My 10 years in sales was a journey of growth, adaptability, and building meaningful relationships. Those experiences laid the foundation for my transition into sales and revenue operations, as well as Salesforce consulting.

As a Territory Sales Rep for Spectrum Healthcare, I secured my first major client despite a botched haircut before the sales presentation. That client ultimately became my highest-grossing account. Starting with just one client, I grew my territory to more than 30 accounts across the southeastern U.S., working closely with medical professionals such as doctors, nurses, and therapists. This experience sharpened my ability to navigate complex stakeholder relationships and identify opportunities for growth.

At ProctorU, I advanced from Account Manager to Territory Manager, leading a loyal, high-performing team while growing our territory by 30% year over year. I was also an early adopter of technology in our sales process and became the first member of the sales team to use mail merge to generate leads from conference attendee lists, reflecting an instinct I’ve long had for finding scalable, more efficient ways to work. Presenting at conferences, including a standout talk on the connection between academic cheating rings and terrorist organizations, helped me sharpen my public speaking and thought leadership skills. Working with college professors and academic leadership, I learned to manage diverse and challenging personalities, which became an invaluable skill in both consulting and operations. Just as importantly, my experience there exposed me to reporting gaps and operational blind spots that made it harder to fully understand performance and opportunity. While Revenue Operations was not yet a concept I knew by name, and was far less commonly recognized at the time, those challenges planted the seed for what would later become a deep appreciation for the strategic value of RevOps.

These experiences taught me the importance of understanding stakeholder needs, building trust, and creating scalable processes, all of which have become key to my success in delivering impactful solutions and fostering long-term, productive partnerships.

When I joined Local Motors as an Inside Sales Leader, it quickly became clear that the organization lacked a foundational Sales Operations function. The CRM (Zoho) was underutilized, reporting was nonexistent, and there were no formalized sales processes, metrics, or forecasting beyond tracking closed deals. Recognizing this critical gap, I took the initiative to build the Sales Operations function from the ground up.

I implemented and optimized the CRM, established clear sales processes, developed comprehensive reporting, and introduced forecasting methodologies. These efforts transformed the sales team's effectiveness and provided leadership with critical insights. Over time, my role evolved to include direct reporting to the CEO, president, and board of directors, delivering key metrics and forecasts that supported strategic decision-making and drove the company forward.

As our CRM needs at Local Motors became increasingly complex, it became clear that an upgrade was necessary. I led the effort to evaluate various tools, including HubSpot, Zoho, and Salesforce, ultimately deciding on Salesforce as the best fit for our growing needs. Initially, we engaged a Salesforce Partner for implementation, but it quickly became evident that their services were far beyond our budget.

Recognizing the urgency and opportunity, I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about Salesforce during the holiday downtime. With the sales team off for a few weeks, I dedicated my time to performing the entire implementation and data migration myself. By the time the team returned, we were fully up and running in the new system without a single hiccup, enabling a seamless transition and immediate productivity gains.

At Trakstar, I worked closely with executive leadership, particularly partnering with the VP of Sales, to establish meaningful sales team metrics and create a system to visualize them effectively. Our goal was to provide clear, actionable insights for the weekly all-hands meetings. Rather than a traditional superior-subordinate dynamic, our collaboration felt like a true partnership, blending strategic planning with hands-on execution.

Together, we brainstormed a vision for an all-encompassing Salesforce dashboard that would display easy-to-digest metrics. The idea was sketched on the back of a napkin while the VP was at a coffee shop. He snapped a photo of the "final napkin draft" and sent it my way. From there, I iterated and refined the design, incorporating feedback and making adjustments until we arrived at a final solution.

The resulting dashboard not only highlighted the team's successes but also surfaced areas needing improvement, such as incomplete or missing data entry. By showcasing both the "good" and "bad" metrics, we were able to reinforce positive behaviors among the sales team while reducing the frequency of negative habits. This dashboard became an essential tool—not only was it used weekly by the sales team, but it was also heavily referenced by the C-suite and the private equity firm that owned the company. This project demonstrated my ability to translate high-level ideas into practical, impactful tools that drove alignment, accountability, and improved performance across the organization.

In early 2022, sales at Better Place Forests began to slow unexpectedly, despite no clear indicators of why. Marketing spend remained steady, the number of leads was comparable to the previous year, and the "end-of-life" industry, a traditionally resilient sector even during economic downturns, was expected to weather minor slowdowns. Still, my curiosity was piqued. Could the markets be affecting our clients' willingness to purchase? After all, these expenses are often paid from accounts tied to market performance.

To explore this hypothesis, I brainstormed ways to find evidence. Ultimately, I decided to analyze "interest form submissions" over a few months, using software to identify and count mentions of terms like "price" or "cost" in the open-text fields. The results were astonishing: there was a clear, inverse correlation between mentions of these terms and the direction of the S&P 500. When the market went down, cost-related concerns went up, and vice versa.

Presenting this data to our CRO elicited an enthusiastic "F*%$ Yeah!" response. While no company wants sales to decline, understanding the why is the first step toward correction. This discovery helped us gain deeper insight into our customers' behavior, allowing us to adapt our strategies in response to broader market trends.

My regular conversations with sales team members at Better Place Forests uncovered a significant challenge they faced daily: handling two very different types of customers. One group, "Pre-need" clients, consisted of those interested in purchasing a tree as their future burial or ceremonial site. The other, "At-need" clients, included those dealing with the recent or imminent loss of a loved one, or even facing their own mortality. As one can imagine, these two conversations required completely different tones. Transitioning between a sales-oriented discussion of a unique idea and emotionally heavy, deeply personal conversations was exhausting for the team.

Hearing this feedback from multiple team members, I decided to investigate whether this dynamic was impacting performance. After analyzing our sales metrics, I discovered that close rates dropped by 25-35% when a salesperson handled one type of client immediately after the other. Recognizing the need for a solution, I took action.

First, I identified ways to categorize customers before their calls. Through A/B testing landing page forms, I developed a system that accurately determined whether a client was "Pre-need" or "At-need." Next, I redesigned our lead routing process in HubSpot and Salesforce to ensure that sales team members focused exclusively on one client type per day. While this meant some days were emotionally taxing, the elimination of constant mental switching significantly reduced their overall emotional strain.

The results were immediate and impactful: close rates increased, and bottom-line revenue increased by 15-30% in the following months. This initiative not only improved sales performance but also created a more sustainable and supportive environment for our team.