How to Stay Motivated in Sales with Founder of Stripes Women in MedTech Lisa Jacobs
Episode 159
In this episode, we dive deep into the heart of what fuels top-tier sales professionals and how you can harness this power. Discover actionable strategies on how to motivate salespeople to achieve unprecedented success and productivity. Whether you're leading a team or looking to elevate your personal sales game, understanding how to stay motivated in sales is key to overcoming challenges and smashing your targets.
Join us on this episode of Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo, featuring the powerhouse of perseverance, Lisa Jacobs. Lisa has navigated through the literal and figurative storms life has thrown at her - from surviving the ravages of Hurricane Ian to conquering the tumultuous waves of the medical sales industry.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Develop strategies to bolster your resilience in the face of personal setbacks.
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Channel the power of your passion for the products you sell into tangible sales success.
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About the Guest
Lisa Jacobs is an accomplished and high-performing executive sales leader with expertise in medical device sales. She is known for formulating and executing scalable strategies to accelerate business expansion, revenue generation, and team development in startup, turnaround, and rapid-growth environments across domestic and global markets. With her outstanding leadership and emotional intelligence skills, Lisa has built high-performing teams and turned complex business problems into opportunities for improvement that benefit all parties.
Lisa founded Stripes in 2022 with the goal of helping others build a network of women in the medical technology space. Her goal with Stripes is to empower and support women in medtech by sharing their collective knowledge, experience, and resources to help them achieve success, balance, and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives.
Connect with Lisa Jacobs:
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About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
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Hi Lisa, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. You have had a very highly successful career in MedTech sales and before we get into that, I would love to talk about what transpired over the past couple of years and how we got connected.
A Personal Account of Resilience and Recovery
You were actually a result of losing your house in hurricane Ian hurricane which September 20 eighth 2022, category four, winds up to 162. Did some research on this hurricane. It was the number three costliest hurricane since 19 costliest hurricanes and the deadliest hurricane since 1935. And you were among one of the people who lost everything in this hurricane. And I'm first so sorry that this took place. I can't imagine the stress and the feeling of losing everything. But share with us your experience of going through the hurricane and what you experienced during that time.
Sure. Thank you. Yes. So it was interesting. I heard about the hurricane coming and I was in my zone. I was actually in Philadelphia at a surgeon dinner. My husband was begging me not to go. And I remember sitting next to my colleague and I don't know if we should be here.
I think we should go home early. And we were trying to change our flights but we weren't really concerned about it. But we did change to the earliest flight and we just wanted to get home to be with our kids. My oldest son went to USF and was evacuated and was home. So I wanted to make sure I was home with him and my husband but didn't really think much of know. We've been through hurricanes before and never had house water in our house, just some tree damage. But this one was quite different. And we got back, my husband owns his business, we secured that business and then we went home and we waited, we got food, we did everything that you normally do, secure the house.
But within 10 hours water started dripping into the house and it first came through the door jams and we were putting towels down and then all of a sudden it just started pouring through the windows nonstop. And we grabbed the dog, we grabbed a cooler and we all ran upstairs. Luckily we remodeled our house and we had our master bedroom, the only room upstairs. And luckily we probably wouldn't have survived if we didn't do that. And I think it was from that time until the next day, about 10:00 a.m. were in the house and we had 6ft of water in our first floor. And I sat up at night watching it come up the stairs and it came up to about the 6th stair and we sat there and the roof was moving. We saw the water coming up right to the house.
We had about seven boats in our backyard. We live on a canal in south Fort Myers. And I have to say it was the scariest moment in our lives, and especially my son, who was 20 years old at the time. It was a horrible experience for the three of us, but we were there throughout the entire storm. We left the next day with a kayak and a paddleboard that we brought into the house, and we went to one of our friend's house, and we were truly homeless for six months after that, living in Airbnb or hotels or with friends until we could figure out what was.
Not for those that are not familiar with hurricanes, when you say we're going to fly back to the hurricane, there might be people out there that going, why would you be flying to the hurricane versus leaving the hurricane? I know I used to think that because I'm originally from California until I moved to Florida, and I realized the preparation that needs to go into preparing for a hurricane. And also, too, I don't know how you felt about this particular hurricane, but it was not projected to hit Fort Myers. In fact, it was projected to hit Tampa, where I'm at. And at the very last second, it made a sharp turn and just hovered over Fort Myers and devastated Fort Myers. Sarasota, Sanibel Island. I mean, billions upon billions of dollars of damage were in this hurricane. So I just wanted to kind of share that perspective with people.
The Realities of Limited Resources in Hurricane Survival
When you're hearing we flew to the hurricane, it's really because we weren't anticipating it to be down there. And preparation needs to go into. I don't, I have never seen a hurricane like this. I experienced Irma, and I've shared my own experience with Irma in previous episodes. But to have the devastation of losing everything is not something that happens often. Even with the devastating hurricanes.
We, you know, as you mentioned, it wasn't supposed to hit Fort Myers. It was supposed to hit Tampa. That's why my son was evacuated. And I wanted to be with my family. And by the time we were done preparing, I was on the last flight in that day. The airport closed. There was no gas. There were no hotels.
The only option we would have had is to drive across the state. But we did look at potentially staying with friends across the state. But again, there wasn't gas, and we didn't even know if we could make it. So when hurricanes turn like this, as much as you want to be prepared, there's not much time they give you before you have to be secured and hunkered down. Plus there were horrible winds and tornadoes in our whole front yard. We had 100-year-old oaks. There was a tornado before the hurricane that tore down all of our trees, and we were barricaded inside the house. So that was another issue that we were facing.
And that's an element, too, that you bring up about the limited resources that are available. When hurricanes happen, it becomes a frenzy of finding supplies the week leading up to the hurricane. I would say the one benefit in silver lining with hurricanes, and my experience is we have noticed. So coming from California, where we have devastating earthquakes, we don't have notice of the earthquakes. They just happen and startle us. But with hurricanes, we at least have noticed. We can prepare, we can get everything settled. However, resources become very limited when hurricanes happen.
So all the water is typically out, all the food is out of the grocery stores, gas is typically out, because people are not only filling up their cars, but people are also filling up gas tanks for generators and then two. Also the element of traffic from evacuations. I remember when Irma hit us, it took my sister-in-law, and normally it takes about 6 hours or 8 hours to drive to Atlanta. It took her 13 hours because all the roadways were just jam-packed with people trying to evacuate. So sometimes it doesn't make sense to evacuate because as you're saying, you never know what to expect. And if you're going to be able to, because of power lines down or trees down or not having the resources that you need to actually drive a distance.
After the hurricane was actually worse because you heard all the military planes coming in. There was a lot of elderly on the beach. We have a lot of friends, parents who died. They estimated that there were 80 bodies floating around Fort Myers beach. I mean, there were houses that were absolutely gone. So we were very fortunate. When we went outside, there were people on their rooftops sitting there asking for help. So there wasn't much of that in the news.
There were a lot of people at Walmart. We're lucky that we were able to buy another house six months later. We just sold last week our house that was in the hurricane. We decided there was too much pain and devastation there, and we didn't want to tear it down and rebuild. We are away from the water at the moment, but we love that house. We got married on the lot. My kids were raised there, so there were a lot of emotions about leaving that and losing everything and having to do so. But the aftermath of helping and the amount of people that came.
And actually, the people I worked with at the time at Excelis, all drove over from Palm Beach and helped. And I will be forever grateful for all the people who did help us after. But unfortunately, it was mostly churches and local people helping. There wasn't much outside help as you would expect.
Mind Over Matter
Well, let's talk about recovery because you have been able to. This was only a year and a half ago, and since then you've bought a new house, you've been able to rebuild, you've been able to get a new job. You've had a lot of shifts in your life since this time with your mindset. How did you get through that situation? That's got to be a devastating situation to get through. So what steps did you take to help yourself recover from that situation?
I do this when I have obstacles in my life or devastation or things that are hard, I compartmentalize. When I'm at work, I'm locked in. I'm incredibly laser-focused, and whatever I'm working on, I'm working on at that at the moment. I used to get distracted a lot, and I realized to be incredibly productive, I have to be completely locked into what I'm doing. So when I'm at work, I'm completely focused on that. But when I have to deal with things at home, I deal with them separately. And I actually have a productivity cube that I use. So when I'm working on projects at home, 45 minutes, that's what I'm working on.
That's what I'm doing. But it is a mindset that you have to be cognizant of all the time, of how to be laser-focused and locked in with what you're doing and not to let outside emotions or other things going on in your life affect what your goal is and what your dreams are. And I was incredibly motivated because we were very comfortable. We paid off our house, we paid off our cars. I have two kids in college, and my children are typically my biggest motivation. I want them to have more than I did. I want them to have more opportunities. So I work incredibly hard to provide that for them.
So I knew that I needed to continue and work and go towards my goals. It actually made me level up because I knew that I had to take myself my career and my finances to the next level to shorten the curve of everything I just lost. So I worked harder. I absolutely wanted more. So it did actually level me up.
Lisa's Profound Learning Lesson from the Past
What was the biggest learning lesson when you reflect back on this past year and a half and what you've gone through and where you are today, what was the biggest learning lesson for you?
That you really don't need much. I haven't replaced everything that I lost, and there is very few things that you really need if you have your family and the things that are important to you. No, I lost all the baby pictures. I lost all the yearbooks. I lost all of that. And luckily we have a lot of digital ties now. But for me to be successful at work, all I needed was my laptop and a new car, and I was able to run with it.
Right.
So sometimes I think that we think we need certain clothes or a certain briefcase or we need this or that to be successful. You don't. And I think that's what I like about the grit. Right? It's just the basics you need, and you need your knowledge, and you need tenacity, and you need to be resilient and persistent to be successful. And that's it. You don't need much more than that.
There's a lot of times it's easy to get caught up in the society of the need. I need to have this to be successful. I need to have that to be successful, whatever it is. And you break it down to the simplistic elements of at the end of the day, we really don't need very many material things, and we can get so caught up in the. I need that to be successful, when really what we need is to believe in ourselves, to have the grit, to have the tenacity, the resilience, to have that drive, because success is within us, whether we have all the material things that we need or we don't. You think about some of the people that have come out of extreme poverty, have not had the same opportunities, but they've had the drive, they've had the grit, they've had the tenacity to keep going. So you've had a really successful career in medical sales. And when you think about your career, what do you believe has led to some of your success in going from an individual contributor role to being in sales, and then growing into a VP of sales.
Why Listening and Compassion are Non-negotiable in Sales
I think it is listening and having compassion with people, whether it's the surgeon who is giving feedback on your product or on the company, whether it is the sales rep who is learning. But I think where the biggest misses on a lot of these companies is that they don't listen to feedback, whether it's from the customer, whether it's from the VAT committee, and listen to everybody who has the boots on the street and who is testing your business model, who is using the product and giving feedback. Sometimes a lot of decisions are made in the boardroom with people who aren't front-facing. So I think my success is that I'm happy to go into cases and see how the technology is working. I have lots of conversations with all different stakeholders, but then also in the boardroom, I can give accurate, scalable feedback so companies can grow and scale very quickly.
I see that as well. A lot of times in organizations where a lot of the decisions are made at the top-end level without having the perspective of, as you say, the boots on the ground, the ones that are interacting with the customers on a day-to-day basis. I'm a true believer that the best resource an organization has is its employees, especially the employees in the customer service department, the employees are the sales reps because they have direct interaction on a day-to-day basis with the customers and understand what their challenges are, what their needs are, and exactly what it's going to take to take that business to the next level. So I agree with you 100% that the biggest lesson to take away from executive leadership is to really take the time to listen to your team, ask them questions, get them involved in the decision-making process, and get them involved in hearing feedback as well. And when they're doing assessments, actually take the feedback, listen to it, and then respond to it, too. That's another area that I see organizations where they'll ask for feedback and they either do nothing with it or they don't actually provide a report back so that the employees feel like they've been heard.
Correct. And same with surgeons. Surgeons want to be heard. Surgeons, if they're having problems with the case, sometimes they're like, what is the surgeon doing wrong? Well, no, that's not always. Usually not the answer. There may be a new instrument needed for a product, or there may be some pearls of the product that we're not doing in training. So truly listening to the customer, I think, is the most important. And I care about people.
I care about not only them on a professional level, but also on a personal level. Where do they want to be in a year, five years? What are their goals? Where do they want to be? Do they want to get to the executive level? Are they happy where they're at? Or how to keep people passionate about what they're doing? Because that's when you have success in sales, is when you keep that passion, because it's a tough industry. You get beat up a lot. You get said no to a lot. So how do you keep that fire in people's bellies every day? To go out and sell?
Yeah. Now, when we talk about sales, you have this perspective of being in sales and also the perspective of being a leader in sales. And for our listeners, whether they're in sales or not, I believe that there's a particular mindset, a particular behavior, a personality that really thrives in sales.
The Essential Characteristics for Sales Excellence
What are some of the types of characteristics that you see when it comes to being successful in sales?
Someone who is, you have to be obviously incredibly motivated. And what does motivated mean? Right. It means that you consistently do the actionable items it takes to be successful every day. So I think that that is something internal that you can't teach people. And when I interview people, I'm always looking for that quality. There are just certain characteristics of people who can be persistent, who don't get down if they're said no too many times also have pleasant personalities that you listen to more than you speak. I think a lot of times you have a widget that you want to sell, and you have that in mind. But the surgeon may be having a different problem right now with different products, and you're not listening to what his problems are.
And you could probably sell something else in your bag other than the widget that you have in your hand that you're trying to sell. Also, just having fun. One company, one CEO I worked with said, whistle while you work. If you love what you do you ooze passion and you're having fun while you're doing it, people want to work with you. They want to see that you love what you do. They want to help you. So I think that's really important not just to wear the company badge, but also why are you there? And I think in sales, especially in medical sales, you have to believe in what you're selling.
Absolutely. When it comes to hiring, I was a hiring manager for seven years and looking for those key characteristics of drive and motivation, because I can teach someone the products, I can teach them the industry, but I can't teach somebody to wake up every single morning and have the drive to go out and cold call, to go out and meet with customers, to have the resilience, to bounce back after setbacks. So being able to have those innate characteristics and that drive to succeed a lot of times is either in someone or not. Now it can be learned and it can grow, but it's a characteristic that really when you look at all areas of business, whether you're in sales whether you own a business or also somebody that runs marathons and exercise, it's that drive to just keep going forward and to not let those setbacks define or to stop at that moment. So action is key. Absolutely.
The Antidote to Workplace Burnout
And you talked, too, about how I like that whistle as you work. There was a guest on my podcast, Courtney Clark, and she said a profound statement that really resonated, and it was burnout is not a result of working long hours. Burnout is a result of lack of purpose and passion in what you do.
I love that. That absolutely resonates with me as well. But it's true. If you are not passionate or you're disgruntled with the company that you work for, I think it's time just to move on. You have to love what you're doing. You have to be excited about it, and you have to be on the same mission as the entire team. It has to be one team, one mission, and you execute together. You have to be sometimes an individual contributor, but you also have to be a team contributor.
So I really like to hire people who are athletes because they understand that mindset, or people who've been in the military because they also have that mindset.
Yeah, I remember there was a hiring manager at the company that I worked for, we always did co-interviews. So we would interview together and they would always ask, are there any sports that you played in high school? And it could possibly be a deal breaker when it looks at two quality candidates. And the reason being is that he saw the emphasis of working in having a sports background is being a team player, that competitiveness that drive, the consistency, those characteristics that you see in that team sport kind of always was that little one differentiator on why we would hire that particular person, even though two quality candidates. And it's interesting because a lot of times people won't necessarily share that they played a high school sport. And I'm like, share that. That's absolutely relevant because those are the key skills and core competencies that we learn at just a very early age that evolve into where we're at today which leads to our success.
Absolutely. I completely agree.
A Beacon for Women in MedTech Sales
Yes. So Stripes is a women's network in Medtech. And why we started it as I was speaking to a lot of women, especially on LinkedIn and in medical sales college when I was teaching. And they were looking for an organization, not just for executive women, but women who are just getting started, whether you're in customer service or you're a C-suite executive. This is absolutely inclusive for everybody. We have a mentorship program where you can ask any questions on how to do a job interview. How do I ask for that promotion? How do I ask for the raise? Just networking. What obstacles are you having in your industry if you're having your first boardroom meeting and you're in a sea of middle-aged white men in suits? How do you conduct yourself to get the respect that you deserve? So it is unique in that sense, where it's all encompassing of all women. We do have men join sometimes as well for some of our webinars, but we do have monthly webinars, and we just started a group called Breakthrough.
So breaking the glass ceilings. And I created a workbook that people can use to help their goals in 2024. So we have a panelist interview coming up shortly where we get international women as well. So we get people from around the globe who want to join and who want to network and want to help each other out. And I think that as women, instead of pinning each other against each other in this industry, we have to raise each other up and we all can win together. I've had a lot of mentors in my life who are men, but there seem to be more and more women coming in, med tech and med device, and I just wanted to have a place, a safe place where women could go that they could share their problems or successes and feed off each other and hold each other accountable and be energized with each other.
I believe something we've needed for a long time. I wish that this resource existed when I first started my career because I started my career when I was 23 years old and it was a predominantly male-dominated industry in capital equipment sales. I was one of seven women out of 100 sales reps in the company. The stories and the experiences that I had definitely developed grit early on at an age in my career. But it would have been so nice to have a program and a network like what you've created with Stripes that are going to help guide and provide resources to women to really succeed. And for the men who are joining in on those webinars, thank you for advocating and trying to just understand a different perspective and looking at ways to support. So thank you for joining those men.
It's wonderful. I know I have a great group of men who are reposting all the Stripes information, and I am so thankful. And it's actually giving me a new motivation. I love the outreach. I love talking to people. I have a co-founder, Brandy, who I've worked with for years. She does the marketing standpoint of it. I do more of the sales, obviously, of getting speakers.
And Danielle, I know that you're coming up, so we thank you for, you know, it's just been so wonderful. And we just started it about six months ago, and we are growing very quickly. So it shows that there is a need for something like this in the industry.
Yes, there absolutely is. And you're part of the chief community as well. I saw that you're a chief member.
Yes. And that's why, actually, one reason why I started Stripes is because I love Chief and I met an amazing group of women. Unfortunately, in Florida, there wasn't a networking there where you could go and meet people. But the medical device network was a little slim, and that was the main reason why I joined, is I wanted more of that. So I figured if it's not there, then why not just start it on our own? Obviously, there's a need for it.
Absolutely. So if it doesn't exist, we can create it. And that's a great message, too, because if there's something out there that we truly believe that there's a need for, that it's going to make a difference, then we get to be the creators of it. We don't need to wait for somebody else to create it. We get to create it ourselves. So I'm grateful for people like you who are out there creating programs and networks to help other people. It's something that we need.
Thank you.
Well, thank you so much for joining today's podcast. I really appreciate it. And sharing your message about resilience in overcoming this hurricane that you went through and also the qualities and characteristics it takes to success in sales.
Thank you, Danielle.
Well, for those that are listening, thank you so much for joining unstoppable Grit podcast with Danielle Kobo. I really am grateful for your listenership. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please share this episode with your friends, your family, your challenges. If you know somebody who is in medical sales and this message will resonate with them, please share it and continue to expand the network of the unstoppable grit podcast and until next week, be unstoppable.
