Almost three years ago, I was introduced to Chantel George by Myrna Datilus. As Myrna said to me, “She’s someone you should know…” That was an understatement. Following Chantel’s launch of Sistas in Sales, attending her first big event, and then witnessing how she grew the organization, was awe-inspiring. We’re fans and eager to promote and contribute to her cause, a cause aligned with our mission of building diverse and inclusive workplaces and helping individual careers flourish. We spoke with Chantel via Zoom, to learn more about the upcoming Sistas in Sales Virtual Summit 2020, September 18th-19th, and to learn how managers can best support their employees through this difficult time and beyond.
-Cynnie King
You created Sistas In Sales as an alternative network to existing Employee Resource Groups and organizations for women in sales. What inspired you to do so?
Anytime I’m asked this question, I think to myself ‘How far back should we go?’ I grew up in the Bronx with my dad who was already retired and starting his second career as an entrepreneur, and my mom who was working as a nurse. When I was about nine years old, my mom ended up passing and my dad became mom and dad (as he liked to say).
I got to watch my dad become an entrepreneur, using elements of his former career that he loved. He was a building inspector and turned it into a brokerage. As he became successful, he opened an office and hired me to be his secretary and to write contracts. That was my first time witnessing how someone grows professionally, and how you can take the things that you like, that you’re called to, and start a business.
Fast forward to working in sales professionally. I remember looking around at the entry-level stage and seeing there were Black people doing what I was doing and feeling like, ‘Okay, there are people that look like me here.’ And then, as I continued on in sales--two, three, four years later--we just disappeared, especially at my level. I was the only one who looked like me, and I started to wonder, ‘Did I pick the right career?’ I would go to networking events, and I would not find anyone like me in sales. And I was scared, because I was originally supposed to pursue law and I had changed my mind, but I really liked this career and I didn’t want to do anything else. I began to believe that there were surely others who felt like me and were experiencing the same missing, and that I could do something about it.
Seeing the way my dad tackled problems informed my approach: ‘There are certain things that I’m good at in my day job that I could use to catapult this idea.’ One of those things was community building. I like to have community around me. I’m really big on family, connecting my friends with one another and being that person that’s bringing everyone together. The idea I hatched was hosting a dinner with friends—with the caveat that they all had to be in sales. I saw that first event as a test, a focus group to see whether the idea had legs. There were ten of us, all minority saleswomen, gathered for dinner in Harlem. They were all so excited to meet each other, I could barely get to my questions! Just the notion of finding someone else who had traveled the same career path, who looks like you—and not just one, but nine or ten in one place!—was mind-blowing. I figured this energy could absolutely be duplicated, and I think I surprised even the women in that room with how fast I decided to move it along, because our next big event was at Salesforce maybe a month later, and we had about 70 people show up.
Sistas In Sales has become such an influential organization in the professional community of women of color. From that first focus group, how have you successfully continued to build the Sistas In Sales community and partnerships?
A lot of it was just clearly explaining what I thought was the right direction for this community. At the time, one of the biggest champions and the reason why we got into Salesforce and started with such a bang, was Aimee Frank, Vice President, Northeast at Salesforce, whom I had met at a networking event for women in business. When I told her about the concept she said, ‘If you need space, just do it here.’ And that’s the approach I kept using: just carefully explaining with intention, ‘This is what I’m trying to build…’ I began with very small asks, and a lot of these companies gave us that opportunity when we were first scaling. We started to get more traction, and now it’s a completely different story.
Companies are approaching us and saying, ‘We know you have an organization of 2,500 women. How can we support you?’ When that shift happened, my mouth fell open! Sistas In Sales went from a vision requiring lots of outreach and creating a case, to companies finding my email and D&I specialists finding me on LinkedIn, and all of this amazing outpouring of support for this community. Best of all, the women in this community feel it. There’s this shared sense of pride: ‘Oh, they want to talk to us!’ To give that type of pride to these women has been really fulfilling for me. And it probably, in a way, could be affecting how they approach their work and career decisions.
This is the third Sistas In Sales Summit. How have the events and the conversations evolved over the years? And, heading into this Summit, what has been top of mind as you’ve developed the conversations, given the economic and social events we’ve been experiencing this year, over the past 6 months?
Our first summit was really all about providing the community exposure to top tech and media companies—Google, BuzzFeed, etc. My thought was, ‘Let’s ensure that the women who attend this event, if they ever need a job, if they ever need career advice, they will have someone in the room that they can connect directly with.’ Check! Then, the second evolution was, let’s make sure that we are highlighting women of color who are in these careers and who can tell their stories and serve as role models. So, we added panel discussions with opportunities, again, for women to meet one another. And we went from ten women at a dinner table to a fully built-out event with a hundred or so women meeting in person, sharing ideas and knowing that when they go to future SiS events, they’ll recognize each other and even become friends.
And now, with this upcoming summit, I brought it to a completely different level, because I included the element that would address the climate that we’re in AND specifically highlight a woman who could act as a north star for us. Her name is Bonita Stewart, Vice President of Global Partnerships at Google and a powerhouse Black woman who is responsible for an enormous amount of revenue. When you think about going into a profession, let’s say law and you’re a Black lawyer, maybe you think about Johnny Cochran. When you’re a Black saleswoman who are you thinking about? Who is the woman that’s made it? I thought, ‘We have to have a huge moment with this woman. We have to show women what your career could look like in the next 15-20 years.’ It’s hope, it’s inspiration, it’s what makes us drive to work.
The second thing we’ve worked on for this summit is bumping up the level of education—the skill-building take-aways—so, instead of break-out sessions about sponsor companies, this time, those sessions are classes, from executive communications to how to sell to a technical buyer or to a non-technical buyer led by one of our sponsors, Twilio. There is “How to negotiate” and “How to organize your book of business,” presented by Google. There’s an introduction to IT sales by Twilio. We are not just having meet-and-greets; we’re challenging our network and our members to actually walk through actionable items they can use in their day jobs immediately. And that’s a huge pivot.
Lastly, Day Two is designed around healing: meditation, an affirmation morning and a conversation about mental health as a salesperson led by Ashley Faust, Head of Growth at Alma, a mental healthcare start-up. Then we’ll have a town hall featuring Dr. Amanda Cadore who is a behavioral scientist at the CDC and Ezinne Kwubiri, North America, Head of Inclusion & Diversity for H&M, in discussion with Netta Jenkins, Co-founder of Dipper, about the atrocities that have happened within our community. This will lead to creating an action plan for healing and moving forward.
Aside from having people attend this summit and enjoying the conversation with you, do you have any advice for companies that are looking to increase diversity on their sales teams or also support the diversity that is already on their teams?
I think that’s a broad question. Inclusion and diversity in your sales team, in my opinion, falls on the hiring manager’s network. Often, recruiters will come with a short-list of people: maybe the recruiter has done the work and gone out and looked in non-traditional places or approached minority organizations and come up with a really curated list of perhaps ten people. At the same time, the hiring manager might have ten people, but those ten people might be the ten people in that individual’s network, and if the hiring manager, let’s say, is a white man, most likely the ten people that he proposes to the recruiter are ten white men; so, it’s this duel between the recruiter and the hiring manager. And, I just think it starts and ends with the hiring manager. If you hire hiring managers that are seemingly close minded, that are seemingly non-inclusive, then you can’t expect that they’re going to build a team that’s going to be completely different from their values.
What about, if they have a diverse sales team, or team in general, supporting that diversity? Do you have any advice for managers to better support individuals on their team?
I believe that the managers who have diverse teams should be going above and beyond to know what’s going on in the world as it might affect the people on their team. The past couple of days have been so challenging with Jacob Blake and Chadwick Boseman; it’s just one thing after another. It’s on the manager to not come across as tone-deaf, to be thoughtful and tuned in to world events. And as much as that may sound like a heavy lift, you do bring out the best in your people if you can connect with them in a deeper way.
I managed a team a few years ago and I remember having a conversation with a director that, at the time, I didn’t really understand, but as I continue to move forward in my career I appreciate more and more. Basically she said, ‘You are really talented; you understand how to work, how to do sales, how to talk to clients and I know you’re going to pass that tactical skill to your team; but the question is, will your team run through walls for you? And will they stay late for you? Will they come early for you? Will they care about your success?’ I realized it was a bidirectional thought process I had never really considered. I need to care so much about their mental health, their lives, their motivations, so that they care about mine and so that we’re working really together not just them working for me. If you want your Black employees to stay, you have to care. If you do, you’ll end up with a team that will run through walls for you.
How is that caring evidenced? What does the manager say at a time like this? So let’s say specifically, right now, with what’s happened, what are those words?
It’s as simple as, ‘I know that this happened in your community. I know that Chadwick has passed. Are you okay?’ I don’t think anyone is looking for perfection, just acknowledgement. Being a Black person in sales, you already know that you have to do some code switching, you have to put on a mask in some way, shape, or form. You do that with your clients every day, which is about 90% of your job. Then you have interactions with your manager, maybe that’s 10% of your job. If your interactions with your manager are also masked and are also your inauthentic self and are also through code switching, then 100% of your job is code switching. It’s exhausting. I think that if your conversations with your manager can be authentic, cathartic, a safe space, then you have more energy to put towards making it through your day job. Things are changing and eventually we’re going to have a place where Black people can be their authentic selves-- where they are and I am. I know that not all sales cultures are like that right now, and I hope for that to change. But for the current state, the best thing your manager can do is just show that they care, because that signals to the person, ‘Hey, I can relax. My manager knows. I can relax. I can take that 10% back and put it back into myself.’
How can organizations partner with and support Sistas in Sales? How can they get in touch with you, are you looking for anything at the moment, how can we make sure that companies are able to best support you?
We are always looking to work with amazing partners that care about a strategic relationship with these women and are looking for the long-haul, not just one-off events. Although we will work with that, it’s not really our preference. We want to develop a long-term relationship so we can expose the women of our organization to you. For example, over the past 4-5 months we’ve been putting out thoughtful blogs about women’s stories at Salesforce, from someone who just came off maternity leave, to someone who‘s an RVP. We want to show what’s behind closed doors. It’s not going to be one blog and one event to really get that message across. It’s going to be a longer form of partnership--that’s really what we’re looking for. Through this you get a sense of, ‘I know there are women that work here that are like me. I’ve read their stories. It feels safe.’ We want the women to approach working in their companies in that way.
To obtain more information about Sistas in Sales and the upcoming Sistas in Sales Virtual Summit 2020: click here.