Meet Becky Heiss, Operations Manager with Saleslink for the company’s Whirlpool Corporation account. While her job title may be a little complicated, Becky Heiss is clearly loving the rent-to-own turn her career has taken over the past six years.
RTOHQ: The Magazine caught up with Heiss to chat about big families, psychology perks, and the humanity necessary to succeed in RTO.
APRO: Where did you grow up, and what was your growing-up experience like?
BH: I grew up on the east side of Chicago, Illinois, in a huge Catholic Polish family. My mom was one of 12 children, so I have only two siblings, but 29 first cousins who were all my best friends. We all lived close to each other, so there was always someone to hang with and something to do. It was fun. We’re still close – we do a cousins-only reunion every year, and now with all of our kids, we’re up to 30-something second cousins.
When I was in middle school, we moved about a half-hour away to northwest Indiana, and my mom’s parents, our Nana and Papa, lived with us. I was extremely close to them. My grandfather was such a jokester, he was always goofing around with us. And my grandma used to let us spend the night downstairs with them, and she’d tell us ghost stories at bedtime. We got to know them in a different way than our other cousins did, and my brother, sister, and I all feel fortunate to have had that experience. It was really, really special for us.
APRO: Did you go to college, or did you go directly into the workforce?
BH: I earned my bachelor’s in psychology at Purdue University. I thought I was going to be a clinical child psychologist – until my first child psychology class. It was too much for me, but mental health continues to be a passion of mine, and I think a psych degree is helpful no matter what career you go into. During college and following, I did customer service with a wholesale buying club. Then a colleague who had moved on contacted me with an opportunity at Saleslink, working with Whirlpool. It was a newly created position, and I had no idea what I was getting into, but I took a leap, and it’s working out!
APRO: How is your job related to RTO?
BH: So, Saleslink provides manufacturing partners like Whirlpool with a nationwide sales force to optimize their placement with retailers. For my first nine years with the company, I represented Whirlpool with huge mostly rural hardware stores, like ACE and True Value. Then, about six years ago, Whirlpool wanted some help in their rent-to-own space. Saleslink had never done that, but we decided to give it a go.
So we’ve got a four-person team working with rental dealers across the country, and we just give them whatever support they might need from Whirlpool. I see my job as just helping our RTO folks navigate the world of Whirlpool and manage their businesses the best way possible. I help with ordering, deliveries, even strategizing for growth. And Whirlpool has so many resources that it can be kind of overwhelming, so I try to focus in on what information is the most important for our dealers to know day to day. And of course, we support all the different industry events, and I coordinate all of that.
APRO: What’s your favorite thing about working with the rent-to-own industry?
BH: The people in this business are really, really unique. We knew nothing about RTO at the start, and when we began talking to rental dealers, they really wanted to teach us, they wanted to partner. They want to be as helpful to us as we are to them. They’re so proud of what they do, and they should be. They’re giving their customers – these people who are trying to just make a living – the chance to have a nice home for their families, clean laundry, and hot meals. It really gives you a sense of purpose.
At the end of the day, our rental dealers are there to run a business and to make money. But they also have to really exercise their humanity. With technology and AI and all that, so much of our world today has become transactional and sterile and automated, and this is a business where relationships are still at the heart of it. Yes, there’s room for those tools and advancement, always, but the people in this industry truly understand how essential human connection and consideration is to their success.
APRO: How do you think your psychology background helps you in your work today?
BH: Let’s be real: Things go wrong. Orders are delayed, deliveries are missed, invoices are incorrect. The conversations I have daily aren’t always positive ones. Having that background helps me take a step back and get some perspective. When someone goes off on me, I can think, OK, I don’t know what kind of day they’re having. I don’t know what else in their life is frustrating or stressing or exhausting them. It helps me not take negativity personally, and remember that my job is to take care of whatever I can for them at the moment. If I can make this situation easier for them so that their day goes a little better, then I feel like I’m doing my job well. And I don’t want to help you just because it’s my job, but because I really do care that what I do, no matter how small it may be, has some sort of positive impact.
APRO: Tell me a little about your life apart from Whirlpool, Saleslink, and rent-to-own.
BH: My husband, Seth, and I met while bartending together way back during my Purdue days. We dated for six years, and now we’ve been married for 16. He’s a diesel technician, working on big trucks. We’ve got three kids – William is 12 years old, Owen is six, and Vivian is five. We live close to Indianapolis, and several years ago, my mom moved down here and lives just down the block, which is super awesome and incredibly helpful.
Owen and Vivi are just beginning to dabble in activities – Owen in ninja classes, and Vivi is trying dance and gymnastics. But William is entrenched in travel baseball, center field; he considers himself the conductor of the outfield. It’s essentially year-round, with training and practice. So we’re a baseball family, and I’m a baseball mom through and through. I love it.
APRO: And besides preteen baseball, how do you spend your non-work time?
BH: I’m a lifelong learner, and I love to read, so I read everything. I think knowledge is a superpower, so I read whenever I’ve got a spare moment. But at this stage of life, I’ve got a great core group of mom friends, and we count on each other a lot. We live in a 70’s neighborhood on a lake, and it’s a great neighborhood. Everybody knows everybody. I’ve got mom friends on every block, and there are a ton of kids. Our house is the place where all the kids are all the time, so I spend a lot of time making sure the snack drawer stays full! We just love having people over – we entertain, we cook, we feed folks, we host. We’re real homebodies, and all our friends and all the things we need are right here, so it’s pretty sweet.
