Reveel is a company that goes to bat for its clients.
I found that out right away — when I was still on the other side of the table.
In 2010, I was an account executive for FedEx when I got an email from Reveel co-founder Chad Beville. He was representing the University of San Diego, one of my clients, in a request for proposal. And he was asking me to produce a new pricing agreement for USD from FedEx.
I had never seen rates like the ones Chad was requesting. His proposal was incredibly specific, but it included discounts that I frankly didn’t think were achievable. I told him it couldn’t be done. He asked if I’d talked to an analyst yet. I got the sense that he already knew the answer, and he was right — I hadn’t even taken it to a FedEx analyst.
When I did, I was blown away.
The analyst approved everything Reveel had asked for — the earned discount tier levels, every surcharge concession, and every discount. It was all there.
This was great news for Chad and for the University of San Diego. But it wasn’t great news for me. The deal diluted revenue on the FedEx account, which reduced my bonus. I had to learn the hard way that helping my customers get the best price possible cost me money.
After Chad did this twice more, the problem became clear: If I gave my customers the best discounts possible, I was putting myself at a personal disadvantage, making it harder to achieve my goals at the end of the quarter.
I knew something had to change. Fortunately, Chad did too.
What made Reveel so Special
Throughout my experience at FedEx, I’d been inundated by corporate culture. They spent years telling me that this was the best possible place for my career, that its benefits were unparalleled, and that we were working to build something great.
But FedEx is a huge global organization — which often makes for an impersonal company. I had moved up about as far as I could in San Diego, and I knew I eventually wanted to move my family home to Phoenix. If I were to move there with FedEx, someone else would have had to retire, and it likely would’ve had to have been for a lateral move.
When Chad invited me to have coffee with him in 2010, I was already asking questions. The discounts he’d gotten from FedEx, through me, opened my eyes. The University of San Diego proposal wasn’t the first one I would have walked away from because I didn’t think we could match it. I’d seen UPS discounts from other customers and decided that even bidding on them would be a waste of time. I felt like FedEx wasn’t giving me the tools I needed to be competitive. It wasn’t working.
At that coffee meeting, Chad got me to confess that I only had two or three accounts comparable to USD. I’d assumed that FedEx approved pricing based on two or three benchmarks. Chad, on the other hand, had a database of thousands of customers that helped him understand what a truly fair price for those services was. I was operating with insufficient information, and it had put me at a disadvantage — despite FedEx, one of the leaders of the global shipping industry, surely having that data available.
Then Chad told me about Reveel.
He showed me the company’s compensation plan: We make money from what we save our clients money, and I receive a commission from those savings. That was the opposite of making money off of how much I overcharged my customers. I had finally realized that that’s what I was doing at FedEx. The idea that I could have complete alignment with my customer’s financial interests and my financial interests seemed like a great way to operate.
We also talked about other services we could offer companies who were trying to save money, rather than make money, on shipping. Some of those are the services Reveel offers today, including invoice auditing, contract negotiation consulting, data analysis and more.
I was afraid to leave a Fortune 100 company for what was then a startup. But then I asked Chad about moving to Phoenix. Absolutely, he said, as long as you prove yourself here first.
It must have worked, because I’m happily settled in Arizona and truly enjoy what I do.
What I do for Reveel
I joined Reveel in 2010 and focused on new client acquisition. I got to do for clients what I’d seen Chad do for the University of San Diego: dig deep into their shipping profiles, compare them to everything we knew about the shipping industry, and ask for what they needed.
I realized later that what had made Chad’s 2009 pitch to FedEx so successful was how specific it was. Analysts can’t do much with a vague request like “give me your best price.” But when I gave the analyst everything he needed to achieve that best price — and because Chad knew exactly what to ask for — it was no problem. Almost a decade later, as a leader at Reveel, I still encourage my team to identify exactly what analysts need to target to achieve our goals.
After several years of hard work on this new career path, I shifted into a role as Vice President of Operations. I recruit and mentor new Reveel team members. And there are more and more of us every year as we expand our success and services to Nashville, Dallas, Cleveland, Boston, and Phoenix.
Reveel is growing. Our team is dynamic and passionate, with unparalleled work ethic and focus. And every day, we’re doing right by our customers.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
The Reveel App uses AI and machine learning to provide an unparalleled look into what’s impacting your bottom line. Through invoice audits, peer benchmarking, and rate modeling/simulations, you can see the health of your operation and assess pricing changes from parcel carriers like FedEx and UPS. Sign up for a free Reveel account today to see how you can leverage automation to synthesize your data, ship more for less, and reduce the time needed to identify issues and action items.
