At RingLogix, we don’t just talk about helping our partners grow—we hire people who’ve done it. Enter Jonathan Vaudreuil, a seasoned sales strategist who’s helped scale some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the industry. Today, as our head of growth, he’s helping MSPs go beyond tactics and build the kind of systems that generate real, repeatable results. In this interview, Jonathan shares how his background in agency and SaaS sales shapes his approach, what separates high-growth MSPs from the rest, and how to stop chasing wins—and start creating better at-bats.
I got my foot in the door thanks to my 7 years in Marketing Agency sales. At the first agency we ran campaigns with many tech companies, including SaaS providers, so I was familiar with how to position, market, and sell it in multiple industries.
The second agency’s sales org was built like a SaaS company, and our VP of Sales & Marketing came from SaaS sales, so I gained the experience of running a Sales team in a similar environment. When I decided to leave the Agency, I focused on SaaS companies that sold into Marketing, which gave me an advantage since I had so much industry experience. That experience, and referrals from former teammates, got my foot in the door with a few companies and helped me land a job.
The two main ones are working with Partners and building a department with a strong foundation.
InvoiceCloud largely sold through Partners, which is a different selling motion than direct sales. RingLogix takes this another step further and relies on their Partners to grow their business. It’s truly a “when you win, we win” kind of relationship.
At InvoiceCloud, my team was the entry-level sales department. I focused on teaching them strong fundamentals, habits, and systems to help them succeed both in the job and set them up to succeed in their future roles. Hiring the right talent is what makes those things come to life!
At its core, creating better at-bats is about deciding who your ideal customer is and how you’re going to get your message in front of them. It’s asking, “What will it take to get X result?” It’s focusing on the process to get results.
Chasing wins is focusing on the results as the most important thing instead of seeing them as data points. It’s saying, “I’ll do whatever it takes to get X result.” It’s hoping whatever you do gets the result without paying attention to how you got the result.
For example, if you realize you’re often winning with professional services firms, like lawyers and accountants, go after them. Talk to your existing customers, figure out why they’re all working with you, and turn that into your strategy to go after similar orgs. They’re more likely to want to work with you if your business specializes in helping similar orgs. See what works, what doesn’t, find ways to improve, and stick to a process that’s working.
Two things come to mind.
First, all high-growth orgs have created a system to land new customers and, even more important, expand their products and services with their customers. It’s really hard to grow a business without a process to do both. The process can be simple. What makes it so important is that you can train your team do it, otherwise there’s no way of knowing what’s working, what’s not, and what people should do.
Second, we live in a world where it’s incredibly hard to have a truly unique product or service. Relationships matter. The strongest relationships are ones built on trust and respect. It’s better to be seen as an advisor, someone who can guide your customers, than a friend. The better we are at knowing our industry and our customers, the more we help them see and understand ideas they didn’t know and could impact their businesses, the more likely it is customers will sign up and become long-term customers.
A lot of people love to talk about the thing – the product, the service – because we understand it and it’s interesting to us. Our customers can’t follow along and don’t find the products themselves interesting. What they are interested in is what it does for them. The real value is being able to explain it in the context of a problem or a goal they have.
RingLogix has some interesting product updates and at least one major product rollout coming this year. I believe these are going to provide our current partners with a product they are happier with and find more valuable than ever, helping them serve their customers even better than before. They’ll also give new partners even more reason to sign on and grow together.
There are dozens of major ideas I’ve learned studying psychology!
One core concept is to remember that people are reasonable, not rational. This is why you see a lot of experts get things wrong. They focus on what the data says or what the odds are, and they aren’t thinking about what happens when a real person, with a family, with hopes and dreams and fears, finds themselves in that situation. The better we are at thinking, “What’s the reasonable thing someone would do?” instead of expecting people to do the thing we think is the right choice, the better our relationships will be, both in our personal and professional worlds.
What’s great about my role is that it doesn’t matter how many Partners sign on, it matters how many Partners become successful working with RingLogix. That’s what I’m focused on. How can we make it easier for Partners to sign up with us, then sign up their first customers, and then continue to grow as much as they want to working with us?
As someone who loves reading, I often get the question, “What Sales book do you recommend?” My answer is to read 2 books. First, pick the Sales methodology you want to learn and study it. Challenger, SPIN, Sandler, pick one and get really good at it. Second, read Tao of Jeet Kun Do by Bruce Lee. Yes, that Bruce Lee! It’s the science and philosophy behind his fighting style, and it’s loaded with proverbs that can be applied in business and life. Most people who read it are surprised at how his ideas are much bigger than martial arts.
I drink my coffee black and prefer medium roasts in general. They have the right balance of flavor and bitterness. I do love tea, I typically have a decaf black ginger peach tea with breakfast and rotate between a few lighter teas if I want a cup in the afternoon or evening.
I’m the 2003 Connecticut State AA yo-yo champion, and there is a story behind how that happened that’s a bit unconventional.
“Shoot to Thrill” by AC/DC. Years ago I felt it would be an incredible walk-up song, and I found out I was right when they used it as the song for the intro sequence in Iron Man 2!