Jobs in sales can be stressful. Meeting quotas and juggling five no’s for every one yes is both motivating and disheartening depending on the day, which is why it’s essential that sales employees have a supportive environment where friendly competition can thrive.
According to InHerSight ratings, cloud data management company Veeam has one such team culture. Their top metric is The People You Work With, meaning women like Larissa Toriumi, senior manager of renewals and customer success, likely have a cohort of colleagues they can depend on.
We reached out to Toriumi to learn what it’s like to work at Veeam and how the company has supported her in her career and through the pandemic. Read more to discover why this technology company is a great place to work.
Larissa Toriumi
Senior Manager, Renewals and Customer Success, at Veeam with four years of experience
Top three must-haves at work
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Women in Leadership
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Maternity and Adoptive Leave
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Support for Diversity
Tell us first about your role at Veeam. How did you end up where you are and what are your responsibilities?
I joined Veeam in 2017 as an SMB Renewals Representative. Back then, I had been working as a pharmacy technician for three years and felt it was time for a new challenge. I started looking for IT companies in the Atlanta area and came across Veeam. I was impressed by the product and the amazing customer/employee reviews and decided to apply.
In six months, I was promoted to a new team; a year later I became an associate manager. Fast forward another year, and I was promoted to manager position. Ten months later, as of April 2021, I became a renewals and customer success senior manager.
As a senior manager, I'm responsible for developing strategies and processes to enhance our customers' overall experience with Veeam, by providing a top-of-the-line customer success approach. I'm also responsible for supporting my renewals and customer success teams at overachieving our quotas and KPIs, aside from identifying areas of opportunities and bottlenecks in our business processes and create solutions in order to increase efficiency and generate higher rates in areas like customer satisfaction and retention; and optimize the company's results in terms of ARR, revenue, and up-sell/cross-sell opportunities.
Common challenges for people in sales roles include struggling to achieve work-life balance, burnout, and staying motivated. Are there ways either you as a leader or Veeam as a company address these hurdles?
It's no secret that quota carrying, and commission-based roles are associated with high pressure and high stress. To mitigate the negative impact of those two factors in our employees' lives, Veeam fosters a culture of teamwork and open communication. Two of our core values are “Veeam Team” and “Conversations from the Heart” and as a leader, I take them very seriously. Our teams are like big families. We are there to support each other, and we do our best to accommodate everyone's needs, especially during the pandemic, as many new stress factors have been introduced to people’s lives.
I can speak from personal experience about the caring, supportive environment that Veeam provides to its employees. Being a single mom of a toddler and a Brazilian national with no family in the U.S., I can relate to all of these challenges, but Veeam was always there to support me in my career.
Veeam has been experiencing incredible growth in the past few years and, with that, we are not short of career opportunities, as shown by my personal story: four promotions in four years. You don't see that happening everywhere. The opportunity for fast career progression is, for many, a highly motivating factor. And if you consider all the success Veeam has experienced throughout the years and our teams far overachieving their targets, motivation comes naturally to our amazing, winning team.
One of InHerSight’s 20 Best Information Technology and Services Companies to Work For, Veeam’s top metrics are Ability to Telecommute, Flexible Work Hours, and The People You Work With. Eighty-five percent of respondents also say their growth and success are prioritized here and that they’ve received the necessary feedback at their jobs to achieve their goals! Click below to explore Veeam’s company profile and open positions now!
Veeam has awesome scores for The People You Work With. Tell us how your team at the company or Veeam’s culture as a whole has impacted you as a sales leader.
To give a little about my background, I didn't have an IT or sales experience coming into Veeam, but I was very fortunate to have amazing leaders and colleagues that went above and beyond helping with my career development and teaching me everything that I know. Veeam believes in everyone’s potential and is always willing to give opportunities to those who don't typical sales or technology backgrounds. I've proudly hired many entry-level candidates to Veeam and have seen them get promoted and continue to further their careers.
Also being within the technology industry, our day to day is extremely fast-paced, aligning with another one of our core values: Veeam Speed. The innovative atmosphere helps foster and grow everyone's potential. If you have a good idea, Veeam is certain to put it in motion and make it a reality, aligning with another core value: Innovate and Iterate.
What does all this mean? At Veeam I've learned to be a leader focused not only on results and numbers, but also, the motivation and wellbeing of our employees, alongside an environment where innovation and ideas are welcome and career progression and opportunities are at the top of mind. At Veeam, we want to continue growing, and encouraging our workforce to experience the same success, through our day-to-day wins and career development.
Why Veeam? What are three things you love about the company that you think every woman considering applying needs to know?
The first thing that comes to my mind as a woman and sales leader is opportunity. At Veeam, I see women every day presented with new career and professional development opportunities, expanding into different roles and leadership responsibilities. This is so important, especially in the tech industry, a field that is still dominated by men.
Second, there is an employee-led organization within Veeam, Women in Green, to facilitate professional curriculum, webinars, event-sponsorship, and chapters designed to increase the career development. Women in Green also offers a mentoring program that is specifically design for women. Establishing a more formal mentoring program for women provides opportunities for those who are looking to feel more empowered at their current role and grow within the organization either through promotion or through other roles that may interest them.
Third, and this is especially important for women with children like me: flexibility. This is particularly true during these pandemic times. Many of us saw ourselves at home with no child care options, either because schools/ daycares were closed, or due to health concerns associated to COVID exposure when allowing our kids to engage in in-person activities. Veeam has shown nothing less than support every time I face challenges as a single mom. Working from home has helped me tremendously, and there was never a time that I encountered any issues when having to move my schedule or work hours due to mom emergencies. Life-work balance is one of the greatest and most important features while working at Veeam.
