This past summer, Eastern Washington representative Alan Yost joined an extremely elite group of industry professionals by selling his one millionth unit of semen. Alan becomes only the 23rd semen sales representative in the history of the A.I. industry to reach this level of sales and may very well be one of the youngest to accomplish this feat.

Alan began his career with All West in June of 1986 while attending Washington State University. He began by working as a relief technician in the Sunnyside area of Eastern Washington until his graduation in December 1989. For the next two years Alan was the ‘go to’ guy breeding cows and filling in on sales routes in Eastern Washington. He began as a full-time technician in 1992 and bred cows for the next four years in the Yakima/Sunnyside region. It was January 1996 that Alan was promoted to full-time sales representative, and has been doing so for the past 14 years.

His millionth milestone unit was sold at the Golob Dairy in Granger, Washington. It would be hard to find a more loyal co-op supporter than Bob Golob. The dairy has been breeding A.I. exclusively with All West since 1948. According to Bob, “We’ve dealt strictly with All West because we believe in the cooperative philosophy, and they’ve always had a great selection of bulls and they provide excellent service.” The Golob herd is always among Yakima Valley’s best in production and milk quality.

Bob Golob has represented Eastern Washington on the All West Board of Director’s for many years, and has served on the Executive Committee since 1991 guiding the cooperative to the success it is today. Bob, “For Alan to sell a million units of semen in this area is quite an accomplishment. Few in the industry anywhere have ever done it and it takes a lot of dedication.”

As Alan says, “There are no real secrets to success in this business. You just need to be honest, be on time, and be consistent in all you do. You’ve got to establish relationships and then the results will follow. Relationships always come before results. The key to working with these big dairies is to get up early and get going to see your customers early in the morning before something comes up and they are too busy to see you.”

—From All West/Select Sires news release