144: Oracle Sales Rep of the Year - Brad Harmon - Stop Selling & Start Listening

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0:23 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:39 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Brad Harmon. Brad was the Rep of the Year last year at Oracle before moving to his current role at Celonis. Welcome to the show, Brad.

0:49 Brad Harmon: Thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me.

0:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, looking forward to digging into this. We were sharing some old war wounds before we got started, so maybe we'll get into a little bit of that. But let's kick things off like we always do with some immediate value and talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most most to your success in sales?

1:05 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. First and foremost, I think my just relentless, never-ending prospecting plan that I keep in place, not only for myself, but for my broader ecosystem as well, whether it be from a partner strategy perspective or my business development rep, I always want to go into every week having a plan of who to attack and how to attack it. Right. I think that has led to, you know, having some successful qualified meetings and, you know, continuing to build and develop that pipeline. Secondly is, you know, Never-ending personal and professional developments. I recently just completed my MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology. If anybody's considering their MBA, I highly recommend the course. It's extremely fast-paced, all online driven, and really enjoyed the content and really was a great refresher for specific areas that I actually sell into, like finance and accounting. I think investing in yourself professionally is one of the best things that you can do. And if your company allocates some type of reimbursement program or any type of giveback in terms of reimbursing you for continuing education and you're not taking advantage of it, I think that's a significant loss. And then from a personal development perspective, I'm always trying to learn new things, listen, read. Specifically, I try and stay within the elements of business and I'm an avid investor. I love following areas like real estate, Jim Cramer, Mad Money, you name it, anything fun that incorporates what I like to do, I think is also a great personal investment as well. And then thirdly, I think being very customer-focused and customer-centric is definitely a differentiator for myself. I know this is the Top 1% Podcast, but I like to think of myself as the top of the top 1%. And in order to do so, you have to be very customer-focused and very customer-driven and always be listening. I think sometimes in a sales role, you can talk too much and, you know, be overbearing or overwhelming or sometimes overselling. And I think an element that's a forgotten art that's kind of lost is that element of not only humanity, but listening. People buy from people and, you know, I try to incorporate my personality with my sales type all in one. So hopefully those 3 were helpful to give you a better understanding of me.

3:24 Scott Ingram: Love it. Well, we will definitely dig in more, especially into some of the specifics around your prospecting plan, but why don't we contextualize this just a little bit first and I'll have you talk about kind of what your role was with Oracle, what that performance looked like, and then, you know, kind of what led to the transition for you as well?

3:42 Brad Harmon: Yeah, absolutely. No problem. So let's take it back to my first job out of college, which I was a business development rep over at a company called Infor, which is another enterprise software company. And I think having that business development experience only helped build for my success later on in sales. Right. Cause I don't think that business development aspect ever goes away or fades away in any sales role. And then I was transitioned after about a year and a half into an inside sales role at Oracle, which I enjoyed some great success quarter over quarter. And then after about a year and a half of doing that, I was promoted to being an outside rep in the Chicagoland area, which is where I was originally from. Knowing Oracle, there are constant changes. So every year it felt like I was putting new account plans into place, doing account transition plans, and the frustrating things like that when a new fiscal year hits. But, you know, Your number or your forecast doesn't really care that you're getting new accounts or losing your old accounts. So having that quick transition plan and getting out of the gates hot is a key success criteria for any fiscal year where you are planning to blow out your number. You take that target, you want to times it by 4 in terms of pipeline that you need, and then you go out and get it. I was able to build a lot of successful relationships. I'm big on relationships, and I think that's key to the success that I had at Oracle as a field rep. And I think that that is definitely a component, you know, when we talked about the human-to-human elements that, you know, people still buy from people. In terms of quota attainments, I think there was one fiscal year where I missed my number when I was working at Oracle. And then the last year obviously was one of my best years, which was still during the middle of the pandemic when we were doing a lot of things remotely. And I was able to just absolutely blow my number out of the water and make some good money while doing it. Back to the personal and professional development side, I saw an opportunity at Celonis. I felt that I'd proven myself not only to be successful, but one of the top reps at Oracle, and decided it was time to make a jump into a different element of software. And I liked the whole hypergrowth startup mentality and thought that it would be good for me to take on a new challenge and new task. And you know, go as far as I can with the new job in Celonis.

6:02 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm totally going to take advantage of the fact that you spent some good time at Oracle, you had some great success at Oracle, but you no longer work at Oracle. So I can ask you some insider baseball questions that should be fun to dig into, because I have spent a little bit of time sitting in that seat and work with a lot of those reps in my day-to-day. So it's an interesting environment. We'll kind of get there, but you gave us a really good kind of backstory in terms of your history. I'm curious, what was it that brought you into that first BDR role at Infor?

6:33 Brad Harmon: So great question. My first sales job ever, my dad owned a steel refab company out in the western suburbs of Illinois when I was in high school, and he brought me in to do some work. And the first job that you get at, you know, any manufacturer, blue-collar type environment is on the shop floor. So I got to be hands-on with a lot of the shop floor workers. I got to break up lot of crates, all the fun elements of working in the hot of summer in a warehouse, to say the least. And then after a month of that hazing, he was able to move me into an inside sales role where he essentially threw a yellow phone book at me and said, go find me some leads and some business. So that's how my sales career actually got started. I was big in the manufacturing space. I think I moved on after that summer, next summer, just selling screws and fasteners to distributors like Fastenal. So always hitting the phones and always grinding out leads and trying to close business. Essentially, that's how my sales career all got started. Going to college, I was a double major in business administration and marketing, and I always knew I wanted to be in sales ever since that phone book was first thrown at me. So I made the most out of my education. I was a college athlete as well, along with had to work. So in terms of time management, I think I was able to set myself up pretty well for my career by always staying busy in college and ended up coming across an opportunity at a company called Lawson, which was formerly based in St. Paul, Minnesota, which was acquired by Infor during my interview process. And they still wanted to keep me on and hire me. And I was able to move up there and take on the business development role. And that was a role where I was making 80 to 100 phone calls a day, logging roughly 100 to 120 interactions in our CRM system. Just trying to get meetings for my outside sales field reps. Right. And, you know, there's no better way to do that, in my opinion, than just a good old-fashioned cold call. I think emailing has gotten really tough because people's inboxes are flooded given the environment that we work in in today's society. And, you know, LinkedIn is obviously a key tool that I was able to grasp early on in terms of outreach. But I think that people are starting to experience LinkedIn fatigue as well, given what's transpired here over the past couple of years. So having that business development foundation was what really drove my interest in tech sales. Given my manufacturing background, they always kept me with manufacturing-specific accounts. And, you know, I thought that that was great because I was able to leverage, you know, my past experience with my new job in marrying, you know, process to technology. I was promoted to an enterprise automotive business development role and had a ton of success, and we were able to close some business. We had a great tight-knit group. And I think team chemistry and team camaraderie is key to celebrating success. And when the opportunity at Oracle presented itself, I obviously jumped all over it, given that I kind of look at them as the next tier in terms of quality ERP providers.

9:49 Scott Ingram: Nice. Now, is there… I mean, looking back on this, right? I mean, you've been at a few different companies, you've worked under a variety of different roles, sold to variety of different industries. If you could start over knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have done differently or would you approach it differently if you were given that opportunity today?

10:06 Brad Harmon: Yeah. Instead of being so micro-focused on the technology aspect, it would be learn more about those industries and their specific problems. I didn't start reading companies' 10-Ks and 10-Qs until I was promoted to that field sales role in Chicago. And I didn't realize how much you can learn about a company just by looking at their financial statements or listening to their earnings calls, I've been able to have the privilege of working in so many different industries and learning how all these different types of businesses operate. And it's just been fantastic from a learning experience. But I think really, you know, having that industry-specific knowledge and focus earlier on in my career would have been much more beneficial as opposed to picking it up later on.

10:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Great stuff. And we have an incredible asset. I'm going to create a link if we don't already have it. If you go to top1.fm/10k, Evan Kelsay did a presentation at our Sales Success Summit a couple of years ago on just how to read and digest not just 10-Ks, but all kinds of company documents and how to properly listen to earnings calls and all really important, useful, valuable conversation. So if you want to take Brad up on that advice to really learn the business and learn the industry of your customers, incredible, incredible resource. I agree. Absolutely. It's so much probably more important to learn your customers than it is to learn your product. But we often do it backwards.

11:33 Brad Harmon: We do. And that's 100% the truth, Scott. And, you know, if you're speaking their language, that's just going to build you more credibility with the customer and kind of earn your way to kind of get to that executive level to have those conversations and those discussions. Because at the end of the day, a CFO only cares about, you know, their top dollar and their bottom line revenue, right? They don't really care about what our software and technology can do. It's just how can we help them achieve their goals and, you know, marry their processes to our technology, I guess. So you are 100% correct and spot on with that.

12:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So you spend a lot of time in dedicated prospecting roles and you called it out as your first success factor. What is your approach? What are the specifics around your prospecting plan and approach? Yeah.

12:20 Brad Harmon: So every week I have, given I have a large volume of accounts in a majority of these roles and I'm trying to touch as many people and you want to have quality touches, the spray and methodology isn't really working, I would say, based on everything that I've seen and I've heard over the course of the past couple of years. So having that targeted messaging and approach and microfocus on 3 to 5 accounts and 5 to 10 personas within those accounts per week and whether we're qualifying or disqualifying, I think is the most productive use of anybody's time, right? I don't mind having a call where a customer is disqualified because then I know where it's best to focus my efforts, right? We can disqualify that person, take them off the list, hit somebody else in the departments and maybe get more progress there. Coordinating with your business development rep is key. You want to look at that relationship as kind of a mentor-mentee because I've sat in their role and I understand how they get compensated. I understand the daily grind of having to do continuous prospecting. And, you know, I kind of talk through what is their messaging, what's working, what's not working. Okay, where are you hitting roadblocks? And sometimes those roadblocks are actually mental roadblocks because they'll sit there and dial 60 or 70 times without talking to a live human being. And I just tell them, you know, you got to mix up your approach. You got to mix up who you're targeting. You got to mix up your messaging. You know, you got to keep mixing up your day-to-day in order for you to be able to sustain the longevity of being a business development rep for 18 to 24 months or whatever your company's program is to develop that person professionally. You need to invest in your business development rep. That is somebody who is working with you and somebody who is out there trying to drive the same type of conversations. That you're trying to have. And when 2 heads are going at it, it's always better than one. So that is at a high level how I try to touch, you know, as many quality people on a week-to-week basis as possible.

14:14 Scott Ingram: What about your own efforts? Are you doing a little bit of dividing and conquering there? So obviously you're investing in that BDR relationship, you're helping them with their efforts and targeting and messaging and all the rest. Are you taking on some of that yourself?

14:25 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. Yeah. I think every sales rep, regardless of what role you're in, should always be never-ending prospecting unless you're so tied up in so many different deals and you have a line of sight to being 300% or 400% of your number. You need to be out there dialing for dollars and hitting LinkedIn as hard as you can. I usually go after the VP and executive titles because I'm not hitting it at the volume that a business development rep is and keep them at kind of the managing director or lower-level folks to try and build a bottom-up conversation. But given that I'm doing so much research into the messaging that I'm sending these executives, I'm just not at the volume that they are. But yeah, certainly I think LinkedIn, SalesLoft, ZoomInfo, your Salesforce CRM tool or whatever CRM you're utilizing are all great tools for outreach and for prospecting. And certainly something that I'm spending a lot of time doing, given that I'm in a pure hunting role Right now, particularly.

15:24 Scott Ingram: This is a great place to mention Vidyard because it's one of the best tools I've ever seen to be able to break through the noise that is a regular email or a standard LinkedIn message. Being able to demonstrate the research you've done and a relevant insight with a personalized video is so powerful. What's even better is getting notified when that video has been watched. The best part is Vidyard's browser plugin is free. You can get it at top1.fm/vidyard. Now back to my conversation with Brad. So Brad, I call the show Sales Success Stories, and it feels appropriate that we should have a story. What's the story of your favorite sale? And maybe it was your favorite loss, right, where you got punched in the head but you learned one of the most important lessons of your career?

16:10 Brad Harmon: So I look at every loss as an opportunity to learn, but I'll tell you something about me personally, Scott. I hate to lose more than I like to win. So I take losses personally, but I do look at them as an opportunity to learn and grow and get customer feedback. But we're going to keep it with my win stories because I have a lot more wins than losses over the time of my career. So last year, during the middle of the pandemic, I had a customer that was evaluating a systems transformation project where they were on a legacy Oracle on-premise system and were evaluating what their options were for moving to cloud. And they had just acquired 4 or 5 companies. Companies who were all on different systems and they were in different parts of the world as well. And essentially this is a company that had zero visibility into inventory across the org, given that they were operating on all separate environments, right? So there's your compelling event right there. And I had just a great champion who was wonderful to work with and was really spearheading this initiative and making it a priority of theirs to ensure that this success before they actually departed the company themselves. So setting the company up for long-term success prior to their departure, after they were a long-term tenured employee there, you know, really made it a personal success story for me. And if you want to talk about having a lot of cooks in the kitchen, you know, not only are we dealing with these acquired companies, we're dealing with different business units across the globe during a pandemic when, you know, some people are going in because it's a manufacturing company and some people are still working remotely. But having that champion kind of guide and navigate me through the complexities and through the pushback that we were getting from various lines of business was just such a differentiator and able to not only keep competition out, but help me communicate the resources that I needed internally in order to make this project a success. And when I say a lot of cooks in the kitchen, I don't just mean on the customer's end, I mean on the Oracle end as well. So you mentioned kind of the complexity of the ecosystem. You know, within Oracle, you know, the more your deal grows, the more eyes and ears get on it, and the more, you know, other reps catch wind. So obviously, we have an infrastructure as a service team that, you know, wants to do a lift and shift from, you know, on-premise to their cloud. And, you know, just a lot of battles internally that you have to fight as well. But at the end of the day, you have to do what's best for the customer. And the customer's initiative was to move to a pure-play SaaS environment, one single global instance to give them visibility to be able to cross-sell upsell better into their existing customer base. And this was probably about a 6-month sales cycle, drew it all the way down to the last day of the quarter, hard negotiation on the T&Cs, a lot of requests, you know, asking for the moon, and I can only deliver stars. And we were… it was just such a collaborative and great effort, and such a successful sales cycle that, you know, the end result was, you know, a multimillion-dollar long-term commitment to the Oracle platform, along with them getting various wins across different lines of business. And I took a lot of pride in that one because, you know, that's a tough sale given where everything was at at the current time in terms of the pandemic and not being able to meet in person and, you know, having all these different economic buyers across different lines of business sitting globally. But really, it was just a fantastic win. And my team did such a great job because no sales rep or quarterback can do anything without solution architects, solution engineers, technologists, partners. I mean, it takes a mountain to move these types of wins across the finish line. And this one was a true joy and true pleasure to oversee and manage. And, you know, like I said, felt like a great personal victory for myself.

19:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Let's talk about kind of those cooks in the kitchen and some of the internal sale, because we've had a good number of conversations on this podcast. And in fact, if you do enjoy the enterprise sales-oriented conversations, if you go to top1.fm/enterprise, I've collected those there. But oftentimes I kind of hear that… well, let me ask you, what percentage of your time do you feel like you spend with external-facing, kind of working with customers versus kind of managing the internal side of the sale?

20:28 Brad Harmon: So in my Oracle life, I felt like I was dealing about 40% externally and 60% internally, which can be quite frustrating at times, but, you know, it's just part of the day-to-day. It's part of the complexities of working for a large global, you know, Fortune 100 type company, right? I mean, everybody has their challenges, but being able to overcome those and navigate those are what truly separates, you know, the average sales rep from the great sales rep, right? And when you have a longer tenure within companies, you understand, you know, where to go to get certain assets, where to go to get certain resources. And it really gives you a competitive leg up as opposed to, you know, some sales reps that choose to, you know, switch jobs every 18 months because you can never really get a full grasp on your ecosystem until you're at until your tenure with a company is, you know, at that 2 or 3 year mark per se, but really taking ownership with the customer of the relationship between your company and their company, I think really helps manage the noise level of inbound activity because you and I were joking about this beforehand, but there's no kidding. There was 40 reps calling on, you know, one of my accounts at all times. And I could see it in the CRM system. And a lot of people don't utilize it to its extent and don't look through notes and don't see who we're working with and the opportunities because, you know, everybody has their own numbers to obtain and hit at the end of the day. But like I said, if the customer wants to have a centered conversation around infrastructure as a service, I am more than happy to coordinate that resource for them. If somebody wants to have a BI or middleware conversation, I can bring in the correct resource. I really just listened to the customer and what their needs were and could communicate that internally back to all of those cooks in the kitchen that we mentioned. So continuously updating them on where I stand within the account and where their product could potentially fit and who the correct personas are for them to target, I think helps manage the noise level a little bit. At the end of the day, you don't manage them directly, so they don't have to listen to you or do what you want. But if you're just providing proper updates and proper guidance and doing the best you can at managing, you know, all of that outbound activity into that account, it is going to help you build better rapport with the end customer along with your champion who chooses to deem you as the person to kind of be that roadblock between the 2 companies per se. But I kind of looked at it as a badge of honor being the single point of contact. And also it really just helps when you're trying to navigate a deal across the finish line and having those relationships built over time.

23:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I'm curious what other recommendations you have. I mean, Oracle is not the only very large, very complex organization on the planet. I know there's a lot of listeners here from Microsoft and IBM and other companies like that. I mean, beyond the just taking the time, because it's literally going to take you a few years to get your head around how to navigate that, what else can you do just to make that work better? Because it definitely is, again, large organizations selling large deals. You're going to spend at least half your time managing that side of the equation.

23:37 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. And I think the best thing you can do is to have a plan, put it in place, and share that plan internally with other members who are calling into the, into the accounts. Collaboration is key, although difficult at times within those large organizations like you mentioned. But as long as you do the best you can to manage that noise and have a plan in place with, hey, here is how your product is going to fit within the customer within this certain timeframe, and this is a part of their roadmap and these are active discussions, and being the coordinator of those discussions and continuing your quarterback mentality and customer-centric and customer-first mindset, I think is really the best and first and foremost, the lead way to, you know, have a good plan to be put in place and managing noise. Like I mentioned before, I delegated myself as that single point of contact. But, you know, not everybody is going to follow that lead and follow that charge because like I said, you know, they don't report to you at the end of the day. But, you know, open lines of communication, you know, be talking to those people often, you know, act like you're an advocate because at the end of the day, if that's what the customer's initiative and goals is, that's what you're going to support and really just do your best to kind of manage that plan and have those cadences and be constantly communicating with them. You know, it's not just your account, you're sharing the account with mutual counterparts, and you have to do what's in the best interest of the company along with the customer. So that's my 2 cents.

25:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. You want to hear my favorite Oracle story?

25:04 Brad Harmon: Bring it on.

25:06 Scott Ingram: I don't think I've ever shared this on the show. So I came into Oracle via acquisition. So I was at Eloqua, we were acquired, and that was kind of the beginning of what is now the Oracle Marketing Cloud. And at the time, I was managing about a dozen of our largest accounts in the Midwest. And one of those accounts came to me very early in that transition, and they said to me, Scott, we would like to do an early renewal. We want a 2-year agreement. We want all of the same terms that we have today. We'll prepay the full amount. Just get us that contract, and we will be happy to sign that quickly. You want to guess how long it took me to get that deal done?

25:48 Brad Harmon: Oh, knowing an internal process at Oracle, I would say at least 2 to 3 months.

25:53 Scott Ingram: No, that would be 8 months.

25:54 Brad Harmon: Oh, wow.

25:54 Scott Ingram: Because what happened was the first thing that had to happen is as an acquired company, they have to review all of those contracts through a process called an ETR. It was an egregious terms review. And through that process, they determined the terms indeed were egregious by their definition. And what's funny here is, so my client in this case is I don't want to say who it is, but probably a Fortune 25 company. Like, this is a very, very, very large company in a highly regulated industry. And much like Oracle, their approach to contracting is kind of my way or the highway. Like, no, we don't budge on our terms. These are our terms. You accept them. And, you know, because we're huge and, you know, you deal with it. Well, when both organizations feel that way, way, things get a little bit challenging. And the end of the story, this was so funny for me and it felt so, so good because this was only possible because of the way that I partnered with the client. And this just became a personal mission of both of ours because I didn't know the Oracle process at the time. So as I got towards the end of this thing, my HQ app doc was, which for those who don't know, Oracle is sort of this process that just goes up the entire chain at Oracle to literally the office of Larry Ellison. And that doc ended up being, it must have been 80 pages by the time we were done with it. And the end of the story, so our Alex, who was my Chief Revenue Officer when I came into Eloqua, but he ended up being the, I think his title was like the General Manager of Oracle Marketing Cloud. So he became kind of the guy for this whole new division that Oracle was building. And in, as he left, he was here in Austin, and so we had kind of this farewell thing for Alex. And he pulls me aside towards the end of that and he says to me, he's like, Scott, I will never forget you and that blank company deal because that… he's like, I don't know how you did it. Like, what do you mean you don't know how I did it? He says, well, I will never forget that deal because it was the first time I had a deal, a specific deal-related conversation with Safra Catz. And Safra at the time was Oracle's co-CEO and chief financial officer. She's now the CEO And he said, and we decided after that conversation to write the business off. Nobody bothered to tell me that. So they were pretty surprised when I found a way to get that deal done. But to your point, I mean, it was just massive amounts of coordination, finding internal champions, finding people who knew how to work this process, finding other people that were already working on that deal who knew how the customer company kind of operated and worked, and then having like truly an epic level internal champion that this was This was religious for us to get it done. And he chalked it up as his biggest outcome of the year as well. It was hell, honestly, but it was a ton of fun.

28:52 Brad Harmon: I love hearing the war stories at Oracle. As you know, obviously many of them have been shared over the years, and a lot of them are centric around our contracting process and how archaic and legacy it could be. We used to joke that if you haven't written a 50 to 60 page executive summary that goes to HQ apps for approval, that you haven't really experienced the true Oracle yet, because we used to have to manually do the calculations on the discounting and justify every T&C change. And then it would have to go to so many different levels of approval and it was all via email chain and structured. It was just funny to see. And it's great to hear about how a company who had been acquired had to adopt this process that we had all been accustomed to over time. It obviously has improved and gotten significantly better over the years and changed a lot. During my tenure, but certainly the contracting processes, companies like Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, they're not exactly known for being quick and nimble when it comes to quick changes or turnaround times or anything like that. And then as a sales rep, you have these deadlines that you have to hit and meet. And ideally you're working on a schedule with your customer, right? Whether it be a joint execution plan or a customer success plan, and you have to bake in time for your contracting process into those dates in order for you to meet either quarter or fiscal year end. It's absolutely crazy. It's the hand you're dealt with. And the more time and more experience you have doing it, the more streamlined you make the process be, as you were saying, in terms of leveraging your internal champions and managing escalations with various VPs and, and all things like that and having internal calls and having lawyers get on the line. And it's just a crazy but fun process. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. The world.

30:40 Scott Ingram: Oh, I would totally trade it. It makes you appreciate the nimbleness of a smaller organization. I actually had an experience late this last week where, you know, I'm working on a pretty decent, like, really fun deal, and we're really starting to get into the weeds. And so they asked for… they're like, you know what, we just realized we haven't put an NDA in place. So again, we're happy to work off of their paper. We don't have to send them our version that we're not willing to budget on, and they sent me their mutual NDA. I had it signed within 15 minutes. And that's where I love competing against the big companies when you can be in that type of a position. So they have pros and cons, right? There's fun and interesting things on both sides, but it definitely makes you appreciate the nimbleness when you are working for smaller companies.

31:25 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. I would have been happy with getting that document turned around at a larger company in 15 business days. God. Right, right.

31:31 Scott Ingram: Exactly. Exactly. So I'll take my 15 minutes. 15 minutes. So you've had a lot of success over a lot of roles. What are you most proud of?

31:39 Brad Harmon: You know, I love sharing my experience and win stories, whether it be internally or externally with my broader network. You know, I love the trajectory my career has taken at such a rapid pace, because I think that just is a testament to the hard work and effort that I put in early on in my career. But I'm most proud of, you know, the customer success stories and the recommendations that I have on my LinkedIn profile from C-levels just saying how good of a partner I was to work work with. And there are many customers that have actually told me that before I came to the account, they just felt like a small fish in a large pond. And, you know, a lot of customers who work with larger tech or larger sales companies can feel that way. And they made me feel like that I made an investment in them. So it made them want to make an investment back in me and my product set. So I think, you know, it's feel-good stories like that, you know, that really drive me and continue to make me aspire to be one of the top technology advisors out there within the industry. And, you know, those success stories and those win stories, they need to be mutual on both ends. That's not just a Brad Harmon win. I want that to be a Brad Harmon, Brad Harmon's customer, and Brad Harmon's company win. And I'm just going to continue to evolve and adapt, you know, kind of like we mentioned earlier, and continue to strive and thrive to be the best. And yeah, I think that's what I'm most proud of as of today.

33:02 Scott Ingram: Love it. Well, I'll encourage folks to go read some of those stories and get connected with you on LinkedIn. And as always, we've got all the links to all the stuff if you go to top1.fm/this episode number, which I don't know what it will be, or top1.fm/brad-harmon. But the one thing you won't find in the show notes is your opportunity to claim some SalesCoin. So if you go to salescoin.co/bh51, is the random thing I decided to make up right now, to claim a few coins for listening to this episode. So salescoin.co/bh51. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go to top1.fm/coin-intro where I talked about this whole thing that we're doing. It's a ton of fun. We're having a blast with it. And I know the holders are going to be excited about that drop. So, Brad, we talked about what you're proud about. What about the flip side? What do you find to be the most challenging part of sales today?

33:58 Brad Harmon: Yeah, I think we get stuck in repetition mode on occasion, given that, you know, day-to-day tasks within a sales role can be a bit mundane. But I think mentally you just have to have the mindsets of you are going to make this day the most you can and get the most out of it as possible and continue to not only drive revenue and pipeline for the company, but for yourself. I think those learning experiences that we talked about, building those internal relationships are key and constantly building your network, but really You know, I think just, you know, investing in yourself and your business on a day-to-day basis, along with having a plan and, you know, a vision of how you're going to execute that plan should definitely be a daily motivator.

34:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I probably should have asked earlier, you mentioned that you were a college athlete. What sport did you play?

34:50 Brad Harmon: I was a college basketball player.

34:52 Scott Ingram: Okay. Okay. Very nice. What position?

34:54 Brad Harmon: Oh, I tried to do it all just like I do in sales. But in all honesty, I kind of looked at myself as the point forward in today's basketball world. I was kind of on the cutting edge of bringing that position into play before Draymond Green and LeBron James and all those guys.

35:07 Scott Ingram: Very nice, very nice. So I always love to dig into, you know, the specific routines that people deploy, and maybe you can take us through your day. The way I like to do this is, you know, your alarm goes off. Tell me what time that just happened and give me a pretty detailed blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow.

35:25 Brad Harmon: Yeah, so I'm a 6 AM guy. You know, I'd like to say that I'm at the gym every day at 4 AM, but that's just not me. I like to wake up 6. I lay in bed for roughly 5 to 10 minutes a day, you know, might even, you know, put some meditation in there at some points, but my first focus is foremost my dog. So my dog and I, I let him outside, I feed him, and then we want to go on his epic 3-mile walk that he needs every single day. And that's when I listen to great podcasts like yours, the Daily Sales Tips and the daily news, and maybe get some motivational music going towards the tail end. But, you know, once that's all wrapped up by 7:30, I'm heads down in the laptop and, you know, I already have that prospecting plan that I put in place every Sunday evening for the week. I have my cadences with my business development rep, my territory channel manager who manages kind of the partner relationships, along with some blocks in my calendar for when I'm going to do my outreach for when I don't have internal or external meetings. You know, I always try and make myself available to customers. I always tell them that, you know, with the company that I'm working for, you get me 24/7. You can call me anytime, any issues, comments, questions, concerns. I'm always available. So I try to make myself always available to my customer base. And then after the day has ceased, I usually wrap it up and then it's time for dog walk part 2. And then my wife gets home, cooks dinner. I'll usually rip a Peloton maybe in the evening if I get lucky. And then for the past year, I've actually been focused on my master's work for my MBA, which usually take about 2 to 3 hours at night. And I'm a big sports guy still, so I still enjoy getting my SportsCenter recap going for what transpired during the day. But in terms of a day, to day, that sounds like me to a T for my schedule.

37:11 Scott Ingram: Nice. So some important follow-up questions. What kind of dog?

37:15 Brad Harmon: He is a half black lab, half blue heeler, and he is my best friend.

37:19 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice.

37:21 Brad Harmon: Let's see.

37:22 Scott Ingram: I'm also going to need to know your Peloton username.

37:24 Brad Harmon: Okay. I don't have that readily available off the top of my head, but I believe it's bharmon44.

37:29 Scott Ingram: All right. Well, we'll put it into the show notes, even if it's… that doesn't work. I have been the bike for maybe the longest stretch in the time that I've had it. There is just a lot going on because I've, you know, always got a lot going on, but also, you know, bought a new house in the middle of a move on top of everything else. So eager to get back on top of that once we finish this move here in the next couple of weeks. I really want to dig into, because you've mentioned it a couple of times, kind of the Sunday plan. Like, how do you build that? What does that consist of?

37:59 Brad Harmon: Yeah, so I want to make sure that every account in my territory has been touched within a 2-week cadence. That's kind of my goal is that nobody has not seen an email from myself, my BDR, or my company within a 2-week stretch because I always want to be, you know, I'm not going to say top of mind, but I want people to know who I am in case they do pick up the phone. Given the amount of outreach, you don't want it to be overbearing either or annoying, or else you're going to get a bunch of people who unsubscribe from you or just think you're some other cheesy salesman that, you know, they don't really want to talk to or waste their time. But building out that prospecting plan, we have in Sales Navigator what we create is called Account List. So that's going to be our targeted outreach of contacts for the week. And we can also put some notes in there like, hey, talk to so-and-so 3 months ago. They said to follow up around this time. So hopefully this is the time where they'll want to have a conversation with us, et cetera. And, you know, obviously we're building those contacts and folks out of those 3 to 5 accounts that we're going to be targeting heavily that week. Given that the BDR also maps to 2 or 3 of me, I don't get 100% of his or her time from a dedication standpoint. So that's where the personal accountability really comes into play and where I have to get creative in terms of how I want to target and reach out to these folks based on information that I know. For instance, you know, we mentioned that 10-K, 10-Q portion, you know, their corporate initiatives are, hey, we want to, you know, increase our DSO or decrease our DSO time from a daily sales operations perspective, or we want to decrease inventory turns or something like that. So then I have to tailor the messaging that I'm going to have given who I'm reaching out to, right? Because not everybody in the organization cares about DSO or inventory turns. That usually falls to operations, finance, or accounts receivable. And then, you know, really tackle the week that way. And then at the end of the week, you know, I have, I'm not going to say a full-on recap with the business development rep, but we do mention who we talked to and, you know, that constant communication and collaboration is key. And, you know, that's how you determine, you know, who the best person is going to be based on their needs and your product set, right?

40:16 Scott Ingram: Let me give a huge shout out to Outreach right here, because if you're going to put together a program like Brad described, where you're going to reach out consistently to all of your accounts and make sure that they get touched every 2 weeks to stay top of mind, you're going to want a great tool to help you manage that process. And Outreach is that Great tool. If it's time to improve your outreach, head over to top1.fm/outreach. Yeah, nice. Are there other kind of habits and routines like that that are really central to your success?

40:50 Brad Harmon: Sales has really, in my opinion, since I've started, turned from being a feature-function pitch into a very consultative educational dialogue. In my opinion, I think the days of selling feature-function are gone, and if you're not helping solve somebody's day-to-day problem or challenge that you're really not selling anymore. So I think from a day-to-day standpoint, determining what's important to whoever your outreach is, I think is key to having a successful conversation or meeting, along with building up that potential champion that you're always looking for to help you navigate, you know, the complexities of the economic buying system, along with, you know, stop selling, start listening, and, you know, marry their problem to your And if that can't happen, then move on to the next contact who might have that same challenge, because you'd be surprised at how many conversations I've had where, you know, I talked to the person about becoming a champion of the product for their own advancement. That's usually tied to a professional goal, right? A managing director doesn't want to be a managing director. They aspire to be a VP. And in order to get there, they need to come up with a way to create $2 million of cost savings within the next 6 months. So how can you help them personally achieve that goal professionally? I think that's really a key component and lost element to sales sometimes, along with keeping that human element, right? You know, my sales style is not driven by Challenger or Sandler or MEDDIC. My sales style has evolved over time to be a mixture of my personality along with, you know, some of the best things I've seen along the way from a sales standpoint that work. I think, you know, keeping that human and personal elements and being empathetic as a part of your sale is a key differentiator to yourself. And that's how you can certainly differentiate from the competition. And I love me a little friendly competition, given my background in being an athlete, because like I said, my desire to win is so high because I hate to lose. So never lose that edge, I would say, on a day-to-day basis. Make the most of each day because you're blessed just to wake up on the side of the pillow, in my opinion, and really maximize your own potential.

43:08 Scott Ingram: Let's go a little bit deeper into this human piece because what you said I think is absolutely key, and I think a lot of people miss, which is, you know, yes, you're selling to a company, but it's ultimately a person who is making that decision or driving that decision. And what you described in terms of, look, if I can align with your goal to be promoted, right, to advance your career because of what we work on together. It's absolutely huge. How do you get to that conversation?

43:37 Brad Harmon: So that's certainly not a conversation you lead with right out of the gates, right? But that's something you want to get towards because that means that your relationship is at the point where you do have a champion. That's something that definitely takes time and no sales manager or VP of sales likes to hear that things take time, but, you know, relationships do not happen overnight. And, you know, you don't only want to have a professional relationship with this person, you want to get to know them as a person as well. And you want them to get to know you because at the end of the day, I want them to know that I am genuine and my intentions are pure. And I am not just trying to jam a sale down your throat so that I can get my next commission check and buy a boat or a new set of golf clubs or something like that. That is certainly not my driving factor. My driving factor is the success of that person along with their company, along with them being the next reference story that I can use, you know, when I want to bring my next customer forward and say, hey, why don't you tell them about the experience it was working with me and my company and the value that you were able to drive from it over time? So when you're able to get to that point and talk about those personal and professional goals, they could even get to the point where they say that they have bonus dollars tied to certain metrics and achievements for them in their department over time. And then you can get down to the specifics because I don't think there's any better value case that you can present to that person or their executive team that ties to their personal metrics and professional goals.

45:04 Scott Ingram: So this is fun. The story that I just told, right, about my big Oracle deal, one of the individuals… it wasn't the individual who was kind of the primary driver, but they were kind of playing wingman in this whole situation… they had bet their career on the Eloqua platform. So had we not been able to get this deal done, they kind of would have left rudderless, and they had invested years of their career kind of down this path. Since then, they're still very, very good friends. This individual has been promoted 4 times and is a senior vice president because of that bet.

45:36 Brad Harmon: That is what I call a lifelong reference for you, Scott. Those are exactly the type of relationships that we're trying to build, right? I mean, make it personal for these folks. And, you know, success stories like that are why we do what we do, is to see people get those promotions and see them advance professionally. Because at the end of the day, it's is only going to help you and I from a sales standpoint. I want that prospect or customer talking to my other ones about their 4 promotions and the value that they were able to drive from the Eloqua platform. I mean, you know, marketing tools are very powerful, but, you know, this person made a career on it. And I honestly hope and want to see that for others, particularly with people that I work with.

46:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and that part of the story, right, that relationship is so much more gratifying and so much more rewarding because I don't remember how much the deal was worth. I don't remember how much my commission was, but I know that.

46:27 Brad Harmon: Yeah, exactly. You can't tie a dollar amount to that personal gratification of seeing the advancement of that person, and especially because it sounds like you like them, which makes it even better, makes even more of a difference, right? I mean, those are the relationships that I'm looking to build, and that, you know, that's something that could certainly differentiate you as a sales rep. I mean, I'm sure person still remembers Scott Ingram from Eloqua, who was able to help me drive this contract through this new 100-pound gorilla that he just inherited via an acquisition and was able to get the deal done at early terms, which traditionally Oracle didn't want to do with newly acquired products. So you had to fight your own fights in order to get where that person wanted to be. And you were able to see them achieve that success. And like you said, there's no commission check or dollar amount to quota that you can tie to that.

47:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The other thing from kind of a routine or process perspective that I wanted to dig into is you talked about the way that you are basically prepping your year. So, you know, one of the other challenges that happens in Oracle is we kind of move all the chairs around at the start of each fiscal year, and you often have many, many different accounts. How do you set yourself up, right, given that you're oftentimes almost starting with a fresh slate or most of your plate being cleaned before you can get to that point. So how are you tackling that?

47:52 Brad Harmon: Yeah, so blank canvas is never a term that a sales rep likes to hear after they blow their number outs last year because you want to service the existing accounts that you just sold, right? Because there's obviously always opportunity for upsell and cross-sell. But if it's, you know, a new year and you got new accounts, you know, there is no time to waste. And some people like to take a couple of weeks to mentally bounce back from the end of the fiscal year grind. But you have to understand that we're in sales and there is no couple of week grace period for us to kick back, relax, and not be pedal to the metal, especially when you get new accounts. You want to see what you inherited, if anything, from an opportunity perspective. So the first thing I'm doing is combing through the pipeline of these new accounts that I inherited and seeing who they're talking to and potentially set up a transition plan with that rep to introduce me into the account so that they don't feel like there's any lost or wasted time. You also want to create, you know, that prospecting plan of, okay, you know, my number is, we'll say, $1 million this year. What do I need to sell in Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 in order to get there? And then, you know, I mentioned that 4x pipeline metric earlier that I've always strived to obtain. You know, how am I going to get to that $4 million ARR number in order to sell that minimum $1 million worth of software? Because, you know, There is no falling short of quota in what we do. Quota is how we thrive, how we make money, and how we survive. So I think, you know, the coordination of the transition plans with the new accounts, with whoever the previous rep was, and whether that be knowledge share or something of that nature, going through the notes in the CRM, creating a new plan, and then, you know, reaching out to your partner network and saying, hey, who has relationships where, where can we knock down some doors? Doors? What are you hearing at the executive level from a corporate initiative standpoint? This is obviously consulting firms who are working with your accounts and who potentially want to work with you. Do your research. Who are going to be my top targets for this year? How am I going to get to that number? Which company is making money? Which company thrives and drives on innovation? Who's not a stagnant $30 stock for the past 10 years that is basically just okay with mediocrity? What company do you think you're going to place your big bet on for the year? And hopefully that's multiple companies because you never want to have all of your eggs in one basket as a salesperson. I think that's always a risky play that I've seen just make or break too many years. But, you know, those are just some great things that you could do to kind of kickstart your year and get yourself off to a hot start after that lovely game of musical chairs, aka accounts in the sales world.

50:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great, great, great approach. I'm going to interrupt myself here one last time to talk about another unique use case for Gong. If your company were using Gong, you could go back and listen to some of the most recent customer conversations to make that transition even more seamless. No more disjointed customer experiences. With Gong, you could pick up right where that last conversation left off and even use their own quotes to reengage and keep things moving without having to start over. That's better for you, and that's better for your customer. Check them out at top1.fm/gong. You've mentioned a couple of the podcasts that you're listening to on your dog walks. What does the rest of your information diet look like? What are you reading? What are you listening to? What are you watching? When all does that happen, or is it all while you're walking?

51:24 Brad Harmon: So Spotify has some crazy algorithms because they basically create a playlist for me each and every day, but I love the Snacks podcast that was formerly of Robinhood that gave just a 5-minute blurb in terms of what action is happening within the stock markets. Sometimes I get into those motivational speakers. I love a good TED Talk as long as it's on the right topic and right subject. I'll listen to NPR Radio just to get a daily digest on the news, which I know is something that my generation doesn't typically do every day, but it is good to be aware with what's going on in the world today on a day-to-day basis. Then I talked to you about that pump-up music of get your day started. I'm not a coffee guy, so I'm limited on caffeine. So what drives me has to be that music. But yeah, I think in terms of daily podcasts that I enjoy listening to, I do like your, your Daily Sales Tips as well, because I always enjoy hearing what other salespeople are doing and what they're seeing be successful. I actually tried to implement one of the tips that one of your reps that came on your Daily Sales Tips came, and that's getting on the customer Slack channel. Unfortunately, from a security perspective, they didn't allow me on, but hey, at least I tried, to say the least. And yeah, I just, you know, I try and mix it up because like I said, as a sales rep, day to day can be mundane at times and, you know, you don't want to be stagnant. You always want to be on the move and be nimble and be aggressive and keep the motor going.

52:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. It was Irfan that shared that tip and we'll link that up as well as the… you've contributed a couple now, haven't you?

52:57 Brad Harmon: Yeah, I did one and it was great, man. I love doing elevator pitches. I'm constantly working on those myself. You know, I told everybody I'm not trying to be a pitch master. I'm trying to be a listener on the majority of my sales and prospecting calls. But anytime I can get the chance to contribute and, like I said, share advice with the network, I absolutely love it. And I also welcome it. You know, if anybody ever has any questions, comments, concerns, feedback, you know, I'm all about it. I'm all about collaborating. I'm all about networking. I think it's one of the best things in business that you can do. So please, open door policy. For myself. Beautiful. Beautiful.

53:34 Scott Ingram: What about your sales tech stack? What are the tools and apps that you just can't live without?

53:38 Brad Harmon: Yeah, I mean, just your generic ones that we kind of talked about before. I mean, Oracle had great tools and Eloqua was one of them, but, you know, didn't really utilize them to the fullest extent from an outreach perspective, but doing sales and marketing campaigns out of a marketing cloud-based system, I think is great if you're going for the mass outreach type, or if you're going for maybe Maybe invites to events and shout out to in-person events coming back this year. Happy to see it and hope everybody's willing to attend one along with various campaigns from… I send hard goods. I mean, it was much more successful when everybody was going into the office, whether it be… we talked about various campaigns I've ran through alumni campaigns where we're sending college swag of former colleges of executives to baked goods. I mean, you name it. But if you want to be creative in terms of your outreach, I mean, I've seen people send cakes to departments. You know, I just think outside the box in terms of how you want to get in touch with somebody and try and differentiate yourself. I live in LinkedIn. I love LinkedIn. It's the most up to date in terms of people's information. If you attach a little Zoom info on that because there's a tight integration, I think it can supply you great intel in terms of somebody's past companies that they've worked for, which could be a potential former customer of your products, you know, so they might have experience with your platform in a previous life and say, hey, that actually could be a fit within this new company. You know, you can get such great intel and insights from LinkedIn that I really think it's second to none. And now that you have the Sales Navigator collaboration tools where they have integration to Salesforce, which I believe is probably predominantly the most popular CRM that we're all utilizing out there today. You know, I think those are just great, excellent tools. And then I've recently been introduced to SalesLoft. SalesLoft can actually make the dials for you along with create outbound cadences so that you are maximizing your outreach to various prospects on a day-to-day basis. That's been a great tool that was recently introduced to me. That's been great. CPQ tools are fabulous from a building quote and processing approvals perspective. And hopefully, you know, in my new world, they're going to be a bit more streamlined. Online than that process that we talked about at Oracle. And yeah, I just, you know, sticking to the basics and making the most out of what you have. You know, the more information, the better armed you are to have a more educated conversation and build credibility.

56:08 Scott Ingram: So, Brad, if I heard you right, I think you just suggested that we think outside the box and then put it in the box and ship it to the customer.

56:15 Brad Harmon: Yeah, I think that's actually a great way of putting it. You'd be surprised how many responses you'll actually get. And you don't have to do a large volume. Either to get and generate those responses. I think people are genuinely excited whenever a package shows up. I don't know about you, but as long as it's not an Amazon box, I'm always curious as to what's on my doorstep. And if somebody is willing to invest in taking the time to send me something from an outreach perspective, I see no reason why I can't take a 10 to 15 minute high-level meeting to see if there's potentially a mutual fit in terms of opportunities on the horizon. Or I say, hey, thanks, but no thanks. All we're trying to do is generate responses and qualify or disqualify. And a great way is to pack package it up and send it, kind of like we said. Yeah, yeah.

56:56 Scott Ingram: We've actually got a very active member of the Sales Success Community. Shout out to Nathan Offner. I swear half the stuff on my desk Nathan has sent me at one point or another. This guy, I mean, if you need help with some of that creativity, just reach out to Nathan. This guy is next level. I'm looking at a dollar bill with my face on it. I'm looking at a glass cube with me as Indiana Jones inside this cube somehow, and the head moves. It watches me. It's the weirdest, craziest, coolest freaking thing. So yeah, if you need help with that, if you're not the most creative person ever, you got to hit up Nathan. He's doing some cool stuff.

57:33 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. You can never have too much swag, right, Scott?

57:35 Scott Ingram: Well, no, as a guy who's about to move, you can have too much swag. So I think you have to think like one step beyond, right? Like, what's the thing? I mean, I think the way to challenge yourself is what can I send somebody that will take up a permanent place on their desk? I mean, that's like a whole different bar than, oh, swag, that's cool. Maybe I'll wear this shirt, maybe I'll wear this pair of socks. It's a different level.

57:56 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. You're trying to be remembered, right?

57:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's it. That's it. So we talked about your sales philosophy a little bit, but how would you describe your style within sort of that approach?

58:07 Brad Harmon: Yeah, so I mentioned kind of the consultative approach and being that trusted advisor and being the best listener that I possibly can. But you have to be methodical because at the end of the day, we all have sales managers that we have to roll up to along with forecasts that we need to hit or obtain. So that we can report our numbers accurately. So I think really putting that plan in place with the customer in order to create a successful path to closure is certainly part of my day-to-day process and how I'm able to essentially drive things to close ideally within certain timeframes. Now you have to be flexible within these close plans on dates, given that customers' availability changes on a day-to-day basis and other things come up and your resources availability changes. And, you know, those are things that you just have to take into account. For and kind of build that in. But I think having that backwards working plan of, okay, when do you expect to obtain the savings by? When do you expect to go live by? When do you expect to kick off the project? And building that plan with the customer and having them sign off and say, hey, yeah, that looks like a very great high-level plan to execute and put in place, I think is a great tool for you to use in your process. And I know it's not built for every sales cycle by any means, but if you do have a large deal and there are going to be a lot of moving players, and moving parts, it's great to have a living document in terms of, hey, where have we been with this customer? Where are we trying to go? And how are we going to obtain these goals in the long and short term?

59:38 Scott Ingram: This is one of my favorite topics and favorite tools. And maybe we actually turn this into a Daily Sales Tip at some point. Let's talk in just a little bit more detail around what are the components of your plan? How and when are you building that? How are you using kind of your Yeah, so it's milestone-based, right?

59:55 Brad Harmon: We're trying to get to certain points by certain dates, and if we're getting there, then we're on track, right? But I look at it as, you know, a multi-step document in terms of how we get to where we want to be. And those dates are obviously movable and flexible, but they're all kind of built backwards based on, you know, when the deal is set to close. And you always want to create a little padding in there as well. Well, given that, you know, legal and procurement processes can sometimes be very tight and stringent. And I've noticed actually lately that's gotten a little worse given that there was a big data breach that occurred over the past couple years with a large HR software vendor that I'm not going to name that has probably been frustrating for, for many of us sales reps. But really, you know, tying into that legal review process to closure dates and seeing what that window is along with the value component, right? When do you want this product to pay for itself by, along with, you know, where is your resource availability? Where do your constraints lie so that you can kind of navigate those roadblocks that eventually are going to come up and that we've all hit at some point in terms of, hey, I don't have an IT PM for this, or hey, this person's booked with an ERP project until, you know, the next 6 months. So keep it flexible, keep it nimble, but at the same time, you know, build those milestones in and do your best to hit those milestones and leverage champion to get to those milestones. You know, there's a lot of accountability on the sales rep, but make the customer accountable as much as you can as well with sticking to these dates because, you know, they're not only going to be investing in you, you're also investing your time, energy, effort, and resources to them.

1:01:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I want to call out something. I mean, you didn't even probably think about it because you're doing it right. But I see a lot of these truly, they're close plans where the plan goes from here to you sign a contract. And what you're doing is no, no, no, like, yeah, that's one of the steps that is a milestone, but it's really about how are we helping you achieve your goals? Like those are the real milestones. Those are the milestones the customer cares about. They don't care about when do we sign the contract, even though that's kind of important, but it's just one of those steps.

1:02:05 Brad Harmon: Yeah. That can't be the most important point of emphasis or else the customer isn't going to believe in the genuineness of the Close plan, right? This has to be deemed a mutual success plan and how we get to there and how is This is deemed a mutual process on both ends. And a lot of it upfront, you know, if you're dealing in software or tech, is demonstration and process specific, right? There has to be that educational component and that comfortability of the vendor that they're choosing to move forward, or else there is no contract at the end of the cycle, which is every sales rep's nightmare. But if you didn't set the customer up to put them in the best position to get to that point, you can't really expect an execution at the end of it, right? And like I said, everything I do has to be built around customer, built on being customer-focused, very value-centric, right? So get your value architects and your solution consultants involved early and often. Get the customer to agree to that quantifiable value that you're going to bring to their business, because a lot of these folks will say that your business case is skewed towards your product in today's society. So make sure that they buy off, that they agree, that they're using their numbers and that they're having their input so that you're not driving everything on your end and constraining your resources. You know, put some of that work on the customer for sure. Yeah, I think, Scott, to your point, you know, the biggest milestone has to be the go-live or the value realization component. And it's certainly not the contract execution.

1:03:28 Scott Ingram: Yep. Brilliant. Brilliant. And my favorite part of what you just shared there is their numbers, right? Like no business case is believable until they have their fingerprints on it, right?

1:03:36 Brad Harmon: Yeah. We've all done value cases where the customer sits there and looks at labor productivity as, you know, X amount of savings and they'll look at you and say, we have never achieved labor productivity by implementing new software because, you know, there's obviously that learning curve, and there's that time to value that you have to record and realize. And, you know, that's kind of back to that human elements. You know, we're people selling to people. I don't want to sell shelfware or vaporware or stuff that, you know, I say is going to do one thing and ends up not doing it for the customer. So if you're having that value-centric, customer-focused mindset, you know, ensure that they are buying in and that they are using their inputs. And, you know, if they want to create their own business case or work with some type of third party to do that work. Do not push back regardless of what your management says, because, you know, they're not going to listen to what you put in front of them if it's not going to be deemed trustworthy.

1:04:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Brad, what advice do you have for somebody that is just getting started in sales today?

1:04:35 Brad Harmon: Yeah, new sales reps, just be ready to work. I think that that is the biggest thing. Sales is a very rewarding career, and it could potentially even be very lucrative for some of the top reps these companies that I've seen. And I've actually personally been able to enjoy some of that myself. And, you know, sales is a great place to learn and develop and enhance and continue to really progress. But, you know, you got to put the work in upfront. And, you know, I was able to progress very quickly because I put in the hours, I did the dials, and, you know, that leads to continued progression within a sales organization. But, you know, you can't forget about those relationships that you build along the way. You know, find mentors, find people that you think excel or are in the top 1% in your mind and latch on to them and have cadences and rely on them for career advice and look at people's backgrounds and say, hey, that's a similar background that I would like to follow. Let's set up a conversation and say, hey, how did you get there? You know, always look to better yourself. The whole never-ending improvement personally and professionally. I'm very big on that. Like I mentioned before, I think, you know, when we stopped traveling for that time period that we did because of the pandemic, I wanted to find a way to better myself and said, hey, I'm I'm going to go get my MBA, you know, do things like that. Continue to invest in yourself, leverage your resources and network, and just, you know, lean on people for guidance and advice where you see fit. Like I said, sales has been wonderful and can teach you a lot of great things about how business and company runs and operates. And, you know, don't take that for granted and be willing to put in the work and the hours, and eventually it'll reward yourself.

1:06:15 Scott Ingram: Solid. You know, I meant to ask earlier, you talked about you're not caffeinated and you've got kind of your pump-up music, what motivates you? I mean, what is it ultimately? How do you think about motivation?

1:06:25 Brad Harmon: Yeah, when I look at motivation, I just look at thriving to be the best. Like I said, I'm not trying to be the best sales rep at the company I'm at. I look at myself in the mirror in the mornings and say, hey, I'm trying to be the top sales rep that I can be, you know, in the world. You know, don't ever think that any goal is too high for yourself or is too much of a stretch. You know, I want to motivate myself by striving to be the best that I can and having customers and other people feel that way as well. I'm motivated to win. I'm motivated to be the top. And I'm motivated to make that top dollar and provide a great life for my wife and my dog and I. It's like I said, sales is a great career to do that, but you got to be personally motivated on a day-to-day basis. There are no days off during the week because I'm a big proponent of mental health as well. And there is life outside of a job, but that strive driving to be the best is really what keeps me going and keeps motivating me.

1:07:21 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then coming back to kind of the advice piece, what advice do you have for somebody that is further into their career in sales and maybe they're doing good, maybe they're struggling, but they just, they haven't found that next gear yet. They're looking to, you know, become great or at least, you know, get to that place that they're overperforming and they're exceeding their numbers.

1:07:38 Brad Harmon: Yeah. I mean, sales is definitely about peaks and valleys and some of it is out of your control and you just gotta keep your head down and keep pushing through. And I know that's easier said than done because there are going to be 6-month stretches where nothing's closing and you're feeling like you're doing nothing right. And, you know, is this the right career for me? My manager's all over me. I have a, you know, some looming performance improvement plan potentially coming my way. But, you know, it's all about being put in a position of success, right? And whether you do that yourself or your company does that for you, you know, you can create your own path to get to where you want to be. You know, I mentioned investing in yourself personally and professionally. I think that's a huge component of not being stale. But, you know, mix it up, mix up what you're doing, mix up what you're trying. You know, if what you have been doing for the past 6 months hasn't been working, then why would you continue to do that? Get feedback, learn from it. You know, have people sit in on your calls, ask the customer who didn't want to take a second meeting for feedback. Never-ending feedback and criticism is always fine to accept. You can choose to take what you want from it, but there's no better feedback than you get from a customer, whether they choose to move forward with you or not. Hey, what did you like about my sales process? What did you not like about it? Was I too persistent? Was I not persistent enough? Did I not push for this? You know, I think just asking those questions when it's all said and done is only going to help you whether you're in a good position, bad position, or stuck. My two cents.

1:09:11 Scott Ingram: So Brad, you talk about just kind of the learning from others, and I like to wait till really, really late in these episodes to mention the summit. Because our people listen to the end. And so the long, long, long episodes are, it's just a weed out, you know, I'm dropping the people that aren't all the way in. So Brad and I were just talking offline here and it is very likely, not 100% commit, but very, very likely that Brad will be joining us at this year's Sales Success Summit. And if you're not already familiar, the only people I put on stage at that event that's here in Austin, it'll be October October 10th and 11th this year are the folks who've been on the podcast. So by definition, you know, these are true, actual, you know, top-performing sales professionals. It's not somebody that wrote a book because they once were a top sales professional, you know, a decade or 2 ago, nothing like that, right? These are people who, after they're done with their presentation, they're going to sit in the audience and take notes on the rest of the presentations and then really dig in the conversations are epic, partially because many of them involve barbecue and other fun experiences. So, Brad, excited to have you out at this year's event. And let's do another SalesCoin drop because the best way to grab a Sales Success Summit ticket right now is using SalesCoin. So, if you go to salescoin.co/brad1, so B-R-A-D, the number 1, we'll give you a few more coins to get you on your way, but hopefully you'll throw in a few of your own dollars and get on that path to grabbing one of those. There's a limited number that we're going to do that way because it's actually at a pretty good discount, and I don't do discounts. So you definitely want to get into the community in that way. And just holding the Sales Coin is going to get you access to our Slack so that you can start to interact with other folks and dig deeper on all of these topics. And Brad, this will be old news by the time folks end up listening to this episode, but just Before we talked, I had a conversation with David Weiss and we were talking about investing and side hustling for sales professionals. So I think you're gonna enjoy that. We're gonna build a channel in the Slack on that topic as well, cuz it's one of those things I get asked about it a lot, you know, like, okay, great. How and where should I be investing this money? And I think it only makes sense that we take the opportunity to learn from each other on, on that front as well. In, in fact, I just opened the door. I mean, how are you thinking about investing? It certainly sounds like it's a passion of yours. What are you doing? What are you into?

1:11:39 Brad Harmon: Well, first and foremost, the Sales Summit sounds great and obviously I'd be very excited to be a part of it. So just want to give you a shout out there because like-minded professionals and hearing from others is just right up my alley. In terms of investing, I tend to lean on the experts in terms of what they think is the hot thing for the time being. But I'm in it for the long game. So I like my workhorses. I love my tech portfolio. I think it's very, very important, especially in today's world, given the ever-changing economic environment, that you keep a diverse portfolio. I think that you got to take the good with the bad days because that's just what it is. I'm a big user of a platform called Betterment. I think Betterment has a wonderful algorithm that they've built in to maximize the most of your investment and your dollars. I do dabble in Robinhood a bit. Fidelity is obviously my biggest trading platform, given that that's where my 401 and some of the other components of my investment portfolio sits. And then obviously, given the latest and greatest craze of crypto, I do have a Coinbase account that I have been gradually trying to build up over time. So I also want to get involved in real estate. That's a tough market right now to penetrate given there is a very low inventory on places and there's a very high demand from buyers and interest rates continue to go up. So, you know, that's probably on the back burner and on hold for the time being. But real estate is absolutely going to be part of my investment portfolio going forward. But yeah, no, keep it diverse. Don't put all your eggs into one basket. And, you know, be open to, you know, opportunities that you hear and listen to and take that feedback. And just like a sales style, make it your own.

1:13:20 Scott Ingram: Love it. Love it. Good stuff. So speaking of the summit, where we get to connect with a whole ton of of top performers. What do you want to know? What do you want to learn from the top sellers in other organizations?

1:13:31 Brad Harmon: I love hearing about win stories, man. There are so many different paths to a deal that I've seen get done over the course of the years. I just love hearing about other people's successes. And, you know, also to your point earlier, their failures as well, where they fell short and where they thought that they can improve and what the feedback was from the customer. But I love hearing about business problems that were able to be solved by various sales reps. I mean, we're all part of this community. We can all compete compete with each other, you know, all we want, but there's enough market share for all of us to get a piece of the pie. And that's why I think networking, listening to others is very critical and very important. But I would love to sit there and be a part of the audience and just hear, you know, what's working, you know, what's changed for them over the course of the past couple of years, given that we've all become these hybrid inside-outside sales reps and how they've adjusted to that, you know, what they've seen be successful with different lines of business. How were they able to get to that path to closure? How are they able to leverage their champion? How did they get to the economic buyer when, you know, you couldn't just walk into their office and, you know, just hear about these new tactics and strategies that people are using and being successful with, I think would be just so beneficial to sit and hear about.

1:14:40 Scott Ingram: Awesome. Awesome. And I mean, we have covered a lot of ground and I know you listen to the show. Was there something that you were hoping to share? You've got some like nugget of wisdom in your back pocket that I just somehow didn't ask the right question to get to.

1:14:54 Brad Harmon: No, you actually were able to cover all the bases. I mentioned earlier that, you know, stop selling and start listing. Is the best advice that I can give. The feature-function battle ended quite some time ago. So if you're still in the product pitch-centric mindset, I would move past that and become more of an empathetic, value-centric, consultative-based seller. The buying cycle changes on a day-to-day basis. We've all hit roadblocks, we've all hit struggles, but just continue to push forward, continue to try to advance your deals as best as possible. Those relationships. Take your clients out to dinner, even though it's a different ask now than what it once was, and still try to maintain and build those relationships. And don't be afraid to take a risk. You know, if I could give one piece of advice to anybody on this call, particularly if anybody is struggling, get uncomfortable. Ask an uncomfortable question to a prospect. I think, you know, getting out of your comfort zone and getting out within your element is a key component to success that I think all of us personally you know, hit at some point. So that would be my ask and takeaway for everybody from this, from me personally, is do something this week that you traditionally do not feel comfortable with from a sales perspective. Ask that difficult question, ask for that critical feedback, ask for, you know, continuous improvement type mentality, you know, really think outside the box in terms of how you change your go-to-market.

1:16:19 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. Well, you know the format, you know, we always want to wrap up on something actionable, something somebody can do. So there it is. There's your challenge. If you're not going to continue to listening to the next episode, then you can get started on that right now. Brad, this has been incredible. Thank you for your time. Thank you for kind of paying it forward back into the community here.

1:16:38 Brad Harmon: Absolutely, man. No, I appreciate you. Appreciate you having me. Love your podcast. Love what you're doing. It's an honor to be a part of it. And certainly, like I told everybody, please reach out to me. I'm an open book and would love to collaborate and talk further. Network with anybody.

1:16:51 Scott Ingram: There you go. We got everything for you. top1.fm/brad-harmon or forward slash whatever this number is, but we'll get to that next time. Thanks, Brad.

1:16:59 Brad Harmon: No, it's yours, Scott. Appreciate you, man. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.