Seeing my team succeed is the best part of my role

Capita Reading Cloud is a library management system to improve literacy and learning. It’s a simple and cost effective way of cataloguing a school’s physical library stock, to help promote, engage and manage reading throughout a school, college or 6th form. When I heard about it, I immediately wanted to join the team. I was impressed by the size of Capita – with over 70,000 employees – and when I read the company values I instantly felt linked to them. I liked the idea of engaged employees being listened to and bringing their ideas to the workplace – that’s something that motivates me highly. My job itself is not only managing the sales team, but also getting involved with the marketing decisions with the product development team.

The role just spoke to me, it’s exactly how I wanted to work. It was important to me that while my team are the ones selling the product, I have a link to the marketing materials – after all, we’re the ones that speak daily with our customers, pitching the product, we know what works best.

Passion for the purpose

I’m really enjoying my role – I’m developing my career and am already looking forward to seeing what I can achieve here. My favourite part is managing my team. When I’m coaching my employees I want to help them maximise what they can do. It makes everyone happier and what we get is a person who is going to excel, earn more money and be more motivated in their role. And how does it look for the manager? Great because you made that happen and you feel good seeing the other person being happy and proud of themselves. That’s the best part of my role; seeing my employees succeed.

My tip for achieving is that you always need to keep learning. Personally I feel that as a people manager, I need to maintain the best emotional intelligence possible so that I can get the most out of my employees. And what set me apart from my co-workers in my previous role was that I enjoyed self-learning, putting my learnings into practice and making a difference. That’s what I want for my employees and what I like in Capita. Learning is one of my main motivators, I like learning new things and putting them in to practice and then all of a sudden you see the great results and for me, it’s one of the best feelings.

Build relationships

I say to my team that they need to do three things: expect change, learn something new and give 100% to make the team a success. Achieving in sales means being curious, you’re not just selling a product, you have to consider the person on the other end of the phone. I ask my team to set out the goals they want to achieve on a call, because without purpose you’ll hang up the phone and realise you forgot to ask something. Do your research and have in front of you what you want to get out of the call and you’ll get more information. Also, don’t avoid gatekeepers, use them. Try to get information out of them and you’ll be surprised at how much they know. Treat them as key figures, develop connections with them – and they’ll become your ally and help you get your foot in the door.