Preface: Maria Boulden is one of my closest friends. I suspect much is based on our love of really bad puns. But most of it is how deeply I respect her as a leader. She is currently Vice President of Executive Partner Sales at Gartner. Prior to that, she ran one of the largest segments at Dupont, responsible for billions in annual revenue. Here’s Maria:
“I graduated with a degree in chemical engineering with a chemistry minor. And I started my career with a chemical company doing the things you would expect a chemical engineer to do…research, development, manufacturing, operations and beyond. But about 7 years into that work, I took role in technical service helping customers solve problems and use our products in the best possible ways. It was my first time at the customer interface and, for those of you old enough to have seen the movie, it was like the scene in The Wizard of Oz when it goes from black and white to color. I was a nerdy engineer who had issues with eye contact, firm handshakes and, actually talking to people. And, yet, this interface fascinated me from the beginning as I watched some sellers create fantastic growth and opportunity while others failed miserably. I was working for a company that chalked that up to charm and communication skills (of which, I had neither) but that’s not what I was seeing. At the time, I couldn’t be sure exactly what I was seeing but it was definitely more than charm and communication—if it were even either or both of them at all. As a trained problem solver, I had to learn more.
While this particular tech service role was a feeder pattern for sales, I was already “advised” not to pursue that path because I didn’t fit the pattern. It was clearly communicated to me that I lacked the charm and the communication skills. It was also pretty clearly inferred that I wasn’t a white guy who golfed either. Having already spent my life being judged for who I am and how I look (something that continues to this day) as well as being told what I can’t do (otherwise known as the guaranteed way to get me to do something…another thing that continues to this day), I was determined that my next role would be in sales. So I found a particularly technical sales role and evolved my way into it. I made all the rookie mistakes by forcing myself to get really good at (you guessed it) exuding charm and being a good communicator. I built strong relationships. I delighted my customers with great support. I got them everything they needed it when they needed it and, decades later, I still exchange Christmas cards with many of them. And, while my numbers were good, when it came to the big stuff like winning big share positions at key accounts, driving big price increases, etc., that was a mixed bag, even in the early 90s when you still had a shot at closing a big deal over dinner at Ruth’s Chris. I was collecting a lot of data but I still had too many unknowns and not enough equations, a pattern that continued as my career grew from seller, to frontline sales manager, to global commercial leader of a small, $50 million business in that same chemical company. Then my youngest was born at the latter part of my second trimester weighing 784 grams. How is that relevant?
The things that made me love my commercial leadership role made it impossible to do with my family in crisis. So I took a Six Sigma Black Belt job (yup, same huge company) focused on optimizing profitability and sales execution. A job I would have never taken actually fused the two things I hadn’t been able to connect: my analytical capabilities with the universe of sales execution (not just my own limited data set). With a pool of over 10,000 sellers, their individual performance data and a treasure chest of independent variables, we drove profitability to record levels and got the clearest look we had ever experienced at the characteristics of world class sales. With this, we built a framework to manifest it in our own sales force. We created teams to deploy it. And we drove significant profitability to the bottom line by pushing people well beyond charm and communication skills. Some didn’t make it. Many thrived as a result of it. And that just fueled my fascination with the brutal meritocracy that is sales. It also galvanized for me another reason why I loved it: by its very compensation structure, it’s the great equalizer. The characteristics we drove could be done by anyone with the skill and (even more so) the will to do it. The numbers were the great equalizer and who doesn’t love paradigm-busting?
Spoiler alert: those characteristics have a shelf life, especially now in a never-normal world. But even in the early 2000s as I took them with me to commercial and executive leadership roles that grew from millions to billions, I could see limits to what we could do with the framework and shifts in how markets responded. As I adapted and drove evolved skills and attributes, as I continued to get “rewarded” with the next broken sales teams, I could see it testing other leaders as I watched Darwinism at its finest. Those that couldn’t adapt got replaced, around 2 quarters after they missed their numbers. I inherited a lot of their teams. It was as fascinating to watch as it was brutal in its impact. Like the commercial version of The Hunger Games. It still is. But now I get to see it through the eyes of a few hundred Chief Revenue, Commercial and Sales Officers at a time. And I still can’t stop watching.
For reference, the preemie is now a 25-year-old cyber engineer who is tremendously healthy and successful. I’m still learning every day about what it takes to be a world class sales professional and the executive privileged to lead them. At least now I know communication skills are a minimum essential standard and the rest has nothing to do with charm, golf or a personal demographic. May the odds be ever in your favor. And I’m glad to talk anytime about what will stack those odds in your favor.”
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