Episode 115: Alexis Romano – Sales Skills Make Great Marketers

Starting out in sales can build out a skillset that will often lend itself to many other roles you may explore in your lifetime. A career in marketing in particular can greatly benefit from the experiences with product-knowledge building, direct selling, and networking gained through a sales role. 

In this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Alexis Romano discusses her journey from sales to marketing, the way in which her sales background has greatly benefited her career in marketing, and the importance of having a mentor in your company.

Guest-At-A-Glance

💡 Name: Alexis Romano

💡 What she does: Alexis is a senior manager of Program Marketing at Handshake.

💡 Company: Handshake

💡 Noteworthy: Alexis was born in Virginia, raised in Maryland, and went to school for marketing at West Virginia University. Before Handshake, she worked at several companies in different marketing positions (marketing manager, marketing coordinator, marketing operations manager). She started her career in sales as an SDR at memoryBlue.

💡 Where to find Alexis: LinkedIn l Website

Key Insights

⚡ You have to do sales first to get to marketing. Although Alexis graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in marketing, it was difficult for her to find a job right after college. So, she interned at the WVU Career Service Center, and then she got an externship at FedBid, where she learned more about sourcing and how to use tools to source certain people. After that, Alexis was recruited by memoryBlue, where she got the job of an SDR. As she points out, although she did not plan to work in sales, she recommends it to anyone who wants to do marketing. “The great phone calls I loved, but if you don’t want to talk to me, and you don’t want me to sell it to you, I will hang up. Eric, for example, is so good at question probing and can go through the motions with people. I’m like, ‘Screw it, bye,’ and that’s just my personality, and that’s also probably why I got out of sales. I also hate public speaking, and so, I don’t like doing demos and stuff — that always made me very nervous. Another reason why I was like, ‘I’m going to marketing,’ which is a lot of public speaking actually, so nothing has changed. […] I liked taking the number. I have a goal. I like hitting that goal — that was what I truly loved. I still love hitting a goal.”

⚡ You cannot do marketing if you do not know the tool. Working as an SDR, Alexis learned the tool, the platform, the tech, and everything you need to do marketing successfully. She says an SDR role is a great start for any job because you can make the right connections, and your boss will help you move. “I know I’m a good marketer at Handshake, and I’m one of the people I’m always being told that knows the audience, understands the audience, and knows the tool. It’s because I take the time to understand it because I need to think of it like a salesperson if I’m going to market this tool. Whatever you want to do, if you can’t break into it when it’s in tech, start it as an SDR. You’ll learn everything, and they’ll move you.”

⚡It is much better to work at a small company and have a mentor than to work at a big company and not have a real mentor. Alexis got her first marketing job at ZenOptics, where she was the only marketing manager with no previous experience and no one in the company she could learn from. That’s why she decided to join Nlyte Software, even at a low-level marketing position. It is tough at the beginning of a career to get both a great company and a good mentor, so those who are just entering marketing are often in a dilemma whether to choose a small company where they would have a mentor or a big company where they will not get a real mentor. Alexis advises that it is always better to choose a company with a mentor. “When you’re young, you don’t need to go to a company that’s going to go public. Your goal is to truly learn. If you end up making moves and getting into a Slack before it was Slack, amazing, good for you, but most people, unless you’re living in California and get that — like, for me, that would’ve been hard. I would not have understood what a company is.”

Episode Highlights

Moving From Sales to Marketing

“It was a slow transition. Saama did not have a large marketing team, and I don’t know if we were under the marketing team, but we literally worked hand-in-hand. They used us as marketers for any events. We were just a small group of people. We just needed to get it done. And so, they used Marketo to do their email automation. And so I had asked if I can use Marketo to start running email nurtures for sales; this was when I was in SDR. And Crystal, our marketing gal, let me use a tool. And it worked for me because I don’t like calling; I like email campaigns, and that was working for me. So I started to dabble in Marketo, learn nurtures in Marketo, and that’s where my email marketing operational side started to play, and I got that I wanted my title to say marketing because I was still an SDR. So, I left Saama.”

Roles in Marketing

“Every company org is different, but you’ve got the top of marketing, which is like a CMO or VP of Marketing. Within that, you have like three branches. You have marketing operations, which helps with more backend — like attribution reporting, making sure the campaigns are giving ROI, lead flow from your campaigns to the SDR team — and how that works, like MQL generating stuff, which SDRs should all know. Then you have your field marketers, which are your event marketers; they do virtual and in-person events. And then you have your product marketing team; those are the people who know the product and help you with your battle cards of, like, who your personas are? How do the product features map to how you sell it? How do you talk about the product in different ways and sell the product? And then you’ve got demand gen.”

The Marketing Job at Nlyte Software

“We were a team of like four marketers. We had a really good marketing engine. I truly understood the ins and outs; such a small team. They already knew what they were doing. They were really seasoned. I was by far very young compared to who I was working with. And so, I got to understand the KPIs that needed to happen. When we’re doing an event or we’re doing a third-party list buy, we need to make sure that we’re getting ROI. So, how many leads are we getting from that? How many are converting to our SDR team into actual opportunities? What’s our cost-per-lead? So, I understood that part, and then I also was the person in Marketo, inputting this information, uploading the list, and sending emails. So, I truly was doing both, and then I was also doing field. So, I was doing our event calendar. I remember I went to San Antonio, Nashville, all these places, and did our in-person events, and it was really close with the sales team. They were obviously with me on the ground.”

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Alexis Romano: Whatever you wanna do, if you can’t break into it when it’s in tech, start it as an SDR, you learn everything. And they’ll move you. But you just have to, like, figure out how to form, not, like, form, but make the right connections or make friends with your boss. Your boss will help you. They know being an SDR is not forever job. They want you to do well, and then they wanna help you move. 

[00:00:40] Marc Gonyea: Alexis Romano. 

[00:00:42] Alexis Romano: What’s up? 

[00:00:43] Marc Gonyea: In the house. But it’s not Alexis Ruckenstein? 

[00:00:48] Alexis Romano: No. 

[00:00:48] Chris Corcoran: Not yet. Oh. 

[00:00:51] Alexis Romano: According to my work email, it’s Alexis Romano. 

[00:00:54] Marc Gonyea: Okay. That’s what we’re going by. 

[00:00:55] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:00:55] Chris Corcoran: I like it. 

[00:00:56] Marc Gonyea: We’ll talk about that more with the,  one of the other guests. 

[00:00:58] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:00:59] Marc Gonyea: So, how have you been? 

[00:01:00] Alexis Romano: I’m good. How are you guys?

[00:01:01] Yeah, it’s good to be here. This…

[00:01:03] Marc Gonyea: It’s been a while. 

[00:01:03] This office is amazing. And Huge. 

[00:01:06] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:01:06] Alexis Romano: Compared to the satellite office I was in, in 2016? 

[00:01:10] Chris Corcoran: 2015. 

[00:01:11] Alexis Romano: Wow. I don’t even remember. 

[00:01:14] Marc Gonyea: Turning back the clocks. 

[00:01:15] Alexis Romano: Wow. 

[00:01:16] Marc Gonyea: You started in January of 2015. 

[00:01:18] Alexis Romano: Wow. 

[00:01:19] Marc Gonyea: And left a little bit later but started here. Moved up to Cali. But let, let’s get into that.

[00:01:24] Alexis Romano: Yeah, let’s do it. 

[00:01:25] Chris Corcoran: Let’s talk about the history. 

[00:01:26] Marc Gonyea: Let’s talk a little bit about you, just for the listeners and for Chris and I. 

[00:01:29] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:01:30] Marc Gonyea: Edify us a little bit on you, where you’re from. 

[00:01:33] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Okay. So, I am from DC Metro area. Born in Virginia but raised in Maryland. I went to School for Marketing at West Virginia University.

[00:01:43] I chose that university ’cause my sister went there, had a great time when I visited my junior year of high school. 

[00:01:48] Chris Corcoran: That I believe. 

[00:01:49] Yeah. And I was like, “Dad, I’m done. I, I’m gonna West Virginia. I don’t care.” 

[00:01:54] Marc Gonyea: Which sister? No. How many sisters were there? 

[00:01:56] Alexis Romano: Um, one of four. And so, my sister, a year, two years older than me, was going there.

[00:02:01] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:02:01] She’s in a sorority. She said, “Come on out for a weekend’s, we’ll fun.” And I had a lot of fun. So, and I had a great college year career and I got really good grades, but. 

[00:02:11] Chris Corcoran: WVU is a good school. Motown, for the right things. 

[00:02:14] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:02:14] Chris Corcoran: Motown. 

[00:02:15] Alexis Romano: I, the only thing I didn’t like and no knock to them is, like, the locations in middle of nowhere. So, to get experience with internships. 

[00:02:21] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah. 

[00:02:22] Alexis Romano: And, like, really trying to like, figure out your career, there’s not a lot there, so you have to kind of like figure it out yourself. 

[00:02:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:02:30] Alexis Romano: And so, not a lot of opportunity. 

[00:02:32] Marc Gonyea: So, let’s talk about that real quick. Well, what’s, let’s talk about you a little bit growing up.

[00:02:36] So I wanna know, what were you like as a kid? 

[00:02:40] Alexis Romano: I don’t know. I think I would, like, I think I was more of the good, good girl. My two older sisters have a huge personalities. I think I do too, but, like. 

[00:02:49] Chris Corcoran: Well, that’s hard to believe. 

[00:02:50] Alexis Romano: Oh yeah, they’re, wait. If you ever meet them, you’ll truly understand what I’m talking about.

[00:02:55] Um, more even-keeled, I would say. But yeah, maybe when I turned 13, they’d say I probably have taken a, taken a little bit of turn, you know? Had my cool, cool friend group and, you know? Was being that kid. 

[00:03:09] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:03:09] Alexis Romano: But yeah, I was definitely that kid of the group. 

[00:03:11] Marc Gonyea: Okay. So, when you were growing up, when you were in high school, like, what’d you think you wanted to be? ‘Cause you’re marketing, you’re in high marketing, in the high-tech role. 

[00:03:19] Alexis Romano: I had no idea. 

[00:03:19] Marc Gonyea: No idea. 

[00:03:20] Alexis Romano: Most kids like, I mean, talk to my little sister, like, she’s the same way. Like, who knows what they wanna be or do? You just know you wanna, like, go to college. And have a, I mean, I just wanna go to college, have a great experience, and I’m, like, moseying my way through.

[00:03:32] I was lucky having two older sisters that can help me figure out and teach me. Like, I remember my older sister was also in business. She’s, um, more in accounting now. But she had helped me figure out, you know, my freshman year of like, what, what classes to do and stuff because I also said I want to do business.

[00:03:48] For those who don’t have older siblings who haven’t been through it, I bet it’s a lot harder. 

[00:03:51] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree to that. So, you, you go WVU. What’d you major in? 

[00:03:57] Alexis Romano: Business. 

[00:03:58] Marc Gonyea: Business. 

[00:03:58] Alexis Romano: Business with a concentration in marketing. 

[00:04:00] Marc Gonyea: And why? So, you, you can give a little bit, yeah.

[00:04:03] Alexis Romano: Honestly, I truly don’t know. 

[00:04:05] Marc Gonyea: Yeah? 

[00:04:05] Alexis Romano: I think when I was, I always liked fashion.

[00:04:07] I remember I’d always say, like, I always wanted to go and, like, sell clothes or something or, you know, do something in fashion. My dad was like, “You’re crazy ’cause that’s a really hard business to get into.” I think if he never told me that and I stuck to my guns. I would’ve maybe been doing that. But I love where I’m at now, honestly, so I think it all worked out. 

[00:04:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:04:26] Alexis Romano: And I still buy clothes, so I’m happy. 

[00:04:28] Marc Gonyea: That’s right. So, how’d you get outta school? How’d you end up working for us? 

[00:04:34] Alexis Romano: Yeah. So, this is how it kind of went when I graduated. It took me, it was a really hard kind of journey to, to find a job right outta college. And my dad was like, “You have to have a job.”

[00:04:44] So, like, the last three to four months, I was interning at my career center for a mark, like, a marketing kind of thing, and they actually helped me get an externship. Do you guys know FedBid? It’s actually the end. Oh yeah. I think they went public right or something or…

[00:04:58] Marc Gonyea: I’m not sure. I remember we’ve gotten people from them, their day-day, ’cause they had that intern program thing.

[00:05:03] Alexis Romano: That’s what I did. So, I did FedBid for the summer, and it was not about marketing, but it was actually about sourcing and knowing how to use, like, tools to source certain people, and I think that’s actually where my, it helped with my BDR skills, how to use tools. 

[00:05:18] Marc Gonyea: Educate people on sourcing. 

[00:05:19] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:05:20] Marc Gonyea: Some people… 

[00:05:21] Alexis Romano: Sourcing isn’t the method of finding, finding people like, and typically you find them through different, like, platforms.

[00:05:26] FedBid was different ’cause it was a government, it’s like a government platform for procurement, but, like, learning how to sit at the computer for long, prolonged periods of time, and they, like, kind of gave me something that I need to, like, to source. I would figure out where to go, what to do, and, like, use, I don’t know,

[00:05:42] like, use my brain to kind of figure that out. So long ago, I can’t remember. But an example would be the government wants 500 Kevlar vests on a GSA schedule from a woman-owned company, and my job would be to find companies through a platform that could, 

[00:05:58] Marc Gonyea: Oh, okay. 

[00:05:59] Alexis Romano: that would have those different things like, “Are you a luminal company?”

[00:06:02] Et cetera, et cetera. Very similar to BDR, right? “Are, what’s your title? What’s your company? What’s your industry?” And so, I had to kind of connect those together. So, I did that until, I think, it ended in September, and then I think I was working at Nordstrom ’cause my dad had a friend who was, like, a buyer there, and I was like, “Oh, you know, I love clothes.”

[00:06:20] Marc Gonyea: I remember this. 

[00:06:20] Alexis Romano: Yes. 

[00:06:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I remember now. 

[00:06:22] Alexis Romano: Yeah. So, I was doing that for a little bit. I didn’t, like, love it, but I loved, I liked it, but didn’t love it. And then, um, that’s where Joey Cohen had reached out to me, I think on LinkedIn. 

[00:06:31] Chris Corcoran: Joey Cohen. 

[00:06:32] Alexis Romano: Joey Cohen. He’s in Denver now. 

[00:06:34] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, he’s in Denver, living it up. It’s been snowy. Or in Denver. 

[00:06:38] Alexis Romano: Yeah. So, he had reached out, and I remember I was like, “I don’t know what this is, but I need a job.” Like. 

[00:06:46] Marc Gonyea: I wonder how he found you. 

[00:06:47] Alexis Romano: I think he found me on LinkedIn. 

[00:06:49] Marc Gonyea: Really? 

[00:06:49] Alexis Romano: It was. He reached out. I remember, like, being in my car and having the first convo with him. I, like, remember sitting in my car about this. And I truly, no idea what he was trying to ask me to do. But I was like, “I need a job.

[00:06:59] Sounds kind of legit. Let’s try it out.” 

[00:07:02] Chris Corcoran: FedBid had, they’ve called us before and said, “Hey, we have this externship coming to an end, and we have all these people.” So, they, they, that may, may have been the pace. 

[00:07:10] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:07:10] Chris Corcoran: Page two. Yeah. 

[00:07:11] Marc Gonyea: Okay. But Cohen, Cohen did a good job of talking to you.

[00:07:13] Chris Corcoran: Oh, yeah. 

[00:07:14] Alexis Romano: I mean, this was months after, so I feel like he found me. He was a good recruiter. 

[00:07:18] Marc Gonyea: It sounds like you, you ended up in the fall at FedBid. 

[00:07:21] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:07:21] Marc Gonyea: In between the fall and January. 

[00:07:23] Alexis Romano: Yes. 

[00:07:23] Marc Gonyea: January started, started with us. 

[00:07:25] Alexis Romano: Yes. Yes. It was, why do I keep thinking it was, like, in April? I cannot get my years in my straight.

[00:07:30] Marc Gonyea: That’s okay. Time is passing. 

[00:07:31] Alexis Romano: Geez. I’m old. 

[00:07:32] Chris Corcoran: No, you’re not getting old at all. 

[00:07:34] Marc Gonyea: So, take us back just to the, me, me, so memoryBlue was kind of, in theory, your first gig, first little job. 

[00:07:41] Alexis Romano: Yes. Yes. 

[00:07:41] Marc Gonyea: Full-time. What do you remember about that? 

[00:07:43] Alexis Romano: Okay, so I remember my interview doing the mock call. I remember the, like, what was the 30-day, what was, like, the thing we had to do to, like, learn?

[00:07:51] You guys had Ganush, or? 

[00:07:53] Marc Gonyea: Ganesh. 

[00:07:53] Alexis Romano: Ganesh 

[00:07:54] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. The sales training. 

[00:07:55] Alexis Romano: Yeah, the sales training. I remember doing, like, 70 dials a day. I remember my first two clients that were like, basically, my only clients. Saama Technologies. Republic. Got hired out by Saama, which is interesting. 

[00:08:07] Marc Gonyea: That’s awesome. 

[00:08:07] Alexis Romano: They were a very hard client.

[00:08:08] I don’t know if you guys remember. We, we struggled with them. 

[00:08:11] Marc Gonyea: Tell us about, of course. This stuff is hard. 

[00:08:12] Alexis Romano: It’s really hard. 

[00:08:13] Marc Gonyea: And what do you call it? 

[00:08:14] Alexis Romano: Well, this is the thing. 

[00:08:14] Marc Gonyea: Elbows and knees or something, or? 

[00:08:16] Alexis Romano: I don’t know. 

[00:08:17] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, yeah, in trenches. 

[00:08:19] Alexis Romano: Oh my God. 

[00:08:19] Marc Gonyea: So, you didn’t know what you were doing, though?

[00:08:21] Alexis Romano: No, no idea. And I remember being a little upset. I was like, “Oh my God. I’m, like, calling people, and I don’t, you know, I’m not, like, a, I’m not a seller in that way,” and I was like, “God, is this really what I wanna do?” But I’m like, “I’m stuck with it,” so I’m like, “This will lead to something.” You also have to remember, tech in 2015 in this area, like, being younger, I had no idea what was going on.

[00:08:41] I’m not in California. I had no idea what Silicon Valley was. My parents are both in the healthcare industry. 

[00:08:46] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:08:46] Alexis Romano: So, like, I did not truly understand, like, where I was, what the situation was. And moving to California was, like, my saving grace ’cause I was like, “Oh, shit. This is like, this is big time.” And I remember being in the Santa Clara office next to the 49ers stadium, right?

[00:09:01] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna get to that. 

[00:09:02] Alexis Romano: Oh God. Okay. 

[00:09:03] Marc Gonyea: No, no. Take us back to the ’cause, so a lot of people go through the same thing. There’s a crisis of confidence they had. 

[00:09:08] Alexis Romano: Oh God, the first. 

[00:09:09] Marc Gonyea: What am I doing? 

[00:09:09] Alexis Romano: The first couple weeks, you’re like, “Do I wanna do this?” “What is this? This is not what I wanna do with my life.”

[00:09:14] That was it. It was like, “Is this when I graduated college for?” It’s kind of, no, seriously. 

[00:09:18] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, it’s not. 

[00:09:19] That’s a fair question to ask. 

[00:09:20] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m, like, I don’t remember how I got over it, but I think I was just like, “I’m gonna stick through this.” I think there were a lot of other people in the office. 

[00:09:30] Marc Gonyea: Who?

[00:09:31] Alexis Romano: Like, I remember Robbie Connors was there. 

[00:09:33] Chris Corcoran: Robbie Connors. 

[00:09:34] Alexis Romano: Jeanne Ball. Sarah Welch. Garrett Griffinstall.

[00:09:40] Who’s that from? Oh my God. He works at Adobe now too. Let me, I came now. 

[00:09:46] Marc Gonyea: mB alum?

[00:09:46] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:09:47] Alexis Romano: Is an mB alum. Anyways, I love my little area. And I’m like, “If these people are, are in my same kind of level and capacity, and they’re doing it, like, I don’t know, like, I got, I’m gonna stick with this. Like, we, it seems like everybody has very same goals and then, like, wants to strive.”

[00:10:00] Like, all I wanted to do was just make money and have a good job to be, to support myself. And get out of my parents’ house. Yeah. And I’m like, “Okay, this seems like the path to do it eventually, but yeah, again, I just kind of did not really get it. 

[00:10:11] Chris Corcoran: It sounds like you were in Boone. 

[00:10:13] Alexis Romano: Yes. 

[00:10:14] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, you’re in Boone.

[00:10:15] Okay. Yeah. With the Boonies. 

[00:10:16] Alexis Romano: Oh, such a fun time. Remember they made me do the, the DOS boot my first week? 

[00:10:21] Marc Gonyea: Chris went there as often as has been to Portugal, right? 

[00:10:26] Chris Corcoran: I went there a little bit more. 

[00:10:27] Alexis Romano: It was like no man’s land with, like, management in a good way, but, like, everyone was a hustler there. 

[00:10:31] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:10:32] Alexis Romano: Let’s also, let’s remember, half of these people went to California for a reason. 

[00:10:35] Chris Corcoran: Right.

[00:10:35] Alexis Romano: ‘Cause we know how to hustle. 

[00:10:36] Marc Gonyea: Everyone there mis, missed that, we said that on purpose for fish daddy, for Mishler. 

[00:10:40] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:10:41] Marc Gonyea: To have his incubator and to kinda learn to run things by himself. 

[00:10:46] Alexis Romano: I remember that. 

[00:10:47] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:10:47] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:10:48] Marc Gonyea: So, we’re, like, we were in our space. We said this, the Chris orchestrated, we got off the space across the parking lot.

[00:10:53] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:10:54] Marc Gonyea: And Mish was in there, and it was hot. And we had a, you know, it was cold. It was too hot. It was too cold. But he was running his thing. Yeah. But he had a bunch of hustlers. 

[00:11:02] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:11:03] Marc Gonyea: In there. 

[00:11:03] Alexis Romano: I think Lee was my DM at first. 

[00:11:05] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:11:06] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:11:06] Marc Gonyea: Um, Ryan. 

[00:11:07] Alexis Romano: I loved her. 

[00:11:08] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, she’s great. Very nonsense. 

[00:11:10] Alexis Romano: Such a great personality.

[00:11:11] Definitely opposite of Mish. But like, I don’t know everybody. I was like, “What’s going on here?” Like, this is, like, crazy, crazy times. Like, I’m in an office with these, like, young people. There’s a keg, this is cool. But yeah, everybody seemed like they just want all, wanted to work hard. Yeah. I love that office.

[00:11:27] I mean, if I can go back to it just for a day, like, Chima, oh my god, of all people. 

[00:11:33] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. And so, in your, so, alright, let’s talk about the SDR job for a little bit because you were on, uh, your client was what? 

[00:11:40] Alexis Romano: Saama. 

[00:11:41] Marc Gonyea: Saama was pub, public. And then do you remember the other one? 

[00:11:44] Alexis Romano: I cannot remember, but that one was a little bit harder.

[00:11:48] But I will say, like, Saama was hard because they were a SaaS company for, like, they basically can build different types of, like, data pipelines. But it was for different industries, and they did not make it very clear as to, like, what they do, what their selling point was ’cause they actually had no marketing team at that point.

[00:12:04] And they were hoping that me and Nate, who was also on it, were just gonna like, poof magic dragon and, like, figure this out. Like, I remember they made. 

[00:12:12] Marc Gonyea: Nate Cassa. 

[00:12:13] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I remember they, Nate and I got both got…

[00:12:15] Marc Gonyea: My bad. 

[00:12:15] Oh. So did a, oh my God, Matt Watt. He also got hired out to Saama. 

[00:12:20] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:12:21] Alexis Romano: So, it worked out for all three of us when we moved to California.

[00:12:24] But anyways, the way that I actually, we, they were gonna leave, and we actually got them to stay, and we did it, because I remember we were using email to book meetings. Because we, we try to, we were, like, just sourcing lists from, like, people in the pharma space ’cause that’s one of the industries I had.

[00:12:44] But I remember I was like, “I have no idea what’s going on.” The way I figured it out was, like, I just researched a tool and figured out what they do and tried to back that into like, “Okay, like, what am I gonna do here to sell this?” And so, that seemed to work. I got my stride, and I, Saama was, like, one of my only clients.

[00:12:59] I think I had one or two. 

[00:13:01] Marc Gonyea: What did you, what did you get good at then? So, were you good as an SDR? 

[00:13:05] Alexis Romano: Oh, I got good at emailing and sourcing. I turned out phone calls, that was never my thing. 

[00:13:09] Marc Gonyea: But believe you had phone calls. You have such a distinct personality. 

[00:13:11] Alexis Romano: Well, the thing is, is like I.

[00:13:13] Chris Corcoran: The other stuff’s important.

[00:13:14] Alexis Romano: The great phone calls I loved, but if you don’t wanna talk to me and you don’t want me to sell it to you, I will hang up. Eric, for example, so good at question-probing and can, like, go through the motions with people. I’m like, “Screw it. Bye.” 

[00:13:25] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. 

[00:13:26] Alexis Romano: And that’s just my personality. And that’s also probably why I got outta sales.

[00:13:29] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. We’ll get to that. We’ll get to that. 

[00:13:31] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I also hate public speaking, and so I don’t like doing demos and stuff. That always made me very nervous. 

[00:13:36] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:13:36] Alexis Romano: Another reason why I was like, “I’m going to marketing,” which is a lot of public speaking, actually, so nothing has changed. 

[00:13:43] Chris Corcoran: That’s funny.

[00:13:44] Marc Gonyea: All right. So, you’re on, you’re on the campaign. You’re working with these folks. 

[00:13:47] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:13:47] Marc Gonyea: Do you, you’re obviously doing your thing. I remember you being good at your job and us being happy to have you. 

[00:13:54] Alexis Romano: I like taking the number. I write, I like, I have a goal, I like hitting that goal. That was what I truly loved. I mean, I still love hitting a goal.

[00:15:03] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:15:04] Marc Gonyea: It’s, it’s so good for people to hear this, right? Particularly that translates great in the marketing particularly. 

[00:15:08] Alexis Romano: You don’t like sales? Doesn’t matter. Hit your goal, and you’ll figure it out. If you’re good at that, this is a start. If you’re not good at sales, you can’t do marketing, right? That’s, yeah. 

[00:15:17] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, you’re, you’re doing this gig. You’re working with this interesting group of people. You’ve got a, a client that eventually goes public, which is amazing. And you guys saved it. 

[00:15:28] Alexis Romano: Should have bought stock. 

[00:15:29] Marc Gonyea: We all should have bought stock. That’s okay. We’re all doing pretty well.

[00:15:32] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:15:32] Marc Gonyea: What, how did the California thing happen? Because. 

[00:15:35] Alexis Romano: Oh God, I remember this. So, I was not considering it. I don’t even know if you guys even asked me to go to California. 

[00:15:42] Marc Gonyea: You wanna set it up California a little bit more? And you were working with more Micheler on it. 

[00:15:46] Alexis Romano: So long ago. 

[00:15:47] Chris Corcoran: I mean, it was just, we’d, we’d opened up an office in Austin, Texas, and we wanted to open up another office, and we went to Mike Mishler, who anything that’s big, he’ll make it bigger.

[00:15:58] Anything that’s fast, he’ll make it faster. We went to him, and we said, “Mike, uh, we, help us open up an office.” And he said, “Yeah.” He’s like, “I wanna go to Silicon Valley.” I’m like, “All right. Let’s go.” And then, and then he went on a recruiting mission. 

[00:16:10] Alexis Romano: Okay. 

[00:16:11] Chris Corcoran: And that’s probably where he talked to you. I mean, he, he ended up talking to somebody, I think it was Cheema.

[00:16:15] He, he talked to him on Friday afternoon at, like, five o’clock, and Cheema got in the, the car on Saturday morning and moved to 

[00:16:22] Alexis Romano: California. So, I’m telling you, it was, like, I, I cannot remember who had asked me, but I remember this. I remember it took two days to confirm me. Like, I was like, “All right.” 

[00:16:32] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:16:32] Alexis Romano: My parents were in Jamaica.

[00:16:34] I remember this. I called them. I said, “Hey guys, I got an offer to go to California. They’re gonna gimme a little money to get out there, but gonna move, and I’m just gonna do it.” My dad was like, “Great. We gotta get you a new car. We’re gonna drive cross country.” 

[00:16:47] Marc Gonyea: Who is your dad? That’s great. 

[00:16:48] Alexis Romano: Yeah. And they’re like, “Great. Bye. Have a great time.” Like, “Okay.” And I. 

[00:16:53] Marc Gonyea: You went through four years at WVU, they’re like, “You can do anything.” 

[00:16:56] Alexis Romano: I had never been, I’d never been to California, never been West Coast in general. So, like, this was all foreign to me. But I was like, I looked at the people around me. I was close with Hope, cool with Sarah. Jeanne and I knew each other from, like, back then.

[00:17:07] I’m like, “Look, if these guys can go, I’m gonna do this, and if it, if I fail, I fail, but at least I had a trip to California out of it.” So, got a new car. My little sister drove cross country with me, actually, ’cause I needed a buddy. But I drove a full way myself. I met Nate Cassa, and Eric in Vegas for a night.

[00:17:24] Marc Gonyea: I can remember this. 

[00:17:25] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:17:26] Alexis Romano: Yep. I ended up falling asleep. I did not go out ’cause I went out the night before. But, um, yeah, it was so much fun. I stopped in Denver to see a friend. I stopped in LA to see a friend and then met my Craigslist, like, roommate in, yeah, San Jose. And that ended up being the place we always congregated.

[00:17:44] It was a nice place.

[00:17:45] Marc Gonyea: Is that your place? 

[00:17:46] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I like to, I like to throw the pre-game. 

[00:17:48] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:17:48] Alexis Romano: We did a lot. 

[00:17:49] Chris Corcoran: Where were you living? 

[00:17:49] Alexis Romano: I had a lot of fun. Um, south San Jose. 

[00:17:52] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:17:52] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:17:53] Marc Gonyea: Go ahead. 

[00:17:54] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I’m just like, we, we had a little group of people, right? No, no one had family out there. We were our only friends, our only family. I mean, we’re still all close with each other. Yeah. 

[00:18:02] Marc Gonyea: You and Jeanne Ball’s? 

[00:18:04] Alexis Romano: Just at Jeanne Ball’s wedding. They were all, all in my wedding, all my bachelorette, I mean, yeah. 

[00:18:09] Chris Corcoran: Crazy. 

[00:18:10] Marc Gonyea: And then you get to tell people, I just get, I just, I was talking to my wife about this, this morning. I was like, “She’s met her husband working here.

[00:18:16] She’s got this great career she’s got, and then I’m pretty sure she’s good friends with all the people she worked with.” So, like, memoryBlue get, gets mentioned all the time. 

[00:18:22] Alexis Romano: Oh yeah. 

[00:18:22] Marc Gonyea: Which, like, Chris and I get a lot of personal fulfillment outta there. You know, I think it’s pretty exciting. 

[00:18:26] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:18:27] Marc Gonyea: But so, you made the trip to California, and you met, you referenced it earlier, like, Chris and I would talk to people, and even to this day if people want to get in that high-tech, did you know you were going to the, 

[00:18:38] Alexis Romano: Nope, no idea.

[00:18:39] Marc Gonyea: the epicenter? The epicenter of high-tech? 

[00:18:41] Alexis Romano: What was that show that used to be, was it called Silicon Valley? Okay. So, I never watched a TV show. 

[00:18:45] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:18:45] Marc Gonyea: But that show was more. 

[00:18:46] Alexis Romano: But I, I knew it in my head that, like, there was something out there. I did expect San Jose to be this beautiful and shiny place.

[00:18:52] It was not, let’s be honest, but the office was in Santa Clara. 

[00:18:57] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

[00:18:57] Alexis Romano: And it wasn’t in downtown San Jose at that time. And I love the building was like a small office in a really nice building next door to the stadium, how are we always pre-game at the stadiums for games? But it was such a small office, and I remember we were all on top of each other trying to dial, but Eric and I were actually always the first people in the office every morning. But yeah, it was such a fun time. We worked together, went out after together, and everyone got hired out basically. I got hired out in September. Like, right when I. 

[00:19:28] Chris Corcoran: When did you move? When did you move?

[00:19:30] Alexis Romano: Moved early August. 

[00:19:32] Chris Corcoran: Oh, so you were quick. 

[00:19:33] Alexis Romano: It was quick. 

[00:19:33] Chris Corcoran: Quick. Yeah. 

[00:19:33] It was really quick.

[00:19:34] Alexis Romano: I mean, Saama knew I was getting hired out, and I remember I was actually working while I was driving cross country, like. 

[00:19:41] Chris Corcoran: And where were they? Headquarters? In the Bay? 

[00:19:42] Alexis Romano: They were in, yeah, they were in, um, Campbell. 

[00:19:45] Chris Corcoran: Oh, in Campbell. Okay. 

[00:19:46] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:19:46] Marc Gonyea: Cool. She only worked for Maryville about eight months. Eight months.

[00:19:49] That’s a great, that’s fine. That’s how it’s supposed to work. 

[00:19:52] Alexis Romano: That’s the jump, that’s the point. Yeah. Doing really well. 

[00:19:55] Marc Gonyea: Do really well. So, you got hired out, and then in single, going to Santa Clara, you went to Campbell. What was it like working for, at Saama? 

[00:20:02] Alexis Romano: Saama was good. It was nice ’cause we were all together. Like, I had Nate and Mack. I, that was where I was trying to make my move to marketing ’cause I was like, over being an SDR. 

[00:20:10] Marc Gonyea: Let, let, let’s get, let’s get in that real fast. Yeah. So, you’re doing your SDR thing at memoryBlue, and, like, it’s obviously brought you some things, right? 

[00:20:17] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:20:18] Marc Gonyea: It’s a skill set. You tell us what it brought you. Tell us what you kind of learned and when you said, “Okay, I get this, but this is not for me.

[00:20:26] I wanna transition into marketing.” That goes through a lot of people’s minds, but a lot of people don’t see it through how you do it. 

[00:20:30] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I think I always knew I did not wanna be in sales. I think I told everybody that, and it was not a secret, but this was my means to get there. Marketing, you have to have at least three plus years to get job.

[00:20:40] Right? And so, you need to figure out a way to transition. The best thing about tech that people don’t get is that they’re open to moving and changing people’s roles. If you’re good at it or if they think you have means to do, like, you’re, you have the capacity. 

[00:20:55] Marc Gonyea: Can you, can you just restate that for the listeners? Because Chris and I have this conversation sometimes. I know that the MDs and the MDs do that. The best way for you to get a job that you want that’s not your self-development is nine times outta ten is to get into that company as an SDR and then show people you can do it. 

[00:21:13] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:21:14] Marc Gonyea: Is that? 

[00:21:14] Alexis Romano: But also, as an SDR, you learn the tool. That’s, you learn the platform, the tech.

[00:21:19] You cannot be a product marketing manager, even an engineer if you wanna be an engineer, whatever the f you wanna do. But I cannot do marketing if I do not know the tool, and that’s what sale, being in it, an SDR, has always taught me. I will, I know I’m a good marketer at Handshake, and I get, and I, I’m one of the people I’m always being told that knows the audience, understands the audience, and knows the tool.

[00:21:41] It’s because I take the time to understand it because I need to think of, like, a salesperson if I’m gonna market this tool. But, and for, but, like, whatever you wanna do, if you can’t break into it when it’s in tech, start it as an SDR, you learn everything. And they’ll move you. But you just have to, like, figure out how to form, not, like, form but make the right connections or make friends with your boss. Your boss will help you. They, you, they know being an SDR is not forever job. They want you to do well, and then they wanna help you move. And they wanna keep it in the company because it’s a lot cheaper to hire within, inform that versus going to find somebody who you’re gonna have to take time to learn the tool, learn the company.

[00:22:21] Like, I would prefer if I was gonna hire someone under me, they would come from Handshake. 

[00:22:25] Marc Gonyea: Of course. 

[00:22:26] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. You learned so much as an SDR. 

[00:22:28] Alexis Romano: I would love to have an SDR and be like, “I wanna be on marketing.” Like, and I had like.

[00:22:32] Chris Corcoran: Handshake SDRs, are you listening? 

[00:22:35] Marc Gonyea: Just in general. You’re in the industry. All right. So, when, when were you like, “Okay, I need to get, I need to make this move, this marketing move?”

[00:22:43] Alexis Romano: Yeah, it was like a slow transition. Saama did not have a large marketing team, and we, I think we, I don’t know if we were under the marketing team, but we literally worked hand in hand. They literally used us as marketers. Basically, like, for any events, we basically just was a small group of people. We just needed to, like, get it done.

[00:23:01] And so, they used Marketo do their email automation. And so, I had asked if I can use Marketo to start running email nurtures for sales. 

[00:23:11] Marc Gonyea: This is when you were in SDR still? 

[00:23:12] Alexis Romano: When I was in SDR, yeah. And, um, Crystal, I can’t remember her last name. She was our kind of, like, marketing gal.

[00:23:18] And she and I were, were tight, and she, yeah, let me use a tool when we started, like, playing around with it. And it worked for me because, again, like, I don’t like calling, I like email. Campaigns. And that was working for me. So, I kind of started to dabble in Marketo, learn nurtures in Marketo

[00:23:34] and that’s where my email marketing operational kind of side started to play. And that I kind of got, I kind of had, like, one stint at, at a weird job. I really wanted to be, I wanted my title to say marketing because I was still an SDR. So, I left Saama. I remember they tried to keep me to stay, and they told me they would gimme more money or something, but I was like, “No, I need marketing in my title.”

[00:23:54] I went to a company. This is on me that, like. 

[00:23:57] Marc Gonyea: That’s part of the journey. 

[00:23:58] Alexis Romano: It is. And I will say, like, for any young people who are looking to move companies in tech, just make sure that you take the time to research the company. Sometimes you move for money or title. It’s not always the best. But that’s what I did.

[00:24:13] Chris Corcoran: That’s wisdom right there. 

[00:24:14] Alexis Romano: Wisdom. 

[00:24:15] Marc Gonyea: The same thing, right? We talked about that too, but but it’s hard though to get distracted by the higher base salary or, or by the title? Title. 

[00:24:22] Alexis Romano: The title. I wanted that title change ’cause I was never gonna, no one is ever gonna take me seriously in marketing. And I don’t know if Saama was gonna promote me to marketing.

[00:24:31] I cannot remember, but I think I was there for so long. I was kind of over being there. 

[00:24:35] Marc Gonyea: It’s hard to write. They’re like, “Man, she’s so good at what she does.” 

[00:24:38] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:24:39] Marc Gonyea: Right. Oh, that’s right.  

[00:24:40] Alexis Romano: They wanted to keep me at, at that, like, they were like, “We can kind of do both.” And I was like, “No, I’m, I need to get out of this.”

[00:24:45] Marc Gonyea: Well, they tried to keep you. 

[00:24:46] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:24:46] Marc Gonyea: They just, maybe they could, maybe you should have been more patient. But the thing, that’s thing, same thing. 

[00:24:50] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:24:51] Marc Gonyea: It’s the same thing. Like, WVU. WVU to and memoryBlue. memoryBlue to California. 

[00:24:56] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:24:56] Marc Gonyea: Cal. You know, that’s, it’s like a. 

[00:24:58] Alexis Romano: It’s a little, yeah. 

[00:25:00] Marc Gonyea: Part of the journey. So, so you took a job that you, okay.

[00:25:03] Okay, with marketing. 

[00:25:04] Alexis Romano: I took a small step, and it was when I was, like, marketing manager, and I was doing, like, all these things for a startup that wasn’t, the tech wasn’t even there. I think I was only there for like 6 months. In downtown San Jose. And then I found NLyte, which is more like a. 

[00:25:16] Chris Corcoran: Well, hold on.

[00:25:16] Let’s, let’s, I want the listeners to hear about, hey, a learn from your, from your experience of, of, you know, you went to a, a place for the title. What, how soon did you know it was, it was, it was not worth? 

[00:25:27] Alexis Romano: Oh my God. Like, two weeks in. 

[00:25:29] Marc Gonyea: And how, how did you know, like, just like? 

[00:25:30] Alexis Romano: I was like, “Oh, this is like a real,” it was a real company of like, it just seemed like couple people in a dream and not really getting. 

[00:25:37] Chris Corcoran: A couple people in a dream?

[00:25:38] Alexis Romano: In a dream, yeah. And not really getting anywhere. 

[00:25:40] Like, they were still trying to fundraise, and I’m like, “There’s nothing to market. What am I doing? Like, what do you guys got me doing?” And I, I truly cannot remember exactly, like, to be honest, I was getting paid obviously a little bit more, so that was cool.

[00:25:54] But I was like, “I need to go somewhere where I can learn marketing.” 

[00:25:57] Marc Gonyea: Were you the only marketing person there? 

[00:25:58] Alexis Romano: I was. 

[00:25:58] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:25:59] Alexis Romano: Yeah. And I had. 

[00:26:00] Chris Corcoran: So, you didn’t have a, a leader to learn from? 

[00:26:02] Alexis Romano: Correct. And basically, I was marketing manager, and I was like, “Screw this, I need to learn marketing.” I actually went, took a title back to go to my next role. And I was a marketing coordinator.

[00:26:11] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:26:11] Alexis Romano: But honestly, my job was not marketing coordinator. I was MOps, marketing operations. They had me managing, running Marketo, also doing field events, and then also doing Demand Gen with paid ads. 

[00:26:20] Chris Corcoran: And then you had a marketing department and you could learn from leaders.

[00:26:23] Alexis Romano: Yes. I had a manager, her name was Karen. She is amazing. 

[00:26:26] Chris Corcoran: Oh, that’s great. 

[00:26:26] Alexis Romano: She was my direct manager, and there was no one else on our team, so it was just two of us. So, I had a mentor. I had someone that would teach me. 

[00:26:33] Chris Corcoran: How important is that? 

[00:26:33] Alexis Romano: Oh my God. So important. So, important. 

[00:26:35] Marc Gonyea: How important? 

[00:26:37] Alexis Romano: So, so, so important.

[00:26:38] If I could say one thing, I think I didn’t do this as well. Eric, on the other hand, is so good at making connections and keeping those, like that’s how he got his new job from an old manager. Find a mentor and keep your connections from every company. Like, don’t let people off the radar if they’re good people.

[00:26:54] At Handshake, I think I’ve met a couple people who I will consistently keep in touch with and wanna work again for. I haven’t found that, some of the companies that I’ve worked for, but Karen at Nlyte was, like, honestly, I, like, love her. I would work for her again. 

[00:27:07] Marc Gonyea: Let me ask you a question. Just give us like the, the, the one-minute marketing breakdown, like, the roles in marketing?

[00:27:14] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:27:14] Marc Gonyea: Like, I’m an SDR. I’m thinking about marketing. What, what, because there’s also, you, you’ve already mentioned product marketing. Talk about field marketing. Just talk about MOps. Right? Like, just give the breakdown and then, and then maybe give us your little which one of these do you think is a great way for an SDR to, to maybe break into if you are going back in time? 

[00:27:33] Alexis Romano: I can definitely do that. 

[00:27:33] Marc Gonyea: Break it down. 

[00:27:34] Alexis Romano: So, okay. Well, every company org is different. But you think of, you’ve got the top of the marketing, which is like a CMO or VP of marketing. Within that, you kind of have, like, three branches, I would say. You have operations, marketing operations, which helps with, like, more backed. 

[00:27:48] Like, attribution, reporting, making sure the campaigns are actually giving ROI lead flow from your campaigns to the SDR team and how that works, like MQL generating stuff, which SDR should all know. And then you have your kind of field marketers, which are your event marketers. They do virtual and in-person events.

[00:28:05] And then you have your product marketing team. Those are the people who know the product and help you with your battle cards of, like, who your personas are, how does the product features, like, map to how you sell it. How do you talk about the product in different ways and sell the product? And then you’ve got demand gen.

[00:28:23] Marc Gonyea: Demand gen. 

[00:28:23] Alexis Romano: Demand gen. 

[00:28:24] Marc Gonyea: Demand gen is not part of field marketing. 

[00:28:26] Alexis Romano: It depends. Um, I actually think it depends. It’s a company, um. Handshake is a little different. We have, we have a field and campaign team, but they truly drive the most demand. So, demand marketing, at least, it’s more about channels. So, the channels you would leverage for demand are your website channels, your paid ads channels, your search channels and then you’re also kind of, like, using problematization to try to, like, capture the most demand, but, like, yeah. It really depends on what team you work for. 

[00:28:57] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Okay. But you said demand gen, so we got demand gen ops, field marketing, product marketing. 

[00:29:01] Alexis Romano: Yeah, there’s, there’s probably more too. There’s, like, lifecycle marketing. I mean, damn. There’s a lot. Yeah. But I would say those are the main buckets. Yeah. 

[00:29:08] Marc Gonyea: And you’re an SDR, and you’re thinking, “Ah,” you’re daydreaming about marketing. Hopefully, while you’re working your ass off and maybe hitting your number. Where would you transition into if you were, if you were talking to Alexis from Miles, you know, seven years ago? 

[00:29:20] Alexis Romano: Oh yeah. Field marketing. 

[00:29:22] Marc Gonyea: Field marketing. 

[00:29:22] Alexis Romano: Field, events.

[00:29:23] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:29:23] Alexis Romano: Because they need people like coordinators to do the backend of events, right? You need to, like, work with the event, the, the event company to then, like, get the budget. You need to send things, like, to the event, like, like, you know, like your booth. And those are things that people my level, obviously, like, we don’t have the time to do, it’s a lot of tactical stuff.

[00:29:42] And so, that’s a great way to just kind of get your foot in the door. We have an amazing person on our field team ’cause that’s the team I’m on. She, this is actually, like, good for people. She came in as field, she was, maybe had one year of experience. She’s doing marketing operations and demand gen with me.

[00:30:00] Like, she’s literally doing all things because tech will give you that opportunity to dabble. Doesn’t matter if you just get your foot in the door through one thing, most companies will let you dabble if they’re small enough. 

[00:30:11] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. So, you’re like an SDR at a company doing your thing. You think the skill set most applicable, the field or, or? 

[00:30:19] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe demand. 

[00:30:20] Marc Gonyea: Maybe demand. 

[00:30:21] Alexis Romano: But demand is a, I think you need a little bit more. 

[00:30:23] Marc Gonyea: Perspective? 

[00:30:24] Alexis Romano: Perspective. You need to know marketing a little bit more, and I think you, those two, kind of go hand in hand. And if you have the chops and you can be on the team to kind of listen, sit and take it all in

[00:30:34] and you think you have that demand brain, you’re good. You can also go into marketing operations. That’s for people who are a little bit more analytical or like tools. If you’re an SDR and you love LinkedIn and you love learning Gong and you, but you like to actually understand how it works and use it to your benefit, that’s why I got into marketing operations as well because I was really good at sourcing and I knew tools can help me get to where I needed to get to as an SDR.

[00:31:01] Marc Gonyea: Fascinating. So, you went to NLyte to work with Karen. 

[00:31:06] Alexis Romano: Karen. 

[00:31:07] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:31:07] Alexis Romano: Yeah. We were, they had a team of, like, 4 marketers. We had a really good, um, like, a really good marketing engine. I truly understood the ins and outs. Such a small team we’d, like, they already knew what they were doing. They were really seasoned.

[00:31:20] I was, by far, very young compared to who I was working with, and so I got to understand the, the KPIs that needed to happen, right? Like, when we’re doing an event or we’re doing a third-party, you know, list buy or whatnot, we need to make sure that we’re getting ROI. So, like what, how many leads are we getting from that?

[00:31:39] How many are converting to our SDR team into actual opportunities? What’s our cost per lead? And then, so I understood that part, and then I also was the person in Marketo inputting this information, uploading lists, sending emails. So, truly was doing both, and then was also doing field. So, I was doing our event calendar, going, I literally, I remember I went to, like, San Antonio, Nashville, all these places and did our in-person events and was really close with the sales team state.

[00:32:06] They were obviously with me on the ground. 

[00:32:08] Chris Corcoran: Did they, did you have SDRs there? 

[00:32:09] Alexis Romano: Um, we did. We did. 

[00:32:11] Chris Corcoran: So, you were feeding the SDRs.

[00:32:12] Alexis Romano: 100%, yeah. And we met once a week. Actually, our SDR manager did live in this area.

[00:32:18] Marc Gonyea: Interesting. His name? 

[00:32:19] Alexis Romano: Yeah, I think they were mostly remote. They were remote, actually. I lied.

[00:32:24] What I’m interested in, so I’m an SDR looking to jam. Is it more important to have this mentor? Like, it’s hard to get both right? The mentor and the leader and a good company. You might get like a nice, great company, but the mentor. Or you might get a great company and no mentor.

[00:32:40] Marc Gonyea: Which one do you want? What’s more important to you? 

[00:32:43] Alexis Romano: What was the first one? 

[00:32:43] Marc Gonyea: You get a mentor at, at a not-good company. Or you get a good company with no real mentor. 

[00:32:49] Alexis Romano: I would go to the first one because you can, like, it took me a while to know what, like, a good company versus there’s no good or bad companies.

[00:32:57] I think when you’re younger, you don’t need to go to a company that’s gonna go public. I think your, your goal is to truly learn. I mean, listen, if you end up making moves and getting into, like, a slack before it was slack, amazing. Good for you. But most people, unless you’re living in California and, like, kind of get that, like, for me, that would’ve been hard.

[00:33:15] I would not have understood what a company is. 

[00:33:17] Marc Gonyea: You have, I’m gonna ask you to repeat these things ’cause it’s so critical ’cause you actually did it. We will talk to young people who are like, “Why?” They get. 

[00:33:24] Alexis Romano: “I wanna go to Google, I wanna go.” Yeah.

[00:33:26] Marc Gonyea: Or “They gave me equity, but it’s the job. And there’s like, there’s no mentor there. There may not have been a path, but I got equity.” 

[00:33:31] Alexis Romano: Yes. But they, they gave you equity, but that’s not real until the company goes public. So, what is, what is equity at the end of the day? 

[00:33:38] Marc Gonyea: In your early in your career, so why’d you say that? ‘Cause it’s more important to get the experience?

[00:33:41] Alexis Romano: I think it’s more important to get the experience if you’re getting paid decently and you’re getting good bonuses, but like, I think that is, listen, someone might say it differently. When I was younger, I didn’t care about equity. I thought it was cool, but then again, it’s like someone went public, and I didn’t buy stock in that, and I should have, maybe.

[00:33:56] Marc Gonyea: Right. 

[00:33:56] Alexis Romano: So, I think there’s a world where you can maybe do both, or at least know the company you’re working for you believe in the software of the tech. And I actually think that’s probably what I did not have at certain companies. Handshake is one where I, I’m, like, excited to market to it, and I would be excited to sell it because I like it. And I think it works, and I, and I understand the purpose. So, maybe it’s more working for a company that you at least believe in at some capacity. But, like, if you’re 23, 24, 25, you don’t have to worry as much. I don’t know. I don’t wanna say it that way ’cause maybe you do worry about getting stuck, and it goes public.

[00:34:28] But I truly, I don’t know. 

[00:34:30] Chris Corcoran: I think you can play Powerball too. I think it’s a good point. 

[00:34:35] Alexis Romano: You could play. Yeah. 

[00:34:36] Marc Gonyea: If you get this experience, like, these building blocks, you can put yourself in a better position for the right company when it comes at all. 

[00:34:43] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:34:43] Marc Gonyea: If you’re riding along at some company in a job, then you’re not getting, checking all these boxes. The, the right company’s gonna come along, and you’re not gonna be a fit because you don’t have, you don’t have experience. You don’t have experience. 

[00:34:53] Alexis Romano: You need to be, you need to be a spongey. You need to go to a company that is small enough or will not, will allow you to dabble and test and try. If you, like, and I think that’s why I do so well in my role in marketing, is just because, like, I’ve literally been able to do almost every single type of marketing, but maybe besides product marketing and I’m not a great writer, but I truly understand all facets. And you don’t need to do it for 20 years, soak it up.

[00:35:19] All you need to just be dangerous enough in all these little things to then be seen as someone who can be capable. And when you truly wanna try something, like, “I wanna go into paid search,” and that’s, like, your whole job, you’ll get there. I remember when I was younger, I was like, “I just wanna go into search ads or something.”

[00:35:36] I would not wanna do that now. I kept saying it ’cause I thought it would be cool. Like, “Ugh, that’s not for me.” But I had no idea what that even meant. There’s just so many buzzwords. 

[00:35:45] Marc Gonyea: I think the key, what I’m hearing here, Chris, because if you wanna get the next job, you gotta get good at the job that you have.

[00:35:52] Alexis Romano: Yes. Stop looking at the next. 

[00:35:54] Chris Corcoran: Stop looking at the next. 

[00:35:55] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:35:56] Chris Corcoran: So, what’s the difference in business climate and careers working in California versus working in DC? 

[00:36:05] Alexis Romano: Well, I worked in DC for what, maybe less than a year. 

[00:36:08] Chris Corcoran: Eight months, nine months. 

[00:36:09] Alexis Romano: But oh my God. I remember my dad is like, “You jump jobs like I’ve never seen.” And I’m like, “It’s a different world out here.” But I’ll tell you, it’s, I think you should have longevity at certain jobs. I think it looks good on a resume, and I did think I had a jumpy resume at certain times. I’ve been in Handshake now for three and a half years. So, I felt pretty good with that.

[00:36:25] Chris Corcoran: Yeah, you’ve, that’s, that’s not, that’s. 

[00:36:27] Alexis Romano: Yeah. That’s, like, pretty long and, you know, Silicon Valley standards. But it is really nice to go to different companies with different industries so that you can learn because I think in your trajectory of working, you’re gonna be working for what? 30, 40-ish years. Like, you’re going to have different jobs in different industries, and you wanna know at least how to sell, or at least how to be in that. There’s certain ones that I would not wanna do nowadays that I’ve done before. I’m like, “Oh, that’s so boring.” Like, security is not a fun market for marketers.

[00:36:54] It’s not as, you can’t be as creative. But yeah. It’s, I would say it’s just a different beast out there. 

[00:37:01] Chris Corcoran: The reason why we ask that question is because you’ve gotta be presented with opportunity all the time out there. Right? More more than the DMV. Right? Because it’s the, it’s the belly the beast.

[00:37:12] Alexis Romano: Yeah. And it’s, I mean, sometimes it’s weird companies, sometimes it’s not. I think, like, large, large companies, they, you have to apply to them. But I think there’s so many small startups. Like, I get hit up all the time with, like, “Be an automated manager,” this, that, and the third. And I, I’m happy where I’m at, so I don’t really care at this point.

[00:37:29] But yeah, like, having the experience in California also just, I, I don’t know what the tech world is out here, but the people that I got to work with out there, the knowledge that they had it, like I, I think at Handshake, I have an MBA at this point. And my VP of marketing had actually said that. ‘Cause I asked him, I was like, “Do I need to go back for MBA?”

[00:37:47] He was like, I forgot where he said he worked for like years, but he was like, “That’s how I got my MBA in marketing.” It’s just being with these knowledgeable people who have worked at these companies that have been public and have done it before. That’s the knowledge and experience that I want and when I’m ready, I’ll take that to another company, but I’m trying to soak it in. 

[00:38:07] Chris Corcoran: How’d you get in Handshake? What a great company. 

[00:38:09] Alexis Romano: I applied. 

[00:38:09] Chris Corcoran: They dominate. 

[00:38:10] Alexis Romano: I applied. Yeah. They’re amazing. 

[00:38:12] Marc Gonyea: Everything about this company’s cool, I think. 

[00:38:14] Alexis Romano: So cool. 

[00:38:14] Chris Corcoran: So, you applied? 

[00:38:15] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I was, like, the third, third, or fourth marketer.

[00:38:18] I actually went in as marketing operations. I was doing operations at that point. Sitting under the demand team. So, I was doing demand in operations. So, my, like, marketing journey, it’s taken me so, so, so long to get to where I wanna get. 

[00:38:33] Marc Gonyea: Says not. Keep going. 

[00:38:33] Alexis Romano: No, I would tell you. So, that’s, I, that’s why I love working at Handshake too, because, like, not to promote my company, but Handshake helps people with zero to, like, five years of experience get a job. If Handshake was around when I was younger, I might’ve been able to get a marketing internship or have more experience to maybe get me to the level that I wanted to get. I feel like I had to fight for everything that I needed because I did not have the experience or I wasn’t, like, I just kind of had to keep moving and doing it. I think memoryBlue taught me how to hustle. And so, I feel like I, that mentality has helped me kind of navigate. But, yeah, I’ve had the opportunity to work in almost, like, every kind of area in marketing and really just sit back and just learn and take it in and now I’m at where I’m at, which is campaigns and programs, which is really what I enjoy. But who knows where I’ll be. 

[00:39:20] Chris Corcoran: Do they have any competitors? 

[00:39:22] Alexis Romano: Handshake? Um, not. 

[00:39:24] Chris Corcoran: Dominates. 

[00:39:25] Alexis Romano: Not direct competitors ’cause we’re a three-sided marketplace. But, like, yeah. All young people get on Handshake. Like, I’m telling you, like. 

[00:39:31] Chris Corcoran: All the college students are all over it.

[00:39:33] Alexis Romano: Yeah. College, alumni, network. It’s huge. Like, you guys use Handshake? 

[00:39:37] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We’re happy without question. 

[00:39:40] Chris Corcoran: Happy, thrilled users. 

[00:39:41] Alexis Romano: Yeah. And I’d say, like, especially for people who, it is a little harder to source for SDRs, right? Because it’s not, like, you go to an SDR school. But there’s certain attributes I think you can find in people.

[00:39:53] You could, they can have a, like, a degree in psychology. And I bet you have a couple of, like, a vast degree of, of, of people who had different degrees here, but, like, it’s all about skill set, and I think now you need to think about, like, skills marketing and yeah. And. 

[00:40:07] Marc Gonyea: So, you were, you got into Handshake, whatever.

[00:40:09] Are they headquartered in San Francisco? 

[00:40:11] Alexis Romano: Headquartered in SF. I was already working in SF commuting, so I was like mine. 

[00:40:14] Chris Corcoran: From San Jose? 

[00:40:15] Alexis Romano: I was in, um, Hayward at the time. Hayward’s not my favorite place. But I was across the street from the BART, so this was actually the first job I ever took.

[00:40:22] I was taking public transit to commute. I felt very cool. But it was every, you know, five days a week working in San Francisco. Yeah, it was great. And then, you know, obviously, COVID hit, but I started at Handshake in August of 2019, and I’ve been there ever since. I actually just got a promotion literally yesterday, so. 

[00:40:40] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Yeah. Girl. Woohoo. 

[00:40:43] Alexis Romano: Yeah. But yeah. So. 

[00:40:45] Marc Gonyea: So, you’re living in Hayward, taking the BART to SF. And then, explain to the listeners how you ended up coming back east, why you did? 

[00:40:52] Alexis Romano: Oh yeah. So, mid-COVID, Eric and I have two dogs, and we were living in an apartment, and my parents have a lot of acreage out here and a lot of space because none of their kids live at home, and they have a basement that we can literally is, is in my apartment basically. And we were, we were decided to road trip with our dogs back home for a couple months. And we were getting married at that time, eventually, whenever COVID was gonna be done.

[00:41:16] And we were like, “Screw it. We should stay here. Let’s just do it.” And I already, already talked to my boss about potentially moving back, so there was no issue. We were COVID, we were not, we were working remotely. And we ended up just making the change, got married, and then just stayed. And it works out for me, at least, like, I’m going back to California in two and a half weeks for our SCO.

[00:41:38] Chris Corcoran: Okay. 

[00:41:38] Alexis Romano: I go there every three to six months. I was just there in December. So, I get the best of both worlds. I wanna live in this area, but I wanna have the California experience. And I will, I hope to continue, I don’t think it matters actually if the company’s headquartered in California, but I do, like, being able to go back there for free.

[00:41:56] Marc Gonyea: What I would say is the most more thing is you, you’ve been there for three-and-a-half years, and you’ve proven, 

[00:42:01] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:42:01] Marc Gonyea: right? You’ve proved, you started there before COVID. 

[00:42:04] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:42:04] Marc Gonyea: So, you were able to do these things and stick around and get promoted yesterday. 

[00:42:08] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:42:08] Marc Gonyea: Because you’ve been doing a great job. 

[00:42:10] Alexis Romano: Yeah. And I’ll tell you why. I, my programs and campaigns work because I used to be an SDR. I partner extremely closely with the SDR team.

[00:42:18] Marc Gonyea: Let’s, let’s be clear. Tell, tell, so I kind of skip over this. Tell people what you do now. It’s like, talk about your role. 

[00:42:26] Alexis Romano: I have an interesting role. So, technically I’m on the campaigns team, but campaign, campaigns, like, feed all the facets of marketing. Think of, like, a large type of, like, I dunno, like, a campaign is something that is typically, like, an evergreen thing, but it’s got like a narrative.

[00:42:40] It’s got a story. And a company should have that and that, that messaging feeds all the teams. What are we gonna say to the teams, but based off of that campaign? 

[00:42:49] Marc Gonyea: And what teams feed, understand what you’re saying? 

[00:42:51] Alexis Romano: Feeds demand gen. It feeds marketing operations. We need to, like, do programs based on the campaign narrative and the messaging.

[00:42:57] So, the example is Handshake does in early talent awards every year, it’s launching, I think, in March, and so that’s a, that’s a campaign. It’s a list of, like, top 180 employers who are just doing amazing things on our platform. And are, you know, winning Gen Z and have a great early talent program.

[00:43:16] And, um, based on data. So, that’s a campaign. And then different teams take that kind of campaign. It’s like, like Glassdoor’s a hundred places to work. 

[00:43:26] Marc Gonyea: Yep. 

[00:43:26] Alexis Romano: Right? 

[00:43:26] Marc Gonyea: Yep, yep, yep. 

[00:43:27] Alexis Romano: So, like, based on that messaging or that campaign, can we go to people and do an event? Can we do paid ads with messaging around these are the best people in this industry, you know, whatnot?

[00:43:39] So, anyways, I help with that campaigns portion, and then I build a journey of what needs to happen. Like, “Here’s where our audience starts.” They’re starting with no knowledge or minimal knowledge. I wanna take them through a journey of like pipeline, “You start here, you gotta get here. So, what are the different touchpoints?

[00:43:56] What are the events? What are the assets we wanna create to get someone to say, ‘I need to buy Handshake now.'” We need to take them through the journey. That’s where demand comes in with our different channels. Oh, we can get someone through an event. We can get someone through a paid ad here. We can create a custom landing page, that’s, like, custom to that account to get them to get FOMO.

[00:44:12] So, it’s, you can, it’s so creative, which is really fun. But the huge thing is, is these campaigns, our main goal is either brand awareness or pipeline. I need the SDR team to drive pipeline because I’m gonna give them leads. I need them to help work those. I need feedback, I need, I need help on sequences. Like, so I meet with different SDRs a lot to get their feedback. And yeah. 

[00:44:36] Marc Gonyea: You sound like you’re closer, close to revenue. 

[00:44:39] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:44:39] Marc Gonyea: Close to the customer. Is that Ron or is that? 

[00:44:43] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I would say like. 

[00:44:44] Marc Gonyea: I’m the marketing novice, so. 

[00:44:45] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Well, part, the goal is to understand our audience and, like, if we’re saying one thing and the audience is feeling another, makes no sense and, you know, who knows audience the best as SDRs and our AEs? So, for example, I met with two AEs yesterday in different conversations. Based on this campaign I’m trying to run, I gave, I pitched them on an idea I have, and I’m like, “What’s your feedback on this? Is this something you would use? Does this make sense?” And they give me honest feedback, and I take that back, and I’m like, “Okay, what can we do to rethink the narrative we’re trying to sell because it’s not hitting the mark. Or what are the other assets or programs we need to run in order to get the demand from this campaign?” 

[00:45:24] It’s like a lot of words. 

[00:45:26] Marc Gonyea: No, what’s very, you have to illustrate. So, you’re telling a story. What’s interesting is how do you connect that, that, you know how you said earlier, like, to hit your number?

[00:45:35] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:45:36] Marc Gonyea: That’s not something marketing people, I mean, they do it. Maybe I work as a marketing. 

[00:45:41] Alexis Romano: Oh no, I get it. 

[00:45:42] Marc Gonyea: That’s usually, that’s really more sales thing. But I know marketing numbers are important, but talk about that dynamic because…

[00:45:47] Alexis Romano: Marketing and sales should share, should share goals, right?

[00:45:52] Marketing will not work unless sales follows up or sales supports that when we run these very high-touch VP and C-level events, marketing can’t outreach someone. We’re paying for the event, but we need an AE to custom outreach and invite them. Like, there is no world where we don’t work together, and we have shared goals.

[00:46:07] So, the first thing is, is like we need our executive teams to connect and make sure they’re aligned. Handshake, we have a great relationship with our sales team, so it really works out in our benefit for marketing. Like, that’s one of the things I actually ask now, is like, “How’s your relationship with your sales team?

[00:46:22] Is there friction? Like, how does that work?” 

[00:46:25] Marc Gonyea: This ones gonna be a little bit of, like, right. A little bit. 

[00:46:27] Alexis Romano: Yes. But it’s. 

[00:46:28] Marc Gonyea: It’s gotta be. 

[00:46:28] Alexis Romano: If it’s like we, we own pipeline and we own revenue together, like, we are in this as a team, then, then it makes it, it’s a lot easier. And then they’re like, “What’s marketing doing?”

[00:46:38] That’s never a question we like. So, when you think about. 

[00:46:41] Marc Gonyea: Can I ask that, I mean, interject real quick, is that I think some of the people who are earlier in their career and they’re SDR, so maybe they’re in sales, like, well, they want to get away from like, the demand of sales quota. 

[00:46:51] Alexis Romano: That was another thing I didn’t like.

[00:46:53] I remember being very competitive at memoryBlue, and I remember if someone was doing better than me. Internally, I can love them, but I was like, like, “God, like, they’re not calling enough. They’re not emailing, like, what are they doing then I’m not doing?” And I, I actually take that competitiveness to marketing.

[00:47:09] Chris Corcoran: You should. 

[00:47:09] Alexis Romano: But it’s not like I’m up against another person. And I think, I think my personality just wasn’t as suited for that. I think I take it too personally. 

[00:47:19] Marc Gonyea: Okay. But that’s what makes you good too. 

[00:47:20] Alexis Romano: I love, I love, like, I love being competitive. Like, if you give me a challenge, I’m gonna hit it. And, like, and so talking about goals, marketing has to hit goals.

[00:47:31] We don’t just do shit to do it. We, you give us money, and we have to spend it. We have to show ROI for it. Otherwise, you’re not gonna be here. So, that’s where, yeah, that’s where my operations brain comes in because I. 

[00:47:43] Marc Gonyea: Okay, I was gonna ask you about that. 

[00:47:44] Alexis Romano: Yes, because in operations, I do tooling, and I do reporting, so I’ve, I’ve created multiple reporting structures for us to understand different ways of thinking about campaigns and how that ends up going into ROI. The easiest way to say it is like if someone MQL is based off of a form fill that SDR follows up, did that one person hit pipeline? That’s very direct.

[00:48:03] There’s a lot of other ways. Think, the world now is more ABM, right? How many people on an account to actually? 

[00:48:10] Marc Gonyea: ABM is? 

[00:48:10] Alexis Romano: Account-based marketing. Yeah. So, you don’t think about selling to a contact directly. You think about selling to an account, and you have to multi-thread. SDRs need to think about hitting a VP but also a user at the same time.

[00:48:22] And have the right conversation. 

[00:48:24] Marc Gonyea: Messages. 

[00:48:24] Alexis Romano: Yes. Yeah. And it works together. So, that’s what marketing needs to do the same.

[00:48:28] Chris Corcoran: Surround the castle. 

[00:48:29] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I like that. But. 

[00:48:32] Chris Corcoran: Feel free to use it. 

[00:48:33] Alexis Romano: I might use that, actually. It’s cute. But yeah, like, part of also why I’m good at Handshake is because I worked in MOps, and I know how to report.

[00:48:41] Yeah, I have a lot of reporting chops. I love Salesforce, and I like to dabble. And I think if SDR should also know how to report at the basic of levels, you need to learn Salesforce. You’re gonna need it for every frigging job in tech you’re ever going to do on the go-to-market team. You need it. Learn it. Know how to pull a report into, like, yeah. 

[00:49:03] Chris Corcoran: I know. I’m just shaking my head. Not you. Salesforce. 

[00:49:04] Alexis Romano: I just know, like, I think about it all the time. I’m like, “Y’all come on.” But ask for a class. Take a class. Like, I took. 

[00:49:10] Marc Gonyea: “Y’all. Come on.” That’s to the salespeople, right? To the SDRs? 

[00:49:12] Alexis Romano: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:49:13] Take a class, watch videos. Like, that’s, take the initiative.

[00:49:16] And, like, you, I know the SDRs that are sta, that are going to get promoted ’cause we promote within, you’re an SDR, and you come a mid-market rep. I know the ones get promoted are the ones who are attending our, like, meetings that we have about the events coming up. They know how to use the tools, and they take the time to actually learn versus asking, and I think that’s huge. But anyways, back to reporting, 

[00:49:39] Chris Corcoran: Self-sufficient. 

[00:49:40] Marc Gonyea: Self, we’ll pause on reporting real quick ’cause I was gonna bring it back to it, but you know, like, five minutes ago, you were telling this illustrative story of the campaign. And this target market over here. And then the end user and, “Yeah, I gotta go pitch the sales team on the idea to see, see what they think.”

[00:49:55] Some people get lost in all the storytelling, but you have this background in reporting.

[00:50:00] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:50:00] Marc Gonyea: Right? And using the tool. And that’s where the ROI comes in, right? Because, like, we can use some technology to try. 

[00:50:05] Alexis Romano: Well, that’s why, it’s like you gotta be a little dangerous enough in every facet to succeed.

[00:50:11] And I think the people that I’ve worked with, have, have a little bit of, of each. You don’t need to be the best person reporting. We have analytics for that. But if you can self-serve and pull your own data and send a slack over to your team saying, “Hey, this campaign has given this much for our target accounts.”

[00:50:28] Like, that’s how you get noticed from our executive or VP-level team. And even if you’re an SDR. If you’re an SDR and you wanna get into marketing, and you create a boss-ass sequence, and it’s performing really well with a good open rate or a good response rate, let the marketing team know. And let us know that.

[00:50:43] ‘Cause we’re like, “Oh crap. Like, you’re good. We might need you.” 

[00:50:47] Marc Gonyea: I’m gonna steal a boss-ass sequence. Yeah. You mentioned this earlier. We haven’t talked about it as much in engaging and, like, managing up. 

[00:50:56] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:50:57] Marc Gonyea: Like, it’s, you know, relationship building up. Like, you, I don’t want to talk with people that, “Oh, that’s being political.”

[00:51:04] That’s not what I’m talking about. You kind of have to get yourself noticed, but you also have to put yourself out there. Like it’s part of the. 

[00:51:12] Alexis Romano: Every job is hard to get. 

[00:51:13] Marc Gonyea: I know. How would you describe that, Chris? It’s not office politics. 

[00:51:15] Chris Corcoran: It’s, it’s, it’s politicking. Is it politicking, though? 

[00:51:19] Marc Gonyea: That’s, that’s your, that’s your secret sauce?

[00:51:21] Marc Gonyea: It’s not. It’s. 

[00:51:24] Alexis Romano: I get, I get where you’re going, right? And it’s like when I’m. 

[00:51:26] Chris Corcoran: Networking. 

[00:51:27] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, networking. 

[00:51:27] Alexis Romano: That’s actually, that’s better. 

[00:51:28] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Networking. 

[00:51:28] Alexis Romano: When I was younger, I was like, “I just do my good job, and people will reward me.” And I think that happens. I also think it doesn’t happen, and people notice people who stand out.

[00:51:38] I am actually not a, I am not someone who likes to self-promote my work. I truly don’t. What I like to do is support other team members. Like, there’s, there’s someone in my team who’s really good at sending Slack updates about their things that they’re testing and doing, and like I would just take cues from other people who are doing it well.

[00:51:57] I don’t, like, go to someone and be like, “I’m doing this so great.” 

[00:52:00] Marc Gonyea: Yes. Right. 

[00:52:00] Alexis Romano: It’s, like, what are, you need to know the proper forms and channels to send out your wins and, like, learn other people’s wins. But yeah, I would say, like, your manager should help you with that, but sometimes they don’t. You need to figure out

[00:52:14] how to get seen. Because people will wanna promote you if you’re seen. For example, maybe, like, if you’re an SDR or maybe more of an AE, but ask to do, do a marketing webinar. Or maybe go on social. Like, there’s this one rep that I connect with all the time because he’s so social on Handshake. Like, he posts all of our content assets and things like that.

[00:52:33] That’s another way. He actually said he just got promoted because he was social, so social, they wanted him on this certain team. So, it’s, like, there’s other ways to promote without saying, “I’m doing this well.” Just find your groove. I don’t think I found my groove completely yet, but Slack is obviously, like, what we use to communicate. I send a lot of updates in the different channels that I need to be in to let people know what, what I’m doing, what the status is, and I think that gets seen. And then reporting metrics up. I think is like, when you’re an SDR, it’s a little different. I don’t know, SDR wins are more, like, this great call, or I was able to get the VP at… 

[00:53:10] Marc Gonyea: My boss-ass sequence. 

[00:53:11] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Boss-ass sequence. Yeah. Like, that’s a marketing thing. I would love to know that. Like, if your sequence is killing it, please let me know because I need to steal whatever you’re writing. 

[00:53:19] Marc Gonyea: It’s a fine line, like, you want your work to speak for yourself. 

[00:53:23] Alexis Romano: Yeah.

[00:53:23] Marc Gonyea: Itself. But you also want to be able to put yourself out there and let people know that you’re available to help the organization. 

[00:53:33] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:53:33] Marc Gonyea: But you, but you don’t want it to be, you’re, “This guy’s a politic, politicking,” and I think the higher you go up, the more it can reflect negatively on you if you do it the wrong way.

[00:53:40] Right? 

[00:53:40] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:53:40] Marc Gonyea: Because you’re like. 

[00:53:41] Alexis Romano: There’s some SDRs who are really good at like, they have great personalities. Like, we have this thing called Whiteboard Wednesday. It’s every week with the go-to-market team, and we have certain people speak and talk about their wins. I think people who, like, maybe go in those forums and talk about things, like, you’re seen, but you’re not talking about yourself

[00:53:57] exactly, I think it’s, like, how can you help the company in a way that also promotes you but not about you. 

[00:54:05] Marc Gonyea: Mm-hmm. Yes. There you go. 

[00:54:06] Alexis Romano: Okay. Yeah. 

[00:54:07] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. I think ’cause they, people wanna know how you get there and she’s talking about these re, like, it’s, they need to think about all these things. 

[00:54:15] Alexis Romano: Yeah. I will tell you how to, like, a really, really strong, helpful managers at Handshake who

[00:54:21] really helped me navigate and try to get to where I wanna get. I’m very vocal about where I want to be. My vision board set it this year. So, like. 

[00:54:29] Marc Gonyea: What’s your vision board? 

[00:54:30] Alexis Romano: Just my little vision board about what my role, you know, just like. 

[00:54:34] Marc Gonyea: Is, is this just your, your, this is Alexa’s? 

[00:54:36] Alexis Romano: Yeah. My little manifest. 

[00:54:37] Marc Gonyea: Reference role?

[00:54:37] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Eric made one too. 

[00:54:38] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Nice. We vision-boarded together. 

[00:54:40] Marc Gonyea: Awesome. 

[00:54:40] Alexis Romano: Manifestation. A good friend and she said she… 

[00:54:43] Chris Corcoran: California. 

[00:54:44] Alexis Romano: It worked. 

[00:54:44] I got my promotion. 

[00:54:46] Chris Corcoran: Very California, five division boards. 

[00:54:48] Alexis Romano: It’s great. 

[00:54:49] Chris Corcoran: Do you have it on your, uh, bathroom mirror? 

[00:54:50] Alexis Romano: Oh my God, no. 

[00:54:52] We actually didn’t finish them.

[00:54:53] We started the day of New Year’s. We’re sitting on top of my dog crate, so we keep looking at each other. I’m like, “We should really finish that board.” But, uh. 

[00:55:00] Chris Corcoran: Is it for the year, or is it just for life? 

[00:55:02] Alexis Romano: For the year, but it’s for different pockets, right? You have, like, job, things you want, life things, you have trips you want to take, so yeah.

[00:55:09] Chris Corcoran: That’s cool. First-timer? 

[00:55:12] Alexis Romano: First timer. 

[00:55:12] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:55:13] Alexis Romano: But I do like to note, like, list build and, like, note. Like, I like to see things cross off. Yep. And that’s also why I’m really like, I get things done ’cause I make myself lists for the day. 

[00:55:24] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Alright. But just talk about that, and then we’ll go into, like, we gotta, we gotta wrap the sample.

[00:55:27] Alexis Romano: My list. 

[00:55:28] Marc Gonyea: Talk about real quick how you run your day. 

[00:55:29] Alexis Romano: Oh gosh. So, I’m one of the lucky ones because I am in East Coast, and my company is technically West Coast. I wake up obviously early and it gives me time to knock all the things out that I need to do. And I have a day full of meetings.

[00:55:44] But throughout that meeting day, I literally just document, I have, like, literally a list of things that I need to do. 

[00:55:50] Marc Gonyea: Write it down. You use it?

[00:55:51] Alexis Romano: I have a, I have a note, like, on my computer. 

[00:55:53] Marc Gonyea: Okay. 

[00:55:53] Alexis Romano: And then, um. 

[00:55:54] Chris Corcoran: What do you use? 

[00:55:55] Alexis Romano: Just my notes. Like, just. 

[00:55:56] Marc Gonyea: Microsoft Word or, like? 

[00:55:58] Alexis Romano: No. Oh, whatever’s on, whatever’s on Apple.

[00:56:00] Alexis Romano: I don’t know, it’s a little note thing. 

[00:56:01] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Okay. 

[00:56:01] Alexis Romano: I literally, it’s just documents of stuff, but I make myself, like, at the end of the day, I just have, like, a little list, and that’s my morning list that I need to do the next day. Oh, for example, like, “Ping this person. Write a brief for this.” We also use Asana, but I like my lists.

[00:56:18] Marc Gonyea: Okay. Asana, it’s the Facebook guy who left Facebook. 

[00:56:21] Alexis Romano: Is it? 

[00:56:21] Marc Gonyea: Yeah, I think so. Okay. That’s, like, an internal collaboration tool. 

[00:56:24] Alexis Romano: It, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s like a management tool. So, we all use it. 

[00:56:27] Chris Corcoran: All right. 

[00:56:27] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:56:28] Marc Gonyea: All right. 

[00:56:28] So, you’ve been doing this now for, and you started with us in ’14, 6, 8, 8 years? Where do you, where do you want to go with this?

[00:56:37] Alexis Romano: How many years has it been? 

[00:56:38] Marc Gonyea: You started, you started memoryBlue. 

[00:56:41] Alexis Romano: Is it 2014? 

[00:56:42] Marc Gonyea: In January of 2015. So, I’m sorry. 

[00:56:44] Alexis Romano: Pretty close. 

[00:56:44] Marc Gonyea: 5, 7 years. 

[00:56:47] Alexis Romano: Wow. 8. 

[00:56:48] Marc Gonyea: 8 years. Yeah. 

[00:56:49] Alexis Romano: I was gonna say. 

[00:56:49] Marc Gonyea: 2023, man. It’s moving. It’s moving fast. 

[00:56:51] Alexis Romano: Yeah, it’s already February. 

[00:56:53] Chris Corcoran: You, you’ve gone from East Coast to West Coast back to the East. Right? 

[00:56:57] Alexis Romano: Who knows where I’ll be? I know I wanna obviously climb the ladder in marketing. CMO, VP of marketing. There’s a lot more ground I need to cover and, like, things that I need to work on. And, like, whether it’s like, you know, doing a class or personal things, like I will figure that out, but have, like, that’s my ultimate goal, but, yeah. Now it’s just crushing this new position. 

[00:57:22] Marc Gonyea: What’s, can you talk about that? 

[00:57:23] Alexis Romano: Yeah, so I mean, it’s just, I’m just senior manager of program marketing, basically. Center of the campaigns team. But we’re a lean team of two, and we’re gonna kill it. 

[00:57:31] Marc Gonyea: Like it. All right. 

[00:57:33] Chris Corcoran: That’s great. A, advice for SDRs.

[00:57:35] You, you were an SDR. Now you work very closely with SDRs. You know good SDRs from average SDRs, to weak-ass SDRs. What advice would you give to SDRs? 

[00:57:46] Alexis Romano: Uh. 

[00:57:46] Chris Corcoran: Just in general. 

[00:57:47] Alexis Romano: Just take the time. Don’t, you, you sometimes your, like, workday does not shut off from 9 to 5. If you are, like, not understanding the company you work for, what the, the tool is, you need to listen to your sales team’s calls, gong calls, or whatever you guys have for that.

[00:58:04] If you don’t understand the tech, you need to learn, learn it, YouTube it, whatever. If you are struggling, you need to be self-sufficient and figure that out. As a young person, it’s hard to kind of be self-sufficient. Or, like, know that, like, you’re not just dialing for dollars. Like, there’s a reason you’re doing it.

[00:58:22] Like, but you, you will only be as good as you let yourself be, and you need to just take the time to work on the things you need to work on. No one is going to do it for you. Your manager will not pull you aside and say, “Hey, you need to, like, learn LinkedIn better.” But if you do it on your own, you’re gonna probably source better people and hit your number.

[00:58:40] So, yeah. 

[00:58:43] Chris Corcoran: If it’s gonna be, it’s up to me. 

[00:58:45] Alexis Romano: All these were miners. 

[00:58:47] Chris Corcoran: Have we met? 

[00:58:50] Marc Gonyea: It’s been a while. Alexis, thank you for coming back. 

[00:58:56] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:58:56] Marc Gonyea: For joining us. 

[00:58:56] Chris Corcoran: This is amazing. 

[00:58:57] Alexis Romano: Thanks for having me. 

[00:58:57] Chris Corcoran: Lots of wisdom. Keep killing it. 

[00:58:59] Alexis Romano: Really? 

[00:58:59] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:59:00] Marc Gonyea: Yeah. Are you kidding me? We’ve been, I’ve been tracking you, so thank you for doing this.

[00:59:03] Alexis Romano: Yeah. Reach out SDRs. If you ever wanna get into marketing, let me know. I’ll help you out. 

[00:59:09] Marc Gonyea: I wish you existed, you know, for so many SDRs. So we’ve had SDRs come to us before, like, “Mark,” I said, “Yeah?” “Reach out to Alexis. She’s a badass.” 

[00:59:17] Alexis Romano: Yeah. 

[00:59:18] Marc Gonyea: Thanks for joining us. 

[00:59:19] Alexis Romano: Thank you. 

[00:59:19] Marc Gonyea: And now that you’re back in town, man, I don’t know, we have to track you down a little bit more often.

[00:59:23] Can be so long in-between visits. 

[00:59:25] Chris Corcoran: We have a Silicon Valley event for all the Silicon Valley people who move back.

[00:59:32] Marc Gonyea: I mean, California’s great. 

[00:59:33] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:59:35] Alexis Romano: Great to go for a little bit. Get your, get your skills, come back, and now you’re more, you’re, what is it, like, you have a better market position. 

[00:59:43] Chris Corcoran: Completely.

[00:59:43] Alexis Romano: You’ve done before. 

[00:59:44] Chris Corcoran: Yeah. 

[00:59:44] Alexis Romano: Or you’ve been there. 

[00:59:45] Yeah. Well, thanks, guys. 

[00:59:46] Chris Corcoran: Very good. Well, thanks, Alexis.