From Executive to Manager
Based on an episode with Devon London 🇬🇾
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
We talked with Devon London (he/him), an accomplished Business Sales professional with a proven track record of success in the telecommunications industry. With his vast experience, he has developed an in-depth understanding of the industry and has consistently delivered outstanding results.
In this episode, we discussed Devon’s journey starting from his early days as a Business Sales Executive and eventually transitioning into a Business Sales Manager. Devon shared valuable insights and advice for aspiring managers as well.
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Do you consider yourself a Latino? If yes, what does it mean to be a Latino for you?
I’ll be honest with you, before you invited me to the podcast I didn’t. I’m from Guyana, and yes, we are part of South America, but there’s just this misconception that Latinos are Spanish-speaking people from Spanish-speaking origin. And until you invited me to the podcast and I was like, “Mm, this seems interesting. There might be something here that I’m not aware of. Let me check.” And then I started to do some research and then I realized, “Yes, so I am.”
Then I started to reflect on some of my time traveling. I visited a few countries in South America, visited Suriname, I visited Brazil, I visited some countries in the Caribbean as well, and I went to Trinidad, Curaçao, and a few other islands as well. I just thought back on my time at these visits, and even, for example, in Curaçao, where English isn’t the main language, you can feel connected to people, you can see, you can draw similarities into what your daily lives are, what your environment is, what your culture is. Now, yeah, I do consider myself Latinx and I would encourage more people to. For me, it’s important that we all try to find the similarities that we have with one another rather than focus on what divides us. So, I probably consider myself Latinx now.
Can you tell us how your journey, your career, like, how everything started?
I’ll take you back from the beginning. I was a journeyman at the beginning of my working career. I left school, started to study, but I quickly realized that I needed to work and study as well. So, actually, my first job was at the bank. Quickly from there, I realized that there is this idea, there’s a general idea in the workplace that we all earn similar amounts of money if you’re in the same position. But do we really all do the same amount of work? I’m the kind of person who likes to take on extra responsibility because it helps you to grow, and my goal is to grow as a person. I have been deliberate in that and then I try to grow every day, see a goal for myself at the end of the year, and get to where I want to be. I quickly realized at the bank that I didn’t believe that was a fair exchange.
Then I thought about, what can be a fair exchange? What can I do that directly compensates me for the amount of work that I want to put in, that I will put in no matter how I feel? I realized, you know what? I should probably be in sales. It didn’t happen right away. I ended up applying for a job at a company called Digicel. I applied there because while I was working at the bank, one of their sales executives actually came over to us to sell us on phone plans. I thought this was so cool. Here I am sitting in an office all day. I don’t know what’s going on and how the world is moving around me, and this guy is out every day meeting new people. I thought it was amazing. So, I applied, and that was during my first year at the bank.
I worked at the bank for three years before I actually left, I didn’t even get the job. I decided to leave and check something else. I actually got a job in sales with a small hardware company in Guyana. I still wanted to be part of tech. I wanted to work with Digicel at that point in time. I kept applying. And eventually, they called me, and when they called, it was for customer service. It wasn’t what I wanted, I was in the call center, but it was what I needed. It helped me build a strong sense of providing the best possible service to our customers, which has really helped me in my professional career, in my career as a business sales executive and as a manager, because everything that I do now is built on ensuring that the customer has the best experience. And that all started from my time in customer service.
I spent about eight and a half years at Digicel. The first nine months I was in customer service, and then I got up to sales. Fun story is you usually have to do training, so on my first day of training at Digicel, they asked me, where do I see myself? I told them, in a year, I’m going to be in business sales. At that point in time, no one wanted to be in business sales because you had to go through parts of the call center that people didn’t like. It was a very demanding part of the call center. I was all for it because I knew where I wanted to be. I told my trainer that I’m working here for a year. If in one year exactly, I’m not in business sales, I’m going to resign and move on to something else.
In nine months, I got the job to go up the business sales. Then I spent seven and a half years in business sales. For about five and a half of those years, I was a business sales executive. I was tasked in providing ICT solutions to the business community in Guyana. To be honest, it’s something now that ‘s amazing because you get to know and speak with CEOs, successful business people, and people in government, even small business people as well, who just have such grand visions for their business that it helps you develop as a person.
I’ve had conversations with people I never thought I would have had. I’ve built friendships in the industry that I never thought I would have had. It was amazing for me at that young age to be able to do that. Then I got the opportunity to become a manager, and that was the most frightening part of my career so far because I was going from working with my colleagues and friends, I built friendships with these people to now having to manage them.
Let me tell you, for anyone that’s listening here, if it’s your first time in management, you will have impostor syndrome. I’ve listened to leaders all over this world, I’ve read books, I’ve listened to podcasts. They all talk about it. At the beginning, you have impostor syndrome, you feel like you’re not supposed to be there, especially if you were part of that team before. But you need to have a foundation, you need to quickly identify what are your core values and stick to those. It won’t be easy, but it will lead you through those tough times and those days where you’re doubting yourself. I also believe as long as you’re doing things with the best of intentions, you sleep well at night.
Do you think this is something that comes naturally for you to be very strategic? How was your process of understanding where you wanted to be or what you wanted to do?
No, it didn’t come naturally to me. When I talk to people I went to school with, where I am now, outside of my core group of friends who I have been with every day, they kind of don’t recognize me. I’ll be honest, every part of my journey has been necessary. Every part of it I didn’t thoroughly enjoy, but every part of it has helped me become the person I am today. When I was working at the bank, that’s where I got this drive about being deliberate, because what I realized is that those three years, I spent at the bank, flew by so fast, and within the first year, I knew this is not what I wanted to do. But, of course, I had a job, and I had responsibilities, and you need to make some sacrifices there. I realized that, “Okay, so whether or not I’m happy, whether or not I’m working towards a goal, the time will keep passing, and I would implore everyone to focus on that.” Whether or not you’re deliberating what your actions are, the time keeps passing. It’s our most important resource.
I want to ask people, I usually implore my team as well to focus on that. Every day, you’re not going to want to pick up the phone and make those cold calls. You’re not going to want to follow up with customers on these proposals that you have out. But time is passing, and you have a goal that you want to achieve. So, focus on the micro. Make that first call, make that second call, make that third call. It’s going to become a habit, and it’s going to help you get to your goal, and you’re going to love it in the long term, but in the short term, you can’t look at the bigger picture. You just have to focus on, “Yeah, the time is going to pass. What can I do today to get me where I need to be tomorrow?” And you just keep chipping away. And for me, that’s it. It’s just a product of being in a situation that I didn’t like and wanted to change, and it helped me to build an attitude and a drive that really helps me get to the next level constantly now.
How was your process transition to management or was it something that just happened and you enjoyed?
Kind of just happened. But I must say that I owe it also, my previous head of department also. When I got the job in business sales, there’s a manager above me, and I eventually transitioned into that position. The person who ran our department, she’s a mentor to me. She’s like a mom to me. We have a very, very great relationship, and she’s hard nosed, “let’s get the job done,| but then as well, she’s very soft.
I don’t know if I can say this being in my position, but women don’t have it easy in business. As a man, I recognize that because there are certain values that men can exhibit, that kind of gives off the vibe that we are strong, that if women exhibit, it’s taken entirely differently. Getting to work with her so closely, I got a real first-hand understanding of what those challenges are and then to see how she worked through those.
I was in awe of her professionally and then getting to know her personally as well, it really drove me to want to take that next step. But there’s one thing that she said to me very early in my career that always stuck with me, and that’s what drove me to want to become a manager and want to be the best version of myself and keep challenging myself. I was working in sales again, I had a manager above me, but she used to still meet with our team, meet with our team members, get to know everyone and what they’re doing. She told me that she asked me what I wanted to do. And she asked me in such a way that I felt no apprehension in telling her that in a few years, I wanted her a job. She told me that’s great, and it was not what I expected, but she told me that that’s great because she would be a failure as a manager if she didn’t develop somebody within our team that will eventually take her place.
I didn’t eventually take her place. I eventually moved on before I could. Now I’m in a similar role at a new company. And just her embracing that and letting me know that really, that is the goal, and that’s when it clicked. I can have so much experience, so much knowledge. I can do what I’m doing forever. I want to evolve and do more, but to be able to impart that knowledge on other people and help them to be successful and give them the opportunities that I would have had, that’s a goal to teach, to manage people, to help people get to that next step. So, since then, my life is just focused on helping people develop.
How did you develop your management style? How was this for you?
For me, I love sports. During my time when I first started management, I had no idea what I was doing, I was just trying to be the best version of myself and please everyone, which, if you know, it doesn’t work out. You can’t please everyone. As a manager, you’re walking a very thin line between ensuring that you can do what’s beneficial for the company, but most of all, what’s beneficial for your people because if they’re happy. Usually, everybody else is happy.
There are lines that we need to draw. I love sports, like I said, basketball, football, or what you call soccer in the US. So, I have spent a lot of time just following athletes and following what their journeys are and also following managers for teams like the great Sir Alex Ferguson, who was the manager for my favorite team Manchester United for all those years. And getting to see the level of detail he put into managing players and different personalities and superstars and getting them to fall in line. That’s where it clicked me.
I started reading books about his journey. I started reading books from Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan, and their journeys and how a manager meant. For me now, I take more of a management approach. I focus on the individuals within my team. My goal is if I can get every individual in my team to progressively take that next step and develop as a person, and we use that experience collectively, we’ll be in a great place as a team. What I’m constantly doing is helping my team focus on what we’re doing well, what we’re not doing so well. But we can learn from the other people in our team, and collectively, we move each other forward, and we help each other develop and get to our goals.
It took me a while to get there, but I figured out that was the best place because we all have different things. When I’m hiring somebody, I don’t really look for their experience. I have my core values. There are certain things that I look for. You need to have driving skills, you need to have a strong moral compass, and you need to be the kind of person who holds themselves accountable, and if you are, and if I can sense that, I usually ask questions that help me to identify whether you are or not. It’s hit-and-miss. I can say that over time, I’m hitting more than I’m missing. But if you can identify those persons, then I can give them the other skills that they need. I can teach them about their products. I can teach them what the roadmap is for certain conversations that they need to have. But what I can teach is desire. I can’t teach them what makes you get up in the morning and have a positive outlook on the rest of your day and to come to work and put in the little work.
When you’re in the trenches, it’s a desire that gets you through that day. When you have to dig deep and do the grind meetings that no one wants to do, it’s your desire that gets you through that day. So, those are my core values and that’s what I look for. Since I’ve started to do that, being able to manage people has gotten easier for me because I have people with those core values. So, we see eye to eye. We’re still different individuals. So, then I lean on that individuality, so that we know together, including myself, we can continuously grow because they teach me as much as I teach them.
It’s just a wonderful experience learning every day and helping to impart some of my knowledge on people and ensuring that they can be successful. When I am calculating that commission at the end of the month and they’re getting paid amounts of money that they didn’t think was possible before they got the job that I promised them they’d be able to make, you get so much satisfaction from it because I’m helping them change their lives, because of that, they can change the lives of their loved ones as well. After that they probably move on to something else because they’ve hit the peak on where they wanted to be and achieve whatever goals, I get to now start over that entire process again and give that opportunity to another young person who didn’t think they would have it. So, it’s amazing.
Which advice would you give to someone who is starting their career in sales?
I alluded to it earlier, but to me, it’s not worrying about the larger goal. When you get into sales, there are great people in sales, like Grant Cardone, and it teaches you about the 10X Rule. If you really just listen to that message once, you don’t get the gist of it. But what you need to do is everyone will teach you that you need to focus on the small things. You can’t worry about the larger goal.
When you get in sales, you’re going to be given a target here, this is what I want you to achieve within a month or within a quarter. If you sit as somebody new in sales and you focus on that large and you just look at that large number or that large sales target, it will seem impossible to me. Then when you have a bad day and you have a little setback, it will feel impossible. That weight will be on you and that little weight will affect all of your decisions that you’re going to make on the days ahead to get there. It’s going to put so much pressure on you, it’s going to make it impossible for you to get to that target.
It’s what I encourage my team to do is here I give them their targets for the year, I let them know. But then we have weekly meetings where we sit down and focus on what we’re doing this week. Then I get them to ask themselves the questions, “What are you doing today to ensure that you make your target?” And that’s where you need to focus your energies. Not on how I’m going to make my entire target for the month, but what do I need to do right now? What do I need to do today? What do I need to do this hour in order to get me to that goal?
I guarantee you, if you focus on that, you’ll have a lot more successes than failures because you’re able to table it quickly if you’re the kind of person who’s adaptable. One of the values that I look for is I look for persons who hold themselves accountable because you can then have an honest conversation with yourself and sit at the end of the day and say, “Did I do as much today as I needed to do to be successful?” And you’ll realize sometimes that you did. If you’re truly holding yourself accountable, it’s hard. You might not make up for that day, the next day, but at some point in time, you’re going to realize, “Hey, I’m just digging a deeper hole for myself. Let me get down. Let me do the work, and let me get the work here. So, let me sit here today and let me make all of these calls that I didn’t want to make. Let me go and visit all of these customers that I didn’t want to visit. Let me just reach out to strangers and have conversations with them.” It’s something that I hate. It’s something that I probably hate doing, but it’s something that’s necessary for my job. It’s wild to me. I’ve realized this a little while ago, that you know the number one fear in the world is public speaking, not death.
It means that if there’s a funeral, people would prefer to be in the casket, than to be in the unity. I always find people who don’t want to and I was like that as well. I don’t want to be talking to strangers, but it’s just a conversation. This is the first time we’re actually having a conversation, and I think it’s going well, but it’s just a conversation. All I’m doing is focusing on the one answering the first question that you answer me, and then we move on from there, and then you realize it’s natural. We naturally want to talk to people and have experiences, and you just need to focus on those smaller things.
So if you’re clipping this and you want to add it to make sure that this is part of the message, you need to focus on the small thing, you have your larger target, keep asking yourself why? Why are you doing what you’re doing? You’ll get to the root cause of what you’re doing and you focus on that small thing and it will help you be successful.
For aspiring managers, what should they focus on to become as successful in their roles? In your opinion, if there’s maybe one thing or two things they should focus on, what would you say?
Lean into your individuality. And the second thing is to learn. Well, from where I am, I don’t think the school system does the best job of imparting a love for learning in person. It’s such a grind and then at the end of it, you want to just step away from it. But every day you’re learning that. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to learn and grow. But you need to, for me, what I did is I got the information, I read, and I followed who I thought were great leaders, and then I tried to duplicate that.
Then I realized quickly that that wouldn’t work for me. The scenarios aren’t one-for-one. I leaned into my individuality because you’re more to yourself, that inner voice usually tells you what is right. And usually, you get a sense of what’s working from being able to feel the room and being in the room. So, If you take the lessons, you learn from the person who’s done it successfully before, and then you add that to you as an individual. So, you digest it. And then you focus on what your circumstances are? What is your sales environment? What is your management? What is your culture in your business? What’s the makeup of your team?
You can then use that knowledge and help you to develop strategies to focus specifically on that team, and that will help you to be successful. You need to understand that you’ve done a lot so far. You’ve done a lot of things right so far to get you to where you are. Don’t necessarily lean away from it. Lean into it. But at the same time, know that there’s still room for growth. If you do those two things, you will be kind of paying homage to the great people that came before you and helping to take on their great messages. You’ll also be adding to that as well and helping to move forward your great messages and what have made you successful. You’ll be able to get a lot of success from that. Or at least it’s worked well for me. That’s what I would encourage people to do.
Which resource helped you in your journey that you want to talk about and share with us?
It’s been reading for me. There are a lot of books that I have read, but I have to say, it’s my love for sports. My love for sports has been one of the biggest drivers ensuring my success as a manager because I have such a love for sports that I dive so much into the individuals in sports, like the great sports people and the persons that would have impacted them, that I didn’t even know what I was doing until I needed to use that information. I was just gathering it and learning about these people because it was fun for me. If I was to say that there’s a resource, I don’t want to just recommend the book. I want people to do what comes, enjoy, what’s enjoyable for them, and learning has to be part of that. So, whether it’s for you listening to podcasts, that’s learning as well.
You’re gaining new experiences. Whether it’s reading, whether it’s digital, hardcover, or whether it’s just having conversations with new people every day, I encourage you to do more of it. For me, it was my love of sports and reading, so I would have read the autobiography of Sir Alex Ferguson and his time as a Manchester United manager and all of that income. That book might not speak to everyone, so I don’t want to tell people, anyone that’s listening that they need to go and read that book specifically, but focus on who you think is a great leader in your life. If it’s someone that doesn’t have a book, then you can have a conversation with them. Ask them what their challenges were. Ask them what they did to help them get to that place. It will help you.
We’re Latinx because of where we are, and for me, speaking English, you speak in Portuguese, we didn’t identify. Whether we want to believe it or not, we have so many similarities with so many people. Just get out there, have conversations with people, read about their lives. You realize there are things that you can take from there that can help you grow.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. It’s been lovely and I hope that a lot of people get to see this and they’re inspired by it as well and the other work that you’re doing. But for now, I just want to say that my journey is still ongoing. Right now, I’m at ENet in Guyana and we’re doing great things. We’re actually focusing on rolling out mobile, which we will be launching tomorrow. We’ll be launching the first 5G mobile network in Guyana tomorrow. So the first of its kind. And so, it’s exciting times here. I’m in it trying to evolve the business community in Guyana through technology and through the services that we have to offer.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
Additional Reading Mentioned in the Interview
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