Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking about you except you. Your customers don’t wake up thinking about your business — they think about themselves, their business, their challenges.
Understanding yourself as well as others is the key to finding your voice in sales.
In this episode, I speak with Kimberly Morgan, VP, US Sales at K3 Business Technologies, about her trajectory as a female sales leader.
Join us as we discuss:
- The badass female leader who mentored younger Kimberly
- Positivity and accountability to yourself
- Creating community and connection with like-minded female leaders
- Breaking through the sales noise by understanding the person on the other side of the phone
Finding Your Voice
The story is all too common. Women get into a sales role, and as is usually the case, the entire org is dominated by men.
Men make the decisions. Men set the tone. Men establish quotas.
For all the advancement we’ve made, sales is still an incredibly male-dominated field.
Thankfully, Kimberly had an advocate.
Her first role right out of the starting blocks, she had, in her own words, “a truly awesome and badass female leader.” Someone in the sales industry who looked like her. Who understood what she was dealing with.
This leader challenged Kimberly to advocate for herself. She wasn’t a pushover by any means. She was tough, but she was fair. And she taught Kimberly to never stand for or acquiesce to mediocrity.
Hearing from a female leader that early in her career really shaped Kimberly’s trajectory. It had a massive impact on her, and instilled this drive and desire to advocate for other female leaders who are just starting their careers.
Learning to Advocate for Yourself
At the end of the day, your career is up to you.
Leaders will play various roles in helping you grow yourself professionally, but ultimately your career is in your hands. If you don’t learn to speak up and advocate for yourself, you’ll likely end up getting passed up or left behind.
So how do you learn to advocate for yourself? What was Kimberly’s biggest piece of advice?
Start with data, because data doesn’t lie.
While learning to advocate for yourself can be tough, data and numbers and statistics allow you to truly back up your story. To add clarity to what it is that you’re bringing to the table.
If you can’t measure it, then you can’t track it. And if you can’t track it, you can’t use it to advocate for yourself.
Advocating for Women in the Workplace
Obviously, Kimberly’s experiences have instilled in her a deep desire to advocate for women in the workplace. For women to own their career journeys, speak up for what they want, and get those seats in the boardroom.
How is she doing that?
For starters, she’s connected with a group of like minded female leaders in the industry. Whether that’s through a group like Revenue Collective, or some of the Slack communities that align with the priorities that are important to her, it’s all about finding others that are like minded. Folks that know what you’re going through and can offer their expertise.
But most importantly, it’s about showing up for yourself. Highlighting your successes and not beating yourself up over your failures. Creating your own community for collaboration and support.
At the end of the day, we’d all agree that having a more diverse representation of society in the sales profession is a good thing. Both because it’s the right thing to do morally, but also because a diverse set of ideas, processes, and priorities will drive even more revenue.
Check out this resource we mentioned:
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