A Day in the Life of Colt’s Beatriz Solano

In this week’s 'A Day in the Life of...' interview, Colt’s Beatriz Solano provides an insight into her role as Head of Sales Effectiveness.

Hi Beatriz, can you tell us a bit about your role and how you got here? 

I run a function inside Customer and Sales Success, the Sales Effectiveness team. We provide first-hand development and support to front-line sales professionals and their managers. We share best practice and know-how, and run key projects to cover internal and external sales needs and processes. I was part of the team for three years. When the former manager moved to a different organization, the position became vacant and I saw a great opportunity to lead the team and bring an element of transformation.

What does a typical day look like for you? 

Although I try to be quite firm with my agenda, not every day is the same and I am not that good at sticking to the planned agenda as I know that some things will require my attention at short notice. I usually start the day by quickly creating a “to do list”. I write down the 5+ things that I need to do at some point during the day, then I jump into different scheduled calls to ensure I have visibility of what is most important for us to focus on that will create short and lasting benefits for our sales community. I also work with operations quite often to help close the gap between sales needs and ensuring that our processes and procedures are aligned to it. I literally just moved to the role, so there are a lot of discovery calls. Since I moved to Kent and got a dog, I finish work at around 4pm so I can take her for a walk. The break also helps to put my thoughts into perspective. Then I return to my office and finish my day by responding to any pending emails. I also write the next day's “to do list”. My day is spent mostly on video calls, so now I am trying to embrace Fridays calls with no video to help reduce screen fatigue.

What part of your role do you enjoy the most?

I am good at solving problems and identifying patterns, so I very much enjoy listening to our stakeholders and understand where we can best make a difference. I liaise with many different business units at Colt, which have a very diverse set of requirements, and collaboration is a key element of any sales enablement team. I am also a fan of frameworks and data, and having a clear visual plan or structure helps me to be more effective. I tend to overuse PowerPoint to capture and express all my thoughts, but I don’t think this is a bad thing. Our main aim is to ensure that sales are successful, so collecting feedback and being able to confirm we have made a positive impact is very rewarding.

Which top three skills are vital for this role and why?

Firstly, being able to identify the real need from all the noise is key. So an element of analytical and critical thinking is important. Secondly, prioritization is crucial – being able to distinguish the need from the urgency of the moment and the impact of the decisions that are made, and the ability to balance quality and quantity. If you are a perfectionist, you might compromise the agility that business needs nowadays, so balancing the urgency and the long-term success is important. Third, I would say Innovation. Sales Effectiveness is primarily seen as a training and development unit, but it's about much more than that. We can be a revenue partner for the business by focusing on readiness, embracing change, and supporting the business to be more digitally savvy and effective.

What’s the most challenging aspect of your role? 

At an organizational level, building the credibility between all the different stakeholders. There are many demands and some of them are opposing, so navigating the ambiguity and complexity is quite challenging at present. Showing that we can add value to their goals is key. My team's role is to build trust across the team so that we can take them to a better place as a group. I was once their peer, so it is important that they can embrace the changes we need to take to be more successful. There are many demands from the market and we need to ensure we create the bridge between how we sell today and what is expected from a sales professional of the future.

How do you help others feel like they belong in your team and promote inclusion? 

I talk always with transparency about my personal life, my wife and my concerns, so I share loads of personal thoughts, and I encourage my team to do the same. When I first spoke to the team, I told them that challenging one another is good practice to identify our blind spots, and only by speaking up can we achieve that level of equity and ways to achieve our goals. I give them the space to talk about their personal lives too and what is important to them, so I can help to meet their needs too. I like to build an atmosphere of confidentiality. What we discuss between us doesn’t have to be shared if they don’t want to. I believe it's essential to provide a safe space to allow that. I am quite direct and am always asking my team about what they think and how we can do things differently to ensure we all contribute to decisions that need to be made. 

Which podcast/Youtube series would you recommend to someone interested in pursuing a career in this area to help develop their skills and prepare them for the role? 

My wife and I are great fans of podcasts in general, and are always exchanging ideas. She is great at sending me podcasts to listen to. She is a ceramicist and listens to all sorts of podcasts while she works. During dinner we often talk about work, as well as other things, and she will often chime in and say, "oh, I will send you a podcast that talks about that." At present I am very hooked on Women at Work, from the Harvard Business Review which features great business stories and know-how for women. I also just finished The Diary of a CEO from Steven Barlett, which I quite enjoyed. But if you are interested in short stories, I recommend Womanica. What’sHerName is also great to get to know women in history and reclaim our space in history too. 

Where do you see yourself in 10 years? 

Wow, how the market and roles are evolving. It's quite a challenging to predict where we will be in five years from now, let alone 10 years. However, I can tell you that since I took on this role, I am definitely more determined in supporting women and minorities in sales roles, particularly in leadership... so probably something related to that. 

Colt's Beatriz Solano will be speaking at myGwork's WorkPride 2023: How to secure a career in tech on Tuesday June 20 at 14.00 PM BST. Click here to register for free.