Shane Hoffman

My career journey began 15 years ago way back in 2009 when I graduated from Newcastle University with a Bachelor of Information Technology and a hunger to meet great people, share lifelong friendships & experience great success within the IT industry. I packed up my life in Newcastle, moved to Sydney and began a successful career ticking all of these off.

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Since 2009 I have progressed from entry level sales and operations roles, through to sales management.

Which upon reflection probably wasn't right for me, but I believe it's all about the journey...  

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Every employer I have ever worked for, every business partner I've ever worked with, has repeatedly told me three things about myself:

1. "Wow! you really love a challenge don't you"​

2. "You really are such a people person"

3. "You're such a detail orientated person.. you really love the detail don't you?"

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​And I firmly believe these to be true. A slight competitive streak (years of playing competitive sport), an innate sense of curiosity and my natural inclination to seek out the best people to collaborate with, provide me what I love... a challenge. I love to be presented with challenging business problems and learning all that I need to in order to overcome them. I don't like to feel comfortable for too long, I seek out learning and the uncomfortable, as I know this is where real growth stems from. I am the kind of person who will tenaciously ask whoever I need to, or study whatever amount of detail I need to seek out for countless hours for the thrill of overcoming a challenge.

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However, as I feel, if we are honest with ourselves, we all experience from time to time, there was a particular time throughout my career when things were not going as well as I would have hoped and success was hard to come by. During this period I began to question: "Surely there is a better way, perhaps I need to change up my approach a little" and so I did... I started playing to my strengths, leaning into what I know (and have been constantly told) I am good at: leveraging my love of the detail and pursuing more complex challenges. 

 

I started getting savvy, spending more time planning, analysing, diving into the detail of my assigned customers. I wanted to really understand and profile them and know exactly who to target, rather than hopelessly just spraying and praying emails or mindlessly calling down generalised lists of customers. Focusing on quality interactions with customers where real value was offered vs a higher quantity of poor, non-value driven interactions. My father would always tell me "Measure twice and cut once" and so I began to heed this age old, sage advice. The more detail I discovered, the more data I had to work with, which led me to distilling this data down into the relevant detail I needed in order to target the right customers, at the right times, solving more business problems, more frequently and achieving greater success.

 

Fast forward years of applying this in real world scenarios and I have decided to ride the natural wave that I have built throughout my career by formalising my qualifications in the area and stepping into a role in sales analysis and business intelligence, so that I can show businesses just how successful timely, savvy analysis of their customers can make them too and get them excited about exploring their data! Their past and present so they can more accurately seek out a more successful future! 

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"If one wants to run, one must learn to walk. If one wants to teach, one must learn. To define the future, one must study the past." - Confucius