Last week, Dataminr held its annual “Sales Kick-Off” meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. For those of you who are not entrenched in the sales and marketing world, a sales kick-off event is an internal conference held at the start of the year, where companies sequester their sales teams for a couple days of intense training, learning, and planning. These weeks are jam-packed with great content, and some fun team-building activities. Our theme for this year’s event was “Serving our Customers with Passion and Purpose.”
One aspect of Dataminr’s culture that I love most is that we truly put our customers front and center in all that we do. Our customer-centric culture is easy to achieve because it’s a natural result of the genuine respect we have for the work that our customers do and the impact they have on the lives of everyday people. When your customer success stories regularly contain things like “number of lives saved,” it’s impossible not to be inspired.
On day 1 of our Sales Kick-Off, we invited a few of our customers to attend and share their stories with our global sales team. They graciously accepted, and not only took the stage to share their experiences in that formal setting, but also stayed through the evening and shared their stories more informally later on over dinner.
Once again, I was blown away by the roles our customers play in their organizations. This is not only true for our public sector clients, where the connection to saving lives through first response is more apparent, but also for our private sector clients. We heard from large global companies discussing how they manage the risk profile for their company’s assets, but also the people involved in producing, transporting, or selling their products. For companies that are involved in moving people around the globe, receiving real-time information that is both accurate and comprehensive enables them to focus on what they do best--assessing risk and taking swift, decisive action to respond most effectively.
In addition to hearing directly from customers, we also listened to a few of our top Account Managers who took the stage to share their individual perspectives on how they serve their clients. The relationships they have built serving their clients over the years showed in the passion that these Account Managers have for the work that their customers do and the pride they feel in playing a supporting role. It’s not just the customer stories we hear in formal settings, such as what we were privileged to experience last week; it’s also the daily stories and feedback that our clients share with us that inspires us every day.
A huge ‘thank you’ to all of our incredible customers who are always on, don’t understand the meaning of “9 to 5,” and quietly carry an enormous load on their shoulders day in and day out. Thank you for sharing your incredible stories with us, as you are truly the inspiration that keeps us motivated to keep pushing forward to serve you with passion and purpose as we move forward into 2020.
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