Sales leaders and entrepreneurs often face a common challenge—how to unlock consistent, scalable success in highly competitive industries. For those trying to grow their businesses, winning major accounts and closing mega deals can feel elusive. Enter Christina Tan, a Chief Sales Orchestrator and the founder of Sales Symphony. With 30 years of sales experience, including 20 in tech sales leadership, Christina Tan has made it her mission to crack the code for sales teams. Her holistic approach equips sales leaders with repeatable strategies for success. Could this be the answer for those struggling to scale?
Before diving deeper into Christina Tan’s journey and insights, here are some key takeaways from her approach to leadership and sales success.
Key Takeaways:
- Christina Tan’s 30 years of experience emphasize resilience and adaptability.
- Building strong customer relationships is essential for long-term success.
- Empathy and continuous learning are crucial in today’s sales landscape.
- Balancing personal life and work is possible through efficiency and passion
Highlights
Cracking the Sales Code: Lessons from 30 Years of Leadership
Q: What do you love most about your job after more than a decade?
A: What I love most about my job is the dynamic fast-paced environment that enables me to meet people across key industries where I can help and benefit them with my solutions, services and expertise to drive business results and productivity.
Q: Can you describe how Christina Tan’s typical day has evolved over the years?
A: All activities are to be closely aligned with my overall business strategy and objectives. A typical start of the day is planning and reviewing the top priorities of the day.
The main tasks will be to generate leads and follow up with clients on both online and offline modes. My time is diversely spent meeting people through networking, events, calling, emailing and LinkedIn. The other part of the time would be crafting and presenting proposals, working closely with team members, partners and customers.
On days where I conduct workshops or coaching sessions, the time will be focused on interfacing with customers, understanding and helping them solve their sales, career and business issues to deliver results.
Q: What initially inspired you to pursue this career, and has that inspiration changed over the years?
A: My first love is technology. As such, I was trained as an engineer to be immersed in innovations. Subsequently, I realised that I preferred to interact with people more than handling machines. Tech sales became a natural path for me to develop my career over the next twenty years. It enabled me to bridge technology with human, bringing innovation across key industries such as education, healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, government and others.
The greatest gratification was seeing my customers benefit from innovative technologies to improve productivity, cost savings, competitiveness, operational and business excellence.
The inspiration from evangelising technology through my sales career has evolved into advocating sales success. Leading my Sales Team in my corporate role has helped me to understand the key challenges of Sales Members and thus helping them succeed. Now, as Founder of Sales Symphony Pte Ltd, a Sales Training, Coaching and Advisory house, I help individuals and organisations upskill their Sales Teams.
Technology companies remain my deepest passion to work with. However, with versatility and transferable expertise, I have also expanded my service offerings to other key sectors like healthtech, manufacturing, sustainability, financial services, education and others.
Q: What has been your most memorable experience on the job, and how has it shaped your career?
A: I have worked in and served SMEs, GLCs, MNCs and the Government as clients. However, the most memorable experience is helping pioneering technologies open market in Singapore with zero track record as a distribution arm for a GLC (Government-Linked Company). The brutal competition against tech giants has trained me to be extremely resilient, resourceful and creative in penetrating the market and building the brand from scratch by winning against them.
Seeing how key government agencies, global MNCs and Fortune 500 companies have benefitted from the technologies was rewarding. In addition, maintaining strong relationships with the customers after decades keep such memories afresh. This is my main source of motivation!
The tough journey has shaped and prepared me well for my entrepreneurship journey in transiting from serving CIOs and IT leaders to now Learning and Development, Human Resource, Sales and Business Leaders in sales skills enablement.
Today, I am pleased to be able to serve Sales Teams of global leading companies in sales training, coaching and advisory services. I impart to them my sales skills, experience and expertise acquired through the challenging journey of growing the market which I have been through myself.
Q: What skills or qualities are essential for long-term success in your field?
A: To ensure long-term success in my current sales training, coaching and advisory field, I need to be a keen learner myself. This includes constantly keeping abreast with the development and challenges of technology and various industries, as well as learning and development trends.
It is also important to empathise with the constant stress and challenges of businesses by understanding the mindset and needs of sales teams across industries and generations and addressing them appropriately.
In addition, it is also important to acquire AI skills, adapting to dynamic workforce and customer demands, driving constant innovation for increased revenue for my customers in my field.
Q: How do you handle challenges or difficult situations at work, and have your strategies changed over time?
A: Maintaining a positive mindset, harnessing strong problem-solving skills, be resilient and resourceful, keep an open mind to new ideas, take calculated risks to try new things and being innovative in approaches have helped me to handle challenges and difficult situations at work.
My strategy has not changed much. Simply understand the market, competition, trends and self, so as to aptly position, pitch and present my offerings with clear differentiations and benefits to the customers to help them drive their desired sales and business results.
Q: What is the most rewarding part of your job now, compared to when you first started?
A: In my early career, the best reward was to help organisations adopt world-class technologies to peak their operation, business and security performance. Now, the most rewarding part of my business is seeing my clients excel through sales skill enhancements, resulting in promotion, career pivot, mega deals, awards and business success.
Q: How do you stay motivated and engaged in your work after so many years?
A: Strong customer relationship and customer appreciation by helping them succeed in their career and business because of the solutions and services that I provide keep me truly motivated and engaged throughout my career and business. I am still in touch with my customer in my first job more than 30 years ago! Customers turned friends are their ways of affirming my dedication to them.
Q: What advice would you give someone considering a career in your field, especially for the long haul?
A: As a large part of my career was in Sales and now coaching Sales Teams, I would advise those considering a sales career to be prepared to embrace both the pros and cons.
Pros :
- Gratification when customers appreciate you for serving them well.
- Handsome remuneration if you can perform.
- Building of extensive network to propel your career and business.
- Mastery of many skills such as ability to strategise, network, build rapport and relationship, gain trust, communicate effectively, present powerfully, multitask, prioritise and provide excellent customer service.
- Transferable skills that can set you into entrepreneurship, customer success, partnership and channel development.
- High demand by the industry if you have strong track record.
Cons :
- High stress due to high sales quota, tight deadlines, demanding customers and great pressure from the Management to deliver results.
- Stiff competition.
- Handling of complex human relationships both internally and externally.
- Fast pace environment.
- No job security if performance is poor.
Before embarking on a Sales Career, ensure that you can embrace the following :
- The Love for challenges.
- The Courage to go against odds.
- The Competitive spirit with a winning streak.
- The Relevancy to the market.
- The Resilience to achieve success.
Lastly, if you aspire to be a Sales Coach, Trainer and Advisor like my current role, gain experience and expertise, imparting the right sales ethics and values to help the Sales Community build a strong and positive branding.
Q: How have you balanced your work with your personal life over the years, and has your approach changed
A: When my children were young, my domestic helpers were my greatest support. They ensured that meals were ready, the house was well kept and the children were cared for. I preferred to focus on my family when I was back home. Thus I finished most of my work at office so as to spend quality time at home without distraction of unfinished task, though that home time might be short.
I also reorganized my time with early lunch to beat the crowd and saved time from waiting for food. This also helped me to have undisturbed time to finish paperwork that demanded uninterrupted concentration. That would be more efficiency, reducing overtime work.
Sunday has always been strictly Sabbath day for faith, family and rest. As my children have grown up, weekends are now also devoted to serving my ministries in faith and my hobbies.
My profession is my passion, so work is very much integrated into my personal life. Inspiration may strike anytime to solve work issues or to help my customers with lessons drawn from my daily encounters and people I meet. This part has never changed for the last 30 years.
Unlocking Consistent Success in Sales Leadership
As sales landscapes evolve, the need for repeatable and effective sales strategies has never been more pressing. Christina Tan’s story highlights that success in sales is not about chance, but about a refined and learned process. Sales Symphony is a testament to Christina Tan’s dedication to empowering teams and leaders across industries. Whether you’re a seasoned sales leader or an aspiring entrepreneur, it’s time to reconsider your approach to sales—because, with the right guidance, success is not just possible, it’s repeatable.
Highlights
Read this article in Chinese, here.
