SYSTEMS ALLIANCE, INC.:
SOLVING COMPLEX PROBLEMS
Systems Alliance, Inc. is a SaaS provider headquartered in Baltimore, MD. Their software and digital solutions tackle business and operational challenges and create continuous improvement for their global clients across diverse industries, including manufacturing, financial services, healthcare and logistics. They include notables such as AB InBev (known to consumers as Anheuser-Busch), Coca-Cola Consolidated, and FedEx.
“We’re a bit different than many software companies,” says CEO Ric Hughes, who purchased SAI 17 years ago. “We are much more focused on solving particularly complex problems for clients with our software, such as capturing one best-way processes.”
THE
RESULTS
Thanks to RevsUp’s efforts and their unique understanding of the SaaS sales requirements, SAI has two new additions to their sales team and two customer success managers.
“Mark DeChant and the RevsUp team listened carefully to our requirements and executed a disciplined approach to source only highly qualified candidates. Mark’s team significantly shortened the path to increased revenue and scale for us during a period of rapid growth.”
Ric Hughes, CEO
Systems Alliance, Inc.
SEVEN-FIGURE SAVVY
Large clients with complex problems naturally means that the SAI-client relationships require a certain level of finesse. It means that SAI needs salespeople with a knack for creating executive-level relationships at large accounts on the way to seven-figure transactions.
“That by design means we need more capable, skillful salespeople. Think of them as different from the dialing for dollars mentality — we’re not in that business,” Ric says. Instead, the sales team at SAI is highly selective and disciplined in terms of which companies to target, spending an incredible amount of time identifying very senior executives and doing exhaustive account research.
In addition to that level of expertise, Ric was also looking for salespeople with high competence in the consumer-packaged goods industry, and an understanding of everything from manufacturing processes to logistics and transportation.
And then they need to be able to “network their way into an account,” manage a long and intricate sales process with multiple buyers and large transactions. And because the road to closing these kinds of deals is never without hiccups, salespeople with a “genetic predisposition” to problem solve.
RevsUp approached SAI about their hiring need, and from the get-go, Ric says he knew their approach would be different.
THE REVSUP APPROACH:
SYSTEMATIC, PRECISE & CONSCIENTIOUS
“The best way to describe it is that Mark zooms out so that he can zoom in,” Jed says. “He wants to understand more about the business, the industry, the environment, and the culture. And because we’re a multi-brand company, it also means understanding the space we play in.”
Once Mark quickly grasped all of that big picture stuff, he “zoomed in,” tightly focusing on things like org structure, lead generation channels, and the fine details of what each brand does, all the way to the nitty-gritty of the compensation structure. “Certainly, it’s a very thorough way of extracting a lot of information in a short period of time, so that he’s able to get down to the really accurate candidate.”
“Of all the inbound emails I get from recruiters, Mark’s emails stood out,” Ric says. The primary differentiator? His microscopic focus on two things: the types of candidates SAI required and the style of selling that SAI does.
In Ric’s experience, that kind of precision on the part of a recruiter is atypical. “The pitch from most recruiters is very similar: ‘We saw the req on your website and we have three candidates that we think would be a perfect fit.’ But then the candidates aren’t even remotely close and it’s pretty clear the recruiter actually hasn’t invested any time at all in learning about our business. We’re very focused on quality, not quantity, and most recruiters are the direct opposite of that. The biggest occupational hazard in working with recruiters is they send you a lot of junk, which just soaks up capacity we don’t have.”
But the RevsUp team wasn’t like that. They put quality candidates in front of SAI from the get-go. They gathered a lot of data, asked many targeted, thoughtful questions, listened some more, then continued to true up the process until they found the exact fit.
Ric appreciated the attention to detail and emphasis on research. “Everyone we worked with at RevsUp obviously invested a good bit of time understanding our business, our target clients, and our candidates.”
