My passion for most of my youth was sports. I loved competing and playing every sport I could and those experiences inspired me to choose Sports Management as one of my majors at Loyola Chicago. My senior year of college I was excitedly searching for jobs in the sports industry when my life changed forever (in the best way possible). I found out that I was going to be a dad (now a proud dad of 3!). My priorities immediately shifted and the most important thing became providing for my future child (entry level sports jobs didn't pay very well). This led me to pursue sales roles and I was fortunate to get an offer that enabled me to work remotely. I learned a lot in this role, I was able to be there helping care for my child while learning to be self-disciplined and develop time management skills. I also discovered I had a passion for helping people and solving their problems through selling. Before I got into sales I viewed the profession through the stories I heard from people with bad experiences with a self-interested or self-motivated salesperson. In other words a salesperson whose only concern was closing the deal and getting the commission for themselves that came along with it. For this reason I wasn't thrilled to be working in the field but thankfully I have a positive mindset and was determined to succeed and find a way to help others in the role. The type of salesperson I learned to become and am proud to say that I am today is a consultative, customer-centric seller. I do this by making the sale all about the customer. I ask numerous questions during discovery to ensure I get a full understanding of where they are today. Once I feel I understand the current state I ask where they see themselves in the future. I then utilize my experience solving similar problems for similar customers or personas and leverage that knowledge to come up with a plan to make that desired future state a reality for my customer. My most rewarding sales came from solutions that the customer didn't originally approach me to buy but that we discovered could actually do a better job of solving their problem. Selling via this method has led to more positive outcomes for my customers.Selling is all about change and change isn’t always easy or welcome. I love helping people make positive changes for themselves and for their company and will continue to work hard to make change easy and exciting!