My role at Pastel was an inaugural one, with the company ready for someone to take the reins in sales leadership. Combine the exciting growth potential I saw in Pastel with some of the best people I’ve ever worked with, and I felt like I was onto a winner. I love the challenge of building and managing the company’s evolution. And each morning, the buzz of the sales team and the always-amusing office banter make my job that much more enjoyable.
Pastel has reached some incredible targets over the past few years, which is down to our entire team kicking it into high gear and giving their all. It’s been great to see individuals step up with a ‘can do’ approach that I’ve realised is a rare asset in business these days. They’ve also adapted amazingly to change - we’ve seen adjustments in processes, products and strategy - and the team has taken it in their stride.
For one, how we go to market has changed a lot over the years. There’s no longer a place for the old-school, overly-aggressive salesperson who has their own agenda with no regard for the customer’s needs. Our team is trained and managed with a “get to know the customer and their issue” approach. A successful meeting in our books isn’t walking away with a signed order and a confused customer! We want to get under the hood of the business, find out how it ticks and what potential issues Pastel can help resolve. Once we understand this, we are in a considerably better position to offer our customers the best telecom solution or IT service for their needs.
Another challenge, the biggest one for me personally, was establishing processes at Pastel that I had 100% taken for granted while working in a larger corporate environment. It doesn’t matter if you are a tenth of the size of the telecom giants, having solid systems in place when it comes to customer engagement, sales processes and recruitment is crucial, and getting them right has been fundamental in how we’ve managed our growth plan.
I feel really lucky that although keeping the team motivated is a big part of my job, they are all very self-sufficient and perform very strongly. Not a single person dreads coming into the office on Mondays and you can feel it in the lively and light-hearted atmosphere. We very much have a supportive, coaching-focused environment, and if someone needs a hand or doesn’t understand something, they just speak up. We have a wealth of knowledge internally but also some amazing partners that support our business, who have proven invaluable time and time again.
The main goal has been and always will be the same thing: to grow Pastel as big as possible! However, the real vision for me is to do this while maintaining the buzzing work culture and excellent customer-first approach that we currently have. We have a group of people who love their jobs and a company that is honest in its dealings and genuinely concerned about solving customers’ problems. To me that’s success already, we just need to work on keeping that core as we continue to grow!
