Lexi Whitehead - Selling success

Corporate Account Manager

If you’re in sales, you can sell anything, Lexi Whitehead says.

A Corporate Account Manager at Insight, Lexi never planned on working in technology. Her sales career began straight out of school when she joined a Telstra call centre in a commission-only role, six days a week, making an average of 250 calls in her eight-hour day to convert people to Telstra. 

Her mother was just grateful Lexi had made it through to Year 12 with good marks, given she had been kicked out of several schools before, in her words, she decided to ‘pull my head in’.

For Lexi, the role would kickstart her career in sales. She soon moved onto sales for daily deals sites, including Groupon. 

After a stint in Ibiza and London, she was looking for work. 

“A friend said ‘I work for this awesome company, do you want to come in and have a chat to them?’”

It led to the Insight role, taking over ‘a very large enterprise patch’.

“I was thrown in the deep end pretty hard core.” 

She gave it her all with on-the-job training, including tailing her predecessor for three months, attending every vendor event she could and doing any online course on the basics of IT, licensing and cloud, possible.

“I really focused on the relationships, going above and beyond in over-servicing customers while I was building the technical knowledge.”

The effort paid off. In her first full year she was third out of around 40 for sales and was named Rookie of the Year. It’s one of a number of awards she’s won over the years, including three Insight Presidents Club awards for achievement and twice being a finalist for WIICTA Rising Star

She likens her role to being a project manager, managing an account with the backup of specialists she can bring into client conversations. 

As her knowledge grew, so did a passion for technology.

“We sell some really cool solutions. Even people who aren’t interested in technology can’t not be interested in stuff like artificial intelligence and Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality.”

In seven years at Insight she’s had the opportunity to see her clients transform their businesses with technology, watching struggling companies turn around and flourish with the aid of new business models and the right technology. 

“That’s really exciting to be part of,” she says. 

“This is an industry that is never going away. I got stung in daily deals. I thought it was an amazing career and then it just died. It wasn’t possible to advance my career anymore because it wasn’t an industry that had any longevity.

“Technology is always going to be there. If you get your foot in the door you will have career opportunities for the rest of your life.

“And,” she adds, with a laugh “the money is very, very good!”