Earlier in my career I spent several years at a startup services company called Circles at 300 Congress Street in Boston. Circles provided (and still does) white labeled call center based concierge services to credit card and luxury brands. I had just been promoted from being a team leader in the call center to the account management team. The account management and sales teams shared the same part of the building. As I moved into my new digs, excited for what lay ahead for me, something caught my eye. A large banner at the back of the wall where our sales people sat simply read, “Nothing happens until you sell something.” It is a phrase that immediately struck a chord and has stuck with me.
That quote on the wall, simple as it was, changed the way I look at the world and how I ran my business. It became a mentality and a mantra for how I got things done and how I prioritized my day. To a certain extent, I credit that saying for the success I have enjoyed to date.
Fast forward to today. In August 2017 I made the transition from a 250,000 employee multinational bank in JPMorgan to a lean and mean early stage startup in Explorics. As a cofounder and the Chief Revenue Officer of Explorics I am tasked with all things growth. Revenue, and specifically net new sales, is very near and dear to my heart. My gut instinct on day one was to immediately start lighting up my network, setting up meetings, socializing my career change and generally start looking for that first sale. We have given dozens of demos in the last 6-7 weeks, sent dozens of follow up emails and made countless calls chasing that first win. All of which have been productive and have helped shape our evolving go to market strategy.
As anyone who has joined an early stage startup knows, the founding team here at Explorics are all very busy right now. We are in creation mode. Everything from branding to marketing materials to content creation, contracts and invoices don’t exist. They need to be created. All the while the core product stack continues to grow, evolve, improve. Still with all of this activity and foundational work being done one phrase continues to echo in my mind,
“Nothing happens until you sell something.”