Meet Richard. Richard talks all about what a typical day at Fourteen looks like, what he enjoys most about his role and his biggest mentor.

Tell us a bit about yourself; your career background? 

I started working in hotels aged 13 as a part time waiter (Where I met my wife) and have since been connected to hospitality for over 30 years. Ironically, when I went to see a school’s career advisor, I only knew what I didn’t want to do and that was work in hotels! I then spent the next 15 years working as a restaurant manager, a chef and food & beverage manager for Marriott. I set up my own catering business after getting funding from The Prince’s Trust (I even met and spoke to Prince Charles but I couldn’t place the photo so here is another Hospitality event I attended at Buckingham Palace where i met the Duke of Edinburgh) and during that time I really enjoyed the sales and marketing aspect of the business and less so the long hours, no holidays and constant weekend work, so I studied for my marketing diploma at Salford University. After various sales and marketing roles within tech firms I joined Fourteen IP in 2014.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

There are so many things I enjoy about my job and it’s never dull. I like the different people I meet from all over the world, technology never stands still so there is always something different to learn, I get to go to some amazing hotels but most of all its trying to help and support our customers because it does make a real difference.

Who has been the biggest influence in your career?

I’m lucky to have worked for a few very good entrepreneurs who all share things in common which I try and learn from – work ethic, commitment and drive. If you work hard, be honest and true to yourself, have goals and treat others well you’ll probably do ok.What does a typical day look like for you and what are you currently working on?

My role is really varied but typically it starts with me going through my emails which can dictate what happens for much of the rest of the day. These might include requests for pricing, changes to proposals, product questions or recommendations to address challenges. I spend time helping and discussing opportunities with my team so we can close business. I’m frequently reviewing our sales forecast and chasing my own opportunities – there are very few times in the day when I’m not thinking about sales targets and what we need to do to close the gap. I get lots of calls from customers as you would expect and often I’m on the phone to pre-sales asking questions and discussing customer and product options. My current key projects are working on some big renewals coming up in 2020 and product campaigns around Myco 3, Internet circuits and EVA (Evolution Virtual Agent).

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