The following is a guest post from a member of our Slack community, Kristen Holmes. We met recently and the topic of being queer in sales came up. Kristen was kind enough to share her story.
What good is a superpower if you can’t attribute it’s inception? My journey of finding my superpower started in being honest with myself. The self I was and not the self I portrayed for years to the world. You see, I was a queer, married, stay-at-home mom of two.
My journey began with “I’m leaving”. That was the day I lost my home, my church, my community, and in six months, I found my first sales role and sucked at it. 4 months into my role, I came out to my boss and colleges, which began my journey of queering sales.
I quickly realized in all of this how adaptive and adaptable I am to newness, from moving, to starting over, to becoming a single mom, to being my queer self, and to owning my career growth.
This is my superpower: to adapt to change. From raising kids to rediscovering faith, and to sales goals, styles, quotas, and more. Each month, an invitation to iterate and adapt to complete, not always with others, but most importantly with self.
It’s odd how my sales playbook merges into my parent playbook and my life in general. The key to being a good, if not great, sales professional is to learn how to ask great questions and how to listen and read between the lines.
This is also true for being a parent. Kids want you to listen to them, to seek to understand them, and in all their stages, you process changes but the motives are the same. Guide, teach, listen, learn, and achieve a goal together.
Sales, being a single parent and being queer in a conservative area gives you armor and curiosity. Armor to keep pushing through and curiosity to seek empathetic communication because you just never know what the person on the other side of the line is going through.
I want more people to choose sales, at least for a bit. Think of it as an enlistment to uncover your superpower. Being in sales is tough, yet it’s one career with many variations and stages.
It is one career that so noble. When entered into with pure intention to help, learn, and grow. I promise, you’ll at the least discover something tangible to carry with you into future opportunities.
Please connect with Kristen on LinkedIn, support her, and remember to embrace your own superpower.
