What It's Like to Work at Templafy

Tell us about your journey into sales management. What specific roles, networking opportunities and/or projects helped you get to where you are in your career today?

After a number of years as a top performer in individual contributor roles, I was interested in moving into sales management, which I shared with my manager and vice president at the time. To support my career development, my manager created the opportunity for me to mentor and onboard new members of the team, with agreed success criteria and a path to progress to management. 

After successfully mentoring and onboarding a number of new hires, I was put forward for management progression training, which was very valuable. Following this, I was promoted to lead the commercial account management segment. I was also fortunate enough to have a fantastic mentor who was on the senior leadership team, and she was instrumental in my development in progressing to the role of director. In addition to this, I continuously seek out new development and learning opportunities, such as online training courses and podcasts, and actively seek feedback.

What advice, skills or best practices do you find most valuable in sales? How do those skills translate into sales management?

For me, the most interesting part of sales is understanding the root cause of a problem and working toward a solution. Of course, getting to the root cause of a problem requires effective questioning, such as the “Five Whys.” This is a transferable skill that can be applied to sales management tasks, such as collaborating cross-functionally with other teams to solve challenges, understanding direct reports on your teams and the challenges they are having, and working with customers.

What is your top advice for sales professionals interested in breaking into sales management?

My advice would be to share your goals for career development with your manager and other senior leaders. From here, as you would in a sales process, you can understand the decision criteria and process and influence this to create a co-authored mutual action plan that sets everyone up for success. Secondly, it’s all about continuous learning. I have had multiple mentors throughout my career, all of whom have shared different perspectives that have been tremendously valuable in my development. Actively seeking feedback is a key element to continuously learning.