Selling Sara

After four years on the soccer team at Fairfield University, Sara (Plowman) Uy ’19 has never stopped attacking the goal.

Since leaving Fairfield, the Long Island-raised communications major with minors in management and health studies has scored the equivalent of a hat trick in her chosen profession as a sales training maven—170,000 TikTok followers, 85,000 on LinkedIn, and 25,000 on Instagram.

Recruited out of Fairfield by Pareto, a New York City-based sales training company, Uy spent five years scoring as many plaudits as she did clients for the firm. Less than a year ago, and with the blessing of her former bosses, she started her own sales training company, SellingSara, which has already attracted 50 clients, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Her drive to succeed was honed on the soccer pitch. As a striking midfielder in high school, she led her team to the state championship in 2013; at Fairfield, she was a starting forward for four years.

One of Uy’s favorite memories of playing for the Stags was a trip the team made to play three games in the U.K. her junior year—her father is from the U.K. and her grandparents live there. “That trip was such a cool, 180-degree experience—playing for my favorite team in front of my grandparents.”

“I came to Fairfield on a scholarship, which added some pressure, but being a student-athlete was a great experience,” said Uy, a team tri-captain. “It allowed me to have closer relationships with faculty and staff. Because of the soccer schedule, I missed some class time and had to make it up in extra sessions, which were usually one-on-one.”

One of her mentors was Patrick Kelley, PhD, MD, director of the health studies minor. “She was always confident,” said Dr. Kelley, who taught her in two health studies courses. “You can’t have a fragile ego working in sales. Sara’s interpersonal and leadership skills are the reason she’s as successful as she is.”

Steph Gallo, director of career planning for the John Charles Meditz College of Arts and Sciences, crossed paths with Uy as part of her duties advising Fairfield athletes. “I was a student athlete myself, playing field hockey at Villanova, so I felt comfortable working with the women’s soccer team,” said Gallo, who has been at Fairfield since 2012. “I understood the kind of pressures they were under, the balance they had to achieve around a game and practice schedule. Whenever I’d see Sara’s name in my daily work calendar, I would smile. She was so fun to be around.”

Gallo also admired the toughness and competitiveness of Uy, which she cites as key to her success in the business world. “A large percentage of female CEOs were athletes in college,” said Gallo. “They are trained to work really hard. Sara was no exception, but she also has that winning personality, the ability to connect with audiences of all ages.”

Uy acknowledges that luck played a role, too, allowing her to finish her college career just before the pandemic turned everything upside down. “I went straight into Covid out of college,” she recalled. “I more or less had to learn to leverage social media because all contact with prospective clients was now virtual. I had to learn on the fly.”

She began by making short videos of her cold calls and posting them on TikTok and Instagram—platforms she hadn’t often used before. Watching these videos, available on her website (sellingsara.com), is like watching a team captain lead the charge: maneuvering through a defense of hesitance, disinterest, or even hostility, and always pressing toward the goal—whether it’s to close a sale or set up a future conversation.

Uy was pleased to learn that other sales professionals were in the same boat as she was, navigating the choppy and isolating seas of the pandemic. Emboldened by her growing profile, she developed her own webinars on a variety of subjects, including cold calling, social selling, and high-impact emails; she now also offers one-on-one coaching sessions.

“We had Sara back to campus last spring for Communications Night,” said Gallo. “She was so cool. She can appeal to people of all ages. The students were beside themselves listening and learning from her. I remember telling her, ‘That likeability is going to take you far.’ That’s something you can’t teach. It’s innate, and Sara has it.”

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