80: Breaking the Sales Stereotype with Jill Ammon

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: This episode is sponsored by Outreach. You can check them out and get a free copy of their new book, Sales Engagement: How the World's Fastest growing companies are modernizing sales through humanization at scale by clicking over to top1.fm/outreach. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Jill Ammon. Jill is a senior account executive team lead at Continuum out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and to say that she is consistent would be almost an understatement. Welcome to the show, Jill.

0:55 Jill Ammon: Hi, good afternoon.

0:56 Scott Ingram: So let's jump right in like we always do and talk about the 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success. Success at Continuum?

1:04 Jill Ammon: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think these 2 words go hand in hand, so I'm only going to count it as one: consistency and persistency. There's kind of, you know, no distinguish… to me, there's, there's, there's no difference there. Honesty and passion.

1:18 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Well, let's, let's take one of the… each of those individually. And I'm most interested in the consistency because the way that we connected, you had shared an image on LinkedIn after your 5th year in a row as being the top account executive at Continuum, and there is a giant banner in your office. So, maybe talk about the banner and we'll put that in the show notes. If you go to top1.fm/jill-ammon, that's A-M-M-O-N, we'll include that image there. But talk about that banner and just talk about what, what does the consistency and persistency mean to you and how do you, how does it apply?

1:54 Jill Ammon: Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not, my family would say I'm a natural born salesperson. I say no, because I don't fall into some of the typical stereotypes, but 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. You know, they taught my sister and I very well from a young age that you have to be motivated to get, get any place in life. Can't sit back and let it come to you. So, a lot of that is with the consistency and persistency. So, I am constantly making my calls, running through my sales cycle, working my pipeline. And basically, if someone tells me no today, but they don't tell me to get lost, then I'm going to reach out to them in the future. So, by staying consistent, what my main goal is is to have that person think of me first when the time is right to buy. So, with consistency and persistency, I like to be, I like to walk on the borderline of not stalking the customer, but always having them know that I'm there when needed. So, I don't want to be that annoying salesperson that they're gonna hang up and dread my calls. They told me to follow up in 6 months from now, I'm putting a note in Salesforce and I'm following up with them in 6 months from now. And, you know, that might turn into the conversation at that point, or they might say, hey, you know, if, if, if you don't mind, I'm not quite ready yet. Could you try me back in another month or 2? I'm here to work on their timeline. And I think that that's really been the main focus of, of how I've been able to be a top performer year in and year out.

3:26 Scott Ingram: Love that. Love that. And it's funny, the fine line. My favorite joke there is, is, you know, ultimately what we want is purchase orders and just not restraining orders.

3:35 Jill Ammon: That's a good one. Might have to use that.

3:37 Scott Ingram: There you go. It's free for the stealing. So talk about the honesty piece. And I love that you called out that you don't fit into any of the stereotypes. I don't know that anybody that I've had on this show fits into the stereotypes, right? This is a very stereotype-smashing sort of idea. Like, I think we all have this mental image of what top performers really are, and the reality is a very different thing. And I think you may be much more common than you think in terms of what you are. And I think honesty is one of those elements that comes into play. So talk about that just in a little bit more detail.

4:08 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so absolutely. And, you know, Maybe, maybe the place to start with the honesty is that my very first sales job was working at Best Buy. So I managed a copying and a printing company right out of college for about 13 years. And I had… I just love to travel. So I wanted to go over to London. I won a contest where I got cheap airfare to go to London. And my family freaked out like, oh my God, you're gonna leave the country. It's so expensive. You can't go with just you and a friend. It's not safe, you know, things like that. So I'm like, how am I going to pay for this? So I'm like, well, I guess I better go get a second job. So they had just opened up a Best Buy, you know, pretty close to where I live. And I cruised in and I said, hey, I want to get a job. So they threw me into the video and camera department. And what I liked most about Best Buy was it kind of tracked with, with my own personal morals and kind of the DNA of who I am, that we sold and it wasn't on a commission basis. So you had Circuit City right across the street. Those folks were on commission. So The salespeople, when you'd go over there to buy something, they're pushing what's making them the most money. When you walked into Best Buy, I get to talk to you about things that I've used. I try, try to kind of understand from the customer's perspective of, of what they need and then put them with a product based on what their needs are. So a lot of that really kind of hit home for me because I'm an honest person. If they told me, hey, you've got to try to get them to buy the Sony when all they really need is, you know, the Samsung model or something like that. I probably wouldn't have lasted because I don't like… I've got, you know, Catholic guilt. So I don't want to sell someone something that isn't a good fit for them. So I think that that's really been a lot of who I've been and how I've been so successful over the years is just because I'm an honest person. I believe in telling someone and being upfront with them. If this product is not going to do what you need it to do, don't buy it. My product will do a lot of things. Anything that I've sold over the years, you know, there are always perfect people that this product matches, but then there are people that it's not going to do what you need it to. And I think by being honest, you really set yourself apart from someone that's just trying to get that signed contract and move on to the next sale.

6:27 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. Great stuff. Now, put this all in perspective for us a little bit. Maybe just talk to, talk to us about what is, what is your role?

6:33 Jill Ammon: Yeah. So, I work today, I work with the new partner acquisition team at Continuum. I manage the Southeast territories. So, that's from about traditionally from West Virginia down to Florida over to about Alabama, cover Tennessee and, you know, those states in there. And typically what my main role is, I'm going out, I'm following up with marketing-generated leads, things that we get through website traffic and stuff like that. And I'm doing a lot of cold calling to MSPs, you know, managed service providers within my territory. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to bring them on as new customers for Continuum. We're a platform provider. For managed service providers with a fully integrated NOC and a white-labeled help desk. And our strong suit, and what sets us apart from every other competitor out there, is the fact that we actually can help make MSPs more profitable on their existing contracts and really set them up for great scalability and growth just by doing things the way we do them. It's a business model. It's not, hey, here's a piece of software, come buy it and move on. So what I do is I go out and I recruit new MSPs. Sometimes the sales cycle, like this morning, I had a sales cycle that was probably 2 weeks long, and that's moving to contract. But I have folks that I've actually talked to for 2 to 3 years. Going back to my earlier point, the consistency, the persistency. So, the sales cycle can be pretty long, but basically what, what I'm doing is bringing on new, new customers, getting them into a 1 or 2-year contract with Continuum and getting the start of their partnership. I then work with those particular MSPs for the first 3 months, 3 to 4 months of their And during that time, we can sometimes uncover additional opportunities to cross-sell and upsell some of our other products and services. But what we really want to make sure is that we didn't sell you something that you don't know how to use and implement. We want to make sure that you understand how everything works, what makes it tick, and how to get the best experience out of the products and services to deliver that client the top quality services for backup and, and remote monitoring and security that that we have out there.

8:42 Scott Ingram: Excellent. And talk about the team lead part of your title.

8:46 Jill Ammon: Yeah, sure. So, I was very fortunate. I mean, the evolution of kind of my career at Continuum has kind of been all over the map. I came in and I was part of a team of 10. We had 5 geographic regions throughout the world, but mainly they were focused on the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and Europe. And that was it. That was pretty much the only places at that particular point that we sold to. So, each territory had a senior account executive and then an account executive. So, I started in that account executive role. Probably within 2 to 3 months of that role, I had a colleague who actually brought me to Continuum. She and I worked together at FedEx prior. She, she and I were doing so well that they actually paired us up as 2 juniors in a territory, and we pretty much went out and, and grew that territory crazy. So, after the first 6 months to a year at Continuum, they kind of overhauled how we were doing things, and they figured we need to focus on farming the existing accounts that we have to grow. So, they divided our team in half effectively, and there were 5 of us that were left in the hunter role to then work anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world that we could get new folks. The leads just kind of came in in a round-robin fashion. And through that time, we had a little bit of turnover, you know, some new people joining the team, some people moving to different roles in the company. And really what I started doing was kind of noticing places where there were failures in our process. We're doing things good, but this could be better, and here's how we could do it better. So I kind of was that person that, that took the chance and kind of stuck my, my neck out to go to my senior management. At the time, we were under the marketing department, and I proposed some, some changes and, and some things that could kind of help make our job a little bit more productive, automated a little bit through Salesforce. So since I had been doing that and kind being the one to go out there and kind of take that initiative, my senior vice president, Jean Hopkins, at the time, she decided that they wanted to elevate me above my peers in my group because I was spending a good amount of time training best practice, Salesforce hygiene, things like that for all of our new account executives. And basically kind of just wanted to elevate me to a higher role than a senior account executive because I was still doing my job, doing my job consistently. But I also had all these other responsibilities that that in reality take you away from selling. So, how do you balance that to still be a top performer? So, that's kind of where the team lead title was born from.

11:15 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. And I love that, you know, you're able to make that type of contribution to the broader organization and to your peers and still perform as the, as the number 1 AE. Now, before we talk about Jill's results, let me tell you just a bit more about Outreach. This episode is sponsored by Outreach. You can check them out and get a free copy of their new book, Sales Engagement: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale, by clicking over to top1.fm/outreach. Now, Jill, talk about your results. What, what has it taken to be the number 1 AE for the last 5 years running? And I have to imagine you're on pace to do it for a 6th.

11:58 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so, like I mentioned, we, we've kind of evolved in how we sell our product, how our teams are structured, and things like that. So, that's kind of changed over the years. We used to be responsible when I first started just for bringing on new customers, whether they ended up billing a lot, it didn't matter. How many new customers could you bring on? So, that's kind of where it started. Then, we decided that we have to attach some revenue to it. So, then, we would sell what we called starter packages at the time, and then, it basically came down to how many of those sales did you get. So, those those first couple years of my career here, the first couple titles, I was overachieving. They'd give us a target of, you need to bring on this, this number of customers a year. I'm bringing on more than that. In 2017, we kind of overhauled how we do things. We then had an actual quota that was a dollar amount. So, previously, it was just how many customers did you bring on? And now we switched to a dollar amount. So, you have a quota. Here's how many contracts you need to go out and sell. To get to that quota. So, when we started that in 2017, to be perfectly honest with you, everyone on my team was a nervous wreck because we had never sold anything like that before. So, trying to adopt that mentality of how to have those conversations, how to evolve those conversations to be able to go out and sell contracts, that, you know, that kind of changed. As we kind of transitioned into that, there was sort of like an interim year, which was actually 2017, when we were still kind of doing things as a hybrid of both, where it was sort of monetary, sort of number of partners. And that year, I came in at $180,000. 18% to goal. So, was happy with that. I was like, okay, I don't want to be average. What do I do to be above average? So, in 2018, which was last year, we basically then just hit the mark with going out and selling these contracts. We had a new manager at that point, a manager who previously, you know, had contract sales skills. So, he kind of taught our team how to do that, how to have those conversations, because they were quite different than what we had done in the past. So, last year, going into the tail end of 2018, I can't tell you where I was number-wise. I knew I was over 100%. And I think New Year's Eve fell on a Monday last year, if I'm not mistaken. And that Friday, part of my role as team lead is I check our sales line messages. Okay. And most of them are customer service type messages that I have to pass to the accounting department or, you know, to other departments within Continuum. And it was the Friday right before the holiday weekend going into New Year's. And there was a sales line message from a lady that called and said, hey, kind of help. We need to talk to someone as soon as possible. We think we need your help desk services. So, I shot them an email and I said, hey, you know, when did you want to talk? I don't know. You sounded like you had like an urgent need. I don't know if you're open to it, but I'd be willing to give you my Saturday morning, you know, if it's going to help you out. And they were, they jumped right on it. So, I had this hour and a half call the Saturday before New Year's Eve with this particular customer and ended up that they really liked our solution. And we put a deal together on, I think the contract went out at 5 o'clock on the 31st. And it was a very lucrative contract. Much, I'd say probably 3 times the size of our normal contract and just completely right place, right time, you know, perfect mix of customer need and positioning the product correctly. So, I ended up finishing 2018 at 141% of goal. So, that was kind of, that was kind of a blessing and a curse because when you come in that high over goal, you think, what are they going to do to me next year? But then, they don't know who they're talking to because is I wanna beat what I did last year. I'm my biggest competitor. I have folks on my team and we have quite a number of excellent sales professionals on my team, and we're always neck and neck throughout the year. You know, there might be a quarter where someone's way up, quarter where someone's trailing, but we're all neck and neck most of the time. So, when we got our quota for this year, we were all a little bit nervous, but as of the end of Q3, I'm sitting at 96% to goal for this year. So, I'm really hoping that I can finish the year strong and try to beat that $141,000 from last year.

16:07 Scott Ingram: There you go. That's fantastic. So 96%, not year-to-date, but 90%… 96% on your full year number.

16:12 Jill Ammon: Yeah, 96% on my full year number. I actually just 2 days ago, we had a company meeting to recap 3rd quarter, and I got awarded top performer for acquisition for the 3rd quarter because I sat at 200% to quarter goal for that particular quarter, because I, I brought in a couple big deals throughout, you know, July, August, September So, it was pretty cool.

16:34 Scott Ingram: That's fantastic. And just to put this in perspective, because sometimes the release of these episodes lags a little bit, we are having this conversation on October 25th. So, Jill's still got just a little over 2 months to go and beat the 141%. I'm also just struck by, you're wearing a lot of hats, right? So, you're helping the rest of the team. You're kind of the go-to on Salesforce. You're doing all these other things. Oh, and also you pick up all of the generic voicemail messages and route those as well.

17:02 Jill Ammon: Yeah, it can sometimes be overwhelming and kind of stress me out a little bit. But honestly, I think that I call myself the, the grandma of Continuum because I've been here for so long. So when those sales line messages come in, you know, if I think any of the, any of the, the newer folks on the team or even in different departments try to pick them up, they don't have 10,000 virtual Post-it notes on their screen that tell them where that particular type of a message goes to. So I think it's… I do it just out of convenience because it's, it's only going to take me 2 seconds to forward that message where it might take someone else 10 to 15 minutes to figure out where to send it.

17:36 Scott Ingram: Well, that makes sense. But, and I think the value to you is probably that just the context that you have and being able to kind of hear the ins and outs of every little detail and nuance of kind of what's going on has to sort of help inform some of what you do in your sales efforts.

17:53 Jill Ammon: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the other thing too is Continuum's guiding principles really track with my own personal guiding principles. And, you know, everything that we want to do is with the… we call our customers partners because it truly is a partnership. So, everything that we do we want to do with what's in the best interest for our partners. So, you know, if I hear someone call and they're stressed out about something, how can I help get them to the right place so that they're not stressed about it again and, you know, try to help them out? And I just, yes, you kind of pick up things as you go along that some folks might miss. Everything's a learning experience. Like I said, I've been doing this particular role for 7 years, and I was on a call this morning with my tech, and we had a new person starting an evaluation, and Customer asked a question and I didn't know the answer to that particular question because, because it was, it was kind of an oddball question and my tech knew the answer right away. And I said, hey, you can teach an old dog new tricks.

18:52 Scott Ingram: Well, so I want to talk about some of these, these other roles too, right? So just in terms of your sales journey, you shared with us how you, you initially got into sales and you put on the blue shirt at Best Buy. Where, where else have you been and what led to Continuum?

19:08 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so it's actually It's actually a very bizarre story, I guess. I don't know what adjective I'd throw on it there. But so, I mentioned that I was managing a printing and copying company at the time that I took that second job at Best Buy to support my travel habit. And when I was at Procopy, it was called, I think similar to like, I don't even know what it's called today, FedEx Kinko's. It was Kinko's at the time, FedEx Office, I think it is. Basically, at that particular point, I was fresh out of college. I had a degree in… I do have a degree in communications management. So effectively, I could go out. I have the broadcasting history, but I could go out and manage a newsroom. So I took the business curriculum so that I had business to fall back on if my dreams and aspirations of being a TV anchor fell through. And while I was at Procopy, I basically… the owner of the company, Miles Lilly, he… I always attribute him to kind of giving me my start because I was a young person out of college, kind of trying to find my way, and he just kept seeing that I was ambitious and gave me different opportunities throughout the company. So, you know, I started off typical, like, company copy clerk. Come in, customer comes in, I make their copies for them, off they go. But a portion of our job, we had to actually do jobs for corporate customers. So he noticed that as these corporate customers would come in to pick things up or drop them off, I had a good rapport with them. So he kind of transitioned me into… he's like, I want you to do sales. I said, I don't want do sales. I don't like sales. I don't want to do sales. I'm not a salesperson. Because you have those stereotypes, right? You think, oh, there's that used car salesperson that, you know, is gonna, gonna try to sell you something you don't want or need. And I said, no, Miles, I don't want to do that. And he says, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna create like a customer service representative role for you. Okay, what's that entail? Well, I just want you to go out and I want you to keep our top customers happy. I said, I could do that because I already know these people. I'm not trying to sell, you know, new. And gradually, it evolved into also doing new sales because, you know, as the economy changes, we had 9/11 in that mix there too at that particular point. You know, we had to find ways to keep the business afloat and go out and sell not only to our existing customers but to new customers. So, unfortunately, the economy did us in at about the end of 2007. And I'd been at Procopy for 13 years at that point. I had evolved from just a copy clerk to customer service to sales, being general manager, kind of still doing sales and overseeing the whole operation of the store. And at the point to which we had to make the decision to close the store down, I was kind of out looking for what company can I go to that I can stay and grow, you know, because I, I'm a traditional person. I like… I had so many people come up to me at ProCopy and ask me if I own the company. I'm like, no, I don't own the company. Well, you act like you do, you know, you're always trying to do what's best for the company. And that's just kind of how I was raised, who I am. So So I did a lot of research and here in Pittsburgh we have FedEx services. We have FedEx Ground. The Ground building at the time employed thousands of people. And what could I do to get my foot in the door at FedEx? I thought maybe I wanted to go into like IT at that point. I had a wonderful mentor at Procopy, a guy by the name of Dave Van Doren, who basically taught me how to keep our networking and stuff going. He could talk me through anything. So he kind of gave me my start in computers and what can I do at FedEx without a degree in information technology. So, the foot in the door there was a sales role. So, I was an inside sales account executive for FedEx. And there, I was responsible for, again, sort of managing our existing customers and trying to grow that business. But at FedEx, you're as good as your territory, as the drivers feel like making their pickup windows. There's a lot of things you can't control. And it was very, very stressful time in my life, but I had a great support group because we had a wonderful team. And the reason I'm telling you about the team is they play into where I am today. I had, had a colleague by the name of Jessica Borelli and a colleague by the name of Courtney Drehas, who the 3 of us were all kind of in the same boat. We didn't know how we could stay there. So all of us left at the same time and we went to 3 completely different places. And when I left FedEx, I actually left without a job. So, you talk about the scariest point in your life. I just knew I can't, I can't get up. I can't do this every day. So, what do I go out? What do I do? So, I kind of shot an email out to everyone I knew. Hey, I'd like to get into computers in some fashion. What do you have for me? And one of my friend's cousins shot me an email back and she said, hey, we have an entry-level computer, you know, support, help desk support position at a healthcare company here in Pittsburgh called Life Pittsburgh. I said, hey, Hey, who do I send my resume to? I, you know, I don't have a job right now. I need to go do something. And I was hired in Life Pittsburgh. They basically kind of mentored me there and taught me help desk support stuff. So, how do I, you know, do a password reset, a virus removal, things like that? And I got my start in more of the information technology field. So, I was there for about 3 years. I was… that role evolved and expanded to where, you know, I was just sitting there fixing computers to then going out to our 5 sites that we had to fix computers on site rather than them getting brought to me. And at that point, after 3 years, I kind of was getting a little restless, like, I don't know if this is what I want to do long term. And here comes Jessica Borelli back into the mix. She says, hey, I just started at this company Continuum, and, you know, we need to hire a couple more people. And they basically said, hey, who do you know? I said, Jessica, I don't know if I want to go into sales again. So I was also interviewing with Apple at the time to be a lead genius because the Life Pittsburgh role gave me so much, gave me so much information on how to fix iPhones and things like that. So I went and interviewed with Continuum and took the job thinking I'm just gonna stay here for a little bit. It gets me away from the role I was doing while I figure out what's next. And here we are 7 years later. So a couple years into the role at Continuum, our other friend Courtney Drehas, she texts me about midnight one night night, it was after one of our sales kickoffs. She says, it looks like you work for an awesome company. Are you guys hiring? You know, she had been… she had taken some time off to raise her family, and she's like, I'm ready to get back into the workforce. So boom, she came to work with me. So, you know, it's really funny how kind of all the different aspects of your life will kind of connect the dots themselves.

25:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, I think all of this ends up being super small world. I mean, my, my… exactly, my current boss, this is the 3rd company we've worked together. I may have had a hand in that, but it's… but a lot of this happens, right? You develop these, these great relationships and you kind of see like, hey, this is somebody that, that I trust and I would love to work with again. And any company would be lucky to have them. And these things sort of, sort of connect. At one point, I'm really curious, at what point did you decide, oh, damn it, I am a sales professional?

26:14 Jill Ammon: You know what? To be honest with you, Scott, I still fight that title. I still fight that title. I say that jokingly, like my mom says to me all the time, you are a born salesperson. So, if you think about it, I went to school for broadcast journalism communications. I wanted to be a TV anchor. I did an internship at our local NBC affiliate here in Pittsburgh, met a lot of wonderful people, just ran into one of our main anchors who's been here for 30-plus years a week ago, and she still walks up to me and hugs me. That career aspiration of wanting to go into journalism, I never really realized it's a form of sales because you have to go out and you kind of have to get a story and you have to sell it. So, again, it all kind of ties together. I don't know. I mean, I even was fighting being a salesperson even in my first couple of years at Continuum. But 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. So, it's trying to facilitate marrying a product and a service to a person who has a need. So am I a salesperson? Yes. Am I a facilitator? Absolutely. I go out and I get, I get things for people and I help them progress their business. And, and that's really what it boils down to, I guess.

27:33 Scott Ingram: You know, it's so interesting because I had, I fought against the same thing for years. So I started my first company when I was 19 or 20. And for Breaking Bad fans, the name of that company was actually Gray Matter Technology. And I was in the same space. I was doing IT consulting work in Southern California. So, I ran that for 5 years and a huge part of doing that was sales, right? If you don't have clients, you don't have a company. So, I had to learn how to sell really fast. And then, when I moved to Austin, I continued to… I was moving into sales roles and I was doing sales work. I just, I did not want to call myself a salesperson. I would do anything to sort of avoid that. I'm a consultant. I'm all these other things. You know what, at some point, it's the same thing. Like being a true sales professional is the same thing as being a good consultant and trying to help a client solve their particular challenge. And, and, you know, now, now I embrace it and I hope other people do too. And again, we've got to smash the stereotype, right? Because the best salespeople, folks like Jill, are the ones that are helping their customers the most. It's, it's not about, you know, the… and I'd love your opinion on this. For me, It's not about the commissions. Like, those come. Like, you get rewarded because you've served people well.

29:00 Jill Ammon: Absolutely. 100%. I had a situation just this week where I had a customer that I brought on, and we have, you know, different types of contracts. And he came on at one of our minimum spend contracts to use one of our products and services. And I went to my boss and I said, hey, look, he lost a big customer. I don't want to beat him over the head here. And, you know, my boss says, well, Well, you know, we have to adjust that contract. That comes out of your commissions. I said, I'm not concerned about me. I want to do what's best for that customer. You know, it makes good business sense, you know, to do that. And that really is, I think, what sets salespeople, different types of salespeople apart. You know, everyone's got to go out and buy a car at some point in their life. Who do you go to? You go to me. I go to someone I trust. I go, I have conversations with people. If I don't get warm and fuzzies after that conversation, even if they have the car that I want, I'll walk out of the dealership and go find, go find another dealer that has that same car if that salesperson has treated me well. So, I think that, you know, that there are all kinds of lines in sales that get blurry.

30:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Now, I'm curious. I mean, having been through this journey, and clearly, you're a very loyal person. I mean, is there anything that you would have done differently or thought about differently from a career perspective?

30:19 Jill Ammon: Well, I always come back to what I went to school for. You know, it all starts when I was probably in like 8th grade or something, and maybe even earlier than that. My parents got a video camera and, hey, let me use this big clunky thing. And, you know, we'd watch shows like Saturday Night Live and like, hey, how can we make our own skits and do stuff like that? And I always liked… I'm not like a performer, like I don't always necessarily like to be in front of the camera, but I like to kind of make funny things happen, things like that, you know. And, and so whether it was my friends coming over or my cousins when they were in town, you know, we do all these videos and stuff. So I always, I always think to myself what my life would have been like had I stuck with what I went to school for, you know, being in front of the camera, working in news along those lines. I did, I did a fantastic internship, like I mentioned, at our NBC affiliate. I learned so much there. I basically Basically, I was famous that summer because my hand and my watch and my wrist were on TV every night at the 11 o'clock news because I was the one that came into work at 3 o'clock while the anchors were preparing their stories and stuff for, you know, doing the 5 o'clock news. And I'm going out interviewing the people. And then they send the actual reporter back to the scene to, you know, to get that live shot from, you know, where today's activity happened. And they track everything back in the news studio and things like that. But it was… my parents would always be like, what did you have on today? What color nail polish do you have on today? Let's identify Jill's hand on TV tonight. So, I always go back to that. I then worked in radio for, I think, 3 years. And that was a job I kind of fell into happenstance. I won a contest when Seinfeld was going off the air. I won a Seinfeld trivia contest. Like a couple days later, they took, you know, the 4 or 5 contest winners, they put us on a plane, and they flew us to New York City. Us in the radio station could be kind of hanging out watching the last episode of Seinfeld in New York City. And while I was on the plane, someone said, hey, what happened to your movie critic? And they're like, oh, you know, he decided to change careers or whatever the story was. And I said, I'll do it. I go, what do you mean you'll do it? I have a broadcasting degree and I go to the movies all the time. What do you need? So from there, you know, I got a little stint in radio. I had my own segment every Friday morning. It was called Jill Doing the Movies, had my own theme song. But you kind of just burn out doing that stuff. And, you know, while it's fun, does it truly pay the bills and stuff like that? And if you really want to make that, that jump into, into broadcasting and journalism, if you're not in the right place at the right time, you sometimes have to move far away. And I'm real close to my family and my group of friends that I grew up with, and I never was willing to do that. So, you know, sometimes, sometimes I do think about had I taken that path, if I was presented with that same choice today, I might choose differently than what I did. But I'm a big believer on everything happens for a reason. You're where you're supposed to be whether you realize it or not. And, you know, you just kind of have to go with it. And my, my career path has been kind of dotted and not a straight line. And, you know, a couple unique things here or there. And but it's kind of made me who I am. You can always tie your experiences back to conversations when, when you're talking with prospects on the phone to show them that you're a human being too, you know, hey, here, here's where I've been. Here's, here's what I've done. Tell me about, tell me about your journey. How can I help?

33:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I feel like there are very few straight lines anymore. So I'm curious, though, your hand on TV was Was that holding the microphone?

33:47 Jill Ammon: Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it was, it was, it was pretty funny because like they'd give me like these props and things too. So, you know, you have like these little square things that have the Channel 11 logo that slips over the microphone and stuff. And one of the cameramen would be like, oh, here, you want this? Like, yeah, I want to put it on the shelf in my dorm room. I'd go back to college. My college, my college roommate used to start making fun of me saying, we've got Channel 11 heaven going on in our room. That's awesome.

34:14 Scott Ingram: I thought about getting some of those for my microphone, but, but I don't… I sort of nearly intentionally don't videotape these, so you wouldn't see it. Maybe I should just tell you there's, there's one on right now. It says Sales Success Stories in my mind. So, Jill, you've had a lot of success, a lot of consistency. What are you most proud of?

34:32 Jill Ammon: So, I mean, honestly, most proud of is, is that band. I mean, we've got so many banners in our office because we have a truly tremendous sales organization at Continuum, and there are other departments, other divisions, those top performers. But again, you have people that come and go, and the fact that I've stayed in new partner acquisition for my whole career, you know, I did at one point explore going over to the farming side of the company to kind of upsell, cross-sell, and retain relationships. They kind of encouraged me to stay where I was because I was good. I think that scared them a little bit, whether they'd admit it or not, because they didn't want to lose me in the hunting role. And, and the truth of the matter is, is I like what I do. You know, I probably have a shorter attention span than, than some people. So, it works very well for that, that too. So, I get to, get to do a sale, work with them for a short amount of time, and then move on and go find someone new. You know, so, honestly, what I'm most, what I'm most proud of is being able to be consistent. My family will tell you they never had any doubts in me, but, you know, here we are coming close to the end of the year. Have a couple people on the team that are already over 100%, so my name might not be on that banner, you know, finishing up for this year. But hey, I'm fine with that. It means I've just got to get back on it the next year, you know?

35:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, let's use that as, as the transition to talk about sort of motivation. What, what ultimately drives you?

35:59 Jill Ammon: So honestly, it's just, it's my own, it's my own like DNA of motivating myself I'm my biggest, I'm my biggest competitor, but I'm also my biggest roadblock because I can sometimes talk myself out of things. So, I'm competitive by nature, played, you know, sports, ran cross-country and things like that in high school and in college. And what can I do to better what I did before, you know? And it's really what motivates me. Obviously, being a salesperson, money motivates you to some degree. You know, we're not going to work day in and day out to do it for free because Trust me, I'd be at the beach if that was, if that was an option. So, we all have to go out. We have to make ends meet. So, money is, money is a motivator. You know, working for an organization where you can grow and not kind of flatline. Hey, you've hit your quota. You're not going to earn anymore. No, they know we're salespeople. We're driven by getting that higher number, going past that 141%, and having uncapped commission is a great motivator. But, you know, just from a personality trait, it's really the, the competitive edge, whether it's competing against my teammates that are running neck and neck with me towards that finish line, or me… what, what do I need to do? How many more calls do I need to make today because my pipeline's not where I want it to be? So that's really kind of what makes me tick.

37:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah, so it sounds like it's almost kind of pursuit of the PR, pursuit of the, the personal record.

37:32 Jill Ammon: Absolutely. And, you know, you touched on it whether you knew you did or not there. I was I went to college on a track and cross-country scholarship, and track and cross-country, while it's a team sport and you all score, you still have to individually place, and you individually place by getting that personal record. So what was my time, you know, during this 5K race versus what was my time at this 5K race too? So I'm just, like I said, I drive myself. I, I'm very much a person who doesn't need to be babysat. At, I just need to flip that switch in my head to get to the point where I have to turn it up if I need to turn it up. Don't back off that gas.

38:12 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice, nice. What about what's been the biggest challenge, or maybe put us in a time where you have struggled the most?

38:21 Jill Ammon: So that's actually very recent. I just spoke about my running career, which absolutely destroyed my ankle, and I was faced with having to have a full ankle reconstruction, 2 surgeries 10 days apart earlier this year. And And spending 6 weeks in the house, very thankful, you know, that my mother came to stay with me to kind of help out with things around the house and whatnot. But, you know, pick the computer up, put your headset on, and make your calls. Because effectively, my ankle doesn't really prevent me from doing my job, but my head prevented me from doing my job. And I really, really struggled earlier this year with just kind of depression, if you will, just from being laid up in the house. It's the start of the summer, the weather's nice, all my friends are going here or there, there. My family's doing this, my family's doing that, and I can't really go anywhere because I can't walk yet. And that really kind of made me hit a mental roadblock of psyching myself into picking the phone up and making those cold calls to supplement my pipeline and things like that. And it really became something that, that I could feel it trying to pull me down. And, and what do I do to kind of flip that switch? And it took a very simple call from my manager. Hey, Hey, what's up with your call volume? You're always one of our top call volume. Your call volume's down. I'm like, oh, I guess someone else noticed. Okay, gotta just suck it up and do it tomorrow. And honestly, I just flipped a switch in my head. Like, I don't care what you have going on personally, you know, with, with being kind of laid up and things like that. I still have a job to do. I don't want to get behind. I want to be that winner. I want to overachieve my goal. I want to make President's Club to get that nice Caribbean trip. So, that, that, that was probably very recent, something that, that tried to bring me down, that, that I feel that I've bounced back from.

40:09 Scott Ingram: That's, that's interesting. What, what do you think would have happened? How, what would have happened had you not gotten that call?

40:15 Jill Ammon: I would have gotten there on my own. Just might have taken a little bit longer because honestly, a pipeline is what it is. It's not going to fill itself. So, if I don't make the calls, I'm not getting the stuff in the pipeline and I'm not meeting my quota. So, I would have gotten there myself. But it was the kick in the behind that I needed at the right time to kind of just be like, okay, someone else is noticing. Time to move on. Time to just suck it up and do it.

40:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, that was very quotable. A pipeline is what it is, but it's not gonna fill itself. Ain't that the truth?

40:47 Jill Ammon: Yep. Sad reality of sales, right? Yeah.

40:50 Scott Ingram: Well, so let's, let's get into just kind of the, the day-to-day, and I love to just get very granular and talk through the blow-by-blow, right? So you wake up in the morning, the alarm goes off, like what time did that happen? And like you almost can't get too granular with me. Give us just step by step by step, kind of walk us through a day in the life.

41:13 Jill Ammon: So I have 2 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. I can't physically shut my mind off. So sometimes nights, it's very hard for me to fall asleep at a reasonable amount of time. So luckily, if I'm working from home the next day, I can really push that alarm clock and hit that snooze button quite often until it's just about time to get, to get the laptop on. When I'm in the office, you know, I'm waking up and, you know, have a 20 to 30 minute commute depending on, depending on traffic to get into the office. And I really need to blast music in the morning to kind of set the tone for the day. So that drive gives me the opportunity to do that. When I get into the office, and get, get the laptop, you know, up and running, the very first thing that I'm checking on are those I mentioned, the sales line messages. So, what came in overnight? Who do I need to route to where? And I'm also the person who gets assigned the leads that don't have enough information to be routed intelligently through Salesforce from Marketo. And basically, that's part of my morning routine. So, I want to get the leads into the proper hands as quickly as possible because Because it… time, time, you know, if we don't respond quickly to leads, those folks could potentially be looking at a competitor. So, that's really part of the morning routine is kind of going into that folder and going through the leads and the sales line messages and getting those routed. I try to be on the phone by 9. I'm always a stickler for when folks collaboratively within the organization want to have a meeting, you know, that may not necessarily be sales related, like we're making some changes to some backend processes. And one of my cube neighbors came over and said, hey, Jill, do you have a couple minutes? And it was like, can we do it at this time? Because it's not prime selling time. So I'm a big believer on… I'm not necessarily a morning person, so I don't want to call people too early. I know sometimes the early bird gets the worm, but I like to get on the phones by about 9 o'clock. So I try to push those internal meetings. Hey, can we meet between 8 and 9? You know, can we meet right around lunch? Or we meet towards the end of the day when I'm doing, when I'm doing some admin and stuff. But basically, I just get on the phone at, you know, at 9 o'clock. I have obviously scheduled calls throughout the day, but you have to fill those in with getting back to people that have reached out or responding to emails and things like that. So I also go pretty old-fashioned and I use a tally sheet. So I keep a little notebook with me, and every time I make a call, I make a little hash mark because I want to know how many calls I made that day. Yes, I reports that show me that, but sometimes there's a lack in the reports. I want to make sure those reports are accurate. If I need to make 40 calls today, I need to be at 20 by the time lunch rolls around. So, if I have scheduled calls, a busy morning, where am I filling those in? Around lunchtime too, with my territory, my territory crosses a couple different time zones, I guess 3, since I have Eastern, Central, and also Atlantic Standard Time. So, I I really like to structure my day to the point where my tasks and my workflow within Salesforce, I've named them based on the time zone. So, if I need to sort them, I can sort them based on my task name, which is first and foremost the time zone. So, I know if I'm still working, it hits 12 o'clock here in Pittsburgh, now I can flip over and start hitting my Central Standard Time because those folks still have another hour until they typically break for lunch. Of course, being in the IT industry, there are no norms there either. You know, folks are getting called at 5 AM because something, a system went down or what, and they don't typically operate on standard lunch break. But, you know, I work through my calls throughout the day, supplementing calls that we have with existing customers that, again, we're trying to grow their business and make sure that they're implementing things correctly and according to timeline. And then we're also having… I also set time apart during the day to kind of take a look at what tomorrow looks like. So do I need to go in? Do I need to fill in some tasks for some calls? So if I look at tomorrow and let's say tomorrow I only have 20 tasks that I've prescheduled, where am I getting at least 20 to 30 more tasks for more people to call so they can hit that on-target number of the number of calls per day I want to make? And then basically, as in sales, sales never sleeps. When I leave the office and I come home, I usually tend to plug my laptop, throw it right back on the dock, and power it right back up in case someone shoots me an email while I'm puttering around the house, you know, getting dinner ready or what. And hey, sometimes it's easier just to go over to the laptop to respond quickly, attach a few documents, get them what they need. And that goes all the way up until those sleepless nights that you have when it's 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock at night, and customer just happens to reach out, they have a question, I get that answer for them because again, I'm here to help. They have, they have a need. What can I do to help fill that gap? And if that means getting them that information because they tend to have time at 11 o'clock at night because that's not when their customers are calling them, then I'm getting that information to them. And sometimes you'll have a couple emails that go back and forth just to kind of flesh that out. And I never mind, but that's pretty much what my typical day looks like. I don't know if there's anything else you want to dive into.

46:30 Scott Ingram: Well, yeah, a couple of, couple of detail points. So, I just, I want to call out because I think what I heard you say is you're starting the name of every task with the, with the time zone so you can sort by that. Yeah, that's brilliant.

46:44 Jill Ammon: So, this goes back to, I told you that I was kind of the go-to person for Salesforce. Well, at one point when my department was aligned to the marketing department, marketing and sales work so closely together and marketing's putting the leads into Salesforce and then the sales folks are running with them. So they wanted to own that process from start to finish. They actually sent me and a couple members of my team… actually, none of those other people are still on my team; some of them are still within the company, but not on my team… they flew us up to Boston, and they brought a Salesforce trainer in. And we sat through 2 or 3 days of just 8 hours' worth of training each day on how to run reports, how to do this, how to do that. And I was so excited because what I wanted to ask was, can we get a field in the, in like the, the activity view that shows that time zone? Because Salesforce will automatically pull the time zone in if it recognizes, if it recognizes the area code. Nope, can't happen, can't happen. What do you mean it can't happen? Um, that seems very simple. Okay, what's my workaround? So I kind of developed that because the last thing you want to do, especially when, as we like to call it, Courtney and I like to call it, we want to go on a call-a-palooza, and all right, I'm doing my cold calls now, I'm going to just fire them off. You know, you're leaving a lot of voicemails, you're getting a lot of nos, how do you stay motivated to keep going? The last thing you want to do is to open up a task and lose your attention span because, oh, that guy's in… that guy's in California and it's 9 AM in Pittsburgh. I'm not calling him at 6 AM accidentally. And I will tell you, before I implemented this system, I accidentally did that a few times. So it works out well because then I can just kind of sort it and you get to those different points of the day where you can hit those different time zones. Zones and, and know that, that you're reaching out at the best possible time to reach that particular client.

48:28 Scott Ingram: That is really cool. That is, that is a great, great hack. And when you are, it sounds like the way that you're driving. So if the goal is 40 calls tomorrow, you're basically building in sort of a mix from those task lists that, that might be some follow-up calls from, from before, because again, somebody said call me in 6 months and today's the day that they're getting that follow-up call. You're probably putting in some new stuff. Like how does, how the task list get built?

48:54 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so, that's a great question because we've had some, you know, territory changes over the years. And, you know, you'll have people that are out, you know, someone go out for maternity leave. We have one of my teammates that was actively deployed for the military, and he'll just be coming back in December. So, rather than sometimes, you know, hiring people to fill their territory while they're out, we'll kind of just divide and conquer and split it up among the team that we have. And so, I've had some folks that then step into an account that isn't in my territory today, but that I might have, you know, talked to a year or 2 ago, and they're like, hey, what, what did… what does this mean? It's like, oh, you mean my notes? So everyone can't really march to the beat of the same drum. There's like a million different sales philosophies that you can subscribe to, and everyone's gonna do things a little bit differently. But really, it kind of goes back to when I was at FedEx, and Courtney Drehos… she still works with me today… we got locked in a room in the FedEx Ground building literally for 6 weeks, 40 hours a week in a room with no windows in the dead center basement of the FedEx Ground building in Pittsburgh, where 2 absolutely wonderful sales trainers, Andrea Kirtley and Leslie Kuhn, basically taught us fundamentals of how to be a good, efficient salesperson. So people don't, you know, people have this misconception that you go to school for sales And you don't really go to school for sales. You go to, you go to school for business, you go to school for marketing. You just kind of happen to fall into sales because there's products and services and goods all over the world that need to get to buyers and there need to be people to do that. And, you know, we came to this role at FedEx and they wanted to set us up for success. So they locked us into that room and they kind of basically just drilled into our head, you know, you are responsible for your own task list. And if someone tells you, you know, that you're going to follow up in 6 months, you got to use what's in that CRM to make sure you remember to do that. You know, I'll get asked a specific, you know, we'll be in our morning meeting and my manager will, he'll ask me, well, you talked to so-and-so yesterday, tell me about that call. And I'm like, I talked to 50 people yesterday. I've got to look at my notes. You know, so what can you do to stay organized? So I kind of developed, you know, not only using the time zone moniker there at the beginning, but, you know, if someone tells me to call them back in 6 months, it'll be like my task will be like status check, and then I'll put the name of the competitor. I'll do things too where marketing sends out drip campaigns, but I do my own drip. So if I, if I spin up a cold call and I call them, you know, my very first task might be named cold call, and then the second week it might be like touch 2, and it might be like call and then send this particular email. And I'll even go as far as to name my emails. So that's really where when we get people that kind of step into into accounts I used to have, they'll be like, what the heck does AB1 and AB2 mean? And that means something to me, might not mean something to you. So you kind of just have to develop your own system with what works for you and how you can be as quick and efficient as possible to move through your daily workload.

52:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So you mentioned kind of different sales philosophies. What, what is yours and what informed that?

52:11 Jill Ammon: So, I mean, we do, we do a lot at Continuum with MEDDIC and LSCPA. And I always just… my sales mentality, and I don't really even know if there's a particular name for the style, again, just goes back to FedEx. You get locked in a room for 6 weeks and get taught stuff. Hopefully something sticks. And something did stick because when I got brought into Continuum very early on, the manager that we had at that point, he saw Jessica and he said, you're doing this really good. How can I get more people that were trained like you to come in? And he basically wanted us to give him a directory of people we worked with at FedEx so he could try to poach them. And, you know, there, there wasn't really… it really was just a homegrown method by Leslie and Andrea that they went out. And I'm sure that… I've been out of FedEx for over a decade now. I'm sure that's changed. But, you know, I, I really… when I started seeing some success at Continuum, I went back to those 2 ladies, friends with them to this day, and just said, thank you, you did something right. It set… it may not have set me up for success at FedEx, but it set me up for success here 5, 10 years later.

53:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great stuff. I mean, yeah, and you got to love something that, that is lasting, right? And sort of taught you those, those fundamental things that have made you fundamentally successful.

53:29 Jill Ammon: Yeah. And I did forget to mention too, just like information stuff, is in the morning we, we have a lot of great… I call… I like to call them stalking tools. You know, you have awesome technology that's out there and things that will tell you when someone visited the website and exactly what they clicked on. So, oh hey, I'm just happening to call you to today, but I know you were looking at the help desk. So, let me drop that into the conversation. And our marketing department does a great job of pushing stuff out. And, you know, we use a program called Oktopost, where they'll basically put our LinkedIn and our Twitter posts together for us. And then we can share what we want to share that might be relevant and things like that. So, you know, I'm always on LinkedIn, always on Twitter, pushing stuff out. I always like to see what my colleagues are pushing out too, because we always have… we're a global company with 1,400 people. So, we have people in different parts of the doing different things that are all equally important to our company's success. So, basically, you know, if I see that someone's at a conference and they shared an awesome post from Booth Traffic that day, I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna reshare that because, hey, we're there today. Let's push that out. So, that's also part of my morning routine. I'll do it throughout the day as you get breaks because sometimes, you know, you just need to put the phone down for a couple minutes and recollect yourself. So, you know, LinkedIn and Twitter are great ways to share information. Information.

54:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, I have firsthand experience with that because as I was finishing my prep, we've, we've been talking about this conversation for 7 months, and part of it was the surgery, and part of it was I dropped the ball for a couple of months and didn't follow up. And, and I went scrolling back through your LinkedIn posts and, and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and trying to get back to that point because I couldn't remember what was it 7 months ago that prompted me to reach out. And that's where I refound the banner. And it's such great stuff. But again, I think it also just speaks to and shows the consistency with which you engage in those platforms.

55:26 Jill Ammon: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're in a digital age, whether you like it or not. I like to say I'm old school to a degree, but you got to adapt to the technology. I mean, old school, I refused to let my IT department upgrade my laptop. I was still using Windows 7 until last week. And then it was like freakout mode because, oh my gosh, how do I get all my stuff back to where I like it to be? So, you got to adapt with the technology, you know. And then, as I'm using Windows 10 here for a week, I'm like, oh, this is a pretty cool feature. Man, if I would have had that 6 months ago, I might have been a little more efficient in what I was doing.

56:01 Scott Ingram: Well, what about… what is the rest of kind of your go-to technology toolkit?

56:07 Jill Ammon: Yeah. I mean, really, you know, LinkedIn and Twitter really are the big things. Checking, you know, stuff relevant to my particular industry, you know, ChannelE2E and stuff like that, looking to see what, you know, what other podcasts are out there, what blogs are going on. Our company is great that we push a blog out where it's just industry stuff, really, you know, it doesn't always talk about our products and services. So, information sharing and go-to resources. If I'm on a… I was on a call with a cold call yesterday, and the guy wasn't in interested, but he kind of told me where he was in his business today, and he was struggling to kind of convert his clients from a break-fix mentality to a managed services model. And I said, hey, you know, go check out our blog. There are a ton of posts in there talking about ways to help with that. He's not buying from me today. He may never buy from me, but I just tried to help him out because he's struggling with something. And, and, you know, that's the type of stuff that as you can go out and you can kind of consume more resources specific to your industry, you might have that little light bulb that goes off where you can connect that dot for someone else and point them in that direction.

57:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And even though it may be, maybe specific to your industry, what, what are those sources? What does your information diet look like?

57:25 Jill Ammon: So, I mean, honestly, like, I'm not big on… I feel like I'm consumed with work all the time. I remember being on a cruise with my mother and my sister and my sister getting mad because I was on my phone and I'm like, hey, it's almost the end of the quarter. Some of us have to close sales. So, I'm kind of trying to set boundaries for myself that when I'm not working, I'm not like trying to consume myself with the industry stuff. So, when I'm, you know, when I'm at work, the stuff that I'm just consistently doing is the Twitter, the LinkedIn, the ChannelE2E, just to kind of keep up to date on what the competition is doing. I look at local local news, of course. And I'm also paying attention to geographic news too, you know, especially with dealing with the Southeast territory this time of year. We're moving out of the hurricane season, but, you know, I have to be cognizant too if there are bad storms going on in different parts of the country. I don't, I don't want to be that insensitive person that's calling while someone's trying to batten down the hatches there because the storm's rolling in. So that's really it. I'm not, I'm not a huge junkie of going out and kind of reading everything. I I can because I think it muddies my mind a little, and, and, uh, and I can go down a rabbit hole and you won't see me for a couple days. So, so I try to, I try to back off a little bit at my manager's suggestion on some things, you know.

58:43 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I want to go back because I'm going to forget to ask you this. So you said music, blasting music is, is an important part of the process. When you're doing that, what are you blasting?

58:53 Jill Ammon: So honestly, I call it the iPod surprise. So I probably have, you know, like 5,000 songs on my iPod, and I'll make, make like a playlist. I just name my playlists based on the month of the year. So, it might be a mix of newer stuff I just heard on, on satellite radio or on the radio in general or something my friends' kids are listening to or my nieces and nephews are listening to. But then, I'll also be like, oh, I haven't listened to OneRepublic in a while. Let me go grab a couple of their songs, throw it into the mix. So, it's funny when I throw the iPod on shuffle because… and this is gonna be happening here in a couple weeks because I actually fly south via a car for the winter and work remotely from down in Florida, which is my territory. But you got a 17-hour car ride in front of you, so that, that playlist is gonna burn out after an hour or 2. So when you throw the iPod on shuffle, I'll get Christmas music in the middle of June, and I just might listen to it. So, but I really… my, probably my favorite genre is the '90s, '90s alternative. Alternative and stuff. You know, I really like U2, one of my all-time favorite bands out there. I absolutely love Pink. I think she's a phenomenal performer, and I mean, her music really resonates. I've seen her in concert 3 times within like a year and a half, and I just… that's, that's like my go-to stuff. I love the B-52s. You know, they're kind of a little bit of a quirky, eclectic type of a band, but you know, they've got some great tunes and whatnot. If I had to just pick one genre, I'd say '90s alternative would be my go-to.

1:00:25 Scott Ingram: Nice. We, we might just get along. And, and I still need to figure out if we're going to be able to, to make it work. I'm not sure that it's going to work, but Pink is performing here in Austin at the, at the Formula 1 Festival that's coming up in a couple of weeks. So…

1:00:39 Jill Ammon: oh, that's awesome.

1:00:40 Scott Ingram: Might have to see if I can't make that work. My wife's a big fan too, so yeah, probably be a good relationship investment.

1:00:47 Jill Ammon: Yeah. And if you guys have never seen Pink, it's also like going to the circus because you get Cirque du Soleil and, and all kinds of aerial shows and pyrotechnics and things like that too. So it's fun for the whole family.

1:00:58 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Well, if you're listening to this, this will have released after that would have happened. So you'll have to ask me whether or not I saw Pink. So Jill, are you, are you traveling much? Like, are you doing much onsite work with your clients? It sounds like you're, you're pretty well in the office, whether that's Pittsburgh or Florida?

1:01:15 Jill Ammon: Yes. So, I predominantly am doing my sales via the phone. So, when we have larger prospects, just to kind of set like the benchmark, I work with managed service providers that have anywhere from 100 workstations and servers up to about 1,000. So, when we have folks that are bigger clients and we can geographically make it work, we do go on-site sometimes. I was in Florida a couple of years ago at, actually at a conference. We had a big prospect that we were trying to bring in who was about an hour away. So, me and my tech jumped in the car and we did an onsite, spent the day with them. I predominantly am based, work remotely or out of the office when I'm in town. But I do a lot of industry shows throughout the year. I kind of got pulled out of the rotation this year just because of my ankle surgery for obvious reasons. But I typically, I'd probably say I do, you know, 5 to 10 different travel things a year, you know, with going to the shows. It's more so those type of events, industry events, as opposed to partner visits. But we do do partner visits. And then we have our own annual conference every year. This year it just happened to be in Pittsburgh because we have our NOC and our… or I'm sorry, our help desk and our SOC here in Pittsburgh. So we wanted to showcase those to our partners and our prospects that we had in. For our conference. So, you know, it can get tiring kind of being a road warrior, but I also enjoy it because it kind of breaks the day up. You know, you're not doing the same thing week after week and kind of recharge your batteries and things like that.

1:02:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. I'd love to talk a little bit about just kind of the conference element because I don't know that I've dug into that here on the show. So given that you've had experience doing 5 or 10 of those a year, how do you manage that? I mean, what's What's your approach to a conference?

1:03:05 Jill Ammon: So, I mean, typically the ones that we're going to, we're sponsors. So, we have, you know, we have a package, we have booth time, and occasionally there will be speaking portions to our sponsorship. I'm not generally one of the ones that do the presenting. You know, that'll typically be other people that we send to the conference. But, you know, you have your booth time where folks are. One of the big ones that we do all the time is Robin Robins. So, I go to Nashville. Last year, I think I was in Nashville 3 or 4 times just at her different shows. And, you know, she does these, these sessions, her marketing stuff, and the folks come out and then they've got to hit all the vendor booths. So you really have to be clear and concise because you're getting maybe 2 minutes to talk to someone. And yeah, they might just be stopping at your booth to grab a giveaway and walk away, but how can you truly find the ones that are actually interested and and give them that high-level pitch and try to whet their appetite enough to get that conversation when they get, when they get back to the office. Because, you know, a lot of people will talk to a lot of people at conferences. So, our team kind of really just tries to spread out a bit. You know, it's very rarely just one person. There's, you know, always 2 of us, if not sometimes 4 to 5 for bigger shows. I think we have probably 10 to 20 people going to a show here in the coming weeks. But, you know, really, we just want to try to hit as many people as possible, talk to them just kind of, hey, how are things going today? Is there anything that you wish you could wave a magic wand and improve? The nice thing too about the conferences are a lot of these, you know, are multi-day conferences. So you have the opportunity where you happen to be staying in the hotel where your potential customers are staying too. So you run into them in social settings too, you know, hey, let's get a group together and go out to dinner, or hey, let's meet down at the lobby bar and have a a couple drinks and just, you know, chat. And you're not always chatting about business, not necessarily. But, you know, again, we're, we're in the industry of selling products and services. And part of being that trusted advisor is building that trust. And sometimes that comes in just kind of kicking your shoes off and having a beer with someone and, hey, where are you from? What's your family look like? You know, oh, you just mentioned you were just on vacation. Where'd you head? Things like that. How can we all connect as humans? Yeah.

1:05:20 Scott Ingram: So, and interestingly, what I'm hearing there is, you didn't talk hardly at all about being at the booth, right? It's really getting out from the booth and just being a part of the conference and having more organic conversations.

1:05:32 Jill Ammon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're definitely at the booth for those times. But I remember about 2 years ago, we went to a conference down in Orlando. And it was on Universal property. And there were probably, there were well over 1,000 prospects there. But the booth time You got like, I think you got like 2 half-hour slots during the whole day. So, it was like, how do we get in front of these folks? You know, you're here, you're kind of, you have your laptop with you, you're doing your normal job while you're in between your booth time and stuff like that. So, you really have to manage and maximize that time that you have at the booth because that's your exposure.

1:06:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I mean, one of the things that I constantly think about is like shared experience. And a lot of times, I mean, if all you're doing, if you're at a conference, like you're at a multi-day conference and it's specific to the industry that you're selling to, because obviously the attendees, it's got to be relevant for them. If you're just in that booth the whole time and not seeing the keynotes that they're seeing and not in some of the sessions that you're having, like you're having a completely different experience. And I've always found as much as I can trying to engage in the actual conference itself so that I can just have much more relevant conversations. And what I find ultimately happens is you end up meeting that ideal prospect you wanted to meet anyway. You just happen to be sitting next to each other, or you're, you're in line together trying to get a coffee, or whatever it is, right? There's a lot of times they're not seeking out your booth necessarily. And just again, being able to have that… we've had this same experience. Oh, I say keynote, what was, what was your takeaway or, you know, whatever it was?

1:07:13 Jill Ammon: Yeah. And that was, you know, that I do like to dive into the conferences. We had our partner conference, I think it was last year. We had Barbara Corcoran as our keynote. And, you know, I'm… I don't watch much reality TV, so I'd never seen Shark Tank. I'd heard about it. She was the most hysterical person. And then you hear about her personal story. Of her struggles in her life and things like that. Well, I was stoked when about a month later I was at a conference for Robin Robins and she was a keynote there. So yes, we didn't have booth time at that point. Yes, I pulled up a chair and I sat and I listened to her, her speech again. And it was nice too because then, you know, you're standing in line to get your picture taken with her after the thing and you're talking to the people beside you like, oh man, that was funny. I loved when she said this. I loved when she did that. So, you know, when you're, when you're engaged in the conferences in the same capacity to a degree that, that the people that you're trying to target and market to are, it gives you an in for common ground to get a conversation started.

1:08:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Jill, how would you describe your style?

1:08:20 Jill Ammon: Boy, like, this kind of goes back to one of the first things we talked about today is I'm not… I don't fit that sales stereotype that is perceived. And I'm going to say perceived because we all know that it's not the same today as what it was in the past. But really with me is I'm a low-pressure salesperson. So sometimes probably my managers over the years don't like that, but it's worked for me. I don't want to be that person that is very pushy. My style is very much, I'm here for you when you're ready to buy, when you're ready to have that conversation. You told me to call you back in 6 months, I'm not calling you before then because I'm a person that does what I say that I'm going to do. So, my style very much is like low pressure and subtle, if you will. I want them to think about me. So, maybe it's me dropping an email here or there. So, I come top to mind when the timing is right, when something goes awry with, with the solutions that they have in place today or their business shifts and, and they have to kind of look at a different way of doing things. So, I'd really just say, you know, low pressure, kind of waiting in the wings for, for when you're ready for me.

1:09:28 Scott Ingram: Well, and I think that you have to put 2 and 2 together with what you've shared. Right? Because that only works if you've got a great pipeline.

1:09:35 Jill Ammon: Yeah.

1:09:36 Scott Ingram: Is that a fair statement?

1:09:37 Jill Ammon: Yeah, absolutely. But that's the thing too, is I find that if you're consistent in doing that and you're not trying to change your style all the time… yes, you sometimes have to move out of your comfort zone to find different ways to do things, because what you're working today, what you're doing today that's successful might not necessarily work 6 months from now. But if you're consistent just in the fact that you're always doing this type of stuff, your pipeline will come because you'll get those people that you had a conversation with 2 years ago that you reach out to once every 3 to 6 months that now something broke, they need to fix it, and you're the first person they think of.

1:10:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What I'm curious, what's one of those things that used to work really well for you that you find just doesn't… isn't effective anymore or isn't as effective?

1:10:21 Jill Ammon: Well, I mean, I really couldn't pinpoint it on one. I just am kind of like thinking like from a messaging perspective. So, you know, a cold call that I'm might have done a year ago doesn't necessarily resonate the same message to an MSP as it would today. So, you know, it's really just always kind of evaluating what your go-to things are. And I love to like kind of information share with my teammates. We have, we have a new person on our team. He's been with us for about 2 months and he's seen some success on cold calling. So, hey, Tony, can you send me some of your recordings? I'd like to hear kind of how you're delivering that message. Message, maybe there's a word or a phrase that I can pick up from that to kind of tweak my delivery that'll get me some more success using that. So it's really just constantly like kind of revisiting and cleaning out. Another thing that I'm really big on is, and IT laughed at me last week when we were redoing my, upgrading my laptop, I have probably 300 templates. So if I'm on the phone with someone and I need to deliver information to them, I've probably already typed it 10 times. So let's put it in a template so I can grab it, I can click in, you know, add in the personalization that I need to, and then push that information out quickly. So, you know, you have that follow-up right as soon as we get off the phone, so I don't move on to the next thing and then accidentally forget to send that to you. So those templates are also in the form of, you know, my different personalized drip campaigns that I do for people. I'll find things that marketing has pushed out that delivers a great message. So it's just going to be a little nugget that I can push out because, you know, maybe I'm not scheduled to call them for 3 months, but let me shoot them an email at the 6-week mark. And again, I'm going to be top of mind.

1:12:00 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now, how are you managing those templates?

1:12:02 Jill Ammon: I just use it right through Outlook. So I mean, really, at one point I think I had an issue with something syncing to, to the cloud and I lost some. So, every Friday morning, I have a reminder that pops up on my calendar that tells me to back up my templates. So, I do that every week. Do I probably need to do that? No. Do the templates change week over week? Not necessarily, but I know I added 2 new templates in this week because in our team, in one of our team meetings, one of my colleagues mentioned that she was delivering this message this way, and I was like, hey, send me that. She used the… that's Courtney, and we've worked together now for 12 years. We'll get together sometimes and we'll just kind of think of different subject lines that are quirky and off the wall that might get someone to open up that email.

1:12:50 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And I love the way that you are. I mean, there's been a lot of conversation around this, and I think my friend Evan Kelsay says it best. And he wrote this great post on LinkedIn about this coming out of the Sales Success Summit around steel sharpen steel. And he, he went into like the depth of what that actually is and, and what honing is and how sales is really a craft and what, you know, what I hear that you're doing is it's just, it's finding that little extra edge. It's finding somebody new who's coming into the organization with fresh eyes and is communicating things differently than just the way that we've just gotten used to, right? And, and we, we… this is the way we've always described it, but here's somebody just with a completely different lens, and here's how they're saying it. Oh, and, and there's things that I can borrow from, from that. I think there's, there's just so much value in that, you know, this, this isn't… there's never any giant silver bullet, like this magic trick that, that you're gonna teach. It's just this little incremental improvement that you, you try and do every day.

1:13:53 Jill Ammon: Yeah. And that, you know, I couldn't have said it any better myself. There is no silver bullet. You might think there's a silver bullet and there's not. But what works for you, what works for Tony that just stepped into the role at my company, what works for for me is probably totally different, but it's equally valuable. Everyone has different history. Everyone has a different career path, and we all bring different pieces to those puzzles with us. So, you know, where can we draw from to get extra inspiration? I'm not a very creative person by nature. So sometimes, you know, I'll get emails, you know, get marketing emails, solicitation emails. And if that subject line doesn't capture me, you know, I'm not opening it. I'm just clicking delete. You know, Gmail, you get so many spam messages a day. But if there's something that, that you want someone to open and look at, you need to kind of think outside the box sometimes. So that's where that collaboration with my teammates and managers and things like that can really come into play and help out.

1:14:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's fantastic. So, Jill, what have been the most important decisions you've made or lessons you've had to learn to get where you are today?

1:15:01 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so I think we already talked about that and don't, you know, really want to be redundant, but honestly, it was that whole thing where I was at FedEx, the economy kind of took a, a turn, things… none of us were happy, and I just knew that I needed to make a change. That particular change, for the first time in my life since I was probably a teenager, you know, working at Dairy Queen, I was unemployed for 2 And what did that look like? That was a scary time. So that was, ended up being a very pivotal and important decision in my life because my decision was to walk away from a job, a given salary, health benefits, and things like that, because I just knew I couldn't wake up and do it again the next day. And that led me to where I am today, because if you connect those dots, I left there, I went to Life Pittsburgh, which is effectively healthcare organization for elderly. Doing entry-level IT support. Well, the entry-level IT support gave me just enough knowledge and information that when I took the job at Continuum, I knew a little bit about technology and I could have more intelligent conversations, which has ultimately led to my success here in this type of a role with actually selling software as a solution.

1:16:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great stuff. All right. So, this is the advice dispensing section. And I would love to know what advice you would give to somebody that's just getting started in their sales career today?

1:16:24 Jill Ammon: Yeah, so, I mean, probably the, the biggest advice that I could give is I hope you have thick skin because you have to be ready for a lot of nos. If you're the type of person that takes things too personally and you can't let things roll off your back, sales is probably not the job for you. And I struggle with that from time to time. You know, there are some days where people are just downright mean on the phone. Like, some days you just wonder, is it really that hard just to be kind to someone and say, hey, thanks for calling, but I'm not interested? Instead, sometimes you encounter rude people. So you really just have to be ready and have that thick skin, because for 100 nos that you get, you might get one yes. And it's that yes that you have to focus on, and then, and then pick the phone up and keep dialing. And probably the single most important thing is, is that you just have to, you have to develop a pattern of consistency. I see, I've seen every type of a new employee come into Continuum that I've had to give my, my, you know, basic overview Salesforce training to. And then I'll run into, you know, these folks within the organization, you know, run into something where I might have like a joint task with them for different products and services. And I'm like, whoa, you don't have any notes in here. Well, how do you, how do you remember what that last conversation was? Now, amen to the people that, you know, have that astute memory where they can pull that information and just know every single conversation. I'm not that person. And with the bandwidth of, you know, hundreds of calls a week, I'm not gonna remember individual conversations. So you have to be consistent and you have to take detailed notes so that you can go back and you can easily pick up that conversation so that that person feels like they're the only person that, that you're focused on. It's not like, hey, can you recap what we were discussing? Because I talked to 50 other people. So that I really think will set new sales folks just breaking into a sales role up for success is truly just, you know, being very detailed in your notes and being very consistent with those tasks.

1:18:25 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. That's awesome. What about somebody that is a little bit further into their career? So they're more established and either they're struggling or maybe they're doing good, they're doing well, but they're not making President's Club or they're not finding themselves at the top of the leaderboard? What would you suggest to them?

1:18:43 Jill Ammon: Well, I mean, basically, you just kind of have to keep on keeping on, you know. I know it sounds cliché, but you have to kind of continually refine your style and really try to get into the head of the buyer. So, that goes on to, you know, that kind of goes hand in hand with what we were just talking about with sharing information across your teammates, people that, you know, have a different perspective, people that, that, you know, haven't been doing it as long as you have in something like that. So there's not really any code that you can crack to get through that. But I really think that you kind of have to push yourself to get out of your comfort zone. And if you can really try to get into the head of the buyer, which a lot of people struggle with, like, you know, just turn the table. Hey, you're the one that's buying this product or service. How do you make that that customer feel, feel like they can trust you and you can get your value across to them. So I just think that if you, if you stagnate or you're not on that leaderboard, you really have to kind of try different things. And trying those different things really can push you out of your comfort zone, but sometimes you'll learn something and then you'll hit something that will really bring, bring you to your stride and help you kind of overcome that.

1:20:06 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Now, on the flip side, what would you want to know about top sellers in other organizations?

1:20:13 Jill Ammon: Yeah. So we've done some like personality training stuff over the years, and I really would want to know like what makes other top salespeople tick. So, you know, what are those 3 things about you that kind of define your character? And, and your personality. And because if, if you can kind of look at different people and, and different things that, that make the DNA of, of someone that's successful, you can always learn from that. You know, it, it's always funny, my manager today, Austin, and I will sometimes butt heads because we're very much similar personalities. So, you know, we both can recognize our shortcomings in our own character because they're similar to a degree, you know. So, sometimes when you look at other top sales professionals, they're doing it completely different from how you're doing it today. So, I would really want to know what makes them tick because, again, what can you learn from that? Austin was an individual contributor before he moved on to manage my team. So, I wouldn't say that we were competitors. We were selling different segments of the company, but, you know, we were both individually successful in our respective of things. And when he came to, as a top sales professional, when he came to lead my team, first thing that I wanted to know was, okay, he's been selling contracts. How has he done that? What can I learn from him so that I can position and sell contracts and be comfortable with that? So, looking at other salespeople, what are they doing that, that is successful? And how can you build that into your tool belt, if you will?

1:21:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, we have covered a ton of ground. There have been a lot of, just for me, a lot of great little tidbits and things that I'm going to want to try. But I always try and end these conversations with something really actionable that the person listening to us right now can do over the course of maybe the next week, the next 2 weeks to improve themselves and their results. What would you challenge them to do?

1:22:14 Jill Ammon: So, I mean, I really would challenge them to I would challenge everyone to kind of try something different. You're, you're doing things the way that maybe you've done things all the time. What can you do a little bit differently that can maybe add more to your pipeline? What can you do to move outside of your comfort zone? You know, maybe you're not the best at cold calling. Maybe you can kind of partner up with someone on your team that's having some success with that. What can you learn from them? It might not be, you know, you might have to make 50 calls before you can deliver that, that cold call high level pitch where it sounds natural to you, but you gotta, you gotta try or you're never gonna get there. You know, I just would challenge people to collaborate with their teammates and their managers to look at different techniques and different styles that are working, working for those particular individuals to see what you can learn and what you can add from it. You know, because always, just because someone doesn't do it the same way that you do doesn't mean that their way doesn't doesn't work.

1:23:13 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. And I can't help myself because I'm supposed to end there, but I, I'm just… curiosity grabs me all the time. What, what, what does your typical cold call sound like?

1:23:24 Jill Ammon: Oh geez, you're gonna put me on the spot there. This is something that I actually struggle with, believe it or not. And, you know, I, I like to listen to recordings of my teammates and like to kind of, kind of take, you know, take, take a little bit of, uh, information where I can. But, and I switch it up to the new guy on my team. He's told me that he's had some success with cold calls because he keeps delivering the same exact message every time. And I'm like, oh, I never thought of that. And I'm like, well, I'll give that a try, see if it works. And I've been, I've been hitting a little, a little success on it. So, you know, my typical cold call is, hey Scott, this is Jill. I'm calling from Continuum. I was on your website today. I noticed that you guys are selling fully outsourced IT contracts. In my 7 years at Continuum. I've helped hundreds of MSPs like you become more profitable on their current contracts. Would love the opportunity to show you how Continuum's platform can really set you up to significantly scale and grow. Do you have a few minutes where we could set, set a call on the calendar to discuss? Love to know about your business, where I can help you out.

1:24:21 Scott Ingram: Well, you're pretty good on the spot. You just whipped that out.

1:24:24 Jill Ammon: I may or may not have a cheat device in front of me, like my little Post-it notes that, that I have all over my OneNote screen. In there. But, you know, I need to do it just because life is busy. You have only a few seconds to deliver that first impression, so you got to try to be on point, especially if you're leaving a voicemail. I hate when I get sidetracked in the middle of a voicemail because then I'm nervous to call them back the next time. But then I sit and I think, you know what, we're all human. None of us are perfect all the time. That's what makes us unique.

1:24:54 Scott Ingram: Exactly, exactly. Well, and I, again, I think it's just helpful to, to your point, like, hear other people. And there's not enough examples of people just kind of putting it out there and saying, okay, you know what, This is how I'm, I'm structuring my, my cold call, right? I mean, templates and, and whatever are one thing, but it's also another thing to hear somebody deliver them. So, thank you for, thank you for doing that. Thank you for all of the time that you have spent with me today and all of the wisdom that you have shared. I've enjoyed this a ton. I'm sure the folks listening to this have enjoyed it as well because if they weren't, they probably wouldn't be here for over an hour and a half listening to us.

1:25:30 Jill Ammon: Thanks so much. Scott, it's been a pleasure.

1:25:33 Scott Ingram: Likewise, we'll talk again soon. Thanks, Jill.

1:25:37 Jill Ammon: Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.