The real test comes in showing potential customers why your offering is the best choice. While handling sales on your own might work in the beginning, scaling your business means building a strong sales team. That’s where Alan VanTassel comes in, dedicating his career to helping businesses develop effective sales strategies that drive growth and success. For Alan, it’s even a bit of fun.

Alan has an impressive career in sales, during which he has helped build and run sales teams for both smaller and larger businesses. He began as a Market Sales Manager for Verizon, and then moved on to create his own business, Glens Falls Technology Group. He has also been the director of Sales for GSS Infotech and the Executive Vice President of Sales for Stored Technology Solutions Inc. Each role allowed him to develop the skills necessary to build productive sales techniques and manage sales people effectively. His prior experience also helped Alan realize what he wanted to do with his life, and that was to share the skills he had learned with other companies. “What I found over that time was that I really enjoyed helping salespeople be better at the art or skill of sales, and what I really enjoyed was helping businesses build scalable sales models that could withstand the test of time and allow business owners, stakeholders, decision makers to achieve their goals,” he said.

Working with different businesses, Alan realized that many people overlooked the importance of sales, not understanding how much effort it requires. “They more often than not had no prior sales experience, sales training themselves,” he explained. Wanting to be able to help businesses with the knowledge he obtained throughout his career, Alan became an Outsourced Sales VP with Sales Xceleration.  “When I had this opportunity to go out and start my own consulting company in the area that I wanted to focus on, which was this space of small and mid-size companies that struggle with sales, and sales growth, and hiring the right people to be in the right seats, and to be able to run their business and achieve the goals that they aspire to achieve, I jumped all over it,” Alan explained.

He observed that businesses often struggle with two key areas when it comes to sales. The first is that many business owners underestimate the time and energy required. “The biggest misconception a lot of business owners make is they think sales is easy,” Alan noted. “It’s a lot easier for owners and founders of companies that are just passionate about their business that exude confidence. It’s not that easy to hire salespeople to do the same thing, so there’s an art to it. Sales is a skill that requires unique personalities.”

Even those who recognize the importance of building a strong sales team often face a second challenge: knowing how to hire the right people, which is another area where business owners struggle, according to Alan. “They have to have what I call the ‘will to sell’ and they need to have sales DNA,” he said. The sales industry is not easy and there are plenty of competitors. Being a hard-working and dedicated individual is crucial for success, and that’s what Alan refers to as the ‘will to sell.’ They also need to understand exactly what they are offering people. “You have to do this thing called ‘sales,’ in my opinion, with a true passion and commitment to do the right thing for people. It’s not about selling something, it's about learning how to have conversations with business people to figure out how you can potentially bring value to them,” Alan emphasized. 

Alan’s first approach when helping a business is always to figure out where they are starting. Before even hiring a salesperson, or managing the existing team, he needs to know what strategies and infrastructure are in place, if any exist. From there he helps either build a new sales infrastructure or redesign the existing one to improve any weak areas. From there, Alan usually transitions into more of a sales management role to ensure the sales infrastructure is running smoothly, and the salespeople hired are receiving proper training. However, his goal is always to ensure that he builds a strong enough foundation that the company can be successful without him. “My model is that if I do a good job, I eventually work myself out of a job because I’ve built the infrastructure, we’ve hired the right people, and then I just stay engaged on a less regular basis,” Alan explained.

By outsourcing their VP of Sales, Alan allows businesses to get the valuable experience he possesses, without having to commit to a full-time employee. “They’re not often paying me for the work that I’m doing, they’re paying me for the 30 years experience,” said Alan. This is much more cost effective, and produces quicker results. “I have a huge network of resources that I can reach out to in almost any industry if I need additional help,” he shared. This includes assistance on detailed industry-specific topics. Additionally, Alan knows what it’s like to run a business and how draining it can be on a person. “I remember vividly — I’ve just never forgotten this— that running your own business is hard and it’s lonely at the top,” Alan said,  “There’s a whole lot of gratification that comes out of working with people that sit in those kinds of seats, that just are struggling, and to be able to see them focus their time and energy on things that they’re passionate about and fix a problem for them, it’s a lot of fun.” For more information about how you can outsource your VP of Sales, scan the QR code below to visit Alan’s website.