Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

The whole used car salesman thing it really just turns me in the wrong way when people think of sales with this negative connotation of things. I don’t understand it completely because I love being sold. My favorite thing is going into a store and you know getting pitched and being sold and I’ll ask immediately are you guys commissioned. Because if you are I love it even more because I know you’re going to work hard for my business. You know if a kid comes to my door and sell chocolates I may or may not buy depending on how good he is but I’ll definitely help him out and tell him some tips on how to sell my neighbors. So I really love sales. I love the strategy behind it the process because I truly believe that a professional salesperson does not believe, should not stay in that same category as a used car salesman and that negative connotation. So that pretty much pisses me off when I when I start to hear that. The greatest thing about working in one the tech industry, but also the sales and marketing industry is that everyone understands how vital sales is. So no we don’t have to deal with that too much. In this world because we’re working with sales teams we’re working with a marketing teams. They understand how sales works and we’re doing the same thing that they wish that their organization was doing. So I love being in this space because that connotation goes away for the most part because it’s very consultative. They understand what we’re there to do when at the same time we’re not trying to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes or sell them something and take it away from him or anything like that. There’s really no bait and switch in this. The proof is in the pudding when it comes to services and consulting.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

I think one of the most valuable things is learning when it’s not a good fit. You know we talked about kind of over qualifying and the last thing you want to do is work with people that you know either are unpleasant or you don’t really want to work with or aren’t going to be true partners for a long term future. So you know telling people no and saying I don’t think we’re going to be a good fit to work together. And these are the reasons why. It’s nothing about you. It’s just these are the reasons why I don’t think we should work together and really challenging that you know some people would say what were you doing you had that fish on the hook why would you throw it back in. That’s the problem it’s just because you’ve got that fish on the hook doesn’t mean it’s going to be a good tasting fish. And again heavy qualification knowing your buyers making sure that you’re not wasting too much time. You’re using your time properly for the right buyers is going to yield way more in the long run than you know a bunch of small fish that didn’t end up turning out being very well. So really challenging not being afraid to say no and not being afraid to be told no goes right along with that as well.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

In sales there’s two things that motivate people and you know I’m I’ve been an athlete my whole life and being at the top you know being the leader in whether that’s a gold medal or winning the championship or whatever that is you know that’s always been my thing and just what is success. And thinking about how do you define what success really means to you and you know that’s the first thing just having that spirit and saying I’m going to put out a plan to do something make it happen. OK I’m going to become number one by doing that. That’s always been on my mind but being in sales I mean let’s be real. Number two is always money as well. So being motivated properly and making sure that you know you really are worth the effort that you put in and sales is one of the only true equalizers I believe in the business world of you get exactly what you put into it. There’s no easy sale. You know I don’t think I’ve ever had something drop in my lap and said Oh here you go. Here’s a sale you know you really have to work into it. So the motivation and that success factor is knowing as hard as I work. The more I strategize the more I stick with my plan. I’m going to be rewarded at the end of the day and you know making sure that one you understand your value and your worth to an organization and then making sure that you’re working for an organization that understands your worth and your value and what you’re putting in to be properly rewarded for that effort. That’s the perfect motivator for any sales person I believe.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

I like to listen to random podcast and one of the things I do a lot is I’ll see an interview or read an article by someone so say it’s Mark Cuban or Richard Branson or someone like that and I’ll actually just go into the podcast app and search for that person and see what other podcasts they’ve been on and listen to an interview by them from a different interview or different perspective. And so instead of really saying OK I want to listen to ten episodes of this podcast I may go listen to two or three about a certain person that I read something about that I like they’re view on something and kind of see how their personality changes as they’re being interviewed by different types of people and different podcast leaders.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

See if they want to bring in other people into the conversation. The more people you can get from an organization what we’ve learned in these enterprise sales cycles is that no one person ever buys anymore and based on the size of the company or the type of company you’re buying committee could be three people it could be five people it could be seven people and really understanding from day one hey to get this deal done I know I’m going to talk to this manager this director this vice president this c-level executive more than likely they’re all going to have to be in there and you can’t be afraid to say hey does this person need to be involved too? You’re going to show that you have knowledge of their organization. You’re going to show that you’re really understanding everything that’s going on with that organization and being able to show hey I’ve really done my research. You’re not like anybody else. I’m not like anybody else. You know we really were meant to work together and showing hey this person probably needs to be involved and not being scared to ask that question and potentially not moving on without that right person.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

The next big piece of my process is making your prospect do something and make them show that they actually want to be engaged in this. So I like to give homework. These are the types of things that I want you to do by the next call. Provide me a list of the three most important things you got out of the conversation and you know really give them a deadline that hey I need to have this back before our next conversation or does it make sense. And then most importantly in your entire sales process is stick with it. If you say you’re not going to do something unless something else was done. Don’t do it. It’s fine. Don’t be afraid of them saying hey we’re not going to do business now and cancel the meeting. If that happens maybe they weren’t the best prospect for you in the first place. Even worse wouldn’t have been a good client for your company overall. Would have cost the company money overall. So getting people bought into your process is very important. So give them some homework to make sure they do it. Stick with it.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

Lots and lots of qualification at the beginning like we spoke about. Really understanding before I’ve ever talked to a person of. Is this a good buyer for me? You see the spam emails go out. You know we’ve worked with hundreds of companies just like you and that’s a really an empty promise when it comes down to it because you haven’t had any conversation with anybody yet. So being personal finding out about people and treating that first conversation as hey I want to get to know you. I hope you want to get to know me. Let’s go through this and do some light discovery to see if it makes sense for us to continue talking and if at any point you’re not seeing value out of this conversation. Let me know and we can go on our way. You know being very honest from the beginning and people appreciate that because you know you’ve taken time out of their day everyone’s very busy. Calendars are always tight and tough for everyone these days. You know being honest and saying hey I want you to get value out of this. Let’s get to know each other and see if we want to work together because that’s the most important of any time you don’t fully understand what’s going our separate ways and that type of honesty generally opens up. So you know that may be a quick intro call of 10 to 15 minutes. Lots of times that turns into a full discovery process where we may talk for an hour plus. You know if you can build that trust where they want to continue the conversation you know maybe they’re going to skip their next meeting or go go over a little bit to be late for their next meeting because you’re meeting. That’s a pretty good sign that they’re engaged.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

When you have your own business you have to sell and you’re really selling yourself. All day long every day you’re out there making relationships and selling whatever you can possibly sell to try to get business. The part of that that didn’t appeal to me was how do I now have to produce what I’ve sold. So I was spending all day selling and all night producing and as an entrepreneur. That’s great. But can be very tiresome. So what I realized was that part of being an entrepreneur I really liked was selling. So from there I have an opportunity with one of my clients who was an upcoming tech services company who was helping bring companies to the cloud so pre everybody being SAAS they were really helping companies who didn’t have enough development or dollars to be able to take their software from an on premise solution into the cloud but still needed the availability for hosting that product for their people around the world to be to use that product. So we helped lots and lots of companies take their product and put it in the cloud. But still not lose that functionality that they had from an on premise software. So in that I got to sell and learn about lots and lots and lots of businesses. Lots of services from the IT world learning about software which then led me into the SAAS software world for a little bit actually selling SAAS software as that grew. But really I wanted to get back to key roots which was marketing helping businesses from a consulting angle but also having kind of the tech feel to it as well. So the selling services around Salesforce and Marketo with LeadMD has been a perfect fit for everything I’ve wanted to do and based on my history of employment previously.

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Clip from Episode 27: Selling Professional Services – Reed Clarke of LeadMD:

When it comes down to it I had a lot of sales experience I’ve sold services before in the past and I really when I came to the organization challenged it of how can we sell to better clients and bigger deals. And one of the thing that was really my goal from day one is how can I come in and be different than the other sales people we have. How can I sell larger accounts where I can really focus on a smaller number of accounts and kind of get away from the spray and pray a little bit and focus on. We’re going to do bigger engagements. More strategy less tactical and be able to grow those account over multi-phase approaches. It’s just something I’ve done in my past life and it really just felt like it would work here as well so I really made that my goal from day one.

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