Building a career in sales at Wolt: Dana’s story

At Wolt, we're building a platform for the delivery of (almost) everything. Behind the scenes across our many markets, our brilliant salespeople are building relationships with all the merchants on the Wolt platform and do everything they can to help customers' businesses thrive. Over the years, we have expanded into 27 countries and + 500 cities globally. The growth and expansion have offered exciting and meaningful career opportunities for our salespeople worldwide. Next, we'll dive deeper into one of those as Dana, from team Kazakhstan, shares her story.

Jumping from a local sales role to a global scale-up

Dana Kussainnova, from the Wolt Kazakhstan team, has broad experience in the sales spectrum. She has a whopping 12 years of sales experience, and during her five years at Wolt, she has had a chance to wear many hats and hold different positions. In 2019, Dana embarked on a new chapter in her career, joining Wolt as a Restaurant Partnership Manager (also called as Sales Manager). Her prior sales experience was with local companies in Kazakhstan. The opportunity to try out her wings in a global company felt like a significant next step for her. "The prospect of having colleagues in different locations around the world sounded like the perfect next step. I knew this global setup could offer me an exciting opportunity for professional growth and learning”, Dana says.

Restaurant partnership managers are responsible for increasing Wolt’s restaurant selection in their market. They ensure that customers have access to the most lovable restaurants in their areas, and they help local restaurants grow their business and reach more customers. As a restaurant partnership manager, Dana’s plate was full of versatile and exciting responsibilities. These included, for example, identifying potential restaurant partners, approaching them, signing them for the Wolt, and developing key customer relationships. The days were fun and flew by by having exciting encounters with restaurant partners. Dana also emphasizes the team spirit of the sales team. “Within the department, we regularly run trainings and share the best tips and tricks to make us better in sales.”, Dana shares.

Excitement of launching new cities

Dana was passionate about her work as a restaurant partnership manager, and after a little while, she had an opportunity to shift her focus to expansion sales. The expansion sales function is focused on spreading Wolt’s footholds into new cities. That shift fitted well with her motivations and personality as the work includes a lot of variety, exciting discoveries, and new adventures. “Building operations in a new city where people aren’t familiar with Wolt is fascinating and brings a lot of variety to my work. Launching a new city always feels like we are doing this for the first time, even though we are not. To partner with Wolt, people must first learn about us, so we need to hire new people and build awareness across the region.

I love launching new cities - I always enjoy doing it.

It’s a lot of work but very fun and rewarding”, Dana says.

Finding the passion for team leading

After a few years at Wolt, Dana started yearning for new directions in her career. At the same time, it turned out that the restaurant sales team was looking for a team lead - it was the perfect match, a challenging yet exciting new opportunity. "I had no prior experience in people management but I had done sales for so many years and thought it would be a great chance to widen my perspective. I was inspired to learn how to lead people, set targets, and help the team hit them together. I learned a lot about leadership, such as how to motivate others to succeed. Alongside team-leading responsibilities, I also worked on developing key account relationships. Building our team has been one of my responsibilities, and hiring many new people to join us has been exciting”, Dana says. Stepping up to the team lead role has brought her new challenges. “Being a people leader requires being prepared for various situations and being comfortable with the unknown and a level of uncertainty. Staying motivated and energized to be there for others takes energy, but it also gives a lot.”, Dana continues.

Dana's positive and resilient nature has been a driving force in her career at Wolt: “I'm a very positive person, and I never give up. I'm always up for challenges.

What truly attracts me here is the people I work with – not only in Kazakhstan but worldwide.

Even though we don’t often meet face-to-face with people from different Wolt countries, we stay connected through our internal chat and all-hands meetings. These gatherings, where we share information and celebrate new milestones as a team, foster a strong sense of belonging to something bigger. The open-minded and friendly nature of the people at Wolt is something I truly enjoy”, Dana shares.

New perspectives, new challenges - constant growing

Recently, Dana reached a new milestone in her career at Wolt. She has stepped into the role of head of sales, restaurants, and retail. This new position, a result of merging two departments, will surely bring fresh new perspectives and challenges to tackle, and Dana is excited. Her humble, down-to-earth attitude and proven track record of success will undoubtedly help her excel in this role."At Wolt, I have had a chance to grow vertically and horizontally, which I'm grateful about. Right now, we are hiring sales specialists in Kazakhstan and other countries. This is an excellent environment to develop skills and build a career in sales in a truly global set-up. I can guarantee that it won't be boring here.", Dana highlights.

Got interested in building your career in sales at Wolt? Check the open positions here.