Conversations with Women in Sales – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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Gretchen launched Unbound and Unbothered, a career coaching business for women in tech in  2021. She helps high achievers who are stuck, stifled or at a crossroads ditch the stress and overwork to have a life and a job without burning out. 

Since she and I both got into tech in the "early days" (me earlier than her) we had a great conversation - I reference the title because we both worked for at least one company where the bathrooms were both for the guys since we were the first or second female hires.  

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It started for both Cherilynn and me by selling Girl Scout cookies. Like me, she LOVED selling cookies, and it seems to be one of the commonalities in our sales careers. 

Cherilynn Castleman wants to empower 1 million women for C-suite success by 2030!

She is a force to be reckoned with - listen to our conversation and how we both want everyone to know how selling is really helping others. 

Learn sales skills and become "too good to be ignored" - as Cherilynn says. 

Follow her on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cherilynn-castleman/

Women Sales Pros hosts this podcast and also "The News" newsletter for things happening around the sales ecosystem for women in sales. Follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and wherever women in sales is being discussed. 

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. 

Lindsey Boggs is Digital Sales & Development Leader at Citrix where she manages, develops, and retains top talent by teaching social selling, prospecting, cold calling, and pipeline creation. Prior to that she's been a mainstage speaker on social selling and worked at other top companies in sales and leadership. When tragedy struck in her family she had a nervous breakdown, got help for it, and used that situation to help others through the co-founding of Uncrushed.org. She also gave a TEDx talk, and does ongoing speaking (as she did here with us) about the stigma of mental health and how those in our sales organizations feeling depressed or isolated have people to talk with. We also talk about Imposter Syndrome. 

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. 

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.  

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. 

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. 

Maria Tribble is VP of Enterprise Sales at PathFactory. She raises flowers in her #5-9 and believes in the critical importance of kindness. We had a tough time recording this one because Maria had been previously recorded with Barb, before her passing, but the episode hadn't launched nor had we found it - so we re-recorded.