Lessons from My Journey with UiPath

Not the typical salesperson profile

Although I have built a career as a sales professional for more than 15 years, eventually becoming one of the UiPath sales team leaders in Asia and then globally, I have never considered myself a typical salesperson.

When people ask me if I define myself a sales leader, my straightforward answer is: No, I do not. I consider myself a builder, I know how to build a company and a team (globally, locally) from ground zero, and sales is just a component of this building structure.

My passion for technology and innovation shaped my career since my first job with Intel, in Romania. I was part of the MNC GTM team, the Sales & Marketing team responsible for the engagement with hardware manufacturers like Asus, Lenovo, Fujitsu, Dell, HP. It was a fascinating experience from a global collaboration perspective.

Looking back, I never imagined myself in a sales career. As a child and teenager, I thought salespeople were all about convincing others to do things they didn’t want to do. Growing up in Romania’s ’90s economy, I rarely saw examples of what modern sales truly entailed. However, my path took a different turn when I discovered my passion for technology. This passion became a pivotal point in my life, leading me to find my niche at the intersection of sales and technology.

In 2016 I have joined the then Romania-based UiPath, at that time, UiPath had about 30 people, out of which just 2 in sales, 3 in marketing, operations and the rest in product and engineering.

In 2016, in Romania, there was no clear understanding of what a start-up is, most of the tech graduates or people passionate about technology wanted to work for an IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP. If you would have told someone that you want to work for a start-up, the immediate next question would have been, so are they going to pay you and how stable this job is? There was no startup network as such or startup community.

There were 2 main topics which attracted me to apply to UiPath:

• The technology space: “Automation”, which seemed very futuristic and unknown in the Romanian tech landscape of those years.
• The ambition and vision to build a global company

Lessons from different sales roles at UiPath

I would describe my 6 years’ experience at UiPath as life changing. I feel this both on a personal and professional level. I had the opportunity to join UiPath when it consisted of a small team of 30 people in Romania, so I was part of the original sales team. Together we have built everything related to sales, marketing, and customer interaction. It was a fantastic journey because we launched new markets, got involved into fund raising, and became a global company, all in a very short period.

And that meant that every four to five months my role changed, the territory I was covering changed, and my responsibilities expanded.

If you are in an early-stage startup – and that’s the advice that I’m trying to give to the startups that I’m working with right now:

• you’re in a very fortunate position.
• you are part of the team that is going to shape the course of the company, and if you have a growth mindset, you’re not limited by anything.

When I joined the UiPath sales team, I didn’t have significant experience in managing global markets, nor in managing various cross-functional teams. But it was an opportunity I wanted to take.

Eventually, I took on the challenge of managing partners throughout Europe and APAC. By 2017, as we opened offices across Asia, I found myself as one of the pioneering salespeople, which meant traveling extensively. I began hiring, training, mentoring, and coaching new sales teams, helping them become self-sufficient and independent in their respective territories. Driven by a curiosity to explore the other side of the world, I eagerly expanded my role, reaching out to markets in India, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia.

Around 2017-2018, UiPath was venturing into exciting new territories. Hiring in these countries was challenging, as UiPath wasn’t yet an established brand there. My strategy focused on leveraging UiPath’s culture and the company’s strong product values to attract and convince talented professionals to join our team. These people were much more experienced and senior than me, which made it sound like a mission-impossible at first. I was 28-29 years old at that point in time and I had to hire and manage people who had more years of experience than my age.

But I think what really made the experience exciting was this mindset of just trying. I thought that:

• if I’m not going to try now, nobody’s going to tell me when to do it and how to do it.
• I had to take a leap of faith in building different teams and going through different roles, which involved a lot of risk.

Best practices for start-up sales leaders

While you are a sales leader working in a startup, where things are moving so fast, you are almost on fast-forward mode. You only have time to execute, execute, execute. There is very limited time for thorough planning, deep thinking because you need to make so many decisions in such a short period of time and every day is important.

Some considerations which really helped me navigate through a lot of the business challenges, as a sales leaders are:

• Have a genuine interest for your customers’ problems and challenges
• Be willing to listen carefully, understanding these challenges.
• Have patience and more patience, and be open when listening, instead of just moving towards your daily, monthly or quarterly goals.
• Convert these challenges into opportunities for discussion, where you introduce your company product value, and discover areas where your technology can be of help.
• Do not jump into sharing how amazing your product/technology is, until you understand your customer’s challenges.
• Relationship building always should come first. Continuously be available for your customers’ and build a strong trust foundation.
• A human-to-human approach to sales works in all cultures, across all countries. This will build the foundation for growth and scaling globally successfully.

If you would like to read more details about my career journey with UiPath, you can read the full article published by The Recursive:

https://therecursive.com/scale-your-startup-tips-from-uipath-s-original-sales-team-lead/.

Hope this article will help more sales leaders overcome the challenges in their sales career journey.
If you want to share your experience or have any questions, you can reach out to me at my Contact Page.