Janis Renay Schiffner is a Market Manager that oversees three states and is an expert in leveling up Sales Professionals. She focuses on helping them become the most successful versions of themselves as well as how to thrive both as individuals and as part of a team. She is three times a #1 International Best-Selling Author that was also inducted into the prestigious “Who’s Who in America” for 2022-2023. In 2022, she was additionally selected for inclusion into the “Motivation and Success Hall of Fame”. In this interview, Jan shares her inspiring journey, success secrets and key actions that she continues to draw inspiration from to keep her moving forward.
Izdihar: How did you start your journey?
Janis: I was working in an inside sales position for a company that sold telecommunications products. I wanted to do more than simply answer a phone and take orders. I believed that if I could proactively reach out to our customers and find out what they really needed to them increase their business, it would increase ours. I convinced our CEO to let me do outbound proactive calling for 2 hours each day. Within a month the return was five times what we had expected it would be. It built my confidence to the point where I applied for and was promoted to an Outside Sales role and later into Sales Management. I have learned how to stay focused on success while being able to pivot and grow through multiple mergers, acquisitions and most recently through a health wakeup call during a pandemic.
Izdihar: Who inspired you to start your business?
Janis: Following a divorce, I was a single parent with a five-year-old son. I realized that if I wanted to provide him the things and experiences that I believed would foundationally give him a great start in life, I needed my income to increase substantially. I also understood that as quickly as he was growing up, it would require me to take immediate action to provide us with the life I wanted us to have. I did not want to be the divorced Mom living in an apartment where a parent was not home after school so that my son could not have friends over or participate in activities he enjoyed. I wanted to have a home he could be proud to live in, good schools to go to, and the confidence that goes with knowing your world is supportive and stable.
Izdihar: What type of services or products do you offer?
Janis: I currently work in the print industry and my sales team sells to Fortune 500 Companies that spend over $100k per year in Commercial Print, Signs and Graphics. We work with Fortune 500-level accounts and my employer is one of the top four in the World. My personal goal is to be living in both the US and in Italy while offering individualized coaching, to sales professionals that are hungry to succeed, around the globe.
Izdihar: What is the best part of being a sales Coach?
Janis: The best part of becoming a Sales Professional or Coach is twofold. It provides you the opportunity to determine your income by how well you hone your selling/coaching skills. I personally have learned that “Selling” as well as “Coaching” is more about actively listening to people to learn what is important to them, what their needs are and then showing them how you can help. When you can learn to do is listen, support, provide excellent service, and long-term value, you will develop a loyal customer base, referrals and ever-increasing financial success.
Izdihar: What is the most challenging part about being an entrepreneur?
Janis: When I started coaching, I tried to have both my sales team and customers conform to whatever mold I thought would need to have them be who I wanted them to be while doing what I wanted them to do. Thank heavens, that since then I have been incredibly open to learning and growing to become a servant leader, cheerleader, and coach! Through years of experience, I have learned that all of us have something special to offer our customers and our customers have a variety of needs that we need to first uncover before addressing.
It is not a one size fits all, ever. I do my best to bring out that special uniqueness that each of us has within my sales professionals. I have also learned to help others celebrate that we are not all the same nor are our customers. It is the differences that may speak to one audience more clearly than another.
I have learned that we need all those differences to help create better teams, more inclusive organizations, more united communities, and a more understanding world. The more we learn that differences can unite us by broadening our minds, teaching us to be more empathetic, more inclusive, and even more confident in ourselves and our solutions we can become the successful people that we want to be.
While there are behaviors I can coach to, what I can do even better is to help build that understanding, that inclusiveness, that confidence, while additionally teaching sales professionals how to better prepare, how to actively listen for understanding, and then (and only then) create solid solutions that genuinely meet their customer’s needs. When they can learn to do that, their success increases exponentially. Q6: What are your biggest lessons about being an entrepreneur?
My biggest lessons have been to either see what has worked to recreate it or sometimes (and even more importantly) learn that the resulting lesson received when something failed would allow me to pivot and approach things differently/better the next time.
Izdihar: How are you different from other Coaches in the same industry?
Janis: What I do best is that I keep moving forward. Life provides us with ongoing lessons to continue to better and improve ourselves if we are open to receiving them and keep showing up. I do not see myself ever “retiring” as I do what I love, and I love what I do. That is what keeps it from ever feeling like “work.”
Izdihar: What is your top pieces of advice to other Coaches in your niche?
Janis: My top advice is:
