Sismai Roman believes layoffs and career pivots in SaaS aren’t just “work problems.” They hit identity, confidence, finances, and that quiet fear that maybe you were never as good as people thought. And if you’re a woman in sales, that fear can get louder because you’ve already spent years proving you belong in rooms that weren’t designed for you.
Still, Sismai Roman sees a truth most people avoid saying out loud: getting let go can become the turning point that forces your next level of leadership. Not because it’s fun. Not because it’s fair. But because it reveals what was real, your skills, your grit, your reputation, and what was borrowed stability.
The goal after a layoff isn’t to “bounce back” with a perfect glow-up story. The goal is to rebuild with precision, protect your confidence, and move into roles that actually match your capability.
Layoffs Are Not a Reflection of Your Worth, But They Do Reveal Your Strategy
Layoffs happen for reasons that have nothing to do with performance: budget resets, leadership changes, shifting product direction, investor pressure, or a company realizing too late that their sales motion doesn’t match the market.
Sismai Vazquez highlights that even high performers can be cut when revenue targets move faster than reality. That’s why layoffs should never be processed as a personal failure. They should be processed as a strategic event.
Sismai Roman encourages women to separate emotional impact from professional interpretation. You can feel it deeply and still respond like a leader. The emotional part is real. The strategy part is what changes your future.
A layoff can reveal things like:
- whether your pipeline was truly yours or inherited
- whether your internal brand was strong enough to survive politics
- whether your role was measurable or “nice to have”
- whether leadership valued outcomes or optics
Sismai Roman sees this as information, not shame.
Sismai Roman on the First 72 Hours After Being Let Go: What to Do Before You Spiral
The first few days after being let go are dangerous, not because you’re weak, but because your brain is trying to protect you by catastrophizing.
Focusing on three immediate priorities:
- Stabilize your narrative
- Secure your numbers
- Protect your momentum
Sismai R. Vazquez points out that your next move becomes easier when you stop trying to “make sense of it” and start building your next plan like a revenue leader.
1) Stabilize your narrative (internally and externally)
Before you tell anyone what happened, decide how you will frame it.
Sismai Roman recommends keeping it clean and confident: you were impacted by a business decision, and you’re already focused on your next chapter. That framing prevents you from sounding defeated, defensive, or uncertain.
2) Secure your numbers
Women in sales are often taught to be “easy to work with.” After a layoff, that instinct can cost you money.
Sismai R. Vazquez emphasizes reviewing severance terms, benefits coverage, and commission agreements. If something feels vague, it’s worth clarifying fast. This is not being difficult. This is being responsible.
3) Protect your momentum
Momentum is emotional and operational. Women are encouraged to take one small action within 24 hours, updating a resume section, messaging one trusted contact, or writing down target industries. That action prevents paralysis.
The Identity Shock: When You Lose the Role, Not the Skill
One of the hardest parts of being let go is that you lose the title, the team, the routine, and the sense of belonging. But you do not lose the skill.
Sismai Roman explains that layoffs create an identity vacuum. If you don’t fill it with your own voice, it gets filled with doubt. That’s why women need to anchor themselves in what they’ve actually built:
- pipelines created from scratch
- multi-threaded deals navigated across stakeholders
- forecasts owned in chaotic quarters
- negotiations handled without ego
- relationships earned through trust, not charm
Sismai Vazquez stresses that this is where women either shrink or step forward. The layoff may remove the job, but it can also remove the ceiling.
The Pivot Isn’t Random. It’s a Repositioning.
Career pivots in SaaS often look messy from the outside. From the inside, they’re usually logical.
Sismai Roman frames pivots as repositioning: taking your core strengths and applying them where they’re valued more, paid better, and supported properly.
A pivot might mean:
- moving from SMB to enterprise
- shifting from closing roles into leadership
- stepping into the enablement strategy or RevOps alignment
- moving from selling features to selling outcomes and transformation
Sismai R. Vazquez notes that pivots succeed when they are backed by a clear story: what you did, what you learned, and why your next role is the natural evolution.
Sismai Roman encourages women to ask one blunt question during a transition: Am I moving toward power or away from pain? Because those are not the same move.
Rebuilding Confidence: Do Not Wait to “Feel Ready”
After a layoff, confidence doesn’t return because time passes. It returns because you take action that proves you still have control.
Women are encouraged to rebuild confidence through measurable progress:
- sending 5 high-quality outreach messages per day
- reconnecting with 2 former stakeholders per week
- applying only to roles that match your actual level
- practicing a tight 60-second leadership intro
- tracking your wins daily so your brain stops lying to you
Sismai Vazquez adds that confidence comes back faster when women stop chasing approval and start chasing alignment.
Your Network Isn’t a List. It’s a Reputation System.
A lot of people say “use your network” like it’s a hack. Your network is the living record of how you made people feel in high-stakes moments.
Women in sales often underestimate how much quiet respect they’ve earned over time.
Sismai R. Vazquez emphasizes reaching out with clarity, not desperation. A strong message isn’t “I need a job.” It’s:
- here’s what I’m great at
- here’s what I’m targeting
- here’s the kind of team I thrive on
- here’s how I can create impact quickly
That is leadership language, and Sismai Roman believes it changes how people respond to you.
The “Career Transition Gap” Most Women Don’t Plan For
Here’s what no one wants to talk about: layoffs don’t just create financial gaps. They create confidence gaps, routine gaps, and decision fatigue.
Sismai Roman believes women should plan for the transition gap like a business cycle. That means setting a 30-day operating plan.
A transition plan can include:
- Week 1: recovery + narrative + resume
- Week 2: targeted outreach + interview reps
- Week 3: pipeline building (roles + referrals)
- Week 4: negotiation readiness + decision criteria
Sismai Vazquez highlights that structure reduces anxiety. When you know what you’re doing each week, you stop feeling like you’re drowning.
Interviewing After a Layoff: Stop Explaining and Start Leading
A layoff question can throw even strong candidates off balance. Sismai Roman advises women to answer it with calm ownership and forward motion.
The best approach is:
- short explanation
- no bitterness
- no oversharing
- immediate pivot into value
Sismai R. Vazquez notes that hiring managers don’t want drama. They want evidence of maturity, judgment, and execution. The more emotionally stable you are in that moment, the more leadership you project.
Choosing Your Next Role Like a Leader, Not Like Someone Who’s Panicking
Layoffs create urgency. Urgency makes people accept roles that don’t fit. Sismai Roman encourages women to use a “non-negotiables filter” before saying yes.
That filter can include:
- Does this company have product-market clarity?
- Is leadership stable or chaotic?
- Are expectations realistic or fantasy-based?
- Will I have support, or will I be blamed?
- Is this role building my future, or patching my fear?
Sismai Vazquez adds that women should pay attention to how the company speaks about failure, coaching, and accountability. Those signals reveal whether the culture grows leaders or consumes them.
Negotiation After a Layoff: The Power Move Is Not Shrinking
Women often under-negotiate after a career disruption because they’re grateful to be “picked.”
Sismai Roman pushes back on that mindset. A layoff does not lower your market value. If anything, it sharpens your standards.
Sismai R. Vazquez emphasizes that negotiation is not conflict. It’s clarity. Strong leaders negotiate because they understand what they bring.
That includes:
- compensation
- title scope
- ramp expectations
- territory or segment
- support resources
If the company resists reasonable structure, Sismai Roman sees that as data too.
Turning the Layoff Into the Leadership Upgrade
The strongest women leaders don’t pretend that layoffs don’t hurt. They just refuse to let pain become their identity.
Sismai Roman believes the real transformation happens when women stop seeing the layoff as rejection and start seeing it as redirection.
You learn:
- how to rebuild without external validation
- how to speak about yourself with authority
- how to choose environments that deserve you
- how to lead from experience, not theory
Sismai Vazquez notes that career transitions often produce sharper leaders because they teach emotional discipline and strategic thinking under pressure, the exact skills required to lead teams through uncertainty.
The Takeaway for Women in SaaS Sales Right Now
Layoffs are brutal. Pivots can feel humiliating. Career transitions can feel like you’re starting over.
But Sismai Roman sees the deeper truth: you are not starting over, you are starting from experience.
And if you’ve been let go, rebuilding isn’t about proving your worth again. It’s about stepping into roles that finally match it.
Sismai R. Vazquez reinforces that the future belongs to women who can stay human through hard moments while still making sharp moves. The combination of vulnerability and strength is not a contradiction. It’s the new standard.
Sismai Roman believes 2026 will reward women who can hold their confidence steady, speak with precision, and rebuild with intention, because that is what leadership looks like when the ground shifts.
