Monthly Podcast Recap: Top Highlights from July 2021 - Pavilion

We created the Pavilion podcast for one reason — give motivated business leaders a chance to share inspiration, know-how, and insights with the broader community. 

Which Pavilion podcast episodes have you caught lately? We know how busy life and work can get, especially these days, so it’s ok if you’re behind on the latest episodes. No worries — we’ve recapped the top three episodes from the last month for you. Skim, enjoy, and listen back to our favorite July episodes.

Episode 103: July 1, 2021

Ask How to Sell with Orrin Thomas, Business Development Director, Gartner

We all have an interesting entry point to revenue careers, and Thomas has a good story to tell. After a boozy holiday following his time as a political science major at University, he picked up a sales gig to pay off his credit card — and excelled. The rest is history. 

Now he’s fascinated by how power is distributed and how we can understand how the world works through data. At Gartner, he studies the top 1% of organizations in the world to find what makes a top-performing sales team and uncover their secret sauce. 

What has he found? Today’s sellers aren’t selling in the ways customers want to buy. 

“There’s been a big division between how we sell and how customers want to be sold to,” said Thomas. “We need to modernize what sales looks like. Customers have so much complexity and risk when making decisions — how do we make those decisions easier? How do we act as a GPS system?”

Listen to this 11-minute episode

Episode 106: July 8, 2021

Starting a Startup with Melanie Falley, CEO, Spekit

How do you ensure employees have access to what they need to know when they need to know it? Spekit CEO Melanie Falley noticed major pain points in onboarding and sales enablement. She decided to solve it, designing the solution herself. The result was Spekit, a single contextual sales enablement platform that puts the answers sales leaders need front and center — from navigating processes to managing change to finding enablement resources. 

During this episode, Falley shared advice on how to be a successful founder:

• Raise your hand: Put yourself up for opportunities, work hard, and put in the hard work 
• Be scarce and learn: Focus less on fundraising and more on learning as much as you can about every role and function
• Embrace curiosity: To solve problems, you must understand them better than everyone else, so invest in your personal brand, build a community with no agenda, and become a thought leader in your space 

Listen to this 21-minute episode

Episode 110: July 19, 2021

Fighting Off Distractions with Parker Ashley, VP Americas at Darktrace

Modern life is full of distractions. Balancing that reality with a heavy news cycle and career challenges makes it easy to get — and stay — distracted. Focus can be very difficult, even for the most structured and successful people. 

Parker Ashley, VP of Americas for Darktrace, struggles with ADHD and has found ways that help him stay focused and manage his mentality. 

He shared a few tactical tips with the Pavilion community: 

• Practice time blocking: Set 30 minutes on your clock and focus on a singular task for an allotted time 
• Put your phone on silent: Too many notifications are an instant focus killer. Turn on airplane mode 
• Park it in the parking lot: Write down your random thoughts and ideas to revisit later in the day 
• Be willing to say no: Your time is your most critical asset. Say no to things that aren’t aligned with your goals and distract from your mission 

Listen to this 36-minute episode