What is your WHY?

It’s been wonderfully eye-opening to read recent stories from my fellow Conga colleagues and leaders, Kerry Hudson and Bri Turner (Bowen) . They truly opened up about the journeys they’ve undertaken (and are still on), what inspires them to keep pushing every day, and the strength to overcome hardships in becoming the bad A&* female leaders they are today.

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Their stories moved me to share my own personal journey because, as a woman in sales—more specifically, sales leadership—these stories can be hard to come by. I could write a lot about being female in the corporate world, tech industry, and in sales leadership in general, but I wanted to take this opportunity to focus on my last 12 months at Conga.

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It was very shortly after I returned from maternity leave that?Kerry called. She wanted me to join her newly re-organized team as a Commercial Regional VP of Sales. I was more than eager to take on the role, but accompanying that split second of excitement was the thought, Could I be a successful sales leader while balancing being a new mom? Would I be looked at differently doing so?

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The statistics for women in tech aren’t encouraging. We hold only 28%?of technology jobs. Of this 28%, fewer are in sales and even fewer still are in sales leadership (or leadership overall). Only 10% of those who hold C-suite roles are women. And these stats don’t even include the women who are both leaders and new mothers.

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When offered the role, I wasn’t thinking about whether I had the skills necessary to excel in the position. Instead, I began wondering whether colleagues and my team would doubt my abilities because of my new mom status. I thought about how I could possibly balance being a mom while meeting the demands (let alone exceeding the goals) of this job.

The reality of the situation after I began was quite the opposite, not only was I engulfed by support from Kerry, who shared her own experiences about rising into leadership positions as a new mom, I was overwhelmed by the support of my fellow Commercial leaders, Ben Cotton , Andrew Kennel , Holly Stern , Sarah Vinson and Joey DeSimone , and Conga’s executive sponsors, Jeff Ford and Eric Salava among many others.

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In my first year in the position, both myself and my team excelled tremendously. Not only over performing and increasing productivity on a KPI level, we all leaned in and embodied something we call the Conga Way. This required each of us to identify why we are here and why we are going to work so incredibly hard day in and day out.

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My WHY was my new son and the family I was creating; for others, it may have been different. Our WHYs drove the team and I to deliver one of the best years I’ve experienced in tech—measured not just by numbers, but by memories and the anticipation of even greater accomplishments.

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Our team is diverse. It’s comprised of people of different ages, backgrounds, genders, and races, and we achieved something few teams in SaaS sales could claim: EVERY person exceeded 100% of their quota! All because we took advantage of the best parts of one another, kept our heads down, and worked together. We also understood that, by knowing (and prioritizing) our WHYs, we could accomplish anything.

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Thank you to my team and everyone who builds me up, and thank you to all my colleagues, who continue to be part of building something great here at Conga.

William Fox Jill (Permoda) Hadden Nick Raymond No?l Armstrong Tyler Dickey Chelsea Humbach Drew Jackson Graham Crawford Christian Luker Jess Smith