Managing a group of salespeople is a lot like coaching a sports team filled with all-star caliber athletes — you have to let individual player’s talents shine, while also encouraging them to collaborate as a team. This is no easy feat, but it’s one that Tracey Solanas, vice president of enterprise sales at VTS, welcomes the opportunity to tackle.
VTS is a commercial real estate platform that helps landlords attract and retain tenants. Tracey’s team prospects and supports the company’s largest clients across office, retail and industrial spaces — a group whose combined assets total over 15 million square feet. Her sales superstars have a lot to manage but Tracey is a seasoned leader who has learned a lot in her tenure from both personal experience and from a few mentors. She spoke with us at length about her leadership style and what she looks for in new draft picks as she adds to her fast-growing roster.
How do you structure your team, and what influenced your decision to organize your team that way?
We have two roles within the enterprise team — account development managers and account executives. The ADM role is focused on building, expanding and maintaining existing customer relationships. The AE role is primarily comprised of pure prospects with a mixture of existing clients that have significant expansion opportunity. We try to keep it fairly cohesive from a territory perspective, but that is just an overlay. Across both roles, we are outcome-focused and always working to deliver value throughout our clients’ organization.
What has been your favorite part of working in leadership at VTS?
VTS is a supportive environment from an employee perspective. This company is filled with smart, passionate people who are focused on the success of our industry. It starts at the top with our founders Nick Romito and Ryan Masiello and is mirrored throughout the organization. Employee-focused benefits, the strongest diversity and inclusion program I have ever seen, budgets for continuous learning, and lots of fun team-wide events make this an exceptional place to work.
What specific traits do you look for when adding new members to your team?
We have a fairly involved interview process that I believe supports success for both parties. Each interviewee has two skill sets that their interview is designed around. A few that are important to me: active listening and communication, curiosity, resourcefulness, critical thinking, organization and an overall strategic mindset.
It is rewarding to see your client deliver success internally and your team refine their abilities in the process.”
You’ve acted as a sales leader for a number of years, at a number of companies. Are there any specific mentors or resources that have helped guide you in your success?
It has been a pleasure to count Amy Guarino, COO of Kyndi, and Joanna Bloor, founder of The Amplify Lab, as mentors throughout my career. Both are strong, successful and fun women who get it all done. I’ve reported to great CEOs and expanded a different skill set through working with each of them. A few years back I was also lucky enough to join the Revenue Collective, which has been an invaluable well of perspective, support, and ideas across a variety of topics from like-minded sales leaders.
What is the best part of working in sales?
Like most things in life, you get out of this profession what you put in. I enjoy the reality that the effort I put in can directly translate to the success of the organization, to me personally and to my team. I like solving problems and seeing people develop professionally. It is rewarding to see your client deliver success internally and your team refine their abilities in the process. I like to consider myself an entrepreneur within an existing environment and sales is a great career for that mindset.
What is the biggest challenge your team faces right now, and how are you working to overcome it?
Enterprise sales has gotten more complex. There isn’t always a small, clearly defined buying team in today’s world and often the term “decision by consensus” takes on new heights. Additionally, VTS has moved past the early adopters so we are selling to the majority buyers, and that industry has not purchased a lot of technology in the past. For all of these reasons, we have to be extremely diligent in our sales process to ultimately support a successful evaluation plan and decision for our clients.
