Meet the Team: Interview with Nathan Martin, Client Engagement Specialist

Can you tell us a bit about your career journey so far?

I started out learning electronics when I left school, as I had an interest in how these clever little circuit boards could achieve so many different tasks so quickly. Then, halfway through the course, I realised that rather than designing circuitry, using these circuit boards and manipulating their programming and software was the way of the future. So, I transferred to an IT course, and something just clicked – please excuse the pun.

Since then, I have had various roles, from IT Support Engineer at a vehicle gas and emissions company to running my own small IT service and support company. Wherever I have worked, I have always expanded my knowledge across many areas of IT. From mouse mats to mainframes, I've worked with most technologies. As the world moves away from hardware into the cloud and AI, I have moved with it. The only thing that remains constant in IT is change, and I find it important to move with it.

What led you to join NetMonkeys?

Upon meeting with Nick and then Mike, I felt a good vibe about the vision they both have for growing the business. The energy and forward-thinking radiated from them both. I looked into NetMonkeys and could see the growth they have nurtured over the years and wanted to be part of that moving forward. Thankfully, Mike and Nick agreed.

What excites you the most about the role of Client Engagement Specialist?

With client engagement, I am often speaking with people I have never spoken to before. Building the relationship quickly is an absolute necessity, presenting clear and concise solutions to prospects that will resonate with them and their organisations' plans to grow and improve. I love engaging with new people and discovering what they are about, what is going on in their organisation, quickly adapting my language to their technical level to ensure that what I am saying resonates with their understanding of technology and the benefits it will bring. I only have 20 seconds on a cold call to engage someone, so my opening pitch has to be on point and in line with the thoughts of who I am speaking with. That challenge is what excites me: getting it right as often as possible and adapting on the fly.

What is your approach to building meaningful client relationships?

Being honest and upfront with clients—new, old, or prospective—is paramount. Asking open-ended questions and letting them fill in the blanks. Asking probing questions to drill into their specific needs. Listening and picking out the details of what is important to them. Sometimes telling them what is important to them, which may sound overconfident. However, organisations don't often know they need to improve technology and systems to get to where they want to be. Lightening the load for their employees is often one of the best ways to achieve their goals, and technology always has the solution.

What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned about client engagement?

Two things, really: always be positive. Nobody wants to talk to someone who is down and out. Keep it upbeat and friendly. Secondly, it's never a no until it's a no. What I mean by that is that on any given day, the prospects I am reaching out to are already having a busy day, and then I call them. I get told, "I don't have time for you." But that is not a no; it's just a bad time. So I make a note and reach out to them another time or even ask them when would be good for a call. This has various replies, some of which I cannot write here, but more often than not, a prospect will offer a better time for me to call.

Can you share a memorable experience or success story from your previous roles?

Around 18 years ago, a cold prospect contacted me and told me what he wanted and how he wanted it to be done. They are a company that maintains and monitors off-grid water supplies, wells, springs, boreholes, etc., for. Their engineers would fill out paper job sheets, then have to return to the office (which could be days later) for those sheets to be entered into the system and then processed in accounts for the invoices to be, eventually, sent out. The MD of the company had seen an advert for a piece of software that he believed would be exactly what he needed to move his company forward, although they had no idea of the hardware and training that would be needed to implement.

I went and did a full head office pre-sales survey and discovered exactly what they were trying to achieve. I promptly threw out the MD's idea of what he 'wanted' because he had seen a shiny advert and presented him with a solution that gave them what the company 'needed' and more. The MD was skeptical at first. I had a number of meetings with him, presented him with a full proposal, and when he understood the benefits, he was onboard. Within weeks, I had rolled out a solution using tablets tethered to the engineers' mobile phones, which immediately sent the information back to the server at head office in real time, drastically cutting down on lost job sheets, missed parts used on jobs, etc. Immediately increasing their revenue and efficiency, and with a price tag less than the MD's shiny product he had happened upon. Win-win. The MD was happy with the solution, and the engineers immediately saw the benefits. I continued to work with the company for years and helped them to grow both their client base and their adoption of new technologies.

What do you think makes NetMonkeys’ approach to client support unique?

Being ahead of what they are going to ask, having the solution ready to go before they ask. Fixing problems before they become problems. Offering a service that is silent yet effective. Like a utilities provider, when you turn on the hot tap at home, you expect there to be hot water. NetMonkeys monitor, maintain, and support clients to ensure that when they switch on their tech, it's there for them.

What’s something about you that most people wouldn’t guess at first glance?

For those who remember him, I once played snooker against Jimmy White and lost by about 120 points. I got 3 points, and then he cleared up.

If you could have dinner with any historical or fictional character, who would it be and why?

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Astrophysicist.
He has been involved in so many aspects of our everyday lives that you cannot even begin to imagine. A true legend of our time.

What’s a piece of advice you’d give to someone just starting in client engagement?

Don’t take it personally. Often you get curt responses from people, and sometimes they can be quite rude. I’ve been told all kinds of things about myself and life choices on a cold call. It's nothing personal; I see it as the person on the other end of the call's misunderstanding of why I am calling. There is a famous meme in the client engagement world that shows an army general whose troops are fighting a war with swords and spears. The general is immediately closing the door on a machine gun salesman, saying, "I don’t have time for salesmen right now, I’m trying to win this war."