The San Francisco-based SaaS startup KeepTruckin is in a great place right now, a “sweet spot” according to Kelly González, the company’s Director of Diversity and Employee Experience. “We are in a unique phase of the business. We have a solid foundation where our processes are documented and efficient, so we’re not trying to figure it all out. At the same time, individuals can still have a big influence on the company as we grow.”
Thinking specifically of sales roles, González continues, “This is the place for you if you want to have an impact on a company, you want to be recognized as a high performer, and you want to have the resources to do your job.”
Prior to KeepTruckin’s tech-driven ascension to its current position as the #1 provider in the fleet space for long haul drivers, the archaic methods used by legacy companies to track and manage drivers’ hours and schedules marked the industry as one with little appeal for hungry sales talent.
Without KeepTruckin’s fleet management software, the industry’s tracking methods left plenty of room for human error or self-reporting loopholes.
“The way it worked in the past, if you’re thinking of long haul trucks, was instigated by the government saying ‘If you’re driving interstate, we have to manage your hours of service so we don’t have you driving a big heavy vehicle for 30 hours straight, falling asleep, and getting into an accident,” says Brian Germain, SVP of Sales and Customer Success at KeepTruckin and ex-Google employee.
As a truck driver, you’d have to log hours manually using a paper log. KeepTruckin started as a free app to simplify that process. The government later mandated hours of service be tracked with a device connected to the vehicle, an electronic logging device. Now we could monetize the app with a hardware and software subscription model” Germain explains. This industry mandate led to KeepTruckin becoming one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies of all time.
The company has also added in-dash cameras to its service, which allows for a powerful AI influence on fleet scheduling, and that, in turn, means more safety and less risky routes taken by sometimes incautious drivers, and more exonerations for the company in terms of post-accident investigations.
“We can track all that,” Germain says, “and provide it to the safety manager who’s overseeing the fleet.”
The telematics space has classically been untapped by tech innovations, Germain says, adding, “Most of the players that we’re competing against are legacy players with old tech, and their customers are looking for a reason to leave. Enter a company like KeepTruckin.”
That should be music to the ears of sales talent across the country with Germain himself a testament to KeepTruckin’s tech-forward philosophy as his background at Google and Uber points to where KeepTruckin is and where they are headed.
Laquita Morris, a Regional Sales Manager for the company, sums it up: “A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn. I was at another company, but I entertained the notion because I was curious. And I really liked what I saw with KeepTruckin’s software, and how different it looks from existing software. I thought it was pretty innovative.”
A big part of the company’s appeal to sales personnel has to do with KeepTruckin’s remarkably short communication lines.
“Salespeople are able to give feedback directly to our product and marketing teams,” González says, “And that’s a really big deal to be able to have such short communication directly from customer to salesperson to product. That’s huge and that’s really hard to find.”
“The level of engagement is massively higher than at any of my previous companies,” Germain adds. “You can talk to our head of product easily. They’ll jump on calls with you. Our CEO will jump on calls if someone is hung up on a deal. The ability to get anyone across your organization to help support on a deal is at a level I’ve never experienced at much larger organizations.”
“We’ve got a very good manager-to-rep ratio,” he adds. “Managers can go deep with reps on deals.”
“We are so focused on the mission and so collaborative,” says Morris. “ The people here are highly intelligent and they really want to win in this particular space. And I didn’t have any trucking experience or any knowledge of the trucking industry when I started here. But just having a conversation with them and feeling their passion, I thought, ‘This is fresh and new.’”
KeepTruckin lists its company values as the following:
- Create Trust
- Embrace Diversity
- Seek Continuous Improvement
- Be Transparent
- Advocate for The User
- Follow Through with Urgency
When asked what constituted a solid member of the sales team, Germain offered the following:
- Good territory management strategy
- Effective at building sales relationships
- Understanding the value of what you are selling
- Proficiency at organization and pipeline management
- Able to optimize approaches for scale across the organization
“Everyone you talk to is so focused on the mission,” Morris says. “It’s a collaborative environment. You can feel our passion.”
“If you’re a high performer, you have a chance to do extremely well in a world that’s very fast-growing and entering new markets,” Germain says. “There’s just a lot of opportunities for high performers to add a lot of value to the organization above and beyond simply hitting quota.”
The company also takes its dedication to inclusion and diversity seriously as an ethical choice, according to González. “There aren’t many companies that start with the core value of embracing diversity,” she says. “It makes a huge difference when you start that way because it means all of the company leaders that we hire have been and will continue to be evaluated against that value.’
“It’s nice to be around transparent teammates who want to give feedback to each other, and admit and fix mistakes,” González adds when describing her company’s overall culture. “It means that our teams have a high level of psychological safety and we’re respectful and kind.”
If it isn’t already obvious, KeepTruckin offers sales candidates entry into a largely untapped industry that is simply waiting to be transformed by a company with an eye on innovation.
“The group of people I work with here at KeepTruckin are highly intelligent, motivated, and passionate,” Morris says. “And you’re selling a really great product that actually helps people. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
