I recently had the chance to sit down with Riley who works with one of our partners - Glidefast Consulting - to learn about her experience participating in Shark Camp for Partners.

In her own words...

Hi. I’m Riley Jankowski. I’m an inside sales representative at Glidefast Consulting and a recent graduate of the University of South Carolina. Glidefast is an elite ServiceNow partner with offices in Massachusetts, Texas, and Ohio, although I’m based in New York City.

Today, I want to tell you about my experience at ServiceNow Shark Camp and how it has helped me co-selling solutions with the ServiceNow sales team.

I heard about Shark Camp shortly after I joined Glidefast, and I was really interested in the sales simulations and ServiceNow guest speakers. So, when my SVP asked me if I wanted to go, I jumped at the chance. As someone fresh out of college, it was a great opportunity to learn about value selling and how to partner with ServiceNow. And it was awesome to have the opportunity to network with people like me from other ServiceNow partners.

I spent three days at Shark Camp. Each day, we’d start out with tutorial sessions and then do a hands-on simulation to put what we’d heard into practice. Then we’d hear from a ServiceNow guest speaker and wrap up the day with a Kahoot! game. I looked forward to the game at the end of the day—it was really fun and reinforced what we had learned. And, while we covered something new every day, it was all connected together.

One of the biggest things I learned was solution selling. It taught me that there’s no point in trying to sell unless you’re addressing a specific problem. And it showed me how to look for things that will make the customer’s life easier. Understanding Now Value and the value-selling framework really helps you to do that. What I found amazing was that ServiceNow wants you to solve problems rather than just sell products.

It also impressed me that ServiceNow would rather work with partners than sell alone. I’ve seen Glidefast AEs working with ServiceNow sales to grow deal sizes, and Shark Camp really drove that home. We learned how to work with ServiceNow to understand customer problems, align them with solutions, and come up with a joint plan to sell to the customer. It’s so much better for everyone when you work with each other instead of against each other. And it’s important to grow that relationship so you can work together for years to come.

We also had great guest speakers from ServiceNow—people high up in the ServiceNow organization who took the time to help us succeed. For example, one of the guest speakers was the ServiceNow VP of global alliances. It was really cool to hear him talk about how marketing plays a huge role in helping partners to co-sell with ServiceNow.

And I can’t stress enough how great it was to talk to other partners. My breakout group was full of other women from the industry. It was so interesting to share our experiences and work together in the sales simulations. We learned as much from each other as we did from the course, and it was awesome how we helped each other to come to the right conclusions.

What has Shark Camp done for me? It’s given me confidence. When I came into the course, I was so nervous since I was one of the youngest people there. However, my confidence grew over the three days, and I’ve taken that back with me to work. For example, we ran a new campaign just after the course, and I felt really prepared to sit on calls with prospects and our AEs. In fact, I’m now transitioning from inside sales to a full AE role. I’m so excited about that. Glidefast is a great place to work, and I really want to grow my career there.