Team Apperio: My first month in the company

Don't plant saplings when you decide you need shade - my first month at Apperio.

I first heard this quote from Ben Ryan, the British rugby coach who led the Fijian 7’s team to Olympic glory in 2016. Ben’s reference was to the preparation of his Fijian Flyers before Rio and I remember discussing with him how it directly correlated to my world in Saas and sales. Whether it is building a pipeline, a relationship or progressing a deal, all of this needs to be done well in advance of when you need to see results. 

Interestingly this is how the opportunity came up at Apperio, one of those relationships that has grown over the past 5 years. 

It has not been difficult to transfer the same approach into Apperio which I know will be critical to prepare me for long term success, I feel like I have been at the company for years not days already and this is purely down to my new colleagues who have really made time to answer even my most basic questions! A real ‘open door policy’ (where the room is Slack!).  

So what has the first few weeks looked like? Without explaining an in-depth approach to my onboarding I have been working through a list of tasks that we agreed would put me in the best possible position to achieve my goal at the company - selling. 

Keen to be able to present Apperio I embarked on placing notes around my home, listening to recordings of colleagues conversations during my daily run and asking the team to listen to my pitch (apologies to the first few people!!) in return for a donation to a charity of their choice so long as they provided critical/informative feedback. This has been hugely helpful in two ways: 

1. Practicing the pitch
2. Getting to know the wider team. Each 15 minute session has allowed for a bit of back and forth, getting to know each other, understanding their role, how we can work together and importantly where they see Apperio add value to our clients 

We have raised a nice sum of money to a diverse group of charities so far!

The other brilliant part of the last few weeks has been speaking to every department, it is clear that the company embraces distributed leadership and everyone feels empowered within their role to innovate and succeed. They say that the sign of true motivation is when you get someone to do something because they want to do it. It certainly feels that way which is an incredible feeling to be part of, knowing that everyone is turning up to move the company forward together. 

I am certainly looking forward to a few more face to face interactions in the coming weeks/months and driving forward the value of Apperio into a high quality market.