Chris Ray

Revenue Rocket

Managing Partner

Pavilion

Member

SERHANT.

VP, Global Sales

General Assembly

- Oversee GA's Key Accounts within the Tech and Industrials Sector
- Maintain and build rapport with senior executives to formulate strong, long-term business relationships
- Lead negotiation of pricing and contracting, working closely with the client and GA's legal department 
- Drive strong revenue growth within sector through expansion of existing client relationships and development of new business partnerships

Account Director - Key Accounts

Head of Regional Accounts

Inside Sales Manager

Recently voted Fast Company’s #1 Most Innovative Company in Education and #28 Most Innovative Company in the world, General Assembly is a venture backed, post Series C, NYC-based startup in our sixth  year. General Assembly transforms thinkers into creators through education and opportunities in technology, business, design and data.

Inside Sales Lead

Colorado Christian University

This position, while maintaining previous responsibilities, included two major additions, leadership of the admissions specialists and senior specialists (8 members), and a transition to another under-performing territory.  Here is a snapshot of both aspects --

Managerial Responsibilities and Highlights --
-- Facilitate group brainstorming and problem solving sessions with the entire team (8 Members)
-- Meet each team member regularly for one on one’s which include comprehensive looks at their territory, strategizing for potential growth and problem-solving territory hang-ups
--Weekly overview meetings with admissions office senior staff including the Dean of Admissions, Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions as well as the Vice President of Student Life
-- In 2013, my team recruited the largest (by over 10%) and highest achieving (best incoming test scores and GPA) in our 100 year history
--In 2013 we received a national recruiting award from Noel-Levitz (the largest higher education consulting firm with more than 2,800 university clients) as one of the top two universities in regards to our recruiting efforts
-- In 2014, to date, we are on track to exceed our efforts of 2013 (largest and most accomplished incoming class thus far) in both overall students and academic prowess

Individual Territory Highlights –
-- In 2013, in just my first year in a new territory, I brought in 15% above the highest total that territory had ever achieved
-- In 2014, my territory was trimmed by nearly 20 percent, while my goal actually increased.  To date I am exceeding what this adjusted territory accomplished in 2013 by nearly 30 percent, and up over the total from the entire territory from last year.

Associate Director Of Admissions

-Currently am 35 percent over my quota and have grossed the company an additional $280,000                                           
-Brainstormed and created a new marketing campaign adopted by the entire University, which has  been estimated to have saved the organization well over $50,000 and won numerous local and national marketing awards                                           
-Mentored a new employee who is currently exceeding her quota by over 10 percent                                                       
-Developed and presented new format to increase territory retention to entire department

Senior Admissions Specialist

-Exceeded my yearly goal by nearly 30 percent in first year alone and grossed the company an additional $320,000                    
-Maintained direct contact with over 250 students while sustaining a large administrative workload                                             
-Built the International Territory to over 20 percent higher than it currently had been                                                                    
-Built and implemented new documents and worksheets to improve productivity                                                        
-Developed strategic plans to connect with students in a holistic style

Admissions Specialist

Mike Moroney Consulting

This position has included opportunities to work with small to mid-size businesses, and in education both at the high-school and collegiate level. With a broad range of clientele, I have been able to work on a variety of projects including data analysis and projection, web messaging and branding, and enrollment strategies for growth and retention. 

Individual projects of interest:
Graduate Program, Private University – Data analysis and projection. Analyzed weekly data in order to project areas of potential growth and development. Took disorganized and muddled data and structured it in order to find trends and tendencies that were utilized to build comprehensive territory strategies. 
Public online school – web messaging and branding. This project included vast research into the competition of our client and a SWOT analysis of both the competition and our client. Once the data was gathered, we were able to build the messaging that would successfully highlight our client’s strengths and uniqueness within the industry. It was through this messaging mapping that we were able to continue to clarify our client’s brand and move forward in continuing to help them gain ground in their market.
Undergraduate Program, Private University – Enrollment process. This project was incredibly in-depth and all-encompassing and included looks in to many aspects of enrollment. This process included developing communication flow, reviewing and streamlining the application process, constructing travel strategies, identifying target markets and a marketing plan and proposal. This project was one that continued to morph and evolve as we uncovered additional areas of need and took comprehensive action to push enrollment forward.

Contract Services

4x founding sales member || Building teams that Thrive || Helping solve complex sales challenges || Founder

A couple of things to know about me:
1) I am a husband and a girl-dad
2) I love fishing, The Office and Tacos
3) I have been in sales for 15+ years and LOVE it
4) I have built and scaled 5 different sales teams, and 
5) Personally sold over $20m in B2B and B2C products and services

Currently, I am working on building out Revenue Rocket which is a sales consultancy focused on solving complex sales challenges for founders and sales leaders.

I am a connector and welcome any DM's, Coffee chats or IRL meet-ups to get to know you.

I’ve been posting consistently on here for just over a year and I wish I had some crazy stats for you to show why consistency pays off.  But I don’t. Nothing crazy impressive.  Still an unimpressive follower count, only one post that went “somewhat” viral, and roughly about 10-15k impressions a week. Lots of folks doing WAY more impressive things on here than me. 

BUT, there is one stat that I feel REALLY proud of. And that’s the fact that our business has been built 100% off of LinkedIn. We prospect entirely on here. And in the last 4.5 months since we launched, I’ve sourced somewhere north of 150 convos for our business. And that’s almost entirely because people see me on here, they know what we are building and they trust me. 

So, if you are looking for a reason to be consistent and you aren’t seeing the “results” that most post about. Know there are a lot of other valuable reasons for being on here. 

Happy Sunday. 

Here’s a picture of one of the many small fish I caught… because they aren’t always whales.

An open letter to Yellowbird® - 
"My break up song"
By - Chris Ray

It's not you it's me...

Well, actually, it is you Yellowbird®!

You have broken my heart.  

I give and I give and I give:
- 250+ engagements
- 15,000+ impressions
- 1000's of new eyeballs on your products
- 7 days of posting about your delicious sauces

And what do I get?
- 1 like
- 1 account comments
- 1 comment from the founder

This relationship feels very one-sided.  It feels like you don't care.  I know I might not be as sexy as some of the big "creators", but I do try.  I try to make you feel seen.  I try to make you feel heard. 

I have tried to make this work.  I have bought you (things).  I have taken you places.  I was with you even before you hit it big.  

But, alas, it is not working... and I have to look for someone new now.  

I wish you nothing but the best.  

Work from home essentials:

LinkedIn mug ✔
2 Breakfast tacos ✔ 
Yellowbird®Hot Sauce ✔
Sunny spot on a cold morning ✔
Now to close some deals ... Incoming

FWIW - if you are in a hurry... air frying tater tots for your breakfast taco 🙌 

Whew, what a day!  

- Breakfast with killers (Charles / Jon / Johnathan / Zach) ✅ 
- Starbucks pitstop for contract/s, negotiating and a proposal ✅ 
- Lunch with (Chase - no pic 🙁 ) to talk all things DFW-area startups ✅ 
- And then Back to the house to wrap up some 1:1's and account planning ✅ 

It is days like this that remind me that the life/day of a founder can be wild.  It is a constant juggling act of tasks and responsibilities.  It is a whirlwind... and it can be the best and worst day of your career almost simultaneously.  

If you aren't connecting with folks like the above... make it a goal this week to find someone and connect with them.  This platform is such an amazing place to build community.  Go follow these fellas if you aren't already.  

I've never worked harder for a signature in my life.

And funny enough, I wasn't even trying to sell something.  

This signature is the culmination of almost 18+ months of conversations, 12+ months of serious discussions, 9 months of negotiations, and MANY stalls at the goal line.  

If anyone ever thought buying a business was easy... well, it wasn't for us.  

Stayed tuned as we update some things and make the announcement.

But for now, I have the first newly branded swag on the line for anyone who can guess what type of business we just bought, here's a hint -  📸 ☀ 🏭 

It’s hard for me to let myself get excited about things. 

Ask anyone on my team… or especially Zach or Alex and they will tell you that I generally keep moving the goalposts of what it will take for me to get excited.  (This is especially true in regards to our Revenue Rocket growth.)

I am not sure if I am turning into a pessimist in my old age or I just don’t like getting my hopes up. 

Anyone else in LinkedIn land find themselves jaded from years of sales… or is it just me?

Here is a fun one for you:

1) Founder cold dm's a solid, outside of the box dm w/ a cool product 👏

2) I responded affirmatively that I'd be interested in connecting, but mentioned that if we met, I would like to discuss RevRocket as well (we could 100% help them sell) 

3) Founder's response is very non-committal, but asks for more info

4) My response - this is what we do

5) Them - 🦗🦗🦗

6) Me (after a few days... still seriously interested) - Worth a convo

7)  Them - 🦗🦗🦗

8) Me (after a few more days) - Hey we could probably use this for us and our clients, do you want to connect?

9) Them - 🦗🦗🦗

10) Me (final attempt) - "I am interested, want to schedule a call"

11) Founder - sends thru a booking link 

12) Me (while booking) - "this is interesting, looks like it is a link for someone else.  Oh well, they are probably just adding in sales to the call"

13) Me (after getting a swarm of updates to the invite) - get's on said demo with... not the founder... not sales... but someone on the tech support team probably doing one of their first demos (granted they were very nice and this post is not about them)

Moral of the story - You work hard to book meetings.  Don't let any outside of the box response close you off to an opportunity.  IF we rolled this solution out to all of our clients, we could be the biggest sale this startup has ever had.  Likelihood that happens now?  Very slim.

We all fail.  The difference is in your response to those failures.

Resiliency is key.  Practice it.  The more resilient you are the easier it gets to bounce back.

Reminding myself of this today.  

Happy selling ✌ 

Sellers everywhere- “I GOT MY BIG ONE!!”

Sales Leaders everywhere - “Focus! and keep ‘em on there. Keep ‘em on there.” 

Happy Saturday all.

Prospecting out of your own network CAN be one of the most uncomfortable activities in sales.

Why?

Because no one likes being sold to... and no one like having to sell to their friends.  It can feel dirty.  "Oh hey, friend, I know I haven't talked to you in ages.  Want to buy something (or intro me to someone?)?"  

The trouble is that your network is also your lowest hanging fruit.  The people that you should be able to tap for intros and for demos of the new thing you are working on.  

So how do you go about farming from your network without it feeling awkward and uncomfortable?  Easy.  Just be honest.  Small talk is great, but get to the ask quickly.  

"Hey!  You popped in my LinkedIn as I was searching my higher ed contacts (Now they know why you are reaching out).  I'd love to catch up soon (only say if you are honest), but currently I am {insert your ask}"

Remember to always give them an out.  They should feel safe to say no.  

And remember, this is a two way transaction... or should be.  "I really appreciate you being open to {making the intro, checking out the demo...etc}.  I'd love to repay the favor.  Any intros that I can make for you?

Alot of people skip prospecting their network because of this feeling.  But you are missing out if you aren't tapping these folks.

What other ways have you found to engage your network and it not feel slimy?  

✋ Raise your hand if you've ever been the founding sales team member ✋

Or 

✋ Raise your hand if you've ever been a founder who ran sales ✋

What were your biggest takeaways?  What would you tell others about to take on those responsibilities (or currently in that role)?

Let's make it Friday-official

Let's see who is still out there prospecting... and how they've faired this week.

Hit me with your stats for the week... or a success or learn you'd want to share.

My learn is in the comments 👇 ... hint it is about driving a ton of engagement for a company that still won't give me a follow...

Any guesses on how many impressions we’ve generated for Yellowbird® so far over the last 4 days?  

Closest guess can half of my spoils once Yellowbird finally decides I’ve given them enough publicity 😂😂

Always looking for a "rhyme or reason" to your prospecting?

Maybe try following the eclipse's path today...

Will give you an instant opening line:

- (me) Hello John, can you hear me? 
- (them) Uh, yeah.
- (me) Phew, I thought maybe your technology had exploded with the eclipse!  But now that I have you...

What other opening lines are you using today?

Starting to prospect outside of your network is scary. Looking for the lowest hanging fruit?  

Find common experiences / connection points -

- Worked at the same company
- Went to the same university 
- Grew up in the same town 
- Have the same first name
- Have a similar tagline 

Finding commonality in which you can reference will make the cold message not as cold. 

What else are you adding to this list?

How do you know if it is a product/service problem or a seller problem?

Hit me with your thoughts.

After speaking with hundreds of founders over the last few months, I’m always surprised by what I hear when I ask - “Are you still selling”. 

Curious to hear from you all.

Founder's/Sellers what is the hardest thing about prospecting?

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