Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Beth Renninger – You Don’t Need To Know Everything

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Beth Renninger

What she does: Beth is the Director of Center of Sales Success at the University of South Carolina.

Company/Institution: University of South Carolina

Noteworthy: Beth started the sales program at the University of South Carolina in 2016. Till today, she has managed to expand her team, get 12 companies on board, and do what she loves. Her ultimate goal is to create a group where diversity and inclusion are highly promoted.

Where to find Beth: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡ Design your life. Then search for a career. Beth believes that figuring out the life we want to live and how we want to live it has a significant impact on our career choice. “Design your life. Know the life you want and where you want to live. Know what you want your weeks and days to look like, and what your goals in life are. Then find the career and the job that’s going to get you there.”

⚡ Sales professionals are curious and good listeners. Beth defines a successful salesperson as a curious individual who knows how to listen to other people. “If you are curious and a good listener, you can be an outstanding sales professional. […] If you’re curious, then sales and marketing is the career for you.”

⚡ No one expects you to know everything. According to Beth, students shouldn’t be afraid of failure or that they don’t know how to solve a problem. After all, no one can know everything. “No one expects you to know everything. Just do the best you can — listen carefully, follow through, seek coaching and the best practices from your peers, and take it as it comes.”

Episode Highlights

Beth Renninger: A Personal Highlight Reel

“I currently teach at the University of South Carolina. I work with corporate partners who are looking for entry-level sales talent, and I get the privilege of playing matchmaker between the two. What’s great about this job is working with students and the next generation of sales and marketing talent. […] I always tell my students, ‘You can’t know exactly what your life is going to look like when you’re starting out. You just put one foot in front of the other, take one step.’ And it’s very interesting how things build on each other. For me, everything has come full circle.”

In Sales, It’s Not About Well-Known Methodologies. It’s How You Connect with Someone

“What I always say to them [my students] is, ‘When you learn to sell effectively, and you learn the art of influence, you can always get what you want in life.’ […] So, we don’t employ a lot of the well-known methodologies. It comes down to how you connect with someone at the beginning of a conversation — how you go into discovery and ask them what’s going on in their world, in their business. […] We teach the ‘cashu’ process — connect, ask, solve, handle, and unite. We take them [students] through that, but we break it down and keep it simple to say, ‘Anybody can sell. Not everybody likes it, but anybody can do it.'”

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know, But You Can Commit to Learning

“You can’t be good at it [sales] right out of the gate. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you have to rely on discipline and commitment to the things that work.The idea of coachability is critical at the beginning — to stay open to it and say, ‘Okay, I don’t know what I don’t know.’ When I changed careers, a friend of mine gave me really good advice: ‘Just let yourself be new.’ It relieved the pressure on me. All of a sudden, I could be new again. I could take it all in and be a learner. That was tremendous advice. And that’s what I say to graduates: ‘Just let yourself be new.'”

Failure Doesn’t Make You a Bad (Sales) Person

“I had a tendency to take things personally. When things were great, I was off-the-charts happy. And if my team or I were struggling, the numbers weren’t what I wanted them to be, or if I lost a sale, it was very easy for me to take that personally — that I did something wrong, that I am bad, or that I messed up. […] But it was not about me. It’s business. It’s not personal.

As a sales professional, you might’ve lost the deal, but that doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job. And it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It just means that you didn’t get this deal. So, what will you do differently?” 

Sales is About Balancing Things

“When you leave an office where you have a very hard job (and sales jobs are very hard) you want to go to a place that makes you happy — whether you want to live at the beach or the mountains are your thing. You work for so many hours a day, and there is life outside that, as well. When you design your life for the kinds of activities and the places that you want to be, you understand — plugin and perform at work, unplug and live your life. And that’s the whole idea that students always ask about, ‘How do you balance things?’ It doesn’t happen by accident. You have to have a plan for that, and you have to know yourself to know what you want.”

Our Current Goal is to Improve the Diversity of Our Program

“We have an opportunity to improve the diversity of our program, and it is important to me. Diversity and inclusion have been part of my work world and my work philosophy for years. My teams always had diversity across every line — gender, race, sexual orientation, or work experience. And those high-performing teams were high performing because of the diversity that we had on it. We at South Carolina are committed to this, and our sales program is not anywhere near the levels at which I envisioned it to be. In order to walk the diversity and inclusion talk, sometimes you have to be willing to say, ‘What do we need to do differently from where we are right now?’ and embrace that.”

Advice for Students: Be Curious and Stay Open

“The best advice that I can give to students is to be curious and to stay open. Also, to stay in today because you can’t solve everything. Take the time to know yourself, and be curious about what you don’t know. I can’t teach, and a company can’t train for curiosity. You either have it, or you don’t. And if you are considering sales or marketing, I think curiosity is a baseline skill. You have to want to know, ‘Why do people do that?’ If you’re curious, then sales and marketing is the career for you.

Letting yourself learn, requiring yourself to learn, staying open to that, and knowing that you don’t need to have all the answers, but you do have to take charge of your own life — this is probably where I see students struggle. […] So, I always say —  practice with the easy stuff, practice experiencing failure in the classroom where the stakes are low, practice making decisions when they’re little ones, and get to know yourself. Then you have what you need when it’s time for the big ones [decisions].”

Transcript:

[00:01:17] Madisson DeLisle: Hi there.

[00:01:18] Kristen Wisdorf: Hi. All right. Beth, we are super pumped to have you joining us today. Welcome to the podcast. 

[00:01:25] Beth Renninger: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

[00:01:27] Kristen Wisdorf: Yeah, we’re excited to chat with you too. You’ve been with South Carolina now as the Director for, the Center for Sales Success. And previous to that, you have some really exciting marketing experience that I know a lot of our listeners would love to hear about, and how you made that transition from

[00:01:48] your career to education. But before we begin, I don’t want to, I don’t want to give it all away, I want to have you tell your own story. Why don’t we start the same way we start our interviews with students here at memoryBlue, which is, Beth, if you could take 60 seconds and give us your snapshot, let’s call it your personal highlight reel?

[00:02:10] Kristen Wisdorf: Let’s learn a little bit about you. 

[00:02:13] Beth Renninger: Okay, so that’s a challenge to start out here. So I currently teach at the University of South Carolina and I work with corporate partners who are looking for entry-level sales talent, and I get the privilege of playing matchmaker between the two. What’s great about this job is working with students and the next generation of sales and marketing talent.

[00:02:34] And the reason that I love my job so much is because when I was 21 and graduating from college, that was my dream, was to go work in corporate for maybe 30 years, something like that, which seemed like a lifetime to me, and then go and teach. And really take whatever I learned in my corporate career and bring it into a university setting.

[00:02:52] And so I have achieved that and I’m on my second career, and it’s really fun and has everything has kind of come together. So, while I always tell my students, “You can’t know exactly what your life is going to look like. When you’re starting out, you just kind of put one foot in front of the other, take one step.”

[00:03:09] And it’s very interesting to me how things build on each other, and for me, everything has come full circle.

[00:03:15] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay, that’s amazing. Most of the professors we speak to and the folks who head up the sales programs, kind of happened to stumble into running the sales program where they start teaching and then they’re asked to join the sales program. This was your dream. You always wanted to go back and teach, which I find really exciting.

[00:03:33] What do you think drew you to that path, you know, when you graduated high school and actually likable, enabled you to follow it, ultimately? 

[00:03:43] Beth Renninger: I think what drew me to this path was, at even as a mar, I was a marketing major, and as I was graduating, I felt like a couple of things. One, I know nothing. I don’t know why anybody’s going to hire me because I don’t, I’ve been through four years of college and I’m not sure what I know. What I learned is I learned how to learn.

[00:04:02] That’s what college teaches you, and then wherever you work and your job layers on top of that. But what I wanted to do, my favorite professors were the ones who had corporate experience. I thought they were the most interesting, and they could take academic theory and bring it to life. Those concepts would be, were communicated in stories and in projects

[00:04:25] where I got to kind of do something that felt to me to be real. And so I wanted the chance to go do and then go teach. And, and deliver the kind of experiences that I liked the most when I was in college. My corporate career was busy and demanding, and so I had not had the opportunity to be an adjunct and I thought perhaps my dream was going to die. But I did an informational interview with someone at South Carolina because I happen to be taking a little time off and was visiting here,

[00:04:59] really didn’t have any other ties there other than a family friend attended. And through that informational interview, this is why informational interviews work. I went in, asked somebody, “How did you get your job? What do you like about it? What would you change?” If you, by the end of the interview, I said, “I know there’s no job, but if you hear of anybody looking for someone like me with my skills and background,” which included marketing and sales,

[00:05:25] “would you let me know?” And he said, “Well, actually, we’re looking for someone to build a sales center.” And that was like the magic words for me. A- I’m a builder. I love to build things that don’t exist. And B- even when I exited enterprise sales and went into various marketing leadership roles, I always sold. I used my selling skills every day in everything I did.

[00:05:49] And so, a chance to bring those two things together sounded like nirvana to me. And it has been really fun.

[00:05:57] Kristen Wisdorf: Okay, that’s so exciting. Let’s take it way back. Where did you grow up and where did you ultimately go to undergrad? ‘Cause I’m interested in kind of what the early, you know, the life of Beth looked like and kind of what it looks like now being in South Carolina. You were just visiting and now you run the sales center at the school.

[00:06:15] It’s… 

[00:06:16] Beth Renninger: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m from Westchester, Pennsylvania, proud Pennsylvanian. And I went to Bloomsburg University, which is up in the mountains of Pennsylvania, and was a marketing major. And it’s funny they have a very strong sales program now that I just love and I’m happy to support them. I was always involved in a lot of things.

[00:06:36] I loved student leadership, so that looked like student council in high school and the inner sorority council, which became Panhellenic at Bloomsburg, while I attended there in different leadership positions. When I left there, I went with a company called Bell Atlantic that nobody remembers because it was the phone company and my intention was, it was a leadership development program,

[00:06:57] and I was like, “It’s the phone company. How fun can this be? I’ll do this for one year, maybe two.” Well, that industry, the communication industry over the next 30 years changed, and new products, and new consumer behaviors, and the program that I was in gave me a chance to work in operations. And then I went into sales, and then I went to strategic planning, marketing communications, a number of different marketing roles, rolling out products in a region, run a region.

[00:07:29] The internet started to blow up and that was life-changing for me. And I always tell my students, “You don’t know what will evolve.” Because it didn’t even exist when I was in college, it became my very favorite thing about marketing because all the power shifted to the consumer. It was no longer about message push from brands and companies.

[00:07:50] Beth Renninger: It was, “Can you engage your target market in meaningful and relevant ways with things they care about?” Needless to say, I did not leave the industry after two years, but I really believed in what we were doing. It doesn’t look cool and sexy now looking back, but what I held onto was we don’t contaminate the environment.

[00:08:11] We don’t experiment on animals. We don’t cause cancer. What we do is connect people to the things that they care about, and that was true when it was basic phone service. And it was also true by the time I left when we had rolled out the TV and internet products. By the time I left, I was running the digital transformation for the wireline business for consumers and small businesses nationwide.

[00:08:34] I had a global team doing various things, content production, website management, requirements definition for the e-commerce transaction, social media, the chat channels. And so, we had achieved some pretty big goals. And I, the point I left, I was like, “All right. Done everything that I wanted to do on the list.

[00:08:53] It’s time for ‘what’s next?'” And I came to South Carolina for three weeks, I came to Charleston. And three weeks turned into three months. And I had a non-compete, so I was running mad out and trying to figure out what do I want to do next. I felt like I was 21 again, and you get, on the threshold of how do you decide what you want to do.

[00:09:14] So I did an informational interview, which is what I tell my students to do. Found the team at South Carolina, and it just turned out that they were looking for someone to build this program and that was in 2000, the fall of 2016. And here I am five years starting my sixth year, halfway through my sixth year later,

[00:09:33] and the program now exists. It’s gotten bigger. We have now 12 companies, we had no companies. We have a strategy of value proposition, we have a lot of grads that are out there. I love my Gamecock sales grads that are all over the country, some are even all over the world. And it’s just been very exciting,

[00:09:51] and as I said, really a privilege to get a chance to work with the students and the grads.

[00:09:57] Kristen Wisdorf: That is so exciting. And you touched on this earlier, but when you were a student, you loved being in the

[00:10:04] professors, you know, classes who had stories and a real experience to share. And you have, I imagine, a lot of stories and real experience. You worked in an industry that evolved and changed and probably looks very different now than it did when you started.

[00:10:19] And I think that’s very interesting, especially now with so many students graduating and getting into industries that maybe didn’t even hire college students five years ago, let alone, when I graduated, right, like this technology and SaaS companies. How do you prepare your students, and what advice do you give them when they’re entering the industry or they’re selling about to sell something that they really don’t know that much about yet?

[00:10:45] Right? Like they, it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around, enterprise software solutions before, unless you’re a programmer and you’re helping create it, right? Like how do you, ’cause you had to do that personally and you learned an entire industry and watch to change and evolve, how do you prepare your students for things like that? 

[00:11:05] Beth Renninger: The way I prepare my students is really to keep it simple and try to give them some tools. Our program doesn’t teach any specific sales methodologies, there are a lot of them out there. It teaches a general five-step process of how to sell. And what I always say to them is, “When you learn to sell effectively and you learn the art of influence, you can always get what you want in your life,” which I think is exciting.

[00:11:31] So we don’t do a lot of the well-known methodologies. It really gets down to how do you connect with someone at the beginning of a conversation. Then how do you go into discovery and ask them what’s going on in their world, in their business, how do you identify what problems they have? And to me, that’s a key step.

[00:11:50] We don’t talk about pitches, we talk about being clear about the problem you solve. And then, of course, nobody says ‘yes’ right away. So how do you handle any concerns that they have? What’s in the way? Don’t run away from that, that’s where a lot of students get afraid. That’s where you lean in to say, and I love the words,

[00:12:09] “Tell me more. Tell me more about that. What is it that causes that and concern?” And then when they close at the end I said, “It’s not like this big cliffhanger sign this a contract, or, you know, let’s move this on, but recapping the benefits, and figuring out how to get on the same side with your prospect.” So,

[00:12:27] we talk that we, you know, we teach this, I call it the CASHU process, Connect, Ask, Solve, Handle and Unite. And we, we take them through that, but we break it down and keep it simple to say, anybody can sell, not everybody likes it, but anybody can do it. And then we put that into context with different scenarios and role-plays as all programs do, which is where sort of this focus on the tech industry and my interest in tech coming out of Verizon really comes from. I think it’s fascinating how sales have changed in the tech industry over the last, I don’t know, 10 years, something like that.

[00:13:09] And I think it’s going to continue to change with new tools and technology that are out there to support sales professionals, and that when you work in that industry, you are a professional. And you don’t have to know everything, but you know, have to know how to get things started. And that to me is the skill that we focus on just taking that first step and making sure that their skills to do that are strong.

[00:13:35] Madisson DeLisle: That’s, you know, that’s really awesome. Kristen and I both came from an outside sales, advertising background in college. We both actually worked at the same company. And there is something about industry knowing what kind of industry you want to go into. So I’d love to hear when students either don’t know or maybe they’re unsure about the tech industry specifically,

[00:13:57] I’d love to hear the advice you give them on how to go about researching what industry would be best for them if they were to go into sales.

[00:14:05] Beth Renninger: Yeah. So I always start with the student and I have a recruiter who is not in the tech industry, but he said that he shared this advice with students. I think he’s about eight years out of college. And he said, “My advice is to design the life. Know the life you want. Where do you want to live? What do you want your weeks to look like?

[00:14:23] What do you want a day to look like? What are your goals in your life? And then find the career and the job that’s going to get you there. Don’t take a job because of how it sounds. The company that you’re going to, you think you want to say, ‘I’m going to do blah, blah for this big company,’ that’s going to take you into a lifestyle that you might be miserable

[00:14:45] in.” And so I start with the students and kind of walk them through, “Do you know where you want to live? Do you know what you want your days to look like? How do you, where do you feel like you thrive? Do you like to be around a lot of people or do you like your alone time? How do you recharge?” Again, “Does do, are you an extrovert or are you an introvert?

[00:15:06] And neither of those is a wrong answer.” I always say to the students, “I’m an introvert, and I play the part of an extrovert on TV.” Because I am, if I, what recharges me is to sit with a book and a cup of tea. That’s, that’s my happy place. On the other hand, I love, I also love people and I’m very curious, so I say to students, “If you are curious and you are a good listener, you can be an outstanding sales professional because it is not as in the past where we thought being in sales meant talking a lot,

[00:15:40] it’s actually the opposite. Are you a good listener? Are you an active listener? Do you do more than hear what is said? Can you see what’s underneath it? Can you listen, stay in the moment and then know what question to ask next?” For me, those are some of the ways that I help the students. And then, our program is engagement-based for our corporate partners. And it’s intentionally and strategically built that way where the corporate partners have opportunities to talk to students about how they can tell their stories, become participants in the classroom content.

[00:16:16] We have a student-run organization called the Carolina Sales Institute, and our partners come and speak at that, not just about their company, but they help to skill up the members of CSI using competitions on campus, and various boot camps, and workshops. We help the students understand and set expectations about, “Here’s what a sales career might look like.

[00:16:41] Here’s a day in the life of inside sales. Here’s a day in the life of outside sales.” And then one thing that is the last, the last piece of this that I would say is it’s not just what happens on campus and in classrooms that are important to us. My or the USC alumni are invaluable for the students. And so we set up engagements, and we set up opportunities for the students to speak with young alumni,

[00:17:09] so recent graduates, some that have been out in the working world a little bit longer, internship panels to talk about what their experience was because the students work really well together. It’s how they think. So it’s one of the ways as a marketer and a sales professional we try to follow the behavior of how students learn, how they do, what they like to do, which is work together and collaborate with each other and then use that as a way to benefit the employers.

[00:17:39] So, some of the stuff we’ve had some big successes and the Gamecocks like to like I always say, they vote with their feet. And so when they find a great alternative that they’re happy with, they do a good job of really communicating that back to this, the students that are still there.

[00:17:59] Kristen Wisdorf: I love the way you started talking about how you can help them find the right fit for them. It’s designed for your life, and it’s really a series of quite simple questions. Right? What do you want your days to look like? Where do you want to live? How do you recharge? I think sometimes it’s this big change.

[00:18:18] I remember graduating college, “Where am I going to live? What am I going to do? What company do I think is going to look flashy on my resume?” Right? And it’s, it’s really, it’s a little bit more, I guess, simple and less threatening than sometimes we put pressure on ourselves when we’re graduating college and looking for that next role.

[00:18:35] And that’s a great place to start for your students. I love that. 

[00:18:39] Beth Renninger: Thank you. Yeah, it really is simple. And what I also emphasize is I try to bring down that pressure that you just mentioned a little bit, to say, “You can’t plan out your whole life. There are too many unknowns.” Who saw a global pandemic coming? Nobody. So, “But what you can do is make a smart and intentional first choice for yourself.

[00:19:02] And that means, you know, whether your, your parents, your siblings, your cousins, your friends really understand what you’re doing, but you, as long as you understand what you’re doing and what’s your ‘why’ behind that, that’s what counts. It’s not forever. You’re not trapped. And if you change your mind later, easy to do that, especially in this market.

[00:19:23] So to kind of bring things back down to size to say this isn’t, you know, your life, that’s on the line here. It’s just, what are you going to do for the next two years?” I try to say to them, “Make a commitment where you think you can live with it for at least two years because the first six months you won’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

[00:19:41] One of my friends, another colleague at App State, I always quote her with this because she says, “You can have competent, you can’t have confidence without competence.” And it’s so true in sales. And, and every job I did inside of a 30-year career probably did close to 12, maybe even 15 different jobs. The first few months, I never knew what I was doing.

[00:20:05] And I would always think, “This’ll be the time I get fired, ’cause I just, I have no idea what I’m doing.” But, after a while, I learned. I had six months of being clueless, and then I understand what I’m supposed to do for the next six months. And then that second year I could actually get good at it and refine my skills and really start to perform.

[00:20:23] But it takes patience. It does not happen right away. And so that idea of patience, relieving the pressure, those are some of the concepts that we try to thread into the experiences and, and the conversations that we have at South Caroline.

[00:20:41] Kristen Wisdorf: You just said something that I say to my team when they’re, it’s very common here at memoryBlue, we call it ‘elevated’ which is our internal word for promoted. And I say, especially when they you know, the folks that are interested in their first leadership role, it takes a year to learn the job and get, and understand it.

[00:21:57] And it’s kinda like you’re in a tornado. You really don’t know what you’re doing, especially the first six months. And then your second year, you get to apply all the things that you learned and really get to experience and enjoy all the things you learned in the first year. So I love that you said that because it really resonates.

[00:22:14] And I think if students or young people get into their first job, whether they’re just graduating or not, just look at it as a tour of duty and that you’ve got your whole career ahead of you. Just look at, just focus on the next two years, it kind of takes the pressure, it relieves some of the pressure.

[00:22:32] So I love that. Yeah. Was that colleague Bonnie Guy, Dr. Guy? Yeah, Yeah. 

[00:22:40] Beth Renninger: It was so brilliant. It might’ve been one of her posts on LinkedIn and I saw her this summer and I said, “I just want to tell you I quote you all the time with that because I like things that are simple, clear, and brief.” And in those couple of words, she encapsulated everything, I think, especially with the sales career, because you just can’t be good at it right out of the gate.

[00:23:06] You know? You don’t know what you don’t know, and you have to just rely on discipline and commitment to the things that you know work. And then also that idea of coachability is critical at the beginning. And staying open to that and saying, “You know what? I don’t know what I don’t know.” When I changed careers, and the first day walking into South Carolina, a friend of mine gave me really good advice.

[00:23:31] You know, leaving Verizon after all of those years, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t get done, somebody I didn’t know. There would be a connection to somebody and somewhere in the company. But I went into South Carolina, I knew no one, I knew nothing. And she said, “Just let yourself be new.” And that

[00:23:50] relieved pressure on me, because I was used to be in a business executive who was on the hook and accountable for everything that happened. And all of a sudden I could be new again like I was 21 or 22, and just take it all in and be a learner. That was tremendous advice. So that’s what I say to the graduates,

[00:24:12] “Just let yourself be known. No one expects you to know anything. Just do the best you can. Listen carefully, follow-through, seek coaching and best practices from your peers, and take it as it comes.”

[00:24:24] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s great. That’s such good advice. Okay, well, let’s talk about that career of yours in more detail. So, you have had experience in sales, operations, marketing in an industry that is massive and it’s changed and grown a lot. I want you to think back to some of your kind of sales experiences, and sales experience could be really in any role, right,

[00:24:46] because sales are kind of part of everything. What are some of the most memorable, like lessons, you personally learned on the job? Is anything kind of stand out to you as like a story or an experience, a lesson that you learned, maybe the hard way? 

[00:25:03] Beth Renninger: Yeah. So here’s the story of the hard way. I had been taught working with a corporate partner about Voice and Data Networks. And we were still at the time kind of more of a regional player, but we had a couple of business partners and subsidiaries, and I had put together a Nationwide Solutions for a manufacturing company.

[00:25:21] So it was a big deal. And I had people flying, and helicoptering, and driving in a bunch of executives for this huge presentation. And I had recently had a baby, so I had like a little wind-up toy that was my daughter’s little toy, and it was hidden behind the podium for me is like, you know, a little reminder of what my ‘why’ was. I got into the presentation,

[00:25:44] it was time to do the recap at the end. And I’m like, “So three really important things I want you to remember about this solution. The first is this, the second is this, and the third is, and the third is, and the third is,” and my mind went blank. I mean, that’s a terrifying moment. And I had to like ease my way back to behind the podium where my notes were,

[00:26:06] and I said, just bear with me for a second and look at my notes, “And the third is this.” So I finished, I was mortified. I thought that I blew the whole deal and that it was that one mistake that was going to lose me this opportunity after months of work. And I had a sales director and she said, “Beth, you stood up there like butter would’ve melted in your mouth,

[00:26:28] and we were all pulling for you.” And so what I learned then, ’cause I am a recovering perfectionist and a career-long perfectionist, nothing was ever good enough. I always share that with the student, “It’s not fun to be a perfectionist.” And so I thought it was all for, it was lost. I got the deal, so that was the good news.

[00:26:48] And it was not that one moment. So remembering that back to the pressure, it is not anyone moment that makes or breaks a career or a deal. It is all the little things that you do day to day, building a reputation, building a relationship, understanding your client, what do they really need from you, how can you help them,

[00:27:08] what problem can you solve, that I think is really the most important thing. Then the second story that I would say is to know that your selling skills are forever. So that was in an enterprise sales role, and in my last role leading the digital marketing team at Verizon, as a leader, we had aggressive goals.

[00:27:32] We were trying to meet in terms of online transactions, which means nothing to anybody except for us other than, instead of having people call us on the phone, we wanted them to go to our digital tools. Go to the website, go to the mobile ordering, go through the chat channels, because it was more efficient for us.

[00:27:51] And so, and it also could, in some cases, provide them the information that they needed faster. And so really figuring out how to do that, that took a lot of technology embedded in those experiences to make it work. That took investment from the business. So I had to sell. And I use those same selling skills, understanding the problem that my team and I could solve.

[00:28:15] How did I position the solution? Building and collaborating with the client. In that case, the client was other parts of the business, as well as my boss, the chief marketing officer, and making sure that they were clear on the benefits that we could deliver. So I always say to my students, “Even if you think that you want a marketing career, sales experience is the ticket to ride. You will sell

[00:28:40] the rest of your life. Whether you’re selling your partner on where you want to go to dinner or on vacation, selling a C-suite executive on your ideas, or closing a deal that you know, in a professional sales capacity. If you understand the process,” that’s why I say, “It’ll help you get whatever it is that you want in your life and in your work,

[00:29:04] and therefore is a superpower that can benefit everybody.”

[00:29:08] I think that’s really great. I actually wish I had had a professor like you. When I was in school, I was a marketing student that was dead set, “I’m never going into sales,” and now I’ve been in sales for eight years. So I needed someone like you, you know, in my corner telling me this is kind of what to do.

[00:29:26] I’d love to hear from your experience in sales, you know, maybe one of the times where you didn’t get the sales, something challenging and how you use that to improve on the next time you got to meet with a client. Sometimes you may be failed and then you used it to better yourself.

[00:29:44] Beth Renninger: Yeah. So that Nationwide network, that, that whole experience was chock-full of learning. ‘Cause while I got the deal, I didn’t get the deal I pitched. So I pitched 10, I think it was 10 or 12 locations, and when all was said and done, I ended up getting about half of them that went with our solution and the other half went to a competitor.

[00:30:06] And so I really was left with, I can view this as a success and you hear that I talk about it as a success, or I could view it as a failure. And the person on the client-side was dead set against us as a company. And she had a long history of unhooking the Verizon systems everywhere she went to work, reconnecting a competitor’s systems, and putting those in place. To the point that it started, you know, to us, of course, we’re like, “Oh, that looks suspicious.”

[00:30:37] And who knows if it was. But at the end of the day, the relationships that I had built with some of the people who were in those outlying locations, kept the business with us, and other locations went with the other solution. Of course, the pricing did not turn out to be what she had said and the cost justification that she had used.

[00:30:59] Beth Renninger: In the end, I kept and I built on the strength of what I had accomplished with those locations that really wanted to be our partner. And in our, in my mind, that was a win. What I also had to do and what I think is also so important in sales, and this was a struggle for me throughout my career, I’m so all in on everything that I do. I get on board and I’m a cheerleader and I’m passionate, as you can tell from the way I speak.

[00:31:27] I tended to take things personally. And so when things were great I was off the charts happy, and if my team or I were struggling, the numbers weren’t what I wanted them to be or I lost a sale, it was very easy for me to take that personally that I did something wrong. that I am bad.

[00:31:47] Beth Renninger: or that I messed up. And what I’ve learned and what I wish I knew when I was 22 was But it was not about me. And you know that old saying, it’s not, it’s business, it’s not personal. Well, yeah, unless you’re really passionate about what you do and delivering success for whoever you work for. It’s easy to say, it’s hard to do that.

[00:32:08] So an organization benefits from a passionate person, but the balance is letting them know that you know, it’s like we say with kids. You might’ve done a bad thing that behavior is bad, that doesn’t make you a bad person. And so yes, you as a sales professional, you might’ve lost the deal, but that doesn’t mean you’re bad at your job.

[00:32:26] And it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It just means that you didn’t get this deal, so what will you do differently? And with the alumni that I talked to after they leave, I like them to have a, I call it friction in their process. I like when they get to a job and they’re not good at it immediately, and I tell them that. Because it forces them to go back to the fundamentals of what to do and how to do it.

[00:32:53] And I always encourage them, and they now tell me, “I talk to people who are having success and I ask them, ‘What are you doing that worked well? Well, what, what is your email campaign look like? What have you tested? What do, you know, what’s driving response on that? What messaging have you tried that worked well,

[00:33:10] what hasn’t worked well? What’s your opening on your cold call? When you follow up on this kind of lead, what’s working for you?'” I collect all of that and then think about it and then make it their own. No one that’s out there, you know, there’s no company that is a really succeeds in and of itself. There are mentors, there are peers, it is a team,

[00:33:34] and so business by its very nature is a collaborative community when it’s at its best. And so the more that we can embrace that and leverage that, then the greater, the success that any team can have. That was a big part of my leadership style at Verizon was, I would say, “I’m so glad I don’t have to come up with the answer to this on my own.”

[00:33:55] Beth Renninger: And I’d pull my team, which was the smartest people that I knew together. Put them in a room and tell them, “I have complete confidence that you guys can solve this.” Inside my head, I’m thinking I have no idea what we’re going to do, but I would turn them loose on it with a lot of encouragement, inspiration and motivation.

[00:34:11] They would get after it in a way they would go and deliver success every time. And so that’s, I guess those are a couple of things that I would share.

[00:34:21] Madisson DeLisle: That’s great. And I want to go off of one particular thing you said that kind of is sticking in my mind. You know you said every company needs those people that are that passionate about it. So what, what’s your advice be to those? ‘Cause we all know that students alone going into their first-time job are

[00:34:38] nervous. It’s a roller coaster of emotion leaving college and sales is not easy. Getting rejected is not easy, even if it’s not personal. So what’s your advice for those students that you have that are, you can already tell are going to be those passionate, like the hard times are going to hit hard, but the great ones are going to be great?

[00:34:57] How would you recommend they balance that out so that they’re not constantly in a roller coaster of emotion with the sales role?

[00:35:05] Beth Renninger: I’m going to, I’m going to go to the experience at some of our Gamecock grads have had that they have shared with me. And that is to really know that you can hit a drought, and you can go weeks with nothing happening, and then the very next day close two or three deals. And so it comes back to patience and really understanding that today is not forever.

[00:35:30] That means a person that you just talked to is right now, it’s not going to be every time, every phone call. And so the idea of patience and staying in the moment and not giving up, I also would say, “This is where really designing your life for what you want it to look like all together becomes important.” Because if you leave an office where you have a very hard job and these sales jobs are very hard, you want to go to a place

[00:36:01] that makes you happy, whether you want to live at the beach, so you can go surf or walk the beach, or the mountains are your thing, and you want to ski, or you want to hike, people that share your interests because you work for so many hours a day, but then life happens outside of that as well. So when you design your life for the kinds of activities and the place that you want to be,

[00:36:25] you understand, plugin and perform at work, unplug and go do and live your life. And that’s where this whole idea that students always ask about, “You know, how do you balance things?” It doesn’t happen by accident. It, you have to have a plan for that, and you have to know yourself, to know what you want.

[00:36:45] Kristen Wisdorf: I love that. You, you know you’ve mentioned it a couple of times, design your life, think about what you want

[00:36:50] your life to look like. And you had your own personal goal and you designed your future of going back and educating. So now let’s talk about the sales center at South Carolina and kind of how you’ve built the program over the last few years.

[00:37:04] What are, you’ve done a lot, right? You’ve grown from zero partners who, I think you said 12 partners now. Yeah, that’s, that’s really exciting. What does the future look like for your program? And I imagine you have even more goals, right? What are some of the kind of short-term next couple of years and longer-term goals for your program? 

[00:37:25] Beth Renninger: Yeah. So, I think coming from Verizon, I saw this opportunity in the tech industry. I also looked at the jobs and I’m a big believer in encouraging students to get with a company that has a tailwind, that has momentum going forward. And I don’t know that any industry has that as much as tech does right now.

[00:37:46] There’s just, there’s no end in sight. And so to me, that’s, that’s part of the appeal and my, I have big goals. And one of the goals is to make South Carolina a destination, the top destination for tech, tech, tech, sales talent. I think that when we can prepare the students, they can perform successfully.

[00:38:06] And then that gets this flywheel going where the more positive the experience the graduates have, the more students that want to go there. And we have a couple of companies where we have created that flywheel and it’s, it’s going at scale and it’s phenomenal. The other thing is we have an opportunity to improve the diversity of our program,

[00:38:27] and it is really important to me. Diversity and inclusion were key. It’s been part of my work world and my work philosophy for years. I mean, I’m going back over 20 years at Verizon and it was just how we did what we did. My teams always had diversity across every line, gender, race, sexual orientation, gender or experience, work experience.

[00:38:53] And those high-performing teams were high-performing because of the diversity that we had on it. So, at South Carolina, we are really committed to this and our sales program is not, is not anywhere near the levels at which I envisioned it to be, and I’m really excited about that. So we’re trying some new things and reaching out to order, in order to walk the diversity and inclusion talk.

[00:39:20] Sometimes you have to be willing to say, “What do we need to do differently from where we are right now?” And embrace that, and I did that in my corporate career and I’m in the same place now. So, I’d also like for us to be a destination for diverse sales talent. I think that we have a tremendous amount to offer all students and we need to be making sure that we are supporting all students.

[00:39:44] And that means across campus, not just the business school students, but anybody on the campus at USC. So I find those two things to be really, really be big goals. We’re well on our way, but still, a lot to do to deliver against those, and I also like the mutual benefits associated with that. I like changing lives through sales careers for students, and I like changing businesses and helping businesses achieve their goals.

[00:40:12] And what I say to corporate potential, potential or existing corporate partners is we want to be your source for great talent that performs and sticks. I want to do a good job, of setting expectations with students, so when they come to you, you don’t see them churn out three months, six months, even a year later.

[00:40:32] It’s a little tough right now in the year of the great resignation, but most of our Gamecocks where they have landed, they have stayed. And so as a corporate executive, turnover is, is expensive, and it was never something that I wanted to see happen,, especially with Salesforce. And so those are a couple of the things that I’m thinking about and our goals that we’re working towards, and then all of the activities kind of fall out of that.

[00:41:00] Kristen Wisdorf: Those are really amazing goals and, they go so well together because there is a huge need for diversity in technology and especially tech sales as well. So, that

[00:41:12] is absolutely incredible. You said you want to change lives in businesses, and with those two goals, you absolutely will. I’m curious, so far in your career specifically at South Carolina, what’s been the most rewarding part of the most rewarding, you know, an accomplishment so far running the sales center? 

[00:41:30] Beth Renninger: Gosh, there’s been a lot. I mean, I was going to say the most rewarding part hands down has been the students. And seeing students that maybe are first-generation college students, hearing their stories, having the chance to be a part of their life. I love the students who are like me… I, that sales job I got at Verizon,

[00:41:53] they called that organization marketing. That’s why I went there because they called it marketing and I was in operations and I was like, “I’m a marketing major. I will get to marketing.” And I got there and I was like, “Holy smokes. I got to sell. I am shy. I’m an introvert. I’m so not a salesperson.” And yet I ended up loving it.

[00:42:11] So working with the students for me is the highlight, but then also seeing the employers, and pushing back on some of them, how they position themselves, what they do, how they do it, what they say, and then seeing them around the corner and finding ways to engage with the students and realize success from that, sitting in this space in between companies, and students, and grads has just been so much fun for me.

[00:42:38] I’m a natural-born connector. I find that to be immensely rewarding. And in this job I’ve been a builder, and I get to continue to build the program, and I get to be a connector. And those two things, that is my ‘why’, that is my purpose in life, and I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to do that here at South Carolina. 

[00:43:01] Madisson DeLisle: I really love, I really love how passionate you are about teaching the students. It’s really awesome to see. And we love interacting with, you know, professors that do have that experience both in the business world, but then that passion for almost like giving back by teaching the students, you know, from your experience.

[00:43:20] So I’d love to hear, you know, just advice kind of wrapping it up, advice for those that aren’t even sure what they want to do. What would you tell them about taking the time to research and how you would go about doing it if you were to start your career over today?

[00:43:41] Beth Renninger: Think the most important, the best advice that I can give to students is, to “Be curious and to stay open.” Also, to “Stay in today,” because you can’t solve everything. “Take the time to know yourself, and be curious about what you don’t know,” I say this to my students all the time,

[00:44:03] “I can’t teach and accompany them I can’t train for curiosity. You either have it or you don’t.” And if you are considering sales or marketing, I think curiosity is a baseline skill. You must want to know why do people do that. What’s going on? And be, you know, want, want to get underneath that. Other careers that are maybe a little more analytical, it’s hard facts all day long.

[00:44:32] There’s no, “Don’t be curious about, well, why is this going on. It just calculates the numbers or does whatever.” But if you’re curious, then a sales and marketing career is your thing and so, and then talking to people, and learning, and embracing that phrase a lifelong learner. I talked about my learning coming here for a second career.

[00:44:54] I learn every day and I love it. It lights me up because I want students to tell me something I don’t know. Sometimes we do that in class where I say, “Tell me something I don’t know.” And I get all kinds of things that come out. So let yourself learn and actually requiring yourself to learn and staying open to that and knowing that you don’t have to have all the answers,

[00:45:17] but you do have to take charge of your own life. I think this is probably one of the things I see where students struggle. They come from a, a growing-up experience that is different, and as a parent of somebody who’s 30 and 28, and that time we were called like helicopter parents. So we were overly involved in trying to solve some of our, our kid’s issues.

[00:45:43] Beth Renninger: Well, the group that came after us is like a snowplow lawnmower parent. Not only trying to solve those problems but move them all out of the way. So then I have these students that don’t have decision-making muscle because they’ve never made their own decisions. And then they, if you don’t have the muscle, you don’t know how to do it.

[00:46:01] You just lack the experience. So we will set up away throughout the course of the semester to practice making decisions, “What are you going to do? Why are you going to do it?” And then by the time, it comes time for a big decision, “Where do I want to live? Which job should I take?” They have at least gotten some practice.

[00:46:21] And so I always say practice with the easy stuff, practice experiencing failure in the classroom where the stakes are low. Practice making decisions when they’re little ones, get to know yourself, and then you have what you need when it’s time for the big ones.

[00:46:36] Kristen Wisdorf: That’s amazing and really, really great. I, you’re the first professor, you know, who runs this sales program that we spoke with that is helping their students learn how to make decisions and kind of flex that and build up that muscle because it is absolutely necessary. And it’s, it’s great that you recognize that and you’re preparing them. You’re preparing your students for life, kind of no longer in school, and no longer, you know, with their parents.

[00:47:04] So I think that’s, that’s amazing. Well, Beth, we have really enjoyed our conversation with you today. You have an incredible experience that your students are really lucky to be able to learn from. And I have no doubt that you’ll hit those two goals you have for the University of South Carolina. We really appreciate your time today. Thank you. 

[00:47:22] Beth Renninger: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been really fun to talk to both of you. I wish you all the best. 

[00:47:27] Kristen Wisdorf: Thank you.