Passion plus experience equals great results. An avid marketer, Gail Mercer-MacKay combined a passion for storytelling with years of sales & marketing experience gained at technology firms to found MercerMacKay Solutions.
As a business owner and innovator, Gail understands the challenges of the corporate world and believes strongly in mentorship as a path to produce results. She has inspired many to forge their own IT journey. Along with her enthusiasm for story-telling, Gail is a problem-solver committed to helping people build valuable business and personal connections.
During her years working in the world of IT sales, Gail learned the kind of messaging that customers want to hear from technology companies, but it was when she left the role of VP of Sales & Marketing for a Microsoft ISV that her entrepreneurial journey really began. She started a small agency helping Microsoft partners tell their stories, market themselves and connect with customers. Over time, she built a successful agency that cracked and then exceeded the million-dollar revenue ceiling, something that few female entrepreneurs are able to do.
Recognize Opportunities
Gail prides herself on being a risk-taker but believes in making calculated bets. Along her journey, she carefully assessed available opportunities before investing, ultimately building an agile, resilient, scalable business that offers value to a broad community of clients.
Throughout her career, she witnessed start-ups being built – some were successful while others failed – and took those lessons forward when she established Mercer-MacKay. She set out to create something unique, fostering a culture where everyone at the company could both contribute to its growth and share in its success.
A Strong Advocate for Women in Cloud
Today, Mercer-MacKay is a Microsoft supplier and partner. Chaitra Vedullapalli – Founder of Women in Cloud – introduced Gail to the Women in Cloud (WIC) Microsoft Cloud Accelerator. During her six-month accelerator journey, Gail built her own application on Microsoft Dynamics in the Azure cloud.
Gail says, “The WIC Accelerator opened my eyes to the power of the Microsoft Dynamics platform. It’s a great technology to build on and it’s fantastic for women entrepreneurs who want to build in the cloud because you can get into the market really quickly using ‘citizen developers’ for no-code/low-code programming.”
As a Microsoft Dynamics partner, Mercer-MacKay was able to build MVP(Minimum Value Product) for under $100,000, going from paper to product in 8 weeks. Gail credits her participation in the WIC Accelerator for helping MercerMacKay receive software development funding, allowing the team to then develop a revenue-generating version.
Mercer MacKay launched its first software module one year ago and immediately had 300 registrants generating over $200,000 in sales. The company’s annual sales revenue went from $3M to $6M and it was selected by Forrester[1] as one of the world’s top marketing firms for providing channel marketing solutions to technology companies.
Expanding Diversity in Canada
Mercer-MacKay’s plan to build on Microsoft Dynamics as well as Gail’s participation in the WIC Accelerator attracted a lot of attention, including that of the Canadian government. The NRC IRAP program provided funding to help with expansion and the company grew 79% in the past year. In 2020 Mercer-MacKay was ranked number 7 in the top 100 companies certified as a Great Place to Work in Canada, highlighting their focus on women and inclusivity.
A Big Believer in Giving Back
Gail sees Mercer-MacKay as part of an ecosystem; she believes in nurturing all parties, including employees, partners, customers, and suppliers. To that end, the company holds daily meditation breaks, and offers both healthcare and mental health benefits. At the outbreak of the pandemic, they put extra support in place to ensure everyone was cared for, including offering special tutors for parents homeschooling their children as well as additional ‘pandemic-days ‘off.
In her life and her work, Gail is guided by the Zig Ziglar quote that says: “You will have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get everything they want.”