my career in electronics. Um, and it, it took me right back to electronica in Munich. Um, for the listeners, that is a, a massive trade show in, in Munich.

Um, and I was really young, God, I must have been like 22 years old, you know, graduate, walking around this room with hundreds of exhibitors. I will be honest, mostly men wearing gray and navy suits, and I decided that day Sherry, to wear a body con red dress. I mean, not, not the most practical outfit, but that’s what I thought would look nice and professional.

Um, but I definitely stood out, put it that way. And I did get a bit of a, a name for myself where people, some of my customers remembered me and they called me the lady in red. Um, slightly yes, odd connotation if people know what that refers to as well. So look, it’s an amazing field, it’s an amazing industry.

But I wanted to, particularly where this podcast is about women. Um, I’d love to ask you because I found it very, very male dominated when I worked in it. Um, and I’d love to understand your view of being a woman in that space and maybe if you’ve seen it change ’cause it was many moons ago.

Yeah, so it’s changed a little, but not a lot. Um, and I, I have a couple of funny stories. So, first of all, when I got out of, um, school and got into electronics, um, I was told by all my peers, cut your hair, shoulder length or above, wear a Navy suit. Uh, white, whiter ivory blouse. And I did that. And as you can see, I have long hair. Um, I’m wearing leopard today. Um, navy blue suit with short hair wasn’t my style. And I did that, um, for a few years. Um, and fortunately got a little bit more confidence and kind of started dressing more. That’s comfortable for me. But I would say you’re right. It does make you memorable and that was great.

Being in sales, my customers remembered me. I could get meetings, but even about eight years ago. I had started a new job and I was at a meeting with worldwide folks from my company all around, and I rec, there was somebody I didn’t know, walked up and shook. Shook the guy’s hand and introduced myself. And he goes, I know who you are.

You are the sales lady. And I kind of laughed because I was the sales lady and I look around and once again, I’m one of the only in the room still eight years ago. Um, another thing I’ve seen in my career, and I think a lot of women experience this, is you’re underestimated and that’s good when you’re out in the field. Um, one of my first jobs I went, got to a customer’s lobby and my competitor was there. He was probably a good 20, 25 years older than me ’cause I too was in my twenties. And we shake hands and we realized we’re direct competitors. And the customer came out a few minutes later and he proceeded to have a meeting for 30 minutes in the lobby about all his business right in front of me. And the good news is, is I have a great memory. So I just sat there, pretended like I wasn’t listening, and as soon as he left I wrote absolutely everything down and I now had a leg up. but you know, he obviously underestimated me. Um, so that was a good time, but I’ve also had bad times. Um. I had worked at a company where I was a regional sales manager. the number two regional sales manager out of a couple hundred worldwide. And my boss is doing a review with me and he goes to me, we are just shocked by your results. We’re blown away. We don’t know how you did this. And I was almost taken a guess because I’d had a lot of experience. I had spent a lot of time with my team coaching them out in the trenches at our customers. I worked extremely hard and it was my strategy and my willpower that helped the team rise to be the number two team in the entire company. I just learned in that moment, you know, I need to do a better job of articulating how I think and my results. So I would say there’s some really great things about being a woman, but there’s also some very challenging.

Very interesting. I think the, um, underestimating is, is is very common, isn’t it? Um, particularly when you’re sort of few and far between in a, in a, in an industry. And I wonder Sherry as well, you know, when we, when we first spoke before you joined the podcast, I sort of dove into your background a bit. And I think when you understand your background, you are definitely underestimated because you actually have a technical background in engineering, you know, which isn’t a traditional launchpad for sales leaders, but my God, how that’s probably helped support the conversations that you drive with the customers in your field.

So, you know, what was that pivot like for you? Um, and, and I presume that’s been, you know, very influential in why you’ve been so successful. Today, but how has that foundation of engineering like shaped the way that you approach sales and strategy today, do you think?

Yeah, so. First of all, um, I actually, I have my degree in engineering, but I never was a practicing

Mm-hmm.

I figured out, unfortunately, or fortunately late in my college career, I didn’t love engineering the way I thought I would. But I found out about these amazing business jobs that you needed to have a technical background in that acumen to be in a business role. Um, but what I learned, I mean, first of all, I went to an extremely competitive school. Um. A, US engineering school that really, we, we tried to weed students out. and that taught me pretty early on how to work under pressure, under challenging situations, how to ask for help. Um, and it what didn’t come easy to me.

And I would say sales is hard. So that was one thing, um, that, that helped. Um, the second was, um, because engineering was hard for me. I learned how to learn even better than I had, you know, that first 12 years of your education of, you know, I mean, college, it’s short time. It’s a lot of reading. It’s so, I’ve been able to get up on products, understand customers very quickly, and I’ve never been intimidated, um, by it.

Um, and then I’m, what I said is I’m not intimidated to ask for help. Um, and then lastly, um, because I have this very analytical side to me. I’m able to at times put my emotions aside and kind of go back and go, okay, here’s this big problem. know, how do I break it up into small steps and how do I tweak different things along the way that you learn, you know, when you’re studying engineering, I.

Absolutely. Um, what was it, how did you get into the first sales role that you were doing? Like, what was it that made you go, do you know what I can do that.

Well, first of all, I had, um, done retail sales in high school and college. I worked in a women’s clothing store for four years. So I loved, um, actually working with clients a different, you know, aspect of it. But, um. I, I had a roommate whose boyfriend had gotten a job with Shell Oil. He was a mechanical engineer and he’s telling me he’s traveling the world.

He has an expense account. he, uh, has to understand the product, but he meets with people from all over the world. And I was literally like, sign me up. This sounds like something I’d like to do. And I literally just took a leap of faith and those were the only jobs. I actually look for, in spite of people telling me you really need to do design work first.

And that was another lesson I’ve kind of learned was I trusted my gut at a young age, and that has proven me correct all throughout my career that I have a really strong intuition and to trust that, um, because it’s always served me well.

Which is a massive trait of a successful salesperson, isn’t it? Following your gut intuition, reading your customers, being able to be two steps ahead of them. And I wonder when it comes to sales, what was. You know, clearly you felt like this is the right environment for me and I’m gonna flourish because I like people and I like good conversation and I have that technical background.

But did you have any training at all? Was there any formal training when you onboarded?

Not what I ab boarded. It was literally like, here are the products we sell. He, I was, I had the rest of the world customers or mass market and basically accounts that were inactive or we had never done business with and I had a huge territory. It was like. Go see five customers a day. My boss literally would sit down with me for about five minutes a day.

Okay, ask them about this, ask ’em about that. And I would spend a lot of time online like searching, like who our competitors were. I had this whole matrix of, so I, I, kind of self-taught. And then of course, when I would travel with like my boss or different suppliers we had, you know, I would pay attention to what they did and what they said. And I just would add that to my toolbox. And certain things that didn’t feel comfortable I wouldn’t do. But things I thought were great. And so I’ve emulated people a lot in my career too. I mean, over time I’ve had lots of training, but early on it was kind of survival of the fittest.

Absolutely, and what I’m hearing from you. Um, is knowledge. It sounds like your superpower here has been, yeah. Obviously driving the meetings, but before you attend those meetings, like deeply understanding that customer’s business, what they do, the competitive landscape, because sharing, you’ll be surprised, you know, there are so many salespeople that are so driven on getting that meeting that sometimes they forget how important preparation is.

Um, and making sure that you can speak the right language before you sit down with that customer. So I wonder, do you have any tips on, and this will have evolved from when you started your career to where you are now, what are your tips for being the most prepared and being that knowledge bank that you know is like so important to being a trusted consultant and partner?

Yeah. So first of all, I mean, just looking on LinkedIn to see. Who you might know in common, um, at, you know, the, the actual person, um, who, where they might have worked, that there’s just some commonality. Um, I’ve become a big fan of chat, GBT, you know, I used to use Google search, um, but I’m a huge fan of, I will just type in a few questions of where’s this customer investing? Um, can you give me a short, you know, of their revenue for the year and how it’s broken up. And you know, you can start asking questions because where they’re investing is pretty important. And then the last thing I’ve done is call another sales person at your company who calls on a similar type of customer. they could be all over the world. And just go, what have you showed them that’s been compelling? You know what? What are some issues your customers have had that are in a similar space? And then you can go in and ask very targeted, relevant questions. Um, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

But, and to this day, I always have just a few little words that I can glance down to and a few things I want to accomplish. Just a few bullets that I can glance down to, to make sure I’ve maximized my time at that customer.

Amazing. So again, what I’m hearing is like do your research. Externally, leverage your teams internally, and it sounds like, yeah, have a set group of questions that you want to be able to get the answers to, and a couple of goals, like simple goals that you want to nail by the end of that meeting. So it’s like spend some time doing the work and then keep it simple to be able to get as much as you can out of that customer during that time.

Absolutely. And when they’re answering, just be quiet. Let them talk because there’s always this, um, know, a lot of people wanna show how much they know. I just like to be very quiet and hear what they have to say and then build off of that.

Which again, I think is a superpower because I, I feel like salespeople are naturally quite extroverted. Um, and feel quite confident speaking in a room. I mean, sales can be, can be quite hard. We might have to cold call at the start of our career or do lots of big presentations and I think it does take a certain personality to feel, to feel comfortable in that environment really, doesn’t it?

Have you always had that confidence, would you say?

No, I’m actually, well, I’ve always had a lot of confidence in my own ability just to learn and do things. But I’m actually, if you, if you take Myers-Briggs, I’m an introvert, I’m a high introvert, uh, you know, close to an extrovert, meaning I’m really comfortable by myself. I like to spend time by myself. I’m energized by reading and those kind of things. So. Um, I think the part that’s been great about sales is that I’m great one-on-one or in small things, so I’ve done really well in that, but I still get scared talking in front of a big room. I can do it and I do it, I think well, but, I’m more of a one-on-one or small group, uh, person.

Oh, I love that. And Shari I think that’s like a really good topic of discussion. Like I’ve immediately put salespeople in the bracket of like extroversion, but actually what you’ve showed is listening, um, and being quiet and observing can actually be even more fruitful. And, and it is something I guess I had to learn.

Like, I like to talk, um, I like to share stories and. Podcasting even for me, has been a great experience to listen and to not always be the most vocal person in the room. Um, so I think that’s a really good takeaway for the listeners is your experience of you don’t have to be the loudest person, just listen.

and Take everything in, and that will drive you forward. You don’t, you don’t have to be an extrovert to be successful in sales.

Absolutely.

Amazing. Well, let’s move on, shall we? Because you’ve led massive sales initiatives and we are talking companies like Apple and Google, Siemens, Schneider, and these are like high stakes.

They’re long cycle deals, and there’s a lot of complexity involved. And you talked about how you’ve sort of managed some of that complexity before. Um, but I’d love to understand what your mindset is for like building. Relationships in that type of environment, because I’m used to these kind of more short term transactional, but there will be a lot of people that need to keep momentum through a long sales process.

So what’s your tips there with your experience?

Yeah. So first I would say, um, you know, these big multinational long deals. One person doesn’t win it. I’ve never seen like a, a lone wolf win one of these bigs. It’s a team of people, not only at your company, at the customer. So you gotta accept that and somebody of needs to be driving that. And in my world, it’s typically a global account manager, um, that’s kind of organizing the team because sometimes these deals take a year and a half to close. Um, I would say secondly, understanding your customer’s RFQ process and what are some of the key milestones they have along the way. And I’ll give you an example. If we’re not getting lots of technical questions, we’re probably not a top contender. Um, I mean, that’s just one thing that we see all the time and making sure that you are, you know, you didn’t just ask one person at your customer.

We’ve gotten input from the team, got input from all over the world. And then we kind of put the puzzle pieces together and have a good idea. And we let everybody know what that process is in advance, in the milestone. And you’re constantly reminding the team, you know, almost like a thermometer. Here’s where we are.

We’re at the early phases, we’re moving farther up, we’re up at the top. there needs to be a ra, regular cadence internally and externally that you’re reviewing kind of where we are and what our next steps and what everybody’s gonna do because the customer also has to have skin in the game. Um, or we’re probably not winning. Um, I would say decision makers. They, um, can be at all levels in a company and they may be like, my typical customers, a design engineer or supply chain person. But a lot of times lawyers are involved. There’s contracts. Sometimes finance is involved because there’s approval le levels, um, in an organization at our customers.

So you gotta. Uh, software engineers, I sell hardware, but software engineers have a strong vote. So you gotta think about who are the people at my company that would best fit talking to those people? And sometimes it’s the person who designed a chip at our company that’s talking to the engineer. And you as a sales professional, you’re kind of doing the agenda and getting that person prepared, but you gotta let that other person shine in the meeting.

So you gotta be comfortable, um, with that. Um, a a few other come to mind. Keep validating along the way. Be paranoid, ask questions, um, and know that it’s gonna be tough. Um, I like to use the analogy, you know, when you’re on an airplane and the pilot gets on and he goes, in about 15 minutes we’re gonna get in turbulence. And for some reason you feel like a little comfortable, more comfortable, at least I do, when that turbulence starts versus you’re just sitting there and the plane starts moving up and down, so. You know, just kind of remind everybody that this is gonna be tough, but we’re in it for the long haul. This is what success looks like, and you know, kind of tighten up your seatbelt and keep going.

Be paranoid really stood out for me. That’s awesome. That’s such a, it’s constantly being curious and asking questions. I think you’re right. If your customers aren’t asking you the technical questions or are going quiet, you need to start prodding a little bit more, I imagine. Right.

Absolutely.

And you know, you talked a little bit there about sort of surrounding.

The buyer groups and, and I talk about this a lot with, with my team, it’s like, you’re right, it’s not a siloed decision maker. You have to be influencing every single person along the way and, and helping to make that their jobs easier, make the decision to work with you as easy as possible. In your world, let’s say the design engineer community, what does that look like in terms of you as a sales rep trying to make their jobs as easy as possible?

A a actually interesting enough, one thing, um, I’ve had folks do is put together almost a script for your customer. So when you’re not in the room. That person can sell for you, right? That engineer, they can sell to their boss, they can sell to the sophomore team, to, sorry, the software team, the legal team.

So actually putting together a really simple just script, um, for them, because you’re not always gonna be there.

I’ve never heard of that. And I love that because you are right. At the end of the day, they are having to sell you internally and they are not the experts of your business. So let’s just dig into that a bit more. How would you deliver that script to them?

A a actually, I’ve had in our, you know, presentations that are super big, kind of, you start with that, the first slide you end with it. um, why us, um, on in, you know, making sure they understand that and it’s something simple they can read. Because I found a lot of salespeople have said, oh, well we’ve talked about that a million times, but I’m like, they’re talking to other competitors and you don’t want them to get confused.

So actually having a simple summary at the beginning of your presentation or your RFQ documentation at the end. even sometimes in little email summary with just a few clear bullets, and I mean, depending on your relationship, even said here, this can help you internally. If any questions, um, I can be on standby.

If you’re in a meeting, you know, internally, you tell me when you’re gonna be in that meeting. If you need to text me, call me throughout that, I’m here for you.

Wow. I, yeah, I mean that’s showing that you really care. We’ve talked about that in quite a few episodes actually, but it’s, I’m here for you every single step of the way. Any question you need, building business cases for them. But I think you’re right. The script I really like ’cause it’s so simple but so impactful.

It’s like, this is what you need internally and this is why we are the right partner. Um, and again, bringing to life. You know, their problems, their challenges, their pain points, and why you are helping to solve them. So I think that’s an awesome tip. Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you.

So, obviously the nature of wise is about inspiring more women into sales.

Um, and I love that you are deeply involved with women in electronics and, and you are a real recognized voice in, in leadership and inclusion in tech. So how do you see that conversation around women in sales evolving and, and I guess, what do you still think needs to change? I.

Yeah. So, um, what I think’s gone really well is first of all. Um, I think women, and I think men know this too, that results aren’t the only thing. You can’t put your head down and just expect if you want to, you know, get different types of customers move up in your career, that it’s just gonna happen by luck, that you actually need to own your career.

And I think women understand that, um, especially in sales. So they spend a part of their time making sure that people know what they want. Um, I also think there’s a lot of information out there. I mean, there were never podcasts like this. Um, there’s courses you can take, there’s great books on women and sales and stuff that maybe were through a men’s lens many, many years ago.

Um, even compensation numbers are easy to find or you can talk to recruiters or you know, people you know in the industry, which I think is really important because. You know, women are paid what, 74 cents on the dollar, um, of men. Um, what I think still needs to change, I still see a, the C-suite in particular in tech. If you look in the sales organizations, if you look in business units, the technical jobs still have men. You know, you’ll see women in hr, in finance, um, legal, which is fantastic. But in tech, we wanna see women in those technical roles. And people are, they do have the background. There’s a lot of women out there like me, who have 20 plus years experience, um, in there.

So that’s one thing. And then secondly, I still don’t see companies having, you know, I think they have commitments, but there’s no numbers. They’re looking at, very few company are looking at numbers, holding folks accountable to those numbers and making sure that, um, you know. aren’t, um, getting passed over because they don’t have the experience, you know, um, where men get, you know, get hired all the time on potential women don’t.

So I haven’t seen that change to the level. Um, I, I’d like.

Yeah, I agree sadly, and I think having role models like someone like you who is confidently vocal about. You know your industry and your experience and the fact that you love what you do and it sounds like you do a lot of mentorship as well and you’re trying to pass that down to the next generation.

And I think you are right. It’s saturating yourself in like the communities of women who are seeing this as a really successful career. And I think that will show the next generation that it is really exciting and it’s really not scary. And whilst there’s a lot of men in this industry, there’s absolutely a place for women.

A Absolutely, and I always make time both for women and men who reach out. Um, I actually, not too long ago had a man on LinkedIn, um, who was early in his career reach out to me because we had people in common and he just said, Hey, can I have 30 minutes of your time? And we got on a Zoom call and just talked through some questions he had about like kind of I guess how I got to where I am today.

Amazing. And I would say that to the listeners as well. Female, male, it doesn’t matter. Like reach out. People are always willing to help, um, you know, and to, and to learn from each other and to share from each other. So yeah, I think that that’s a great tip. And you’ve obviously achieved some amazing things in your career, so to pass that on and, and help other people is, is a wonderful thing to do.

Um, I’ve just picked up on one thing that you talked about earlier, which is like complexity. And you’ve always said you kind of thrived in complexity. And you’re trying to sort of help companies turn challenges into growth. So just to finish up before we go into a quick fire round, um, I’d love for you to give an example maybe of a time where things felt, you know, really challenging or maybe unclear ’cause we know that happens in our industry.

Um, and what did you do to like, lead through that? Um.

Yeah, so a little over two years ago, um, I had gotten promoted to a vice president and I created a new vertical sales organization for us. That was comprised of, um, the compute sector, the mobile sector and consumer sector. And two years ago we were coming off of, you know, COVID, a pandemic where the semiconductor supply chain, um, was on allocation for over three years, which means our phones were ringing off the hook and we could not ship everything customers wanted. It was crazy. Business was up into the right. All of our competitors at us, well. About a month into my new role, customers were starting to wanna cancel. They were wanting to push out, their forecasts were going way down. And no other group in the company was seeing this. Um, and I quickly gathered, I started hearing it from individual leaders on my team, got us all together, and we came up with a list of questions we were gonna ask customers.

And well, lo and behold, now if you go back in history, the compute space was the very first. drop off then it was mobile, then it was infrastructure, then it was home appliances. You know, you saw this ripple around the world over about a year and a half time. Um, but so what, what I did was, first of all, nobody wants to see orders going away and potentially business going down. but once we understood from our customers what was happening, we kind of did a tiger team internally and kind of saw of. Are there places we haven’t built product that maybe we can slow down some of our manufacturing? Um, is there stuff we can push out now? You know, we’re a revenue organization, so we have to be careful about that, but we also don’t wanna ship a bunch of stuff and then not get orders for two years, on it.

So we worked with our customers, we worked with our internal team, and during that time when we’re doing favors for our customers, we ask for some in return. Hey, can you help get some meetings set up with this person that we don’t have a great relationship with? Because we wanna get involved in future products.

And fortunately, customers did that. Um, I’ll fast forward a little bit farther. Our revenue was not great that year. Um, my team, um, did not hit their revenue goals. However, um, what I, what I did was I told the team, I was very blunt, we’re all gonna miss our revenue goals. We’re gonna do things to. Make it as good as possible, but we need to spend the majority of our time focused on these rf, QS and new business because that’s what’s gonna turn the ship around. And I did a lot of worldwide sharing success stories um, whether it was on a all hands meeting, whether it was through teams, whether it was through emails of, Hey, so and so just won this, here’s how they won it. Um, and just showing that good things are happening. Also, I had my leaders make a commitment that we weren’t gonna spend more than 20% of our time on dealing with, you know, these awful orders that we’re gonna spend 80% of our time focusing on new business.

We still had to take care of the other stuff. and lo and behold, when we got, we do employee engagement scores, we got ’em last year. So it would’ve been, you know, a year after it happened, I had the number one out of 12 leaders in the company. Um, and I had the most challenging results, but I think because I was transparent and I got the team focused on what we can control. Um, and we won two huge deals during that time that haven’t gone into production yet. They will be, one actually is going later this year. Another one’s, uh, two years from now. But, you know, we got our funnel filled with some commitments from customers, which are really important.

Wow, congratulations. Um, and my takeaway from that is resilience. Um, you were agile and you pivoted. Um, you can’t control what’s going on in the economy. And there was some stuff that was completely out of your control in terms of hitting numbers. But what you demonstrated as a leader and what your team demonstrated is, this is gonna be hard.

Let’s be real, that this is gonna be really tough. We all know that. But we are going to throw ourself headfirst into other areas of the business to redirect our focus and like you said, work on what we can control. And I think that’s such a powerful way to even end our, our time talking together. ’cause it is, sometimes it is really hard sales.

We know that and we know that sometimes we’ll have a really good quarter and sometimes things just won’t work in our favor. But as long as you are giving it everything that you’ve got, and also you are always considering wider strategies. It could be cross-sell, upsell initiatives. It could be being two steps ahead of the business and recommending products that they can innovate and evolve to.

Um, but I think, yeah, as long as you don’t let the tough times bring you down and cause you to stop, but actually push you forward, then you’re gonna continue to be really successful in this industry.

I agree.

Awesome. Well, let’s jump to the quick fire ’cause I love these ones and I ask the same questions to every guest because at the end of the year I want to be able to collate the different things that each of you have told me.

So starting with, and we’ve talked about a few of these today, but what do you think is like the number one trait that is most critical for a sales leader today?

Adaptable. I think the world is changing so quickly. Technology’s changing and. People now can be more themselves at work. So you’re working with lots of different types of personalities and cultures from all over the world, so you’ve gotta be able to adapt to that real time.

Amazing. And your story says that doesn’t it? Adaptable in so many ways and also being a bit of a chameleon, I suppose, in terms of all the different people that we transact with on a day to day. Um, what about a female sales leader? Maybe you’ve had a, a female leader that has really inspired you in your journey.

Who is that? Is there anyone we can follow?

Yeah. Um, I would have to say my dear friend Linda Zel, um, I’ve known her over 20 years and she helped me get into Cypress Semiconductor, and she actually was a peer. And I, on paper, a peer of mine, but had much more experience than me, and that was my first job as a manager. she helped me how to present to an SVP.

I’d never done that in my career. Internally, she helped me close 20, $30 million into the quarter deals. She helped me navigate, how do I manage a team in Asia? I’d never been to China, I’d never been to Singapore. All those things. And, um. She had a vision back then that when she retired, she was gonna start a nonprofit, um, helping endangered species.

And she retired six years ago and she’s the founder of president of, um, a nonprofit called Safe Worldwide. She goes to Africa several times a year. She’s raised money. She has a whole team of people and she’s like living like her, her vision and her dream. And of course a sales aspect of right. Um, having a non-profit. And being successful. And so not only is she doing well for animals, also, um, in a lot of places like Africa, um, to make sure the animals are taken care of. You have to have the local economy doing well. She got sewing machines donated, women trained that are making purses and different things. So she’s not only helping animals, she’s helping women. Being self-sufficient. So, um, like I said, she’s one of my dear friends, but I just am blown away by what she’s done with her background in sales, um, you know, and transferring that to her dream.

Wow, she sounds amazing. Um, will maybe, I dunno if she’s got some sort of LinkedIn profile, but we can share that with the listeners as well. Drop her a follow or something or follow her business. ’cause what a wonderful thing to do to be a great sales mentor, sales leader, and then. Be able to channel your energy into a passion and a side hustle.

So again, I’d say to any, go ahead.

to you. I’ll,

Yeah, do

impressive and it’s pretty impressive what she’s doing.

incredible. And I think another, what I’m taking away as well for the listeners is like, get yourself a mentor. You know, none of us are you. You mentioned being a self-starter. None of us are the perfect sales leader. Like we need to evolve, we need to grow. You talked about modern sales, it’s changing all the time.

We need to be adaptable. Learning from each other and finding a sales mentor, someone that really inspires you, will help you along the way as well. Um, so my last question, again, going back to you saying you are a self-starter, you kind of just taught yourself. I wonder if there’s any books or resources or podcasts that just really helped you be as successful as you are?

Yeah, so there’s two books and uh, two podcasts. So the first book is called Start With No, and it’s by Jim Camp. was lucky enough to work with Jim, um, at a company I worked at. He was, um, a, he’s a professional negotiator I, to this day, kind of use how he approaches, you know, tough negotiations. Um, my other favorite book that’s changed my life is called Promotions Made Easy by Stacy Mayer. And it’s, uh, her mission is to get, um, women into the C-suite. so it’s really great for managing your career. And then two podcasts I love. Um, the first podcast is by Stacey Mayer. How I found her podcast was ’cause I read her book, um, women Changing Leadership. Um, and then the last is a pretty well known one by how I built This by Guy Ra about entrepreneurship.

But when you listen to it, it’s all about sales. You know, it’s about the whole customer journey. And, um, I just, those are, those are two that I listen to every week.

Oh, amazing. If you can also send me the links to those, and I remember how I built this sherry, and now it’s just triggered. I used to listen to it. All the time and I forgot about it. He’s awesome guy. So that’s a really good one to definitely selfishly for me to revisit as well.

Yeah, no, and there’s a lot of great women founders on there, so I, I, I mean, I, I love all of the episodes, but I love, like my two favorites are Sarah Blakely of Spank. And then Sandy Lerner, who was the, uh, one of the founders of Cisco, both just amazing. If you wanna, um, follow two amazing women leaders.

Always. Absolutely. I’m, I’m about to walk back to my house after recording this, so I’m gonna put that in my ears. So. So thank you so much. Sharing. You are an inspiration. You’ve had an incredibly fruitful career and all the work that you’re doing to support women in your field and mentorship. Thank you so much for being part of Wise the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.