Kimberlee Marsh
Vice President of Sales,
Kellogg Canada
Kimberlee’s Favorite Things
Favorite Catchphrase
“It’s all good! My grandmother lived in assisted living the last five years of her life. Every morning she got up; she put on her makeup; she got dressed; she put on her earrings and necklaces. She wasn’t going anywhere, but she never knew what the day was going to bring, and she was prepared to greet it with her best foot forward. I try to live with that same positive and expectant attitude.”
Favorite Piece of Advice
“My mentor, Brian encouraged me to create a “Board of Directors” made up of carefully chosen people who have expertise in a particular area so that I could gain well-rounded, quality advice in all aspects of my life. For instance, he’s definitely there for a business perspective, and certainly some family members; and I have a dear friend who is a medical professional, so she’s somebody who’s on my board. Throughout the years, board members have come and gone, but I’ve continued to consult my board for major decisions in my life.”
Favorite Way to “Network”
“I love to introduce like-minded acquaintances. What I’ve discovered over time is that if you think about the people that you come across, you can connect people who have strengths in some areas with people who are looking for somebody with those strengths. It’s almost like matchmaking, except that it’s on development areas. And those people are always appreciative so they’ll think of me when they have an opportunity I might be good for.”
Favorite Book
“The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. I’m a believer in continuous learning. Not necessarily formal classes, but I’m always reading. I try to learn something from everybody that I come across and take every advantage to broaden my understanding of how things work.”
Kimberlee’s Strategies for Selling Anything to Anyone
Know when to sell yourself.
“You want to be genuine. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and emphasize how you can help them. If you have your sales hat on all the time, especially about yourself, that can come off as unprofessional. So, it’s important to know when to sell, and then it’s important to focus on the benefits—what’s in it for the person potentially buying?”
Embrace the silence
“People often want to fill the gap in a conversation, but you can learn a lot if you can just sit back, listen and wait. If you want to excel at sales, you need to learn to get comfortable with silence.”
Ask open-ended Qs
“I always like to ask the person a question that can’t be answered with a yes or no. It gets them talking and I find that oftentimes people will share important information that can be used later—whether it’s about themselves, or their objectives, or perhaps their struggles, if you listen well, you will often hear nuggets of information that can help you achieve your objectives.”
Knock on the right door
“I was working on this one proposal for a year and a half. I kept getting the run-around by the person who was supposedly responsible for the final decision. It turned out I was beating my head against the wall all that time only to find out I was talking to the wrong person and tailoring my presentation to the wrong types of information. When I finally figured that out, I got to know the right buyer and what his issues were so I was able to address them correctly. That’s when I made the sale.”
Never write anyone off as “unimportant.”
“You just never know who’s going to be the gate keeper. The way I discovered I was selling that proposal to the wrong person was by talking with an administrative assistant who gave me the heads up. Respect everybody that you come across in your work life because you never know who is going to be promoted tomorrow. I’ve seen so many guys talk down to assistants only to find out that they’re the only way in to see the decision maker.”
Know when to sell yourself
June 2010
Early on in her career, Kimberlee Marsh was fortunate to work in an entrepreneurial environment where she had a chance to let her dynamic personality shine. Only a year out of college, she was already interacting with marketing executives and identifying ways for them to drive their sales further. “I wasn’t intimidated by these high-level people so I would speak my mind and let them know where the opportunities were, as opposed to sugar-coating things. I almost didn’t know any better—I was always respectful, but I was also very open and up front with them,” she says. It was this natural confidence that caught the eye of Brian Nohe, a sales director at Gillette, which was one of the companies she interacted with at that time. “He really enjoyed the fact that I was so straight forward with these executives, and he was impressed by what he liked to call my ‘spunk’!” Brian took Kimberlee under his wing and has been a mentor to her both professionally and personally for 24 years now.
It was another strong mentor who helped Kimberlee discover that sometimes taking a step backward can actually lead to a bigger step forward. While she was VP of Category Management at Kellogg four years ago, her professional mentor at the time suggested that she step down from her position to work as a director for a different business unit within the company. At first, she was reluctant to take his advice because of the hard work she had put in to moving up. “Then as I thought about it, and actually listened to his advice, I realized it was an opportunity for me to learn new things without the risk of failing at very high levels,” she recalls. As she reflects on the decision today, she believes her growth has been accelerated because of it, and she knows it was the best move. Within one year, Kimberlee was promoted back to the VP level, and just recently the company named her Vice President of Sales for all of Kellogg Canada so she’s packing up her bags and taking another huge step into a new country!
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