Conversations With Women In Sales

Niya Khatri is a long way from her home of Kathmandu, Nepal. She is a Millenial b2b seller who has lived in Pune, India, Colorado Springs, Toronto, and now the Bay Area, SF. She brings a wonderful and different perspective as a woman of color, as a woman "up and coming" in sales, and has openly helped her employers to improve revenues by looking through a different lens. We had a fun conversation. 

Katherine Andruha has been leading sales teams for 14 years at brands like Aruba Networks, Anaplan, Sugar CRM, Cloudflare, and now at Simpplr. Katherine's advice, "Focus on your job, and hit your numbers - you'll be OK" -  She also advises to speak up about your career goals and be intentional.  Katherine is now focused on strategy in her leadership roles. She encourages women to not just settle for a position - "life is too short to work for a crappy boss" - words to live by. 

Lori Harmon is a consummate tech sales leader. I've had the pleasure to know her over 8 or 9 years. In her recent role at Cloudflare, Lori is Global Head of Business Development.  Reflecting on her 20+ years of building, leading, and transforming inside sales organizations, and as author of "42 Rules for Building a High-Velocity Inside Sales Team: Actionable Guide to Creating Inside Sales Teams That Deliver Quantum Results," Lori has an immense passion for developing meaningful strategy, executing tactfully, and working to inspire people early in their careers to perform and advance, which she is working to impart to her teams at @Cloudflare. In this conversation, Lori shares some of her lessons learned and about her journey into sales leadership - a place not enough of us are at. 

Karen Keating is a Strategic Account Director at Salesforce. She's created a great life through professional selling - and always working at the Enterprise level of selling. She lives in Utah where her passion for the snow continues. We had a great conversation about how she got into sales in the first place and someone "saw" something in her to encourage her to consider selling. Once she got bit by the sales bug, she has spent her career selling.   

It doesn't seem fair that our society has developed boys and men who can be loud and agressive and everyone thinks that is fine. When a woman is not even agressive but assertive, and speaks up, she is often labeled one of an assortment of names - one is five letters and starts with a B. Women who thrive in sales leadership learn the "dance" between not being "too much" and being "enough".  There is no road map for this - that's why we talk to amazing leaders like Ang McManamon, who has been at Gilt Groupe, Amazon, Knotel (among others) and now VP Sales at Crunchbase. Ang talks about her climb into leadership and how she supports her people so that they feel like she has their back. 

Stephanie Chung is a transformational expert and a commercial strategist with passion for people. Stephanie serves on many boards. She's led businesses through significant change in unprecedented times which has given her great appreciation and resolve to align organizational goals and amazing teams behind a shared vision and purpose to achieve the desired results.  As an accomplished, innovative leader, Stephanie has  20+ years of demonstrated success of steering companies from start-up into maturity, propelling record sales growth, and building highly engaged and loyal teams for global entities.  Deemed the first African-American to lead a major private aviation company, Stephanie was honored to earn accolades as a “Trailblazer” on the 2020 Ebony Magazine Power 100 list, "Top Visionary Changing The Luxury World Right Now" Robb Report 2021, "Top Executive" 2022 Savoy Magazine, and "Most Influential Female Executive" Women's Inc 2022 . We had a great conversation. I had no idea what her first job in aviati

Tonni has been a sales leader in tech companies for over 14 years. I wondered how she started out in a leadership role so early in her career. We also talked about momhood / parenthood as she now has two kids so juggling family as well as work and a sales team is a lot. We talked about how great leaders who ARE parents can be in hitting goals and being productive. We also talked about how many women coming up in newer sales roles don't visualize that they could actually have a family some day and stay in sales or be in a sales leader role. Tonni's success dispels this myth. We'd love your feedback on this episode - consider posting on iTunes - and thank you in advance!

If nothing else, connect with Nirvanna to follow her LinkedIn posts and shares - she is so great at putting things "out there" on topics like leadership, stress, inspiration, and dealing with change. I met Nirvanna in Boston a number of years ago. She's always been focused on her professional development, and committed to being in a leadership role. Learn how she rose from individual contributor to a leader - she would not settle for another individual role. I am inspired by her "can-do" attitude and how she is sharing what she is learning through her posts on Medium here as well as on LinkedIn. 

Nancy Calabrese is Founder and CEO of One of a Kind Sales - a lead generation and appointment setting firm working primarily with B2B companies, helping them grow revenue. Her team loves cold calling, lead development, and top of the funnel services. Most people don't, so this has given Nancy a robust business for many years. In our conversation she'll share her story, how she grew to love sales so much, and some tips and ideas for success in getting meetings and in speaking with future buyers.  Nancy sees calling as one of the marketing channels and assuming you are professional and use the multi-channel approach to reach prospective customers, between all of the channels, you'll be successful. You need to be open to where your buyer is and where what you say or do resonates with them. 

This is a quick teaser about what is ahead for 2023 on the podcast, Conversations with Women in Sales, as well as with the "women in sales" community. Lori is solo on this one to share some information and perhaps a little inspiration at the end. 

We had so many wonderful episodes this past year. Lori Richardson, podcast host, will share the top  listened to episodes and some of her favorite topics and guests. Plus she puts out a call at the end for everyone to do a hard look at their past year and review, then set some stretch goals and find an accountability partner or team. Lori mentions free tools to download for helping you evaluate 2022 and to kickstart 2023. You can reach out to her if you don't know how to reach the ones she's referring to. lori AT womensalespros DOT com.  IF YOU LIKE THE PODCAST, we ask that you go to iTunes, log in, download an episode or two and then give us a FIVE STAR rating - and then give us a review. It will go a long way and it matters if you have 100 reviews or if you have 20. Thank you in advance. 

Laura Colón focused on public relations in college at the suggestion of a counselor. She learned, however, that PR does not pay well right out of college. She went a different direction and ended up in sales, but is grateful for the learning she got about communication and PR which has helped her first as an individual contributor in sales, then as a sales leader. Laura has worked on both coasts, and is currently Regional VP, Mid-Market West for Vonage. She is also a Mentor at #GirlsClub and recently spoke on the main stage at the #GirlsClub "RISE UP" conference, where I met her and realized her energy would be a great addition to the podcast. 

Porchia Jenkins is currently Manager of Mid-Market Sales Development at a company called TripActions. But Porchia didn't start out in college thinking about going into sales... nope, she was focused on kineseology and exercise science. Got her Bachelors degree, and then her Masters in it. She was ready for her career in physical fitness - first working with adults, and then with kids. Somehow she ended up at a holiday party or two with folks in software sales. That got her thinking about a change - the rest is history. Porchia and I shared stories about formerly being a teacher then getting into sales. We laughed at how it "used" to be that hiring managers in sales didn't see a correlation sometimes for "grit" and "perserverance" as we toiled away with kids in classrooms. Really?  Porchia also talked about being a Black woman in a while male world - sales. How she's used being an "only" often to her advantage and who is really clear about who she is and the huge value she offers. I think this episode will ins

Helen Fanucci has written a much-needed book in "Love Your Team"  and it is different from so many other sales management guides because it helps managers, whether new or experienced to understand what to say, when to say it, and actual wording suggestions.  Helen has brought her years of sales leadership currently as a senior leader at Microsoft and previously at Sun Microsystems.  There are sections of the book on these conversations - on connection, performance, strategy, customer engagement, and internal alignment, Helen emphasises that "words matter" in sales - internally and with our customers - and I could not agree more. Check out our conversation and download a copy of her book to help your sales team - whether you are a sales manager, leader, or individual contributor - you will receive some great, practical ideas. 

Katie Visco was the youngest woman to run across the United States in 2009. Not only did she run across the U.S., but she gave talks all along the way. She repeated a cross-nation run ten years later, running across Australia with only bicycle support throughout the ride.  Now Katie is in a sales role at ADP in their retirement services - and winning awards doing it - no surprise.  Listen to Katie's transition into sales (she's also an entrepreneur) and learn what keeps her going.  This is our 140th episode to inspire women and appreciate our male allies in B2B sales and revenue growth. #shesells #seeitbeit #womeninsales   

Let's talk about the drop in outbound call connections - buyers have changed. How do we adjust and prepare and work to hit our sales numbers? Meet Heidi. Heidi Messer is an entrepreneur, board director, builder of networks and investor who founded several global businesesses including Linkshare and collective[i]. She serves on a number of boards, was granted two patents connected to collective[i]'s data analytics network and is listed in Wikipedia. The name collective[i] stands for Collective Intelligence-- a concept that when knowledge is shared, everyone wins. Heidi says the greatest sales leaders she's seen are resilient. She wants people to question logic from the past instead of being open to the future. Technology is not the change itself, but it helps enables change. Her latest venture works to remove time forecasting as well as inputing data. It connects buyers and sellers in modern ways - deep collaboration. People need the ability to collaborate and that is the next experience in selling. Check out

Wesleyne went to college to become a chemist. She was a chemist for four years, then got into a sales career - tripling the sales in her region in one year! She takes a scientific approach to selling, and uses data to prove what a sales team possesses and what it needs.  Take a listen to this fun conversation with my friend and colleague, Wesleyne and see how someone with a scientific background totally excelled at selling. Find more about Wesleyne at https://www.transformedsales.com/ She also has a podcast called Transformed Sales. 

This podcast aims to highlight so many women in sales who have created success without being "salesy" - you know that "icky" feeling after being "sold to?" that can happen in a bad sales situation. Robin Treasure wrote a book, "Heart-Powerd Sales - Grow Your Sales Exponetially with Emotional Intelligence and Intuition" and is a great resource for anyone in sales wanting to be in the admirable profession of selling, using heart.  Robin is a sales trainer and sales coach as well as a multi-lingual world traveler who has lived abroad in several different countries. She began her career as an Italian translator in Rome. www.robintreasure.com 

Her book starts with the powerful sentiment: "Sales isn't a dirty word!" and so did our conversation. Mandy is not only the VP, Global Accounts at Hospitality Performance Network but is also the author of a great book called, "Sales Tales: The Hustle, Humor, and Lessons from a Life in Sales".  Mandy has a very down to earth style in sharing what she loves about the sales profession and how everything we do involves selling - so embrace it rather than shy away from it. 

Heidi Solomon-Orlick is a force to be reckoned with. In our conversation she will talk about her career in sales (currently now Sr. VP, Bus Dev at Arise Virtual Solutions) and the impetus to launch her organization, GirlzWhoSell. Heidi has amazing amounts of energy as it seems she is always working on a new project or idea for more women in sales.  I met Heidi when we both lived in New Hampshire and I was impressed with her networking to key people, and for believing in the idea to put a book together with 30+ women sharing their sales journeys to inspire other women to consider a sales career. GirlzWhoSell has a non-profit foundation and an academy where young women can learn about sales and be mentored.