119: Rick Hill, VP Sales at Ava Security, on the process of being acquired (and how it feels)

On this episode, we sit down with Rick Hill, Vice President and General Manager of the Americas at Ava Security. 

Rick started his career at Cisco in the Sales Associate Program and ended his 16 year career with them as Director of Sales, Global Enterprise to make the move to Ava Security to become their VP & GM of the Americas. 

In his career at Cisco, Rick progressed through the ranks and eventually made the decision to leave the nest. He recalls times where some thought he was crazy for leaving his role in Cisco, but for him it was time to do something different. 

Now, the startup world and culture is a different beast altogether, so it’s not for everyone, but for Rick, it was the right time to do something different. It was the right time for him to take all of the skills and talents that he had the chance to grow and accumulate at Cisco and put them to work in a different way. 

Rick explains the adjustment from going from a large company like Cisco to a startup where he was tasked with consistently making big decisions. He went from making decisions with a significant amount of data points to making a volume of decisions with a high level of intensity. He explains how although this change at first felt intense and exhausting, with time he was able to adjust. As Rick likes to say: it’s where the fun is.

At Ava Security, Rick leads the Americas business with the responsibility to help their partners, customers, and communities leverage the technology to disrupt the market and protect their people, places, and intellectual property.

Tune in to the episode to learn more about Rick’s journey, his transition to Ava Security, and to go in depth into how his company was recently acquired and everything that went into that process. 

If you are a sales leader at a startup, or you're in the sales team, and you're searching for your repeatable scalable sales process to grow sales faster, then please get in touch with me at andrew@unstoppable.do or you can also go to my site at www.unstoppable.do. 

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