Sandy Zhen

Recruiting & Coaching by Zhen Inc

Founder & Sales Recruiter (US & Canada only)

MeazureUp

Sales hire #2 while joining company as employee #14
Sold to mid market & enterprise segment, large chain businesses across Canada & the U.S

Account Executive

Ritual.co

#1 AE ranking among a team of 9 account executives 
Broke company record of most closed won deals in month of October 2020, 420% above quota. 
Acting as a quasi-sales manager to other AEs
Major contributions in sales playbook & cold calling scripts 
Mentored and coached incoming sales hires 
Acted as the liaison between the sales function and product & marketing team

Jobillico | You'll be happier

Jobillico is a recruitment network partnered with Google Jobs and the Canadian Job Bank to create a better match between companies and job seekers. My role is to entice HR professionals to complement their existing hiring tools with the platform that is home to 10,000 hiring companies and 3 million job seekers. 

- Prospecting with inbound leads provided by marketing research team 
- Self initiated 30% of leads through research
- Average of 80-100 outbound calls / day to qualify leads  
- Book appointments for the Account Executive team 
- Average of 45-60 appointments booked per month

Sales Development Specialist

HomeStars

HomeStars is a network for homeowners to post reviews for contractors, separating the best businesses from the worst. I worked with service professionals in the home industry to build their reputation online with their past customer reviews. Happy to have served 120+ clients among small, medium and enterprise businesses to improve their SEO, advertise through word of mouth and generate more work projects! 

- Products; Brand Builder Program & Lead Driver Program 
- Prospecting; average of 100 outbound calls / day to find potential clients                      
- Educate clients on word of mouth advertising through reviews on HomeStars.com 
- full cycle sales from prospecting, closing & providing tips to succeed on platform
- Upsell subscription services with add-ons
- Negotiating subscription prices using least amount of discounting possible 
- Annual attainment of 122% above target

Virgin Mobile Canada

Acting Manager

Top Performers Award Winner (Presidents Club)

Worked for one of Canada's best cellular services provider, a Bell company. Every day my duties included helping members with their account inquiries, billing issues, technical errors and sold cellular devices, home internet and new rate plans. 

- Educate new customers on the Virgin Mobile LTE network 
- New activation monthly attainment 100-135% 
- Review existing customer accounts & discussed renewal options 
- Upgrade sales monthly attainment 150-200%
- Upsell & cross-sell to exceed multiple metrics of accessories and warranties 
- Resolve customer complaints & discovering sales opportunities in difficult situations 
- Member Experience follow up; Ensure customer satisfaction through callbacks while pitching additional products 
- Cold called customer database to generate in-store traffic & referrals 
- Mentored and trained new hires
- National recognition for best member experience through customer surveys
- Consistently remained in Canada's top 2% best sales rep

Retail Sales Consultant

Cash management
Sell bank accounts, credit cards & travel insurance 
Promote RBC Mortgages & refer to mortgage specialists
Provide preliminary advice on diverse investments & referred clients to financial advisors

Client Service Representative

WOW! mobile boutique

Sell mobile devices and monthly rate plans for Koodo, Fido, Rogers & Telus 
New activation & renewal sales 
Post-Sale Calls - checking in with customers regarding purchases and in-store experiences

Sales Representative

Wilfrid Laurier University

Research Assistance in departments of social and developmental psychology 

- Aided graduate students with literature reviews 
- Conducted social experiments & data analyses 
- Brainstormed methods to recruit participants 
- Coordinate schedules for research studies 
- Tutored students in social psychology & statistics 
- Proctored 2-3 exams/ semester

Research And Teaching Assistant

ACTV8 Marketing

Encourage customers to apply for the President's Choice Financial Mastercard 
Attach balance protection plans to sales

Contact: sandy@recruitingcoachingbyzhen.com

Recruiting - I recruit top sales talent for companies across Canada & the U.S. I have a successful track record of placing SDRs and AEs into companies within 30 days. DM me to inquire about having me assist with finding rock star talent. 


My Super Powers: Mentoring & Connecting People
📌[MENTORSHIP/SALES ADVICE]  
Being in sales for 5+ years, I still have so much to learn but have a hand full of tips and tricks that keeps me employed in the sales tech space. Happy to mentor any emerging sales professionals or trade sales secrets with veterans 🙋🏻‍♀️ 🌟 
[INTRODUCTIONS TO PEOPLE IN MY NETWORK]
📌 I genuinely enjoy connecting people with each other to further their possible synergies. Happy to make someone’s day by introducing you to someone that could help your professional or personal goals 

🚀 [FUTURE GOALS] 🚀 
My ultimate goal is to be a founder of my own software company one day. In the past 4 years, I have been qualitatively designing a sales training software. I often day dream about the day it launches and the number of sales professionals it can help! With this goal, networking to build a large following on Linkedin is important. I help as many people as I can to curate relationships and connections that will aid my software launch in the future. Super open to connect and chat with anyone in various industries, roles or backgrounds. I am open minded to talk to anyone as I love creating opportunities. Firm believer in an equal give and take interaction to network. The best way to network is to help people. 🙏🏻

I love sales, entrepreneurship and all things that fall under hustles 💪🏻 much enjoy meeting new people and discovering their passions as well. what’s your passion? Let’s connect and chat (I accept all invites)

Founder @MSP Consulting | Enterprise Sales for Startups | $2M => $10M ARR

Making enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders. 

If next year’s revenue, your next hire, or your next 20 customers feel like a gamble, you’re not alone. 
Most founders don’t see the real cause... inconsistency across sales, hiring, and leadership.

I help you implement repeatable enterprise sales systems that remove that guesswork. 

Book a 30‑min strategy session at the link below. We’ll diagnose the single biggest inconsistency costing you predictability. (Shortened sales cycles by 50% for a recent client.)

Monica Stewart

I lost a $227K deal because I made the CTO look stupid 😬


8 months working on this deal. Perfect use case. Everyone loved us.

Then I pulled up my slides showing how much time they were wasting with their current process.

Turns out the CTO had personally championed their current system two years earlier. Like, sold it to the board and managed the implementation.

And I (some random salesperson) just made this whole presentation explaining why it was inefficient.

The deal died two weeks later.

"Budget priorities shifted".

What I learned:

People don't want to be told they made a bad decision (especially not by someone who has never had their job). 

They want to be shown how to make a good one going forward.

"You built something great for where you were. Now you're ready for what's next."

Evolution, not replacement.

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

Making enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders | $1M - $10M

Sometimes you meet people who make everything around them better, just by existing. 


Leslie Venetz is one of those people.

Leslie is an expander. She is the biggest champion of her friends, the most generous anti-gatekeeper, and relentless supporter of women. 

Leslie is the kind of person who knows a million cool people and is always conspiring behind the scenes to get them to be friends with each other and she is ALWAYS RIGHT (Anne Pao Laura Erdem ⚡Shannon Plumb⚡ Alice Heiman Chris Tubis). 

Watching Leslie write Profit Generating Pipeline over the last year and launch it into the world has been SO INSPIRING and it was sooo much fun to celebrate it with her last week 🖤 

Congratulations leslie and thank you Meg for introducing us. 

No better feeling than seeing your friends winning.

Ok let me get this straight...


Everyone should use AI.
But not to write LinkedIn posts.

BUT you should be writing about AI because it’s the future.
If you use AI for writing you’re lazy. 

But if you don’t use it for everything else you’re living in 2015. 

Cool cool cool. 

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

When I was a kid I didn’t know anyone who had a corporate job. 


I’m the only person in my family to graduate college. 

I wasn’t even planning to go. I only applied as a way to get out of the city I grew up in. 

If you would have told 15 year old me that I’d end up building a business helping startup founders sell to the biggest companies in the world, I literally would not have known what you were talking about (and probably gone right back to listening to Wu Tang Clan). 

I went to Brooklyn College because I wanted to be in NYC (despite having only been there once for 5 days). 

I studied International Relations and worked my way through school. 

I got a job selling hedge fund conferences after graduating because it paid the same as all the other jobs BUT had commission. I made $36k my first year. Got a crash course in selling to people WAY above my pay grade from Jared Rose 

Switched to financial services for a 40% pay bump, realized I made a terrible mistake after a year. 

Went to work at an art tech startup and started freelancing for conference companies on the side. 

Got my first SaaS sales role and made $150k my first year. I stayed 5 years and learned everything I could about sales, logistics, supply chain, economics and how enterprises really work. Got to test so many things with Erika Borden and build a great team with Peter Swartz and Keith Soura 

Moved into leadership and ran teams at 2 more startups. Got to work with amazing people like Kristen Habacht Alexa Battista and Hamid Palo

Realized my destiny was not working for other people and went into consulting, still ended up working for someone else to build an agency. So many lessons learned about consulting and scaling with Matt Lopez Franklin Williams Jake Dunlap 

Took a 2-year sabbatical to travel the world, organize raves and DJ. 

Finally went all in on myself. I made more in my first year than I ever did working for someone else. Learned a ton (and still am) about brand, social, business models and sales from Ken Yarmosh Reshia Lea Colin Stewart-Perreault 🧙 Leslie Venetz Meghann Misiak 🔮 Scott Sambucci

Along the way, became obsessed with building a great business and helping founders do the same. 

15-year old me would be PYSCHED if she knew all this was possible. The only reason I got here was the people who helped me along the way. 

Who's helped you get where you are today? 

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

If you're a Series A-ish startup with enterprise customers, you have two paths.


You cannot do both at the same time.

Most founders try anyway. And it kills their momentum.

Your first enterprise deals are almost ALWAYS proofs of concept. 

You're not capturing full value in year one because: 
→ Your team does not have the patience for a 7-figure sales cycle 
→ Your customer isn’t fully committed yet, they want to see what it's like to work with you first

So you have to choose a path. 

Path 1: Stack logos at lower ACVs 

→ Close lots of enterprise customers at <$50K/year 
→ Prove you can win deals consistently 
→ Build a diversified customer base 
→ Go back later for expansion

Path 2: Go big with anchor accounts 

→ Close a handful of customers at mid-6 or 7 figure contracts
→ Prove you can build very deep enterprise relationships 
→ Get real partnerships 
→ Extract maximum value upfront

“But Monica we want to run both plays and see what works better.”

…..no. 

These require completely different team structures, sales motions, founder involvement, GTM investments. 

Your company will look entirely different depending on which you choose.

If you choose Path 1, you might wait too long to expand and end up leaving a lot of money on the table. 

If you choose Path 2, you might become a consulting firm building custom features for 3 big customers instead of a scalable product.

TL’DR: Pick ONE. Get really good at it.

Then tackle the other.

Which path are you on?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

No alternative text description for this image

VPs of Sales who won’t answer cold calls even though THEIR OWN TEAM MAKES COLD CALLS...


Beyond rude, right? 

Except I teach all my teams to leverage social selling…and I also don't reply to 95% of LI DMs from sellers… bc they are hot garbage and not at all relevant to me. 

I even sent a sassy email reply to someone recently because they cold emailed me 3 days in a ROW about something I didn't want, and it was annoying. 

Am I the problem? Maybe. 

But there is also an element of this conversation that feels like “wHY arE WoMEN on DatInG AppS BUT wOnT TalK To a RaNDom Guy At A BaR??”

No one owes you their time, even if you're broadly on the same team because you're both in sales. 

Sales leaders, don't be jerks, but also sellers, would YOU respond to you?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders


Follow for more.

"Anyone had luck getting out of a contract with (sales tool we all know)? We're 1 year into a 3 year contract and no one on my team cares about it."


😬😬😬

Saw this from a CRO in a private Slack yesterday.

This is why your onboarding experience matters so much.

It sounds boring. It's not boring. It's the hidden thing causing you to leak revenue.

Most teams close a 3-year deal, celebrate the win, and hand it off to CS. Do a “training” for the users. Maybe QBRs. 

And 12 months later, the customer is looking for the exit because no one on their team knows why they should use the product.

How to make sure this doesn’t happen to you: 

1. Schedule the kickoff when you sign the contract
Don't send an email intro from sales to CS and hope CS schedules it.
Get it on the calendar immediately.

2. Give CS everything they need from the sales process
What does the customer actually want to accomplish? What's the most important thing for them to do first? What are the risks on this account?
Should go without saying. But most teams aren't doing this.

3. Onboarding is NOT a product walkthrough
It's not training on features.
It's showing them how to do the thing they bought the product for.
So know what they bought it for. And show them how to do that thing.

Bonus - make it interactive! 

Structure onboarding as a multi-part workshop.
Roll out components in phases so by week 3-5, they've created something tangible they can show to the person who signed the contract.
Give them a win in the first month.

4. Create superusers 
Now they have basic knowledge, where do you go from here? 
Send advanced usage tips, mini videos, new product release messaging customized for them (not the mass email you sent), social content, tips from other users. Doing this even once every 1-2 months makes a huge difference. 

5. Make QBRs internal show and tell 
Usage stats are cool. 
Making your users look amazing by showcasing their work is even better. 

What did I miss?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

"My sales team isn't hitting goals but I'm not 100% sure why"


I know why. And it's probably not your team.

Here's what I see over and over:
Founders blame their reps when close rates are 12% and outbound response is 1%.

But when I ask "Has anyone ever been successful with this process?" the answer is no.

Your team isn't the problem if:
→ No one has ever hit quota using your system 
→ Your close rate on "qualified" opportunities is under 20% 
→ Your outbound gets 1% response rates 
→ Your reps don’t know what they are supposed to do on any given day

You don't have underperformers, you have a broken system (or none).

If you've cycled through 3+ reps in the same role and they all "underperformed," they were not the problem.


👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

You might lose enterprise deals because you're too small, but you will definitely lose them because you're too risky.

And you keep making it worse...

- Talking about how fast your team moves and releases new products
- Explaining in great detail your cutting-edge technology that no one else has or really understands
- Emphasizing how different you are from incumbents 
- Offering "flexible pricing models" (aka we haven't figured this out yet) 
- Putting your founder on every demo 

Yes, enterprise buyers are attracted to you because you’re exciting. But they sign with you because you’re dependable. 

The legacy players aren’t winning because they're better.

They're winning because buying them makes no one look bad. 

Build trust first. 

What do you think? 

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders


Follow for more.

8 startup lies: 


“We just need to scale the team”
=> The last 3 people we hired didn’t work out, but we’re betting that the next 3 definitely will

“Enterprise customers love us”
=> We’ve got 12 enterprise logos that are all underpaying, and haven’t spoken with us in 5 months 

“We have strong pipeline growth”
=> Several intro meetings with innovation teams who said they’d circulate internally and get back to us

“Our product sells itself”
=> We run 80-minute demos and talk 80% of the time and then get ghosted. Everyone knows what our product does and no one knows how it would help them

“We have a great sales leader with experience and a rolodex”
=> We are wildly overpaying someone to have introductory meetings that go nowhere. They haven’t closed anything in 8 months. 

“Our product is easy to use”
=> Founder is still answering support tickets because we can’t train anyone else to do it

“We have great investors”
=> At the last board meeting our investors told us to switch to PLG, now they want us to hire 8 more salespeople by Q1 

“We’re on track to triple revenue again this year”
=> We haven’t made an actual forecast yet and have no idea what our number is, let alone how we’re going to hit it

What am I missing?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders


Follow for more.

The best salespeople talk about risks more than benefits…but not in the way you think.


✖️ "If you don't implement our data tool, your sales team will spend hours on manual work instead of closing deals."
✔️"Your incomplete CRM data means your marketing team is guessing at messaging. That's why your ads aren't converting. This will be a blocker to your growth if you don’t improve your data"

✖️"You're overspending on recruiters without our solution."
✔️ "You don't have a company LinkedIn strategy. That's why you can't fill senior roles and keep losing candidates to competitors."

What great salespeople understand...cost of inaction isn't what they are missing out on. 

It's about connecting your solution to an EXISTING problem that already has its own velocity.

What do you think?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I help B2B SaaS founders grow revenue from $1-$10M ARR.

You’ll never see me talk about this on LinkedIn….


- Sports 
- My kids 
- What my kids playing sports taught me about B2B sales
- What sales bros you should follow 
- Sales lessons from $2B orgs 
- Biohacking
- Taylor Swift
- Sales tips from the 90’s
- XYZ thing that is dead 
- AI hype 
- Fear-based sales strategies 
- A conversation I had with a fake CRO of a fake $500M org

What I will never stop talking about:

- Brilliant women 
- Burning Man
- Women you should follow
- Pushing yourself to grow 
- Raves 
- Real life sales lessons from <$10M orgs 
- Empathy 
- Coffee in tiny cups 
- AI in the real world 
- How much Zig Ziglar still slaps
- The power of focus 
- Plants 
- The fact the no one is free until everyone is free 
- A conversation I had with a real founder of a real $6M org 

What’s something you won’t stop talking about?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders


Follow for more.

How I know your sales team is about to crash out
Whether you want to admit it or not….


=> Your pipeline is 60% deals with no activity in 1 month or more
=> Reps spend more time on internal calls than customer calls
=> Your close rate is under 20% but you keep hiring more AEs
=> Holding on to every deal “just in case” 
=> “Sure, we can set you up with a trial”
=> No qualification framework, just vibes 
=> “No time to prospect”
=> Your sales manager is either on no calls or every call
=> The weekly sales meeting is always different 
=> You’re not connected with all your customers + prospects on LinkedIn

What did I miss?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I help B2B SaaS founders grow revenue from $1-$10M ARR. 
If you’re on this journey, send me a DM!

The most cringe thing about me?


I am CHALANT AF.

I care a lot.

I’m not here for “passive income”

I’m not here to build a business I don’t have to work on. 

I’m trying. Like, really hard.

There are a lot of people on LinkedIn who talk about how to make money without trying. 

Grow revenue without talking to customers. 

Build a course instead of working with clients 1:1. 

Use AI agents + AI SDRs + vibe coding to build a SaaS business that runs itself. 

Work 4 hours a day and go meditate. 

I believe that the real flex is building your life around something that you love and care about so deeply that you want to lean all the way in and challenge yourself to commit to it even more. 

The real flex is making a life you don’t want to be detached from.

What do you think? 

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders

Follow for more.

10 things buying software taught me about sales:


1. No one actually has internal meetings about a demo they saw 

2. Every decision involves 2-3 people (even in small companies)

3. People’s vision of who they want to be is just as important as what they actually need 

4. Do not underestimate the power of making it easy to say yes. The number of decisions people have to make in a day is insane. 

5. Arm your champion with a one-sentence answer to the question “what is this thing again?” 

6. The 12 page slide deck you sent most likely will not be read

7. People on the same team can have wildly different priorities 

8. Dark social is real. 90% of information comes from referrals, communities, DMs and texts. 

9. If they don’t think they need it at full price a discount makes no difference 

10. The trial access you gave will be used for 30 minutes, max

This is as a VP of Sales in 15-20 person orgs but I feel like applies most places. 

What did I miss?

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I make enterprise revenue predictable for B2B SaaS founders
Follow for more.

Stoppp itttt. 


You're killing your enterprise deals by (accidentally) making buyers look stupid.

What you're doing: 

→ Showing slides about "common pain points" that describe their exact setup 

→ Asking "what are your challenges?" 

→ Pointing out how much better your solution is 

→ Highlighting what they're missing by not using you

All they hear is "You made a bad decision two years ago and you've been losing ever since."

You’re totally missing the fact that at least 3 people in that meeting either: 
→ Approved the current vendor 
→ Implemented the current system 
→ Trained everyone on the current process 
→ Built the workaround hack everyone uses

You just called their last two years of work a mistake! And you wonder why they ghost you after the demo.

Your first competition is the buying committee's ego.

Give them a way to look smart choosing you, not wrong for not choosing you sooner.

👋 Hi, I'm Monica Stewart. I help B2B SaaS founders grow revenue from $1-$10M ARR. 
If you’re on this journey, send me a DM!

linkedin.com

JSESSIONID

li_at

Talks about #b2bsales, #feminism, #startups, #negotiation, and #enterprisesales

Daniel Garcia

If you spend more time talking about what you hate than what you love 



We probably won’t get along.

I don't spend money on retail.

 
Why? 

1. We already have too much stuff

Humans have already made enough clothes for the next 6-7 generations. There are literal mountains of clothes sitting in landfills around the world.
I don't need to add to that. 

2. I like nice things 

You can spend $100 on a new dress from Zara that is made from synthetic fabric, isn’t designed well and will last <2 years. 

Or you can spend $100 on a secondhand dress from a designer you love that cost $500 new, is made from real silk, fits amazing and will last 10 years.
Seems like an easy choice to me. 

3. Community over corporations

My desk is from IKEA but I bought it used on Craigslist. 

Once I factor in the time it takes to pick it up and an UberXL to bring it home, I could have bought it new. 

But, I’d rather give that money to a person in my city than to IKEA. 

4. I’d rather spend the money on other things

I do buy some things new (shoes, work bags, things I can’t live without). 

But I'd rather prioritize buying more BTC and spending on travel. 

Not brand new stuff I'll probably replace in two years anyway.

It's about being intentional with my money. 

What do you think?

P.S. My faves are The RealReal and Poshmark for clothes/bags, Craigslist for furniture and Whatsapp groups (huge in Mexico) for almost everything.

Why I'm not worried about AI replacing sales teams anytime soon.

taplio

The Battle

Sandy Zhen

Monica Stewart

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMonica Stewart's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Sandy Zhen

Monica Stewart

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Monica Stewart's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMonica Stewart's LinkedIn Performance