Episode Information

Show Notes

In this episode of Career Downloads, host Manuel Martinez sits down with Cynthia Hara, a successful cybersecurity sales executive, who shares her fascinating journey from aspiring fashion designer to thriving tech sales leader.

Growing up in Silicon Valley with an engineer father, Cynthia initially planned a career in fashion design. A pivotal moment at a career fair changed her trajectory, leading her to discover opportunities in technology and sales. She openly shares how she turned what could have been seen as a disadvantage – being one of few women in her information systems classes – into a strategic career advantage.

Cynthia provides practical insights on:

Starting in tech sales with no prior experience

Making the transition from cold calling to enterprise sales

Building and maintaining professional relationships

Negotiating salaries and benefits effectively

Creating valuable business networks

Establishing yourself as a trusted advisor

Starting a non-profit to support women in tech

A particularly valuable segment covers her approach to mentorship and coaching, explaining the crucial differences between the two and how to leverage both for career growth. Cynthia also discusses how she built her professional brand and shares strategies for standing out in a competitive field.

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in tech sales, career transitions, or professional development. Whether you’re just starting your career or looking to advance to the next level, Cynthia’s experiences and advice provide actionable insights you can implement today.

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Connect with our guest:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiahara/

#CareerDownloads #TechSales #CareerAdvice #WomenInTech #ProfessionalDevelopment

Transcript

Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads, where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background, their experience, and just the different ways that they’ve managed their career, to really be able to pull out those actionable items for you that you can go ahead and implement as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me Cynthia Hara and we met a few years ago. She is on the technology sales side and she’s done a lot of interesting side projects. There’s a lot of speaking that she’s done, so I think she brings a wealth of experience. Not everybody wants to do the hands-on keyboard, but she still is involved in technology, understands a lot of that and some of the business problems, so I think there’s a lot of good information that she’s going to provide to everybody. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and I will introduce Cynthia.

Cynthia: Awesome, thank you so much for having me.

Manuel: I appreciate you coming on. It’s definitely something that I think is of interest, so I’ve, you know, I think around the time that we met, I was also on the sales side, but I was on the sales engineer and, you know, you’re more on the account manager side, but definitely I think that you’re going to provide a lot of good information just in the conversations we’ve had, you know, indirectly and on our own.

Cynthia: Awesome, well thank you.

Manuel: So just to kind of, what I’ve been doing with everybody is if you just briefly tell me kind of what your current role is and some ...