Guest Speaker Series – Sarah Mills – AE at InVision

Not a Linear career journey, but one full of lessons.

We were delighted to welcome Sarah Mills, Account Executive at InVision, as our Academy Guest Speaker this week. Sarah has had a very exciting career and although not the typical, linear career everyone expects, she said that she learnt many lessons along the way that have shaped her into the person she is today. 

 

Self-reflection is key to personal and professional growth

 

How can you be the most successful people, not just in work she asked the group? When you’re in sales you learn a lot of skills that help you become a better colleague, friend, partner. Sarah puts this down to the fact that you uncover a lot of unconscious biases that you may have. This self-reflection will allow you to become better in your professional and personal life. The biases we have are obviously natural, however you should still make an effort to try and be aware of them. 

 

From teacher to Yoga instructor to a career in sales

 

Sarah has done plenty of different roles, once she came out of university; she decided that she would start a career as a teacher. This was her passion and what she truly cared about. However, she loved this role so much that she said she would often think about it 24/7 and not have any time to switch off. So in a way, the role became her due to the passion.  After this role, she decided to use her teaching skills to become a yoga instructor in Nicaragua from 2016 – 2017. This way she could use her skills, but also have the opportunity to switch off at the end of the day. 

 

After a year of yoga, that Sarah calls a “late gap year” she went on to get a role in London in sales, working with our very own Chris Ritson at Peakon. After a year of this, Sarah decided that she was done with sales and took some more time to do some self-reflecting, this time in Spain, where she surfed, but realised that the surf camp she worked at had terrible customer service. At this point she began to mentor her managers to try and improve the way they talk to people. When at Peakon, Sarah felt that she was just irritating people and disturbing them all the time in her SDR role. However, when she went to Spain to work at the surf camp, she came to a realisation that the reason why she was able to mentor her managers was due to the people skills she picked up during her short time in sales.

 

Sometimes taking a step back is the best course

 

After this realisation, Sarah decided to give sales another shot and has now become an Account Executive at InVision after 2 years in her role. One thing that really stuck with everyone is that sometimes to see the value in something you have to take a step back. So no matter how your journey pans out, there’s always value in all of your experience.