To leave a legacy of creativity, development and inspiration for my family, friends, community and the world.
Headquartered in Houston, Total Safety was the first ever Shadow Company COSA. Having no previous relationship with SHI, what started with a COSA has turned into opportunities spanning multiple solutions practices – security with Mimecast, baseline SAM engagement, professional services, and assessments for a business intelligence solution.
I take great pride in the faith that was put in the Black Ops organization by starting Shadow Company, and have taken it upon myself to help train the team by leading a Microsoft-related huddle every Friday morning. Getting their first COSA, knowing I was contributing the expansion of the Black Ops brand, was an incredible feeling, and one I'll look back on fondly throughout my career.
To me, professionalism means striving to be at the top of your given field, whatever it is. For Black Ops, that means leading the charge in sharpening our team’s sales, licensing and operational skills to help us be more professional with customers and our coworkers. I exhibit professionalism by constantly driving that behavior – from leading Shadow Company huddles every Friday morning to licensing and renewal best practice sessions weekly in team meetings to writing over 15 MFUD and mailer communications to customers. My focus is to help our entire team benefit from a rapidly increasing standard of excellence.
Seth Godin’s altMBA, which I completed as part of the winter 2017 class, taught that sales is the transfer of emotion. A quick Bing search (yes, Bing) defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”. Therefore, the best way to sell is to master empathy.
Through exercises like decision-making analysis, persona creation and worldview examination, coupled with the use of insightful open-ended questions, I’ve been able to broaden my understanding of customers, create trust quickly, and sell through empathy.
My ‘A-ha’ moment came during my first field visit as a Black Ops rep to Chicago in October of 2016. My first year in role, I focused heavily on selling the value of SHI as a company and our proprietary tools for managing Enterprise Agreements, but I struggled to articulate how I was valuable for customers as a resource. While meeting with the CIO, Director of Infrastructure, and Director of App Dev for The Warrant Group (a customer now doing roughly $2M in revenue with SHI), it finally clicked – customers were desperate for a resource with the unique skillset that I and the rest of the Black Ops team had.
My role is SHI’s biggest Microsoft differentiator.
That realization caused me to adjust my COSA approach, which led to a more than 50% increase in COSAs YoY, from 22 in 2016 to 34 YTD in 2017 (and counting).
Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a leader – at school, in my extracurricular organizations, among my friends, at work; everywhere. I’ve read leadership books profusely, taken courses and certifications through UT, Udemy and others, and tried to do the work of a leader without the title. But, as many people at SHI, including my manager Jennifer Hutchinson and new Shadow Company manager Lilyana Frescas, have pointed out -I haven’t spoken up about it.
And they’re right. It’s impossible to truly lead if you don’t step up and speak out. More often than not the root cause of mistakes is a leader not speaking up. And that's what I've resolved to do - in team meetings, huddles, brainstorm sessions, everywhere. It's time I start putting my thoughtful energy into practice.
As for critical customer feedback, I can honestly say I haven’t received any. And I know for a fact that’s not because I haven’t warranted any, but because I haven’t asked. That’s something I’d like to take from this exercise and implement from now on.
One of the most important lesson’s I’ve learned is that self-focus doesn’t scale – leadership and generosity scale. If I’m part of the TG18 class, my focus will be on making everyone else around me better. Becoming the team lead for Black Ops has helped me understand that group success, be it a specialized Microsoft acquisition team or collection of the highest performing salespeople across a company, is dependent on a leaders ability to elevate everyone around them, and in doing so, elevate themselves.
For my TG17 application, I suggested that SHI invest more in the creation and implementation of an online learning platform for SHI sellers that will enable ongoing professional development at scale. I think an incredible amount of progress has been made so far, and with much success – which is why I’d like SHI to continue to improve the platform.
With the Black Ops brand expanding under the umbrella of the Acquisition Specialist group, there’s an immediate opportunity to utilize the training platform for those outside of Account Management. With teams like Microsoft Renewal and CSP Specialists, AWS Black Ops, Shadow Company and Cisco Black Ops starting (and expanding), the platform would help both to certify the specialist resources and train the sales floor on their practices and value add. There can also be voluntary (or mandatory) general education courses to help improve sales skills, business acumen, or other areas of professional development.
Finally, the platform can enable Black Ops and sales leaders to create and curate content for customers to help market and brand SHI. Customer trainings could even integrate with SHI.com to track progress, create communities of loyal SHI customers, and build trust. In the long term, vendors could use the platform and create co-branded content to reach a user group of educated, interested customers.