by Cleo Tarca
Alexandra (Ali) Faivus has been in sales for her entire career, which has spanned everything from publishing and ad tech to enterprise sales and management. She joined Uber five years ago, right as Uber for Business was taking shape.
Ali is now the Head of Mid-Market Sales for North America, and she’s just as excited about what lies ahead as she was when she first started. “I’m still in awe of the products we’re able to create, the problems we’re able to solve, and the people I get to work with,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of different roles here at Uber, but to see how we’ve grown as an organization and how we’ve developed globally is really exciting.”
On what keeps Ali at Uber:
“I’ve gotten to experience a lot of growth within Uber for Business and I continue to be challenged and excited by the work we are doing. I think there’s just so much opportunity for us in terms of what we can achieve and how much more we can scale the B2B side of Uber. Uber for Business encompasses a robust product set and gives businesses a single platform for managing global rides, meals, and local deliveries.
We’ve made great strides with large enterprises along with Mid-Market and SMB partners nationally and globally. Our sales team has a real opportunity to improve the way businesses operate. I have one team in San Francisco and one in New York, and their success is a testament to how effective our platform truly is for companies.”
On a pandemic pivot and the magic of the Mid-Market team:
“My team primarily focused on travel partnerships before the COVID-19 pandemic, but we have since transitioned to partnerships across the entire Uber portfolio, including meal programs and delivery solutions. The fact that every person on my team was extremely successful during a time when no one was traveling just shows how quickly we were able to pivot, adapt, and execute. It’s very rare for a company to be able to do all three of those things well and drive the results we have. It’s a very high-performing team, which is extremely exhilarating and inspiring for me as a leader and for the Account Executives as well.”
On what makes sales at Uber for Business so dynamic:
“One day you’re talking to a financial services firm about a meal program opportunity and the next day you’re talking to a hospital that needs to transport essential workers. It’s really different, because you’re coordinating with so many decision-makers, while also working internally to help ensure our product is adapting to our customers’ changing needs.
It’s always interesting and challenging, and you get to go from addressing the big questions— how can we help a certain industry, what can we do to improve transportation in a given city— to helping meet the personal or individual needs of our many Uber for Business partners.”
On what Ali looks for in new members of the team:
“The people who work here are extremely curious and passionate about Uber’s mission to make the world a better place. You can be really good at reading off a talk-track, but if you believe in the great product that we’re selling—which is making the lives of our decision-makers easier and more efficient, driving cost savings, and making partners and employees happy—you’re going to do very well here. And as this past year has shown, we can never know exactly what new challenges we’ll face, so we look for people who are nimble, creative, and willing to put in the work to succeed.”
On winning as a team:
“It’s not just about the individual contributor. The most successful reps are the ones learning from others. On my team, I make sure that everyone shares best practices and we foster a collaborative culture. So when you’re on a sales call, you’re never really alone. And that applies to everyone.
Even as a manager, I’ll get on late-night calls trying to figure out how to solve a problem for a client, and I really enjoy that. There are also so many talented people throughout Uber, so we’ve built out a network of cross-functional partners, from product to marketing to engineering. At the end of the day, the best memories are not those of celebrating a win for just one person, but celebrating all the teams who helped us get there.”
Interested in joining the team? Check out the open sales roles at Uber for Business ->
Posted by Chelsea Kelly
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