After two years caring for (in the best possible way) one of Oracle’s biggest life sciences relationships, I made a jump that looked backwards on paper and turned out to be exactly the stretch I needed: Client Director at NetApp, December 2021.

Instead of one giant account, I picked up four — an energy utility, an automotive manufacturer, an investment/wealth management firm, and a life sciences company, all in Southern California, all completely different animals. If Oracle had taught me how to go deep on one relationship, NetApp was about to teach me how to go deep on four at once, in four industries that don’t share a single vocabulary. #RangeOverDepth

The account that ended up defining the chapter was Southern California Edison — a name most people know as “SCE” and not much else, until you’re inside their infrastructure conversations and realize how much of what keeps the lights on in this paart of the state runs through decisions made in rooms like the ones I was suddenly sitting in. Capital Group was the other big one — completely different risk profile, completely different definition of “uptime,” completely different buying committee. Two accounts, same building block (NetApp storage), two entirely different sales.

The real work, though — the actual “rebuild” part — was less about winning anything new and more about changing the conversation. NetApp walked into most of these accounts known as a storage vendor. My job was getting the same people who’d been buying arrays and shelves for a decade to start talking to me about cloud, SaaS, hyperscaler integration, and business continuity instead. That’s a slower sell than it sounds — you’re not pitching a new product, you’re asking someone to reclassify what they think you’re for. #NotJustHardware

It worked out: 180% of target in FY22 2H, 210% in FY23 1H — and more importantly, conversations that used to start and end with “how much storage do you need this quarter” started including cloud strategy and resilience planning instead.

Two and a half years in, another opportunity pulled me toward something I hadn’t done in a while: getting back into a pure healthcare vertical, and picking up an individual quota again alongside leading a team. That’s next.

#NetApp #MultiCloud #SoCal #AccountManagement