Company: Avetta, Lehi, UT
Company Description: The Avetta supply chain risk management SaaS platform helps clients manage supply chain risk and their contractors to become more qualified for jobs.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Engineer of the Year
 Nomination Title: Sarah Blevins—Director, Solution Engineering
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2021 of the nominated individual, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
N/A
- Briefly describe the nominated individual: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 199 words used.
Honesty. Integrity. Kindness—These values drive Sarah Blevins, Avetta’s Director of Solution Engineering, and her approach to engaging customers and coworkers. Sarah boasts an impressive career marked by visionary thought leadership and relentless commitment to excellence. She is a seasoned sales veteran, having served in Sales, Account Management, Client Success and Solution Engineering in the software and risk management space. Sarah leads by example, inspiring those around her to unleash their perpetual curiosity to spur continued improvement and imagine new ways to support our customers. If there is a task without a title it belongs to— Sarah will see it through. Our strongest storyteller, Sarah maintains a hybrid role at Avetta— continuing to deliver solution demonstrations to our largest, most complex customers while simultaneously managing the Solution Engineering and Proposal Management departments, nine direct-reports strong. Serving as the “glue” between Sales, Product and Marketing, Sarah and her team often represent “the voice of the customer” and play a large role in conceptual development and go-to-market efforts. While Sarah’s list of achievements will quickly exceed the word limit, she proudly claims her highest achievement is creating and managing a team of unique individuals with a positive, collaborative, and relationship-focused work culture.
- Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 237 words used.
- Avetta Solution Engineer of the Year Award Winner (2021).
- Avetta Sales Leadership Excellence Award Winner (2022).
- Supported 125+ unique opportunities with an 11% higher close rate than the team average.
- Supported 2 of 3 largest accounts which saw 49% and 113% growth from 2021-2023.
- Successfully transitioned into management role; promoted to Director within six months.
- Successfully scaled Solution Engineering Team from two to ten individuals globally with a consistent internal reputation for quality, collaboration, and efficiency.
- Developed an eight-week onboarding program with a 100% “field readiness” success rate.
- Developed continued education process for technical content; adopted by five additional cross-functional teams. More than 75 unique 60-minute training sessions have been held by Sarah and the Solution Engineering Team since July 2021.
- Developed demonstration planning guide to map messaging to strategic client pains.
- Developed team metrics, activity tracking and KPI reporting for executive leadership.
- Spearheaded development of new product introduction (NPI) process, ensuring go-to-market strategies and seller enablement are in place for new features before launch.
- Regularly leads enablement trainings around products, competition, and client industries.
- Regularly develop conference content with the highest presenter ratings across sessions.
- Created conduit for employee career growth and development; supported three internal transfers who were (professionally) poached to more senior internal roles.
- Equal opportunist: of ten total hires, five belong to minority representations.
- Received 100% favorable scores to the prompt, “My leader makes me feel valued.” in employee satisfaction surveys (2023).
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 160 words used.
Sarah Blevins is only a decade into her professional career. To have accomplished so much in such a short time while building a reputation for the highest quality deliverables is an achievement many would not see in twice as long. Sarah has not only honed her own style and craft but has created a repeatable process to disseminate critical functional knowledge, with her thought leadership influencing the messaging of all client-facing teams. Sarah continues to split time as an individual contributor—often handling Avetta’s most challenging, unique or complex opportunities—while simultaneously carrying a full management workload and maintaining outstanding leadership survey results from direct reports (90% approval rating, 10% neutral, 0% negative). Sarah is a true influencer and empowerer, with past employees citing, “Sarah is amazing, very supportive, always there to help and listen, and really interested in your development.” Beyond Avetta, Sarah provides career insights, mentorships, resume help, and interview practice to many within her professional and local networks.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 4 words used.
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