When will we start talking about diversity in… sales?
Diversity issues everywhere
I have a STEM background, I am an entrepreneur, and I am a woman. A lot of those things don’t usually go together, and I know I am an outlier. Throughout my career, I have been part of conversations on how to improve on diversity in whatever career I was in, and it is with great sadness that the further I get, the fewer women there seems to be around me.
Starting in STEM, as a starry-eyed (pardon the pun) Astrophysics PhD, the balance was pretty much 50–50. There, the debate was on how to keep the women and get them into higher positions and professorships. After switching careers into data science and tech, things got worse. It is well known that c. 15–30% of technical and data science roles are held by women today. Countless events, publications, and communities have been started to improve on these statistics — as they should!
It gets worse
Over the last year, though, I have been speaking with hundreds of people working in and around sales and I realised, to my horror, that this is one area that is doing even worse. I specifically try to reach individuals in senior sales roles (e.g. Chief Commercial Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, VP of Sales, Head of Sales) in B2B start-ups and SMB’s (sales team sizes less than 25) and with no other bias in my…
