Women in Sales - Lisa Stead

In this series focusing exclusively on Women in Sales, my guest in Episode 7 is Lisa Stead, Head of Franchising at Shuttercraft, the franchise group specialising in plantation shutters.

Lisa is our first non-salesperson guest in this series yet, as you might imagine, she regards her sales skills as critical to her success in all her non-sales roles. Having left university with ambitions to become an actress, Lisa saw a gap in the market for children's performing arts groups and set up her first business: a dance school for children in South Wales. From there, she moved to a property investment franchise, eventually becoming a Board Member (the first woman) and finally Managing Director. These days, she is a senior director at Shuttercraft where, like her time in property investment, she has played a significant part in hugely increased business levels and big growth in franchise partners for the group.

In this episode, we hear Lisa's views on how sales skills can help us all, no matter what job we do, and some tips on how they can improve relationships in our personal lives too. "Learning to sell has actually made me a better wife!" was one of many interesting comments in this episode. 

We close our conversation, as always, with a discussion of the challenges (and benefits) of being a woman in sales and in business along with a few recommended books from Lisa's reading history as sources of inspiration.

Lisa is one of my favourite non-sales salespeople and I hope you enjoy my time with her as much as I did.

If you'd like to get in touch with Lisa direct, you can find her on LinkedIn or via the Shuttercraft Head Office: https://www.shuttercraft.co.uk/.