Becoming a sales manager isn’t always easy.
Just ask Jason Blais. Before becoming a chief commercial officer at PerkSpot, a company that offers personalized discounts and rewards programs for employees, Blais spent roughly twenty years of his professional life climbing the leadership ladder.
His journey began in 1998 when he was just 23 years old and moved into a supervisory role on a small sales team. While Blais was a top-performing salesperson, he was far from ready to take on a management role.
“There was no leadership training, and considering I was so young at the time, I certainly lacked experience and aptitude,” Blais said.
Over the next few years, Blais toggled back and forth between supervisor and individual contributor roles before finally landing a director position in 2005. During that time, he proved his potential to both himself and the people around him.
“Everyone saw that I was doing the job before I had the job, and more importantly, the work I was doing was always focused on helping the team improve,” Blais said.
If there’s one thing in particular that Blais has learned over the course of his leadership journey, it’s that managers should focus less on their personal goals and spend more energy on helping their direct reports grow. From his perspective, having a team-oriented mindset is tantamount to succeeding as a sales leader.
Built In Chicago caught up with Blais to learn about his path to becoming a sales director and discover his advice for others eager to do the same.
When did you see your leadership skills start to manifest, and what played a pivotal role in your professional growth?
Between 2007 and 2009, I earned the opportunity to write my own job descriptions and influence my own compensation plans. This was a unique situation in which preparation met opportunity. I had successfully applied my leadership training in real-world practice, the company was growing quickly, and we were still small enough that I had visibility with the founder and managing partner. The other key to my development during that time was that our leadership team was very transparent, and I had a clear understanding of the business objectives, which allowed me to propose expanded responsibilities for myself that were directly related to the strategic opportunities of the company.
When I joined another startup in 2013 as a director, my past experiences with direct sales management, program management and leadership provided me with the foundation to take the next steps in my career. After successfully building out and growing one team, I was asked to grow another team in 2016. And in 2017, I was asked to take on my first VP role, ultimately obtaining direct responsibility for seven directors, 35 managers and more than 300 staff persons across four departments.
When I look back, I realize my personal accountability, drive and performance represented only half of my success. Had it not been for an exceptional mentor and being in the right place at the right time, I may not have had that same career trajectory. My path to becoming a sales manager was a long one, from attempting my first leadership role at the age of 23 to landing my first VP role at 42. I am eternally grateful for my failures and successes, as they all supported my leadership development.
TAKING THE INITIATIVE
What surprised you most about your new leadership role?
To achieve success, I had to be less focused on results and more focused on the operational processes, behaviors and professional development of the team. I learned that pep talks, incentives and performance plans alone cannot improve the success of my team. To be successful as a leader, you must ensure your team has the right process and that there is continual focus on skills development. As a mentor once told me, sales is one of the only careers where you can consistently earn a six-figure income without any professional certification or recertification requirements, so it’s up to individuals and leaders to create opportunities to continually sharpen the blade.
To be successful as a leader, you must ensure your team has the right process and that there is continual focus on skills development.”
What advice do you have for salespeople interested in becoming leaders?
There are two viable and rewarding career paths: remain in an individual contributor role and move up the enterprise seller ladder, taking on more complex sales models while selling to larger, more sophisticated customers or move into sales leadership and grow through traditional hierarchy.
If you’re motivated strictly by a larger paycheck, more respect and recognition, or greater control, remaining in an individual contributor role will most likely create the most career satisfaction, giving you control over your personal success. On the other hand, if you’re motivated by impacting the careers of others, take the leadership path.
I always ask prospective leaders this hypothetical question: Will you feel personal pride at the end of the day if your team had no sales close, but you heard your sellers applying new skills or behaviors? Or, would you feel more pride closing a significant deal yourself? Truthfully, the only way you will succeed as a leader is by helping your team grow their skills and succeed. If that work doesn’t motivate and excite you, sales leadership can be a very challenging environment.
