Salesprenuership: How to get an idea launched using your professional sales skillset
Hey Sis! You may know me as the operational head behind the brand, Sistas In Sales, the event lead, the social media admin, the sales lead and the CEO. I’m writing this piece to discuss how your practical sales skills can help you launch a successful business and brand. Within one year, Sistas In Sales had secured over 20 sponsors (Google, Salesforce, Bobbi Brown, and BuzzFeed) just to name a few, launched a website/blog, a Slack channel and hosts quarterly events. Allow me to share with you how we got to this place, and what you can do to get your side hustle off the ground using your current sales skills! 1. Business Plan – As sales professionals, we have a good understanding of what our company’s business plan is from listening to the All Hands, attending company wide meetings or simply asking your manager where they think the company is trending towards. Use that same ambition to sit down and create your plan, there are dozens of templates online you can use to get you going, starting with this one. 2. Data is King – You need a database of information from your prospects, customers to successfully scale your brand. Larger companies typically invest in CRM systems like Salesforce. Sis, we can use good old fashioned Google Sheets to create a simple spreadsheet of names, phone numbers, roles, LinkedIn profiles and email addresses. 3. Elevator Pitch – If you’ve ever cold called (like my earlier days), then you know the value of truncating your value proposition into 20 seconds. Practice on your friends, and use this formula to come up with it. “My name is A, and I am B, I work with C to help them to D.” My name is Chantel George, and I am a professional digital media saleswoman, as well as CEO of Sistas in Sales. I work with women of color in sales and business to help them connect with other women of color saleswomen, provide an authentic sisterhood in an industry that lacks diversity, expose them to networking opportunities, senior black saleswomen in sales/business, and educational opportunities to perfect our craft. 4. Create content – Content can take different forms, social media posts, website pages or blog posts. I’m agnostic! Test all avenues and see what you can keep up consistently. The biggest tip here is to be consistent! 5. Tell your friends and family – Then tell them again. You never know who knows someone who can help you. My Bobbi Brown sponsorship came from my cousin who was interning there at the time, next thing you knew we had full size BB makeup in our first swag bag. 6. Create an LLC only IF you need to! Are you planning on opening another business account, make contracts under your business name or do you foresee suing people? If so, then create it knowing that this can be a costly venture. More information here. We hope these tips serve as a reminder of how to use your already amazing sales skills to launch your side hustle!
Realizing Your Self-Worth Both Personally & Professionally
By Sidney Garcia & Myrna L. Datilus Self-worth is an important topic that many tend to emphasize in reference to their personal lives but rarely mention in reference to their professional lives. Sidney Garcia, our last SIS interviewee, has collaborated with me on this blog post to discuss how to realize your self-worth within your sales career. I will explore her essay, “Self-worth as it relates to Sales & Success,” and I’ll add my insight below. In this post, we’re going to explore self-worth, why it’s hard to build, and how we can get over the challenges to developing it and owning it. Sidney mentions how we are forced to think about what self-worth really is it, and what does it have to do with our sales careers? It seems like everyone is talking about self-worth and self-love, but even with all the good reading out there and positive stories circulating the internet, the idea of deep-seated self-love is still a tough one to fully embody. Now, no matter who you are or where you come from, we all struggle with it to a degree, particularly women of color in the sales industry, but how do we really define self-worth? A sense of self-worth is like a personal thermostat around one’s comfort level with receiving. That could mean receiving respect, opportunity, promotions, love, pay, abuse, abundance, freedom…you name it. It’s both something you can feel and something you embody with behavior; you feel a certain level of worthiness, and how you feel will directly determine how you behave outwardly in the world. Those feelings become projected through our actions and behavior, and then people react to that behavior, like a mirror. It is similar to the Law of Attraction concept which is the ability to attract into our lives whatever we are focusing on. The main difference is that with self-worth you must not only believe in what you are attracting, but be in a position to receive it as well; this is something I personally struggle with when it comes to love, but that is for another blog post on a different platform. Wherever our thermostat rests is how we project our behavior onto the world regularly, and how we act then prompts people to respond to us in a similar way. This means so much in a career like sales when we are constantly interacting with other people. What we believe about ourselves is subconsciously picked up on by our customers, our colleagues, our internal resources, our managers, etc. It’s picked up on by how we show up to our meetings, negotiations, and strategy calls. Someone who is confident about their voice owns the room differently and isn’t afraid to share their opinions, expertise or ask questions, and others will reflect that back and listen. Someone who respects their own time will have different boundaries that other people respect when it comes to setting up meetings or sending an agenda ahead of time. Someone who believes in their value to the company will be more likely to receive a promotion because people will notice that sense of self-worth and then see it for themselves too. We generally have the power to attract certain people, promotions or pay into our lives by how we project ourselves into the world. It all comes down to our beliefs. Sidney gives us this example around money, one that blocked her from receiving the pay she deserved until she corrected it. Sidney’s parents are from Mexico and mine from Haiti, so it was very common to hear our parents complain about having to work very hard with over-time in order to make more money. On a subconscious level, this turned into the beliefs you have to work hard for money, money means my parents spend less time with me because they’re working, and the classic one my mom used to say, money doesn’t grow on trees. The hard-wiring events in our lives are so powerful on a very subconscious level, that I wouldn’t want to receive money because I don’t want the pain that’s associated to come with it. I might say on the outside “I want tons of money,” but my projected behavior and how I portray myself won’t be in congruence with that statement. Instead, I might complain about money, I might get nervous when it comes to paying the bills or I might not go after the promotion as hard because a deeper part of me doesn’t want to violate the value of being able to spend time with my friends & family…see the problem? There’s literally biochemistry happening in the brain that is working against the goals I say I want; it’s like an instinct. Negative or “incongruent” beliefs like this also exist when it comes to how we feel about ourselves, and they get in the way of our ability to receive respect, pay, love, or freedom every day. This is exactly why embodying something we “say” we want can be a lot more challenging than it sounds. Biochemistry is a powerful force of nature. I, like many women, am very dialed into my emotions, and yet- I never once let on to anyone that beliefs and insecurities like these were a part of my reality and on a deep level holding me back. That’s because I didn’t understand them. The good news is that you are so much more powerful than beliefs and biochemistry and once you’re aware of what they are, you can begin to change them. Over the next several weeks, Sidney will be deep-diving into how that self-worth directly affects our sales results and careers when it comes to showing up fully as ourselves, communicating with our customers, getting the promotions, and not depleting our energy — all challenges women seemingly have to face to a greater degree. She will be doing this through her business, The Blum Business Academy via her Facebook group, The Mastery of Relationship Sales. In this series, Sidney’s greatest wish is for women is to begin to understand their true potential that lies in their sense of self-worth. Her hope is that we can
Jopwell Features Female Founders
Vision Statements: A SIStas Guide to Visualizing Your Future Successes
While the New Year is swiftly approaching, everyone is trying to figure out what their resolutions will be, how to become a better version of themselves in the New Year, and how to ring in 2019. This may be overwhelming for some if they have not given their New Year any thought, but for others, it may be more exciting since they have an exact idea of how they would like the New Year to pan out for them. My best friend and I have been discussing our New Years and now have officially planned how to ring it in since we want 2019 to be the best year ever for us. Since I will be spending it in DC with her, I brought up the idea of us creating vision boards together, but then she introduced me to something even more powerful; a vision statement. I have never heard of such a concept before therefore she directed me to an article featured on Medium by NYTimes Best-Selling Author, Luvvie Ajayi. After reading this amazing article I MUST write a vision statement and I cannot wait to see how everything comes into fruition for me and my best friend! As a SISta, whether you are planning your New Year alone, with your friends, or with your family, we want you to be able to plan out your new year in the best way possible. With that said, take the time to read the 5 key takeaways along with my elaborations on what I have learned after reading this mind altering article by Luvvie. I hope this serves as a reminder that it is important to write your visions down! Nevertheless, I hope everyone rings in the New Year in the best way possible and that everything you wite down comes to fruition. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year, SIStas!!
Happy Birthday SISta Edition: Our Founder & CEO, Chantel N. George!
Chantel Nicole George was born in the Bronx, NY to Dominican (Do-mee-NEE-can) parents who taught her at an early age to be a strong and assertive woman. The strength they taught her would help her cope when she lost her mother to breast cancer when she was only 9 years old. This experience would help shape Chantel into the bold, strong-willed entrepreneur she is today. In honor of keeping her mother’s legacy alive, and to bring more awareness to cancer in the Caribbean, in 2013 Chantel volunteered in Dominica for The North-South Breast Cancer Initiative Workshop. As an advocate for change, it was, and still is very important to Chantel to be a part of a mission that helps to bring exposure to not only breast cancer but all the cancers that have attacked loved ones in the Caribbean. Chantel volunteering in Dominica at The North-South Breast Cancer Initiative Workshop in 2013. Outside of Ms. George being a change agent, in 2011, Chantel created her first business called, “Chantel’s Hair Creations.” This business venture opened doors within the fashion industry, and with her keen eye for opportunity, she was able to experience Fashion Week in NYC as a hairstylist! After being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, Chantel realized that she can do anything she puts her mind to. After a few years of working in the fashion & beauty industry, Chantel decided to put her hairstyling business on hold and venture into the sales industry as a successful sales professional. Over the past 5 years, she has worked for companies such as Yelp, Justworks, and currently, Dataminr as an Enterprise Account Executive. While working in sales, Chantel noticed a deficiency when it came to women of color in professional sales positions, therefore she decided to alter the industry by creating “Sistas in Sales” (SIS) at the beginning of 2018. Chantel states, “Ever since I was young, I’ve always been selling, but I never predicted I would end up being a professional salesperson. From selling piano lessons to the neighborhood kids, to movie tickets as a teen, to now technology to the Fortune 500.” Chantel has come a long way! She did not settle for but instead chose to disrupt the sales culture and narrative surrounding women of color in the sales industry. Ms. George is a woman that does not let any of life’s challenges hold her back from accomplishing any of her God-given dreams but instead forges towards them with a vengeance. One of the many things I love about Chantel is that she wants to take people along with her on her journey towards success. She is not selfish with her knowledge but very selfless, and when she puts her mind to something, no matter what the obstacles faced, she will get it done! Chantel truly believes in the power of sisterhood! She has built a community filled with women from across the country in the profession of sales. These women now have a resource to rely on and connect with. Due to being raised in a single parent household as the only child, Chantel has been determined to never have another woman walk alone in their journey towards success as she had to do at the beginning of her career. She now has many SIStas she can reach out to through SIS. Outside of being a sales Superwoman, Chantel loves to cook, wine & dine at nice restaurants, travel, and spend quality time with her family, friends, and boyfriend. To learn more about her adventures with SIS, follower her using the handle @sistasinsales, and to follow her and her travel adventures, use the handle @chantelmedia. Chantel, keep up the amazing work you are doing. You are leaving an amazing footprint in this world and it is so inspiring to watch your growth. I am blessed to call you not only my friend but my Sista!