Today we’d like to introduce you to Leslie Venetz.
Leslie, please share your story with us.
My journey to Sales Team Builder started in high school.
I fell in love with Policy Debate in high school. I spent my after school hours, nights and weekends researching, forming cohesive arguments, and attending debate tournaments. This experience became the foundation for my later passion for and success in sales.
I’ve stayed involved with debate, in some form, since high school. I held leadership positions in the Model United Nations and Model Arab League programs during college and, more recently, I’ve been involved with the Chicago Debate Commission.
Debate taught me that the more closely I listened to my opposition, the stronger my response would be. Debate taught how to research to make informed and compelling arguments that people wanted to listen to. Debate taught me the power of rhetoric.
Now, through Sales Team Builder, I want to share the knowledge I’ve acquired through decades of debate and top-performing sales experience.
Over the past decade, I excelled as a consistent elite B2B sales performer as well as a Sales Manager. I’ve grown sales offices from scratch, hosted international training sessions and have always maintained a position in the top 20% of sales rankings.
Most recently, I was recruited to launch a Startup acting as the day-to-day CEO. Selling a new product, with little support, into a heavily saturated market pushed me to learn a boatload of new skills. A key takeaway that Startup life showed me was the importance of relationships even when making a transactional sale.
I’ve just started a position with a business intelligence firm, Procurement Leaders. As their Chicago-based Accounts Director, I will be supporting growth in the US-market. I am excited for a new challenge that will continue to push my boundaries and grow my sales acumen.
All of my real-life experience as a top performer, manager, coach and sales trainer has driven me to create Sales Team Builder LLC.
I love sharing my knowledge with others. I am eager to support my B2B sales peers. Anybody can learn how to sell and Sales Team Builder is meant to be a go-to resource for organizations that want to invest in their staff.
Sales Team Builder will help any company unleash their team’s revenue potential through live-coaching and actionable training. Our expertise is creating the processes and foundation for a sale’s teams success.
It is so much fun to support an industry where small changes can have massive effects. We even to free 30-minute consultations where you can pick our brain!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Sales is a predominantly male profession. That is especially true for sales management.
For many years, the verticals I specialized in were energy and finance which are also very male-dominated.
Point being, I’ve always worked for men, on a sales floor that is majority male, selling to industries that are 90% male. It can sometimes feel isolating.
My advice for young professional women is to find a female mentor. I deeply regret not finding a professional mentor when I entered the workforce. Inevitably, there will be questions you want to ask or issues you encounter that would be easier to discuss with a female mentor.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t also have a male mentor, but I really wish I would’ve had a strong professional woman to bounce ideas off of or to seek support from during experiences of gender discrimination and sexual harassment.
We’d love to hear more about Sales Team Builder LLC.
Sales Team Builder (www.insidesalesteambuilder.com) is a sales consultancy firm. We specialize in supporting revenue growth for B2B sales organizations.
With expertise in sales enablement, content creation, and B2B sales metrics Sales Team Builder is a turnkey solution; heightening an organizations sales strategy and growing their company revenue.
We are proud to be a woman-owned business.
Our CEO, Leslie Venetz, has also been featured on podcasts such as the Inside Sales Podcast, Sales Acceleration Podcast, and Sales DNA Podcast. She was recommended as one of the top B2B Sales Professionals to follow on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz.
Leslie has hosted sales training sessions in Chicago, New York, Manchester, London, Sydney, Macau, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City and Barbados.
Leslie especially loves to help women start or advance a career in sales. She prides herself in giving free 30-minute consultations to individual sales professionals as well as sales organizations.
Leslie’s has a knack for bringing the best out of a sales’ team.
We’re interested to hear your thoughts on female leadership – in particular, what do you feel are the biggest barriers or obstacles?
The biggest barriers to female leadership revolve around mindset.
There is a mindset that women are simply not as capable as men. Unfortunately, I see this bias come out in the actions of men and women alike.
It is human nature to want to be surrounded by people who are like you, people who are easy for you to understand. Since 70% of Fortune senior-executives are white males, that means that everybody else is fighting an uphill battle.
For women in sales, that percentage is even more daunting. According to a 2018 Forbes article, only 21% of Sales VPs are women and there has only been a 3% increase in the number of female sales professionals in the past decade.
A few issues that I routinely encounter:
1. Men calling female professionals sweetheart, darling, babe etc during a professional sales call or meeting. That type of language does not belong in the workplace.
I do believe that some of what’s happening with the #MeToo movement will have a positive effect on reducing this sort of language, but this sort of undermining, dismissive language is something I personally encounter at least a dozen times a year.
When, five minutes into a sales presentation a C-level interrupts you to say, “darling, blah blah blah,” you know the sale is dead.
2. Peers (men and women) making jokes about how a deal was only closed because you are a woman.
I am happy to acknowledge that men and women need to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses in sales. We could discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each sex until we’re blue in the face.
Unfortunately, these conversations are rarely about constructive ways to use a different voice or personality on the phone to get an appointment scheduled or a sale closed. The jokes that get made around the office undermine women as strong sales professionals. Too often, their success is attributed to a specific body part or a manipulative use of sensuality (or worse).
Women close sales because of their hard work, intelligence or grit.
3. Exclusion from important conversations because they happen at the bar, the strip club, the game – you name it – but they happen during social outings where women are often not included.
Inclusion has to be a conscious act. Inclusion takes work and needs to be pushed from the top down.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.insidesalesteambuilder.com
- Phone: 406-880-3824
- Email: Leslie.venetz@gmail.com
- Twitter: @LeslieVenetz
- Other: www.linkedin.com/in/leslievenetz
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