“There are a couple of things you need to be successful, and they are called the ABC’s: you have to be assertive, bold and confident,” said Ashley Challburg, a junior majoring in art.
Challburg was recently promoted to a team lead at DHL Express Optimal Ship, a worldwide shipping company. Before becoming a team lead, her responsibilities included cold-calling businesses, managing, following up with and helping current clients get their shipments.
“Now I manage a team of four people,” Challburg said. “I do all the things that I did before except I also make sure my team is on track and I grade their calls. Every day, the first thing I do is look at the stats from my team from the day before. We then usually have a training topic to see if anyone has any questions and to keep things fresh.”
Challburg has only been a team lead for four months, but she really loves the opportunity to help others improve.
“I really like the idea of being able to help train and lead,” Challburg said, “Since I’ve kind of taken over this team, we got a couple of new hires and I’ve gotten to train them from start to finish, so that was really cool.”
Rejection and rude people are a very common occurrence in sales, and Challburg is not an exception. She developed a strategy to work through constant rejection.
“I just think that we are trying to help people rather than sell things,” Challburg said. “If they don’t want our help, then that’s on them. Of course, we try our best to make it up to those people, but sometimes you just have to move forward and focus on the people that you can help.”