Francesca Platten is a Client Director at Godel and has been part of the growing sales team in Godel’s Manchester HQ for just over a year, responsible for building relationships and forging new long-term partnerships. We sat down with Francesca as she reflects on her 1st year at Godel, what she has learnt so far, and what she is looking forward to in 2024.

How would you sum up your first year at Godel?

I think it’s fair to say this year has been challenging, not only as a sales person, but as someone new to the industry. As a result of a tough economic year in the UK, I have witnessed businesses having to reduce or cap their spending in order to stay above the bottom line which has made it a difficult task at times to find businesses who are considering nearshore partners.

Naturally, this has impacted my exposure to the industry as a whole, but thankfully Jack, Chris and the Godel team continue to support my development in other ways: I am part of governance groups for existing clients so that I get first-hand experience of how our managed services works day-to-day, weekly training sessions with our Pre-Sales teams to broaden my software knowledge and access to external and online training courses to better my inter-personal skills. So overall, a challenging year, but also a year of significant personal development as well.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

I love that I get to meet with new people and businesses regularly which allows me to constantly learn something new. I’m quite an inquisitive person, so learning about what a business does, how they leverage technology, their objectives and goals for the year, and people’s roles and responsibilities within that business is something that never gets tedious for me.

There’s so much opportunity to learn in this industry as it evolves and develops constantly, so I know there will never be a time where I know everything. Equally, there were 436,000 new businesses registered in the UK in H1 of 2023, so I don’t see the opportunity to meet new people/businesses and understand what they want to achieve declining any time soon. 

Has anything in the role surprised you?

Something that has surprised me is the number of people involved in the process of partnering. In my previous role, the ‘sales cycle’ often involved myself, a sales manager, a general manager and an operations manager, with a Procurement Director and Health and safety Manager on the client side. Because of the complexity, sensitivity of technology, varying technical requirements and impact on the business our solutions have, there is a significant number of stakeholders involved.

To take a business with a requirement through our process to onboarding and commencement, it involves: myself, VP Sales, our pre-sales team, multiple division managers, our CTO, the finance team, our CEO, CFO and our Service Delivery team. To then consider who is involved on behalf of our partners, you only scratch the surface of CTOs, Engineering Directors, CFOs, CEOs, Security Managers and Product Teams.

Being based in Hull, how have you adapted to a mostly remote role but still stay connected to your team?

I have worked from home for a number of years now, so I knew what to expect from working remotely at Godel. I go into the Manchester office once a week along with the other remote people in the team. But outside of this, I have weekly calls with management, pipeline reviews, training sessions, stand-ups and retros which give me additional time with the team. There are always things being discussed in our Sales team chat or in the Pre-sales chat which gives me wider business contact and I get to spend time with members of the Service Delivery on our client calls which is great.

We are a close-knit team, I don’t think there’s a day yet when I haven’t spoken to at least 4 of my team, so it’s safe to say I don’t have a problem staying connected to them all very regularly.

What are you looking forward to starting in the new year?

I’m looking forward to the prospect of a better market for everyone. After numerous conversations this year, I know that a number of businesses are looking to do some exciting things with their technology function in 2024 which Godel can be a part of.

Thankfully with inflation rates slowly coming back down, businesses are looking to spend again in the New Year and it’s the idea of being involved in those exciting solutions, strategy discussions and innovation that I’m looking forward to.

What advice would you give to someone starting a new role in sales?

My advice would be to fail fast and learn quickly. Working in sales is very dynamic and as a result, you must change your approach to things regularly, especially when it comes to prospecting, as no two businesses are the same. Don’t be afraid to try something new, and if it is a “flop”, learn from it and try something else, don’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results – adopt an agile mindset in what you do.