Frances Arville fell into sales by coincidence and fell in love with the competition and the high of closing. On Sales Rewritten, Zinc's Head of Sales traces her journey from Chicago to London, and how she went from never wanting to manage to loving it.
Frances Arville fell into sales by coincidence and fell in love with the competition and the high of closing. On Sales Rewritten, Zinc's Head of Sales traces her journey from Chicago to London, and how she went from never wanting to manage to loving it.
She explains why reps happy to ask for six-figure deals still hesitate to ask for a phone number, and why communicating with intent and simply asking is the fix.
Frances also shares hard lessons from lost deals, the case for multi-threading and team selling, and why she hires for consistency over one-off wins, the same way you might choose a partner.
Some sellers chase promotion, some chase commission - Frances Arville chased the competition.
From selling denim jeans and fine whisky to leading sales teams across the US and EMEA, she has built a career on competition, confidence and closing. In episode four of Surfe’s podcast Sales Rewritten, she tells host Alex Wood why the high of closing never gets old - and why the best part of sales turned out to be the part she swore she would never do.
Frances didn't plan for a career in sales. Medicine required too much studying, law involved too many lawyers and marketing meant being creative.
What she was good at was retail and waiting tables, including learning everything about bourbon to sell to Chicago's big spenders.
She landed her first SaaS job in 2013. On day one, a sales manager told her to stay at least three to four years, long enough to learn the ropes and figure out her next steps. Frances stayed almost five.
"I loved being super competitive. I got high off of beating all the guys and the girls on the team. I loved seeing my name in lights."
Next came G2, as an account executive, with a promise that London might one day be on the cards.
When the opportunity arose in February 2020, Frances sold her things, bought a plane ticket, packed up her stuff…and then the world shut down because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Working UK hours from her Chicago kitchen, she was offered a team lead role.
There was just one problem.
"I very much never ever ever wanted to manage a sales team. That was so uninteresting... I just always thought that people that wanted to be managers were sales reps that were lazy and couldn't really sell."
Her VP won her over with a smart pitch: treat your reps as your new customers.
Frances wrote down three things she wanted people to say about her as a leader, and worked to live up to them every day: Be a true teammate, lead from the back sometimes and let people learn from mistakes.
Her managerial mantra is to help everyone be the best they can be.
In London, Frances found EMEA buyers less direct than Americans. But one particular habit in her team baffled her above all else.
"The thing that winded me up was the number of reps that didn't have phone numbers of their prospects. And they were really relying on that prospect accepting the Zoom invite... you're asking them for $100,000 but you can't ask them for their phone number?"
Her advice is to communicate with intent - explain why you're asking, whether it's a prospect or a rep in a one-to-one.
Still can't bring yourself to ask for a phone number? You may not have to. Find out how data enrichment uncovers verified phone numbers and emails.
Frances learned to cold call on a floor of a hundred reps, where nobody noticed you stumbling over your words or getting rejected.
She accepts difficult conversations with irritated prospects are part of the job, especially when you’re first starting out as a rep.
But, reflecting on her biggest closed wons and losses, she said her experiences as a rep have made her a more empathetic manager.
"This is sales 101 [but] I was single threading... not only is it super important to be multi-threading early on, but be careful with how much a prospect likes you because prospects that love you are also afraid to tell you no."
Her biggest win proved the opposite.
A first multi-year deal at G2 closed because she brought in her manager, product, tech and even a fellow AE. As a colleague told her at the time, you hit the gong as a team.
The deals that slip away usually send signals first. Learn to spot the B2B buying signals that tell you a deal is warming up, or going cold, before it's too late.
Frances often compares sales to dating, and the analogy works just as well for hiring. Flashy one-offs don't impress her.
"I look for consistency. I hate when AEs are telling me about how they crushed their first quarter, and this is the reason why they should get promoted. Or I hate when reps are telling me that they were the number one rep at a company and they've only been there a year."
She wants people who show up through the highs and the lows, and who can teach as well as learn. For SDRs chasing that first AE role, it comes down to numbers, curiosity and making yourself impossible to ignore.
There is plenty more in the episode, including the whisky toast she shares with every rep after their first deal, how cold outreach landed her a network of mentors, why she left G2 for Zinc, and her growing British-to-American dictionary.
Frances Arville is Head of Sales at Zinc, a global background check provider. She spent almost six years at G2, rising from account executive to sales leader and helping build its London team. Find her on LinkedIn.
Surfe finds verified emails and phone numbers for your prospects and sends them straight to your CRM.
Alex Wood tells Surfe's story across every part of the business, from product news to onboarding new users and everything in between. He oversees all aspects of Surfe's video content production, communicating new features and connecting with audiences. Born in the UK. Based in Bristol. Can quote every line of Jurassic Park 🦖
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