Boxer Spotlight: Izzie brings her industrious self to work

"Bring Your _______ Self to Work" is an important pillar of our Box culture. We're a pretty mixed bag of different backgrounds and values around here, so the blank is different for each Box employee. In this series, we'll interview one of our own to give you a look at our diverse family of Boxers around the world. Our Boxer this week is Izzie Armentrout, Outbound Business Representative based out of our San Francisco office.

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Box.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, I came to the US to attend Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia. After my first job, I moved to San Francisco to embark on a career in tech. I joined Box in October 2016 as an Outbound Business Representative, which means I am on the front-lines of expanding Box's business presence and engaging in discussions with business leaders about how Box can support their strategic initiatives. I am also one of the first hires to develop and pilot Box's digital outbound strategy, which will streamline outbound activity for the entire sales org at Box.

How does what you do contribute to the success of Box?

Being on the Outbound team means that I contribute to helping green-field accounts understand the value of our platform and create more opportunities for Box to grow our presence across any business, in any industry. Furthermore, working on the digital outbound strategy will provide massive productivity gains to our growing sales org, and help sales reps prioritize what accounts they do outreach to and how they do so, leading to higher quality conversations and opportunities within those accounts.

What has been your most exciting win at Box?

I can't name the customer, but the digital outbound strategy recently had its first close, proving out the value of our pilot program and demonstrating that when data is utilized, we can reduce the time to close because we have provided the right insight at the right time to get in front of an account.

What has been the high point of your career?

Being at Box has definitely been a high point in my career. I came to San Francisco with no experience in tech and very little understanding of what I could bring to the table with my minimal amount of work experience. Since I've arrived at Box, I've had access to a vault of training and growth opportunities, to help me as a sales professional and as a leader. Furthermore, having the responsibility to help build out the digital outbound strategy is extremely rewarding, especially as the impact for the sales org is so significant. Being so young in my career, I'm extremely grateful to have so much ownership of where I can grow at Box and as a professional.

What do you love about Box as a product? Why do people buy it?

What excites me most about Box is that there really is no place that the product cannot add value - we have the ability to work with small businesses to Fortune 500 behemoths (with over 60% using Box) in any industry. Box also has incredible scope as a product, meeting regulatory compliance and constantly expanding our solutions to meet the use cases and needs of some of the most highly regulated industries in the world, such as healthcare, finance, and the public sector. The reason people buy Box is once they realize its value as a cloud content management platform, and how that opens up opportunities to not only centralize and secure their content, but improve processes across their entire business - it's a game-changer.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows, what's been the most difficult challenge?

Box is an incredibly valuable product, but it's no easy sell - to sell a product as versatile as Box requires significant understanding of the business you're talking to. While the value of Box is very clear to me, it will fall on deaf ears if you haven't done the work required to fully understand your account. Since Box is not limited to a niche buyer or industry, there's a lot of industry and market knowledge you need to build and develop for each unique company/industry that you sell to. It can be a challenge, but I think it makes for well-rounded salespeople with a lot of confidence to provide value to prospects across various industries, which is an invaluable skill set.

Aaron is such a core part of this company, do you have a fun memory to share?

Aaron recently hung out with us at the company-wide Juneteenth celebration, playing Cornhole, and enjoying the company of fellow Boxers. It's pretty amazing to have a CEO that makes sure he's present and accessible to all his employees!

Hear more from Boxers working in Sales on The Muse!