Business Advice
Q: Before we get into the work, tell us a bit about your own background. How did your career path lead you to where you are now?
Leyla Jama: I started selling officially at around 18 years old, though my first“ sales job” was Avon at 13, so it must have been in my blood. My dad, Alistaire Jama, the MD of Sellology, was a Sales Director and had worked in sales for years, so I suppose it was always around me.
I worked for NTL, now Virgin Media, then moved into advertising sales for 118118, at the time one of the biggest brands in the world. It was pre search engine, so we were collecting our own data by dictaphone and writing it up on a Sunday evening just to have people to call on Monday morning. It was fullon, relentless cold calling, and that’ s where I first started noticing patterns in how people communicate, which later became something I train now called Business Style Awareness.
But I found the environment quite ruthless, so I left and went back to university to study English language and linguistics with education. I ended up majoring in rhetoric almost by accident, and it changed everything.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and I suddenly realised: this is what I’ d been doing in sales all along, except now I understood there was a way to do it properly, ethically. It comes down to Aristotle’ s theory of ethos, pathos and logos: credibility, emotion and logic, in balance.
After university I worked at Graduate Prospects, the UK’ s largest graduate recruitment site, and became the UK Sales Manager. I was then headhunted by Michael Page to be European Sales Manager for Wex Europe Services owned by Esso, setting up seven telesales offices across Europe while raising two sons. I implemented a systemised approach to selling and managing several teams in order to reach so many people across so many countries, because there was no better way to do it at that scale. Eventually I had to choose between being fully present as a mum and fully present as a businesswoman, so I decided to work for myself. That was almost ten years ago.
I’ ve delivered programmes under my dad’ s Sellology brand for most of that time as Head of Training, and I’ ve had the pleasure of working with some fantastic companies such as Skiddle and Chards Coin and Bullion Dealers. I’ m doing my MBA at the moment, and my dissertation focuses on our Business Style Awareness psychometric tool, specifically looking at how it improves employability among younger people, particularly STEM graduates who aren’ t naturally as vocal or confident. This tool is fundamental to improving communication, especially at the start of interactions, whatever that may be.
Q: You lead training at Sellology and are about to run the Chamber’ s Sales Xchange. What gap were you trying to fill when that was set up?
Leyla Jama: I wanted to give the Chamber genuine, proper sales training. I was flattered to be asked, because I know this subject inside out, and it also felt right generationally. We still actively sell and understand what sales is like at the coal face. My dad’ s
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