How It All Began

"You're hired." Woohoo!

About three years ago, I was thrilled to begin my career as a technical consultant for an accounting software firm. Unfortunately on my first day, my excitement hit a wall when we were told that our main responsibility was to complete "click-through" modules by the end of the first month.

Thankfully, there was light at the end of the tunnel. At the end of that month, we were given a "Demo Call", a ceremonial role-playing call where the more experienced consultants would pretend to be clients and the new consultants, myself included, were running the call.

Excited to show off my skills, I spent all month reading the documentation, clicking through modules, and preparing what I would say. The result? I flopped! My demo day consisted of tripping over words, broken software, and poorly answered questions. But in that 30 minutes, I learned more than what I had the entire rest of the month. Some lessons were so impactful that I still draw on them to this day.

Thankfully for me, even those who excelled on the "Demo Call" were not viewed as client-ready. Why? Because all new consultants needed to get customer-facing road miles before anyone would trust us to run calls. For the next six months, this came more in the form of "passive" road miles, where I would shadow primary consultants 95% of the time, while answering only the easiest questions.

This period was more impactful than "click-through" modules, but still not the same as running the call myself. Basically, I was watching someone else drive a car. At some point after six months, I was finally given the keys to the car and trusted to get my first "active" road miles.

Guess what happened? I flopped again…just this time not as bad as the Demo Call. What about the next call? A little better. The next? Even better. Basically, I repeated this cycle until I was considered just experienced enough to train the new guy. And the cycle continued.

In the moment, I didn't think too much about what this system missed. Taking a closer look, I realized that the vast majority of my learning happened when I was running the calls myself. If that's true, then, why isn't the vast majority of consultant training geared towards providing new hires with "active" road miles? If you put them in front of real clients, then it risks the relationship. If you use the experienced consultants, then it's a resource drain.

But, what if you could simulate client calls with software?

This is why my co-founder and I made Syrenn, to do exactly that!

With Syrenn, you can get active road miles instantly without risking the customer relationship!

See how here.