Jessica Moore applied for a job at Gravity because she wanted a change of scenery. Born and raised in Atlanta, she’d been working as a general manager at an optical retailer chain for seven years and was starting to feel complacent. “I wasn’t being challenged enough,” she says.
She first heard about Gravity while discussing an article with a coworker about CEO Dan Price’s decision to pay everyone at the company a $70,000 minimum wage. Jessica had family in Seattle and, contemplating a career change, she decided to find out more. She started researching online and the information she found suggested Gravity might be her next great opportunity. “It gave me this feeling like this is a company where I feel like it’s small enough for me to come in and impact the company in some way.” She didn’t know anything about credit card processing but had previously studied business and thought this could be a great opportunity to challenge herself.
She moved to Seattle and originally interviewed for a finance position at Gravity. She immediately noticed something different about the company during the interview process. “They were concerned about what my needs were and what would fit me best,” she says. In other words, they knew finance wasn’t right for her. At the end of her second interview, they told her, “We don’t want to hire you for a job that you won’t be happy in, and from our conversations it sounds like you might be happier in a different role. So what are your strengths and what do you prefer?”
Get the Gravity newsletter for the latest FAQs, tools, tips and tricks
Jessica ended up being hired for a job in merchant relations (Gravity’s inside sales department) in October 2016. After just a few months on the job, she started taking on more responsibility and working with a mentor to investigate problems that had arisen with existing clients and figuring out ways to fix them. A few months later, she started working with the finance department to identify accounts that were losing money and come up with solutions to put them back in the black.
About a year into her tenure at Gravity, she started thinking bigger picture and realized, that, as the company had grown, it had become more important to retain existing clients rather than just focus on acquiring new ones. To help boost retention rates, Jessica and some of her colleagues set out to try and figure out how to do this on an account-by-account basis, especially for accounts that didn’t currently have a go-to point-person at the company. At Gravity, she says, “That’s what we pride ourselves on is separating ourselves with customer service and providing value.”
In addition to her efforts on retention, Jessica works with sales reps who have large portfolios to provide support to clients. She also works with sales reps who are transitioning out of Gravity to make sure their accounts are taken care of. She’s also continuing to sell herself and build up her own portfolio, and, as if she weren’t busy enough, she also occasionally accompanies Dan Price to local events where she helps answer questions or address concerns about Gravity’s offerings. In the future, she hopes to either continue ramping up her efforts keeping clients with the company or, perhaps, become a sales manager and work more directly with the revenue-generating side of the business.
When asked about how she’s been able to accomplish so much in just over a year, she attributes her success to Gravity’s culture. “The good thing about Gravity is you are able to do so much because, even on top of [everything that I’ve done] I’ve had the chance to work with [other departments. I’ve worked with] the marketing department. I was the event coordinator on one of Dan’s entrepreneurial organization events, and I’m working with marketing to see if we can create a ‘night with Gravity’ with some of our other partners like our bank partners and reservation-booking partners,” she says. “You don’t have to stay in one box. If you find a need or you’re like ‘this can drive sales, or this will make improvements to the way that we operate,’ you have the ability to voice that to the person who can make an impact or just be the change agent yourself.”
Her advice to those who are interested in working at Gravity? “Focus on what you’re passionate about and never be afraid to voice your opinion or give a suggestion even if you’re not in a leadership role. Always speak up. That’s the only way that you will grow if you’re going to step out of your own box and take ownership of your own career path.”
By Brooke Carey, Content Editor
Interested in joining our team? Check out our Careers page for the latest opportunities.
