Conversations with Women in Sales (Lori Richardson)

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. 

In this interview Barb interviews Carolyn Rehling, VP Sales at SkyBitz.

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!

In this episode Barb interviews Julia DePalma, Account Executive, West at TechTarget.

How to Make a Difference in Your Sales Career

Rakhi Voria, is the Director of IBM Global Digital Sales, and she manages a team that is responsible for the strategy, implementation, and revenue of the Digital Development Representative sales function globally. We talked about how she made the big decision to move to IBM to take on a new leadership role.

Rachel Gray has been selling for the past 10 years after fleeing from the career she first thought she wanted, which was being a lawyer. We talk about how important it is for salespeople to look after themselves mentally and physically every day. If you don't take care of number 1 first... you are ultimately no good to anyone else.

Dr. Jane Sojka is Professor Educator, Marketing at University of Cincinnati. She teaches undergrad and grad students and does research. Is responsible for developing the professional sales program, implementing course curriculum, coaching the UC Sales Team and advising the UC Sales Club. Professor Sojka runs an incredible "Women in Sales" course at UC. 

We have a great conversation about confidence and resiliency in women and men. 

Ashley Philipps is the author of the new book, The Teacher's Guide to Changing Careers. Being a former teacher myself, I am always up for hearing about others who left the admirable profession of teaching due to the lack of pay, and who got into sales roles. 

Ashley's book showcases other careers, but she did go into B2B sales and we talk about that on this episode. 

You will also hear my tip for those in the job market - what is the best way to approach someone who is well connected, instead of saying, "Hey if you know of anyone hiring...." What do you say instead? 

Ashley's book will certainly help teachers who feel like they are underappreciated, underpaid, and who are interested in continuing to be a teacher as a professional seller. 

The good news about the B2B sales profession is that IT is also an admirable profession - a helping profession. Even with new AI tools, complex sales won't happen without empathetic, communicative, collaborative sellers like many former teachers can be. 

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Nancy McNeill is Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for global sales strategy for Dow Jones' suite of professional information products. She has more than 20 years of management experience, leading global sales organizations in the financial services information industry. We talked about supportive company leaders, mentors, and how sales can be successful working remotely.

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. 

We kick of 2022 with a new sponsor, Reprise. Big thank you to them. They have some amazing women in sales, including their head of sales. VP Sales Grace Tyson sat down with us to share about her journey and stops along the way to her current role. 

We discussed the idea of product led growth and got some inspiration from a top sales leader. If you know of a woman sales leader or amazing sales rep, let us know - if they inspire, we want to share their insight and story here. 

"A billion dollar quota is like a 100K quota - you have to be comfortable talking about money with others" - one of the topics guest Marva Bailer and I bond on in our conversation shared today. I'm thrilled that our sponsor, Skillibrium, brings on advisors like Marva so that we can have real discussions around how to be successful. 

Marva was in sales before she learned how to drive - she and I share that young entrepreneurial spirit as well. Marva got into health, wellness and personal development before it was cool - and these are big topics in a successful sales career today. 

Join us for a fun conversation about coaching, personal growth, and professional development as well - share your thoughts, and please share the podcast with one other woman or male ally if you can. 

@womensalespros on Insta

@marvabailer on Insta

Becc Holland is a woman on a mission to help Sales Development Reps - and anyone at the front of the sales process to better communicate with and help buyers buy. She has an exhaustive library of plays for those newer to sales to try in order to reach buyers and have more positive conversations to ultimately move deals forward. Her Flip the Script program offering is free for others to learn, and paid for by sponsors. We talk about how her helping others internationally when young, along with her love of music and selling helped bring her to where she is today. 

Ellen Stafford is Director, Presales and Solutions at Vidyard which means that she leads business development as well as the Solutions Consulting teams - an unusual combination but it works for her. She started selling cell phones after college and then, through connections, got an opportunity at Salesforce.com. She went from the mammoth company to Vidyard which was truly a startup with 35 employees when she started there, and has risen through the ranks. 

Radhika Shukla is a long time sales leader in the tech sales space, working for big brands like Microsoft and IBM.

We have a wonderful conversation about all of the skills and traits that women bring to the table when we are able to be our authentic selves. 

Join us to learn more. Reach out to Radhika on Linkedin. 

Kristie's parents were both in real estate sales and Kristie grew up hearing her parents  talk at the dinner table about commissions, sales, and more. After getting a degree in Journalism from University of Kansas, she ended up as a waitress and then worked for the legendary Kansas City department store called The Jones Co (later became Macy's) 

Kristie worked as a sales leader for companies like Network Solutions, Gainsight, and Netskope. Listen how the universe conspired for her to start her own sales consultancy. 

This year, 2024, Kristie's new book, "Selling Your Way In" will launch. 

Get updates about the book here. 

Follow Kristie Jones on LinkedIn here.  

Podcasts brought to you by Women Sales Pros. Reach out to help sponsor our efforts!

Women Sales Pros has updates on our LinkedIn page, and on our website. 

Reach out to Lori Richardson through her LinkedIn profile. 

Know of a female sales rep or leader we should interview? Reach out to Lori.

Thanks for listening, and the ultimate gift is for you to share on LinkedIn AND/OR post a review on iTunes plus a blurb as to what you liked about it. Thanks in advance. 

Kristie Jones is the go-to expert for companies looking for help evaluating, building, training and scaling their Sales teams. Her 19+ years in the SaaS space, willingness to get her hands dirty, and “take no prisoners” approach is what makes her so valuable to her clients.

Here's what you can expect from Conversations with Women in Sales, hosted by Barb Giamanco!

Professor Stefanie Boyer is a changemaker - she is helping thousands of college and university students learn how to be a professional seller through her work as a professor and also as the co-founder of RNMKRS. We had an interesting conversation about sales education and more. 

Alice Katwan wanted to get into a tech sales role in Silicon Valley and started in Customer Support - a smart way to begin a sales career, because she rose to Enterprise Account Manager, Area Sales Manager, Sales Director, and now Senior Vice President of North American Sales for Salesforce. Listen as Alice discusses her journey, and in what she and I agree about when it comes to professional selling. 

In this episode Barb interviews Christel Mauffet-Smith, Sales Director at Cadence Design Systems.

Elizabeth Ionita is Account Executive at Allocadia and founder of COMWUNE. She grew up and lives in Canada - was 1st generation Canadian in her family. Elizabeth has raised two kids and been in a sales role, so we talk a bit about her maternity leaves and how coming back can be tough. Listen to her journey as a full cycle rep and what she was looking for when making a move to another role. Good food for thought for anyone contemplating change - to really know what type of company and environment will suit you well.  Also learn how she moved from selling to a different persona moving from one company to another. 

Tracy Eiler is the Chief Marketing Officer at InsideView. She has been driving marketing strategy at both cloud-based and traditional enterprise technology companies for 25 years. At InsideView, Tracy leads the end-to-end marketing strategy and initiatives. Tracy came to InsideView from her own marketing consulting firm. Previously, Tracy held executive roles at Replicon, Cloud9, MarkLogic, Postini, and Business Objects. She also founded and ran a successful technology communications agency.

In this episode Barb interviews Emily Hyde, VP Sales at Advocate.

Jen is an author contributor to the new book, "Heels to Deals" with 33 women's stories about their journeys in B2B sales. It was pulled together by Heidi Solomon-Orlick of Girlz Who Sell and is a GREAT read! 

Jen does a popular LinkedIn Live show where she shares stories, as she did in the book and on this episode about challenges she ran into as a woman in sales - in hopes that other women coming up in sales will learn from others and not get stuck in the same corner or be speechless if and when someone says something totally inappropriate or disrespectful. We cover a lot of topics in this one. 

Irina Soriano is VP, Enablement at Seismic and author of "Generation Brand: Controlling your life-brand for likes, loves, and career advancement". She also has a terrific TEDx talk called, "Gender Parity Starts with Controlling our Life Brand". In this conversation we discuss how Irina rose in her career to a VP level, and how your brand can support you (or not support you) in your career growth. 

Precious Williams KNEW there was a STAR inside of herself - she was not raised with confidence but she learned to embrace herself and own who she is.  She is a world class master communicator and a shining light in our sales world (and the world at large) 

Sales and pitching skills are vital to charting your own destiny. Precious shares part of her story and you should be watching for Precious - she is going big places! 

Sheevaun Thatcher is an outspoken leader in the practice of Sales Enablement worldwide - as a frequent speaker and as a Founding Member & Member of the Board of Advisors with the Sales Enablement Society. 

She is the Global Learning and Enablement Leader at RingCentral and oversees a worldwide remote team. Sheevaun has a way with words - which makes her an amazing storyteller. 

In this episode Barb interviews Alice Heiman, CEO of Alice Heiman, LLC about the Sales Leaders Role in the Complex Sale.

In this episode Barb interviews Leadership & Mindset Coach Jennifer Trask.

In this episode Barb interviews Christine Zmuda, Sr. Sales Leader, Dynamics 365 WW Global Sales at Microsoft.

In this episode Barb interviews Sydney Sloan, Chief Marketing Officer at SalesLoft about The Customer First Advantage in business and sales.

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. 

Rana Salman, MBA PhD, is the author of the new book, Sales Essentials: The Tools You need at Every Stage to Close More Deals and Crush your Quota. She is CEO of Salman Consulting, started in research, and stumbled (as she says) into sales and consulting.  Rana is also co-founder of WISE (Women in Sales Enablement) We had a great conversation about her childhood and how her dad's sales role made a huge impact on her. 

For more info: www.salmanconsulting.com
Follow us on Twitter: @SalmanConsult
email me: rana.salman@salmanconsulting.com

Women Sales Pros can be found on Instagram and X @womensalespros

Connect with us on LinkedIn! https://www.linkedin.com/company/women-sales-pros/

Katie Walsh was a Division 1 College Field Hockey player and atributes a lot of her success in sales and leadership to her collegiate athletic career. Katie is Director of Sales at Hubspot. Unlike most of us in software and SaaS, she's been at Hubspot for the past NINE years. Yep - sometimes you find a great work home and have talented leaders who inspire you to stay and grow with the company. 

Katie received a solid foundation in selling through her work at EMC making lots of calls and setting up meetings for the AEs there. She said that time at EMC, while not a career "fit" for her, was critical for her future success. 

We talk about preconcieved notions about sales, growth within one company, and what the future holds. #sales #seeitbeit #shesells #womeninsales  

She had me at "B2B sales literally changed my life." I heard it as "B2B sales SAVED my life" and although Jenny Anderson didn't say it, what a stable, well-paying career in sales did for her was revolutionary in her world. Listen to her journey and how she is working to pay it forward so other women and men can rise into this great career. 

In this episode Barb interviews Dana Dupuis, founder of ECHO Listening Intelligence. You'll learn how listening is a critical component of sales success.

The time has come where we hit 200 episodes and it was a pleasure to have on good friend and "Sales Energizer" Alice Heiman. Alice also hosts a great podcast called Sales Talk for CEOs. 

We need to keep talking about more women in sales and sales leadership since we still have huge opportunities for more women in sales and sales leadership. 

Alice and Lori talk about the last ten years of effort to help create inclusive B2B sales teams, what has changed, and what we still need to do. 

We remember Barbara Giamanco who started the podcast back in 2018. Her early episodes are really great and we encourage others to listen to them. 

Thanks to all those listeners who have helped it be an award-winning podcast!

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

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https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

When Elitsa and I spoke, we had many stories about competent women in sales and leadership roles who wait to get the "tap" on the shoulder to be promoted. Our male counterparts TELL their boss that they expect to be promoted many times and they initiate introductions with some of their C-level leaders, heads of other teams in their company and proudly state their accomplishments. 

Are we too shiy to also do that, or is it in how we were raised - "don't brag," my dad would tell me. 

Today in 2025 we say, "It isn't bragging if it is true." 

Listen to Elitsa share about her career. Born in Bulgaria, Elitsa visited the US a number of times, going back and forth, then moved to the DC area in 2011 and started working for CEB (which became Gartner later). She got great sales training (these were the "Challenger" folks) and really fell in love with sales. 

Due to an opportunity for her husband, she moved to Ukraine back in 2015 (no hint of a future war then). What was amazing was that when they did hear of turmoil happening at the beginning of 2022, they had to immediately leave Ukraine - while she was quickly building a virtual and in person sales team AND was six months pregnant. Any one of those three things is tough, but all together is incredible. 

Listen to her story, and also how she created her original role at Preply by giving feedback to the CEO. 

More about Elitsa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elitsa-zaimova-a238a31a/

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

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https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

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 

I first met Andrea Sittig-Rolf in the early 2000's - we had both recently launched our B2B sales consulting businesses and she was about to get her first of several books published.  Fast forward to now, and she has a 22 year track record of success in helping thousands of sellers and hundreds of companies with the "top of funnel" prospecting part of professional selling. 

More about Andrea: 

2021 - 2024 CRN Woman of the Channel. Trusted co-selling partner for the world's top tech giants since 2002. Her company, BLITZMasters does workshops and has a co-selling platform.

In this episode we talk about some sales and prospecting fundamentals. Andrea will give some hints to their formula for success in their Blitzes and prospecting in general. 

Follow Andrea here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theblitzmaster/

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

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https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

In this conversation, Annie shares SO much insight about being good at your sales role, how she got into sales, and how her mom inspired her to do her best and ASK for what she needs. We talked about the need for women to speak up and really advocate for themselves. She says, "You don't have to be salesy to be in sales!" 

In this episode, Barb talks to Kristina McMillan, VP of Research at TOPO about why it is so important to FOCUS on the right activities if you want to achieve the right sales results.

Tracy Young has been on our radar for some time, having co-founded PlanGrid (acquired by Autodesk) and now co-founder of TigerEye - a GTM modern analytics platform. As a successful co-founder, Tracy has a natural sales background combined with her engineer background - a powerful combination. 

On the TigerEye website, the company's core values are: Wholehearted, Humility, Kaizen, Trust, and Simplicity. Tracy discusses how she leads the company and has battled in her own head what a construction CEO or a tech co-founder looks like. It looks like her: a petite, Asian woman. 

Tracy belives that the focus on a great leader should not be whether they are masculine or feminine but rather how they build their team - they have a vision, they're authentic, genuine, and are great communicators who care. 

Follow Tracy on LinkedIn

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

subscribe: https://bit.ly/thewspnews

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https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

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. 

Diana Cappello brings over 15 years of experience in sales, marketing and revenue operations to her current role as Lead Sales Engineer at Clari. Prior to Clari, she was a SE Manager at Apttus. And before becoming a SE, she was a Business Systems Manager for several startups. If she’s not selling through demos, you can find Diana exploring Tahoe with her husband and 2-year-old daughter.

When Meredith graduated from college, she taught English as a second language in Spain. She had graduated in 2011 and from Spain saw and heard that her friends back in the San Francisco Bay / Silicon Valley area were all getting tech jobs. Friends encourged her to hurry back and get on with a big tech company. 

Using her background as an NCAA varsity field hockey athlete, she walked into a sales role at Yelp - a super fast growing company at the time. 

We talked about office dynamics at some of the companies Meredith went on to work for. She said that she had left amazing opportunities because the in-office dynamic was so intolerable. A boy's club. 

Listern to her journey and currently Meredith is at pclub.io working to grow sales there, and also at Meredith Chandler Consulting 

Connect with Meredith here.

Sara Levinson, VP Business Development at Prometric has sold and launched transformational technology initiatives - multi-million dollar deals - with the world’s largest & most influential brands. After grad school, Sara got into a marketing role which morphed into more of a sales role in the newspaper business in Pittsburgh. Hear how she got into the technology sector and how who you know is key to not applying for positions. 

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 inspire a woman - maybe a Black or Brown woman - to consider sales - or consider staying in sales (don't leave...) or moving into sales leadership as Porchia has done. I think the sky is the limit for Porchia and I can't wait to see what is ahead for her.  This time of year, we could use a "gift" of a 5 star review on iTunes if you are so moved! Please write a comment too, on iTunes as it makes a difference. Thanks!

Ali Cudby is the author of the best-selling book, Keep Your Customers: How to Stop Customer Turnover, Improve Retention, and Get Lucrative, Long-Term Loyalty. We talk about pay equity in non-sales roles and what type of a career can someone grow into in Customer Care. There is a lot of growth and potential in this niche within B2B sales.

In this episode Barb interviews Louise Anderson, Director of Digital Sales Enablement at Modus.

In this episode Barb interviews Jackie Lipnicki, Head of Business Development Representatives for North America at ScribbleLive.

Anna Baird is an accomplished C-Level executive, with a tremendous background in finance and in accelerating high growth companies. She is currently CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) at Outreach.io and oversees all of the sales and revenue initiatives there. Listen as I ask Anna about her career journey and hear her advice for women in sales and aspiring leaders. 

Brooke Bachesta is an SDR Manager at Outreach, a leading Sales Engagement Platform. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and specifically, bringing more women into sales and sales development organizations.

We had a fabulous panel discussion on how to deal with the unique issues women in sales roles - and parents in general need to deal with when it comes to variable pay, ramp up, quota and other issues that standard corporate family leave policies often don't take into account. Listen to Alicia MacDonald of Brandwatch, Jordan Arogeti of Salesloft, and Michelle Benfer of Hubspot speak about their stories, insights, and lessons learned over a number of years discussing these issues. Company leaders should listen to better understand how to attract and retain more women in sales for their companies based on the policies they create. 

In this session Alli and I talk about the topic of feeling like an imposter and what you can do. Why is it so prevalent in women, and can men have it too? Join us and learn. 

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 

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. 

This is an important episode for anyone who has ever been paid less than their peers doing the same role, or who was fired while pregnant (yep, it still happens in 2023) or who got downsized and didn't negotiate severance - my guest, Dan Goodman will cover it all. 

Dan is Founder and CEO of TruCommish, an app that helps verify true commission - and Dan also has been shining a light on horrible compensation situations that companies have been doing quietly - to advocate on the part of the seller or sales leader. 

We appreciate Dan as a supporter of women in sales and his work with dozens and dozens of women working to solve employment, PIP, and severance issues - in addition to offering advice to others at the same time. 

Follow Dan Goodman on LinkedIn - he is an amazing resource and a treasure for us in a time of big layoffs and sometimes poor leadership choices. 

It was a LinkedIn post that got my attention.  Sales managers are acting poorly, according to Tara Ryan's coachees. As an Executive and Leadership Coach, she's heard more complaints from women in sales roles about managers with lack of empathy, perhaps fear-motivated. 

I couldn't let the conversation go - so we recorded. 

What is important to you in a sales manager? 

I wrote about making reps more coachable, with some very interesting data. 

Learn more about what a coach does in this conversation with Tara Ryan, Founder of InfiniDEI. 

Host Lori Richardson speaks, writes, hosts this podcast, consults, trains and coaches B2B sales leaders and helps their teams grow. Find out more here. 

Xactly is a tech platform for assisting companies with compensation and forecasting with the sales team, and has been around since 2005. They started sharing research about men in sales roles versus women in 2014 or so - quite some time ago, and just released their 2024 research results which includes the following:

● Representation disparities: The gender ratio in sales is alarming. Women are underrepresented in sales roles, constituting only 34% of the sales force and only 29% of sales managers.
● Female salespeople earn less: On average, men earn 3.5% more than women as salespeople, and 3.7%* more as sales managers when it comes to fixed pay. Without adjustment of outside factors, men earn 9% more than women as salespeople, and 13% more as sales managers.
● Pay gaps widen over time: At the start of salespeople’s careers, men earn 2.2% more on average than women. After 2 years, this gap widens by 30%. After 5 years, the gap increases even more significantly, with a 77% increase.
● The gaps differ from industry to industry: The pay gap varies significantly across sectors, with female sales professionals in the Life Sciences and Pharma space reporting a 9% gap in pay and Manufacturing space with an 8% gap. It might be more opportune for women in sales to enter the Financial Services industry, where no pay gap was reported.
● State-by-state disparities: The state sales people live in seems to correlate with the pay disparities. Colorado and New Jersey hold the largest pay gap between men and women at 7%, with Georgia and Washington claiming the lowest pay gap at 1%.
● Performance remains unaffected: Despite the overwhelming disparities in representation and pay, female sales professionals consistently outperformed their male counterparts. Female salespeople outperformed men by 1.5%, and female sales managers outperformed by 3%.
● Loyalty is not a factor: Women tend to show greater loyalty to their Sales teams, staying with the same organization on average four months longer than their male counterparts.
● Unfair impact on quota assignments: Many organizations do not seem to recognize women’s higher performance. On average, male salespeople are assigned 3% higher quotas, and male sales managers are assigned 5% higher quotas, suggesting that sales teams assign men to higher potential sales territories or opportunities.

Follow Women Sales Pros for more research, interviews, and recommendations to add more women into sales and sales leadership roles. 

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Now more than ever, we are seeing the importance of how sales fits in pre-sale and after the sale, and how sales needs enablement like the examples Deirdre offers are what helps grow .

Learning, practicing, executing and coaching is the repeatable cadence  

Lori and Deirdre talk about creating "work life harmony" and the value of keeping in touch with those you've enjoyed working with previously. 

We talk about "just in time" coaching and how adults learn. 

Deirdre helps Skillibrium to: 

Assess your team's skills

Remediate with Learning paths

Practice with Stand and Deliver

Implement an Operational Cadence

Execute with Sales Playbooks

Predicably grow revenue

Promote based on objectivity 

and Deliver exceptional experiences.

More is at https://skillibrium.com/ 

Women Sales Pros tracks top podcasts, books and speakers and has a 2x a month newsletter in addition to this award-winning podcast. @womensalespros 

In this episode Barb interviews Melissa Lui, Sales Development Manager at ServiceTitan.

In this episode Barb interviews Amy Volas, Founder and CEO of Avenue Talent Partners about How the Bots HAVEN’T Taken Over. How to Be Human in Sales.

Galem Girmay is an Account Executive at Flywire and co-founded RevGenius, the community for sales professionals with over 7,000 members. As a Black woman, she offers her support and recommendations to companies to help them find women of color for sales and sales leadership roles. Learn more about the SDR role, where she began her sales career and gain ideas about the great possibilities of sales in this episode.  

In this episode Barb interviews Melody Astley, VP Sales at FinListics.

Chantel George is doing big things. She is an Account Executive at LinkedIn, the Global Program Manager for the Black Inclusion Group at LinkedIn, and also Founder & CEO of Sistas in Sales, which is the first community of women of color sales professionals. We talk about Chantel's journey from acting to law to sales, and have a good conversation about what majority women can do to support her efforts to see more women of color in our sales profession. 

Katie McDonald was in sales previously. Now she coaches women in self-care because of so many of us who have gotten burned out or just put ourselves last. Hear some of Katie's suggestions for your crazy busy life. She talks about "ME management" 

It's all about self-care strategies because the fact is most of us are running on fumes and we're borrowing future energy to get through today. Katie wants to disrupt that. When we think about what we're able to create in a compromised state she wants to leverage the wellbeing that we can create through our habits.

Katie also says that to create sustainable change and also have a legacy, leave a legacy behind that's intentional and come from a place of nourishment and restoration instead of deprivation and denial is the goal. 

More about Katie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bnourished/

https://bnourished.com/

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

subscribe: https://bit.ly/thewspnews

Contribute: https://forms.gle/v9rRiPDUtgGqKaXA6

Past News Issues: bit.ly/past_news_issues

https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

In this episode Barb interviews Mavis Norwich, Director of Sales Development at TINYPulse.

In her new book, "Right on the Money - New Principles for Bold Growth", author and sales strategist Colleen Francis discusses the current sales landscape and offers some great strategies - and tactics - to win over today's buyers.  One of the #WomenInSalesAuthors with bold strategies for revenue growth. 

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 a big year at Women Sales Pros and now are going through the review of all of our wonderful podcast guests in 2023. I would like to thank all of our guests for their focus and contribution to topics we discussed such as:

Getting into sales in the first place as a woman or another "only" 

Growing in your sales career

Becoming a sales leader - what is required? 

Dealing with a "male majority" environment and if you are a leader, how you can improve it. 

Various industries, like avation, SaaS, and manufacturing. 

Fundamentals for sellers. 

And other topics. 

We also discussed how you can give us a "5 Star" rating and you can post comments on iTunes which greatly helps our visibility. I'll personally give you a shout out if you and two other people go to iTunes, listen to an episode, and rate it - if all 3 rate it, I'll talk you up on the next episode. 

Donate to the Sales Education Foundation's Giamanco Memorial Scholarship for Women in sales programs here: https://salesfoundation.org/barbara-giamanco-memorial-scholarship-fund/index.php

Follow us @WomenSalesPros on Instagram, X, LinkedIn and Facebook. 

Send us names of amazing women we should interview - or male counterparts. They must be in B2B selling or managing currently. 

Thank you to our listeners, we'd be nothing without you!!

After hearing Rhasheeda Hughes on a panel webinar, I had to invite her to join our podcast so that others could learn about her journey and her strategies for being a successful woman in sales leadership. 

Rhasheeda has a proven record as a sales expert, trainer, and team leader with a reputation for enhancing organizational capabilities. She led a national team of 10 Account Managers with full responsibility for team hiring, development, and performance coaching.

She is adept at consultative sales strategies based on data-driven analysis and a relentless focus on customer service.

Rhasheeda has a reputation as an empathetic leader who builds inclusive culture while coaching individuals to develop high-performing teams.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhasheeda-hughes-mba-4a81b313/

Conversations with Women in Sales podcast now has over 160 episodes with amazing sales contributors and sales leaders - large companies and small - new reps and seasoned veterans. If you like the podcast, please SHARE it with another woman or a male ally. Please rate it and review it as we do not get many reviews and really could use them. For more help with adding women to your sales team, reach out to Lori at Women Sales Pros. 

https://womensalespros.com/

Carole Mahoney has written an excellent book for sales professionals and entrepreneurs on collaborative selling and in changing the sales industry. She mixes in stories, anecdotes and statistics to help one learn and improve around critical sales skills and mindset for success. 

00:00 Introduction and Guest Background

00:59 Carol's Journey and Book Contribution

02:48 The Impact of 'Buyer First' on Salespeople

04:57 The Concept of Collaborative Selling

09:20 The Importance of Mindset in Sales

10:56 Overcoming Non-Supportive Beliefs

17:49 Personal Growth Through Writing 'Buyer First'

19:39 Dealing with Bad Sales Days and Final Thoughts

Find Carole on LinkedIn 

Order BuyerFirst on Amazon or here: https://carolemahoney.com/books/buyerfirstbook/

Our goal at Women Sales Pros is to help support women in existing B2B sales roles to thrive, to get into leadership if they want to, and to recognize the companies and allies doing great things. 

This is a short episode with host Lori Richardson to cheer on 2025 and share resources like these ones: 

Find podcasts, women in sales organizations, and more here at Women Sales Pros - https://womensalespros.com/resources/

Get an e-newsletter 2x a month with stories about women in sales and more resources

subscribe: https://bit.ly/thewspnews

Contribute: https://forms.gle/v9rRiPDUtgGqKaXA6

Past News Issues: bit.ly/past_news_issues

Follow "Conversations with Women in Sales" for previous episodes here: 

https://womensalespros.com/podcast/

On LinkedIn: https://womensalespros.com/podcast/

Gabrielle did not plan on becoming an amazing sales leader - especially when she was in France or when she was learning about public policy. Hear about her path into one of the coolest careers in the world - She is a Magical Sales Development Leader in service to the virtues of: Empowerment, Advocacy and Enlightenment

Cultivating expertise in:
Sales Leadership
Sales Training
Sales Management
Change Management
Sales Coaching
Personal Coaching
Sales Enablement 

Ashley is co-founder of Somersault Innovation and the author of "Naked Sales: How Design Thinking Reveals Customer Motives and Drives Revenue" 

In this episode we discussed what design thinking is, what her journey in sales has been like, and some great insights she had to share with us. 

As a people first leader, Jaime's passion is for building strong teams, running toward complex problems and "digging in" to help clients deliver outcomes during periods of massive organizational change & transformation.

Over the last 15+ years while holding sales leadership roles at Gartner & Microsoft, her teams overachieved year over year growth targets by building trust based CXO relationships to drive millions of dollars of net new revenue. Today she consults and advises clients on how to attract, inspire and maintain high performing teams (specifically) during times of change.

When you think about careers for women in sales, we typically talk about revenue responsibility roles plus sales leadership. In the past 5-7 years we started to see sales enablement roles as well as RevOps. .Personally I get a little confused between enablement and ops, so I brought on a team of RevOps leaders at Xactly to help us understand what their roles are and how they both got into them. Meet Bayley Fesler, Director, Revenue Ops, and Annie Jones, Revenue Ops Business Partner. Together these women break things down for us and dispel myths about forecasting - it isn't hard anymore, for one thing! 

Bayley Fesler, Director, Revenue Ops, Xactly Corp

Annie Jones, Revenue Ops Business Partner, Xactly Corp

Their latest article about AI and Sales

Podcast is hosted by Lori Richardson, President of Women Sales Pros, a community helping to get more women into sales and sales leadership. Lori is also author of "She Sells: Attract, Promote, and Retain Great Women in B2B Sales" available here on Amazon. 

Learn about and donate to the Barbara Giamanco Memorial Scholarship for women in university sales programs here. 

Astha immigrated to the U.S. from India  in 2006 and talks on this episode about how she ended up in professional selling in a male-dominated industry. 

Catie Ivey is the Regional Vice President of Sales at Demandbase, which is a leading B2B marketing platform. Prior to joining Demandbase, Catie ran revenue teams at Marketo, Insightpool, Salesforce, and Meltwater. She has deep expertise in MarTech specifically and how to better leverage technology to scale revenue teams. Catie is a huge advocate for getting more women into sales and sales leadership, so many of the topics we talk about here on ‘Women in Sales’ are topics she speaks passionately about.

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. 

Ayana Gardner was recently named as one of "300 Women Making an Impact in B2B SaaS" so it is great that she kick off our first episode of 2025. Ayana is a ZCX Channel Leader at Zoom. 

We are also starting 2025 with our Q1 sponsor, RapidScale.

Ayana has been in sales for a number of years and loves her current position which involves working with Zoom channel partners - a huge opportunity in B2B sales as so many companies sell through channels of one type or another. 

Because she works for Zoom Ayana is virtual, and does virtual events and enablement within her role. 

Ayana talks about being a lifelong learner- how our company we work for will provide some foundational training and learning, but it is up to us to learn what we think we need or want so we can grow. 

More about Ayana: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayanagardner702/

More about Women Sales Pros - we have a website, we are on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. 

Subscribe to our 2x a month news, and share the podcast with others! We'd love a 5 star rating and comments on iTunes if you are so moved! It really makes a difference. 

subscribe: https://bit.ly/thewspnews

Contribute: https://forms.gle/v9rRiPDUtgGqKaXA6

Past News Issues: bit.ly/past_news_issues

https://womensalespros.com/podcast/ 

Partnerships Unraveled Podcast that Ayana mentions: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/partnerships-unraveled-podcast-7242555185363922944/

I met "my people" when I met Elyse Archer - she has a big abundant mindset and is helping men and women entrepreneurs and professional sellers to gain success through mindset, too. Elyse has a soft spot for women and founded She Sells to offer programs specifically for women - also a She Sells podcast. Elyse is also a personal brand strategist and a video confidence coach. 

I hope you find this episode inspiring - would love any feedback. Check out Elyse at https://elysearcher.com/ 

We had an awesome, amazing year of interviews here at Conversations with Women in Sales. I'll review all 36 episodes and share what is ahead for Women Sales Pros and the She Sells Summit. If you know of a woman in sales or woman sales leader in B2B who would make a great guest, please refer them our way AND please share this podcast with your sales leader or company leader, whether they are male or female. We depend on our male allies to help affect change in B2B. Also, reviews are welcome and appreciated on iTunes as well as any endorsements on LinkedIn or elsewhere. 

Alexine has been in SaaS software sales for over 8 years. She and host Lori have some things in common- we had influence in our youth by relatives who were selling all around us, and impacted us. But with a dad who received his PhD from MIT and other interesting possibilities for Alexine, she did end up in B2B tech sales, specifically software-as-a-service (SaaS). 

Additionally she is a rising voice for more women in sales and we champion her as she co-leads the Clubhouse "Women in Sales" club on Saturdays with Gabrielle Blackwell. Alexine also volunteers with great organizations like Aspireship, Victory Lap, and Re:work. 

Cynthia Barnes is author of "Reach the Top 1%: A Strategic Game Plan for Warrior Women in Sales", and is a keynote speaker, sales trainer, LinkedIn top sales influencer, and CEO of the NAWSP.org. In this episode we discuss how sales changed Cynthia's life, how we both agree that women do NOT lack confidence! and more. 

In this episode, Barb's guestis Caryn Kopp. She is the Chief Door Opener® at Kopp Consulting, an Inc 5000 winner, recognized for the Door Opener® Service where they get their clients meetings with high level decision makers in almost every major company. 

Jordan wishes she had gotten the advice about sales being a "long game" - a marathon, not a sprint. Try not to measure yourself based on your dashboard. Jordan Arogeti is Sr. Executive, Financial Services at Salesloft. She is a mom, a wife, and also a partner in Arogeti Endeavors. Jordan says that she is in an intense season in life right now with so much going on. We have a great conversation about her career path since college and some of the wisdom she's learned in sales. 

Keri Schull grew from a real estate solopreneur to one of America's most successful real estate agents, according to REAL Trends and The Wall Street Journal. She has scaled multiple businesses including The Keri Shull Team, with over 80 members and counting; DKA Development; and the HyperFast Agent coaching platform and academy, which teaches real estate agents everywhere how to grow and scale their real estate businesses.

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. 

Her parents were Somali refugees who ended up in the U.K. As a child, Misky Sharif learned to be careful around the drugs and crime in her low income neighborhood. She rose above it, while learning as she grew up. How many kids would dodge all of the negative and find something positive in that? Listen as Misky explains how. 

Misky overcame obstacles and currently is in FinTech as an Account Executive for Revolut, and if you are in sales and don't have an "accomplishment bank" - take a listen to the full episode  - great action item to start one on your own today! 

Misky Sharif can connect via LinkedIn

Womnen Sales Pros can be found on LinkedIn, Instagram, X, and other social posts. 

In this episode Barb interviews Mary Lombardo, CEO of Absolute Impact.

In this episode Barb interviews Rakhi Voria, Chief of Staff and Sr. Business Manager to Microsoft's Corporate VP of Inside Sales.

Heather Combs is the Chief Revenue Officer for 3Pillar Global, an Inc. 5000 developer of client-facing web and mobile applications. She oversees marketing, business development and operations for the nearly 1000-person multinational company, creating the revenue acceleration strategies that drive 3Pillar’s continued double-digit growth. Heather has been named one of Software Report’s Top Female Tech Services Leaders and Member of the Year by the Institute for Excellence in Sales.

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. 

Mary Grothe, is CEO and Founder of Sales BQ. She is a former #1 rep in the MidMarket B2B SaaS Payroll / HR industry. After 8 years and millions in revenue sold, she founded Sales BQ, and leads a team of fractional VPs of Sales across the country as they rebuild their clients' sales departments, all while focusing on the behavioral quotient.

There is often a stigma associated with failing but never making mistakes means never learning and growing. In this episode, I talked with Ashley Zagst from Zagst Consulting. She is a professional dancer/choreographer turned digital marketer. She is the former Head of Marketing at Bravado.co, the first digital community exclusively for sales professionals committed to elevating the profession by changing the stigmatized perception.