Jen Wilkinson, an enterprise salesperson and former stand-up comic, emailed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison to land a meeting. She built a Six Sigma project at GE to fix CRM forecasting and warns against de-qualifying deals too early. Her core rule: be kind to everyone, because secretaries and coworkers open doors that titles don't.
Chapters
Alright everyone, welcome back to the Business Blast podcast. I have Jen Wilkinson with me today. She has over 15 years in enterprise solution sales. She is a former stand-up comic in Los Angeles and she's currently working on her first book. So we'll dive right in. Jen, my first question for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
I was taught early on in my career to go straight for the top in sales. And so when I left Oracle, I approached Larry Ellison, the CEO, directly in an email saying, you taught me to be aggressive, so I'm going straight to the top. I was working for a multimedia company where you can step into an environment virtually, and I knew they had a need for that from a solution that I could sell. And from that, I got creative and took a 360 picture of the Oracle campus. And I copied Ray Lane. And I got us a meeting with the VP of product, Joe Meeks. So it got a lot of attention. And he definitely responded and said, I'll give you credit, Jennifer. And to this day, he remembers me. So kind of fun story of how you can go straight to the top and it can get results if you have something valuable to say.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So from GE, I have my Six Sigma project, which is a year-long extensive project, was on CRM and the value of accurately forecasting all the way up to the top. So I am big on being realistic and asking the tough questions of decision makers. So that you really can de-qualify and really be accurate into what's going to close and not. Sometimes I see peers holding on to deals that are not going to happen, so I really hold to CRM as being, um, accountable and accurate to what I'm going to close each quarter and year.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice?
I would say be kind to everyone, because if you just look at people's titles or go after just who you think is going to be influential to you, you're missing a whole community of people that can help you, including coworkers and people in different roles than yourself. You never know when projects will come about that are within your organization through a different group entirely or how you can get into a company through even someone like a secretary that has a lot of political power within a company.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
Not to take people's advice to heart always. Sometimes it's coming— that, that type of thinking can really happen if you're a big thinker and go after things in a bigger way. So sometimes people give you advice because they limit themselves.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
For me, it's simplicity. I have very much become a minimalist. I think that the less distractions I can have, I focus when I need to. I don't look at my phone or read emails. I don't let my day interrupt me. I control my time. And I like if someone gives me good messages, I'm all for it on social media. But if it's not the kind of messaging I want, I remove it from my life. So I just keep everything very simple.
And what's the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
Pray in Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The book really taught me that we all create our personal happiness and it's so important to have that work-life balance and it can easily get off-kilter and it's so important to be well-rounded and we create our own happiness. Nobody else can.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
It would be from Marianne Williamson, um, our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. You're playing small does not serve the world.
I love that quote. And we got 12 seconds left. So where can people find you online?
Mainly LinkedIn. It's double N Jen hyphen Wilkinson.
Awesome. Thanks for coming on, Jen.
Thanks, Tyler. The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.
