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Just 15 days after graduating high school in 1995, Dreá Serrano left her Wyoming hometown for the Army, where she became a military intelligence analyst. In that role, she did everything from running background checks to reading secure messages from war zones and briefing her superiors on the key points.
“It shaped me into a person who was able to gather information, organize it quickly and present it to those who needed it,” Serrano said.
Those skills have served Serrano well as she built a sales career in the oil-and-gas and construction fields. To get ahead, particularly as a woman in male-dominated industries, Serrano was determined to learn everything possible about her products and communicate that information effectively to customers.
That approach has helped her rise to her current role as EquipmentShare’s district sales manager for Wyoming and Montana.
“Dreá has shattered stereotypes and led by example,” said Jimmy Allen, EquipmentShare’s regional operations manager for the Mountain West Region. “She has encountered and overcome biases, proving that expertise, dedication and results define success, not gender. Her experience at EquipmentShare has reinforced her belief in a merit-based industry, where she has seized opportunities to establish herself as a powerhouse sales leader.”
Serrano said a typical day starts at 5:30 a.m. with her going over reports and sending leads to her sales team. She tries to talk to each sales rep individually in the morning and regularly joins them in their company trucks for ride-alongs.
“This allows me to extend product knowledge, give teaching and training moments in real time as well as give a different insight on ways to overcome pain points and the dreaded ‘no’ that we hear in the field quite often,” she said. “I encourage my team to understand ‘no’ doesn’t necessarily mean forever no — maybe it just means not right now — and to continue with that follow-up and education on what our company can potentially offer.”
Serrano has taken a special interest in mentoring women who are getting started in the equipment rental business, like McKayla Morgan, an Advanced Solutions territory account manager in Casper, Wyoming, and Jonna Bertelsen, a rental coordinator in Billings, Montana.
“My biggest advice is to educate yourself on the products that you are speaking about,” Serrano said. “The best thing that you could do is go out with your operation staff, as well as a service technician, and learn the basics of a piece of equipment through asking questions about troubleshooting and getting a cut sheet and understanding exactly what that piece can be used for. If you have the product knowledge and professionalism to back up what you’re saying, the sky truly is the limit.”
