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Today’s show featured an interview with Tricia Fitzmaurice, Public Sector Vice President of Sales, Rancher Government Solutions.
Find Tricia on LinkedIn.
TRICIA’S TIP: “My ask of my sales teams is to be curious, be invested in who you’re speaking to, be invested into what their mission is, understand why they get up and get out of bed every day and go into work and serve the missions that they do, and then speak to them about those missions and how we can support them.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: All right, thank you so much. Welcome to another episode of the Sales Story and a Tip Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond. Of course, I’m cofounder of the Institute for Excellence in Sales. I’m also the host of the Sales Game Changers podcast. Go to salesgamechangerspodcast.com. And we have one of our guests who was on the Sales Game Changers podcast on today’s Sales Story and a Tip, it’s Tricia Fitzmaurice.
Tricia, give us a little bit of an introduction.
Tricia Fitzmaurice: Thanks, Fred. Thank you for having me here today. I’m glad to be back on with you. So a little bit of an introduction. I’m Tricia Fitzmaurice, the vice president of sales at Rancher Government Solutions.
Fred Diamond: Tricia Fitzmaurice, tell us a story.
Tricia Fitzmaurice: My Sales Game Changer story. I spent a big chunk of my career carrying it back. So I was an account executive outside of a few years, right out of college, always in the US Federal Government space. I spent a lot of time in national security as well. And so one of the things that happens when you do is you find yourself very close to mission and understanding exactly why you do what you do here, even as a government partner entity.
I was working at a company, and I was covering a very large department that had a large number of component entities to it. And I had been successful in selling and getting our products into certain pockets of those various entities, but didn’t have a lot of sort of sponsorship at the executive level of the department CIO level.
And so that department had a new CTO that came in. And I knew that he came in from industry. I knew that he was more of a technical guy. And so one of the things that I have always done as a sales rep was taken take a better understanding as to taking a look at the department’s strategic plans, understanding what those strategic plans are and mapping that back to my product.
So it took about, with this new individual coming into the CTO role, probably about three months just to even get and get a meeting in front of him. So I knew that I had to nail this meeting. Went in completely prepared in the presentation that I was giving to him with, laid up the department strategic plan. Exactly. Talked to him about what I was doing in the various different components, mapped then my solutions back to that strategic plan that they had and talking about sort of how I was supporting mission in the product that I was selling at the time.
And so I get done presenting, and I go through everything, and then I talk about my products a little bit more so that he understands, like, who we are and what we do.
And at the end of it, he just sat there and looked at me and said, did you do that on purpose? And I said, do what on purpose? He said, “I created that strategic plan. I drew up all of the content. I created all the graphics, and you literally just presented it back to me. Did you do that on purpose? Did you know, and I had no idea that he had that.
That was his work! It had been put into the strategic plan. But now I understand why it took me so long to get a meeting!
He was working on that strategic plan, but afterwards, that turned into a really great working relationship that had with that office to where I was able to gain sponsorship there and a better understanding to where I could come back in and sit down with them and say, okay, here’s what we’re doing even more. How about this? How about we look at, you know, how this works from a security standpoint, from across the various components, and. And it just. It turned into something that really allowed me to elevate where I was at in a given customers or set of customers up to a much higher level than I had ever been.
And honestly, it was just from really understanding who I was talking to and really what mattered most to that particular customer. And, you know, to this day, I’m still, you know, I still have a great relationship with that executive.
Fred Diamond: That story is so powerful. That story is so relevant on so many different levels. A, the preparation, but B, also what I found great is we talk to the great salespeople all the time. They truly understand what the customer is trying to achieve. And like you just said, with that customer segment, it is all about mission. You know, life or death mission, right. Peacekeeping mission. Some of the most intense things, especially right now.
Again, we’re doing today’s interview at the end of 2023. There’s so many factors in the world that need to be understood, and there’s so many critical people who are playing a role in making that happen. It’s got to be satisfying to know that you’re assisting with that and that you truly understand what they’re going for.
Trisha, tell us the tip that came away from that story.
Tricia Fitzmaurice: I think that you hit on it. We in Fed IT on the outside. In the private sector, we have the ability to serve individuals that have a very deep passion about what they do. They get up and their job is to go in. And whether it’s, as you talked about, life and death missions or it’s simply in the aid of citizen services, these are individuals who I have, I feel honored in my career to have been able to work beside them because they are some of the most dedicated individuals I have ever met in my entire life. So my ask of my sales teams is to be curious, be invested in who you’re speaking to, be invested into what their mission is, understand why they get up and get out of bed every day and go into work and serve the missions that they do, and then speak to them about those missions and how we can support them.
Fred Diamond: In the DC region, every day the value that the government customer brings, and especially in our roles. A lot of people outside of this area, they always see the bureaucracy of government and the politics, if you will. But when you deal, especially in IT with government IT professionals, especially those who have gotten to the level of the people that you’re typically talking to, it’s about serious stuff and it’s about mission driven.
A lot of times I’ll ask the sales representative, the sales leaders who are on the Sales Game Changers Podcast, you included, why have you chosen serving public sector markets, specifically federal? And it almost always comes down to some relevance of the mission. Maybe family members who were involved in the military, of course, or family members. You mentioned the civilian side in health and human services is, or energy, whatever, education, whatever it might be.
Thank you, Tricia, for the great story!