Water Cooler Conversations - Anna Violeta
Thoughts from the Business Development Director of Booky
How are you amidst the pandemic?
The past few months have been a roller coaster of emotions. Some days I feel anxious but most days I feel grateful. I’m pretty sure I’m one of the luckier ones who only have a few things to be worried about so I try to focus my energy on the positive things!
How did you end up in sales? What was your course in college?
I graduated with a degree in Management and I also took Business Enterprise as my minor. It was weird because although it was pretty clear that sales and entrepreneurship is the path that I should be taking, I still pushed for a finance track.
Back then, sales was deeply associated with MLM and life insurance, and I didn’t think I had the courage to contact my friends and colleagues one by one just so I could make money. It was also pretty common to opt working for multinational companies and that’s exactly what I did. After working in finance for a year at a big corporation, I realized that I will never be able to apply any of the things I learned and so I started looking for startups. Nobody really told me that I will be doing sales. I was just told that I will take care of clients and I have to build relationships with them and that pretty much convinced me to take the job.
What do you love most about Business Development?
I really love building relationships and taking care of people. I think part of taking care of people is ensuring that your growth never declines so you can continuously provide ideas to clients.
I genuinely enjoy talking to restaurant owners, listening to their stories and figuring out more ways to help them get their brand out there. I enjoy learning from them too and listening to how they became successful so that I can be successful too. It really feels like a partnership because we get to help each other. I have a lot of clients who eventually became my friends and mentors along the way and I feel like I will never get these types of opportunities if I wasn’t in business development.
What’s the hardest thing about business development?
Hmm. In all honesty, sales is a skill that anyone can learn so I’d say that it’s probably not as hard as people would think. If anything, I think the hardest thing is building your network especially if you’re starting from scratch. It takes a lot of effort to do hundreds of cold calls, emails, and messages on social media pages to get the right person.
What's the top sales principle that you uphold?
Always start with why. As part of our onboarding process, I would always require my team to watch Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. It’s actually important because you have to first and foremost understand why you want to be in sales; afterwhich, you have to understand why you’re selling what you have to sell. Once you figure that out, I’m sure the rest will be easy.
Any advice for newbies in the field?
Do the hard things. A lot of people are naturally good at talking and conversing with others and I think most people feel like this is everything they need to have to be great in sales. Chances are, people who think this way will also refuse to do all other things that might help them grow further. If you want to succeed:
Do the hard things and it will separate you from everyone else.
What‘s your favorite part about managing people?
People who know me know that I love mentoring people. I think it’s my way of giving back because I truly enjoyed all the opportunities where I got to learn from people more experienced than me.
I like getting to know my team and figuring out how their long term goals connect with their current work now. It’s honestly challenging a lot of times especially when responsibilities are somewhat limited but I would like to think that all efforts count including the small ones.
What are the challenges involved in managing people?
Managing people is always hard but I think I can think of two things that make it extremely difficult:
1) Finding the balance between challenging people and caring for them
What do you do when you clearly see that a person can do so much more but they insist that this is all they can give? Nobody actually wants to be uncomfortable but it’s so necessary for growth.
People have different capacities to tolerate challenges so the way to balance it out is showing genuine care for people. It’s tricky because you really need to spend time with everyone to figure out the right mix for each of them.
2) Being the bearer of bad news
People seem to have the perception that being a leader means you just need to tell people what they have to do - but this isn’t usually the case. Leading people comes with a lot of responsibility and that also means being the person to do the hard things.
This includes letting your team members know if they’re not performing at par with the standards or letting go of people when you know that they’re not fit for the current role and they would most likely flourish in a different field.
Any advice for people new to being a manager?
1) Find mentors, read lots of books, listen to podcasts and watch videos relating to leadership.
2) Aim to lead and influence people instead of managing people. It’s going to be a lot easier to earn the respect of your team members this way.
3) Build relationships with your team and get to know them personally. I think this makes a huge impact because it makes people feel that you genuinely care about them. From what I’ve seen, people actually put in more effort into their work when they know that they’re not just seen as tools to perform tasks.
How do you handle adversity?
My laptop wallpaper is a quote from one of my favorite books. It says:
“It will work because I will make it work.”
I guess this is pretty much how I usually handle adversity. The pandemic has created tons of challenges for Booky but I’ve always believed that things will work out no matter what because I will do whatever it takes to make it work.
