Why I’m the JerBear…at Sprinklr

Given my penchant for nicknames in my personal life, it probably won’t come as a surprise to you that I’ve rolled this over to my professional life. In fact, on the Sprinklr marketing team, we kind of view it as a rite of passage.

Managers are given 1 month from a new employee’s start date to hand down the nickname, which is then listed in their official email signature.

Yes, you read that correctly.                                                                                    

Now, I’m pretty firm on what constitutes a good nickname (documented here), but the basic idea is that you should not be able to figure out immediately how the person’s nickname is connected to their actual name. Otherwise, it’s not really a nickname, more a term of endearment.

What may surprise you is that we’ve discovered that there is immense value in having a nickname in your email signature. Call it the ROI of the Nickname.

I’ve had some of my team members report that they have received responses from potential customers simply based on the fact that the nickname was a part of their email. It indicated that Sprinklr is a different type of company.

We’ve also had an article published in FORBES about it.

However, when it came time for my nickname…the rules were kind of suspended.

One of my peers started calling me “JerBear,” a moniker which then spread to my team.

They decided that they wanted to call me that because, as they said, “a teddy bear is cute, cuddly, and warm…it’s everything you’re not.”

Clearly, I have some emotional intelligence work to do, but that’s a different blog post.

While it’s not really a nickname, per se, I decided that I would embrace it…so it now sits in my email signature.

And now, I have clients, analysts, board members, reporters…and more…all calling me “JerBear.”

It’s a conversation starter—a chance to talk about our philosophy at Sprinklr…and an ice-breaker.

So, at Sprinklr…they call me “Jer Bear.”