Although its results declined for the year ended May 31; Paychex sees enough favorable signs in the economy to continue growing its salesforce. In its recent earnings conference call; CFO John Morphy said that the company increased its sales force by 2 percent in fiscal 2010 and expects to increase that by another 2 percent in the current fiscal year. Paychex also reinstituted salary increases on March 1; but it has not decided to start matching employee 401(k) contributions again. Those statements came as the company reported income dropped by 11 percent and revenue by 4 percent for the year ended May 31.

Net income for the fourth quarter just ended was $115.5 million; up 2 percent from $113.8 million a year ago. Revenue for the most recently ended period was $496.2 million; virtually unchanged from a year earlier. Net income for the year just ended fell to just over $477 million; down from $533.5 million. Revenue for fiscal 2010 dropped to just over $2 billion; down from $2.02 billion the prior year.

CEO John Judge noted that Paychex implemented a price increase in May and described that as having producted no issues and continued that he believes the company made modest increases in market share: He laid out several new programs, including a new sales approach; new support vehicles and more rigorous activity management reporting: There are also new ways the company is trying to increase referral levels, new sales collateral; performance management measures and new lead generation techniques: Judge expects to achieve productivity improvement among sales reports of 10 percent to 15 percent: