Lynsey Jones, Business Development Director, on achieving her career goals, what the day-to-day looks like for a BDD and the advice she would give her younger self.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your career to date.
I started off my career working in sales at the age of 18, after I decided at that point further education wasn’t for me and I had a real appetite to make money. My first role was as an appointment generator for a pest control business.
After a few years I then moved to working for PHS Compliance for a period of 10 years and successfully worked my way up the career ladder, from appointment generating, to an internal sales role, then to a strategic external national sales role.
So effectively when I moved to what was NWC four and a half years ago, this was essentially only my third job! This was as a National Sales Manager up until June 2019, when I was then promoted to my current role as Business Development Director.
What does your current role with the business involve?
My
current role involves the generation of new business across all divisions
of NSS. This business could be generated from something as simple as a
communication via LinkedIn, which for one new maintenance client, has recently
seen us generate a significant amount of new business into our projects
division.
Once a new customer is on board, I also take responsibility in ensuring we maximise all opportunities with this client by building and expanding on the relationship with key contacts nationally.
I also work alongside our group commercial director, in strategically looking at our existing sales processes and strategy and working on ways in which we can improve as a team.
What has been your proudest achievement to date?
Within work, this would most definitely be being promoted to director last year. From the start of my career and my aim through my twenties, would be that I would achieve this role before the age of 35, which I did a year ahead of my expectation. I achieved this through hard work and consistently over-achieving my annual sales targets.
Another achievement in my previous employment was being nominated and making the top 5 salespeople out of 1500, for Salesperson of the Year at the British Excellence in Sales & Marketing Awards. Unfortunately, I wasn’t number one on the evening, but it was still a great experience to be put forward as part of the selection process by my employer at the time.
What has been the biggest challenge you have faced throughout your career?
My biggest challenge was the completion of my business management degree which took five years of part time study, alongside working full time. I found the balancing of both very difficult and at times very testing to the point of being ready to quit.
But with support and encouragement of my family and friends I made it out of the other side with a great sense of achievement. Also, the skills and knowledge I picked up as part of the course I feel have been key in the development and progression of my career.
What advice would you now give to a younger self?
Always remain persistent and believe that anything is achievable with a bit of hard work!
How do you relax or unwind outside the office?
Outside of the office, I like to be quite active and enjoy doing CrossFit and have recently started playing golf. Aside from being active, I enjoy socialising and spending time with family and friends and love a good holiday.
What does the future hold for NSS?
I believe we are in a very strong position within the marketplace. Now that we have fully integrated the divisions, there is no other company that comes close to us in terms of competition based on our service delivery, resource and coverage. This makes our future outlook strong and we will continue to go from strength to strength, as a salesperson this makes it an exciting place to be and I am proud to be part of our ongoing success.