Jill Ammon is a Senior Account Executive Team Lead at Continuum out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Continuum is an organization that provides a proactive platform to address the key needs and objectives of its clients. With technologies and integrated services spanning security to monitoring, the Continuum platform anticipates and tackles Managed Service Providers’ (MSPs) next challenges, enabling them to grow with confidence. In addition to her role as team lead, Jill wears many hats, including partner acquisition. Jill is an experienced sales executive with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. She places a heavy emphasis on customer relationship management and exceeding client needs. These skills, among others, have transformed Jill’s career and led to her continued success in sales.
In this episode, Jill talks about what sets Continuum apart from their competitors. Primarily, it’s the fact that they make MSPs more profitable and set them up for greater scalability and growth. Jill facilitates this process by recruiting new MSPs, onboarding new customers, and building partnerships with them. Jill even refers to her clients and customers as partners. She identifies three keys that she attributes to her success, including consistency and persistency, honesty, and passion. Jill is a true believer in satisfying partner needs and objectives, which she accomplishes flawlessly with her low-pressure sales style. She makes herself available to her partners when they are ready to buy while simultaneously respecting their time and space.
Jill takes the audience through a typical day in the life, from blasting music to set the tone for the day and checking incoming sales messages, to scheduling her prospecting calls and remaining plugged in after-hours. At the end of the day, Jill is here to help her partners, and her steadfast dedication is a strong testament to that ideal. Jill also shares some sales hacks that she incorporates into her day-to-day, including sorting all of her tasks by time zone so she can work more efficiently. She speaks to her sales philosophy and her homegrown method to sales training. Finally, Jill provides actionable advice to salespeople in the audience. She urges them to develop a pattern of consistency, identify and refine the optimal sales style, and push to operate outside what is comfortable.
What We Covered:
00:24 – Scott takes a moment to thank today’s sponsor, Outreach
00:40 – Scott Ingram welcomes today’s guest, Jill Ammon
00:56 – The top three things Jill attributes to her sales success
01:05 – Number 1: Consistency and Persistency
03:38 – Numbers 2 & 3: Honesty and Passion
06:28 – Jill’s role at Continuum
08:41 – The team lead portion of Jill’s role
11:26 – Scott takes a moment to promote his sponsor, Outreach, once more
11:47 – Jill quantifies her sales results
16:47 – Wearing many hats
18:50 – Jill’s unconventional sales journey
26:05 – Why Jill struggles to declare herself a sales professional
28:59 – Jill and Scott discuss the importance of serving others in sales
30:05 – What Jill would do differently if given the chance
34:23 – Jill’s proudest achievement
35:49 – How Jill maintains her drive and motivation
38:10 – Struggles and hardships Jill has overcome in her sales career
40:46 – Jill describes a typical day in the life
46:28 – How Jill organizes her daily tasks
48:27 – How Jill builds her task list
52:02 – The sales philosophy that Jill subscribes to
55:57 – Tools and apps that Jill uses on a daily basis
57:12 – The books, news and trade information that Jill consumes
58:40 – The genre of music that Jill listens to
1:01:00 – Jill’s travel schedule
1:02:45 – Jill’s approach to sales conferences
1:05:15 – Jill and Scott share their thoughts on having organic conversations at sales conferences
1:08:12 – Jill’s sales style
1:10:07 – The evolution of sales techniques
1:14:47 – The most important career decision Jill ever made
1:16:08 – Advice Jill would give to an upstart sales professional
1:18:19 – Advice Jill would give to a struggling middle-of-the-pack sales professional
1:20:00 – What Jill would like to know about top sellers in other organizations
1:21:52 – Jill’s actionable challenges to the audience
1:23:11 – What Jill’s typical cold call sounds like
Tweetables:
“I think a lot of getting to where I am today really is just my driving work ethic, which I have to attribute that to my parents. They taught my sister and I very well, from a young age, that you have to be motivated to get anywhere in life.” (02:03)
“Continuum’s guiding principles really track with my own personal guiding principles. We call our customers ‘partners’ because it truly is a partnership.” (17:54)
“If you have a product and you have a service, no matter what it is, that you believe in, it’s not really sales. It’s just trying to help people out. It’s trying to facilitate marrying a product and a service to a person who has a need.” (27:01)
“I have two lives that I lead. One is the life that I lead when I go into the office and one is the life that I lead when I work remotely.” (41:10)
“People have this misconception that you go to school for sales. You don’t really go to school for sales. You go to school for business. You go to school for marketing. You just kinda happen to fall into sales.” (50:12)
“Life is busy. You have only a few seconds to deliver that first impression, so you gotta try to be on point, especially if you’re leaving a voicemail.” (1:24:27)
Links Mentioned:
[email protected]
2019 Sales Success Summit
Outreach
Robin Robins’ Conference
Jill Ammon on LinkedIn
Jill’s LinkedIn post