Heather Campbell went into sales for a better work-life balance. After working seven days a week in marketing and getting chewed out on Christmas, she took a job in print sales in order to “have a real life.” She quickly began outperforming her peers due to her tireless work ethic and the immense pressure she placed on herself to succeed.

In this week’s episode, Heather tells us about her unexpected travels through marketing, sales, and eventually recruiting, in pursuit of that elusive work/life balance. As she puts it, “you can always throw the car in reverse.”

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SAM BALTER

Tell me a little bit about your first job in marketing. What attracted you to marketing and how did you find out about that job?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yeah, so I guess my first big, big deal job after college was an ad agency. I majored in philosophy, so I feel like philosophy majors end up in marketing or serving coffee. So I was in an advertising agency. I had the Subaru account, which was really fun. I had a jet fuel account. I had a yarn account. I had all kinds of accounts. And there, it was very “Mad Men.” It was very burny-outy. I was very exhausted with my work-life balance.

SAM BALTER

Describe that. What does that mean?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I had about 13 or 14 accounts, and it was account management at the highest degree where I didn’t really have an assistant or anybody else. So any single issue with the website, with their media buys, with a billboard, with their print, with an event, I was flying. So I mentioned to our print rep, who we worked with for pretty much everything, that I was considering a different path.

She said, “Why don’t you try print sales?”

I pretty much worked 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. every single day. I remember being called and chewed out on Christmas because of a billboard that didn’t work out. So it was just constant. It was just me kind of by myself, constant hustle. So I wanted to try to go to a dentist appointment or something. Have a real life.

SAM BALTER

When you’re philosophy-major Heather and you’re looking to get a job working at an ad agency, did you imagine it would be like that?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yes and no. I think I had enough friends that were in it. I had a lot of friends that worked at Wieden + Kennedy, actually. And so they can sleep under their desk sometimes. So I knew what I was getting into, but I imagined maybe a little bit more of a work-life balance.

SAM BALTER

OK. So you’re feeling burnt out. You’re working really hard. I guess, can you just paint the picture of what you expected sales to be like? Were there any movies that stuck out in your mind where it’s like, “that’s a salesperson.” Or people you knew in your past where you’re like, “that’s a definite salesperson. I’m not that person.”

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Immediately, what comes to mind when I think of sales is a car lot with a guy in like a houndstooth jacket with elbow patches and those blow-up guys, those advertising flag things that wiggle around and maybe like a weird hair pattern and like gold chain on his chest. That’s kind of what I imagined as a salesperson, especially in a manufacturing setting. So I kind of thought, “I don’t know if that’s my jam.”

SAM BALTER

OK. So now talk me through how, again – you mentioned that you know this person who’s trying to get in there. Who are they? How do you know them?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

So it was our go-to sales rep for the print shop that I ended up working with. She was retiring soon and she had a pretty big book of business. She had Portland General Electric. She had Subaru. She had quite a few local names in Portland.

So she was saying, “I love the owner. She’s worked there forever. If she’s going to leave, it would be easier for him if she could train and give somebody her book of business, rather than them struggle and scramble.”

So the fact that I was going to be handed a small book of business, made it seem a little bit like I could go out on a limb and try it out. And she would take us to lunch all the time, do the sales schmooze. And the more she talked about it and the more I saw her work-life balance against my account life for an agency side, I thought, “I’ll try it. What’s the worst that could happen?” You can always hit the brakes and go in reverse. So that’s how she got me over there.

SAM BALTER

So normally people say, I feel like when people think about the difference between sales and marketing, people are always like, “Marketing, like so relaxed. They’re just like chilling, creating creative things. But sales people are grinding every hour, every day.” You sound like you’re like, “I’m going to get into sales from marketing to calm down.” Is that kind of accurate? Or how is that for you?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yes, it was. I mean, in my marketing, I was traveling or I was going to events. It was flying to Vegas. It was working on media buys. We had the Portland Rose Festival, so it was going to all of their events. A lot of conventions, just constant, constant, constant.

So I thought, “At least in sales, I’m selling one kind of thing,” even though it’s variable, like what you can print and what you can make out of packaging. At least I probably don’t have to fly to Vegas for jet fuel. And then like go to Bend for a Crosstrek.” So I guess I imagined marketing to be crazy and creative, but then I imagine sales to be more individual contributor. And that’s what spoke to me about it.

SAM BALTER

Cool. So you decide you’re going to take the job. What’s day one like?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Every sales rep had their own office with bookshelves across the wall of paper samples. And I just stared at those thinking, “Do I have to literally know every single paper that you can buy across the United States?” I was just sweating. I had this book I carried around with me, going to every press we had, talking to every bindering guy. Like, “How does this work? What is that? What if they ask me this?”

And everybody said, “People pick the same paper 90% of the time. People don’t know any of this.” But I wanted to be able to explain like the full functioning of a Heidelberg’s press, which I never needed at all. But so for at least three weeks, I think I came home and had a silent tear of like, “What did I sign myself up for?”

SAM BALTER

OK. And what were the people around you like? Were they helpful? Were they helping you get up to speed? What was the sort of team that you worked around?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

So I went in there. I was like, end of my 20s and I went in there. It was all men, except for the woman I was replacing. So I came in, she trained me a little bit, and she was out. So it was me and then five guys that were all at least 15 years older than me that had been in the industry forever.

So they were a little big brother tease-y, but they did answer my questions when I needed help, but it was definitely the men talking about golf and their boats and me just sitting there kind of like, “OK, guys.”

SAM BALTER

Cool. So you had no boats at the time?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

No, I don’t have one single boat. I still don’t have one single boat.

SAM BALTER

OK. So now you’re getting some help a little bit, so let’s talk about the specific deal. So walk me through, where are you? What is the start to this story of your pretty big deal?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yeah. So when I started, I got a little bit of a book of business to train on, to be introduced to, to talk to these people. And because of the five men to one woman scenario, there was a lot of, “you’ll get there.” Telling me how my ramp could be, “just be precious and gentle with yourself. Your ramp, you’ll get there. One day you’ll get there.”

So I asked my boss when they’re all kind of putting me in the new girl place, “Well, if you could have any account, what would you want?”

And he said, “Oh, a bank. We love banks. If you want to, you could try to get Umpqua Bank.”

And they all said, “Oh yeah, that’d be great if you could Umpqua Bank.”

So within two weeks I had a meeting with the two career directors for Umpqua Bank. They told me they liked me because I wasn’t salesy. And I said, “Yeah, I hate salespeople. In fact, my mental image of a salesperson is those little things at the used car dealership.”

So they’re a really cool bank. They’re very creative. Their art is a lot more detailed and thought out than a lot of the bank work, so we got to do a lot of cool packaging, custom, individualized work for them. And so that is where I saw my agency life working because I could speak to designers and really cut to the problems with Pantones and how things would work.

So yeah, it was a really big deal for me to get that one because not only were they creative, but they were big and that was when they started their acquiring journey, like they started acquiring other banks.

SAM BALTER

And then there’s a part of this story that seems a little bit confusing to me. So you join and every night you’re crying a single tear and having a number of panic attacks. And it sounds like everybody is like, “Don’t worry, Heather, you’ll get there.”

My response probably would be like, “Thank you. I appreciate that.” Your response sounded like, “I’m going to get whatever account you tell me you get.” And all of a sudden you’re putting a really high bar on yourself. Why did you do that?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I think I have just an innate desire to attack people with spite of my greatness. I think when somebody tells me, “oh, you’ll get there,” or, “it’s tough for a lot of people,” I just want to say, “Well, I’ll show you by running myself ragged and then accomplishing some insane goal. And then we’ll talk after that.” So that’s how that happened.

SAM BALTER

After you got Umpqua Bank, did you get the work-life balance you had been looking for? Or did you find yourself kind of just more engrossed in sales and putting a lot of energy there?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

When I was a new salesperson, I didn’t trust the process. Looking back on it now I expended a lot of energy walking every job I got through every single process, double-checking everything, because my reputation was so important to me and my boss was constantly like, “trust the process, trust the process.”

So I didn’t then. I was running out in bindery, like checking everything, looking at it, making sure it was good. So I kept myself in the bad life-work balance that I was running from. But then I think I grew into trusting the process and then that was awesome. I was taking lunch. I could go to a birthday party and not have my phone next to me the whole time.

SAM BALTER

It sounds like that was your first big thing. How long did that deal take from when you called the shot, “I’ll get this bank,” to when you closed it.

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I mean, we got our first job, I think in a week or two weeks. And then after we delivered that first job it really saved them, because they were in a really tight spot. After that, they just started sending us work. We eventually signed up with them through Office Depot, their deal to do all of their business cards, all of their basic office supplies, let alone every event they went to.

SAM BALTER

And when you mentioned that for this deal in particular, it sounded like having the background in marketing, having the agency experience was helpful. Did having that background in marketing carry through to other deals or other aspects of sales?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yes, it definitely did. I think in marketing, you learn to be able to deliver bad news in a happy way. So there were a lot of times, especially with the postal service or FedEx that you would say, “You know that really urgent special thing you needed by tomorrow. It actually got delivered to the other side of the United States by accident, because hashtag-FedEx.” So I think marketing prepared me for that. I was pretty unflappable by then.

SAM BALTER

Is there any part of sales that you feel like when you started was like a totally new scale you had never developed?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yeah. I never had to prospect before. I never had to cold call anybody or say, like, “Hi, my name’s Heather. You don’t want to hear from me, but I’m calling you,” and then keep calling those people. I never had to do that because I worked with people who just wrote me a check to get their stuff done.

So prospecting was tough. I generally like to say that I’m very good at cocktail parties, so I just use that skill to help me in sales. But prospecting was tough. I hadn’t dealt with repetitive rejection when I’m over here, like, “I’m just trying to help you.”

SAM BALTER

Yeah, the repetitive rejection is probably pretty rough. How is the rest of your job, after Umpqua, after you’re building up the accounts, how long did you stay in sales?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I was in that print sales role for seven years. In the beginning, I came in there very unsure of myself. Like, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, thought I would just try it. My boss asked me when he was interviewing me, “Can you promise to stay at least three years?”

And I said, “Yes, I can promise three years.” And I stayed seven and it totally changed my opinion of sales.

SAM BALTER

And then I guess you had mentioned before you had won some awards. Could you just walk through some of the awards you’ve won?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

Yeah. So after I asked my boss, “OK, well, what account would you want if I was getting an account?” And he said, “Umpqua Bank,” and I got it in two weeks, at that time, we had a quarterly sales award meeting where my boss would have $1,000 cash in his pocket and we would sit around the conference table and there was a $500 cash reward for a new business for the quarter and then a $500 cash reward for most sold within an existing account.

So I think for the first five quarters, I won both of those awards in every single meeting. So I would send pictures of $1,000 in cash in my hand to the other reps, if they were being bossy to me, I’d send a picture of my cash money that I won every time. And so after five quarters, they magically stopped having those meetings. They also had a competition leaderboard in the hallway where the sales reps worked and that also disappeared.

SAM BALTER

Now let’s say, Heather talking after seven years smashing it, what would you say to Heather on day one?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I’d say, “Yes, still smash all those men and show them that you can do it, but chill out. You’ll get there. And it’s a one day at a time thing.”

I’m always like, “What’s the next three months look like? When’s my next raise? What’s the next promotion I can get?” I just kept looking for the next thing and put a lot of pressure on myself and didn’t listen to anyone around me. That was my biggest mistake.

When people said, “You’ll get there. No one’s going to ask you about that. That never comes up,” I didn’t listen. I just wanted to be prepared in how I thought I needed to be prepared. And I see that I wasted a lot of energy and a lot of stress on myself trying to hit the ground running to ramp in the week. I mean, I kind of did a ramp in a week, but the amount of stress I put on myself to get there was a little unnecessary.

SAM BALTER

OK, but now you are out of sales. Talk to me about why you left sales and where you went to.

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I was talking to a friend of mine who’s also a recruiter at ZoomInfo and he had nothing but good things to say about recruiting and ZoomInfo and it being rewarding. And the thing about sales is that you can build all the trust and relationship you want with your accounts, but at the end of the day, you’re sending them like a $60,000 invoice with a smile on your face.

And that got a little, I don’t know, that was the least rewarding part of working in sales is begging people for money, especially when they don’t pay and then you’re asking where the check is. And in recruiting, you’re still prospecting. You’re still using that seller’s mentality, but you’re asking somebody if they would like a job and money, rather than sending them an invoice and then begging them to pay.

SAM BALTER

Oh, that’s great. And I think the last, probably the last, question is just what advice do you have for people who are thinking about switching careers or changing into a new role?

HEATHER CAMPBELL

I think with careers, it’s a lot like relationships. Like the same mentality goes when you know if it’s the wrong fit. You might be making excuses and you might be trying to tell yourself, “Just this much more or just this next promotion.”

But I think ultimately you should work so you can live, you shouldn’t live to work. And I think COVID especially, living through a pandemic, hopefully reminds us all that life isn’t guaranteed. Weird things happen. Life can be shorter than you want. So there’s no point in knowing something’s a wrong fit and just be brave to try it, because you can always throw the car in reverse.

That’s something I say to myself a lot, “You can always put the car in reverse.” So try something, learn about it as much as you can to make an educated decision, but nothing bad is going to happen to you. Just try it. Jobs are important, but at the end of the day, it’s just a job. It’s not your limb, it’s not your little cat. It’s just a job. Try it out. And ask people along the way.

SAM BALTER

If you have a pretty big deal to tell us about, let us know by writing to prettybigdeal@zoominfo.com. Otherwise we’ll see you in the next episode.