By Paul Post
Alan VanTassel stays in business by working himself out of a job.
After 30-plus years in corporate America, he recently launched his own Moreau-based firm, Velocity Sales, which helps entrepreneurs achieve their sales vision and goals.
“Sales is an area of difficulty for most small business owners,” VanTassel said. “They’re passionate about what they do, but their experience is not often in sales. At some point they get to a place where sales are declining or they’re frustrated with revolving-door salespeople coming and going, and can’t attract good talent. Clients hire me on an interim business. We don’t just consult, we actually do the work for them.”
“The model is to help them build a sales structure they don’t have, to help them get their business to the next level,” he said. “I’ll help them hire salespeople, do weekly ride-alongs and attend sales meetings. I can be part of the business and run sales while developing a long-term strategy or plan. After 12 to 24 months I’d be gone.”
Early in VanTassel’s career, he traveled the country for Melville Corp., the parent company of numerous nationwide chain stores such as Thom McAn shoes, Marshalls and KB Toys. Then he was a regional sales manager for Stride Rite shoes before moving to Verizon, where he managed sales in its upstate New York market’s messaging division.
Most recently, VanTassel spent the last nine years working for StoredTech.
Right before this, however, in 2000 he launched his own Glens Falls-based technology firm, which laid the groundwork for his newest venture, Velocity Sales.
“That’s where I got my first exposure to the life of an entrepreneur,” he said. “That’s when you become chief cook and bottle washer. In the corporate world, I didn’t realize how much got done by someone else. It gave me a new appreciation for business owners and entrepreneurs, how hard they work.”
VanTassel decided that 2023 was a good time to make significant career and lifestyle change. Velocity Sales was launched in early January, aligned with a global firm called Sales Xceleration, which supports more than 200 sales leaders like VanTassel throughout the U.S. and several other countries.
Its stated mission is to provide “outsourced sales consultants to small businesses and mid-sized corporations that want to launch, expand or improve their sales operations to drive revenue growth.”
Small and new businesses are often plagued by declining or stagnant sales because the owner is focused on other tasks. Or, the enterprise may be growing too fast with no sales process or procedures in place, and the owner doesn’t have a good strategy and doesn’t know how to create one.
VanTassel helps solve these and many other similar problems.
“I have this huge passion for wanting to help entrepreneurs,” he said. “It’s tough running your own business and it’s lonely at the top. Most entrepreneurs who go into business don’t realize how hard it is. I know I can bring value and help them get back the quality of life they might be struggling with because they’re just pulled in too many different directions. The more people I can do it for, the most satisfied I’m going to be.”
At any given time VanTassel works with three to four different clients, primarily in the Capital Region and North Country where he developed a broad business network over the years. Clients are in many types of business, from insurance to executive recruitment.
“I like working with customers in the community where I live and giving back that way, but I have no boundaries,” he said. “I’m currently consulting with one client in Wisconsin. The beauty of why I chose this is that I’m doing what I like, but at my own pace.”