Why Every Entrepreneur Should Start in Sales

Listen to STS Managing Director Sherry Orel on The Break Free Podcast

The Break Free Podcast, hosted by David Mansilla, features guests who share their recipe of success to break free from barriers that have held them back in their lives so they can learn to break through to extraordinary success – both professionally and personally.

In this episode, David interviewed STS Managing Director Sherry Orel, who shared her entrepreneurial career journey. She also provided her advice on why entrepreneurs should think like a salesperson if they want to establish a career or a company that succeeds.

Here are four high-level takeaways from the podcast:

1) Being an entrepreneur means you can identify opportunities, anywhere. Sherry said she launched her career after asking for more responsibility beyond her role as a receptionist for a marketing company. She was quickly promoted within that company and over the years, she found herself in roles spanning sales, marketing, leadership, and management. Sherry attributes her request for more responsibility as her first entrepreneurial endeavor and it has since defined her career path as an intrapreneur.

2) Focus on employee growth sooner than later. At one of her foundational career roles, Sherry successfully improved sales and operational resilience together to increase client satisfaction. Through that sales experience and after consulting other entrepreneurs, she learned that companies should create an intentional strategy for perpetual growth and give employees an upside that to prevent situations where disenchantment can emerge. For sales teams and any organization that wants to keep talent performing, Sherry advises delicately scaling through establishing new models, offering more opportunities, and making gradual changes to an existing team.

3) Create opportunities by saying yes. From early on in her career, Sherry found herself in ambitious situations professionally that she never anticipated but was able to tackle because she would say yes. Saying yes has defined her career in a positive way, since that has allowed her to always seize opportunities as they come. She also said she never worried about failure but rather, she has always focused on figuring out challenges and embracing mistakes that would result in valuable learnings.

4) Continue asking yourself “how hard could it be?” A personal mantra of Sherry’s, she recommends thinking of this term to remove fear since it can help you as a salesperson and in other areas of life. She suggests using this saying as a positive way to help your subconscious continue moving toward entrepreneurial goals that would otherwise be intimidating. Sherry said that as her career progressed in business, asking herself “how hard could it be” made overwhelming opportunities approachable.

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