Merchants of Change

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Speaker 1
This week on Merchants of Change, we talk with Melissa Pouliot, enterprise account director at Talon one. Talon sells an all in one promotion engine to companies like Adidas, Mercedes-Benz and Live Nation. Melissa was a three sport high school athlete at Lawrence Academy before playing college softball for the Trinity Bantams. Here she is, Melissa Pouliot.

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Speaker 1
I'm J.R. Butler, co-founder of the Chef Crew. And you're listening to Merchants of Change. Oh, this is a podcast about transferring the skills and behaviors we acquire as athletes into being a professional technology salesperson. Each week, we'll introduce you to a top performer who will help us understand how they became professional merchants of change.

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Speaker 1
What's up, kid? How are we doing?

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Speaker 2
Nothing. J.R., what's happening? See?

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Speaker 1
Not much. Excited to have Melissa. Welcome to the show, Melissa. Thanks for joining us.

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Speaker 3
Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

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Speaker 1
Absolutely. So, Melissa, where we like to start is with your athletic background. So you are a three sport athlete at Lawrence. I can appreciate that. I'm a former three sport athlete from Cushing. You guys were our biggest rivalry in hockey.

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Speaker 4
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
And then after Lawrence, you played softball at Trinity and ultimately graduated from me and John's alma mater, Holy Cross. Can you tell us, like, what are some of your fondest memories of playing sports?

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, things. Roberts Growing up was such a big part of my everyday life. My closest friends are still people that I played softball with when we started in fourth grade, and it's great to still have those connections. I think just the overall teamwork mentality and especially first off, I also played field hockey and ice hockey was a goalie, goalie and catcher, so I was always on the team but always doing my own thing.

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Speaker 3
But it's great to just have that mentality and just all the memories growing up. Something I miss daily.

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Speaker 1
Forget we got another goalie.

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Speaker 2
Kathy, or you. Yeah, I'd say yeah. I was just going to say I played Catcher in baseball. I was playing catcher. But we usually give goalies a hard time and then the Bobcats go. I never played hockey or real gear or any of that crap. Yeah, that's funny.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. I was going to say, you got to have your wires crossed a little bit to want to stand in front of the puck in a ball like that. Do you consider yourself a goalie? Weird, Melissa?

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Speaker 3
It depends. I mean, I also consider myself a salesman, so. Yes, sure, I guess I am. But I got to enjoy it because I was started as a mini in field hockey, realized I didn't like running that much, so thought I was getting around by standing in goal. But then I realized you run all practice with your pads on so.

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Speaker 4
It.

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Speaker 3
Didn't work out but ended up really enjoying being a goalie. And that's how I got into hockey too, because they needed a goalie for the J.V. team and then worked my way up to varsity.

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Speaker 2
Field hockey is pretty intense. My younger sister played field hockey in college and high school, and I used to see the goalies had all kinds of pads on. But until I actually fell to field hockey ball, I was like, You know, why don't they almost have them that can take your head off, you know? That's pretty intense.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Those are not some fond memories.

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Speaker 4
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
No. How does the how would your if we asked your teammates describe Melissa, what would they say?

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Speaker 3
So I've always been or had always been, never the MVP, always the coach's word, because I was there for the team helping people get where they needed to get done. I was always a person also that got there early and stayed late. Sometimes that got me shamed by the team. But, you know, that was just my mentality. And so I think just being a team player is still something that, you know, the friends that I have today, them close with what I go to.

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Speaker 2
That's a common theme. J.R. and I get a lot in the show is, you know, kind of being coachable and a team player. Can you talk about a little bit more about some of the habits and skills you developed as an athlete?

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I think, you know, being an athlete growing up, you have practice, you go show up, try to do your best. I think then what everyone does in their off time sets people apart. So are you a person that shows up late or shows up early versus late, stays late instead of leaving early? And that tenacity is something that I learned very early through sports.

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Speaker 3
I mean, certainly softball in fourth grade, it was just you walk in the maximum amount of runs each inning and then you call the game. I had mercy in like the third inning because everyone's down, right. But by the time we got to playing summer ball, it was you have to be able to adapt to when you're down going into I mean, how do you come back?

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Speaker 3
And that that mentality obviously translates to field hockey and ice hockey as well as how do you stay tough when when the times get hard and that's something that you know, in sales certainly I take and try to to keep top of mind and keep that mentality process in everyday life. Right. I mean, it's something that's being able to believe in yourself and persevere is.

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Speaker 3
Yes, very helpful. And sales that just help on everything day to day.

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Speaker 1
Absolutely. When you when you start playing softball at the college level, what did you miss the most about sport?

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Speaker 3
And I mean, it was really, really nice to have the built in time in the day to go out, be social and be active. That now is obviously very tricky, especially working from home where you don't have an excuse to leave the house necessarily. So I think that was the biggest transition and just not having the the daily or every other day dedicated couple of hours to to just go and enjoy.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Being around your friends all the time and that's definitely what I miss the most was the locker room, you know.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's such a lifestyle, right? It's I mean, you know, breakfast lunches, dinners with the team. You go to practice, you do homework with them. And to go from everything to relatively nothing is as big transition.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, so, Melissa, transition is great, great transition. We also like this word shift, you know, making a.

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Speaker 4
Shift from.

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Speaker 2
I love saying it because J.R. picked it and it's such a good word for what he's doing. But shift so talk about the shift from going from a student athlete. A lot of our listeners are student athletes go from a student athlete to a working professional. You know, we're in talk a little bit about you know you said showing up early, staying late, having the team aspect.

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Speaker 2
How did that differ when you started towards your professional career?

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Speaker 3
So I actually didn't know that I wanted to go into sales. There was an on campus recruiter at Holy Cross for next week that was building a business development program that was rotational and I said, Great, I want to go into business not knowing that a BTR is at the time. Right? So that shift was really interesting when I got there.

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Speaker 3
It's holy smokes, this is sales, this is not marketing or anything else I was sort of tangentially interested in, but that was a great opportunity because I started with a class. So there were, I think, ten or 11 other people that started same day as me. We all went through the training program and so we were able to adjust and make that shift from student to working professional might be so a loose term for those early days, but making that shift to more of a day to day 9 to 5, obviously sales not 9 to 5, but more of that just regular working experience.

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Speaker 2
Is that still the case? Jerod But this YouTube or is it still the case where a lot of software companies are doing like classes of business development?

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Speaker 1
Yeah, we see a lot of like cohort, cohort, scale kind of onboarding without a doubt. And and I was curious, Melissa, like, so you didn't realize it was a sales role because they trick you with that business development title?

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Speaker 4
Oh yeah.

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Speaker 1
Like I guess when did you when you were doing the BTR role and you started to understand the career path. When did you make the decision and why did you make the decision? Like, Okay, I want to I want to be a salesperson. And I'm like, what was that? What was that transition mentally like and what happened.

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Speaker 3
To the culture? And that's why it was very much if you're successful in the BTR program, you broke up for lunch about their meetings, then the good leaders go into sales, right? And the really good BTR is go into the software vertical of sales. This was my perception it was not company mandated by any means, but somebody saw that and said, Great, I want to be at the top of the class, which means I want to go direct sales for the software vertical.

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Speaker 3
I found out pretty early on in the BTR program that the competitive nature of sales was great for me. Coming from a sports background, yes, you have the team, but you're still an individual player. And that dynamic really worked for me then and has continued my career in sales since then.

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Speaker 1
So that competition is really like what what you find the most joy out of going to sales role?

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Speaker 3
100%. And it's you know, it's a question why are you in sales, I guess, or have been asked in interviews? And it's the money is nice, it's a nice bonus. But that thrill of winning for me is what does it. So whether it's booking that outbound meeting, closing the deal whenever the win is for that day, that's something that Michael Sallah, who's a VP of Sales that I've worked with previously.

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Speaker 3
His whole mentality is winning the day. So how do you get the most out of each individual day with the goal then that those good days are going to add up to good years, good quarters, good years and good careers?

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Speaker 2
I love I love this story, Melissa, too, of just how you kind of went down and interviewed for a business development role and you took it. And a lot of the athletes we talked to, they they either stumble into sales through their brother in law, their uncle or the sister in law, or somebody told them, hey, wants to try sales.

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Speaker 2
And then they the the funny thing is they, they're really good at it and then they stay in it. So you've been in it for quite some time now and you kind of got in it not by accident, but.

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Speaker 3
By just saying.

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Speaker 4
Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, go ahead.

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Speaker 3
No, I just can say I had a scholarship to go do something completely different. And you know, I remember that interview very distinctly, and when I got the job offer, my parents said, okay, well, you know, we've put you through private high school and college. Maybe you should start making some money instead of going off to study Buddhism.

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Speaker 3
Buddhism, which is what I was supposed to do.

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Speaker 4
So that's.

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Speaker 3
One.

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Speaker 4
Thing you do, is.

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Speaker 3
That there are some days where I wish I had taken the scholarship.

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Speaker 4
But.

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Speaker 3
Overall, no.

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Speaker 1
I'm sure you.

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Speaker 4
Practice.

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Speaker 2
That's good. I, I talk too much for Buddhism, so I'm Melissa.

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Speaker 1
I'm really interested to get your take on this because you've worked for unbelievable companies. Most of the candidates that we work with because we don't like work exclusively with companies, so they end up getting multiple offers from multiple companies. And like when we're talking to these, you know, these younger professionals, they're looking at things like, you know, base salary on track earnings, benefits office versus remote work, like, what do you think?

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Speaker 1
What do you think is missing from this list? And how would you advise one of these young student athletes that's making the transition to evaluate the potential employers that they're going to go work for? What what would put in some of the boxes you think they need to start checking?

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Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, it's obviously super, super important to think about comp and the lifestyle, what's going to fit in with what you're looking for out of your day to day. I think the biggest thing for me is, is the person that I'm going to work for someone who I want to work for and someone that's going to help me advance my career.

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Speaker 3
I was fortunate enough that that team and the sales manager at that sweet believed in us as leaders. And so they really put in a lot of effort to make sure that we were, as a group, were successful. And now, you know, even interviewing for my role here at time, one, my biggest criteria is the leadership team, are the people that I want to work with and are they going to help me get to that next step?

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Speaker 1
Yeah.

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Speaker 3
Really easy to get sucked into. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Melissa Like a lot of the entry level sales positions are within a range in terms of base salary and on target earnings right there within a range. But a lot of graduates are people transitioning or shifting into sales are kind of concerned with the compensation. What we like to coach them on is look at your management, look at the person that you're going to is going to be leading you and, you know, we had a few guests on the podcast that J.R. used to manage, and they've come so far and like having a strong leader, I think personally, I think that's just as important as having the $5,000 more in

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Speaker 2
the cup.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, it's really easy to get distracted by the comp and all the flashy, you know, added bonuses that companies have today. But I mean, I would not be in sales if I didn't have a good leader. And so even so, thinking about that, in a decade of comp, you know, that five k difference doesn't really make a big difference looking back on it now.

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Speaker 1
That's a that's a really good way to think of it. So I like that I'm still in that one. So getting into your career, getting into your career a bit, what did you what did you find like the most challenging when you first started in sales? Well.

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Speaker 3
Not knowing it was sales was a shock, but I think it does require a whole bunch of tenacity. And sales is very, very hard. And if it was easy, people, everyone would do it. There's a reason that there's a small group of people that get into it and stick with it. And, you know, all of the mindset building and skill building that you do, playing sports ties really nicely into making that shift from, you know, a student athlete to a working professional who's going to get noticed way more times than you get.

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Speaker 3
Yes, but how do you find the good in that? How do you find this all wins to keep going?

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Speaker 1
100%. 100%.

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Speaker 2
No, I get to I got a two part question for you, Melissa. So for listeners, what's the first part? What's the best way to approach the mediator position in? Second part is you went from VTR to if somebody wants to go from BTR to 80 quickly and kind of climb the ladder quickly, what should they focus?

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I think there are some roles out there that where you can just jump right into the role. Again, super attractive because maybe it's higher pay. I think the amazing thing about a BTR as your position is that you get to learn without having it be super high risk. You don't have a huge quota attached to your comp.

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Speaker 3
So you can go out, iterate on what works, what doesn't, figure out your own sales style before it's actually your head that's on the chopping block for making the number. I think that's why I was very fortunate that the eight that I was paired with was also based in Boston. She sat in the same office with me and she was very dedicated to making sure that I was successful because she knew in turn that that would pay her dividends in the long run.

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Speaker 3
So she brought me along to the first call that I booked. She would bring me along to in-person meetings in Boston, have me do the pre demo sales pitch and then she had me stay on throughout just eight copy emails throughout the sales process so that I could see what that process looked like. And for me that really helped.

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Speaker 3
Once I got into the position that I had some semblance of what I knew I was supposed to be doing on a day to day basis other than just making phone calls, because in the BTR role, that's kind of all, you know. So I'd say for anyone looking to move quickly from ACR, BTR, make sure that you're working closely with your eight E or someone else on that team who's going to help really invest in you as a mentee to make sure that they are taking the next step.

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Speaker 3
Similarly to what I would consider looking at for management too, like are those people that invest in you and make sure that you're getting to the next stage of your career.

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Speaker 2
That that is perfect. Melissa And for everybody listening, I'm just going to repeat that if you're BTR looking to go to E or county executive start doing what the account executives do, ask, ask first, you know, through that, go about it the right way, don't just overstep, but ask to start doing what they do and you'll be surprised who opens the doors.

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Speaker 2
I've had reps that I managed in the past tell me I want to get into management. So right away I've just said, okay, you're going to interview the next candidate. You're going to just starting to be you got to learn how to interview if you want to be a manager. And they were kind of like, Well, I don't know how to do it.

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Speaker 2
Well, you got to start somewhere. So yeah, I think Trial by Fire is a good way to do it, but you're not going to get there if you don't act, if you're a, B, D, R listening. You want to be in a ask somebody tell tell them you want to be in a asking me how to how to get involved.

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Speaker 2
Well, that's great advice.

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Speaker 1
And I know you made a great point. Like in order to be an A, you have to be a good BTR for right. And I think like part of being a good BTR is like finding a really solid operating cadence with the AC that you support. So like now you've been on both sides of that relationship, the BTR, the AC kind of relationship.

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Speaker 1
What are some of the characteristics in your opinion that make for a good BTR 80 relationship?

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Speaker 3
I think communication is key. I mean, if you think about sports to being able to communicate with your teammates from thinking about the goal of your catcher position, I was communicating to them when like an offensive player was coming down the field or down the ice and where they needed to go. Very similar to now how I act as a sales rep and how I interact not only with prospects and customers, but with my ACR, you know, because my my success is tied to their success.

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Speaker 3
And so I want to make sure that we're talking on a daily basis. Any update from a prospecting perspective, whether it's on my end or the year end, I want to make sure that we're in constant communication there because that's how we're going to get better. No one ever gets better by just working in a vacuum and never getting feedback.

00;18;57;19 - 00;19;08;00
Speaker 3
And so I encourage my buyers to give me feedback after we hop off a call and vice versa. So the team sort of the battery of 80 BTR instead of good judicature continues to get better as well.

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Speaker 2
Communication is perfect, is perfect. So say for some of our listeners looking for an edge, you know, they're athletes now. What can be what can you advise them on in terms of, you know, how can they differentiate themselves going through the job job application process?

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, it's you got to find your own style with how you present it. But I think the amount of time and dedication that we have as athletes, especially if you're playing at a collegiate level, is above and beyond what most of our other colleagues interviewing for the same position have gone through. And most people, you know, they show up to class and that's it.

00;19;47;14 - 00;20;08;26
Speaker 3
You know, they're not having the team breakfast, the team lunches, team dinners practice, extra practice, then the mental training that goes along with that. And that is really the foundation in my experience and from my perspective for sales is how do you have that dedication, tenacity so you can continue to get up every day and not to knock people that haven't played sports?

00;20;08;26 - 00;20;20;26
Speaker 3
You know, I'm sure that they've done wonderful things, too, but sports really drills in to you that that's how you can operate. You can operate at a much higher level than than someone maybe who hasn't played at that level.

00;20;20;26 - 00;20;41;25
Speaker 1
So so telling telling that story of your experience as an athlete. And, you know, you're talking a lot about time management, right? Because you have the same workload as a regular student, plus practice left rehab, getting on the bus to go to games on the weekend and during the week, sometimes, like, I think that's a piece of it.

00;20;41;25 - 00;21;06;01
Speaker 1
I think, you know, and all the other stuff you said at the beginning about teamwork and, you know, competitiveness, I think that's that's a really well said is like telling your story as an athlete is the is is the best way to differentiate yourself. I love that I talk a lot. You know, the whole kind of core belief in our program is mentorship is like a critical part of it.

00;21;07;08 - 00;21;19;07
Speaker 1
You have any like colleagues, peers, leaders that you've had in your career that have been like valuable mentors to you and like, what are some of the best lessons you've got from your mentors? I love that when the day one that's that's a good one.

00;21;21;13 - 00;21;42;04
Speaker 3
Yeah. So Mike Sella is credited for win the day 100% and he and our sounds kick off a couple of years ago gave us all these little coins that say when the day so that it's firmly on my desk as a reminder if I'm starting to go off track to come back to my not so Kelly Lampkin who is now over at work day, she was the one that really believed in me.

00;21;42;04 - 00;22;03;21
Speaker 3
And her whole mentality is to just be herself. She's actually the only person that I've ever met, I think that knew that they wanted to be in sales. Everyone else, sort of like myself, stumbled into it. Kelly grew up knowing she wanted to be in sales, and she is herself and so unique and so opinionated that she's had amazing success.

00;22;03;21 - 00;22;22;04
Speaker 3
And that tweet at Workday and she is invested in of companies. So I try to take some of that mentality and make it my own, you know, I think that I've been very fortunate to work with a handful of great leaders. I learned a lot from Steve traveling, and when I was at Datto, that mentality was so, so different than that.

00;22;22;04 - 00;22;46;02
Speaker 3
Sweet It wasn't more enterprise. It was very transactional. Get in, grind, hustle and do it again. And that that training took sort of my BTR foundation to the next level. And how do you really learn how to if there's a wall in front, you just run through it when appropriate. And so I've been very again fortunate to work with a ton of a ton of great teams, a ton of great leaders, but those are some of the few that they definitely stand out.

00;22;47;03 - 00;22;56;18
Speaker 2
So let's switch gears. So leadership, you talk about a lot of leaders probably versus great managers. What do you think makes an effective sales leader.

00;22;59;07 - 00;23;19;02
Speaker 3
Know so many things? But I think the big thing is just being able to understand your team because everyone operates differently. Every rep is different. Sales is both a science and how many cold calls, how many cold emails you make. But it's also an art. And I think everyone's approach to the art side of things is very, very different.

00;23;19;02 - 00;23;38;10
Speaker 3
And so from a leadership perspective, I think it's very easy for someone to say, Oh, this person, prospects like me or they sound like me, so that's easy. I'll just help them or coach them. But how can you then take the whole team and people that learn and interact differently and also help coach them and bring them help bring them along and get them successful?

00;23;38;10 - 00;23;44;05
Speaker 3
And I think that leadership in and of itself is art that, you know, takes it takes a lot of practice.

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Speaker 2
Does definitely that definitely does. You say you send an email as a sales leader to ten people, you get ten different responses all the time.

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Speaker 4
Yeah.

00;23;54;27 - 00;24;02;04
Speaker 1
Realize that you would like to work for Steve. Melissa. He's he's one of our favorite partners. He's a he's a rock star. That's awesome.

00;24;03;24 - 00;24;27;05
Speaker 3
Yeah. No. So I spent a year with Steve at backup of I and he was instrumental in changing the trajectory of my career and just, you know, it's fond memories from from that time and everything from just getting on the phone, listening to tropical house music, walking around the office, making cold calls, putting money in the sales God and the good faith hope that, you know, a deal will come in a day.

00;24;27;05 - 00;24;56;20
Speaker 1
So he's he's carried a lot of that to link square's one thing one thing that's really cool about Chef Group I think is that a huge portion of our candidates are females. Right. And the reality is, is that there are underrepresented kind of populations from a sales perspective right there. There are more, you know, whether we want to admit it or not, there are more males in software sales than there are females.

00;24;56;20 - 00;25;05;25
Speaker 1
So I'd love for you to like spend just a couple of minutes talking about your guidance for women who are working with. We're getting started in sales.

00;25;07;13 - 00;25;24;23
Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, I could spend a whole bunch of time talking about this, but I think at a high level it's, you know, how the culture that we live in is very much at least my experience should come out. This whole thing with my experience is that, you know, it's pretty common for women to just be listeners, not talkers.

00;25;25;17 - 00;25;45;18
Speaker 3
And this is still something that I'm working on getting better at is speaking up for myself and promoting the good work that I'm doing, because I know that I'm working my butt off every day, that I'm making the calls, making making the emails, doing what I need to do to win the day. My experience is that been that the guys on my team are very good about saying, Oh, I had a great day, I did this, I did this.

00;25;46;26 - 00;26;04;26
Speaker 3
I'm much more reserved and I know I'm doing what I need to do, so I'm not going to tell anyone. And I think that has held me back at times. So just being able to believe in yourself and speak up for it. And that's something that, you know, having that foundation as an athlete definitely helps, but certainly something that I'm still thinking about and trying to lean in.

00;26;04;26 - 00;26;13;24
Speaker 3
I'm just promoting myself as well as my team, right? And the good stuff that's happening, especially when you're working from home and no one really sees what's going on.

00;26;14;20 - 00;26;17;01
Speaker 2
Speak up. I love it. It's great advice.

00;26;17;25 - 00;26;46;22
Speaker 1
Self-Advocacy, too huge. We we deal with large companies, Melissa. But I'd say a huge portion of our of our companies that come through our venture partnerships, you know, they're series A through see, you've done you've kind of done both. Right. How different is the job and the job at a net suite versus back up of Phi or Salsa Phi?

00;26;46;22 - 00;26;53;06
Speaker 1
Like, like like where do you see the biggest differences between big and small companies?

00;26;53;06 - 00;27;10;17
Speaker 3
Yeah, so it has been a while since I was at Natsumi, but my memory is that I showed up and I was there too. So I was really the the quarterback of the deal and I pulled in subject matter experts where appropriate. Not that that hasn't been the case that the startups that I've been a part of but the sales are there is much more.

00;27;11;21 - 00;27;32;14
Speaker 3
Yes. The man behind the curtains, but also also doing demos, also doing your own outreach, also doing marketing, also going to conferences. And so you get to you get a lot more exposure to different things, which for a lot of people, myself included, is really exciting and really energizing because I'm doing a whole bunch of different things every day, sometimes all at the same time.

00;27;32;14 - 00;27;53;28
Speaker 3
And that can be very daunting, though, and not a good fit for some people. Some people it is really helpful to just go in and know what your job is and what's expected of you. I think for me the beauty of startup is that it is insane chaos, but that you get the opportunity to then make your own out of that and determine to a certain extent what the trajectory of your current career looks like.

00;27;55;21 - 00;28;06;05
Speaker 1
Yet it's not that it's not better or worse, it's different, and it's and people are different, so that's okay. So I'm really glad you put it that way. That's awesome.

00;28;07;22 - 00;28;19;22
Speaker 2
So, Melissa, we asked all our guests to talk about one skill that they've developed that makes them really what's yours or Lisa?

00;28;19;26 - 00;28;37;18
Speaker 3
A tall order. But I think you mentioned earlier with time management from going from making that shift from sports and all of the time that you dedicate to that to then day to day, I'm very good at managing my time and getting stuff done. I have found that the more I have to do, the more I get done.

00;28;37;18 - 00;28;54;18
Speaker 3
And that doesn't matter how much stuff it is. Whenever we've had, you know, like dial competitions, I'm always on at the top of the leaderboard because it's just all right. Like I'm going to make as many dials until I break my headset today because this is what we're expected to do. I'm very thankful that that's not every day.

00;28;55;09 - 00;29;01;20
Speaker 3
But I think being able to manage all of the different components, especially in the startup world, the time management is huge.

00;29;02;08 - 00;29;31;02
Speaker 2
Time management is such an underrated skill because you have to you only get so many hours, so many, what do they call them, selling hours where you have to be doing things between 8 to 5 that matter. And sometimes you have to do, you know, a contract later at night because if you're spending 11 to 1 in the afternoon doing contracts, are doing your expense reports like it's not there's if you're if you're a top notch elite time manager, I think you have a ton of success.

00;29;31;02 - 00;29;54;18
Speaker 2
And so it's hard. It's hard. I I'm just going to talk about that for a second, but I like I came from finance into sales and in finance it was every hour was structured. It was like at 3:00, this is what you have to get to the Fed that says she needs this by 1 p.m. for this. Everything was structured and when I took a sales job they were like, here's your account, this, here's your products.

00;29;55;12 - 00;30;05;08
Speaker 2
Let us know if you need help. And that was that was a challenge for me. So definitely time management, that's definitely a great skill to have.

00;30;06;06 - 00;30;27;02
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think sales is great and that is different every day. Right. To your point, it's not structured every day, 8 to 9 and 9 to 10. And so it's I just make myself her to do list at the beginning of the day and I don't shop until that list is checked off, but that's different every day and sort of ebbs and flows with with the month, with the week, with the quarter, with the year.

00;30;28;08 - 00;30;43;00
Speaker 3
But again, just trying to maximize the time that we we do have and during especially during those selling hours, making sure that you are connecting with prospects and customers who probably aren't going to take your call later at night or super early in the morning.

00;30;43;00 - 00;30;51;28
Speaker 2
I'm actually working on my time management myself each day. But with that being said, I think we have time for one more question. Yeah.

00;30;52;14 - 00;31;17;04
Speaker 1
Yeah. So, Melissa, I grew up my father was a hockey coach for like 40 years and he used to tell us when we were little, like, a lot of people play hockey, but there's not a lot of hockey players, right? So the idea is like, you know, being a professional, right? Like, like really bringing to the table like that full, that whole commitment.

00;31;17;18 - 00;31;30;14
Speaker 1
So we, we always say the highest praise you can give to a salesperson is calling them a pro. What, in your opinion, is being a professional mean and sales?

00;31;30;14 - 00;31;54;07
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think, you know, at its foundation you have to be really good and diligent with your follow up, with your time management. But I think all sales reps who make it past that first year have to be fairly decent at that to stay in sales. I think for me and saying that that's really elite sellers or pro sellers apart from the others is their mentality because it is a grind and there's going to be ups and downs and ebbs and flows.

00;31;54;07 - 00;32;14;03
Speaker 3
But if you think about professional athletes, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, they have to find a way to find the good even when they're having a bad day. And so the elite and pro sellers are the ones that are really making that mental shift to not get really excited about the when you're at the top of the mountain or really sad when you're in the valley, but how do you stay consistent?

00;32;14;14 - 00;32;19;26
Speaker 3
And it's really, really hard. But I think that that's what ultimately sets pro sellers apart from others.

00;32;20;12 - 00;32;35;26
Speaker 2
And I think that's the first time you've got that answer. And I think that's a great answer. I don't know why it makes me because I'm from New England, makes me think of Tom Brady like he's always in the game, he's always right in the zone. You know, having that mentality doesn't matter if it's a Super Bowl or the first week he's trying to do the same thing.

00;32;37;00 - 00;32;39;14
Speaker 2
And I think that's a great answer. I love that.

00;32;40;01 - 00;32;40;12
Speaker 3
We love.

00;32;44;14 - 00;32;45;13
Speaker 1
We love Tom.

00;32;45;13 - 00;32;48;15
Speaker 2
Brady. Yeah.

00;32;48;15 - 00;32;50;10
Speaker 1
He'll be it'll be aggressive. No worry about it.

00;32;51;29 - 00;32;53;15
Speaker 4
Yeah.

00;32;53;15 - 00;33;03;16
Speaker 1
Melissa, thank you so much. It's such a good conversation. Thank you so much. It's going to be super valuable for those out there that listen so thank you very much for joining us.

00;33;05;04 - 00;33;06;16
Speaker 3
Thank you so much. This is great.

00;33;06;26 - 00;33;10;01
Speaker 2
Thanks, Melissa. Have a good day.

00;33;11;06 - 00;33;34;01
Speaker 1
This wraps up this episode of Making Some Change. If you enjoyed this episode, the most meaningful way to say thanks is to submit a review wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're interested in working with us, please come find us at WW Dot. Chef Gregorio.