Ethical Sales Leadership!
The sales development industry is undergoing a rapid transformation, emphasizing the importance of emotional intelligence and authenticity in achieving success. Traditionally viewed as a steppingstone to field sales, the role of Sales Development is now being recognized for its potential to nurture long-term talent and drive meaningful change within organizations. This shift is particularly evident in the growing efforts to recruit and empower women in sales, addressing barriers such as lack of confidence and imposter syndrome. The industry is moving towards a more supportive environment where women’s unique strengths are utilized to enhance overall sales performance.
Kelly Lichtenberger has emerged as a prominent figure in this evolving field. Starting her career as a Sales Development Representative in the technology sector, her passion for training and mentoring new representatives set her apart, as she chose to focus on developing effective phone prospecting techniques rather than transitioning to field sales. Kelly’s dedication to empowering women in sales has led her to lead global teams and launch various initiatives aimed at overcoming the challenges women face in the industry, aiding their professional growth, and enhancing their confidence and skills.
Prospect Like A Girl, the organization founded by Kelly, embodies this mission of empowerment. By providing specialized training, coaching, and mentoring, the company aims to help women harness their emotional intelligence to succeed in sales. Through her organization, Kelly advocates for a balanced approach that combines data analytics with human-centric strategies, reinforcing the idea that emotional intelligence is crucial in building authentic customer relationships and achieving sustainable success in sales.
Let’s explore Kelly’s journey of driving change in sales development:
Transforming Sales Development
Kelly’s professional journey began as a Sales Development Representative in the technology industry, a role she found incredibly fulfilling and rewarding. While many of her peers aspired to transition into field sales positions, she felt a strong calling to remain in her current role and focus on training new representatives in effective phone prospecting techniques.
She continued to grow her roles and leading global teams of Sales Development and Inside Sales teams. Kelly is the Vice President of Sales Development at HiBob. HiBob is on a mission to transform how organizations operate in the modern world of work with its HR platform Bob. Leading the way for the future workplace, Bob offers resilient, agile technology that wraps all the complexities of HR processes into a game-changing, user-friendly tool that touches every employee across the business.
Kelly is very passionate about recruiting and training more women to join sales. Women have statistically been 11% better at sales, but unfortunately, not enough women are joining the role.
This is sometimes due to a lack of confidence, thinking that sales are deceitful, or imposter syndrome around certain technological information. She recently launched her new website, Prospect Like A Girl www.prospectlikeagirl.com, to start assisting women to hone their skills and become top reps in their field.
There have been many challenges along the way, as Sales Development is often an overlooked part of the sales team. If not properly managed and trained, it is nothing more than a call center and is looked at as if you get anything good, but no one counts on it. She manages teams differently and really builds up the individuals so that they can have long, successful careers in sales.
Then, once the pipeline grows due to the SDRs’ work, there is new respect in all areas of the organization. She believes you need to continuously invest in developing your team and provide great career paths for everyone to excel.
Empowering Sales
Kelly’s mission is to empower women in sales by leveraging their emotional intelligence over artificial intelligence. She enables advancement by training, coaching, and mentoring women to excel with the skills with which they were born. She empowers women in sales to unlock their full potential by harnessing the power of their authentic selves in an artificial world.
Leading with Confidence
Kelly has been speaking at conferences, participating in podcasts, and providing training to many different companies across various industries. She is helping audiences embrace their human superpowers by unlocking their full potential and harnessing their authentic selves. Through fostering authenticity and resilience, she aims to cultivate a supportive community where women thrive, excel, and lead with confidence, and she helps women own their sales abilities.
Key Factors in Achieving Sales Success
- Empowerment: Kelly believes in empowering women in sales to leverage their unique strengths, particularly emotional intelligence, to achieve success and drive meaningful change in their careers.
- Authenticity: She values authenticity and encourages women to embrace their true selves in the sales profession. By fostering genuine connections and relationships, they create an environment where individuals can thrive and excel.
- Continuous Growth: Kelly is committed to continuous learning and growth, both personally and professionally. She encourages women to step out of their comfort zones, take risks, and embrace new challenges as opportunities for development and advancement.
- Collaboration: Kelly also recognizes the power of collaboration and teamwork in achieving success. By fostering a supportive and inclusive environment, they encourage women to collaborate, share insights, and learn from one another to achieve collective greatness.
- Resilience: She understands that success in sales requires resilience and perseverance in the face of challenges and setbacks. They equip women with the tools and support they need to bounce back from adversity and stay focused on their goals.
- Impact: She is driven by a desire to make a positive impact in the lives of women in sales. By empowering them to harness their emotional intelligence and step out of their comfort zones, they enable them to achieve greatness and create lasting change in the industry.
- Ethical Leadership: Kelly upholds the highest standards of integrity, honesty, and ethical conduct in all aspects of the organization. She believes in leading by example and fostering a culture of trust, transparency, and accountability.
Balancing Data and Decisions
Kelly uses tools for data and analytics but not to make all the decisions for Sales Development success. It is a combination of everything she believes: Emotional Intelligence (EI) will always win over Artificial Intelligence (AI), but AI can have benefits that make them work smarter in certain industries or positions in a company. However, it will never take away the human factor needed.
Training for Change
Cold calling is becoming encouraged and wanted again. We are losing the human connection through AI, and more and more people want to speak with humans. She thinks the “ick” factor of a cold call will be lessening, and she is here for it! To prepare, Kelly believes in continual training in phone skills and objection handling on calls.
A Vision for Women in Sales
She aspires to speak on larger stages with larger audiences of women in sales. She wants women to join sales teams and continue to increase their success.
Venturing into Sales
Her advice to budding leaders who aspire to venture into the Sales industry is not to conform to how things have always been done. She encourages them to try new things, challenge the norm, and always use their Emotional Intelligence (EI). She reminds them that sales are a position, but deals are won by being human and building relationships. To learn more, Kelly has recently published an award-winning sales book titled “Prospect Like A Girl: Winning in Sales Using Your Emotional Intelligence (EI) Over Artificial Intelligence (AI),” available on Amazon.
