Transactional vs. Intentional in the SMB Software Space: Inspiration from Italy

It's about 6:20AM in New York City and the sun is just barely beginning to peek over the Brooklyn skyline. I'm about 36 hours being back from my trip to Italy, and still awestruck at not only the beauty of that country, but also the pace of life, and tangential to that, the sincerity of intention that I felt the Italians carried over there in just about everything they do - cooking, wine-making, tour-giving - you name it.

2021 is nearing it's close, and it has been a year of immense personal growth for me. I've been fortunate enough to have stepped in to my first management role - about 72 days in at this point (yes, we're still counting in days!), and this management role has been marked by a return to the SMB (small & medium business) segment - where I started my UCaaS career back in 2015, just over 6 years ago to the day.

I knew in returning to this segment - but still have nonetheless been quickly reminded in each and every meeting I've had - just how fast this segment moves... no, how fast it must move, given the volume of business we are doing. This is especially true at an organization like Zoom, to say the least.

And with that fast pace, we can often "get into the motions" - delivering the same pitch, the same demo, in the same way, day in and day out. My Zoom Phone Specialists work extremely hard and are undoubtedly the absolute best in the business - but that does not make it mentally any easier on any of us, when we are giving as many demos and having as many customer discussions in a day, as we do.

Being Transactional, vs. being Intentional (I am going to capitalize these terms into proper nouns as I believe they are sincerely proper States of Mind), is so critical in this segment and such an important reminder that I gained in Italy.

As I reflect on my time overseas - come back there with me, for a moment.

I am recalling my tour of the Coliseum and of the Roman Forum. This was a dream for me after taking 4 years of Latin in high school, yet having only read about these rich monuments in textbooks until now. In awe of the sincerity and passion of the topic I was lucky enough to be touring and learning about, as I walked through the Coliseum grounds, I asked my guide Giovanni, how many of these tours he gives per day. He said typically at least 2 to 3 per day. Mind you, these are nearly 3 hour sessions, and on this day we walked several miles in our session alone to say the least. Giovanni said he was well into his forties, and has been doing this since he was a much younger man, with a wink. Yet, when I think about Giovanni's tone and candor towards our group, it was beautiful - like the first time he had given this tour after enthusiastically exiting a training and completing a series of college courses on this topic, ready to hit the ground running. Knowledge, intention, and sheer passion for the history was what we felt.

I am then thinking about the pasta-making and wine-tasting class I was so lucky to have the privilege to take in the Tuscan countryside a few days later. Again, I asked our first guide on this leg of the trip, Greta, how many of these wine-tasting courses she gives. Again, I heard, two or three of these per day (each 2 hours long), for the past 5+ years - essentially since she got out of school. Yet she skipped no detail on the notes of the wine, nor the different techniques to evaluate our delectable burgundy and off-white liquids, that we were imbibing. Filling in the space with historical notes about the damp, brooding castle we were in (Castello Del Trebbio), and the history of the Pazzi family in conjunction with the Medici's that once ruled this area, made the experience come alive like you wouldn't believe.

The pasta making was terrific as well. We were there to make Tagliatelle, but our chef also happened to spend extra time giving us techniques on different thicknesses and shapes as well. "Oh! You want to make a ravioli instead?! Haha! Here is how you do it!" he said, beaming, in a thick Italian accent, without us even asking. Our eyes lit up like children as he magnificently showed us, with the finesse and dexterity that only an Italian chef with decades of experience would have.

It felt like we were the only people in the world he had ever given this training to, and he gave it to us with immense passion and outright glee - at moments even teasing us as we attempted to perfect our techniques. Our chef, with all due respect, was well into his fifties, and again, when I asked how long he had been doing this, the answer was essentially his entire life.

For all intents & purposes, for these Italians, we were just another eager bunch of Americans looking to gain some culture & perspective. They had seen hundreds if not thousands of us before, and many more will continue to come after us from all around the world. Yet the passion, energy and excitement they exuded for these topics toward us, again made us feel like we were the only people they had given these tours to, ever, and that we were the most important people in the world. I truly mean that.

I'm "back in the saddle" today, as they say, and feeling so grateful and fortunate to have been able to take my trip to Italy. But I realize the greatest lesson the Italians afforded me was not the wine, nor the pasta (not even the souvenir of several extra pounds, to boot!), nor even the thousands of years of culture that go with it. It was the gift of the reminder to always Be Intentional, and to have an Intentional mindset be an undying flame in whatever you do.

Intention leads to passion, to excitement, and to presentations coming alive, even in transactional environments - whether that transactional environment is in Italy during an in-person tour, or over a Zoom meeting in a software presentation half way around the world, that my team and I operate in. Thank you Italy for these great lessons and opportunity to reflect. Bravissimo, Italia!