Episode 33: Caity Cover – Sincerity Sells
Caity Cover learned everything she needed to know about people from waiting tables at Red Robin.
“I really think that waitressing for so long taught me how to small talk and build rapport with people,” Caity says. “You make 100 dials and 10 people are going to answer, so how are you going to stand out to those 10 people? … You have to be you.”
Since her more than three years in the restaurant business, Caity has worked as a banker for BB&T and Sales Development Representative with us here at memoryBlue. Now, she’s an Account Executive at the cybersecurity and data analytics company Blackwood. Despite knowing little about tech or sales early on, she found success by networking with other sales professionals, accepting mentorship from her superiors and remembering that, at their core, people just want you to take an interest in them.
On this episode of Tech Sales is for Hustlers, Caity discusses the importance of both working hard and playing hard, not letting yourself get intimidated by higher-ups and focusing on getting good at what you’re doing rather than worrying about a five-year plan.
“Just be where your feet are,” Caity says. “Now you have all these tools because you’ve perfected them. You’ve taken the time to learn and really embrace it, instead of just going through the motions in hopes of getting to the next step.”
Guest-at-a-Glance:
Name: Caity Cover
What she does: As an Account Executive at cybersecurity and data analytics company Blackwood, Caity uses everything in her background — from food service to banking — to further hone her people skills and continue to learn about cybersecurity.
Company: Blackwood
Noteworthy: Caity has a degree in psychology from the University of Colorado and originally wanted to pursue a career in criminology. However, she veered quickly after several prosecutors and lawyers told her she would lose her personality if she went into that field.
Exit Year from memoryBlue: 2018
Months at memoryBlue: 7
Alumni Path: Hired Out
Where to find Caity: LinkedIn
Key Insights:
You don’t need to be an expert in technology to start a career in tech. Caity admits she didn’t even know what IT stood for until nearly two months into her first job in the tech field, but she’s worked hard ever since to get to know what her clients do — and currently, what cybersecurity is all about.
You’ll be successful in sales if you treat every potential client as a human being. Caity says that even CEOs, the people at the very top, are just people. So why treat them differently? Everyone deserves respect and to feel like you’re interested in getting to know them — and that’s what engages them during a sales call.
Focus on the present. Caity believes that if you keep worrying about your next step, you’ll never get there because you’re not trying your best to succeed in your current position. She says you just need to stay positive, work hard and let the universe do the rest.
Episode Highlights:
Don’t be intimidated by people at the top
“I grew up around pretty important people — people that own businesses, CFOs, CEOs, and I just learned at a young age that these are all people. It doesn’t matter what their title is, how much money they have or who they think they are. We’re all just people and people want to be treated like people. When you’re treated like some big head honcho, you think you’re a big head honcho. If you’re treated like any other person, you’re going to act like any other person.
… these people are tough to talk to, and as soon as you just bring it down, it makes them so much more comfortable. They’re willing to open up if you ask them, say, about lunch, what they had for lunch today.”
Networking doesn’t have to be difficult or boring
“I up and moved across the country and now I have an amazing network of friends. … It was just all a bunch of people my age, business-minded. We were all going after the same goals, and we were out there because we’re hungry, we want to learn business. We want to learn sales. We want to become great at what we do, but we also know how to have a good time. These are the kinds of people who are going to grind all day long, but we’re definitely going to hit happy hour afterward. … You can learn something from everyone and you should, you have the resources. Why would you waste that and not have a quick conversation to say, ‘Hey, what would you have done in this situation?’”
Stop looking ahead and focus on excelling at your current job
“Be where your feet are. That’s something that’s really stuck with me. In sales, you’re always going to be wanting to hit the next benchmark. You want to have your own accounts. You want to be closing. You want to be a VP. You want to do this, that and the other, but you can’t do that until you’re successful where you are. So I think a lot of that is about just being where your feet are. Stop looking for the next thing, earn it. Get there, obviously, but really perfect where you are right now [first].”
On being a woman in the male-dominated world of tech sales
“I don’t know what it would take to encourage more women to get into sales. Maybe just more stories. I know that I’ve been to different panels where it’s been women in sales and they do different webinars, different things like that, but something that I don’t necessarily like about those is they always talk about ‘How do you balance your work and your life?’ You don’t ask a man that. No one’s asking, ‘How do you balance being a husband and having kids and having a career?’ Maybe if we just stopped talking about it, people wouldn’t have a problem with it.”
It’s OK to not have a five-year plan
“So my least favorite interview question is ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ because I don’t picture it. I’ve never once in my life been like, Oh, this is where my future will be. And I kind of like that. That’s how I ended up in high tech sales based out of Annapolis, Maryland. I just let the universe kind of decide. I’ll put it out there and whatever happens, happens — if something great comes along, which it did, cool. I didn’t plan for that. I couldn’t even imagine that. So I don’t know, man. I’m just here for the ride.”
You’ll be successful in sales if you treat every potential client as a human being. Caity says that even CEOs, the people at the very top, are just people. So why treat them differently? Everyone deserves respect and to feel like you’re interested in getting to know them — and that’s what engages them during a sales call.
Stop looking ahead and focus on the present. Caity believes that if you keep worrying about your next step, you’ll never get there because you’re not trying your best to succeed in your current position. She says you just need to stay positive, work hard and let the universe do the rest.
Transcript:
Marc Gonyea: [00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Today we’re joined by Caity Cover from Blackwood. Caity’s an account executive at Blackwood, she left memoryBlue, December of 2018. She’s been tearing it up at Blackwood for a year and 10 months. She’s also one of the five finalists for memoryBlue Phenom. She’s crushing it.
[00:01:05] Blackwood is a hyper-focused Government VAR. They do a ton of work in cyber, work exclusively with Best-of-Breed cyber technology companies.
[00:01:13] We’re excited to have Caity today.
[00:01:15] Chris Corcoran: [00:01:15] Welcome Caity.
[00:01:16] Caity Cover: [00:01:16] Thank you, I’m excited to be here.
[00:01:17] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:17] It’s gonna
[00:01:18] Caity Cover: [00:01:18] be a lot of fun.
[00:01:19] Should be, hopefully.
[00:01:21] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:21] We miss you, Caity.
[00:01:22] Caity Cover: [00:01:22] I’d miss me too.
[00:01:24] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:24] You know, we have, we’ve talked about this in some of the podcasts, but you were one of those people that was only with us for seven months.
[00:01:30] Caity Cover: [00:01:30] It was quick. It seemed like I was here for a while, but man, I was in and out.
[00:01:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:33] I don’t know if that says, good or bad about when people serve time.
[00:01:39] Caity Cover: [00:01:39] Serve time. I did my time
[00:01:40] Chris Corcoran: [00:01:40] here.
[00:01:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:01:42] So we’re going to get into that, cause you’ve got a great story and how you ended up working for us originally, which was, which we’ll get to. But let’s talk a little bit about you, ’cause we talked a little bit about what you’re doing now, Blackwood tearing it up, you worked for us for a short amount of time. Let’s go back in time a little. Tell us about who you are, where you’re from.
[00:01:57] Caity Cover: [00:01:57] Sure. So I’m originally from Denver, Colorado. I moved to North Carolina in 2017, just kind of on a whim. I was struggling to find the right career path after school. And one of my friends offered to let me live with her in North Carolina. So I just overnight up and moved, and then I was there.
[00:02:17]Marc Gonyea: [00:02:17] Where are you from?
[00:02:18] Caity Cover: [00:02:18] Elizabeth, Colorado, which is like a tiny town outside of Denver. I always say Denver because even people in Denver don’t know where Elizabeth is.
[00:02:27] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:27] And what’s “tiny” mean?
[00:02:28] Caity Cover: [00:02:28] I grew up on dirt roads. I had 160 people in my graduating class for high school, and people would drive about an hour to get to high school. So tiny. Yeah, very rural. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I actually, my grandparents had an alpaca farm growing up, so I’m literally a farm girl.
[00:02:45] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:45] Do they still have that or no?
[00:02:47] Caity Cover: [00:02:47] No, they don’t. I don’t know when, when they did that, they they’re still involved, but they no longer have the farm, so.
[00:02:52] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:52] Okay.
[00:02:53] Caity Cover: [00:02:53] Yeah.
[00:02:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:02:54] So was this, so you grew up a small town in Colorado, went to college?
[00:02:58] Caity Cover: [00:02:58] I went to college at Boulder, which was the complete opposite of everyone else from my small town. They all went to Colorado State, which was not nearly as hippy. I think I was one of two people that went to Boulder and became a hippie.
[00:03:10] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:10] The Buffs.
[00:03:11] Caity Cover: [00:03:11] Let’s go Buffs.
[00:03:12] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:12] And then what’d you major in, in college?
[00:03:15] Caity Cover: [00:03:15] Psychology with a minor in Sociology. I did want to focus a little bit on criminology and interrogation and the death penalty. And then, I got scared away.
[00:03:26] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:26] The death penalty scares me. Did that scare you away or something else scare you away?
[00:03:30] Caity Cover: [00:03:30] No, I met a lot of people in the industry and I got to know a lot of prosecutors and lawyers and everyone was like, “You’ll lose your personality, don’t go to that career field.” And I really took it to heart when the fourth or fifth person said it.
[00:03:42] Chris Corcoran: [00:03:42] Wow.
[00:03:43] Caity Cover: [00:03:43] It was a lot.
[00:03:43] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:43] That’s why we miss you so much at memoryBlue. ‘Cause you’ve got an amazing personality.
[00:03:47] Caity Cover: [00:03:47] Oh, thanks.
[00:03:48] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:48] We do miss you. So, all right. So you went to BU, CU-
[00:03:51] Caity Cover: [00:03:51] CU.
[00:03:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:51] I’m sorry. CU, at Boulder.
[00:03:53] Caity Cover: [00:03:53] Definitely not BU.
[00:03:57] Marc Gonyea: [00:03:57] And you got scared off by what you were studying, when you thought you were going to do. What’d you, what’d you do after, after school?
[00:04:03] Caity Cover: [00:04:03] So after school I went into a marketing job. It kind of ended up being like a pyramid scheme type marketing job. And then I went back to Red Robin. So I waitressed all throughout college at Red Robin.
[00:04:14] And it was like my home, man. I went back there after marketing and I was like there for another year and just kinda, kinda stuck, but content cause I was making enough money to survive, but looking for a change. I worked at three separate locations, so I kind of jumped around the Red Robin train.
[00:04:31] Chris Corcoran: [00:04:31] Wow.
[00:04:32] Caity Cover: [00:04:32] Yeah.
[00:04:32] Chris Corcoran: [00:04:32] So Boulder and then Denver or?
[00:04:34] Caity Cover: [00:04:34] Boulder, Aurora and Parker.
[00:04:37] Chris Corcoran: [00:04:37] Okay. Wow.
[00:04:38] Caity Cover: [00:04:38] Yeah. And then I finally left the one in Aurora when I moved out here, or to North Carolina.
[00:04:44] Marc Gonyea: [00:04:44] And what’d you learn waiting tables for that long? Because Chris and I like people with that background.
[00:04:48] Caity Cover: [00:04:48] We learned how to talk to people. You will get all breeds of people in your face.
[00:04:53] People will be happy about things that you had nothing to do with. There’ll be angry about things that you have nothing to do with. So you really just learn at a young age, like I started waitressing, I think at 15. So you, you learn from a young age, how to deal with people, how to handle angry people.
[00:05:07] Something I learned was like, how to handle people that have been drinking and just like how to diffuse certain situations, how to upsell people, the more money that these they spend, the more money you make. So it kind of turned into kind of turned into sales almost.
[00:05:22] Marc Gonyea: [00:05:22] Interesting. I never waited tables. I kinda wish I had.
[00:05:25] Chris Corcoran: [00:05:25] I always wanted to, they would never let me,
[00:05:27] Caity Cover: [00:05:27] Yeah, you can still go back. Could you imagine?
[00:05:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:05:31] No.
[00:05:32] Caity Cover: [00:05:32] Could you imagine him waiting tables?
[00:05:37]Marc Gonyea: [00:05:37]
[00:05:37] All right. So, so you said Red Robin in Aurora, Colorado. I’m out. I’m done. Tell us after that.
[00:05:43] Caity Cover: [00:05:43] Yeah, about a week later, I, so I had started talking to somebody about getting into wine sales. And if I ended up actually getting into that path, I would have had the territory of North Carolina and it lined up to when my friend asked if I wanted to move with her.
[00:05:56] So I was like, “okay, let’s do it. And then I’ll figure out the details once I get there.” And then once I got there, I got ghosted by this woman. So I was just in North Carolina, living with my friend, thankful that she was able to take care of me for a few months, and I applied to a ton of jobs out there just to make end’s meet.
[00:06:12] And I ended up getting a job at a bank and it was horrible. It was awful.
[00:06:19] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:19] Why was it so bad?
[00:06:21] Caity Cover: [00:06:21] I just remember some of the, I mean, this might surprise you, but people get angry about their money. They get angry about their food, but they really get angry about their money. And I just remember following all the protocols, they’re very strict. Obviously, you have to follow different things for banks. And one woman came in screaming and she kicked a hole in the wall and I was just flabbergasted. Like a grown woman, you’re having a temper tantrum over something I have no control over and it was awful. It was, there are so many stories like that.
[00:06:53] And I would just, as soon as that happened, I was on LinkedIn trying to find any route out.
[00:06:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:06:59] So you were a teller?
[00:07:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:07:00] Yes. Okay.
[00:07:02] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:02] And what did, what was the route out?
[00:07:03] Caity Cover: [00:07:03] So I posted on LinkedIn, looking for opportunities. I started looking in DC; in Austin, Texas, cause I had a few friends out there; and then in Denver and no part of me wanted to go back to Denver because it was like, if I did, I failed, that’s how my brain works.
[00:07:17] And so I posted on my LinkedIn open to opportunities in DC. And then, that’s actually when Bailey found me, so.
[00:07:25] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:25] Baily.
[00:07:26] Caity Cover: [00:07:26] Bailey the talent recruiter.
[00:07:28] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:28] I always jack up Baily’s late name, Chris.
[00:07:29] Chris Corcoran: [00:07:29] Esparza, or I like to call it her “Wheels”.
[00:07:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:32] ” Wheels.” That’s right.
[00:07:33] Chris Corcoran: [00:07:33] Her maiden name is Wheeler, so I had to go, I have to call her “Wheels”.
[00:07:36] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:36] So
[00:07:37] Chris Corcoran: [00:07:37] It
[00:07:37] Caity Cover: [00:07:37] was
[00:07:37] Marc Gonyea: [00:07:37] amazing for us, an amazing person overall. What, what, what, she called you or did she LinkedIn you?
[00:07:42] Caity Cover: [00:07:42] I honestly don’t even remember how she reached out, maybe on LinkedIn? I would assume since that’s what I put everything on. And, I was living in North Carolina and we had our first phone interview and we found out that her husband went to school with the girl that I had moved across the country with. And so-
[00:07:59] Chris Corcoran: [00:07:59] The one you were staying with?
[00:08:00] Caity Cover: [00:08:00] Yeah, the one that I was living with and they knew of each other and they were both at Air Force Academies.
[00:08:04] So as soon as we started talking, Bailey’s like, “Okay, I got to get you in for an interview.” And I was like, “Okay, but here’s the thing. I’m four hours away.”
[00:08:13] Chris Corcoran: [00:08:13] What a small world. That’s just remarkable.
[00:08:17] Marc Gonyea: [00:08:17] We were like always suspect of the people who live out, we still are. You know, if someone lives in North Carolina and we’re in DC, do they just want to move to DC to get a job. They come up, accept the job, come up and then look for another job and then quit. of skeptical.
[00:08:33] Caity Cover: [00:08:33] Yeah. And, actually I didn’t know this until I had become friends with Bailey after, but she went over to a few of the different recruiters trying to get one of them to take an interview with me.
[00:08:44] And I guess it took her a few different tries to get one of them to finally be like, “Okay, fine. I’ll take an interview with this girl.” So shout out to Libby, thank you for taking my interview.
[00:08:54] Chris Corcoran: [00:08:54] So what happened? Libby still works here.
[00:08:58] Caity Cover: [00:08:58] Okay. But still.
[00:08:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:08:59] Libby’s a special superstar, but she’s…
[00:09:02] Chris Corcoran: [00:09:02] Yeah. The bell, the bell, the bell only goes to alums.
[00:09:05] Caity Cover: [00:09:05] For once you’re done with your time, serving, serving your time.
[00:09:11] Marc Gonyea: [00:09:11] So when you talked your way into it though.
[00:09:13] Caity Cover: [00:09:13] I guess so. I don’t know what I did, but man.
[00:09:16] Chris Corcoran: [00:09:16] You were just being you.
[00:09:17] Caity Cover: [00:09:17] Yeah, it was funny. And so Libby did, one of the first interviews and then I had a Skype interview with Joey Plesh and during my Skype interview, my cat started chasing the dog and then they started like screaming at each other.
[00:09:30] And at one point my cat ran in front of the camera in front of Joey Plesh. He’s like, “do you want to take five?” I was like, “I’ll be right back”. And he was just so calm and
[00:09:40] Chris Corcoran: [00:09:40] I was
[00:09:40] Caity Cover: [00:09:40] flustered ’cause I wanted this job so badly, like, and he’s like, “yeah, you’re good. Just get your situation situated.” And so.
[00:09:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:09:51] If you had not worked out, there would have been hell to pay. Let’s just say that. She lives in North Carolina, her animals are running around on the Skype.
[00:09:57] I was really,
[00:09:58] Caity Cover: [00:09:58] there was a lot of people that had to vet for me to, I was a chaos storm from the beginning to say the least.
[00:10:04] Marc Gonyea: [00:10:04] Well it worked, well, you know? So, you came up here?
[00:10:08] Caity Cover: [00:10:08] I did. So I moved up here, on the weekend and then my first day was Monday. And so I found a random girl on Facebook. We started living together and then, the rest is history. I came to memoryBlue and, now we’re here.
[00:10:21] Marc Gonyea: [00:10:21] And so you started, it was Joey Plesh your DM?
[00:10:24] Caity Cover: [00:10:24] No. Stacy, for like maybe 30 seconds because she was 10 and a half months pregnant. She was like ready to leave when I started.
[00:10:32] So Stacy was my manager, I guess maybe for a month. And then Ross took over and then I was back to Stacy for the, the end when she had come back from maternity leave.
[00:10:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:10:42] All right. Okay. So you had some Stacey, then you had some big dog Martin and then back to Stacy.
[00:10:48] Caity Cover: [00:10:48] Yeah, I was, it was right when Ross had first become a DM. So he got to experience a lot right out the gate.
[00:10:55] Marc Gonyea: [00:10:55] Big personality, new job, and what was the transition like into the job? Because it’s not easy. Did you know what you were doing?
[00:11:01] Caity Cover: [00:11:01] I had literally no idea what I was getting into. Even with the interview process, when you’re like “Sell something to me, blah, blah, blah. Like, how do you generate a lead?” I had no clue what I was getting into. And I remember, the first week I booked I think two meetings the very first day I was dialing and Stacy was like, “Oh my God, this little baby boss.” And I was like, “I have no idea what I’m doing still.”
[00:11:27] Marc Gonyea: [00:11:27] So was it easy? Was it hard? Did you hit, did you get to dip ever or what?
[00:11:32] Caity Cover: [00:11:32] Yeah, so I ended up on two half-time campaigns that were very different from each other. The first was Gigamon, which is like a network company, cybersecurity. And then the other one was Intelligent Insights. So they’re healthcare technologies and, I didn’t know anything about IT, like anything about IT.
[00:11:51] Marc Gonyea: [00:11:51] When you say “anything about IT”, what does that mean?
[00:11:54] Caity Cover: [00:11:54] Okay. So one day I’m sitting in the memoryBlue office, roughly 45 days into my career at memoryBlue. And I look over at Kellen Robidoux and I’m list-building and I go, “Oh my God, Kellen. IT stands for information technology.” And he goes, “ha ha, good one, Caity” and I turned away and I go, “ha ha good one, Caity.”
[00:12:17] And so, yeah, that’s how little I knew about just anything. Anything information technology, and now I work for a reseller that does like very distinct cybersecurity.
[00:12:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:12:30] Well, I think that’s good for our listeners to know is that you don’t need to be an expert on technology.
[00:12:34] And the example I always like to share people, I ask people “hey, have you ever bought a car?” And some people have, some people haven’t or maybe their parents have. And I said, “Well, the person who sold you the car, do you think that person can take the engine apart?” And they’re like, “No”, same thing, same thing holds up with technology.
[00:12:49] We seem to be able to be talkative about it and understand
[00:12:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:12:52] it.
[00:12:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:12:53] business problems that technology can solve in terms of how the bits and the bites work with that, that’s what the engineers are for.
[00:12:59] Caity Cover: [00:12:59] Thank God for the engineers.
[00:13:01] Chris Corcoran: [00:13:01] Thank God.
[00:13:02] Marc Gonyea: [00:13:02] So how were you successful though? So, cause a lot of people come in and they say, well, I’m gonna learn all I can, I’m going to all I can abput the technology. So I’m going to get certified, I’m going to read schematics of how networks are managed and monitored, but you were successful for other reasons.
[00:13:15] And that’s where most people are successful for other reasons. But w-why were you successful despite the fact that you-?
[00:13:21] Caity Cover: [00:13:21] Yeah, I really think that waitressing for so long had, it had taught me how to have so much small talk and build rapport with these people. I remember one of the calls that I made, I was like halfway through my opening value statement and the guy just starts yelling “human, human, human.”
[00:13:37] And I was like, “dude, what are you doing?” I think I said, “dude, what are you doing?”
[00:13:40] Marc Gonyea: [00:13:40] Yeah.
[00:13:40] Caity Cover: [00:13:40] And he goes, “Oh, I thought this was a robot” and that was at the beginning. And so after that, I was like, “I need to sound like a person or these people are not going to care. I just thought it was so funny, robot or “human, human.”
[00:13:54] but
[00:13:54] Chris Corcoran: [00:13:54] That sounds like you booked them.
[00:13:56] Caity Cover: [00:13:56] I don’t think I booked that guy. No, but he didn’t hang up on me, which I guess is
[00:14:01] Chris Corcoran: [00:14:01] Did you hang up on him?
[00:14:02] Caity Cover: [00:14:02] I don’t remember. Maybe, I’ve definitely hung up on a prospect or two. I think, yeah, I was, I was pretty successful in the way I would talk to people. There was one time I called this guy and every single time I called him, he would answer the phone, but never let me take a meeting.
[00:14:17] He would just push me off, come up with some excuse, some something. And I remember calling him one day and it was, it was like two or three in the afternoon. And he was like, “Caity, I’m so sorry. It’s been busy. I haven’t even eaten lunch today.” And I go, “Andre, what are you doing? You haven’t had lunch yet?Call me back when you’ve eaten.” And I hung up on him and this guy called me back and asked for a meeting. And so I think it’s just the rapport and the way that you could talk to people. And as soon as they realize, like, okay, you’re a person, you’re not just somebody trying to sell something. That’s when they start to care.
[00:14:48] Chris Corcoran: [00:14:48] Totally. That’s amazing. So you, so, so you’re encouraging our listeners to, when they get someone on the phone, hang up on them.
[00:14:55] Caity Cover: [00:14:55] I mean, if it works. That’s probably not what you guys want to hear, but-
[00:14:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:14:59] No, I like the fact that you did something creative.
[00:15:03] Caity Cover: [00:15:03] Yeah. I, I do stuff like that now and I’ll be around partners and they’re like, “Oh my God, does that work?” Like I had one woman hang up on me and I called her back and I was like, “I don’t want you to think that I was so rude that I hung up on you.” And she took a meeting because she hung up on me.
[00:15:19] Chris Corcoran: [00:15:19] A little bit guilt.
[00:15:20] Caity Cover: [00:15:20] Oh yeah. It’s all psychology.
[00:15:22] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:22] There’s a lot of room for creativity when there’s a lot of discipline and the discipline comes from making the calls.
[00:15:29] Caity Cover: [00:15:29] Yeah. It’s, I mean, it’s a numbers game and then you just have to be able to handle it because, okay, you make a hundred dials, 10 people are going to answer, how are you going to stand out to those 10 people? Because they are getting a hundred dials from every other person like that day.
[00:15:44] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:44] Correct. So you have to, you have to be unique.
[00:15:46] Caity Cover: [00:15:46] You have to be a human, human human.
[00:15:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:15:50] So the sincerity sells and they’ll know if you’re just reading from a script, if you’re going through the motions.
[00:15:55] Caity Cover: [00:15:55] Oh yeah. They can sense the fear. They’re like a horse.
[00:16:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:16:00] Like a horse, like a horse. I’m not scared of you, prospect, you’re a horse. What was, so was that your signature move? Did you have signature moves that you, kind of like, how you booked meetings was that it?
[00:16:10] Caity Cover: [00:16:10] I don’t think I have a signature move. I think, sometimes I surprise myself. Like, like when I said “Andre, you know, go eat lunch.” I heard it come out of my mouth and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to get fired.” And I remember Abby looking at me and like, “Oh my God, did you just say that on the phone? Like that’s recorded, you know that right? Like it’s forever.” I was like, “oh gosh.”
[00:16:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:16:30] We talked about this a little bit too, though. I mean, you kind of have a philosophy, I don’t know if you, how you were raised or what about how people, everyone’s, we’re all people.
[00:16:38] Caity Cover: [00:16:38] Oh, definitely. So my, my parents have some pretty prominent friends. I grew up around like pretty important people, people that own businesses, CFOs, CEOs, and I just learned at a young age, like these are all people.
[00:16:49] It doesn’t matter what their title is, how much money they have. Who they think they are. We’re all just people and people want to be treated like people, when you’re treated like some big head honcho, you think you’re a big head honcho. If you’re treated like any other person you’re going to act like any other person.
[00:17:06] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:06] And that was, that kind of helped you reconcile, look you were, so you didn’t have any real sales experience before. And then you come into memoryBlue-
[00:17:13] Caity Cover: [00:17:13] Not really, no.
[00:17:14] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:14] Like, “Hey, you’re going to call people in cyber for Gigamon.
[00:17:19] Caity Cover: [00:17:19] All the time. And I’m calling in to like, the DOD of all places. And these people are tough to talk to.
[00:17:25] And as soon as you just like bring it down, it makes them so much more comfortable. They’re willing to open up, ask them, you know, about lunch, what they have for lunch today. And they’re gonna be like, “Oh my God, why do you care?” Like I don’t, but you think I do.
[00:17:39] Marc Gonyea: [00:17:39] And you were able to do this cause you were successful on tops trip, right?
[00:17:43] Caity Cover: [00:17:43] I, I earned my way to that tops trip man. I had to hit, my last month I had to hit 125% of both of my clients to make it to that trip. And I remember Stacy she’s like, “what do you, what do you need from me?” And I was like, I don’t even know, but I’m going to be here until I hit this trip. And so there were a few different routes. Like, you could do a PPM, so a different client. I was staying until 7:00 PM calling on PPMs. I was calling on my clients, I was calling for any possible route. I was like trying to get on a buddy pass. I was like, all my friends are going, I’m going on this trip regardless. And I remember you, like Chris saw me one day and it was probably 6:30 o’clock at night. And he’s like, “I just want to thank you for staying late.” And I hadn’t won anything yet. And I was like, “I want to thank you for taking me on a trip.” And I just remember the look you gave me, like, “okay”.
[00:18:29] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:29] So you were able to make that work though?
[00:18:32]Caity Cover: [00:18:32] I did. And I got to go on, on your guys’s first tops trip. It was really fun. Yeah. I got stung by a jellyfish. Got wrapped around my leg, but-
[00:18:39] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:39] Really?
[00:18:40] Caity Cover: [00:18:40] Oh yeah.
[00:18:41] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:41] That was, that was my favorite one.
[00:18:42] Caity Cover: [00:18:42] That was fun.
[00:18:44] Marc Gonyea: [00:18:44] For sure. So who else did you roll with at memoryBlue in your seven short months with us?
[00:18:49] Caity Cover: [00:18:49] Yeah, I think that’s another thing I want to talk about. So I up and moved across the country and now I have an amazing network of friends.
[00:18:55] I hang out, I actually lived with Abby Curtis and Kellen Robideau last year. They are probably two of my closest friends. Allie Siegel, I hang out with her and we go to the gym every morning. We were together this morning. Emily Sullivan, Cullen Casey, Sam Newman, Houston Brodigan, Carely Armentrout, Dylan Dunn, Devin Barnes.
[00:19:18] Like we, yeah. It’s like, I don’t have friends that are not from memoryBlue. It’s kind of funny. I had a, one of my childhood friends lives out here now. And every time I introduced her to someone, she’s like, “let me guess, memoryBlue.” And I’m like, “yeah, I don’t have other friends.” She’s like, “don’t you have work friends?” I was like, “Yeah, but they all worked at memoryBlue first.”
[00:19:38] Marc Gonyea: [00:19:38] So why, why do you think that is? Because if you didn’t know that when you accepted the job.
[00:19:42] Caity Cover: [00:19:42] Oh, I had no idea. I don’t know. It was just all a bunch of people, our own age, same business minded. We’re all going after the same goals. Like we’re out here because we’re hungry. Like we want to learn business. We want to learn sales. We want to become great at what we do, but we also like know how to have a good time, you know? Like these are the kinds of people,we’re going to grind all day long, but definitely going to hit happy
[00:20:03] Chris Corcoran: [00:20:03] I
[00:20:04] Caity Cover: [00:20:04] afterward. And I love that about memoryBlue I just remember like every Thursday we would go out and every Friday Ross would hate us. It’s like, Caity I always know you went out because you’re wearing glasses today. I was like, yikes. It’s a big telltale sign
[00:20:20] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:20] That’s
[00:20:20] part of the
[00:20:20] Rite of passage
[00:20:21] Chris Corcoran: [00:20:21] of
[00:20:21] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:21] all those people you listed were
[00:20:23] all taking care
[00:20:25] Caity Cover: [00:20:25] Yeah. And I mean, even the people that I’m working with now at Blackwood, like Sam Cartner and I, we like, he was one of my first friends here and I just remember sitting and talking to him and like, we would sit and talk in the parking lot until 8:00 PM at night, just because we’ve talked to people that actually want to talk to us and like, don’t hang up with us.
[00:20:43] Like, you know what I mean? So it’s it’s Oh God, you think that’ll be a long
[00:20:48] Chris Corcoran: [00:20:48] time,
[00:20:49] Caity Cover: [00:20:49] Imagine him and Sohale in the same podcast, it’d be at least five hours.
[00:20:54] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:54] I’d just leave, let those guys do it.
[00:20:56] Caity Cover: [00:20:56] They wouldn’t even need you. They’d just run without it.
[00:20:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:20:59] So out of all those ballers you worked with, who was the best one besides yourself?
[00:21:04] Caity Cover: [00:21:04] Oh, no, I have to pick, they’re going to listen to it.
[00:21:08] Chris Corcoran: [00:21:08] The strongest SDR yeah. That you worked with.
[00:21:11] I’d
[00:21:11] Caity Cover: [00:21:11] I say Sam Cartner. Man, he, he, Oh, that was a face. I’m curious. He, he knew how to be successful and also beat to his own drum. Like this guy would be like lifting weights and making dials. And like, I just remembered like the things that he would teach me, I would just be like, “Sam, why does your brain work that way?” But it, it makes sense, but like why?
[00:21:35] Chris Corcoran: [00:21:35] He’s extremely entrepreneurial.
[00:21:37] Caity Cover: [00:21:37] Oh yeah, he’s awesome.
[00:21:39] Marc Gonyea: [00:21:39] What about emails? You know anybody who wrote good emails?
[00:21:42] Caity Cover: [00:21:42] Sam Newman. I still hit him up to this day. Like “Sam, okay I need to talk, I need to target this, this, so about this, we proofread this?” And he’s like, “I don’t want to.” And I’m like, “but please.” Yeah, he’s very good. On the phones, I’d say Colin Casey. I definitely learned a lot from him. He was across the cubicles for me. And I just remember him calling on Plum Relish, which for those of you don’t know, is a catering company. Are they even still in business? I don’t know, but, yeah, so Colin was just like calling, trying to book catering.
[00:22:16] And so you just get to hear everyone’s different styles. So I definitely think that there wasn’t one person that was the best at everything. I think I learned a lot from individuals, which would make like a collective great SDR.
[00:22:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:22:32] That’s very true. And I think that’s part of the value of working in an office with people.
[00:22:36] Caity Cover: [00:22:36] Oh, definitely.
[00:22:37] Marc Gonyea: [00:22:37] Certainly with COVID, there’s gotta be some work from home. But you learn so much when you’re with like-minded people in a setting where you can pick things up and they’re picking up things from you too.
[00:22:46] Chris Corcoran: [00:22:46] Right?
[00:22:47] Caity Cover: [00:22:47] And I firmly believe that. I mean, that was another thing that I love about memoryBlue is you can learn something from everyone, and you should, you have the resources. Why would you waste them, to not have a quick conversation say, “Hey, what would you have done in this situation? What, how would you have responded to this?” And just to learn how everyone’s hitting their own success because we’re not doing anything the same. I mean, I was on the same campaign for Gigamon with somebody else. We’re doing, I mean, the same outreach, the same scripts, the same emails, but we’re not, we’re not doing the same success.
[00:23:20] You know what I mean? So you can learn something from every single person here.
[00:23:24] Marc Gonyea: [00:23:24] You said something too yesterday about Colin was playing ping pong?
[00:23:28] Caity Cover: [00:23:28] Oh, yeah, this, this really stuck with me. And we were sitting in the lunch room. It was myself and Abby, Curtis and Colin. I don’t even know who else, it’s irrelevant. Playing ping pong and the conversation somehow led to Colin saying “be where your feet are” and that’s something that’s really stuck with me. In sales, you’re always going to be wanting to hit the next benchmark. Like you want to have your own accounts. You want to be closing. You want to be a VP. You want to do this, that and the other, but you can’t do that until you’re successful where you are.
[00:23:56] So I think of that a lot is just be where your feet are. Stop looking for the next thing. Earn it, get there, obviously, but like really perfect where you are right now.
[00:24:05] Chris Corcoran: [00:24:05] That’s so important for SDRs.
[00:24:08] Caity Cover: [00:24:08] Definitely.
[00:24:09] Chris Corcoran: [00:24:09] Because it’s every SDR wants to move on to SDR management or full cycle sales, but what they really need to do is to Colin’s point is master being a strong SDR. And when, when that mastery comes, that’s when those other opportunities will present themselves. And you’ll, you’re more likely to be successful in those, in that next role.
[00:24:32] Caity Cover: [00:24:32] Yeah. And now you have all these tools because you’ve perfected them. You’ve taken the time to learn and really embrace it instead of just going through the motions in hopes of getting to the next step.
[00:24:43] Marc Gonyea: [00:24:43] That’s good insight. What, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time to your first day at memoryBlue?
[00:24:53] Caity Cover: [00:24:53] I’d say do it all the same. Man, I thought it was great. I made so many friends.
[00:24:56] Maybe like, try to learn what my clients did a little more. ‘Cause I, once I got hired out and I learned what Gigamon did, I was like, “how was I successful?” I had no idea what they did, man. I was just, I was just talking to people on the phone, asking about lunch.
[00:25:13] Marc Gonyea: [00:25:13] What, let’s talk about that transition. So you were with, with us and it’s it’s, it’s never a podcast if we don’t talk about SoHo at some point, but Blackwood, Hill Vice President of Federal Sales?
[00:25:27] Caity Cover: [00:25:27] Yup, Vice President of Federal Sales.
[00:25:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:25:31] And so he was one of your clients, directly, I guess. How did your transition occur? Like, were you thinking about what you wanted to do next? Did it happen, did it was kind of just happen?
[00:25:41] Caity Cover: [00:25:41] It kind of just happened. It was, obviously I wanted to be hired out, or I wanted to stay in the sales path. I didn’t want to go into managing, I didn’t want to go into recruiting.
[00:25:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:25:50] Let me jump in real quick. When did you, so you didn’t have a sales background, right? And sometimes, some people, and then you’re here at this company memoryBlue. Did you, was there a dawning or when did you realize, “Oh, the sales, this is what I want to do”? Like, did you, how did that work, did you learn that from working with the clients? ‘Cause some people still don’t, they can’t get their arms around when sales is.
[00:26:10] Caity Cover: [00:26:10] Honestly, I don’t know. I, I almost wanna say before memoryBlue, because when I was talking to that woman about getting into wine sales, I’ve always been a people person. I’ve always been able to talk to anybody. My dad would always say like, you can make a tree jump out of the road to come hang out with you. So I think it was just knowing that I can have, like, I can use my personality to become successful, basically.
[00:26:34] Marc Gonyea: [00:26:34] Yeah, yeah. And so then it kind of popped up, okay this sales thing. I think I like. And then how did it go down with you and the parting that, how did that whole thing occur?
[00:27:57] Caity Cover: [00:27:57] Yeah so I, I was kind of thinking about it. I was like, Oh, Gigamon would be cool. I don’t know anything, except for, IT stands for information technology now. My other client, they were based in Fargo, North Dakota. So I knew if I was going to get hired out by them, it had to be remote. Cause I’m, I’m not moving to North Dakota.
[00:28:13] Chris Corcoran: [00:28:13] Kellen didn’t convince you?
[00:28:15] Caity Cover: [00:28:15] God no. So it was a right before we went to Costa Rica for tops. Sohale comes into the office and he’s like, “Caity, can I talk to you?” And I’m like, “Oh God, what did I do? What did, he found out I did something wrong. Like I’m in trouble”.
[00:28:28] Brings me into Marc’s office, like “sit down at my desk.” I’m like, “okay, first of all…”
[00:28:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:28:33] His desk.
[00:28:34] Caity Cover: [00:28:34] His desk. And so he goes, “are you interested in working for us? We have a spot that’s going to be opening here soon. It’s between you and another girl.” And I was like, “how was it already between me and another girl? What do you mean?” And I was like, “yeah, let’s do an interview.” He came in with his team, so the managing partner, Ryan Morris, my direct boss now, Emily Shepherd and then their director of engineering, Chris Ebily, and then Sohale all came in.
[00:28:59] Marc Gonyea: [00:28:59] To the memoryBlue office to
[00:29:00] Caity Cover: [00:29:00] To the memoryBlue office to interview me at memoryBlue, where there’s like ping pong ball, flying around, like people going crazy and I’m trying to be impressive to these people that I have no idea, you know? And I was like, “well, here’s my resume.” And they’re like, “we don’t want that, we know what, we know what you’re capable of. We want to see if you’re a personality fit.” And I was like, “Oh God, I’m going to ramble” and I did, and then Sohale was like, “Okay, cool. We’ll let you know Monday, good job.”
[00:29:26] And then 10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, I get a call. He’s like, “You got the job, I’ll send you over the paperwork.” I was like, cool. I’m going to tops. And now I have a job.
[00:29:35] Marc Gonyea: [00:29:35] So exciting. Yeah. So talk about that transition.
[00:29:39] Caity Cover: [00:29:39] It was hard. I mean that, so where I work now at Blackwood, we work with the top of the top vendors.
[00:29:47] So their business model is to have like the best player in each individual field. So for Palo Alto, like you’re going to have the best firewalls. Splunk is going to be the best SIM. So it’s learning. We have at any given time, like 12 to 25 different vendors on our line card. And I have to be comfortable enough to talk about all of them at the same time, because these conversations are flowing. Somebody says, you know, “Well, I’m having issues with endpoint.” I need to be able to say, “Okay, this is CrowdStrike and this is why you should care.” So it was just so much information at the beginning. I remember calling my brother cause he, he’s very much into IT. And I was like, “what recommendations do you have for me? Like what can I do to learn?”
[00:30:29] And he sent me information on free cybersecurity courses online. So I started taking online cybersecurity, just like intro to IT, like how a network works. Like, what does it mean when someone says stack? Like just very basic things. And I’m two years in now almost. And I still feel like I have to be continuously watching videos, continuously learning because these people are they’re cutthroat.
[00:30:54] Like I’m talking to CISOs at the federal government. If I take, if I say one thing wrong, they’re like, “Okay, you’re completely discredited, get out of my face.” So it’s been hard, but it’s been definitely rewarding.
[00:31:05] Marc Gonyea: [00:31:05] It’s interesting. So you have to learn the attack at some point, right? And there’s a difference between kicking off, getting someone interested enough curious enough to take a meeting.
[00:31:13] Caity Cover: [00:31:13] Right.
[00:31:14] Marc Gonyea: [00:31:14] And getting in front of someone and explaining it, having a dialogue or an explanation to why. You don’t know, you still can’t architect it, right? You have sales engineers who do that, at Blackwood. But you need to be more credible than you are in the SDR role.
[00:31:26] Caity Cover: [00:31:26] Right. And it’s like, you have to know all the buzzwords, like all of the right things. I used to joke. It’s like, I work in an industry that speaks Spanish and I’m only at a Dora the Explorer level of Spanish. That’s like how I feel about cyber security, learning more every day.
[00:31:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:31:42] What else did you have to transition into besides the tech?
[00:31:45] Caity Cover: [00:31:45] It was not memoryBlue. So I was the youngest person there. That was hard. I think in 2019 to 2020, they’ve had maybe like six babies, the great baby boom of Blackwood. So I was like the youngest person there. Thankfully they’ve hired some, some more people in my age group. But it was definitely a very drastic change going from, you know, post-college memoryBlue into, okay these are real people with like families and real life, you know, things going on.
[00:32:13] So that was definitely a transition is getting to know everyone there. Since I’ve started, I think they’ve hired about 15 people, so it’s really grown, but it was very little when I first started there. Thank God for Sam Karner ’cause he would just like, take me out to lunch in Annapolis and be like, “Okay, so how are you doing? Like I know this transition. Let’s talk about it.” So, he was Oh yeah, he was about three months before me.
[00:32:35] Marc Gonyea: [00:32:35] Okay. And what, and what are you doing now? Tell us about your role.
[00:32:38] Caity Cover: [00:32:38] So my role is I, I do all lead generation, so that’s part of my role. And then I cover all of our renewal bases and, I do like all of the admin kind of stuff. And so I’m working with partners on lead generation. I’m making sure everything’s renewing and trying to get them to upsell based on like their renewals. And then just supporting my direct manager who’s the outside sales rep in any way that she needs.
[00:33:02] Marc Gonyea: [00:33:02] Wow. And so you learning the tech, right? And then you’re doing, it sounds like you varying degrees of various different types of responsibilities. What’s the, what’s the stuff that you think you’re, you enjoy the most that you weren’t doing before?
[00:33:14] Caity Cover: [00:33:14] I definitely like working with so many different vendors because I get to go have lunches with Splunk. I get to have lunches with Varonis, FireEye, CrowdStrike. I’m doing like all of these different things, meeting all of these different networks of people, going to different conferences, talking to people at booths, stuff like that. Obviously, I still enjoy lead generation, but, I’m not like cold calling a hundred dials a day anymore thank God. But, I’m teaching people how to use LinkedIn. I have come up with a bunch of sales scripts and emails just for every vendor that we have. So it’s like going through, onboarding people. You said pick a favorite and I, I said like seven things, right?
[00:33:54] Chris Corcoran: [00:33:54] What’s your super power?
[00:33:55] Caity Cover: [00:33:55] I don’t know, being a redhead.
[00:33:59] Chris Corcoran: [00:33:59] Jinja.
[00:34:01] Caity Cover: [00:34:01] So not a superpower.
[00:34:02] Chris Corcoran: [00:34:02] I think that’s just a gift.
[00:34:04] Caity Cover: [00:34:04] Yeah, thanks, grandma. My superpower, probably I guess, LinkedIn stalking. I am very good at stalking people. Talk a little bit about that. You were talking to me when we were preparing, you were talking a little about kind of some of your tactics that you use.
[00:34:16] Yeah. So I, I like to use psychology to stalk people, especially on LinkedIn, just because my name, Caity Cover, it’s like two C’s, it’s spelled weirdly. So every time I click on someone’s name, they’re seeing my name, I’ll go into their profile like every other week, I’ll send them a message. I just get to the point where they think that they’re familiar with me, just because they’ve seen my name so many times whether or not we’ve actually talked, they don’t really think of that.
[00:34:40] But then if my name pops up again in the future, they’re like, “Oh, I know Caity Cover”. So I think LinkedIn is probably my super power at this point.
[00:34:47] Chris Corcoran: [00:34:47] Excellent. So you,
[00:34:48] Caity Cover: [00:34:48] it, It took me a year to convince Sohale to get that. So, wow. I finally it.
[00:34:53] Chris Corcoran: [00:34:53] There you go, so you got it. And so what you do is you find people that, you know, you want to talk with, and then you essentially just start going onto their profile so that when they look at to see people who viewed my profile, they see your name all the time, all the time, all the time, familiarity, familiarity, familiarity, then you eventually get them on the phone and?
[00:35:10] Caity Cover: [00:35:10] Oh, I don’t even, no I’ll reach out on LinkedIn and I’ll set meetings through LinkedIn. I don’t remember the last cold call I made, honestly.
[00:35:16] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:16] You’ve gone all digital.
[00:35:17] Caity Cover: [00:35:17] Yeah. Like I don’t want to, I don’t want to talk to you. You don’t want to talk to me, I’ll just send you a message. I’m trying to think, there was something I was going to say. I don’t know it’s gone.
[00:35:27] Marc Gonyea: [00:35:27] No, it’s good. And you said, “I said seven things I like”, it’s good for you to tell us about those things. ‘Cause the people who listen or work here now, they don’t really know.
[00:35:35] Caity Cover: [00:35:35] And it’s amazing how much I didn’t know when I worked here. Like it’s, I can’t even, I can’t wrap my head around how little I knew at memoryBlue, which it’s kind of cool though ’cause it’s like, I’m pretty successful in what I’m doing. Like I’m one of these finalists for the Phenom Award. This is so cool. If you would have realized how little I knew at memoryBlue and then to be where I am now, like that’s awesome.
[00:35:58] Chris Corcoran: [00:35:58] I do want to talk about one thing and ask your opinion on it, because we’ve heard this before, it’s a recurring theme. It’s just about women in sales and this Phenom Award, it’s obviously, it’s something that’s designed for recent alums who have exited the firm within the last two years. And I remember you telling me that you didn’t even think about applying. You didn’t think you had a chance and maybe here somehow you, you found the motivation or the, the encouragement to apply and lo and behold, you’re a finalist. So talk a little bit about that.
[00:36:28] Caity Cover: [00:36:28] Sure. Yeah. So I guess there are two parts to it. I was looking at everyone’s bio from last year and people are like running teams, they’ve gotten like massive promotions, blah, blah, this and the other.
[00:36:37] I was like, that’s not me. I’ve been in the same role. I’m kind of doing the same thing. But then I started putting all of my numbers down and I was in one of our QBRs and one of the numbers was like, there was an increase of I think 21 closed deals versus last year. And so it just got me thinking like, okay, I should look at my numbers.
[00:36:55] And then I started looking at my numbers and I was like, “Oh my gosh, maybe I do have a chance at this”, because I didn’t really, I had never put it all in the same place. And then when I finally did, I’m like, “Okay. I, I, I have a chance.”
[00:37:08] Chris Corcoran: [00:37:08] And so you applied and I’m glad you did.
[00:37:09] Caity Cover: [00:37:09] I did. I’m glad too, I mean, this is cool. It’s going to be really cool when you guys name a room in Colorado, “Caity”. Not the last name ’cause people will mispronounce it. So “Caity”, taking notes? Make sure you write that
[00:37:21] Chris Corcoran: [00:37:21] With a C.
[00:37:23] Caity Cover: [00:37:23] Exactly.
[00:37:23] Chris Corcoran: [00:37:23] Caity with a C.
[00:37:24] Caity Cover: [00:37:24] Yep.
[00:37:25] Marc Gonyea: [00:37:25] That’s a cool, and that would work. Going back to the women in sales is what I want to talk about. So we get one of our SDRs emails, Chris this week and she’s great, she’s doing a good job. She said, “Hey, I’d like to hear or see some more women on the podcast.” And then when we go back, that goes back to like trying to get more women to come work in sales.
[00:37:44] How do you think that could happen or should happen? ‘Cause you, you were a psychology, sociology minor at Colorado and you kind of ended up through us, it was circumstances kind of random.
[00:37:56] Caity Cover: [00:37:56] Right. And I, I mean, I see this in the industry. Like I will go to conferences and it’s me, my boss, and then a bunch of men. Oh, especially in, in federal government cyber security.
[00:38:08] It’s like me, my boss, and a bunch of men. And I, I like it cause there’s never a line at the bathroom. That’s cool. I’m not used to that. But I don’t know. I don’t know what it would take to encourage more women to get into sales. Maybe just like more stories. I’m, I know that I’ve been to different panels where it’s like women in sales, they do different webinars, different things like that.
[00:38:32] Something that I don’t necessarily like about those is they always talk about like, “how do you balance your work and your life?” Like you don’t ask a man that, no one’s asking, you know, “how do you balance being a husband and having kids and having a career?” Like, maybe if we just stopped talking about it, people wouldn’t have a problem with it.
[00:38:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:38:52] Very interesting.
[00:38:53] Marc Gonyea: [00:38:53] I gotta be careful what I say. No, but, but, but it’s true. I mean, it’s, it’s the number one ask of our clients and women who work here, like Emily, want to hear women on the podcast. Then it goes back to, we have to recruit and get them in and get them interested. Right. And I don’t know, maybe it’s not an educated, it’s a nut that we have to crack, right? Because look at how great you’re doing, we got to find more people like you.
[00:39:21] Caity Cover: [00:39:21] Right. And I mean, maybe go start recruiting at restaurants or something? I don’t
[00:39:25] Marc Gonyea: [00:39:25] I love that.
[00:39:27] Caity Cover: [00:39:27] Put a nice poster up in the back. I don’t really know Red Robin, specifically, my people.
[00:39:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:39:33] Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge. And it particularly, as you go through your career, right? You want to get people, I don’t know maybe mentor some women, right? We’re always looking for them here.
[00:39:44] Caity Cover: [00:39:44] And it’s interesting too, to see like the different people in my company and how well that they know their stuff. Like my boss, I respect the hell out of her. She, she is such a good sales woman and she, I mean, I know I just said, don’t talk about it, but she balances her kids, she does all of this, she’s like out here making moves and it’s awesome to see her not questioning anything. She’s like, I’m here. Like I’m here, figure it out kind of thing.
[00:40:11] And so it’s cool to have all of these positive people in that industry saying like, I’m doing it, you know, just to see the success.
[00:40:19] Chris Corcoran: [00:40:19] That’s one thing Marc always says is, if you ever want anything done, go give it to a busy mom and it’ll get done.
[00:40:27] Caity Cover: [00:40:27] That’s probably true.
[00:40:28] Marc Gonyea: [00:40:28] It’s not a hundred percent true.
[00:40:30] So what’s your favorite, your favorite accomplishment since you’ve been at Blackwood?
[00:40:34] Caity Cover: [00:40:34] I think one of the coolest things was I was on the team that closed the biggest, I believe, hopefully, hopefully no one’s dethroned us, but, the biggest deal to date was a $55 million Splunk deal, which was really cool to be a part of. So it’s like coming in and seeing how people were handling that was amazing.
[00:40:53] Seeing how my boss, Emily took care of that. And just to, to be part of something that big so quickly, it was really powerful.
[00:41:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:41:00] What about, what about biggest defeat? Most memorable. Do you have one or loss?
[00:41:05] Caity Cover: [00:41:05] I really don’t. I was actually talking to Amanda Alfs today. another one. She’s at Blackwood and I was talking to her about this. I was like, honestly, I don’t know if we have a big loss, like there’s, there’s been losses obviously, but at any given time, there’s like 90 different opportunities in our pipeline. And so I’m at the point where it’s like, Okay next. I don’t have time to deal with that. Like, let’s move on. If it was a huge deal, like if it was that $55 million one, obviously that would be impactful, but everything it’s just like, okay, let’s move on and pick it up. Let’s go. There’s no time to dwell on this. Let’s move on. Next thing. What are you going to do? Who’s going to be the next conversation? Where’s it going from here? Are you going to try and fix it? Do you care enough to fix it? So I don’t, I don’t necessarily have. a big L, knock on wood.
[00:41:51] Chris Corcoran: [00:41:51] I think that speaks to an important point of just having a, like a really healthy pipeline. When you have a healthy pipeline, you don’t have as much emotionally invested in each opportunity. So you’re okay with a no, because you know that there’s others there. If you have a really small pipeline, every deal means so much. And if you lose that one, then it’s just devastation.
[00:42:13] Caity Cover: [00:42:13] Right,
[00:42:14] Chris Corcoran: [00:42:14] But those pipelines don’t just fall from the sky. Those, that’s the work that you’ve done day by day, day by day, day by day.
[00:42:19] Caity Cover: [00:42:19] And I definitely walked into a very good account team. The person that I had replaced, the way him and Emily had their pipeline before was already so well set up that now I can just go in and I can sell to all these previous customers and just expand what they’re already doing.
[00:42:36] That would, I would say that’s probably my favorite part about working at a reseller, as well, is if there’s one technology that they’re like, “no, we’re good on this.” I can be like, “okay, well here’s six more. Let’s have that conversation.” Versus if I went direct to Gigamon or something, they’re like, “no, we’re good.” Then it’s like, “okay, like I’ll hit you up in a week. Like, I’ll I’ll be back next month or something” versus, but that also comes back to having the knowledge, to hear people say certain things and be like, “okay, you’re good on this, but are you good on this?” And just understanding enough about these vendors to talk about anything.
[00:43:12]Marc Gonyea: [00:43:12] You’re in a great spot.
[00:43:13] Caity Cover: [00:43:13] Yeah. I love it.
[00:43:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:43:15] You’re getting, you’re, you’re getting the tier one education in the cyber, right. And it’s not just one vendor. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:43:22] Caity Cover: [00:43:22] Oh, no, I was just agreeing.
[00:43:23] Marc Gonyea: [00:43:23] Oh, well thank you. You work for just one vendor and you’re going to learn about the one vendor’s technology and maybe some of the periphery, but you’re exactly right here.
[00:43:32] You get to learn about every different component of the stack that is relevant to someone’s cyber set up, it’s wild.
[00:43:39] Caity Cover: [00:43:39] And it’s cool too, because we have a team at Blackwood that looks into every company in the industry, essentially. And so they watch how the markets are moving. We’re starting to get into data analytics so I get to see all of these emerging technologies as well and learn about them whether or not they make it on our line card, who knows, but it’s cool to see like, okay, we should care about this because this is going to be where the industry goes. So it’s not only am I learning about how the industry works now I get to learn about how they see it in 10 years, in 20 years, et cetera.
[00:44:11] Chris Corcoran: [00:44:11] Yeah, I always talk to Marc about working for a value-add reseller. And one of the great things about that, even though I never had, I didn’t have that opportunity to do so, but you get to essentially, you don’t need to pick the hot technology. You just have to follow the hot technology. Right? And so they, they, it’s an opportunity to, you’re always representing and working with the best and hottest technology, as opposed to if you work for a manufacturer and that technology falls out of favor, you’re selling dinosaur food.
[00:44:38] Caity Cover: [00:44:38] Right. And it’s cool too, because I mean, we’re pretty cutthroat. Like if, if it’s not working for us, we’ll be like, okay, any, any deals we have going cool, but we’re not going to actively go out and sell your technology.
[00:44:50] So you get to see the big top dogs and you get to like, there’s some resellers they’ll have hundreds of people on their line card. They’re just there to push papers. Like no, we’re here to work with the best of the best and bring that to our customer base.
[00:45:05] Marc Gonyea: [00:45:05] Exciting.
[00:45:06] Caity Cover: [00:45:06] It really is. It’s interesting. And I never expected myself to be so interested in cybersecurity. And now I call my brother and I’m like, “Oh my God. Remember when I didn’t know IT, like, let’s have a real conversation.” He’s like, “I don’t know what that meant.” And I was like, “let’s write this date down the day that you didn’t know what I was talking about.” Yeah.
[00:45:25] Marc Gonyea: [00:45:25] Okay.
[00:45:25] Chris Corcoran: [00:45:25] The student has become the master.
[00:45:28] Caity Cover: [00:45:28] Oh, I should call him and let him know that, he’ll be like, “can you go?”
[00:45:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:45:33] Where do you see yourself going now? I mean, it’s still early, right? But you’ve been exposed to all these different companies, all these different functions. What, what does the future hold for, for you?
[00:45:44] Caity Cover: [00:45:44] I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve okay. So my least favorite interview question is where do you see yourself in five years? Because I don’t picture it. I’ve never once in my life been like, “Oh, this is where my future will be.” And I kind of like that. That’s how I ended up in high-tech sales in, you know, based out of Annapolis, Maryland. I just let the universe kind of decide I’ll, I’ll put it out there and whatever happens happens, if something great comes along, which it did like cool. I didn’t plan for that. I couldn’t even imagine that. So I don’t know, man. I’m just here for the ride.
[00:46:18] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:18] Well, there’s like a law of attraction thing, right? You’re high performing. I mean you don’t use that word to describe yourself, but I would. And you’ve really enjoyed what you do and people like being around you and you like winning, right?
[00:46:30] Caity Cover: [00:46:30] Oh, definitely.
[00:46:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:31] We’ve talked about that. Are you competitive? Would you see yourself a competitive person or you said, “I definitely had to win” and you stayed at that tops, you know, late. Yeah.
[00:46:37] Caity Cover: [00:46:37] Yeah. I, it depends. If I care about it, then yeah I’m pretty competitive. If I don’t care, then I’m not like going to win for the sake of winning, if that makes sense.
[00:46:48] Marc Gonyea: [00:46:48] So, but companies and people are attracted to people like that. So, it’ll be fun to kind of track it and see where she ends up.
[00:46:58] Caity Cover: [00:46:58] I’ll be just as surprised as you guys.
[00:47:01] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:01] I don’t know. It’s going to be kind of cool to watch.
[00:47:04] Caity Cover: [00:47:04] Retire by 40, maybe. I’m only 25, for the next seven days.
[00:47:08] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:08] Really?
[00:47:09] Caity Cover: [00:47:09] I’m turning 25 again, because I refuse to turn 26.
[00:47:15] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:15] That’s like you, you’d get so bored, you’re not going to stop working at 40 are you? What would you do?
[00:47:20] Caity Cover: [00:47:20] I don’t know, travel the world. And I mean, I’d find ways to still make money, but I would love to go see the world and experience new cultures. And that was something about being in Colorado. I knew from a young age, like I was going to move.
[00:47:33] I want to see other places. I want to be other places. I want to travel, experience new things. Like I travel all the time, not this year, but I don’t know. I could definitely see myself retiring and just like messing around, but like, in a way that I still made money.
[00:47:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:47:50] Yeah. Well, this cyber thing could take you to a lot of places a lot, you definitely go international because cyber is so critical.
[00:47:57] Caity Cover: [00:47:57] Right. And it’s only getting like, crazier by the second.
[00:48:00] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:00] You’re in the perfect business. So Chris and I will have to sit back and watch, while we go find and manufacture more Caity’s.
[00:48:07] Caity Cover: [00:48:07] They’re in North Carolina at Red Robin. If they had a Red Robin in, in the town that I was in, I probably would’ve gone back though.
[00:48:17] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:17] Well, thank goodness that they didn’t have a Red Robin in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
[00:48:21] Caity Cover: [00:48:21] Thank God.
[00:48:23] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:23] What else? We got you here. Anything else?
[00:48:26] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:26] I got something here.
[00:48:27] Marc Gonyea: [00:48:27] Go ahead.
[00:48:28] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:28] I brought with me the farewell email.
[00:48:30] Caity Cover: [00:48:30] Oh no. I was wondering, I even texted Abby yesterday. I was like, “did I write one of these?” And she goes, “I don’t know.” I was like, “can you look?” And she, she didn’t respond. So here we
[00:48:40] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:40] well, I have it here. And so, there’s a little, there’s some poetry here.
[00:48:45] Caity Cover: [00:48:45] Oh.
[00:48:46] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:46] Yeah, the subject is “Ending Today with the memoryBlues.”
[00:48:50]Caity Cover: [00:48:50] Oh, I wrote that?
[00:48:52] Chris Corcoran: [00:48:52] Yep. “Today’s my last day here at big ole’ memoryBlue. This has been one of the most life-changing experiences for me thus far.”
[00:48:59] Caity Cover: [00:48:59] That’s true.
[00:49:00] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:00] “Being an SDR at memoryBlue is not an easy job and if you do not take it seriously, you won’t get what you want out of it.
[00:49:06] Caity Cover: [00:49:06] Also true.
[00:49:07] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:07] “The job is hard, but as you spend more time and get better at the SDR role, you quickly learn how well memoryBlue can set you up moving forward. You have to trust the process and the outcome will follow. I promise.” Then just a couple of shout outs.
[00:49:22] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:22] That was, that was gold.
[00:49:23] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:23] That is
[00:49:23] Caity Cover: [00:49:23] gold.
[00:49:25] I’m a pretty good writer. Oh yeah. I’m actually a very good writer. I used to write a lot in college.
[00:49:30] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:30] That’s,
[00:49:31] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:31] I will do the
[00:49:31] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:31] you tell stories, I’m like, did she keep
[00:49:33] Caity Cover: [00:49:33] a journal
[00:49:33] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:33] something cause you should, because you say all sorts
[00:49:35] of wicked things all the time.
[00:49:36] You should write down.
[00:49:37] Caity Cover: [00:49:37] Okay. But as long as no one ever gets their hands on it,
[00:49:40] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:40] She has a couple shout outs,
[00:49:41] Caity Cover: [00:49:41] God.
[00:49:42] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:42] Marc I
[00:49:44] want to thank you for everything except,
[00:49:48] Caity Cover: [00:49:48] Oh no, I remember this.
[00:49:50] Marc Gonyea: [00:49:50] What was it
[00:49:51] Chris Corcoran: [00:49:51] losing the amazing race for our team on week one
[00:49:55] Caity Cover: [00:49:55] I remember yelling at you. I don’t, I was out of town and I just
[00:50:00] remember being so angry
[00:50:02] that the one time I missed you guys lost it for us, that I came up to you in front of everybody and I was like Mack do you have a
[00:50:09] second?
[00:50:10] And were like, yeah, what’s up. I was like, how dare you lose on week
[00:50:14] one?
[00:50:15] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:15] What happened?
[00:50:16] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:16] Oh, I can’t remember.
[00:50:18] Caity Cover: [00:50:18] Do you remember what you had for breakfast
[00:50:19] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:19] Marc blew it for the team.
[00:50:23] Caity Cover: [00:50:23] He
[00:50:24] really did
[00:50:24] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:24] for
[00:50:25] the win.
[00:50:25] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:25] Fond
[00:50:27] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:27] But that’s it. That’s
[00:50:29] Marc Gonyea: [00:50:29] that was your biggest loss.
[00:50:31] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:31] And then to me, “thank you for listening to my rants at 6:00 PM when I’m not sure how to respond to prospects who want to try to get a job at memoryBlue.”
[00:50:40] Caity Cover: [00:50:40] Oh, I forgot about that.
[00:50:42] Yeah. “
[00:50:43] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:43] Also, thank you for remembering some pretty embarrassing rants I had in Costa Rica. I really enjoyed the Blue Moon.”
[00:50:49] Caity Cover: [00:50:49] I was hoping that you guys would forget that.
[00:50:54] Chris Corcoran: [00:50:54] Yeah, well two more, two more pieces. “But on a serious note, I cannot thank you all enough. You’ve created an incredible work environment that fosters not only a future, but lifelong friends for the journey. I up and moved across the country for the second time in one year, hoping to find a career that I could fall in love with. That and so much more happened.
[00:51:11] I can honestly say there isn’t a single person at memoryBlue that I don’t get along with. It’s crazy that in the last seven months, my entire life has changed with the training and mentorship that has been provided. I’m very confident I will find success throughout my future.”
[00:51:25] And then one more shout out. It goes to a friend, roommate, Abby. Poetry.
[00:51:30] Caity Cover: [00:51:30] Gale, what did I write to Gale?
[00:51:33] Chris Corcoran: [00:51:33] “Roses are red,”
[00:51:34] Caity Cover: [00:51:34] God.
[00:51:35] Chris Corcoran: [00:51:35] “Violets are blue. Thank goodness memory blue brought me to you.
[00:51:41] Caity Cover: [00:51:41] Oh my God.
[00:51:42] Marc Gonyea: [00:51:42] Oh you were a great writer. Maybe we should take the great writing part back.
[00:51:45] Caity Cover: [00:51:45] And it’s gone.
[00:51:46] Marc Gonyea: [00:51:46] It started off strong.
[00:51:48] Caity Cover: [00:51:48] Poetry was never my strong point. That’s so funny.
[00:51:57] Chris Corcoran: [00:51:57] So any, any parting shots to the listeners?
[00:52:03] Caity Cover: [00:52:03] Hey, be where your feet are. Grind it out. It’ll happen. Speak it into the universe. It’ll happen.
[00:52:10] Chris Corcoran: [00:52:10] Very good for me.
[00:52:12] Marc Gonyea: [00:52:12] You said it so well. Thank you. Awesome.
[00:52:15] Chris Corcoran: [00:52:15] This was a lot of fun.
[00:52:15] Caity Cover: [00:52:15] This was fun. I can’t wait to win the Phenom Award and get a, an office named after me.
[00:52:22] Chris Corcoran: [00:52:22] Speak it. Speak it into the universe. Right Caity?
[00:52:25] Caity Cover: [00:52:25] Oh, I spoke it into the universe. It’s C-A-I-T-Y in
[00:52:29] Chris Corcoran: [00:52:29] Denver. First
[00:52:30] Caity Cover: [00:52:30] name only.
[00:52:30] Chris Corcoran: [00:52:30] There you go.
[00:52:32] Marc Gonyea: [00:52:32] Love it.