The tech industry is still largely dominated by men – but there are more and more fighting for greater diversity and inclusion in the sector.
There are a number of initiatives championing women in tech, networking groups, women’s events and awards all trying to address the lack of women in tech.
But why should we care? And what can women do to champion each other?
To answer this, we hear from Mary Shea, Global Innovation Evangelist at Outreach.
At Outreach, Mary leads the team producing thought-provoking research examining the sales technology landscape. Outreach’s in-house research team explores everything from the future of buying and selling to the criticality of having diverse, equitable, and inclusive B2B sales organizations. This work fuels and informs their product, platform, and people by uncovering new trends and innovative ways of thinking.
Mary also empowers diverse talent within the company by co-creating the RISE and RISE UP programs to uplift women in sales and elevate rising Black leaders.
Mary talks to us about the importance of lifting while you climb, paying it forward, how businesses can improve their diversity.
hello everyone thank you for tuning in again I am Katie batesman the content director at chican code and today we are
discussing why we need to lift as we climb now there are lots of women in Tech initiatives nowadays networking
groups women events and awards all trying to address the lack of women in Tech but why should we care and what can
women do to champion each other now we’ve got the wonderful Mary Shay Global Innovation evangelist at Outreach with
us today to help us answer that question welcome Mary hey Kaylee it’s great to be here thank you thank you very much for
for joining us this afternoon and can we start with a little bit of background about yourself please
sure happy to provide that for your audience so as you mentioned my name is Mary Shea and I’m the global Innovation
evangelist at Outreach and that’s sort of a very complex way of saying I’m an
analyst so I’m a technology analyst I follow sales Tech I follow uh the future
of buying and selling in the business world and I spent a lot of time looking at diversity Equity inclusion both
within Tech within sales and writ large and so um that’s what I do day to day I
conduct a lot of research qualitative interviews like we’re doing today quantitative surveys which we’ll talk
about I’ve got a lot of data prior to joining Outreach I was an analyst at Forester research which is an
independent market research company out of Cambridge Massachusetts in the states here and
um love that job did very similar things and I have also
uh been in sales for much of my career so for 15 20 years in sales I was a
chief Revenue officer I was an SDR which is sort of uh an entry-level sales position and just about everything in
between I’m uh my horoscope is Gemini I’m curious um and I just love intellectual
challenges so when you started in sales did you start in tech and and fall into textiles or was that that a plan of
yours were you good at sales um it’s funny because most people who go into sales in the business World it
wasn’t a plan you find out if you talk to a lot of people it was very serendipitous and so my first career
which I probably should have let you know was as a classical musician and I was a nobleist
and so I played all over the world and I also have a PhD in musicology and ethnomusicology I was teaching at a
small women’s college in Boston at the time and I didn’t make very much money so I sold cars in uh the summer I ended
up selling uh three or four cars to people who worked at Forester research which was as I mentioned a technology
market research firm and they recruited me to come join and I took a chance I took a flyer on a company that was
helping businesses understand what the impact of the internet was going to be back in that day so it wasn’t pure Tech
but we focused on technology research and then from there I spent my selling
and selling leadership roles in primarily Tech and SAS based companies oh wow that’s
quite an interesting site I’ve always found at companies that I’ve worked out
sales team have been quite male dominated teams as well so um it would
be really interesting to hear yours been on working in sales and in Tech and
firstly though um we would like to kick off with our our first question today and why do you think businesses should
care about diversity within their Workforce well in and above it’s the right thing
to care about and think about and pay attention to it’s no surprise that diverse organizations whether they’re
sales engineering research or what have you deliver Better Business results they deliver Better Business outcomes and
there’s numerous studies from LinkedIn to McKinsey to Forrester to outreach
that I’ve LED that shows that diverse organizations deliver better growth and
more profitability and then specifically in sales women in sales and we’ve seen so many articles come out from hbr and
others that show that women at the individual contributor level as well as in management and Leadership
typically deliver on their quotas more than their male counterparts so you know
look the numbers and the data are there but I do want to Circle back to my first comment which is it’s the right thing to
do right women make up more than half of the global Workforce so
um you know they should be in leadership Tech and all kinds of roles across the
board yeah they so that’s so right actually when you say especially sales teams and
and women uh be on top of their game I worked at a company where it was a male-dominated sales team there was one
female and she was always talking the leaderboard and she always um just just amazing and all of the boys
could never never reach her obviously she had such a way about her
um that you’re absolutely right that when when there is a female on the team especially in sales um they tend to always outdo their
colleagues so is that your experience as well actually coming from a sales background is that that’s something
you’ve seen yeah so I mean certainly I’ve seen that uh B2B sales organizations have been
pretty homogeneous as you mentioned you know typically you know white male
dominated and we could even get into an age bracket as well and I’ve certainly seen that uh across the board I think
it’s only recently now that companies are really starting to look into the research and do the data that shows the
business results from uh women tend to uh pretty consistently outperform males
so you know when I was selling yes uh it was uh fairly a male dominated across
the board and when I was a chief Revenue officer when I was in sales leadership roles it
was probably 10 to 50 well 15 years ago 100 years ago it was almost unheard of
that you would find women hitting that top Echelon of sales leadership whether
that’s because of implicit or explicit bias or because of a range of other
reasons it’s a tough tough role probably one of the toughest roles in the organization there’s constant travel
there’s always somebody that’s looking out to get your job the longevity for
all genders is somewhere in the range of 18 months so um it was you know when I was doing that
job it was really really tough and when I talked to other women who’ve been around a while like I have you know you
find that there’s this um double bind dilemma where women leaders
get judged by different standards than men whether that’s in sales or across
different areas of the functional areas of the business and so I’ve talked to a lot of leaders who said you know I was
told by my CEO I’m not Tough Enough I’m not strong enough or if you are then there’s another word that we can all
find for you so it’s certainly been really challenging but what I’m super excited about now is that we are seeing
a lot more women in sales leadership we’re seeing them succeed and we’re also
seeing them Reach back and provide that helping hand and mentorship to that next gen and that’s you know that’s what I’m
super excited you see organizations like Chief coming up and um The Rise program that we have at
Outreach which I’ll hopefully get a chance to tell you about a little bit later but we’re seeing sort of um an
openness to helping each other and even with male allies who are sponsors and address as well yeah yeah and I think in
sales as well um it’s so black and white that you know if you if you if you get told you’re not hitting your number
um you can really see whether or not somebody who’s doing well or or not um in in sales and uh as you mentioned
it can be a very tough um sector for men and women um as well in the workplace so
um why is um uh championing women in Tech so important for the the future success of
the sector well I think it’s really really important number one for some of the reasons that I’ve already discussed but
the research that I’ve conducted recently this summer and in October shows that business buyers actually want
to buy from organizations that are representative of the world around them
so 74 of buyers agree that they want
sales teams to be more diverse and so we’re starting to see
organizations that will walk away from partnering with a company that doesn’t value diversity that doesn’t put forth a
team that looks and acts and has diversity of thought like their organization
um and So eventually if companies don’t Embrace diversity they’re going to start
losing business and I post on on LinkedIn quite frequently so I hope you’re some of your listeners will
follow me but um I posted about this the other day and I had a number of people come back to me
and say we’re already seeing companies lose business for not paying attention
to and committing to diversity across the board and that’s just not in gender that’s really even more broadly yeah I
think um it’s interesting that you mentioned about the sales team reflecting what you’re selling as well because I remember working at a company
where we launched um we launched a women in Tech Awards and I remember the sales team they were all guys and they didn’t
know how to sell it which I found so surprising at the time but the reason why they they felt they couldn’t relate
was they were all male and they they didn’t quite you know this was um about 13 years ago and I think back
in the day people were talking about it but perhaps that conversation um wasn’t there as it is as it is now we
still have a long way to go and but 13 years ago um I think our sales team really struggled to just to understand why we
wanted to launch in an awards to showcase the women working in the in the tech sector and so you’re right just
having a diverse team that can really understand what it is that you’re trying to sell um is is super helpful because I ended
up having to sell it and I’m not a salesperson um but you know so we could still push ahead with what we wanted to do
um but why do you think that you know what what is putting women off from the
sector is it that you mentioned a few things about what it’s like to work on the sales team for instance you know are
there other things about working in technology that you’ve you’ve noticed during your career yeah certainly you know I can speak from
both experience as well as from the research that I conduct on a pretty regular basis you know one thing that’s
really interesting in my recent research and then I’ll talk about my own experiences is that
women’s satisfaction with the company that they work at it is about nine
percent less than male counterparts and the same relative split on their
satisfaction with their managers so what that tells me is that leadership management and overall company cultures
haven’t really cracked the code on how to enlist and engage Inspire women
across the board and organizations so like you said there’s a lot more work uh
that needs to be done and there’s so many books out there there’s a really interesting book that was written by Eva
Helen and it’s called women in Tech a book for guys and it’s really
interesting because a lot of times we see some of the books are written for women or underrepresented folks in uh in
the corporate world and she actually wrote this for men she picks out five different types of personas and really
shows where these men are missing the mark in terms of how they’re are
interacting with women in the workforce so you know there’s there’s lots of
really interesting things that folks can do to learn but you know to to answer your question more
specifically you know I think women have historically stayed away from stem jobs
I think that uh you know it’s difficult you don’t always
want to be a Trailblazer and um you know if you’re only one or two of
you at a company it can be really really difficult as I mentioned as well bosses
don’t necessarily have the leadership tops to engage in ways that are going to
be hyper motivating um you know I think in the UK women just account for about 17 percent of uh tech
jobs so that’s super super low things that put women off start before
they even join the organization they can start with once you start researching the company and you start at
the board level and you see a very homogeneous board made up of a bunch of
guys then you go one step down to the executive team and the representation isn’t there as well I tell women that I
coach and work with and advise you know do your research and if you don’t see a
commitment at the highest echelons of the organization it’s probably not going to be a comfortable place to work because the tone does get set at the top
the next thing that I see that puts women off is the way job descriptions are constructed whether the language is
super male dominated I think in the world of sales instead of saying we’re looking for an
expert um seller who can create and close pipeline they’ll say we’re looking for a
hunter a closer a killer a co-water Crusher well maybe that doesn’t really
appeal to me that maybe that’s not who I am in B2B sales we’ll say we need
10 years of SAS experience well a lot of women sellers who are phenomenal have
come up not through Tech or not selling SAS so without even realizing it you can
put off women from even wanting to apply to your company yes yeah and as mentioned there
um you mentioned um so many areas of the business as well I think that um making change it’s
definitely a company-wide commitment as you mentioned it’s not just from leadership it’s from your colleagues
around you it’s from from yourself as well and what you want to do in the direction that you would like to go in
and what are small steps that individuals can take um to Champion women in Tech
I think there’s a lot of steps um you know first and foremost I think you want to take a hard look at your role
descriptions and the language that you use and the language that you use on your website I think you can be more creative in creating a more expansive
job descriptions so that people will actually apply for roles you probably know this but men will apply for a role
of promotion if they have 40 to 60 percent of what’s being asked women will apply if they have 90 to 100 percent
that’s asked so providing some more expansiveness there the other thing is I
find that with diversity the word intentionality goes with it really closely right it doesn’t happen by the
buy so you can provide interview Loops that have representation across gender
race how you identify what have you making sure that people feel comfortable
when they’re interviewing you can also have a world in your Workforce where
mentorship is encouraged and unexpected right and and not just women mentoring
women but because uh women who are going to go up the organization at any Tech or
other company the decision is typically going to be made by men so you need men who are mentors and allies as well and I
encourage women to seek those out and then I think the other thing you can do
is have policies that um are are gender friendly or or parent
friendly or friendly to people who uh are someone under represented in the
world uh more largely so paternity and and Matt leave
um pay policies linkedin’s a great example they realize that they were losing a lot of women that were on
maternity leave in their selling organization and they didn’t know why so they did some research and they found
out that the compensation plan for when folks are on leave was really punishing
and because their sales Cycles in some cases were very long these women because they weren’t
full-time employees weren’t getting their commission so now they’re double paying they’re giving commission to the
people who are taking over the op as well as the women who started it out or the person rather because it goes across
uh all types of people and they’re getting their full commission without getting punished so looking at policies
compensation pay transparency and then finally I would say if you don’t have an
employee Resource Group or a culture that encourages that let those groups happen organically because they provide
a safe space for uh different types of diverse employees to come together talk
about some of the challenges talk about the microaggressions that they experience on a regular basis and even
have the ability to come together socially and then finally this is
controversial because I know CEOs like to be in control and they like to see
their beautiful offices filled with people but having flexible and remote policies
actually provide an environment where underrepresented folks can take a break from The Continuous microaggression that
they feel in the workforce and so believe it or not remote environments
um can help as well so those are quite a few things that companies can do right off uh right at the get-go and I think a
lot of that a lot of the things that you mentioned there are really about um showing compassion as a leader as
well by remembering um to do that I think good managers and they know about their you know their
direct team they know about their personal lives and they know what matters there and you you know you mentioning the example there of just
noticing that that people would disappear once they’ve been on maternity or paternity leave and just recognizing
that there was a problem and showing that compassion and I think that goes further as well um and not just to
people that are parents but people that are caring for somebody um or who need to disappear I worked at
a wonderful um advertising agency and I had a parent that I was caring for
at the time and whenever um obviously you’re caring for somebody um and they’re terminally you things
change you know treatment changes operations happen and you know you have to disappear sometimes and I was never
questioned I had a very um a great manager who’s very compassionate um and I think that that helps you I
mean a lot a lot of that changed as well with covid um a flexible working um and that helps a lot of women
obviously along the way if you’re trying to juggle um family obligations a lot of things
are not necessarily questioned now than they would have um before and but we talk a lot about
that you know we’re talking about women in leadership positions and how can Junior women help others
well that’s a great um a great question I think the first thing you can do is start by helping yourself
because if you really invest in your career and I invested in my career I started in the
business World very late and I knew that if I was going to catch up I had to have a very fast career trajectory and I did
so by helping yourself you know invest in in a career coach
invest in Executive coaching join external organizations
start an internal organization uh at your own organization we have
um Outreach women’s Network so this is a place where the women can come together at Outreach across a range of different
job functions and so there’s things you can do there the other thing you can do
is um you know try to uh coach and mentor and
encourage as many people as you can in your organization and speak up it’s interesting that you mentioned starting
with yourself because I think that’s something that you know if you’re if you attend a lot of women in Tech groups you
hear about you know the things that you should be doing to help other people which is absolutely admirable to to help
other people and to make sure that as we were talking about today that you lived as you climb um but starting with yourself you know
as they say you need to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help others to make sure that you don’t burn out um
as well um and that you look after yourself um in your own career as you grow
um can you tell us a little bit about uh Rise And The Rise Up Programs um and and
how do these Frameworks help grow diverse Talent well thank you so much for asking we’re
really proud of both of those programs at Outreach and Rise started at the beginning of 2022 and the program was
led by our head of sales and our head of HR and it came about because our head of
sales at that time was a woman and interestingly enough all of her
direct reports who had operational responsibility responsibility for quota the money P L we’re all men
and every time a senior level VP role opened up she tried to hire a woman she
even went out and hired expensive Headhunters and search firms and spent all the money and at the end of the day
couldn’t get the candidate she wanted so they decided she and the head of HR decided to create an internal program
that would cultivate that next generation and few generations of female
Talent within the selling organization and one of the things I loved about it was the concept was we want women to
rise up and if they rise up and such that there isn’t a role at Outreach but they go someplace else we’re going to
still see that as a success because we know they’ll reach back and so we created this program that provided
experience access projects for a set select of up and
coming female leaders and it was a tremendous success it was such a success
that we decided to launch rise up which is for a set select of black employees
across all of Outreach and providing uh the education Executive coaching we
partner with a well-known Executive coaching external firm but the biggest thing we found was just access to
working with Business Leaders outside of your functional group and being put on these big area dashes challenges and
then being able to come back and provide solutions back to the business and the c-suite and so we’re super excited about
both of those programs and we are sharing the playbooks and the Frameworks with any company out there in the world
that would like to learn from what we did and make a program of their own but
I think once you get more underrepresented folks in leadership roles then you’re going to find they’re
going to reach back with a mentorship and they’re going to hire with that intentionality that I spoke about being
missing a little bit earlier in the conversation I was interesting When you
mention there as well even if you don’t stay with us you know just making sure
through the ranks because you know somebody if somebody circles back um to companies later in their career as
well you know it helps everybody and throughout the tech sector anyway and you mentioned there a little bit about
um sharing sharing the rule book um and helping other businesses and how how can other businesses develop and
Implement their own programs to promote diversity inequality yeah I mean the first thing you might want to do is just
start out with a little research and find out the companies who are getting the awards and getting the recognition and being on shows like yours who
actually are getting and I want to say some of it right because none of us get it all right right it’s a constant
journey of education so seek out and understand who those uh companies are and who’s who’s those Business Leaders
are the next step is just talk to them talk to everyone you can and learn as much um like I said someone reaches out to me
we will share the whole Playbook of the program and then of course you have to make it your own there’s other things
out there too there’s thought leaders and influencers who are lifting up women
across the workforce so you can follow them on social media you can reach out
to me and ask me who they are people um like Lori Richardson and Janice
Gordon over in the UK and many many others and you can develop relationships with them
and learn from them bring them in to speak bring them into your organization to consult there’s uh there are a range
of people who are out there who are helping businesses be more effective in driving diversity through uh formal and
informal programs nice um for businesses especially
where to start um and we always say to people that we work with you know we really don’t care
where you are in your diversity journey and we’re there to you know help you um
right from the start you know even if you already have a very in-depth program implemented
um you mentioned a little bit earlier about Mao allies um what more can men do um how can they
be better allies yeah I think you know I think it’s being first of all having an open heart mind
right and understanding the data understanding my team is going to be
more successful our company is going to be more successful if we have a range of diverse Talent on that team and then
open yourself to the education I have been educating myself a lot lately on
you know what can women in the workforce do to be a good Ally for black women in
the workforce and that’s something that I need to educate myself more on so start reading there’s a lot of books out
there that you can read um and and then I think really putting
an effort into sincerely celebrating the accomplishments of women
and diverse folks in your organization so again whether that’s external Awards or internal Awards or
just simply communication and recognition I think that’s something that you could really do being a man
tour and and a sponsor those are things that we talked about and then there was
kind of one thing I didn’t really talk about and it’s on the education side but you know I would bring in some external
training and it can all be done online with modules that help you understand
unconscious bias what is a microaggression like you need to learn
those things and probably year after year go through those modules and make sure you haven’t taken a step back
um so those are some of the things you can do and then bring in some of these women like Eva Helen who wrote this book
and be a speaker at your organization at your next off-site yeah because once companies understand
or even if the mirror has been held up to them or people within um their company I think things start to
change as long as people know as you say you know introducing training about unconscious buyers for instance people
might not realize um until they’re shown and we are running out of time already but I I
would um love to ask you about Role Models because we’re firm Believers in
that you you can’t be what you can’t see and so who are your female role models
in tech oh my gosh okay well um first of all Anna Baird so uh she is
uh currently doing a lot of board work but she has an incredible um career behind her and she actually
launched the Rise program for outreach so she’s out there she’s very accessible
um on LinkedIn and she’s an advisor to a range of different companies she’s just
a wonderful person Andrea Austin is someone I admire tremendously so she runs a sales uh business unit at Google
she coined a phrase that I used in my research if you don’t like the channel
change it if you keep getting the wrong information you’re not getting treated right go somewhere else you know this is
a tremendous time for women in sales leadership people want to hire you and women in Tech leadership and women in
Tech across the board so I’m a big admirer of uh of Andrea
um Tracy Eiler who many know from uh her her years as being a top CMO those are
some of the three that I love I could go you know I could go on and on but thank you for asking that question
yeah I love I love that expression if you don’t like the channel change it I think um I love it too that’s amazing I
think I’m going to use that in a few internal meetings I’m just gonna throw that one out there and go for it she
would she would be really honored yeah it applies to so many things
um and it and it’s it’s great advice and Mary we are already out of time it is
flown by it so thank you so much for coming in and chatting with us today well it’s truly my pleasure Kaylee and
thank you for having me and thank you for all the amazing work that you’re doing on a regular basis appreciate you thank you thank you very much and um to
everybody listening as always thank you for joining us and we hope to see you again next time
