The Denver Breakfast Club
This blog brought to you by Guest Writer Hailey Williams, Account Executive at ConnectAndSell.
In the iconic 80’s film, The Breakfast Club, the Princess, the Criminal, the Athlete, the Brain and the Basket Case take on the complicated social hierarchy that is High School. During a Saturday detention session, the five high school students come to grips with the realities facing them and they break down the one-dimensional impressions they initially had of each other.
The message:
1. there is more to each character than meets the eye and,
2. as a whole, they are powerful in their diversity.
When we come into contact with new people, we usually have only a few pieces of information about them that, whether intentionally or not, first defines them. In other words, we create a first impression based on relatively little.
I happened upon the movie this past Thanksgiving evening. As I watched, I realized that it sheds light on my recent experience joining a new company. ConnectAndSell, a San Mateo-based sales enablement software company, is opening a new Denver office that I’ll be a part of. CAS veeps Chad Burmeister and Jim Reiss meticulously recruited, interviewed and hired eight salespeople for our new team using CAS’s own parallel dialing software to accelerate the process. Fortunately, we ended up with the most interesting, dynamic and diverse sales team possible.
The range in experience is from 3 to 30 years and spans many industries, ensuring that each team member will bring his/her own special “sauce” to the table. At first glance we might have been the Beauty Queen, the Baseball Player, the Clint Eastwood, and the Newbie, etc. However, as the Denver players begin to take shape the overwhelming feeling I have is one of unfettered opportunity. The opportunity for success and perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to learn. I’ve never been surrounded by so many talented and successful people in my career. As I get to know my new co-workers, I’m blown away by the environment of encouragement and collaboration. The only thing we have in common with the angst-ridden, teenage, rebellious Breakfast Club, is that we too are more powerful in our diversity.
I joined ConnectAndSell for one simple reason: the technology. As the “Newbie,” my career consists of 3.5 years of experience in print advertising sales. Not only did I lack technology sales experience, I also lacked experience with just about any sales enablement technologies in my own sales process. I felt the pain of manually calling 30-40 clients or prospects a day and perhaps having at most 5 conversations. ConnectAndSell brings you conversations on demand, a concept so new to me I had to see it to believe it.
As any sales executive will corroborate, there exists a necessary but sometimes inconvenient balance between actual time spent selling and time spent doing everything else: databasing, prospecting, researching, list-building, etc. If you could swing the balance in your favor and spend most of your time selling, why wouldn’t you?
The Denver Breakfast Club meets at 1730 Blake Street at 8:00 AM on weekdays. And watch out, we’re a game-changer!
