Episode 105: Taylor Ritchie –  The Importance of Conversations and Connections

The SDR role is an amazing way to work on commitment, responsibility, and build a strong foundation for a successful business career. Taylor Ritchie can especially attest to this since being exposed to the sales business at a young age and now working as the account manager for MoxiWorks.

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Taylor discusses the significance of continually learning and improving in a sales role, draws parallels between competitive sports and sales, and emphasizes the importance of working in person as an SDR.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Taylor Ritchie

💡 What she does:  Taylor is the account manager at MoxiWorks.

💡 Company: MoxiWorks

💡 Noteworthy: Taylor is from North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Communication Studies – Interpersonal and Organizational. She played volleyball for years and fell in love with sales while working in her grandfather’s sock business. During her studies, Taylor had an internship in a cybersecurity company, and after graduation, she was recruiting at Jobspring Partners. Taylor started at memoryBlue as an SDR, and since then, her sales career has been on an upward trajectory. Today, Taylor is an account manager at MoxiWorks.

💡 Where to find Taylor: LinkedIn | Website

Key Insights

⚡ Competitive sports can teach you a lot about yourself and others. Taylor has been playing volleyball since she was four years old. First, she played AAU volleyball, and then she played beach volleyball for more than ten years. As she says, that experience taught her that she must have commitments and responsibilities and good habits to succeed. “Coming from a background of being not just a volleyball player but a volleyball leader as the manager of the team, I was able to learn some responsibility as a personnel person. I was also able to learn how to gain leadership responsibility and teach people how to learn and talk to people the way that they need to be talked to.”

⚡You learn a lot through the role of SDR. The job of an SDR is difficult, but it is the basis for a successful business career. Taylor points out that she and the other SDRs at memoryBlue learned how to get through the hardest part of the sales process and that you’ll never succeed if you don’t push yourself there. “Coming in every single day, getting on the phone, and making a hundred calls is setting the routine for yourself. And that is learning how you can better yourself and showing yourself your full capacity of where you can go. So remind yourself constantly — during this time while you are in this role as a sales development representative — that you’re not only learning parts about the role itself, but you’re learning about yourself, how you can manage time, and what you need to do in order to manage your day. And that’s what’s going to set you apart in life.”

⚡ SDRs should work in an office, not remotely. Until recently, almost everyone was working remotely at one point, even those who may have found themselves in an SDR position for the first time. Taylor believes that this is not good for newbies in sales and that they should come to the office. “It’s important because you don’t have structure. This may be your first job out of college; this may be your first sales job; this may be your first professional job, whatever it may be. You don’t know how sales works, and until you know how it works, you need to be in the office around people who are learning at the same pace and same level that you are. And that’s so important because you have each other to rely on to get there. When you’re working from home, you don’t have that.”

Episode Highlights

Family Business

“My grandfather, when I was two years old, bought a sock business, and at that time, my mother was an elementary school teacher in second grade, and my aunt was in real estate. And when he bought this business, he was like, ‘We’re gonna do this as a family business because we’re gonna sell wholesale.’ And so, from then on, my aunt, my grandmother, my grandfather, and my mother were all in sales. And I remember, when I was six, coming home after school, I had my own filing cabinet, I had my own fake computer, and I used to play around with those. So it was natural to me that it was going to be a job, that I was going to have to organize my life, and I was going to have to communicate with people on a day-to-day basis.”

Internship at RedSeal Inc.

“I basically was doing the graph work for everyone within the office, but it was the best experience I could ever imagine. It was in Mountain View, California. I went out there and was just building lists all day. Never on the phone — just getting names, building lists, linked in with Navigator, Excel sheets for eight hours of the day — [I was] miserable, but the grit that I learned from that is what got me in to memoryBlue because I knew what I had to do in order to be successful, because I was around so many other successful people, learning from them, listening to them, which is the most important thing to do. Listening to other people around you, you can learn so much more from that and about yourself and incorporate that in your day-to-day life.”

Technical Recruiter at Jobspring Partners

“It was a lot of cold-calling, where I was managing both the customer and the interviewee — full cycle sale or full cycle recruiting. So with that, I learned a lot about just business in general. I had never been involved in the business. So, I learned the business in college, but I’d never seen how the business operated outside of the internship. And I was actually involved with things outside of being siloed with list-building and Excel sheets with the recruiting.”

Role of an Account Manager

“I’m managing clients. So, post-sales, clients come to me, and I’m in charge of making sure that the implementation, onboarding, training, adoption, everything is going well. That includes support tickets because we all know technology breaks every single day. So, [my job includes] managing, making sure that it’s working the way that the product is meant to work, as well as aligning with their strategy. […]

I’m working specifically with real estate brokerages, commercial and residential both, and also some partnerships. I’m working with a couple of large companies that do outsourcing, like memoryBlue, that help provide smaller partner teams with their business as well. So, working within any brokerage, working with the agents — that’s typically who I’m training with these days.”

Transcript: 

[00:00:00] Taylor Ritchie: Something that my dad told me that has honestly brought me a far, far, far in my sales career is, “The most successful salespeople always find three commonalities within the person that they are on the phone with or the person that they are interacting with.” 

[00:00:19] Marc Gonyea: T Ritch in the house, Chris. 

[00:00:43] Chris Corcoran: The pride at North Cackalacky. 

[00:00:44] Marc Gonyea: Taylor, Taylor Ritchie. Taylor Ritchie, how you doing?

[00:00:48] Taylor Ritchie: I’m doing good, guys. How are y’all?

[00:00:49] Chris Corcoran: It’s great seeing you again.

[00:00:51] Taylor Ritchie: I’m super excited to be here.

[00:00:53] Marc Gonyea: It’s gonna be fun catching up.

[00:00:55] Taylor Ritchie: It is. It’s gonna be a good time. 

[00:00:57] Marc Gonyea: You know, we’re in this nicer office than the one you were in.

[00:01:01] Taylor Ritchie: So much nicer

[00:01:05] Marc Gonyea: But I, I was saying is, I was, we weren’t able to have an office like this because of what, the people who were in the old office established in the, in, in Austin for us.

[00:01:17] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:01:17] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:01:17] Marc Gonyea: Right? This is beautiful office. We got 75 people here, in Austin now. Chase Edwards, who you worked with, his goal is to get it to a hundred.

[00:01:26] And you said that’s a nice, good number. So, we appreciate you spending some time with us today and also all the work and contributions you do when you were here. 

[00:01:33] Taylor Ritchie: Absolutely. Well, I mean, I, just seeing the way that it’s grown, walking in today, it’s immaculate and talking to Caroline, like opening some new offices.

[00:01:43] Couldn’t be more proud to be an alumni here. 

[00:01:46] Marc Gonyea: Love it. All right. Well, let’s get into it. So, we know you, but we’re gonna want some things about you today too, but the folks listening, right, who are curious about you and want to be able to relate to why they’re doing this role and where you are particularly being a, a woman, a young woman in, in the tech sales world.

[00:02:01] Taylor Ritchie: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:02] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:02:02] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. 

[00:02:02] Marc Gonyea: Like, there aren’t as many of those as you like, so you, you’re a role model. So, let’s talk about you. Let’s get to know you a little bit, though. Tell us about where you’re from, where you grew up, that sort of thing. 

[00:02:13] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:02:13] Marc Gonyea: We’ll go from there.

[00:02:14] Chris Corcoran: Your story.

[00:02:15] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, my, my background, let’s get into it.

[00:02:18] So, I’m actually from North Carolina, right outside of Wake Forest, a small town, Youngsville. If you blink, you will pass it, I promise you.

[00:02:26] Marc Gonyea: Uhhuh.

[00:02:27] And there I was kind of a big fish in a small sea at high school, all throughout school because it was a very small school. I was all it, all athletes loved to get into athletics.

[00:02:41] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:42] Taylor Ritchie: I was in volleyball, did track for a little while, hated that. Quit it real quick.

[00:02:47] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:02:48] And then, additionally, I was playing AAU volleyball.

[00:02:51] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:51] Taylor Ritchie: And so, this is what really gave me the idea of having some structure in my life and having to have commitments and responsibilities and learning that you have to have habits and good habits in order to be successful. 

[00:03:07] And so, with that coming from a background of being not even just a volleyball player, but a volleyball leader, as the manager of the team, I was able to learn some responsibility as a personal person. 

[00:03:24] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:03:24] Taylor Ritchie: And I was also able to learn how to gain leadership responsibility and teach people how to learn and talk to people the way that they need to be talked to in order to learn that way.

[00:03:38] Marc Gonyea: When did you start playing volleyball?

[00:03:40] Taylor Ritchie: I started playing volleyball when I was, I mean, I touched a ball when I was four.

[00:03:44] Mm-hmm . But I started playing with, in an AAU league, probably when I was six.

[00:03:48] Marc Gonyea: Okay.

[00:03:48] Taylor Ritchie: And then, I played with my dad all across the East Coast. 

[00:03:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:03:53] Taylor Ritchie: For about 10 years, beach volleyball. 

[00:03:55] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about that. 

[00:03:57] Taylor Ritchie: Yes, so.

[00:03:57] Marc Gonyea: I remember you, I remember you tell me about this. 

[00:03:59] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, we, we actually, we started, I don’t know who knows beach volleyball, but there’s of you out there that do, we started as a B team when I was 16.

[00:04:08] So, we were playing in Daytona Beach, Florida, where we were playing against these people that were going to go pro. 

[00:04:15] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:04:15] Taylor Ritchie: And my dad was the one always talking shit to me, trying to throw everyone off and making them seem like he was a bad dad, but we were a good cop, bad cop. 

[00:04:24] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:04:25] Taylor Ritchie: Um.And whether that was what it did to pursue us to the top or whether it was the teamwork that we had together, we eventually bumped up to A-level, and that was a really fun time during my, my career with volleyball because when I graduated in high school, that was the year that we won the championship, for A-level of volleyball on the East Coast.

[00:04:48] Marc Gonyea: And when you meet…

[00:04:49] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:04:49] Marc Gonyea: When you meet Taylor Ritchie, you’re like, “I would not wanna mess around her around volleyball.” No. 

[00:04:53] Taylor Ritchie: We actually, we did a, when I was managing here, we did a, uh, team here with Austin social league, and we had a team that some were good, some were bad. I won’t say names, don’t worry, guys. But those, you know, I, I saw myself on the court.

[00:05:09] I’m like, “Okay, Taylor, you cannot, like this is fun. This is funny names. Like, this is not where we are. We’re not actually playing a volleyball game.” 

[00:05:19] Marc Gonyea: I think of, like, a fluid athlete, you know, I think of it Mika when he was in the pool and I was just like, “If I get out there with T Ritch, she’s gonna spike the ball right in my face.” Right? And not on purpose just because you’re getting after it. 

[00:05:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:05:31] Marc Gonyea: Right? So.

[00:05:32] Chris Corcoran: That really knows one speed.

[00:05:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, that was a big part of your life, competitive sports. 

[00:05:37] Taylor Ritchie: Oh, yeah. 

[00:05:37] Marc Gonyea: Right. Sounds like…

[00:05:38] Taylor Ritchie: A huge, huge part.

[00:05:39] Marc Gonyea: Sounds like it taught you a lot about yourself and other people. 

[00:05:41] Taylor Ritchie: Absolutely. It did. Yeah. I mean, I, like going back to just putting this into a work perspective, you know, managing your time and managing what you’re doing. Here, what, the system that they have here at memoryBlue is just insane. Like, we are learning how to put ourselves through the hardest part of the sales process and it’s not easy. And none of us like going through it, but you never get good by not pushing yourself and putting yourself out there.

[00:06:13] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:14] Taylor Ritchie: And so, coming in every single day and getting on the phone and making a hundred dials, that is setting the routine for yourself and that is learning how you can better yourself and showing yourself your full capacity of where you can go. So, just remind yourself constantly, you know, during this time, while you are in this role as a sales development representative, you’re not only learning parts about the role itself, but you’re learning parts about yourself and about how you can manage time, what you need to do in order to manage your day.

[00:06:54] And that’s what’s gonna put you a part in life. And there’s a few books that I’ve been reading and that I’ve read. I’ll actually talk about Radical Candor because it’s a book that Marc made me read once . And I thank him every single day for making me read it because it sits on my bookshelf, I look at it and sometimes I pick it up and read the parts that I highlighted that I had to report back to him.

[00:07:18] So, with that being said, a couple of things that, it’s written much, very much in a managerial perspective, but you can think about it in a holistic life perspective and what that really is, is challenging directly. Right? So, it talks a lot about challenging people directly.

[00:07:34] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:35] Taylor Ritchie: And that’s not only in management, that’s in every day-to-day life.

[00:07:38] Right? You’re challenging people when you’re on the phones, you’re asking them questions. You’re trying to discover where they need to solve their problem and where their, their issue is really lying. And having these, these tough conversations where you’re getting this pushback, it gives you criticism that you’re able to learn off of, that’s gonna make your performance even better the next time. 

[00:08:04] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Let’s come back to that. That, I mean, that, that topic. Let’s go to your story, little story a little bit more. You’re in a high school, amazing volleyball player, what did you think you wanted to do?

[00:08:14] Taylor Ritchie: I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a business major and I double majored in women’s studies at Chapel Hill. 

[00:08:22] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. We’ll talk about that real quick. I’m not glossing over that. Right? So, where’d you…?

[00:08:26] Taylor Ritchie: Go Heels.

[00:08:27] Marc Gonyea: Where’d you go to college?

[00:08:27] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. UNC Chapel Hill, fourth generation.

[00:08:31] Woohoo. 

[00:08:33] Marc Gonyea: And what’d you major in? 

[00:08:34] I majored in business communications as well as women’s studies. 

[00:08:38] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. So, you know, Chris and I have a lot of respect for that school, but also for people who get into that school and go there ’cause he and I were gonna get into that school. Right? And they always say, “Hire people smarter than yourselves.”

[00:08:48] Well, with that, with you we crush that. 

[00:08:51] Chris Corcoran: That’s easier for someone forever. It’s easy for you and I.

[00:08:56] Marc Gonyea: Unfortunately. Alright. So, you, you’re majoring in these things. Did sales ever, like, you know, high school, college, did sales ever kind of come up in your mind’s eye, something? Was it in your circle? ‘Cause it wasn’t in our circle when we were growing up.

[00:09:09] Taylor Ritchie: 100%. 

[00:09:10] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:09:11] Taylor Ritchie: I grew up in it. I grew up, I was an office baby.

[00:09:13] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk about that.

[00:09:14] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Office baby for life. So, I, my grandfather, when I was about two years old, he bought a sock business and this sock…

[00:09:25] Chris Corcoran: What business?

[00:09:26] Taylor Ritchie: Sock.

[00:09:26] Marc Gonyea: Sock, like socks I wear?

[00:09:27] Taylor Ritchie: Socks that you wear. 

[00:09:29] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Okay. 

[00:09:29] Taylor Ritchie: And I have funny stories for you after that. 

[00:09:31] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:09:31] But he bought a sock business and when he bought that sock business my mother was a elementary school teacher, second grade. And my aunt was in real estate. And when he bought this business, he was like, “We’re gonna do this as a family business because we’re gonna sell wholesale.

[00:09:48] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:09:48] Taylor Ritchie: And so, from that, my aunt, my grandmother, my grandfather and my mother were all in sales. And I grew up, I remember when I was six, after school, coming home, I had my own filing cabinet. I had my own fake computer and I used to play around in that. So, it was natural to me that it was going to be a job that I was gonna have to organize my life and I was gonna have to communicate with people on a day-to-day basis. 

[00:10:18] Marc Gonyea: All right.

[00:10:19] Taylor Ritchie: Additionally, my dad was VP of sales, and was in sales my entire life as I was growing up. 

[00:10:26] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:26] Taylor Ritchie: And then, my grandmother was a business owner. And on my side of my father, my grandfather, he was a business owner and he sold flip carpets for your, your car. 

[00:10:37] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:10:37] So, I grew up in a total environment of sales. 

[00:10:40] Taylor Ritchie: All right. When I came out of the womb, I was told that this was something that I was going to do. I never saw it for myself. I didn’t have confidence in myself.

[00:10:49] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:10:49] Taylor Ritchie: When I walked in the front door of memoryBlue I didn’t think that I was gonna be successful at what I was about to get myself into.

[00:10:56] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

[00:10:56] Taylor Ritchie: And quite honestly, when I went to be a delivery manager, I didn’t have confidence in myself, but Marc and Chris did. 

[00:11:05] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:05] Taylor Ritchie: And because of that I built confidence and I am today where I am because of that. 

[00:11:11] Marc Gonyea: Oh, yeah. 

[00:11:12] Chris Corcoran: We gotta pump the breaks here. 

[00:11:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, please. 

[00:11:15] Chris Corcoran: We gotta pump the breaks.

[00:11:17] Star athletes, elite college education, and you’re also forgetting or leaving out you had an amazing internship when you were in college. 

[00:11:27] Taylor Ritchie: I did.

[00:11:28] Chris Corcoran: Right? So, talk a little bit about that internship because that background, Marc and I, we would love to get candidates with this background. So, share with the listeners a little bit about the internship you had in…

[00:11:38] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:11:39] Chris Corcoran: …college. 

[00:11:39] Taylor Ritchie: Absolutely. So, I was at RedSeal networks and this is a cybersecurity company.

[00:11:44] And I basically was doing the graph work for everyone within the office, but it was the best experience that I could ever imagine. And I couldn’t think anything more for it. So, it was in Mountain View, California. I went out there and I was just building lists all day. Never on the phone, just getting names, building lists.

[00:12:07] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:07] Taylor Ritchie:  LinkedIn, with Navigator, Excel sheets for eight hours of the day, miserable. 

[00:12:13] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:12:14] Taylor Ritchie: But the grit that I learned from that is what got me to memoryBlue.

[00:12:20] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:21] Taylor Ritchie: Because I knew what I had to do in order to be, be successful because I was around so many other successful people, learning from them, listening to them, which is the most important thing to do is listening to other people around you because you can learn so much more from that and about yourself and incorporate that in your day-to-day. 

[00:12:46] Chris Corcoran: Absolutely. 

[00:12:47] Marc Gonyea: Oh, yeah.

[00:12:48] Chris Corcoran: Absolutely. So, you graduate from Chapel Hill, you have an internship from, in kind of tech sales in almost like list building, which would set you up for an SDR, but you ended up not getting into tech sales initially. 

[00:13:02] Taylor Ritchie: Right. 

[00:13:02] Chris Corcoran: So, talk to us a little bit about what you did initially, right out, right out, right outta Chapel Hill. 

[00:13:06] Taylor Ritchie: So, I was determined to get as far away from North Carolina as possible. So, I moved to Los Angeles. 

[00:13:14] Chris Corcoran: Right, right.

[00:13:15] Taylor Ritchie: Literally. So, when I moved to Los Angeles, I had save some money in college to give myself three months to figure out what I wanted to do, what the hell I wanted to do with my life.

[00:13:27] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:27] Taylor Ritchie: Because no one in college knows what they wanna do with their lives. 

[00:13:31] Marc Gonyea: They think they do. 

[00:13:31] Taylor Ritchie: And yes, they do think they do, but they do not. And so, I had an opportunity, LA was not in a good job market and recruiting came, came by and I was like, “Well, this is close enough to sales. It’ll get me on the phones.

[00:13:46] It’ll get me some experience with that conversation.” So, I decided to take the position. When I took it, I learned a lot. It was very much cold calling, where I was managing both, not only the customer, but the interviewee as well, full cycle sale or full cycles recruiting. So, with that, I learned a lot about just business in general.

[00:14:11] Marc Gonyea: Sure.

[00:14:11] Taylor Ritchie: I had never been involved in business.

[00:14:13] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:14] Taylor Ritchie: Right? So, I learned business in college, but I’d never seen how business operated…

[00:14:19] Mm-hmm . …outside of the internship.

[00:14:22] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:22] Taylor Ritchie: Right? And I was actually involved with things outside of being siloed with list building and Excel sheets.

[00:14:28] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[00:14:29] With the recruitings.

[00:14:30] Taylor Ritchie: So, I think that…

[00:14:31] Marc Gonyea: What, what were you recruiting for?

[00:14:32] Taylor Ritchie: I was recruiting for developers, so.

[00:14:35] Chris Corcoran: Oh, it was IT

[00:14:36] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, it was IT. So, C-sharp, SQL, JIRA, software, all of that. Anything that had developers, that’s what we were recruiting for. 

[00:14:44] Marc Gonyea: I see, you were doing the client side and the candidate side. 

[00:14:47] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. Full cycle, client and candidate.

[00:14:49] Marc Gonyea: Okay. And so, what did that experience teach you?

[00:14:51] Taylor Ritchie: I mean, honestly, I think it prepared me for the, the managing position here because it taught me how to not only teach and coach people how to act and interact, but also manage the customers and make sure that they are happy and that they are getting what they need.

[00:15:12] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:12] Taylor Ritchie: And that I understand what’s going right and what’s going wrong so that I can better suit their needs. 

[00:15:18] Chris Corcoran: Okay.

[00:15:18] Marc Gonyea: Probably tasted her a little bit too, for how, you know, hiring people. 

[00:15:23] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah, for sure. 

[00:15:23] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:15:23] Marc Gonyea: Right. What to look for or how for sure. 

[00:15:25] Taylor Ritchie: Absolutely. 

[00:15:26] Marc Gonyea: How, I mean, that you look at it a little bit differently when you, I think, when you’re recruiting someone, and then you’re recruiting and actually join your team.

[00:15:32] Taylor Ritchie: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:33] Marc Gonyea:  When you’re a manager a couple years later. 

[00:15:34] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, absolutely. No, I was fully prepared to start interviewing because of that. I knew what to look for, I knew what not to look for. I knew what questions to ask. I knew what questions for them not to ask. 

[00:15:46] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:46] Taylor Ritchie: I knew what red flags were. It really just, it gave me a lot of experience that I’m able to still use, to this day.

[00:15:56] Marc Gonyea: So, four-leaf clovers, Chris, right, you don’t find ’em very often, right?

[00:16:02] Chris Corcoran: But, but you’re lucky when you do. 

[00:16:06] Marc Gonyea: The name like Corcoran, you think you find some four-leaf clovers, where you find more than you have, you know? So, how in God’s name, and God’s green earth, right, four-leaf clovers, did we get you to end up coming working for us?

[00:16:20] ‘Cause we got…

[00:16:20] Taylor Ritchie: Culture.

[00:16:22] Marc Gonyea: Culture, but no, but how did it happen? ‘Cause you’re in LA, you worked for, in the Austin office. 

[00:16:27] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:16:27] Marc Gonyea: So, you, you, you ended up in Austin, right?

[00:16:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, I did.

[00:16:31] Marc Gonyea: And then, how, I mean, how’d you end up in Austin, but also how’d you find us? 

[00:16:35] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:16:35] Marc Gonyea: There’s a story there somewhere.

[00:16:36] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:16:37] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, there definitely is.

[00:16:38] So, when I was in LA I was about nine months into my lease and I was like, “I absolutely cannot do this anymore.” And I had a bunch of friends from UNC that have been recruited to Oracle. And so, I had connections here and I wanted to come and hang out and have some people that I had familiar faces around.

[00:16:58] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:58] So, when I made that decision, I started looking on LinkedIn for places to work and I was like, you know, “I don’t really know what type of tech I wanna do, but I know I wanna do tech sales.” 

[00:17:09] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:17:09] Taylor Ritchie: And I come across this memoryBlue place, and I’m like, “Well, what the heck is this place?”

[00:17:13] Marc Gonyea: Just randomly on the web?

[00:17:15] Taylor Ritchie: On LinkedIn.

[00:17:16] Marc Gonyea: LinkedIn.

[00:17:16] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. On LinkedIn. And I come across it and I’m like, “What is this all about?” And I take a recruiter call, and they tell me, and I’m like, “Wow, this is exactly what I need because I don’t know where the hell I fit within the technology world, but I know I’m in the tech world.”

[00:17:32] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:32] Taylor Ritchie: And so, with that, it gave me the ability to figure out where my strong suits and where my weaker suits are because every conversation within every industry is gonna be completely different.

[00:17:44] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:45] Marc Gonyea: So, to walk us through that process, do you remember who you interviewed with? Do you remember, like, how all that started or if you don’t? 

[00:17:53] Taylor Ritchie: Oh, I definitely interviewed with Nimit.

[00:17:55] Marc Gonyea: Mr. Bhatt. Okay. 

[00:17:56] Taylor Ritchie: Mr. Bhatt. Nimit Bhatt. 

[00:17:58] Marc Gonyea: Yep.

[00:17:58] He was a, he might have been the first person I interviewed with.

[00:18:02] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:18:02] Taylor Ritchie: Actually funny story. So, I was traveling from LA and my interview was the day after the first day that I was in LA. So, I slept in my car the day before my interview. 

[00:18:15] Marc Gonyea: Oh boy. 

[00:18:16] Taylor Ritchie: And I came in for my interview and I was like, “I’m not getting this job. I’m really not gonna get it.” Like, “My hair’s a mess. I’m a mess.” Like, “I’m tired. My back hurts.”

[00:18:26] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:18:26] Taylor Ritchie: But I interviewed with, I interviewed with Nimit and I just, I loved his energy. And I loved the energy in the office. People were greeting me, telling me hello, introducing me to themselves. To me, that’s something that was severely lacking in my last job. 

[00:18:44] Yeah. And that is severely important to me in order to be successful.

[00:18:48] I need support. Everyone needs support. We’re doing a grueling job here.

[00:18:51] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:18:51] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:18:51] Taylor Ritchie: You know?

[00:18:52] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:18:52] Taylor Ritchie: We need to hold each other up. 

[00:18:53] Chris Corcoran: Yes. 

[00:18:54] Taylor Ritchie: And if we…

[00:18:54] Marc Gonyea: It’s a legend school at office. 

[00:18:56] Chris Corcoran: I know.

[00:18:57] Taylor Ritchie: Literally.

[00:18:58] Marc Gonyea: Literally, right? ‘Cause it wasn’t the fanciest office.

[00:19:00] Taylor Ritchie: No, it was not the fanciest office, but we showed up. 

[00:19:04] Marc Gonyea: Yes. All right. So, you got into the process, that’s a great story. ‘Cause that’s one of our core things here. We hope transcends, like, all the offices that people greeting you when you come in and making you feel at home…

[00:19:16] Chris Corcoran: And guest in the house.

[00:19:17] Marc Gonyea: Like in, it’s a grueling job of people for the most part, enjoy the culture.

[00:19:21] Taylor Ritchie: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:21] Marc Gonyea: Right? Which we can get to is how important that is. Particularly, people want to hear from you who’ve left and other jobs, how you side up other opportunities, we’ll get to all that stuff. So, you, you took the job, right?

[00:19:32] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:19:33] Marc Gonyea: And then, what, so what was that like, early days as an SDR? 

[00:19:38] Taylor Ritchie: Questioned my life a lot.

[00:19:39] Marc Gonyea: Yeah?

[00:19:40] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. I questioned, I got in my car, and I drove every day, but picking up those keys, I questioned it.

[00:19:48] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:48] Taylor Ritchie: But as I started, this was like the first three months, right?

[00:19:51] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:19:52] Taylor Ritchie: Getting situated, learning how the ropes work, getting familiar with my manager, getting familiar with the processes.

[00:20:00] Marc Gonyea: Was Nimit your manager, or did you have another DM? 

[00:20:03] Taylor Ritchie: Man, I’m trying to remember who was, it was, it was sword. 

[00:20:06] Marc Gonyea: Joey joey. 

[00:20:07] Taylor Ritchie: Joey. Yeah. 

[00:20:07] Marc Gonyea: Joey. Okay.

[00:20:08] Taylor Ritchie: Joey.

[00:20:08] Marc Gonyea: Yep.

[00:20:09] So, yeah, Joey was my manager, and he just made me feel so comfortable.

[00:20:15] Marc Gonyea: Yep.

[00:20:15] Taylor Ritchie: Because he can tell that I was just having complete panic attacks ’cause I was, I was working on two clients at the same time, and I was like, “I’m flip-flopping conversations from day to, like from the morning half to the second half.”

[00:20:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:20:27] Taylor Ritchie: Like, “How am I doing? I’m talking to marketing in the morning.

[00:20:30] Marc Gonyea: Yeah.

[00:20:30] Taylor Ritchie: IT in the afternoon. And so, just my head was spinning and he gave me so much great coaching advice. And without that advice I probably would not have showed up for work. And so, he and Nimit and everyone else that was constantly there, the call recordings that we did sitting around, where we give feedback to each other and learning from each other, that’s what kept me here.

[00:20:55] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:20:56] Taylor Ritchie: Honestly, and that’s why I showed up every single day is because I had a system. I had a support system that was there for me. 

[00:21:03] Marc Gonyea: Yep.

[00:21:03] Taylor Ritchie: Even though it was something I wasn’t really sure I was capable of doing, they knew I could do it. 

[00:21:09] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:21:09] And so, for that, I showed up. And who were those people you were starting with? 

[00:21:14] Taylor Ritchie: Definitely. Christina. 

[00:21:15] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Tina.

[00:21:16] Taylor Ritchie: Uh, Tina. Tina. Yeah. Who else? Julia, well, she was my number one that we started on the first day together, sat beside each other for full nine months as I was in SDR, could not separate us. Who else?

[00:21:29] Marc Gonyea: We did that, we try and get people to start at the same time.

[00:21:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Tyler Cason.

[00:21:33] Marc Gonyea: TC.

[00:21:33] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. TC.

[00:21:34] Psycho T . Let’s see, at, so many other people, Lauren Hutchinson, Paige, all the above. 

[00:21:43] Marc Gonyea: And then, you were telling us earlier, you have a, a text chat, a group chat from still. 

[00:21:48] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. We’ve still got a group chat. Yeah. We still hang out every, every weekend.

[00:21:52] Chris Corcoran: That’s, that’s great.

[00:21:53] Marc Gonyea: That’s great. So, it matters a lot. Right? ‘Cause we’ve got a lot of people in the, in the business who work here, who have friends who maybe their first SDR job, they’re working out on their house.

[00:22:02] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:22:02] Marc Gonyea: Full time. Right? For their first, first go out.

[00:22:04] Taylor Ritchie: That’s hard. 

[00:22:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Or, or they’re, you know, maybe they’re working hybrid, but then they come to the office and some people are there, some people aren’t there and stuff. And we, we think there’s a lot to be learned by being in the office with other people who are doing the job at the same time. So, what was that like? 

[00:22:19] Working from home?

[00:22:20] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. 

[00:22:21] Marc Gonyea: Doing this job out of school versus being on a sales floor with people. 

[00:22:27] Taylor Ritchie: I can’t imagine. I literally cannot imagine.

[00:22:29] Marc Gonyea: Lots of come, imagine they got work from remote SDR job. 

[00:22:32] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. So, I mean, everyone was working remote at one point.

[00:22:35] Marc Gonyea: SDRs come to Chris and I, and they’re like, “We gotta have a work from home.

[00:22:40] Can we work from home?”

[00:22:41] Taylor Ritchie: No, not, not in this environment. 

[00:22:43] Marc Gonyea: Not yet. 

[00:22:44] Taylor Ritchie: Not.

[00:22:44] Marc Gonyea: Maybe when you, later. 

[00:22:45] Taylor Ritchie: When, when you’re, when you’re here, when you’re where I am. Yeah.

[00:22:48] Marc Gonyea: Right? Exactly. 

[00:22:50] Exactly. So, why is that important?

[00:22:52] Taylor Ritchie: But it’s important because you don’t have structure.

[00:22:54] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:55] Taylor Ritchie: You’re coming, you know, this may be your first job out of college.

[00:22:59] This may be your first sales job. This may be your first professional job, whatever it may be. You don’t know how sales works and until you know how it works, you need to be in office around people that are learning at the same pace and same level that you are. And that’s so important because you have each other to rely on to get there.

[00:23:22] When you’re working from home, you don’t have that. You’ve got Slack or Teams, whatever you’re using, and you can go back and forth, but you don’t have structure. You can go out and take a 20-minute walk when you should be blitzing.

[00:23:35] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:35] Taylor Ritchie: You don’t have, you don’t have someone sitting next to you that’s on a call that you’re like, “Shit, I need to get on a call.”

[00:23:42] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Right.

[00:23:42] So, it’s, it just, and that and the energy, right? When somebody books a call, when somebody hits their quota, hitting the gong, everyone cheering, you don’t get that at home. You might get a Slack, but you don’t feel that. And that’s why it’s so important.

[00:23:56] Taylor Ritchie: And I honestly think any SDR job should be in office for at least the first year of your life. 

[00:24:04] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:05] Taylor Ritchie: Because you have to learn how to manage your time. Once you learn that, then you’ve got your structure. You know, what works for you? You know what doesn’t work for you, you can fit your work within that. 

[00:24:15] Marc Gonyea: You know what it’s spoken like, Corcoran?

[00:24:18] Chris Corcoran: You know I’m ready. 

[00:24:19] Marc Gonyea: That’s spoken like someone who’s done it before. Right? Yeah. Who’s, who’s kicked their career off doing this. 

[00:24:26] Chris Corcoran: Yep. 

[00:24:26] Marc Gonyea: Who’s kicked off other people’s careers doing this.

[00:24:28] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:24:29] Marc Gonyea: Who’s worked multiple technology companies that don’t know and need some assistant is why they come to us.

[00:24:34] Somebody who has done it. Right? And, you know, God bless those SDRs who, who come to their DMs and DMs will come to me and say, “Oh, we wanna work from home.” And we, I say, “No.” 

[00:24:45] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. I was mad at y’all for that. I definitely was. I’m not gonna lie. 

[00:24:49] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Of course. 

[00:24:50] Taylor Ritchie: Looking back at it now I can’t be more thankful.

[00:24:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:24:53] Right? Well, I appreciate you saying that. But my day’s over. I’m going home now. Um, ’cause those are tough conversations to have sometimes. Yeah. 

[00:25:03] Chris Corcoran: Well, let’s just talk how about you starting off as an SDR, what you learned, how it was different from what you were doing prior, previously as a recruiter?

[00:26:12] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Well, what I learned as an SDR is just mostly the conversations and connections that you make with people are the most important. And so, something that we forget a lot of times is the 80-20 role that you all promote so much. So, listen, we have to stop talking so much and that’s what I learned as an SDR here.

[00:26:40] And now that I’m in account management, the most important of my role is to listen and understand. And just going back to another book that I read, The Go-Giver. So, they have five laws that they like to live under. It’s value, compensation, influence, authenticity and receptivity.

[00:27:00] Chris Corcoran: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:00] Taylor Ritchie: And these five laws are really important because they teach you how to listen and how you can base your fundamental sales off of understanding the contact or the customer that you’re talking to based off of telling them what you have. It doesn’t matter what you have until you understand what they need.

[00:27:23] If you don’t understand what they need, then you can’t provide a solution. And what this book talks about is they mentor you to follow the success for your path and fulfill through these five laws by understanding your customers and what they need, rather than trying to push what you have. 

[00:27:46] It’s called The Go-Giver.

[00:27:47] Yes.

[00:27:48] I’m gonna check it out. 

[00:27:49] Taylor Ritchie: And it is by Mr. Bob Berg and John D Mann.

[00:27:55] Chris Corcoran: Nice. 

[00:27:55] Very good. Very good. So, so, how long were you in SDR and, and what clients do you remember? What clients you supported? 

[00:28:02] Taylor Ritchie: I was an SDR for nine months. I couldn’t list all of the clients. It’s on my LinkedIn if you wanna look. But it was a lot, it was about eight of them.

[00:28:11] And so, flexing between super billing, I don’t know what you call it now, but the split. 

[00:28:18] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. We call it split.

[00:28:20] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. Split. Cool. Yeah. So, started off as split, um, went to super billing, and then went into management. So, the, when I was working with those clients, they were all over the place. It was marketing, it was cyber, it was in non-profit spaces, it was all over the place. So, the conversations were all different. Right? I had to learn how to converse with them each time differently ’cause they all have different interests. Some want the fluff, some don’t want the bullshit. 

[00:28:52] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:53] Chris Corcoran: Lots of exposure to lots of different industries, lots of different technologies, different personas.

[00:28:57] Taylor Ritchie: Yep.

[00:28:58] Chris Corcoran: All within just a very condensed nine month experience. 

[00:29:01] Taylor Ritchie: Exactly. 

[00:29:02] Marc Gonyea: What did you get good at?

[00:29:04] Taylor Ritchie: Talking.

[00:29:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:29:05] Taylor Ritchie: Well, listening.

[00:29:06] Marc Gonyea: Well, yeah. What do you mean by that stuff? Like…

[00:29:08] Yeah. 

[00:29:08] You know, everybody’s got something, they kind of, like, had some, they were like a superpower or something, they kind of refined, maybe did their own personality or like, you know, what was your? 

[00:29:19] Taylor Ritchie: I mean, I really think it was studying outside, doing homework. Like, you’re never out of college when you think about it. 

[00:29:26] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:29:27] Taylor Ritchie: Your brain is a muscle. If you do not exercise it, it’s going to shrink. And so.

[00:29:34] Marc Gonyea: That’s the truth.

[00:29:36] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, so, I would read outside of work. 

[00:29:39] Yeah. I would look up articles. I would google. Google is your best friend.

[00:29:45] “What are the most successful sales development representatives doing right now?” And really what I learned from that is listening and just asking more questions rather than talking. 

[00:29:56] Marc Gonyea: Yep. Hum. Right now, some gold, you’re saying. I am. 

[00:30:01] So, you’re here, you’re doing the role. You’re working with this group of little ballers, right, like yourself. 

[00:30:05] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. 

[00:30:06] Marc Gonyea: And you’re getting through, you’re very, very candid about it. We have people on the podcast all the time. They sat with the lunch, “I came back. I parked the car. I didn’t know if I was gonna go back in.”

[00:30:15] Taylor Ritchie: Oh yeah.

[00:30:16] Marc Gonyea: Right? Because it’s tough. It’s a tough gig. Right? And…

[00:30:18] Taylor Ritchie: It’s not meant to be easy.

[00:30:20] Marc Gonyea: It’s not meant to be easy. Like, there’s a barrier entry to get into these positions you’re in now. And this is how you kind of get through the, the dip. 

[00:30:25] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:30:25] Marc Gonyea: Buried entry to do that stuff. 

[00:30:27] Taylor Ritchie: And that’s another book you had us read.

[00:30:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. That’s a girl. Chris could take more credit that I can. I just make sure people. I make sure people are reading it now. 

[00:30:33] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Right. Good.

[00:30:34] Chris Corcoran: So.

[00:30:35] Which everybody reads it now or they at least they tell me that. Damn it, for sure, talking about it. So.

[00:30:39] Taylor Ritchie: I’ll send him a test. 

[00:30:40] Marc Gonyea: There. There you go. There you go. So, when you’re in the role doing this, these things and you’re certainly talking about culture of, in the office, what do you think you want to do next?

[00:30:51] Because you’re, you’re passing these leads over to these clients, the As are taking calls.

[00:30:54] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 

[00:30:54] Marc Gonyea: Right? You’re seeing some people leave. Some people stay.

[00:30:57] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:30:58] Marc Gonyea: Some people get converted, you, so on and so forth. Like, what, in your mind’s eye, okay, what do you think this is going besides? And then you’re, you know, you’re also enjoying this beautiful city, Austin.

[00:31:06] Taylor Ritchie: Like, we’ll talk on that later. 

[00:31:07] I laugh because do we ever know what we wanna do next?

[00:31:11] Marc Gonyea: No. 

[00:31:11] No. But I, I do have goals. And so, I think those goals are, are gonna be going back either into sales, sales management. Oh, I mean, when you were an SDR at memoryBlue. 

[00:31:26] Taylor Ritchie: Oh yeah. Sales.

[00:31:27] Marc Gonyea: We’re, we’re, we’re going through the steps of where you are.

[00:31:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah.

[00:31:31] Marc Gonyea: So, now we’re in memoryBlue. 

[00:31:32] Yep. 

[00:31:33] You’re an SDR at memoryBlue. 

[00:31:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:31:34] And you’re seeing memoryBlue SDRs, like, leave and those things, what did you think you wanted to do next? 

[00:31:39] I thought that I wanted to be hired out. Okay. And I thought that I wanted to be sales, I wanted to be a VP of sales. Yep.

[00:31:46] Taylor Ritchie: That was like my main goal in life. 

[00:31:49] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. 

[00:31:50] Taylor Ritchie: Which is totally changed now. 

[00:31:51] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:51] Taylor Ritchie: Well, not totally, but changed a little.

[00:31:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:31:54] Taylor Ritchie: And so, with, with that, I wanted to be hired out, get into a sales role, closing. I wanted to be in control of my own money. 

[00:32:04] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. Yep.

[00:32:04] Taylor Ritchie: And then, from the wound. My grandmother always told me that I had leadership capabilities,

[00:32:10] Taylor Ritchie: and that I was a leader. And when Nimit approached me about the delivery management role, I came in, and I called her and I told her about it and I told her I was very scared and I didn’t think that I had the confidence to do it. And she said, “Sweetheart, if they didn’t have the confidence in you, they wouldn’t have come to you.”

[00:32:30] And I was like, “That’s so true.” So, I took that leap of faith and I became a manager and I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about time management. I learned a lot about teaching. I learned a lot about learning and I think that that’s what really pushed me to go into that is just to challenge myself and put myself in a place that I’m uncomfortable in, be, just because I don’t see my, confidence in myself in doing it doesn’t mean that I am capable of doing it.

[00:33:03] Marc Gonyea: Like, we talk, I mean, I, I’ll repeat this to include the face. Chris has probably talking about it, maybe he’s not. That DM job is just the baller position. 

[00:33:12] Taylor Ritchie: It is. It is, it taught me so much.

[00:33:15] Marc Gonyea: It’s such an early age in your career. I know people my age.

[00:33:19] I was 22, 23, 22, early, early. 

[00:33:21] Yeah. I, I know people my age or, Chris is older than me, Chris’s age, old people who, they, they’ve gone through their career, they haven’t, they haven’t, you know, which is okay. But, like, the challenges, the obstacles you face. As a DM, interviewing people, figuring out who you wanna bring onto the team. Figuring out they’re not all like you.

[00:33:42] Right. Which is okay. Everybody’s different. But then how do you motivate those people who aren’t, they aren’t set the way you’re motivated? Working with these clients. Right? We got clients who have high expectations. Right? Their success depends upon how well we do for them.

[00:33:56] Then, running into the, the challenges. Some people you gotta high five every minute. Some people, they don’t wanna high five. They want an email, they want you to copy the team. They do and say how great they are. You gotta know one to kick people in the butt. You gotta know one, tell the client, “Stand down.”

[00:34:10] Taylor Ritchie: You gotta understand. You have to understand not only the people that are on your team, but the people that you’re working with. And that just comes from just breaking the barrier, and something that my dad told me that has honestly brought me a far, far, far in my sales career is, “The most successful salespeople always find three commonalities within the person that they are on the phone with or the person that they are interacting with.”

[00:34:41] And this doesn’t have to be three commonalities in the first time, but you should find the first one, at least in the first couple of minutes that you’re talking to them. And what I say by this, it’s just hobbies, sports teams, even the industry you’re in, whatever it is, bring something into the mix that’s outside of what you’re communicating with in order to relate to them on a personal level.

[00:35:05] Because when you do that, then you make them more comfortable and you gain trust, and trust is where you’re able to really bring those people up that need you when you’re managing a team or when you’re working with a client and they’re angry at you, you can bring back to the, the trust that you have in the good times that you’ve had in the past and the good conversations. 

[00:35:27] And so, that’s what’s really important, with those relationships and building that inside and outside of your work environment. 

[00:35:34] Marc Gonyea: So, you took the DM job and you learned these lessons. And you drew out how to motivate people. If you had to boil it down to those, like one or two things about the DM gig, what would it be?

[00:35:45] Taylor Ritchie: I would say it taught me how to manage myself. And it taught me how to manage relationships with others.

[00:35:54] Marc Gonyea: Okay. That’s good. Yep. And, um, who else was the DM with you when you were DM? You have DM call was, Tina was a DM?

[00:36:03] Taylor Ritchie: Tina was a DM for a while. And then Tyler Cason was a DM as well. 

[00:36:07] Marc Gonyea: Psycho, Psycho T. Okay, great.

[00:36:09] Taylor Ritchie: Um, I think Jace may have been.

[00:36:11] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Okay.

[00:36:12] Uh, he was on the up and up right when I was leaving. Yeah.

[00:36:15] Marc Gonyea: And that’s when we had you guys read Radical Candor because like, you’ve gotta have these conversations with people.

[00:36:20] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. 100%. Every single day of your life. Inside and outside of work. 

[00:36:24] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. To keep you and people on track from a communication standpoint. Excellent. 

[00:36:29] Chris Corcoran: So, you were a sales development leader.

[00:36:32] Taylor Ritchie: I was. 

[00:36:32] Chris Corcoran: As a DM. And so, how long were you in that role? 

[00:36:37] Taylor Ritchie: A year.

[00:36:37] Chris Corcoran: A year. Wow. So, you, you were doing that and then you served in a leadership role for longer than you were in an individual contributor role.

[00:36:44] Taylor Ritchie: Yep. I was. 

[00:36:45] Chris Corcoran: Okay. Very good. Very good. And so, what are you doing now? Share with the listeners. 

[00:36:49] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. So, now I’m in account management, so it’s kind of similar what I did in the delivery manager role because I’m managing clients. So, post-sales, clients come to me, and I’m in charge of making sure implementation, onboarding, training, adoption, everything is going well.

[00:37:09] That includes support tickets ’cause we all know technology breaks every single day. And so, managing, making sure that it’s working intentionally the way that the product is meant to work as well as aligning with their strategy. So, what is their goal with the tool, “Let’s talk about what, what did you really buy this tool from, for?

[00:37:28] What are we using it for? How can I bring in my knowledge of the tool and how it works in order to make your business success, successful?” This is exactly what I was doing at memoryBlue. Just in a different format. I was bringing on these customers that I was managing. And I was understanding what their business purpose and what their needs were from a business model.

[00:37:54] And then, I was teaching the SDRs how to sell it and how to research, how to get their cadence down, how to talk to people, the influencers that they’re talking to and all of that. So, it all just circles back around. I’m, what I’m doing now is very similar to what I did there. It’s just with different people.

[00:38:15] Marc Gonyea: Nice.

[00:38:15] Chris Corcoran: Well, I guess one big distinction is, as an SDR manager, the company was paying the people you were managing. Now, your clients are paying your company, and you have to try to manage people who you don’t really have authority, authority over. So, there’s gotta be some differences there that takes a lot more…

[00:38:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. I didn’t even think about that. 

[00:38:33] Chris Corcoran: …influence and art. 

[00:38:35] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. It is.

[00:38:36] Chris Corcoran: Talk a little bit about that.

[00:38:37] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. I mean, it, it definitely comes back to relationship building. And so, when you’re, it’s on sales calls, right? And when I’m a delivery manager I’m, I’m talking to them, making sure that they are getting the meetings that they need, that the meetings are going down, that the demos are going well, that we have the correct prospect that we are in line with that.

[00:38:59] Whereas now, as a business where the customers are paying me, my sole purpose is for them to work and for their adoption to be 80% plus. Because I’m paid off of that, right? I’m paid off of whether my accounts are adding more people to the product, whether they are buying new products within our suite, whether they are staying on the product.

[00:39:25] And so, with that, the relationship that I have to build with them is much stronger. And I’m meeting with these people on a weekly cadence. I’m talking to them on a weekly basis, honestly, a daily basis when you bring email into it, and I’m making sure that everything is flowing and I’m managing the project.

[00:39:46] So, essentially, project management to ensure that everything that they have needs, that are on our end, get completed within their deadline. And so, with that, I have to work internally within each of the roles in our industry. I’m working with marketing, products, sales, sales engineers, engineers, developers, design.

[00:40:08] Whatever it is, I am the centerpiece of that. I am the purpose of giving the feedback back to product. So we can put something into place. 

[00:40:16] Marc Gonyea: Right. Get it on the product roadmap.

[00:40:17] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. What’s the technology? What does it do?

[00:40:19] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. So, it’s MoxiWorks. And it is, we like to call it the powers strip of real estate technology.

[00:40:25] So, it’s a whole suite of real estate technology. And people out there in the real estate industry know that real estate tech has primarily been very outdated and integrated. And so, MoxiWorks’ primary focus is really to, like, bring the technology into the forefront. So, I’m working specifically with real estate brokerages.

[00:40:46] And so.

[00:40:47] Marc Gonyea: Commercial or residential or both?

[00:40:48] Taylor Ritchie: Both.

[00:40:48] Both. Okay. And also some partnerships. So, working with a couple of large companies that do outsourcing kind of like memoryBlue, I see, that help provide. Smaller partner teams. with their business as well. So working within any brokerage, work with the agents, and that’s typically who I’m training with these days.

[00:41:10] Chris Corcoran: Interesting. And then, so you’re managing all these accounts, just for a sense of size, how many different accounts are under your portfolio that you’re managing? Yeah. 

[00:41:17] Taylor Ritchie: So, I, it’s gonna sound like a little because it’s based off of MRR. Yeah, but I’m managing about 15 account 15 accounts at this time.

[00:41:25] Chris Corcoran: Why would that sound a little? 

[00:41:27] Taylor Ritchie: Well, at my last role, I was managing 150. 

[00:41:31] Chris Corcoran: Wow. But again, if you have 15 big accounts, that can be more MRR than150 really tiny small ones. And you can build stronger relationships and make a bigger impact on those 15, I think.

[00:41:42] Taylor Ritchie: Right? Yeah. I mean, I’ve been working with the customers that I’m working with for the past year and a half.

[00:41:47] Okay. So, you know, they’re like we are on texting basis. We’re best friends. 

[00:41:53] Marc Gonyea: Yeah,  there you go. These software companies, they need people to renew. Yeah. And, and, spend more, spend more. And if they don’t renew, they don’t spend more like the, it would be hard for the company to grow. Yeah. And like after sales goes away and right.

[00:42:08] It gets implemented. It’s such an important job. It is. 

[00:42:12] Taylor Ritchie: It is. But it goes back to sales, you know, mm-hmm, like, I’m still selling constantly. Definitely. Absolutely. People you are know, like I’m building the reason I’m building this relationship. So, is because I want them to buy more, and I’m in charge of identifying back to SDR.

[00:42:27] I’m in charge of identifying that opportunity within the account. Hey, they have a need for this, this product that we have in our suite could really suffice for this. Let’s try and get it in front of them. I’ll run a demo. They like it send a contract, they sign it, and we’re done. So it’s all. It all comes back to it.

[00:42:49] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, definitely all sales and I loved how you connected back to being SDR because you know, when you’re in SDR grinding in your first 90 days or first six months, you don’t know. No. And you’ve, we talked to ’em about it, but it just seems like could be as how long ago you working here wasn’t that long ago?

[00:43:05] No, you left 4, 3, 3 years ago for them. There might be in their mind’s eye. It might be 50 years away. Yeah, but it’s not, it’s gotta stay in the course. yes. As an SDR, right? This is why it’s is amazing. NIIT was able to retain you to have you be a DM for us. Yeah. Are you day jam about being a CRO so we got you to be a delivery manager, what’s it like?

[00:43:25] So your company was acquired, right? So you’ve got experience being at a company that was acquired by another company. So that’s an experience that people, oh, it’s an experience people daydream and wonder about. So I wanna get into that. Yeah. Before we get into that, though, share with. so you’re an SDR, or even you’re DM, or you’re someone who’s thinking about leaving.

[00:43:43] Right? How do you size up companies? Right? How do you decide, oh, this is a company I’m interested in. Like what should you look for?

[00:43:52] Taylor Ritchie: I mean, it’s really on a personal level. When you think about it, I’m gonna get a little bit internal here because everyone’s needs are different, right? So depending on what your goals and what your aspirations are, it’s gonna be dependent on that.

[00:44:09] But what is important is to remember that you can succeed at anything that you want to. 

[00:44:17] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Yes. And they all believe that, but when you’re sizing up an op a company, do you care about the tech more? Do you care about the comp more? Do you care about the culture? Do you look at the sales leadership?

[00:44:32] Yeah. Or do you look at the, like, what do you look at?

[00:44:34] Taylor Ritchie:  I look at everything. I mean, culture’s number one for me ‘cause support system. We’re working eight hours a day, which is. When you think about it, 80% of our weeks, most of your work waking hours are at work. Yeah, exactly. So support systems, number one, um, management is a huge thing.

[00:44:53] I need to be in direct contact with management on constant. I ask way too many questions not to have that comfortability. And I also look for growth in the company growth is number one because if they don’t have projections of growth of where they’re going, there’s no projection of growth for.

[00:45:13] Marc Gonyea: Ooh, and it’s okay to ask that.

[00:45:15] Taylor Ritchie: It’s okay to ask that, I, that’s one of the first questions I ask in any interview with the recruiter. That’s the first thing that I get out. I don’t even want to get into questions about myself. What, what is a company about because that is the most important thing.

[00:45:29] You’re not gonna stick. Seated a company. If you do not fit within their values, it has to be a perfect match. And that kind of takes me to, you know, when, when you are interviewing and you are looking for your next opportunity, it’s okay to be turned down and you should look at that as a, as a thank you because it probably wasn’t a good fit after all.

[00:45:49] Yeah. and so you have to find something that works for not only you, but for them as well. And you have to find the questions that matter to you in order to ask those to the company that you wanna be at next. 

[00:46:03] Marc Gonyea: Exactly. 

[00:46:04] Chris Corcoran: It’s all about match. 

[00:46:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. It’s so critical. ‘Cause they’re, if you’re good at your job, you wouldn’t have a, a potential opportunities.

[00:46:10] That doesn’t mean you should, you, you gotta be picky. Yeah. And I think there’s a speak to this for me. If. People still, they do this job they’re so in their career, not everybody for some people, this is not a problem. They’re probably on the other spectrum, but they might undervalue their net worth, right?

[00:46:27] Their net worth TWA, financially, what they bring to the company. And if you come out of this place and you’ve done the things that people do, either as an SDR or delivery manager, I’m convinced that you’re doing this for 20 years, that you’re in the top percentile of, of your peers. 100%. Indoor cats and outdoor cats.

[00:46:45] Yeah, memoryBlue. We bunch of outdoor cats. 

[00:46:48] Taylor Ritchie: We are come out savages. Right? Savages. 

[00:46:50] Chris Corcoran: Wow. 

[00:46:51] Marc Gonyea: So right. So how do you keep that mind, and in a job interview process, and this might be a thing for, for women in sales too. I don’t know. Right? Because the studies say that sometimes they’re to ask for, they’re not as aggressive as they need to be about a job that they may, may, or may want to do.

[00:47:06] Sometimes, they’re not as aggressive as they need to be. This is not archive’s opinion. This is the data. In terms of asking for more money. Right? A more flexibility, or that comes later a more leverage company. Yeah. Yeah. So, so how so, how do you, what’s your message to people who are earlier in their career who are really good at their job, particularly memoryBlue people who, and how they kind of view themselves when they’re out, out interviewing maybe financially or like that growth perspective.

[00:47:29] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Well, I mean, everyone starts from the bottom, Drake, didn’t say it for a reason. You know? And so I, when I was starting, I didn’t really know what a, you know, a salary was really supposed to look like. Right. I was there for the experience, and I think that’s something that a lot of people forget when they’re coming out of college is your first job is not met for you to necessarily earn money.

[00:48:00] Obviously. Your goal, if you’re successful, is to earn money. And if you’re in a sales role, you’re gonna have that opportunity too, but your goal should be to go to somewhere where you’re going to learn the most. And because when you’re taking a role that matters to you because you want to build your career in sales, you are gonna go somewhere.

[00:48:24] That’s gonna have a good training program that has a good culture program that has a support system that has an alumni system, anything, something that has a network, where they have the constant ability to give you the educational pieces in order to take you onto your next journey.

[00:48:41] Marc Gonyea: Nice. So. Going back to being at a company that’s been acquired.

[00:48:45] What, what’s that like?

[00:48:46] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. So it’s rough. So we so set it up course. Yeah. So I started at active fight back in February of 2021 and loved active type Australian-based company, and we’re a small team, had four account managers here in Austin on the team.

[00:49:08] We were running a book of business of over a thousand customers with the four of us. So, we were going through our series tier funding. Um, and during that time, MoxiWorks came in and said, “Hey, this is a great piece of technology. We wanna add it to our suite.” So we took the offer that MoxiWorks gave us, and now I’m in Moxi, a proud Moxi for that matter. 

[00:49:32] Chris Corcoran: And so where’s Moxi? Are they a US-based company? 

[00:49:35] Taylor Ritchie: They are us. They are based in Seattle, Washington. 

[00:49:39] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Interesting. So you have a US-based company acquiring an Australian-based company.

[00:49:42] Taylor Ritchie: Exactly. Yes. Interesting. Yeah. So the, I mean, it’s rocky, every acquisition is rocky, right?

[00:49:48] Everyone’s heads are spinning, they’re people that are being elevated at the same time of bringing on new people. There are roles being changed. There’s people, there’s new processes. So there was, about a four-month period where everyone was just like, I don’t know, and that was kind of the nature of the workplace.

[00:50:09] And it was a really scary time. But you just have to put your head down and keep, remember what your role is. Remember what your ultimate goal is, and that is to keep the customers happy. So if you’re doing that, we’ll figure everything else out in the back end. Just make it look good. Fake it till you make it on the front end

[00:50:30] to get where you need to be. So, you know, acquisitions are never easy, but if you can make it through it, like I did, it’s a really good feeling because you can. You have a lot of power, you have a lot of knowledge that they don’t have. You’re bringing on the knowledge from the tool that they are now trying to sell.

[00:50:50] And so you have the ability to go back and teach again, which is my favorite thing. So, I’m back to where I wanna be. 

[00:50:56] Marc Gonyea: You know, it sounds like to me, what you’re saying, you gotta focus on the things you, you can control, right, 100%. You gotta this acquisition process, people glamorize it. I think that would’ve been acquired.

[00:51:06] This is amazing. And maybe it might be, I guess, for some people from an option standpoint, or maybe just the idea of it is it’s a win, it’s a success. Somebody sees value. Sure. But they don’t look at the, the other side, the integration piece of it, right in like cultures. Process roles and responsibilities.

[00:51:23] There’s a lot of unknown. 

[00:51:24] Taylor Ritchie: A lot of unknown. I mean, three months, I went through unknowns. Couldn’t tell I, my customers, I can’t tell you right now. I’m so sorry. Yeah. 

[00:51:34] Marc Gonyea: Oh yeah. Forget about that. The customer’s asking all these questions. How do you know the answers worse?

[00:51:36] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah, I don’t, it’s just apologize and give them what you can.

[00:51:42] Tell ’em that you’re doing your best. And because you have that strong relationship and that trust from them, you know, they believe you and they, they know you have their back. 

[00:51:50] Marc Gonyea: So as all this is happening, I know we got a couple questions for you as we kind of towards the close. Where do you want to go with this moving forward?

[00:51:59] Yeah. Like where do you see T Ritch incorporated? 

[00:52:03] Taylor Ritchie: I mean, I, I definitely wanna be an exact one day, not sure what exact role, that’s gonna be, I’m really finding a passion in operations right now and also on the product side of things, not sure where I’m gonna take it. I also love account management because I have these such strong relationships with these great people that I’ve been working with for so long.

[00:52:26] So, I’m, I’m kind of taking it step by step, to be honest, but I know that within the next six months, I kind of want a transition whether that’s gonna be in operations or if it’s going to be in management or if it’s gonna be in product side, we’ll see more to come. 

[00:52:44] Marc Gonyea: What would you tell yourself?

[00:52:46] Everything, you know now, right? The roles, the books being a young professional is a great city making some money, right? With a great friend base. What would you tell yourself the night before you started at course when you were in the car the night before in the passenger seat of your car? I don’t know that was the interview, but like, what would you tell yourself the night before you got your apartment in.

[00:53:09] You started here. 

[00:53:10] Taylor Ritchie: Just do it. Yeah. Honestly, like just get up and do it. I remember my palms were sweating. I had heels on my feet were sweating. I was slipping outta my heels walking in my first day. So nervous had never walked into a cubicle style ‘cause it was bullpen at the recruiting. And so just, you know, just do it, wake up, have confidence in yourself, and just remember that you can do.

[00:53:38] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, love it. Very good. I’ll tell you what T Ritch you were with us for over two years, right? And you contributed to certificate ways to you guys. Culture club. I mean, Culture club’s strong. Now here, you guys were running a bonafide type one baller Culture club, right? I remember a couple holiday parties like, man, these are.

[00:53:57] The rest of the, company’s gotta catch up with these guys, or maybe they’re overspending the Culture club budget. I don’t know.

[00:54:01] Taylor Ritchie: No, we didn’t, promise. 

[00:54:03] Marc Gonyea: All right. All yeah. Like good use of funds. Yeah. So you impact a lot of people, and Chris and I are very fortunate that you stayed and came here. So thank you for that.

[00:54:11] Taylor Ritchie: Of course, I loved being here and, and seeing y’all again, it’s been too long, to be honest, really way too long, but happy to be here. And I hope that listeners out there, you learn something from this. Um, and if then just take a bit of it, and, and think about it could take you very far.

[00:54:31] Very good. Well, 

[00:54:31] Chris Corcoran: we’ll leave it there. Thanks to you, T Ritch. 

[00:54:31] Taylor Ritchie: Yeah. Thanks, everyone.