Sales Success Stories

Hear the Secrets of World Class Sales Professionals

Clip: 100X Client Sales Success Story

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Clip from Episode 32: Ryan Alvord – Top Sales Professional at Paychex:

There was a company. Again this was this was back in that first year. There was a company that was calling on every month. And again I was really focusing on those bigger companies within my territory. This one was probably you know at least a hundred times my average sized client. Right. So this is a very very big client and this company I called them once a month for about six months and on the sixth month calling my point of contact there the lady kind of laughed and said: What can I do so you’ll stop calling me? And I said if he’ll give me 15 minutes to come and meet with you I’ll stop calling you. And She said deal and we scheduled a meeting and I went in and we had a 15 minute meeting and I went through why my clients come on board with with our services. And she said I can’t believe I’m saying this but I’d be open to taking a look at a demonstration. So I came back and I did a demonstration for her and her team. You know I don’t know 10 or 12 people or so. And she kind of said the same thing at the end of that meeting she said. Again I can’t believe I’m saying this but let’s look at pricing so we came back and we talked about pricing and and she made a decision. Long story short she made a decision to come on board and get started and they were clients for many many years with us. And I always like that story because if I would have stopped after that fifth call I don’t get that deal. It’s that sixth call and a lot of people do a lot of you will stop after two calls or three calls. But if I would have stopped after 5 again I don’t get that deal. By making that sixth call I got the appointment I got in. And you know just to kind of give you an estimate for I mean that that commission on that deal I mean more than allowed me to pay cash for a brand new Audi that year. I mean so you know just one more call made such a difference. In addition to that I mean the client was a great reference for us. She helped me bring on you know at least probably 10 other clients just by being a reference for me so you know just making those calls. A lot of times it just seems like it’s not going to be successful but you just keep pushing through and it will pay off.

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Clip: Specific Follow-up

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Clip from Episode 32: Ryan Alvord – Top Sales Professional at Paychex:

I just go through those folders and I follow up individually with them. I mean I do do some mail merges here and there but that’s not really that’s not really what works with companies. It really needs to be specific follow-up to them where you can reference something specifically about them and you know it does help that they do need to know your name. They need to know you then you remember talking to you as well just an e-mail will not work.

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Clip: Consistent Persistence in Sales

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Clip from Episode 32: Ryan Alvord – Top Sales Professional at Paychex:

I think it’s a cliche thing to say in sales is that you’re just persist. But I think there’s really really a craft to it. I look at it from this perspective. I assume that at any point in time about 5 percent of my prospects are frustrated with their current vendor. The problem is that this 5 percent is always changing right. So it might be different every week. There might be a different 5 percent that’s interested in looking every week. So from my perspective I really need to make sure that my name was in front of that 5 percent whenever they were ready to look. So it might not be this week it might be you know two years from now but I didn’t want them to forget about me so I really had to find a way to follow up the right way consistently, persistently. And it needs to be done tactfully as well. Right. So you have to follow up in a way that’s pleasant. You can’t come across too pushy. Nobody likes that type of sales rep but you do need to stay top of mind for them so that when they’re ready to make a switch they’re thinking of you they’re going back to an e-mail that they got from you a week ago and just responding to it and say yep you know what we’re ready to look now.

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Clip: Understanding what clients are looking for

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Clip from Episode 32: Ryan Alvord – Top Sales Professional at Paychex:

Those first few years helped me to really learn a lot about our products and services and it was a big advantage when I went into sales because I already understood what we provide and more importantly I understood what our clients were looking for. In addition to that I really made a conscious effort to learn about my my partner’s products and services. One of the big things I think that helped me was that when a company would bring up a question about another product that the company offers I didn’t have to bring in somebody to answer that question. I knew it on the spot it gave them a lot of confidence in me as a you know as a specialist for them. And it also just was a lot more efficient than than setting up another meeting and bringing other people in. So I think knowing my products really well in addition to knowing my partner’s products within the company was was another big advantage for me.

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Clip: Hard Work Early On – Meeting with Anyone and Everyone

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Clip from Episode 32: Ryan Alvord – Top Sales Professional at Paychex:

Number one for me was really the hard work that I put in early on in my career. Right. So that first six months first you know six to 12 months was the key for me. What I did was I went through every single prospect in my territory. I called them all. I found out who my contacts were there. And I stayed in touch with those over the course of my career. But more importantly I would meet with anyone and everyone that would meet. So I think one thing that I did differently than a lot of reps that I’ve talked to is I didn’t over qualify who I was meeting with. I agreed to meet with anybody that would sit down and talk with me. And these early introductions really paid off paid off well over time. It also gave me a lot of practice. Right. So meeting with anyone and everyone instead of being very selective about who I was going to sit down with it gave me a lot of practice. It helped me to really you know get better at what my what my conversations would look like with with companies. I also was able to get a lot of business during that time that I probably didn’t expect to get. So some companies that didn’t seemed like they were really in a buying process yet that I agreed to meet with surprised me a lot of times and they would end up they would end up buying and if they didn’t buy then a lot of them would buy later on there’s still companies today that I bring on board you know eight nine years later that I had met with had met with in that first year. And so they remember me and they stay in touch and it really really helped me to you know sell a lot more business over time. So that’s number one. I think one of the biggest keys to my success here.

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Episode 32: Top 10 at Paychex for 8 Consecutive Years – Ryan Alvord

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Ryan Alvord - PaychexRyan Alvord — Repetition, Persistence, and Consistency
The practice will make you perfect.

Ryan Alvord is the top sales representative at Paychex in their Large Market Division, selling HR and payroll technology and services. Of the 400 reps in his division, Ryan has finished in the top 10 for eight consecutive years, and last year finished #1. Ryan shares his experiences of moving from an operations role to a sales role and talks about how his persistence and consistency have allowed him to Continue Reading …

Clip: Better Sales Networks

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Clip from Episode 31: SalesLoft’s Top AE – Kevin Walkup – Leverage Your Network:

SalesLoft was growing again I was 16th employee and we got to 50 employees I was thinking to myself was like wow we’re at 50 employees I could have lunch with a different person at my company once a week every day for a year or every week for a year. So I started thinking alright I’m going to start doing this. I sent out a doc hey sign up and I’ll take somebody’s lunch every Wednesday a different person. And doing that was probably one of the best decisions I ever did. In sales you kind of get stuck in your little sales silo in your corner you know with your sales team. He talked to the sales team. I wanted to know more about other people my organization. Taking an engineer out to lunch somebody that would typically not reach out to you and you know to have a conversation and have lunch with. And I’ve made more great relationships by doing that over the last three years than I could ever imagine. And it’s really helped especially when I’m in a deal cycle and I have a very unique question I can go to one of these people that I’ve now known for three years that maybe other people in the sales team don’t know that well I go and ask hey here is a really technical question how would you answer this or what would what would be our answer from an infrastructure perspective. You know since we have that relationship they’re really are always more than willing to help. So it’s been very impactful for me and I love getting to know other people especially outside of the sales world and learning about them and not even talking about work talking about how they got to SalesLoft or you know where they come from. When they grew up or what did they do what they do outside of work. It’s it’s been awesome to be able to be part of that that culture and be involved in you know people’s lives outside of just the sales team. That’s that’s huge. And you know I think at some level sure you can be the the lone wolf and you can try and take this all on your shoulders and you can go do it. But when you get to a certain point and I’m thinking of my interview with Trong Nguyen who was managing a $50 million book of business for Microsoft. He’s like you can’t begin to do that by yourself and it takes a lot of other people and those relationships are really important and it reminds me of literally the best thing I’ve ever read on networking in my career and I’ve I’ve read a fair amount about networking for a variety of reasons. There was a Harvard Business Review article and again we’ll find the link for this and we’ll put it up at top1sales.wpengine.com/kevin. I’m pretty sure the article is called “Better Sales Networks.”

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Clip: “They’re burning bridges because they’re not being authentic in the way that they’re engaging”

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Clip from Episode 31: SalesLoft’s Top AE – Kevin Walkup – Leverage Your Network:

We have to be mindful about I make a point of asking when I’m spending time with the marketing executives and the c-level folks in my network. I always ask them particularly in the marketing space which I think is probably the most it feels to me like one of the most saturated places in the world because there are literally thousands of tools out there so if you’re a V.P. of marketing or you’re a CMO like you’re screwed. I don’t know how they operate with the amount of salespeople reaching out to them and I asked them I like. So what do you actually respond to like how do you deal with this and was talking with with one of those individuals just recently and I’ve seen this sort of validated in some other things here recently is like yes you know what. The first message. Like as soon as I can tell that this is generic not personalized I got loaded into some type of a spam cannon. He says I just take a second and I create a rule that’s going to make sure that I never see messages from that individual or that company ever again. You’re spot on. And so that this rep is actually doing a disservice by sending those fully automated e-mails. They’re going backwards. They’re burning bridges because they’re not being authentic in the way that they’re engaging and that’s to your point. Those marketing folks, I’m glad I’m not in market because they just get bombarded all day every day and you’ve really got to do something to make it through that so you’re not getting tagged as hey never ever reply to somebody from this organization because they’re just trying to fully automate the sales process and going back to the evils of some of these tools that these tools aren’t built for reps to just dump in a thousand people put their feet up and you know casually check for replies every couple of hours. You know it’s meant for automating the menial tasks of what I struggle with. Logging those things in your CRM or making sure you’re being persistent in following up but still doing it in a authentic way customizing that message and not just fully automating the entire sales process because that’s just only going to do a disservice.

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Clip: “I’m a huge fan of Vidyard”

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Clip from Episode 31: SalesLoft’s Top AE – Kevin Walkup – Leverage Your Network:

I’m a huge huge fan of Vidyard they are doing just a fantastic job by humanizing that element. Hey I’m going to sift through all the rest of that junk in your inbox. I’m going to send you like you said a video with you holding that white board. It’s so impactful because you really stand apart from all of the other mess in their inbox and people are genuinely more interested. I had a prospect tell me the other day they would rather spend a minute watching a video that’s personalized to them than 40 seconds reading an email. So they’d rather spend more time with something that’s more engaging and more beneficial to them. So I’m absolutely a huge fan of Vidyard. SalesLoft actually has a Vidyard integration for their freemium version and they are absolutely fantastic. Love them over there. Great company.

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Clip: The good and evil of sales engagement tools

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Clip from Episode 31: SalesLoft’s Top AE – Kevin Walkup – Leverage Your Network:

You’re exactly right. Good and Evil. There’s two different ways to leverage a sales engagement tool. You can try to boil the ocean and say alright I always send an e-mail to a thousand people and it’s going to be an email that’s me generated. This is who I am this is what I do this is and this is why you should be talking to me. That’s a very me focused e-mail. And I think a lot of that is what you’re seeing and getting posted on linked in people you know with bashing you know ad sales emails because there’s no like you mentioned human to it. It’s a robot going through that and by leveraging a solution like SalesLoft or any sales engagement platform the right way. You have to have that human element you have to be authentic in the way that you’re engaging. That email needs to be about them. It needs to be about how you understand their business and how you understand that they might have some challenges that you might be able to help with and that you want to earn their business not just hey you should do business with me because I’m sending you a templated e-mail. You really have to be sincere in the way that that you’re engaging and make that engagement about them and how they can be better off by having a conversation with you.

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