171: Transition Planning, Relationship Building & Fast Starts to the Fiscal Year with Brad Harmon

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0:58 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I have a returning guest as I'm joined by Brad Harmon, a top-performing industry sales executive at Oracle. Welcome back to the show, Brad.

1:12 Brad Harmon: Happy to be back, Scott. It's been too long.

1:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, we originally talked about a year and a half ago, maybe a little bit more than that, in episode 144. But the reason I wanted to have you back, especially right now, is your story. So Oracle's fiscal year starts… oh, now shoot, I should absolutely know this off the back of my hand. It's July 1st, correct?

1:34 Brad Harmon: June 1st, but very close. Yes. Odd fiscal calendar going from May to June.

1:38 Scott Ingram: Yep. So June 1st, you got off to a really, really incredible start in a new territory with some new products. I mean, there was a lot of new going on and I thought, you know what, this is kind of the perfect topic to dig into this time of year as most of us who are on more traditional fiscal years who are starting either calendar where we get back to zero on January 1st, or maybe we're on what I think of as the sales 4th fiscal, which is the February 1st start. Just really wanted to get into what do you do? How do you set yourself up for a great start at the beginning of a year? I'm going to take a little twist on the typical question I ask coming out of the gate, because I typically ask for kind of the top 3 things that you believe have led to your success in sales. But in this case, I want to know what are the top 3 things that contribute most to your success in getting off to a great start?

2:34 Brad Harmon: Absolutely, Scott. And thanks for having me back. And first and foremost, I know this topic should be at the top of mind for everybody given where we're at in the year. So I would say from a top 3 standpoint, what you want to be looking for, whether you're inheriting a new territory, maintaining something that you've built over the years, or starting on a new team or something along those lines, is you want to have solid transition plans in place with the previous rep. So whoever last covered the account, if it wasn't you, immediately set up time with those folks to begin bridging what's been happening and what's been transpiring within the account so that you can't miss a beat when coming up to speed with that. And this is a new industry to me as well. As you mentioned, it was a new territory. It's a new industry. So I wanted to get up to speed on the industry-specific terminology and pain points that they're having. So I think that was a key component to getting brought up to speed a little bit more quicker. And then secondly, I would say get your data aligned. Data is obviously critical for any sales rep in a new position or a new role or new territory because you need to look at historical trends. You need to look at what's been going on within the accounts and the territory within the accounts. And then lastly, you want to begin to profile those accounts, which I spent some time talking about actually at the Sales Success Summit last year. And once you have those 3 things in line, I think it gives you the opportunity to get off to that fast start that we talked about because nobody wants to be playing catch up towards the tail end of a fiscal year and trying to get to that number if they've been struggling to get to that number throughout the course of each quarter as it goes by. So I think just from an overall landscape, if you can get those 3 things in place, it could really set yourself up for success, not only in the short term, but in the long term as well.

4:25 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And the power of a strong start, it just like emotionally, I think is important, right? The level of confidence you have when you're at 200% of your number after Q1, the patience and the way that you get to be like your best sales self is a totally different thing than when you're behind the numbers and just constantly trying to catch up and having to do unnatural things.

4:50 Brad Harmon: You are completely correct. It's a much more mentally comfortable place to be for the fiscal year. Like you were saying, you're not trying to make unnatural things happen within the territory, apply unnecessary pressures to customers, just more organically and naturally have those sales progression steps in place for you to just take advantage of those accelerators that you're already at and you've already built to, given where you're at in the fiscal year. I think it lightens the long-term load in terms of pressure and stress like we talked about. And I think you hit the nail on the head. It's where you want to be because you're really in the driver's seat throughout the course of the rest of the year.

5:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll definitely dig into each of those areas that you laid out. But let's kind of put this into context first. You're a little more than halfway through your year, right? All the way through full Q1, full Q2. Where are you?

5:42 Brad Harmon: Yeah, so I'm where you want to be. I'm right in that 165% yearly number and quarter over quarter, 700+% in Q1, probably just met the number in Q2. But with the tail end of the fiscal year coming up and where customers within my industry and within my company have been trained to buy is where you want to be because there are a lot of outstanding opportunities like renewals and things like that coming up towards the tail end of the year that you could take advantage for upsell and cross-sell type opportunities. So I think it was all built just on a very solid success plan when I came back to Oracle, which was actually a year ago almost to this day last December. I built out what, what I called a 30-60-90 plan, and everybody could look at that as short, medium, and long-term goals within a territory. And you really have to hold yourself accountable to the actions within the 30- and 60-day, 90-day plan. And that can include numerous things depending on what your role is and what your ecosystem system is like and what your support system is like. You build it based on who you need to contact first within your territory. And that could be key partners, that could be key contacts within the accounts, that could be a customer with some low-hanging fruit. It could be an in-flight opportunity that you want to get engaged at right away. You really have to spell that out for yourself early in order to really build the foundation of success for that fiscal year when you're jumping right back into it for a new fiscal, or like I said, starting in a new territory, because everybody's in a different place. Some inherit in-flight opportunities that are rather large, and those reps are looked at as lucky because they could hit their number early just by inheriting one of those in-flight deals. Somebody can go out and find it. That was the mentality I took, is get high and wide in the territory and entrench yourself, learn what's going on so that you can continue to drive and move those opportunities forward along with finding net new ones. You could be in a place where you're on a brand new team and you want to make a name for yourself, and maybe you didn't get the marquee logo account names that you wanted, but there is opportunity there to grow the spend and look at the total addressable market of the territory and really get after it in that aspect. So we all know that we're not in the same starting spot each year at each time, but if you have a plan to put yourself in position to be successful, I do think it really helps to start out the year and jump out of the gate fast because we all know they say there's going to be some lag time or some transition time while you're getting your territory and your comp plan and everything like that. But the trainings are going to come at you a mile minutes, quarterly business reviews are showing up on the calendar before you already know it and before you even have an understanding of your territory. So it really is important for you to have an individual plan put in place for success and to build that foundation for the year to kind of block out that extra noise like we were talking about before.

8:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So let's talk about kind of ingredients of that plan. Obviously, the amazing thing here is not only a brand new territory, brand new set of accounts for you, but also a new industry. And you knocked out more than your full year number within Q1. So I think that's a good result. What's the beginning of the plan? What are the things that you're looking to address kind of coming into that? And let's get pretty granular and start to build this out.

9:03 Brad Harmon: Okay. Yeah. So let's start with the 3 key ingredients that we were discussing earlier, and that's the transition plan. Transition plan is essentially architecting an internal plan of how am I going to get this other account that has been managed or owned by somebody else, whether it just be for last fiscal or previous years or whatever, putting that plan in place with who that new rep is so that you have actionable items of how you're going to get engaged within your new accounts or the opportunities that are in flight that you're inheriting. I think those are key. I think those help communicate to management where you're at with getting into these new accounts, because sometimes there's things like deal holdovers and things like that that you have to kind of take into account and you have to tread a little bit lightly when taking over an account from somebody else. You could have a customer that's not very receptive towards the new rep, but it is what it is. That's just what happens in our industry. It's going to happen sooner or later. But getting those transition plans in place early on and having those internally to hold each other accountable, I think, is a very important step in the process when dealing with, say, customers or like I said, in-flight opportunities or something like that.

10:17 Scott Ingram: Let's talk about both sides of that. I want to talk about kind of the structure of that conversation with the previous rep. I also want to talk about the initial conversations, how you're making that introduction with the customer, especially in cases where maybe you work for a company that this happens kind of a lot and maybe you appear to be the flavor of the month and they're like, yep, I've had 5 different reps in the last 3 or 4 years. How are you kind of managing through those challenges, starting with the internal conversation? How are you structuring that?

10:51 Brad Harmon: Yeah, the internal conversation is never easy, especially if you're going to be battling over an opportunity or account hierarchy or something like that. But I think just a gentle initial outreach is the best way to approach that of, hey, saw you were mapped to this account last year, saw that this opportunity, this opportunity, and this opportunity were in flight. I certainly don't want to be disruptive to that, but given that I'm going to be managing the account this year, I do think that it makes sense for us to talk sooner rather than later about how we're going to transition this not only internally but externally to the customer as well. And you have to position that transition to the customer as seamless as I'm not going to lose a step in the steps they've taken forward. Because when you do go through the case, like you were saying of, hey, we've had 5 reps in the past 3 years, you're just another face to the name of your company. You'll be out the door or out the window in 6 months. And it's just a revolving door. I think when you come with credentializing yourself and establishing credibility, By saying this is a completely normal thing within our company, it's something that happens often, and I am going to be the new point of contact moving forward. And you already know what's going on within the account instead of having to ask the customer like they've been asked by those previous 5 or 6, what's going on? How can I help? And where are you going in the future? If you already have that coming in, I think that's a very helpful step in that transition process. So as you move from the internal out towards the external and figure out ways to kind of slowly migrate yourself within the accounts. I have found if there's in-flight opportunities that I have no problem being a fly on the wall on the first couple Zooms with whatever type of discussions they're having, whether it be demos or legal discussions, T&Cs, pricing, customer stats, you name it. I want to be a fly on the wall initially if we're not going to introduce myself hard into the accounts. I think that that is a very soft way of getting your name out there and they see it. So they're a little bit warmer to it than just coming in cold on like an intro call via Zoom. In-person meetings are obviously the best way to do transitions, in my opinion, and those are coming back more frequently. I think a lot of us have seen more travel, more openness to meet in person again, which has been fantastic just from a customer-facing role perspective. And I think that's just going to continue to get better as well. I love to do those transition plans in person over something light like lunch or dinner or something like that. I think it's very innovative to the customer. I think it's a little bit warmer than just showing up on a Zoom and being just another face to the company like we were talking about. But yeah, those are definitely areas that I would say have been helpful within those transition plans. I think if you know your stuff going into the customer as opposed to having the customer update you on everything, I think it makes it a lot more smoother to them and a little bit easier as opposed to just doing the usual walk in and ask the 30 questions and try and figure out when you're going to make your sale.

13:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So really about just showing that, look, I've done my homework and I understand you kind of validating and using that as an opportunity to check in and make sure that, hey, This is what I understand. This is what I've been told. Is that still the case? And just starting to build a relationship from that perspective.

14:02 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. And just make it seem like you're not going to be losing any ground or any coverage or anything like that. Just say you're not going to get the coverage that you become accustomed to in the past, but I'm hoping to kind of exceed the expectations of what you experienced previously. And we all inherit different situations from different customers, and they all have different sentiments about how they feel about either our product or our solution or our company or something along those lines too. But if you come come prepared, I think it just puts you all in a better place just from that relationship transition perspective going forward, because it doesn't make you seem like you're just going to be another in-and-out face to the client.

14:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Let's talk about 2 other scenarios. So one scenario is you really can't have that internal handoff call because the previous rep is no longer with the company. What are you doing in those scenarios?

14:50 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. So I am contacting their manager and figuring out if their manager covered the account briefly. I'm contacting the co-primers on the account. Who potentially could have covered it. I'm contacting anybody internally, maybe from partner alliances or anything like that. I'm reaching out to our ecosystem. So any type of alliance connections that could be there, I'm looking on LinkedIn. I'm seeing who on LinkedIn is connected to this customer that I could just find out information about. And all CRMs in terms of data quality and cleansing are not created equal, but I am absolutely 100% going through the CRM and looking at account spends and interactions and outreach and pipeline and history. I think one of the best things that you can do when you're first starting with a new territory is go through the closed opportunities that fall within your product set within your company. I think closed opportunities are a great way to kind of outreach and present yourself from a new perspective. I think when you introduce yourself as a new rep to a client, a great thing to go after is a closed opportunity just so you can play dumb and figure out to see, hey, Whatever happened to that opportunity? Did it not get funded? Did you go with a competitor? Did it get pushed out down the road? I think those are really tiny, small wins that if you do your homework in terms of looking in your internal systems or talking to the right people, a partner who thought that my customer was leaving the product is how I found one of my largest opportunities within my first 3 months back. Back within the role I'm in now. So if that just teaches you where you can find these deals and where these opportunities can come from, whether organically or inorganically, you can learn a lot from those closed opportunities, in my opinion. And it could stimulate something new, or it could just let you know, hey, you should put this in your account profiler ranked lower because there isn't going to be an opportunity there for the last couple of years. There's certainly plenty of times where the previous rep is just going to leave the company and you're not going to get any transitional data. I go through Slack. I try and look at all the Slack channels that have been created from opportunities that are synced up to the CRM or the accounts or something along those lines. I mean, there's plenty of places internally you can go to try and find data as long as it's available. Or like I said, when in terms of people and outreach to get information as well, if that previous rep isn't there anymore.

17:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, you know that I love the tangible examples and the real success stories. Can we dig into kind of the specifics of the example that you just shared?

17:30 Brad Harmon: Yeah, absolutely. It was like I said, it was within my first 3 months of being within the new role, and I was still trying to figure out where I was going to be able to make my mark initially right out of the gates. And there were some opportunities that were more longer term that were already… I'm not going to say ball rolling, but definitely stuff to kind of walk into and inherit and be proud of and kind of run with in flights. But you still have to be able to find your own pipeline and make your own mark. So when canvassing and profiling, I had an account that I deemed as an AB because it had some competitor products and not a ton of opportunity for my company I saw. But when I did share my list with other partners within the ecosystem, I was able to get little tidbits of information. And I found out that one company actually used to do managed services for the account. And for that account specifically, he gave me a contact to reach out to because that was their main point of contact, just to figure out what's going on with it, why they're leaving. Are they moving to a different platform? What is the long-term plan and the vision there? So I reached out to that person, was able to get a meeting right away fairly quickly. So I didn't immediately think that something negative was transpiring, like they were leaving the product. And it turned out that there actually had just been a new partner in there. And this is all stuff that I found on the Discover And there had been a new partner in there that had been selling our full suites on our behalf without me knowing. And she brought me kind of up to speed on where the project was. So they weren't leaving the products, they were just upgrading and they found a new partner to do that work. So that's kind of how that ended up all coming to fruition in the beginning. And it really turned out to be a great opportunity and a great cycle. It was very quick. It was very streamlined. There was a lot of complexities to it, but yeah, just a simple phone call. A simple discovery meeting and boom, there you go. You have your Q4 number right there. And when you're on a brand new team and you're able to uncover an opportunity of that size, I think it really helps credentialize yourself, especially when I was coming back to a company that I had previous success with. So it was really a great, great win overall, not just for myself and the team, but the ecosystem as well as they were really able to help drive that opportunity forward with with us in lockstep. So yeah, it was really great to come back and be able to kind of find that cradle to grave.

19:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What's maybe not as relevant for everybody listening who maybe don't work with the scale of organization that you do, where there are multiple reps selling into the same account, there's a ton of different products. You may have some footprint, you may have a lot of footprint, you may have no footprint. And then there's also just this broader partner ecosystem. And the fun part about this is our orbits have almost intersected now, kind of on the edges, right? Not right at the center of all that we do, but kind of interesting the way that Oracle has evolved. Talk specifically though about the partner ecosystem and how you think about that and how you're leveraging that.

20:39 Brad Harmon: Yeah, I mean, partners are critical to success when you're working within the enterprise space. Like you were saying, all organizations are different in terms of how they operate, whether it's co-sell, resell model. But when you're selling software as a service, normally you're either using in-house resources to implement that or they're the partner that implements those services. And when you're dealing with companies at a certain size and a certain magnitude, a majority of them have some type of connection to the Big 4 ecosystem. So that's your KPMG, your Deloitte, your Accenture, your PwCs of of the world, they are doing some type of work within your accounts and you just want to learn what type of work they're doing, who they have relationships with, because potentially that could be critical to help you driving an opportunity forward or uncovering an opportunity. We have smaller niche partners, Scott, like you were mentioning, that cover edge products specifically that, that range from the CX portfolio to HR to supply chain and enterprise performance management, which is formerly Hyperion. Specifically, those smaller niche providers can bring a certain level of expertise into your client for standalone opportunities that those Big 4 that I mentioned really just can't do to sometimes the size and nimbleness and speed and agility that you need. It's really a one-to-many in terms of who and how you can work with, but those partners can drive critical, critical steps in the sales process and engagement forward for you. Because at the end of the day, we all know this and we all say this, If we don't sell our software, you all don't get to sell your services with that software. So it's a win-win when we're all winning. Working with partners and being good to work with and being transparent and being honest and upfront about what your expectations are and everything like that, I think are critical. But, you know, sometimes you all on the other side are driving that forward and you all have the relationship and we're kind of just riding along shotgun and you're kind of giving us guidance on how to operate. I mean, every opportunity is different. The partner in the ecosystem is so critical towards not just the success of our customers, but the success of our daily sales life that we really all can't operate without one another, as I'm sure you can attest to.

22:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I mean, this is an area that we've been leaning into more and more within kind of the Sales Success Society. From my perspective, it's a little bit more of kind of a formal relationship where most of the work that we do is in support of Oracle. So most of my interaction is with other Oracle reps. What Kevin Piket has been kind of working on is more of a broader ecosystem type of a play where like I sell this specific type of IT security or IT services type stuff. Who are the other vendors in my local area that are providing complementary services and how do we coordinate and collaborate? But at the end of the day, I think it all comes down to really understanding where are the relationships, who's connected to who, who knows what, because you can learn so much more. And just like you're saying, it's one-to-many. You may have multiple partners that touch a single account where you can learn different things from different people that are engaged in different ways. It's all valuable at the end of the day. And I think the other thing that you learn… took me a long time to figure this out in the early parts of my career… is is some people are good at this and play this game well and are great to collaborate and work with, and some people aren't. And those that aren't, my experience is they're not fixable really. It's like, spend your time with the people where you can have that really great synergistic relationship and you both win and you enjoy doing that work together. And don't worry too much about the ones where it's like, you know what, this just isn't jiving. I'm just gonna have to do this on my own or find another partner or whatever it is. Have you had that experience? Yourself.

24:38 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. And sometimes on the ladder that you were speaking of, you don't have a choice. You have to work with that. You have to work with that person. But yes, it is much better from a relationship standpoint, from rep to partner, when it's a great communicative, collaborative sales cycle and effort where you're both working with one another as opposed to against, which can happen in this competitive world that we're in. You were mentioning something about the relationship at the beginning of when sometimes the partner can own some aspects and then sometimes the vendor can also own some as well. And I think that's critical when you're doing your relationship maps or your influence maps or anything or something like that. Understanding where you have relationships and where your partner has relationships can really help streamline and multithread when trying to drive a transaction across the finish line. There are sometimes very personal relationships between partners and customers that can really, really help and assist or get you inside information that you normally wouldn't be privy to, which is mutually beneficial for the both of you. Think understanding where and who's what and the key players within the account is really helpful when a partner can bring that to the table. And sometimes the partners are at the executive level before you are too, which I mean, nobody within your management chain is going to like hearing that. But if they can bridge you and bring you in and leverage those existing relationships, I think that forms a great partnership. But yeah, to your point, some of the partner relationships are deeper than others. Some you work with more than others. But I think if you're always open to working with whoever can help get the deal or the job done in the best way that's in the best interest of the clients. I think it's a win-win for all parties. I'm never closed-minded to who I work with, even if they aren't the easiest to work with, because sometimes those people have their own complexity and genius to them as well. The partners are so critical in software and technology and selling what the vision and what we do and the holistic end-to-end roadmap that we wouldn't be able to do what we do without them.

26:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, we could talk about this particular thing all day long, but I want to come back to really the profiling accounts work and really the prioritization that you're doing, which I think is kind of ultimately the goal of that work, really understanding where do I need to strategically invest my time, especially in the early parts of the year. What's your process there? How are you going about that?

27:04 Brad Harmon: Absolutely, and that's a critical process to building that foundation for success for the year, in my opinion, and it's different for everybody because We're all covering different industries and we're covering different market segments. So if you have, say, 200+ accounts, which is more an SMB or mid-market type of territory, versus if you're an enterprise rep where you have maybe 10 to 30 versus a strategic rep who has 3 to 5, you're going to go about this much differently. So I'm going to try and keep this so I can cover all those market segments so that everybody can kind of get a piece of this knowledge that I would bring to the table for the specific specific opportunity of territory planning. So if you have a ton of accounts and it's hard to manage and it's mostly a greenfield territory, you obviously want to start with those customers. So what are the customers? Who are they? When do they buy? What do they buy? What have they bought? And is there any pattern or trend that you can tie to based on their purchase history? So those are the ones that I'm probably putting more towards the top of the list unless they are completely sold out and they are just in implementation mode. And they're just sustaining. I mean, those are still going to be high-touch accounts for you. And long-term, there could be great opportunity there. But I think that those should always be more towards the top. The B accounts are going to be more of the, there is an opportunity to buy. I don't know if it's going to be in the near term or the long term, but there are some existing relationships there. They do have a small footprint in my product, or they don't have a footprint, but we've had some conversation in the past, there is some opportunity in flight and there is a TAM or a total addressable market of this account to me where I think I could potentially see some revenue. Your C accounts are going to be more of those mid-tiers. It's going to be long shots. We feel like the competitor's presence is too high. We don't have any existing relationships today. I'm going to build a plan with my BDR. My BDC to penetrate this line of business by this certain date. And if I could generate X amount of pipeline within these C accounts by the end of this year, I would consider that a win. And then I go all the way down to D, and D is basically the nonexistent accounts to you because there was a lost opportunity. The relationship has deteriorated. You name it, anything that could go wrong within an account, it happened. And I'm not going to say it's not worth my time, but it's not exactly where I want to spend a majority of my time. And then based on how many accounts you have in those D, C, B, and A segments, that's kind of how you divvy up your time from like an account management perspective, a prospecting perspective. It's kind of how you build out that 30-60-90 plan is kind of based on that landscape that we were just discussing. How much opportunity and pipeline do you need from the As the Bs and the Cs to equal three x of your quota so that you can close 100% of that number. So you're kind of doing reverse math and reverse engineering up front of saying, hey, here's best case scenario with the As, Bs, and Cs. Here's what's most likely to happen based on patterns, trends, pipelines, etc. And here is what I want my outcome to be at the end based on all that data and information. So I know that was a lot there in terms of profile. And a lot of it has to tie to, like I said, existing relationships, existing opportunities. What type of data is available to those accounts for you? Are they public companies? Are they private companies? How much level of detail can you get into their corporate initiatives and their spend and everything like that? And how are you going to generate revenue based on all that data and information that you can find? I think all that is critical towards that hot start that we were mentioning earlier. And the account profiling, in my opinion, is a very foundational aspect of that.

31:00 Scott Ingram: What's the ideal mix for you? So once you've kind of gone through, you've done your profiling exercise, you've gotten things broken down into the ABCD, how are you trying to kind of proportion your time against that so that obviously you've got a couple dynamics here, right? One is, hey, I want quick start, I want quick wins, I want to get on the board in a meaningful way early. At the same time, you want to be developing pipe so that you've got good opportunities opportunities to really take advantage of the accelerators in Q3, in Q4? And does that prioritization, does that mix, does it evolve over time?

31:38 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. Great question. So the way I would look at it at first, if we're just starting off, is I want to delegate 50% of my time to those A's, which could only be, like I said, depending on territory size, can only be between 2 and 10 accounts. You don't want to have a plethora of A's because if you have all A's, you're going to make a ton of money and you're not going to have a ton of challenges and issues there. But the way I see it is I want to spend 50% of my time with the A's and then divvy up the other 50% of the time between the B's and C's. Where you want to really focus on generating and getting pipeline going is within those B's and C's accounts. And that's when you have to decide, okay, what am I going to be personally accountable for? What is my inside sales rep or my business development rep or my co-prime or something along those What are they going to be responsible for? So have kind of a delegation plan of who's doing what. And sometimes that could be an active spreadsheet of activities within accounts or something along those lines, or everybody working off one account plan is kind of the ideal because you want to have account plans for what I call the top 10% in your territory. And that account plans, as we all know, are different depending on your market segment and what you sell and who do you sell to and everything like that. But I just look at an account plan is how am I going to sell? Who am I going to sell to? And how long do I think it's going to take based on the information and the data that I can find? Back to where you're delegating your time. I choose that because I think within the A's is where you're going to get some of those quick wins that we were discussing. It could also be in those B's and C's when you're out there prospecting, like I mentioned. But I think A's traditionally is where you want to spend a majority of your time upfront because some of that could be relationship building or continuing opportunities that are already in flight or something along those lines. A's are where you think that your money is going to be not only in the near term but in the long term as well. And then the B's and C's, that's where you're trying to really figure that out. And that's why you should still be devoting a lot of time to those, because that's where a majority of your new pipeline and your new customers and your new opportunities, I think, are going to be stimulated. Now, what do you do for those? Like I said, you have to delegate to your ecosystem internally and then externally. When we were talking about that great partner channel and those great partner networks, you're going to find out who you're going to be willing to work with on getting into some of those new accounts based on any relationships that they potentially can have. So you're just going out there kind of fact-finding, fact-checking, doing all your due diligence on those Bs and Cs to get as much information as possible to figure out which segment that they should be in. And then the Ds, I really don't spend a ton of time in and don't touch. But I will say that there are accounts where I thought there were no or dead opportunities or something along those lines. Where you're able to get a single or a double and that kind of drives your number past where you need to be sometimes. So I wouldn't completely ignore those either. I do think that they are the 5 to 10% time. Like I said, if you can build out account profiling, you can attach plans to the top 10% and then you can build attack plans to kind of your next 50%. I think that's going to put you in the best situation when inheriting a new territory.

34:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, a lot of good stuff there. And I think your perspective on the D's is kind of interesting because there's always that balance between is this just going to be a distraction? Should I just write it off and leave it be? But it sounds like you're still investing a little bit of effort because, man, you never know. Sometimes you just absolutely get surprised and our assumptions are sometimes wrong.

35:19 Brad Harmon: Exactly. And companies who you don't think have budget have budget because they've expanded into a new market. They maybe entered some M&A activity when you're not paying attention to them and you're not getting Owler alerts for them or following them on LinkedIn or anything like that, you're really doing yourself a disservice because there could be some small nuggets out there that say, hey, this is worth an outreach to, as they just reported record quarter earnings, something along those lines. And just a simple congrats email could potentially be in order. But yeah, I try and cover the entire territory as much as I possibly can, depending on bandwidth and opportunities and deal sizes. And obviously we talked about it depends where you're at in your fiscal year, if you're in desperation mode, if you're in maintain mode, or if you're in accelerator mode. I kind of look at it as you're in one of those 3 tiers in sales almost at all times, depending on who you are and your situation and everything like that. And if you're in that desperation mode, you're going to have to be full throttle prospecting into those BCD accounts to generate pipeline in order to try and drive some in-order business and get some of those quicker wins. Because sometimes all you need to get the momentum rolling is just 1 or 2 quick ones. And I've worked in account segments in all sizes. I had a totally greenfield territory in my last job, and I had to take a totally different approach than what I'm doing today. So I would say be flexible and be nimble depending on where you're at and the hand you're dealt with from a territory perspective, and be open-minded. I mean, just because the last rep didn't have success within that territory, maybe they didn't profile everything properly. Maybe they didn't get enough information from the previous rep or partner. So be open-minded about what you're inheriting. Sometimes a new start is the best situation for you at the time. And it could be frustrating. And I know there's those mental hurdles that we always have to all get over of, hey, I've spent the past 12 months building these relationships and this pipeline, and I just lost my best accounts. And that was how I was going to make my number and how I was going to make my year. Well, I'm sure the same thing could have potentially happened to an account that you've inherited, that maybe you inherited as well, or maybe it's a totally new slate and you have to go back out there and do it again. That's kind of the old dust yourself off mentality. Put your worker hat on and get to it. You know, it's certainly not an ideal situation for anybody, but I think it helps keep your sales rep skills sharp and helps build you to be a better rep when you're given those difficult hands to overcome. So hopefully that's helpful in terms of the new starts.

37:52 Scott Ingram: I think there's a lot of good perspective in that. And even I'm thinking about… I've had my territory, it's been very established over years and years and years, but I think we can get into ruts where we think we know something about an account But you know what, maybe things have changed. Maybe we need to revalidate some things. It could be that somebody else had that account and they have told you a story of their experience over some number of years or whatever it is. Or maybe it's your own story that you've told yourself that you're like, you know what, let me take another look at this. Or maybe there's some other areas of the business that I can have some conversations and just make sure that is what I'm telling myself right, or is what somebody else telling me correct, or is it different, or is it changing? Or again, there's new leadership, market changes. I mean, there's so many things that can come into play in, in all of this. And speaking of change, I mean, the other thing I'm really curious about is, Brad, you came into not only this new territory but a new industry. How did you go about learning the industry so that you could kind of credentialize yourself there and present yourself as somebody who actually knows what they're talking about once you get into these customer conversations?

39:02 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. Fantastic question. So the industry part is big from a credibility perspective. If you have a company that has an industry-specific go-to-market strategy, which a lot of the larger enterprises do, there's tons of areas where you can go out and get information. But I usually like to read a lot of what the Big 4 will pump out in terms of industry trends and what they're seeing and everything like that. So I need to learn what's important to the customer. And if we're going to be all solution sellers and trusted advisors and everything like that, then you need to have an understanding of what's going on within the industry you're selling to in order to establish credibility and be able to solution properly for what their challenges and their issues are. I'm fortunate enough to work for a large company that has industry experts and industry expertise across the board. So I immediately reached out to those people to set up some times and say, hey, what are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are we presenting on? If we were to do just an industry-specific day, what is the content that we would typically provide? Who would we be talking to? What matters? Why does that matter now? What does that mean for the future? Because I think a lot of the mindset has shifted from maintaining to thinking more forward than it has been before. And I don't know if that was driven by the pandemic and everybody being virtualized there for a couple of years. But I do think that we're off that sustaining, maintaining mentality and mindset and we're going more towards, okay, there's a lot of cool technologies out there. What can we take advantage of and what's going to help us now and set us up for success in the future? Because we have all this data and we don't know what to do with it or analyze it or manipulated or something like that. So I think just having a good understanding about what the industry-specific challenges are, what the industry-specific trends are going to be, can really help you tell a better story, not just prospecting, but when you're meeting these accounts that you've profiled for the first time or something like that. Because if you can bring that new fresh perspective like we were talking about, if you're inheriting something from somebody who had an account for 10 years and obviously had great relationships, if you can bring new ideas and a fresh perspective and a more innovative strategy or something along those lines, I do think that it's a positive change, not just for you, but for your company and for the customer. And that's obviously something that's TBD and measured by certain things like revenue and attainments and all that. But yeah, I mean, I really wanted to dive into how these companies operate and I just would cruise their website and figure out what the latest and greatest trends are. I'm not a media entertainment Telco expert by any means, but I did tie a lot of what our customer references are and our customer stories into what my mindset and methodology is going to be when approaching this new territory and these new prospects. So I know that was a lot to digest in terms of what your question was, but hopefully that answered it.

42:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and you were talking about your closed opportunities earlier. I actually thought you were talking about it in a little bit of a different way because you were talking about. Essentially closed lost opportunities for one reason or another, to kind of uncover new potential. What I actually thought you might have been referring to, and something I have done, is going and sometimes even starting with conversations around the closed won opportunities to just get the backstory. One, it's kind of checking on, hey, how is this going? Because maybe there's an upsell opportunity. But it's for me more just learning more broadly about what were you trying to solve for? What was this intended to do? Is it doing that? What kinds of outcomes are we getting? Because I'm also looking to build… I always like to have my own references. Like, I don't want to have to rely on some other team that I have to go beg when an opportunity presents itself and I have to find somebody that I can connect reference-wise. I like to have my own. If I can really get inside those stories, that to me gets me really, really quickly to the industry knowledge and the specific stories that are relevant. And again, just like the show, they're real. This isn't like theoretical. This is what I actually did. This is the result. This is the story. And to me, it's so much more meaningful rather than, oh, some industry report said these general inane things.

43:35 Brad Harmon: Absolutely. No, you are 100% spot on and correct. I was so entrenched on thinking, what have I done? That's okay. What I see is out outside the box, but I didn't even really start with the basics and the foundations. You are spot on when you say that those closed won opportunities that maybe just closed at the end of the fiscal year and then we're transitioning in the new fiscal year, those are absolutely where you want to start and figure out what the heck happened and what the heck's going on and what problems and challenges you solve for. Because yes, eventually over time you want to build that customer into a reference and you have that in your specific back pocket as opposed to not having to rely on the broader team. So yeah, I think from a best practice standpoint, the closed won opportunities are just as important and probably more important than the closed lost. I'd put the closed lost just as in the go find out what happened and go try and restimulate the opportunity. But to your point, the closed won, did they buy all upfront? Is their plan to roll this out over time? Is there other opportunities that you were speaking to? Is there a price hold? There are so So many questions that you can ask to a closed one, but that should absolutely all be part of that transition plan that we initially talked about up front when you do have to put something like that into place. So you hit the nail on the head there, Scott.

44:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I mean the other opportunity, especially in your type of situation where there may have been a closed one, you might learn oh yeah actually that was phase one of five and you've got four more giant opportunities to follow. So really getting that. Context can be so, so important to understanding what is that big picture. And then I always like to look at just all of those broad relationship dynamics. Maybe it's, yeah, we had this other executive who was leading this initiative, right? We were trying to drive this transformation and they left and now they're the CEO at this other company. Well, maybe that's an opportunity.

45:26 Brad Harmon: Absolutely.

45:27 Scott Ingram: A lot of interesting stuff that happens from those perspectives.

45:30 Brad Harmon: There's no better new customer than a past customer, in my opinion. And I think we all know the old trick of going onto LinkedIn in and saying, okay, where did this person work in the past? Where have they used my product? Where was there potentially some overlap? Because I think that's a great outreach and a great place to start. When you're building out those account plans and the territory plans and everything that we've talked about, that should absolutely not just be part of your daily activities, but your inside teams as well, so that you're building out who has touched your technology at some point so that you can have a warmer outreach and find out what their experience in the past was like. Because if it was a positive one, then there may be an opportunity to go in there and present a little bit sooner rather than later. And that's the low-hanging fruit as a sales rep that you want to be going after because it is a much easier and much warmer conversation and you're not having to spend a bunch of time credentializing or explaining what your product does or how it works or the value it brings or what you're solving for or anything like that. Past champions, probably particularly in your world, in the partner system as well, being new champions is one of the best ways to bridge a new sales cycle.

46:41 Scott Ingram: Absolutely, absolutely. Brad, as we wrap this up, for the folks who are listening, getting ready to start their new year, or they're in the very earliest stages of that new year, any other parting ideas or advice that you would share to help them get off to just the best start they've ever had?

47:00 Brad Harmon: Yeah, no, definitely. The first thing I said was be excited, whether you're inheriting a change or adopting something new or being on a new team or something like that. But every new year presents new opportunities, and this could be the year that you're going to have that career year or blow it out or find the deal of the quarter or be rep of the year. I mean, there's so much opportunity that a new year presents itself. So when that opportunity does come around, I would say dive right in, get your hands dirty, there isn't really any transition period or lag time between the last year and the new year. We work in a what have you done for me now industry, which is great and hard at the same time. But if you do the heavy work upfront and you do some of the things that we discussed, like the account plans and the transition plans and the territory planning and everything like that, it's only going to make your life easier in the latter half, no matter where you are at in terms of attainment for that fiscal year. So if you do the dirty work upfront, it's only going to help yourself over time. And like I said, be excited about the opportunity in front of you. Everybody is in a different situation and a different place, but just be the best version of yourself. Be flexible, be good to work with, be willing to learn. And I think I want nothing but the best for all of our sales community out there and everything, because when we're all selling, I think that's a good sign from an overall economic outlook perspective. So I'm wishing nothing but the best to everybody in 2024. And obviously, if you do have any questions as a follow-up to this episode, you can always connect everybody with me on LinkedIn. I'm an open book. I love to share best practices and I love to talk to the greater community and broader community. That's why I'm fortunate enough to get to do this. I'm obviously very happy and thankful to be where I'm at today in terms of attainments and working for a great organization and a great management chain that really helps drive value throughout the business community and through the customers. And be a customer-centric sales rep. Always put yourself in the other person's seat when you're a sales rep so that you can understand it from both sides so that you can help articulate and better paint the picture and the message for them. Those are just some of the wonderful tips and tricks that we've been able to discuss today, Scott. But obviously want nothing but the best for Everybody.

49:20 Scott Ingram: Love it, love it. Brad, thanks for the time. Looking forward to a great year all the way around.

49:25 Brad Harmon: Same to you. Great to get reconnected. Look forward to doing this again. Thanks for having me back on. And like I said, everyone, please don't hesitate to reach out. 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.

49:45 Scott Ingram: FM.