Before You Hire Another Rep, Look at Your Best One

0:00Rubrik is the security and AI operations company built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters. Automated recovery, clean data, a business that keeps moving no matter what hits. One platform, not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business at Rubrik.com. Again, rubric.com. Welcome back to the Sales Review Podcast. I'm Jeff Blunt Jr., your host, and today's a special episode because I am standing in the Belay Solutions headquarters.

0:38Our conversation today is with the VP of Growth, Kyle Willis. We're gonna talk about how Belay helps sales organizations and sales peoples and sales leaders make sure that they are tackling the most important activities every single day so that they can get their time back and they can do the things that matter most for the business and not do the things that take away their energy.

1:04Thank you for joining us on the Sales Theory Podcast. One of our key partnerships with Outbound. We're going to be in Las Vegas this November. And we're bringing you there because virtual sales assistants have really taken the market by storm. And Belay is heading up that market. Can you walk us through what Belay is, how you've been growing this segment for your business, and why sales organizations are choosing virtual sales assistants going into 2026 and beyond? Well, first of all, we're really excited to be a part of Outbound. So excited to be there in person for that. And when it comes to staffing, hiring, especially for high performing leaders, high performing sales leaders that we're talking about today, that is something that they don't necessarily really need to have on their plate.

1:48So that's where I think Belay can come in and really help being the experts in hiring, going out and finding those people. And what we find is so many people think about in the day to day, I need help. I need help. I'm drowning in my CRM. I'm drowning in my prospecting, in my follow up. But when it comes to actually taking the action, putting together the time and resources to go find that person, it's overwhelming. Where do you start? Where do you get the time? And I think that's where Belay really steps in as that expert in hiring and as that expert in going out and getting you the right help that you specifically need.

2:19And that's where we can take that from, I should be doing this to, oh, this is actually possible. And I can partner with someone like Belay to help me find that right person and help me find that right person fast. And we were talking before we started recording the podcast, we were having this really interesting conversation about the costs of not having a virtual assistant for your sales organization and how there are leaders in B2B sales who are looking at their roster. They have an ultra high performer, somebody who is hitting above 100 % of quota consistently, even 200 % of quota. And then they have other people in their team that are hitting, you know, 18 % or 20 % or 30 % or even 60%.

2:55And a virtual sales assistant is rocket fuel on top of that organization. But it's interesting how you've kind of positioned where that rocket fuel goes. So can you walk us through what Belay has seen work for ultra high performers in sales organizations that are hitting above and beyond their quota? Yeah, I think a lot of sales leaders are taking a look at those ultra performers. And let's say it's 100 % quota, maybe it's 120 % quota. And they're saying, okay, hey, I've tapped this person out. So now what is my next step? And I think that the natural next step can be, well, I'm gonna go hire more sales reps, right?

3:26But it's so hard to replicate the activity of those highest performers. It's so hard to replicate the tenure, the knowledge, the relationships that they have. What if you started asking the question, okay, what if they're not at max capacity? What if maybe their quota potential is 150%, 200%, whatever that number is, I just need to get them the right help to be able to do that. I need the compliment to what they do, to what their superpower is, the client facing work, the actual salesmanship of what they're doing. And I think that to me is a key ingredient that a sales leader needs to be asking because that sales leader, there are certain tasks that they're pushing down to their top sales reps because they need that information, right?

4:05They need that information to inform the own decisions that they're doing. They need that information to report to their executive team. They need to be able to help pull out what are these consistencies that we need to do. So those tasks can't necessarily go away. And we actually need them the most from our top high-performing sales reps because that's what I want to replicate the most. So how do we now start to plug in an administrative-level help to start helping that sales rep with that so that they stay in their highest revenue-generating activities? But now you have the right administrative-level help to also give you as a sales leader what you need to do your job really well.

4:37I want to pivot to Belay in talking about your organization and why we have chosen to partner with you. We went through a vetting process. We had lots of conversations, even utilized our network to make sure that we are bringing the right people to outbound and Belay just hit all of the notes. And I want you to kind of walk through what makes Belay special. Why are these virtual sales assistants so much more effective for sales organizations be through Belay than through other means? And I want you to highlight a little bit about why Belay is the choice for ultra high performing organizations.

5:12Yeah. So we've had the privilege to work with high performing leaders for the last 15 years. We've matched over 10 ,000 different people with the right assistant solution that they need, which is super exciting to us. We feel like we know this world really, really well. I do think there's a natural fit of just both of our organizations saying, hey, we wanna help high-performing leaders climb higher. That's where the term belay comes from. We believe that that ceiling might not be the actual ceiling. We can help you continue to get more and more. And what we really love is it's not always just, yes, certainly we're going to dive into, hey, what are those tasks that you actually need taken off of your plate, right?

5:45CRM help, prospecting, list building, proposals, agreements, all things that we know really well. But now let's also get into some of those soft skills, right? Like what is the personality that you're looking for that fits well with your organization, that fits well with your sales rep? These are things that we've gotten a lot of reps doing. We know what works really well in the market. And we've got this incredible bench of sales assistants that are ready and hungry and excited to come out and help support some of those sales leaders. So I think not only do we really see ourselves just like you are leaders in the sales training world, we see ourselves as leaders and helping high impact, high capacity leaders really continue to add more and more to their plates.

6:24When we started our relationship and started forming our outbound project and getting you there and having these conversations, what I've learned about Belay, and we have a virtual assistant for Jeb Blunt Senior through This organization operates like what we want our organization to operate like. We can call and text you. We've got access to people. It's easy to communicate. You are flexible. You're able to speak our language in a way that many other organizations that we have worked with in the past haven't been able to really bridge that gap. I wonder from your perspective, what allows you to do that?

7:01What allows your team to really personalize the experience of a virtual sales assistant for a salesperson or even a leader in an organization? What gives you that kind of special sauce that really ties that knot and pulls the bridge together? I'm going to use one word for that. And I would say team. We look at our clients. We look at our sales assistants as a part of the team. And we win when you all win, right? We win when Jed Blunt Sr. gets some time back, right? to go and concentrate on those, setting the vision for the company for the next three. We win when that sales rep goes from, man, I thought I was tapped out at 101 % of quota.

7:35Now I see the roadmap to 150%, right? Same thing on the other side with our sales assistants. We win when we get to hear the stories about them. They're saying, hey, I stepped in, I helped out this sales team. I was in the middle of everything from their data and analytics, but also we went out and we got five more prospecting wins this month than we've ever done. They're just as pumped up and excited about that as a sales rep is. So it is a true strategic partnership is what we're looking for, right? And we're not just going to match you with your sales assistant and then say, good luck, go figure it out.

8:03We actually walk alongside you throughout the entire time of that engagement to make sure, hey, what are our goals? What are our priorities? Are we hitting those? What do we need to adjust? What's working? What's not working? All of that is a three-way street. So you've got your sales leader, sales rep, you've got your sales assistant. We also have a client success consultant in the middle. So I think everything from the very beginning to how we pull out information and what you need, how we coach and consult you to really help you understand what is possible with a sales assistant. You probably have a couple ideas in your head, but you're also asking the question, how do I maximize this?

8:35How do I really squeeze as much out of this as possible? And what does life look like in the first 30 days versus what does life look like at month nine, right? Like those goals, priorities might continue to change. We're going to walk alongside you with that, with a true team, all hands-on approach to that engagement because we want to see it succeed because we want to see and hear what that story is on the back end of look at the growth that we all together as a team helped create. I want to go back to a conversation we were having earlier today, the relationship of the virtual sales assistant with the sales rep or the leader.

9:08Your team working together creates a 3D image of the person you are serving. It's not just the professional tasks. It's not just the CRM and the email box and maybe some scheduling. Yes, that's a big part of everything, but it's actually the brain of the virtual sales assistant thinking and behaving like the person that they are serving because they understand how that person operates in their world. And it doesn't just fall into the professional stuff. It actually feeds into their personal lives and their goals and ambitions and what they want to do with everything else. Can you walk through like how you guys start to build a true relationship with that person so that you are helping them not only achieve professional goals, but it's starting to bleed into other parts of their life?

9:53Oh, that's so good. I love how this comes into the personal life. And first of all, I will say even a high performer, they're always asking, how can I perform even more? That does something for them personally, right? They don't want to feel like they're actually at a ceiling and OK, this is it month after month. I'm just going to keep hitting this 127 percent quota. They want to know what's possible, right? And I think that's where a sales assistant can truly come in. And part of that is allowing them to stay focused on what drives you, right? If you are a high performing sales rep, sales leader, you are driven by a lot of different things, right?

10:25A lot of that is driven to win. It's to go get that next deal. It's to go after that next big partnership. It's to, as a sales leader, it's to uncover and find that consistent pattern that really worked in quarter two so that you can replicate and put more fuel on it in quarter three. When we look at a sales assistant, the reality is they are helping increase your capacity, right? So there's not more hours in the day. There's not more time. That is the resource that we can't get back. This sales assistant is not going to come in and be the high level sales rep that you have, right? Like that's not their skillset, but it does allow them to get 25, 50, 75 % more capacity to do what only they can do to do what only that superpower is that they can do, which drives them.

11:10And professionally, and now I'm going to kind of connect this to your personal life, you are doing the work that you were hired to do. You're doing the work that you love doing, that you get to see benefits you in your personal pocketbook. You also get to see benefit overall growth of the business, which provides more and more opportunities for others. And let's start to ask the question, who does this allow you to be outside of work, right? Like what else really drives and fuels you? Can you get a 30-minute workout in now during the middle of the day that actually sets you up for those sales calls in the afternoon because it re-energizes you and gets you ready to go?

11:41Can you make that kid's game that starts at four o 'clock that otherwise might be impossible because you know all the planes, trains, and automobiles have to continue going, but now you actually have someone to keep an eye on that while you're stepping away? Can you refuel on some evenings and some weekends rather than having to catch up on all the admin tasks that otherwise you're trying to fit in the middle of all your different day-to-day activities and work. So all of that to me, it is the whole person as a sales rep. And as a sales leader, I want my people to go and enjoy all these other things of life.

12:11Hey, you're working hard, right? We as a business, we as a company, we are getting to benefit from your hard work. I also want you to be here for a really long time because there's a high, high cost for me to lose you. So I want you to play golf. I want you to work out. I want you to make your kids games. You're probably a leader in your community and all of that. I want you to plug into some of those things. That makes you an even better person and someone that wants to be here for a really long time. What type of help do you need in order to do that? And a lot of times it's not full-time help.

12:39I think that's where people get stuck because there's a lot of resources, a lot of bandwidth, a lot of risk to bring on someone full-time. A fractional model like Belay has really is something that you can plug and play quickly and reduce some of those resources because we're going to do the hiring for you. Reduce some of that risk because it is a fractional model that can start even just at 10 hours a week and work your way up. So it is something that you can say, hey, I want to take that next step without having to jump into the deep end yet. I want to kind of wade into this and see what's next.

13:10Who is right for belay? Who should be looking at your services? You're listening to this podcast, you're coming to Outbound or you're at Outbound. Who should come and learn more about this service and who should ultimately invest in themselves with a virtual sales assistant. Kind of give us a full picture of the exact person that would benefit most from engaging with Belay. Awesome. Let's look at it in two different categories. So let's start with that high performing sales rep. You're six figures, 150 ,000 a year or more in income, but you can see that there is fruit on the table that you just can't get to.

13:47And potentially it might be, hey, I literally don't have any more hours in the day, or it might be, hey, it's too much of a sacrifice for me to go get that. But it's there and it's there for my company. And a lot of people are thinking, hey, does that mean bring on a whole nother sales rep? I think it can actually be, let's maximize the capacity of your current sales rep that you have. You are probably drowning in CRM level work. You are seeing that there's, hey, there's some outbound prospecting and list targeting that I want to do. And I've thought about that week after week, but I just, I can't quite get to it.

14:18But I know if I do it and I know if I do enough activity there that the fruit is there to come and bring in that revenue for the company and for myself, that's where a sales assistant can truly step in. If you're a sales leader, and I think this is a joint decision between your sales rep, sales leader, you need to be making this decision together because it's going to benefit both of you. There will be a return on the investment for both of you. But if you are a sales leader and you're stuck between, okay, I wanna keep my highest sales reps. There is a cost to me if I bring on some new sales reps because there's the onboarding time, three months, six months at least until I can get them to quota.

14:53And I'm in a really pivotal time right now. I can't take a step back anywhere, but you're considering, do I bring on a new person? Do I hire or do I get some help for my highest performing sales reps? That's a joint decision where I would say, hey, take a look at this fractional model, right? Let's try to say, I want my highest performing sales rep that has the highest close rate. I think I might even be able to get them a few percentage points higher. And not only does that avoid the hiring a new sales rep that's going to make you have to take a proverbial step back for a few months. It's also, it's going to help you maintain and then have rocket fuel on that to really take off and go.

15:25If you're a sales leader that's also consistently feeling like I have these other activities that I really want and need my sales reps to be doing, I just don't feel like I can ask them to do anything else. Like it's not fair. They're doing everything that they can do. I know the hours that they're working. I don't want to take their mindset priorities off of anything that's revenue generating activities. That also is a great place to say, hey, I'm gonna bring this person in to support my top sales rep or to support my top three sales reps or maybe sit in the middle of your five, 10 person sales team and they're doing a lot of consistent activities for all the different reps.

15:55I think that is a tough place to feel in as a sales leader. You know that you need some more information from your reps. You know that you wanna put the pedal down on prospecting and say, hey guys, we're going from 20 % to 30 % prospecting this month but you just feel like you can't do that because it's not fair. Get them the help and do it in a really mindful way, maximizing resources of your team and of your company to partner with someone like Belay to bring in that help. Going into a follow-up call, I want every important note right at my fingertips, not buried somewhere in a scribbled stack of notes.

16:26And with Plod Notepin S, I always have them because it's a wearable, portable note taker that lets me stay present and focused on customers during every single meeting. Plod captures the conversation and turns it into organized summaries and action items so I can follow up faster. And if I need a specific detail, Plod's Recall has that ready for me. And that's why Jeb Sr. and I and all of Sales Gravy trusts our Plod Note Pen S. Try Plod and stay focused on the conversation while it handles all of your notes. Go to plod.ai forward slash Jeb. That's plod.ai forward slash Jeb and use code JEB to get 10 % off your purchase.

17:00Say you've got a smaller team. You're not Fortune 100. You're not Fortune 500. You're not even, you know,$250 million. dollars, you are a small, lean, 10, 15,$20 million organization, maybe got two, three, four reps, and maybe you're the business owner and you're also on the team. And you are seeing this challenge of people hitting a ceiling. You're not able to grow the business as fast as you want. You're going to have to hire more people in order to have that happen. And in order to hire more people, you got to onboard people. And that causes all kinds of crazy things to happen in business. and you just want your people to be able to sell a bit more, can you work with Belay for a virtual sales assistant that is for the small team, for multiple people to help multiple people who maybe are top performers also reach a higher capacity?

17:51Is that something that you could work on with Belay? Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of different models there. I would look at that as like a sales assistant team admin, right? So, and you don't want to, you would not want to do this for much more than maybe three to five reps that are on your team. But think about plugging them in the middle of your hub. A lot of the activities that your reps need, a lot of the support that they need are consistent things. And this is what we're going to help pull out that are happening on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that now you can just duplicate their efforts, right?

18:16And one thing that I also love is now that this sales assistant that's sitting in the middle of your multiple reps, they're getting insight into how each of them operate, starting to also pull out and say, hey, hey, I found some processes here that we can really make more efficient for the entire team. So now the impact, the return on that investment is starting to be multiplied by two, three, five, five reps. So absolutely, that is something that can be done. And really the fractional model also works well for that. So, you know, typically, and you should be asking yourself right now, like what are those, there's probably two or three things that you know.

18:47Hey, if I could delegate this yesterday, I would have done it. I got nobody to delegate it to. So now how do I do this? We can also start to add to your plate to that list and say, hey, here's another few things that you probably haven't even thought about that's possible with a sales assistant. Now multiply that times the different reps that you have. We're looking to get back somewhere between five, 10 hours a week per rep. And I want you to start thinking about, okay, now if that's putting back towards revenue generating activities, I'm doing that times three to five different reps. That's a huge impact on your business.

19:18We can help you also figure out what size package you need. It's hourly packages. I think I mentioned it starts at 45 hours per month. but we can continue to build that. Or even if you're saying, hey, I got three reps right now, but I'm trying to get to five reps over the next 12 months. I want to plug someone in here to support these three reps, but I want someone that's also going to be ready to really help not only onboard, but support these other two reps over the next 12 months too. We have a lot of flexibility and can kind of scale that package and grow with you as you continue to grow. It's incredible.

19:45A person sitting in the middle of the hub, in the middle of the salespeople, and they're seeing how different people operate. A question I ask leaders all the time is, do you know what your best salespeople are actually doing. And often they don't because they're like Michael Jordan, right? How does Michael Jordan be Michael Jordan? Michael Jordan couldn't tell you because he just does it. And a lot of these really high level sales reps and even really good sales reps on your team are operating and they just do things slightly different. Yes, they follow the process, but they follow it with their own nuance to it.

20:14And if you have someone who is able to almost intake what they're doing, see their brain, operate with some of those thought processes, they're also less cerebral about it. They can actually point out to you, okay, this person is doing X, Y, and Z to make them successful. And I'm seeing these results from it. The salesperson and the virtual sales assistant can corroborate that process and give your business even better ways to create playbooks and move forward from it. I want to take this down to earth. Let's talk about ways that virtual sales assistants can help salespeople, sales leaders in their specific situations.

20:46I want to start with you. You have a virtual sales assistant and you are the VP of growth for Belay. you are responsible for top line revenue for lots of different parts of your business. And you have somebody that we work with because you are doing lots of other kinds of things. And it's a pleasure to work with them. And your virtual sales assistant is fantastic. Give us a little bit of insight into your own experience with it. How has it helped you? What are some things that you are able to do now that you might not be able to do without some assistance like that? Love it. So the first thing I'll say is, you know, I really work a lot with partnerships.

21:19So working a lot of partnership deals, have multiple of those going every single month. What I love to do is what we're doing right now, right? Like I wanna do that client partner facing work, if you will, and getting to use the superpowers that I think I have to be able to do that work. Now, in the meantime, while we're recording this podcast, there's a lot of work that has happened before that, right? To coordinate schedules, to figure out what room we're gonna do this in, to figure out what the content is. A lot of that is the work that's happening in the background that I don't necessarily want to be a part of.

21:48I want to be able to show up and be able to have this conversation, be able to have the energy and the excitement for this conversation, while at the same time realizing as soon as we wrap this up, I'm back to going to figure out what the next partnership is, right? So I need everything in the background to continue happening while I'm doing what I believe that I do best. That is one piece of it right there. The second piece is I do lead an internal sales team as well, right? So I've got sales reps, I've got RevOps people on my team as well. There's a lot of meetings that comes with that. So what I love the most is I can be fully present in a meeting with the people that I'm sitting across from, thinking strategically, trying to figure out, hey, how do we make some decisions here?

22:25How do we make some moves that truly move the needle? Not only for us today, but also thinking about, I'm starting to think about 2027, right? Like, what does this look like for next year? Now, all the details that come with that, right? How does everybody get to that meeting, right? There's a lot of coordinating of schedules. There's a lot of actually sending out the invites. There's putting together the agenda. If I need a sales pitch deck, or if I need an internal deck that I'm gonna use with my team, There's a lot of that that is now being taken off of my plate. I like to use the 1080-10 principle.

22:52So let's say, hey, I've got a full sales team meeting coming up and there's a presentation that I want to give. To me, the 10 % is an audio note to my sales assistant to say, hey, here's what I'm envisioning. Here's who's going to be in the meeting. Here's the things that I want to talk about. Now she can take that 80 % of the way, right? That's pulling a lot of things that she also knows really well because she's living in our CRMs. She's living in our sales dashboards and scoreboards. She knows where to go gather that information and pull it together. and then I'm coming in on the last 10%, which might look like a 15, 30 minute meeting with her to basically dot the I's and cross the T's.

23:24Think about how much energy that saves me to now get in front of my sales team for the hour or to get in front of that next partnership that I'm wanting to make sure that we get because it really does drive our business forward. Now I'm saving that energy for what I do best and I'm honestly staying out of the work to me that just feels like a grime. The opposite is I do all of that work. I show up to the sales meeting with a cup half full, right? And they don't get to experience the vision casting the galvanizing, the things that I want to do and the things that these sales leaders and sales reps are being asked to do when they're sitting across this.

23:54Take that off their plate. Let's unlock them to do the things that they love to do. Is there a case study that kind of highlights other ways that virtual sales assistants have been really successful? Professional services team that we were working with recently, and this is where I got the example that I was sharing earlier of saying, okay, your highest sales rep, most of your sales reps are averaging somewhere between 70 and 100 % quota. Your highest sales rep consistently hitting right around 130 % quota. So they were at that crossroads. Do I hire a new sales rep or do we get more out of this team, right?

24:25A lot of people would think, well, hey, you've got, this person's at 77%, this person's at 82%, let's try to get them up to 100%. That sales leader is asking the exact same question that every sales leader asks, which is saying, how do I replicate the activities of my highest sales rep so that these others can do it? Not a bad strategy. I understand that strategy. I ask them the question, what if 136 % of quota is not as high as your highest sales rep can get? Ask them how many hours are they currently spending updating CRM, figuring out what the prospect, it was around that five to 10 hours a week, right?

24:55And that's where we said, Hey, let's bring along a sales assistant just for your top rep. Let's start there. And the key thing that we're going to do is help us some list building and prospecting. Right now, 20 % of their overall revenue that they drove on a month to month basis was from prospecting. Past leads six months or older that had not converted, throw in some lost deals from there as well that they could bring back to the table. The results were amazing. So now you've got your top sales rep getting up 150 % plus of quota, which is a recurring revenue professional services business. Huge impact on the business.

25:25She's happier doing the work that she's doing. Has a sales assistant coming alongside. We're also seeing prospecting jump from 20 % to 27%, which the downstream effect on that, even marketing is like, hey, that's budget we don't have to use. You went out and generated your own lead. We don't have to spend more money to get those wins. So not only is that revenue generating activities that is hitting top line, it's also helping with bottom line because marketing saying we didn't even have to spend as much money to go get this person. There's a fraction of the cost to bring in the sales assistant to help get that higher quota, help get that prospecting, which doesn't have as many marketing dollars attached to it.

25:59Win, win, win for the whole organization. Again, we're heading to outbound this November, November 9th of the 12th, or be at the beautiful Red Rappers Ordinand off strip in Las Vegas. And Belay is going to be there. A major sponsor of our event, from your perspective, what are you hoping that people who come to Outbound walk away from your booth with? What do you want them to take away from that event? I want these people to start thinking of delegation as an offensive strategy. So I think sometimes delegation gets a bad rap. It's, hey, I'm passing off work that I don't want to do. Let's flip that.

26:30Let's think about this as an offensive strategy that now gives me a higher ceiling, more capacity to focus on those highest priority items that only I can do as a sales rep or as a sales leader. Come by our booth. Let's have a conversation because I do want to ask the question, hey, what are the couple things that you want to get off your plate today? And also, we want to coach and consult you. Get to know, understand your business a little bit. Understand all the nuances and say, hey, have you thought about this? The landscape of what is possible within delegation and delegating this to an expert sales assistant, someone that really wants to come in, they want to build their career around being a sales assistant and supporting a sales rep or sales leader is so much wider than you can imagine.

27:06And it's one of those things that we want you to look up 90 days, six months after and say, I can't imagine life without my sales assistant. There's certainly a part that you're going to play in that of knowing what you need today. And then we also want you all to see us as the experts in this lane to help you really understand how a sales assistant can help you drive more revenue. enjoy your job, do the work that you really love doing, and also not completely lose your personal life as well. I love it. I'm really excited to have you all at Outbound. You are sponsoring our VIP events, an amazing event.

27:34We're going to be doing bowling. We have a bowling alley a night with our VIP ticket holders and Belay is going to be there. If you're listening to this podcast and you're interested in Belay and virtual sales assistance, you're going to want to go get this free resource. The five reasons you're not hitting your sales quota. Text 55123 to G-R-A-V-Y. That's 55123 to gravy, G-R-A-V-Y. Kyle, thanks so much for joining us for the conversation. It's a pleasure to learn about Belay, how you work, how you help sales organizations. And we can't wait to see you at Outbound Conference in Las Vegas. Love the conversation today.

28:07Can't wait to be at Outbound. And we're just really excited about this partnership.

28:42Thank you.