27: Selling Professional Services - Reed Clarke of LeadMD

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of ViewedIt. Boost your email response rates and book more meetings with video by downloading ViewedIt by Vidyard at top1.fm/v, or go to any page on top1.fm and click on their ad. 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. Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Reed Clarke, who is the top solution consulting director at LeadMD out of Scottsdale, Arizona. Welcome to the show, Reed.

0:47 Reed Clarke: Hey, Scott. Thanks a lot.

0:49 Scott Ingram: Oh, I'm really looking forward to this conversation for a couple of reasons. First, Reed is the first seller I've talked to in the professional services or consulting space, which is a bit different than product sales. And for me in particular, this is crazy interesting because LeadMD is basically the marketing automation doppelganger of Relationship One, where I sell. So the only difference is that LeadMD focuses almost exclusively on Marketo clients, and we focus exclusively on Eloqua and now more broadly Oracle Marketing Cloud clients. So I imagine that Reed's world looks an awful lot like mine. And with that, let's get into this. Reed, what are the top 3 things that have allowed you to get to the number 1 spot at LeadMD?

1:30 Reed Clarke: Yeah. So, you know, it really breaks down and kind of a high-level outline of the 3 things is one, just, you know, making sure you know who your best buyers are. Uh, 2, making sure that you really manage your time. And I think those 2 things go well together. And then 3, everything in sales is basically about relationships. So, you know, really knowing about your best buyers is being able to focus on prospects and clients who will most likely buy from you. Make sure that you have a potential client that one, you can actually make them be successful. And not just really… don't just sell them something because you think you can and you can get a deal out of it. That really helps a lot, and that transparency, I believe, really comes through to prospects, and they really want to buy from you, and it becomes more of a partnership feel. And obviously, Scott, as you know, in the consulting world, in the services world, you know, sales is more of, you know, how can we help you out? How can we help you guys move the needle? How do we help enable your team or your organization to do things that you couldn't really do before. So knowing that you've got a buyer there who really understands that as well, that this is really a true partnership, that one side can't win in this arrangement, unlike, you know, buying a product or software or something like that, really understanding and educating them to know that yes, this is a person that can succeed based on us, but also they understand that this is a two-way street for sure. So, you know, going into time management of that is making sure that you're spending majority of your time on those types of people. In my entire sales career, I've always really prided myself on being able to not be working maybe as hard as my peers and other people on the sales team, but being able to put up the big numbers and be able to be at the top of the board every month or every quarter without really, you know, overspending and overspending time on, you know, clients and prospects that just don't make sense. You know, it's sometimes it's better just to make sure you can hit a double as opposed to trying to hit a home run. So really focusing that time management and making sure that all that time is focused on revenue-generating activity. So, you know, you really need to be able to spend a large majority of your time… in my mind, I like to have to be 80% plus of my time on revenue-generating activities… try to cancel out all the other noise and say, okay, this is where it makes sense. And when you do that, you're able to go above and beyond and spend more time with your best prospects, and it really shows. And that really creates long-term relationships, which is my third point, which is make relationships that are bound by trust and really be honest, be transparent. And LeadMD has been a perfect fit for me over the last year because we're a very transparent organization. And I've always treated like that in my sales career to say, hey, this is exactly what we're doing. There's no smoke and mirrors here. I'm not going back to talk to the manager and getting you a new price. It's no, this is what we can do. This is how much it costs. This is what it's going to look like at the end. And that really builds that relationship. To that organization, to that prospect. And you'll know very quickly when you get a call or an email from a prospect that says, hey, I want to bring this person into the conversation as well. I want to make this what we now call multi-threaded, where you're making that relationship with multiple people within that organization, not just one prospect or one buyer, that you're creating almost friendships between yourself and an organization and those products where There's a lot of trust there. It feels like a partnership and it doesn't feel like, hey, I'm just trying to sell you something. Now, the flip side of that is you don't want to get too friendly that you forget that you're still there to sell them something. So, you know, one of the things I always need to think about is, okay, we're creating a great partnership here. We may have gone to dinner in person. We're very friendly. We know about each other's kids. We know about each other's vacations and everything. That's fun. But at the end of the day, they still need to understand that if I call them, Yeah, it's going to be friendly, but we're still trying to sell something and keeping that boundary up as well, you know, has been very, very successful for me.

5:18 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and what I heard on the front end of that was in terms of knowing your buyers and the time management piece really came down to qualifying. So how are you making that determination? How are you deciding this is somebody that I'm willing to invest time in? And what do you do when you determine somebody is not that fit and let them go in a way that doesn't destroy the relationship. Before we go to Reed's answer to this question about how he qualifies, let me tell you about our very qualified sponsor, and that is ViewedIt by Vidyard. If you haven't done yourself this favor, pause the podcast and go to top1.fm/v to get this free Chrome plugin that allows you to record videos either of yourself or of your screen that you can drop into an email in just one click to make them significantly more engaging. And the best part is you'll get an immediate notification once the recipient has viewed it. Get it? Viewed it? Anyway, check it out. top1.fm/v. Now back to Reed Clarke.

6:19 Reed Clarke: Sure. No, that's a great question. So, you know, 2 things. One, if it feels too good to be true, it probably is. So if you're in the first or second conversation with a prospect and they're promising the world and they can get everything done and, you know, at first glance you're like, wow, this is great. This is going to be a large 6-figure deal and this is going to be great for my quota and great for my pocketbook and great for the company I work for. It's probably too good to be true. You know, maybe throw up those boundaries and qualify a little deeper, ask some more questions that will maybe take them off guard a little bit and kind of get rid of that pie-in-the-sky mentality. So, you know, really overqualifying is something that I've always done to try to reel people back in and make sure that, you know, they really, really are saying that they can do what they do. And, you know, lots of times it's a good opportunity to kind of step back and take things away a little bit and say, you know, that all sounds great. But maybe we should try a phased approach. And one of the things I like to think about a lot when I'm qualifying a potential client is, is this somebody that I'd want to work with again as a phase 2? Is this somebody I want to work with again as a phase 3 or something like that? And if this looks like this could be a long-term relationship where we're all going to work together for a long period of time, not just today on one sale, but, you know, this account could expand and, and buy more from us in the future. Then that's a good feeling and I'm going to want to put more of my time there.

7:41 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So good transition to just telling us a little bit more about your role and kind of how you got to number 1 and kind of that piece. I think professional services tends to be a little bit different where, you know, this isn't like a SaaS sale where you're, you've got hunters and farmers where the hunter is, you know, I signed the first deal and then it's gone. These tend to be longer-term relationships that you manage. So just give us, give us that picture if you could.

8:06 Reed Clarke: Yeah, so, you know, the services world and the services landscape has changed a lot because of SaaS software. So I worked in services sales before SaaS was really big. So Salesforce was around, but marketing automation was just getting started and SaaS was really just becoming popular and it wasn't to what it was today. So, you know, in the old days, people would buy software, understand they're gonna spend just as much on hardware to make that software work, and they knew they'd spend just as much on services to make somebody, an agency or consulting firm, put that software on their hardware and make it work for their business. Well, with Salesforce coming along and all the SaaS platforms coming along, they've really changed the way that buyers look at software, and they understand that, oh well, SaaS is easy, I don't have to buy hardware anymore. And one of the biggest misconceptions is that they don't have to buy services as well. Where what we've learned, and especially with the way LeadMD was formed, is that there's still a huge services aspect to every software purchase, whether it's a SaaS or an on-premise software. And mainly you're creating that long-term relationship because these new SaaS platforms are ever-evolving. You know, a CRM is never perfect. Marketing automation solution is never perfect. You're working on that on a daily, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis of how can we make this better? How can we make it more efficient? And as It's become easier and easier now for the SaaS software companies to be able to update their software and send it out to thousands of users all over the world. Makes big changes, creates more services around how are we going to use the system now that it's changed? It looks different than it did 3 months ago. We're going to have to now get in there and make changes a lot. So there's none of this make a sale and run for the fences and try to find your next sale. It's really creating long-lasting relationships because from a services aspect, we may be working together 2, 3, 4 years. And in that time, You know, we may have multiple sales cycles going on, um, selling different types of things as their maturity grows and us having more opportunities.

10:03 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what does your kind of world look like in terms of territory and the amount of revenue you're pulling from brand new clients versus existing client relationships?

10:14 Reed Clarke: Sure. So, uh, in our organization we have named accounts, so it's not regionally based, not vertically based. We just truly have named accounts. In a tiered strategy. So we've got kind of our Tier As, which is the top 50, and then we've got Tier Bs and Tier Cs, which break down to the top 100 and the top 500. In our world, you know, our total addressable market is basically everyone who is working with Marketo, working with Salesforce, or some other platform. So it's a pretty large addressable market, but from an ideal client perspective, we can really break that down to a couple thousand customers that we can potentially work with and really target on. So I tend to spend outgoing efforts on my tier A accounts for a majority of my time, you know, working with our account development team and working with our marketing team as well, because in a hybrid account-based approach, you know, we're all working together to be able to, you know, really attack those accounts from an outbound perspective. That being said, we're obviously, you know, working with hand raisers and people that are coming to us through thought leadership and typical demand gen efforts as well. So we're also focusing a good amount of time on people who come to us. Um, you know, as you know, in the consulting world, you know, when the house is on fire, they call the fire department and we tend to be those people that come put those fires out.

11:30 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then can you quantify your results for us? What does it take to be number 1 at LeadMD?

11:35 Reed Clarke: Sure. So I've been with LeadMD for just barely over 12 months now. Um, so, you know, really the first few months is really understanding products and process and, you know, in any sales job, there's, there's some ramp-up time at first, but, uh, Basically within my first 9 months, I've done, um, just over $1.6 million in sales, which equates to about 125% of quota over, uh, over that period.

11:59 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And, and what, what was it you think that allowed you to get there so quickly? Right. You're, you're barely over the first year and already at the top of the heap.

12:08 Reed Clarke: Yeah. So, I mean, I had some good, you know, some good help internally. You know, we're a close-knit organization. We really are a flat organization. So we've got lots of help, um, you know, from marketing efforts. Efforts and sales enablement, you know, great account development team, and, you know, really just being able to absorb a lot of information quickly. We record all of our sales calls. We can ask for help. You have people that are listening to your calls and giving you tips early on in that ramp-up period, so you really can learn a lot and really listen. We also have an open environment where we're hearing our services team actually work with clients that are, you know, current clients and in engagements now, so we're hearing all the conversations that are happening on the floor. So really, you know, if you keep your ears open, you can learn a lot about the organization really quickly. But really, when it comes down to it, you know, I have a lot of sales experience. I've sold services before in the past, and I really, you know, when I came to the organization, challenged it of how can we sell to better clients and bigger deals? And one of the things that was really my goal from day one is how can I come in and be different than the other salespeople we have? How can I sell larger accounts where I can really focus on a smaller number of accounts and kind of get away from the spray and pray a little bit and focus on, we're going to do bigger engagements, more strategy, less tactical, and be able to grow those accounts over multi-phase approaches. Um, it's just something I had done in my past life and it really just felt like it would work here as well. So I really made that my goal from day one.

13:38 Scott Ingram: Nice. And obviously that ties into some of your earlier points. Now you mentioned that you're recording all of your calls. We'll get into some of the tools and tech here in a little bit, but I'm curious, curious what technology are you using to, to do that?

13:50 Reed Clarke: Uh, so we're currently using GoToMeeting to record all the calls, and then everything syncs over to box.com, which then syncs to ExecVision. So we can use that so people can review the calls, mark them up, make notes and things like that.

14:04 Scott Ingram: Very cool. So what's your origin story? How did you get into sales in the first place?

14:08 Reed Clarke: Sure. So I've kind of started out as a serial entrepreneur. You know, I went to college and went to, uh, Originally, I was going to be an engineer. I was real good at math and I was really good and really logical at figuring things out and got to college and realized that being in engineering school just really isn't that fun. Um, 95% of the people in the class are men. Uh, I was at Arizona State, which is a very fun school, and I wasn't having any fun taking Calculus 2 my first semester, my freshman year. So within, uh, about 2 semesters, I decided, you know, let's go to business school, use some of that logical, uh, feel to be able to potentially build businesses in the future. I kind of always knew I wanted to develop something early on. I thought that was going to be products through engineering or software, but what I really learned is building a business is just as fun. So by the time I was almost done with college, I had 2 businesses up and running, one of them being a marketing agency. So I was helping customers of mine, you know, really jump into the digital marketing age from email marketing to the early starts of marketing automation, um, helping with social and ads and everything in the early, early days of that. And I really liked building businesses from a consulting angle. So started a marketing agency, um, built that up to a few hundred clients with a partner and a small team. It was really great because I learned a lot of experience in, uh, in 2 ways. One, I learned to sell, you know, when you have your own business, you have to sell and you're really selling yourself. All day long, every day you're out there making relationships and selling whatever you can possibly sell to try to get business. The part of that that didn't appeal to me was how do I now have to produce what I've sold? So I was spending all day selling and all night producing. And as an entrepreneur, that's great, but it can become very tiresome. So what I realized was the part of being an entrepreneur I really liked was selling. So from there, I had an opportunity with one of my clients who was an up-and-coming tech services company who was helping bring companies to the cloud. So pre-everybody being SaaS, they were really helping companies who didn't have enough development or dollars to be able to take their softwares from an on-premise solution into the cloud, but still needed the availability for hosting that product for their people around the world to be able to use that product. So we helped lots and lots of companies take their product, put it in the cloud, but still not lose that functionality that they had from that on-premise software. So in that, I got to sell and learn about lots and lots and lots of businesses. So lots of services from the IT world, learning about software, which then led me into the SaaS software world for a little bit, actually selling SaaS software as that grew. But really, I wanted to get back to my key roots, which was marketing. Helping businesses from a consulting angle, but also having kind of the tech feel to it as well. So, uh, selling services around Salesforce and Marketo with LeadMD has been a perfect fit for everything I've wanted to do and based on my history of employment previously.

17:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's… it's really interesting how shared some of that story is because I went down a very, very similar route. I started my first company when I was 20 years old in the kind of IT consulting space, and that's exactly it. It's, it's Boy, do you have to learn to sell fast or you don't have a company. And number 2, it's so much better to just be able to focus. I love that I don't have to worry about any of the delivery. I've got a great team that does all of that work and gets to worry about how best to manage that so that I can keep doing the things that I'm best at. So very, very interesting stuff. Is there anything that you would have done differently if you had that to do over again?

17:49 Reed Clarke: You know, maybe not do differently, but if I could, you know, take the knowledge I have now and go back in time, you know, the main thing I would have done was just be fearless. You know, you learn in sales after you've been in long enough that you're going to get told no a lot and you're going to get knocked down a lot. And that really affected me early in my career, especially when I owned my own agency and, and was, you know, really working for every dollar for my own business. You know, I didn't understand why people didn't want to work with me. And now, you know, after years and years of selling and all kinds of different enterprise sales, I understand that there's a lot of moving pieces in a sale. There's lots of people who have their hands in it, people you haven't talked to. Um, you know, there's personal things going on with each and every person. There's things going on in the business with every person. Um, their reputation may be at stake based off the decision and, you know, being able to go back and tell myself, hey, it's probably not you. Your product's great. Your delivery was great. Your process was great. They probably need you or your solution. It just isn't the right time, or there's some other factor going on that's making it not work. You know, being able to go back and tell myself that now, I probably would have worked twice as hard and tried to sell twice as many people without that fear of rejection.

19:02 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and obviously without having that context, it's, uh, it's hard to take that not personally when it's your company, right?

19:09 Reed Clarke: Totally.

19:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So what's your, what's your favorite sales story? You know, whether that's a big deal that you won or a hard deal that you won, what do you got for us?

19:20 Reed Clarke: You know, so the, you know, one of the biggest sales I ever made was within an RFP. And, you know, I personally don't like RFPs. RFPs are very, very hard to win. And anybody who's been in sales, you say the words RFP and, you know, they immediately go, oh no, not, not one of those. You have a low chance of winning. It's a ton of work. You never get as much information as you want, but I actually did win a pretty large RFP with a real large company. And, um, it was a 7-figure deal, you know, multimillion-dollar deal. And what I learned that sometimes in sales, it's okay to cheat to win. And I don't mean be deceitful. I don't mean lying, but in this specific case, uh, you know, I was working, like I mentioned, in IT services and a company was looking for a software that needed to be in the cloud. And they had 12 candidates of different companies between SaaS and non-SaaS. Companies that they wanted to. And so myself as a cloud hosting services provider knew that if I could attach myself to as many of the non-SaaS people in that RFP, that would give me the best chance of winning. So what I actually did was went out, aligned myself with 4 of the 12 companies in that RFP. So now RFP doesn't look as bad when you know, okay, well, there's a 25% chance that one of my companies are going to get picked as opposed to you know, just 1 or 2% is what it generally feels like when you're getting into an RFP. So aligned myself with as many companies as I could. You know, if you've been through the RFP process, you know, you start with 16 companies, you go down to 12, you go down to 10, you go down to 8, you go down to 5, you go down to 3. And by the end of it, I think we were down to 4 or 5 companies and I still had 2 horses in that race. So, you know, being one jockey and having 2 horses felt pretty good in that race. And Ended up winning the business with one of those companies, creating a long-term agreement with the largest sale of my career. And, uh, I can actually say I've won an RFP, which talking with lots of other salespeople, that's, uh, still kind of that unicorn they're out there chasing. So maybe not the most fun, but at least I took something that's generally painful and hard to deal with and created some strategy around it to try to get it more into my sales process, which is very, very hard in an RFP process versus kind of a one-on-one sale. So. Um, that one always sticks out probably because it was, uh, the biggest sale of my career.

21:38 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Nice. Good story. Well, and I wonder maybe, maybe it's RFPs. Uh, I'm curious about what do you think is the biggest challenge in sales today or what's been the most challenging part of your sales career?

21:51 Reed Clarke: So early on I realized I needed a system in sales. You really have to have something that works that you do. And, you know, if you've ever been on a sales floor, you know, Whoever is doing the best, they just closed the biggest deal or they closed a bunch of deals this month. You know, they got the hot hand. Everyone flocks and changes their strategy to whatever that guy's doing. You know, what was your presentation deck? What was your final close plan? What was the thing you did that really got them over the hump? And, you know, really that's kind of like shiny object syndrome to me. Like you see something shiny and I'm going to go run to it and I'm going to go try to do that. And, you know, really sticking to a plan and knowing that, hey, this is a solid plan. I know this is going to work for the long term. Let's stick with this and make small adjustments, not, you know, total overhauls to that plan. So, you know, really creating a structure that, you know, works and be transparent with your buyer. Let them know, this is the way that I'm going to sell to you. This is the way that this is going to go. My most successful clients do it this way and really walking them through from, you know, the first or second call, like, this is my process. This is the way that we do things. If you'd like to be successful, You should follow along with me because I've done this a whole bunch of times. And we know that this is going to make you look like a champion to your executives. Uh, you're going to get really moving the needle within your organization. Um, and there's going to be true ROI for the business. And if you can create that structure and stick with it, um, I think it really pans out and any good salesperson can stick with that and really get to the top very fast.

23:16 Scott Ingram: And what is that structure for you? What is, what is your process?

23:23 Reed Clarke: You know, for me, it's lots and lots of qualification at the beginning, like we spoke about, you know, really understanding before I've ever talked to a person of, you know, is this a good buyer for me? You know, you see the spam emails go out, you know, we've worked with hundreds of companies just like you. And, you know, that's really an empty promise when it comes down to it, because you haven't had any conversation with anybody yet. So being personal, finding out about people and treating that first conversation as, hey, I want to get to know you. I hope you want to get to know me. Let's go through this and do some light discovery to see if it makes sense for us to continue talking. And if at any point you're not seeing value out of this conversation, let me know and we can go on our way. You know, being very honest from the beginning and people appreciate that because, you know, you've taken time out of their day. Everyone's very busy. Calendars are always tight and tough for everyone these days. Um, you know, being honest and saying, hey, I want you to get value out of this. Let's get to know each other and see if we want to work together, because that's most important. And if anytime you don't, totally understand, let's go on our separate ways. And that type of honesty generally opens up. So, you know, that may be a quick intro call of 10 to 15 minutes. Lots of times that turns into a full discovery process where we may talk for an hour plus. You know, if you can build that trust where they want to continue the conversation, you know, maybe they're going to skip their next meeting or go, go over a little bit to be late for their next meeting because of your meeting. That's a pretty good sign that they're engaged and continuing. Um, the next big piece of my process is making your prospect do something, make them show that they actually want to be engaged in this. So I like to give homework. These are the types of things that I want you to do by the next call. Um, provide me a list of the 3 most important things you got out of the conversation and, you know, really give them a deadline to that of, hey, I need to have this back before our next conversation, or does it make sense? And then most importantly, in your entire sales process is stick with it. If you say you're not going to do something unless something else is done, don't do it. It's fine. Don't be afraid of them saying, hey, we're not going to do business now because you canceled the meeting. If that happens, maybe they weren't the best prospect for you in the first place. Even worse, wouldn't have been a good client for your company overall. It would have cost the company money overall. So getting people bought into your process is very important. So give them some homework, make sure they do it, stick with it, and then keep to your commitments as well. So if you say you're going to do something by a certain time, make sure you do it, make sure that trust is going both ways. So again, overqualifying, give them some homework and then see if they want to bring in other people into the conversation. The more people you can get from an organization, what we've learned in the enterprise sales cycle is that no one person ever buys anymore. And based on the size of the company or the type of company, your buying committee could be 3 people. It could be 5 people. It could be 7 people. And really understanding from day one, hey, to get this deal done, I know I'm going to need to talk to this manager, this director, this vice president, this C-level executive. More than likely, they're all going to have to be in there. And you can't be afraid to say, hey, does this person need to be involved too? You're going to show that you have knowledge of their organization. You're going to show that you're really understanding everything that's going on with that organization and being able to show, hey, I've really done my research. You're not like anybody else. I'm not like anybody else. You know, we really were meant to work together and showing, hey, this person probably needs to be involved and not being scared to ask that question and potentially not moving on without that right person. And it's just all about getting over that fear of, you know, getting through the process, asking the right questions, asking the difficult questions, having some of those awkward pauses and, you know, doing that at every step of the way. So it's a very challenger level of sale for me where I'm going to be expected to do a lot and a lot of work, but I know it's gonna be worth it in the end. I want my prospects, I want my partners and my clients to feel the same way that we really work together on everything.

27:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, you mentioned challenger as, as an ingredient there. I mean, what, what else informs your sales philosophy?

27:24 Reed Clarke: Um, so again, you know, kind of that upfront process, that, that contract, that verbal bond between myself and the prospect that, hey, this is what we're going to do. And if at any time it gets off the rails, we to be accountable to each other to get it back on the rails. And you'll know, you know, the first time it's really working when a prospect says, hey, am I supposed to have this to you by this day? Right. Or I'm supposed to, we're supposed to have this done by this time. And they're strategizing with you on how to make that happen, whether that's, you know, a meeting with their boss or a signature or a legal review and really just holding people to that, you know, really having that contract and at every meeting, starting it with, okay, Here's what we talked about last time. What has changed, if anything? Is there any questions, anything that we need to clarify from before, before we can move forward? Making sure that everything is out on the table, knowing this is the value that we're going to have out of this next hour together. We're going to try to accomplish this, and then a clear set of expectations for the next meeting or the next call or the signature or whatever that might be. Just always having that out there. So, you know, a lot of people talk about a closed plan or a success plan or road to success, you know, that generally comes out too late in most sales processes. Really, my philosophy and LeadMD's philosophy is let's put that out there from day one. You know, really let people know, here's the roadmap to doing business with us. Is that something that you can commit to? And really getting commitment every way, every single meeting you take, getting a commitment to the next meeting, or do we need to just kind of jump ship and go our own ways? Yeah.

28:57 Scott Ingram: So, so you're basically not just qualifying upfront in the discovery process, but you're qualifying at each step and you're almost qualifying based on commitment. Like, are you, are you still going to play the game? Are we going to do this or do we need to walk away?

29:10 Reed Clarke: Yeah, absolutely.

29:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So Reid, talk about your routines and habits and things like that. Do you have… well, let me ask this first. Are you more of a morning person or are you a night owl?

29:24 Reed Clarke: Uh, so I'd say by, by birth I was a night owl, but, uh, I'm also a morning person now. Um, I don't necessarily like getting out of bed, but I know I'm productive once I do. So, um, I get moving. I'm definitely not your typical salesperson or, you know, the blog post that says these successful people do these 7 things every day. That just doesn't appeal to me. I'm, uh, I'm not gonna eat the same breakfast every day. I'm not gonna have the same routine every day. It's just, It doesn't, uh, it doesn't work for me. So if I felt that I had to do the exact same thing every day and have that kind of Groundhog Day life, I'm going to get bored and bored doesn't lead to success for me. So I may be the opposite of most people from the, I'm up at 5 and, you know, I have my coffee and then I do the crossword puzzle and then I make 5 sales calls and then I do this. Totally not me at all. So, you know, really my goal is just to know what are the most important things I need to get done each day. What are the things that I can spend my time on that are potential revenue-generating activities for what's right in front of me, but also focusing on doing things that are potential future business? And in my mind, when I say that, I think relationships, you know, maybe it's not revenue today. Maybe it's not a sale today. Maybe it's not a sale ever. But what I've learned is a simple coffee with someone or a lunch or conversation just to say, hey, what's up? Let's catch up or let's get to know each other. Can lead to lots of good things in the future. And you really just staying in front of lots of people in your industry or similar industries and networking and just making sure that every day has some sort of relationship building involved with it, but really focusing, you know, the main thing every day is these are the items I need to do to get to my goals. These are the things I need to do every day to be able to stay on top of that leaderboard and make sure that I'm not falling off. And stick with those. So I don't think there's any magic potion for me as far as a schedule or certain things I need to do. Um, it's just making sure I'm sticking with, you know, my mental plan of these are the things I got to do to be successful.

31:26 Scott Ingram: Well, and when are you creating that plan? It sounds like your approach is very strategic, very thoughtful. So when are you determining and deciding these are the things that I need to get done?

31:37 Reed Clarke: Sure. So from a holistic approach, You know, that's kind of just ongoing in my mind. It's years and years of basically trying to do the same thing throughout that process of, you know, focus and sticking with clients from a, you know, more of an individual account or prospect or client perspective. You know, I'm forming that plan from the day that I've got a meeting accepted or even sooner than that when I know, hey, this is an account I want to target and start to do my research. So I always want to have, you know, my research done way ahead of the time. And then kind of forget about it a little bit. So say I've got my first discovery meeting a week from now with a client. The day I get that booked, I'm probably going to do some research to make sure I have some things, make some mental notes, maybe actually make a little bulleted list of these are some things that I want to make sure I find out about. And then within, you know, an hour before that meeting, or sometimes even shorter than that, I'm going to go back over that and do some kind of rapid-fire quick research. It's going to re-trigger those things in my mind to say, okay, These are the specific things I want to get out of this meeting. I think a successful first call with this company would be if I get 3 of the 5 items on this list checked off, and I've got clear next steps for my next meeting. So I'm kind of always going through that process and treating every single client, every single customer, you know, like they have their own plan. So it's not always the same and we have to make some tweaks and change, but you know, they're each their own little business that I'm now the CEO of, and I'm going to try to help out and make decisions and make recommendations from a consulting perspective specifically for this company and come in with a complete open mind when I get to that conversation of I've got this information in the back of my head, but I'm going to be completely open-minded to everything they have to say and try to make some value right from day one. Yeah.

33:20 Scott Ingram: Nice. It's funny that mirrors almost exactly like the way that I prepped for this conversation, right? There was early work and some early research and background, and then And, you know, we got to about an hour before the conversation, it was, it was re-review and rethink about, you know, where do we want to take this? But at the end of the day, you know, while you may have a structure and a plan for, uh, where you want the conversation to go, you need to stay open and flexible and, and kind of go with the flow a little bit. So, Reid, I'm wondering, are you, are you on the road much? Are you traveling a lot? Are you managing almost all this from, from the office? There in Scottsdale?

33:55 Reed Clarke: Um, I'm generally on the road about once a month. So, you know, making trips up to the San Francisco Bay Area most of the time. Um, and then some occasional trips back east. I'd say I'm out of town maybe, maybe 4 or 5 business days per month, but not usually more than that unless it's a heavy conference season or anything like that.

34:12 Scott Ingram: Sure. And any, any things that are helping you manage just the madness that is travel that you've found over the years?

34:20 Reed Clarke: You know, I, my main thing is when you leave for the trip, don't be behind. That's my main thing. You know, if you've got overdue items and overdue tasks that you needed to get done, make sure those are done before you get on the plane. I've made the mistake too many times of saying, oh, well, I'll catch up on the plane or I'll do this. And it just, it just never really works out. So number one, make sure that I'm completely caught up before I leave, that I have no outstanding tasks because travel time, one, is expensive for you, for the organization from a monetary perspective, but from a time perspective, it really eats it up. You're living in Ubers, you're living in the airport, and the time face-to-face that you get with those prospects or those clients or those potential partners or networks or whoever that is, that's very, very valuable. You know, in my mind, that face-to-face conversation may be 5 to 10x more valuable than a phone call or an email. So, you know, really having a clear mind and focusing on exactly what's in front of me is good. Also making sure that there's clear next steps from face-to-face meetings. Because what happens is you have a much more, you know, conversational effect when you're face-to-face, and there's a lot less focus on these are what we're doing, these are the next steps. So really trying to create really actionable items out of face-to-face meetings is really well, really good as well. You know, obviously I try to spend a little bit of time each day staying on top of, you know, what I need to from a day-to-day basis. But, you know, as you know, travel is going to take up a lot of your time. I'm just trying to stay on top of it as much as I can. You know, people understand that you're going to get a little bit behind on some things, but when it really comes down to it is what are the number one items you need to focus on for today that have to get done, but not losing sight still of that other 20% that I talked about, which is, you know, networking for the future. And, you know, you can accomplish a lot of that in the face-to-face, but you can't also let that go and, you know, be letting down those obligations that you've made from the past. So there's definitely a balance, as anyone who has to travel for business knows.

36:15 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and when you speak about the actionable piece in those meetings, is that something that you're trying to just make sure that you're intentional about in bringing into the conversation, or is it something that you're focusing on and maybe working on quickly documenting and following up after the fact to establish those? How do you think about that?

36:35 Reed Clarke: You know, I want to create something actionable right then and there. Um, you know, when you're face-to-face, everything sounds great. You know, if you've ever, you know, work at a conference booth or, you know, everything, everything is rainbows and unicorns at a conference booth, right? You know, you, I talked to 40 people and 35 of them are going to be opportunities. Everyone's so excited. Well, what you're forgetting a lot of the times is that person was just excited with everyone else they talked to at that conference and nobody can really manage that. So, you know, keeping it simple, having a solid message and being, say, hey, this is what we're going to do next. And, you know, in a conference setting, it's let's get a meeting later today, or let's get a meeting tomorrow while we're both in time so we can really maximize our value. And if that doesn't work, let's still set something on the calendar. So it's not this, yeah, that's great, we'll talk in the future, and nothing's really actionable. You know, let's really try to make everything actionable and treat it just like any other sales process. You know, if you, if you were emailing back and forth with a prospect and said, hey, we're going to talk next Tuesday, you would talk next Tuesday. But in face-to-face events, for some reason there's this magic of, yeah, we're going to talk again, we're going to see each other again, and sometimes that goes away. So Trying to, again, make something actionable and then making sure both sides of that party understand the obligation they made and get people to stick to it is important.

37:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah, great stuff. So what does your information diet look like? What are you listening to, reading, and watching?

37:56 Reed Clarke: You know, I used to read quite a few books. Um, I read a lot of the different sales books. I'm kind of past and over those in my mind. I'll occasionally remember something that I read. I'll go back and read again, but You know, with podcasts, obviously that's taken away a lot of actual reading time for me, which I think is a good thing. Um, I like to, you know, have focus based on, on my day. So, you know, if I've got… it's kind of backwards for me. If I have a very, very busy day where I know I have lots and lots of meetings and I'm probably not going to need to be real creative or, you know, trying to bring out a lot of stuff, I know it's going to be business all day. You know, I'll listen to, you know, something more entertainment focused, you know, some other podcasts where it's not necessarily, you know, all educational. I may learn something, but it's not specific around business or around my day. On the other hand, on days where I know that maybe I've only got 1 or 2 calls scheduled or 1 or 2 face-to-face meetings scheduled, I know I'm going to have a lot of time to really work on relationships, work on networking, work on outbound messages or strategy for the future. I tend to listen to something that's very educational and really, you know, on point to what I, what I'm listening to. So, you know, whether that's a Tim Ferriss or, you know, someone who's business-minded from a different industry where I can really say, okay, this gets me focused. Maybe I'll think of something from a different perspective. I like to do that. Um, I still like to go back and read, read some books occasionally, but generally, um, not specific to sales. So, you know, one book I like a lot is Personality Plus that really talks about personality types and how they can be mended together and how you should work with certain people. You know, really sales is more about relationships than it is tactics. And I think a lot of those sales books get very, very tactical and, uh, I don't think it's free thinking enough for a true enterprise level sale.

39:45 Scott Ingram: Nice. And on the podcast front, obviously folks are listening to this in podcast form. What are the, what are the 2 or 3 favorites for you? Maybe, maybe 1 or 2 of each on the, on the fun side and then the go-to go-tos on the more educational businessy side?

39:58 Reed Clarke: Yeah, on the fun side, you know, I love Joe Rogan. He's one of the leaders in the industry. Um, you know, you get everything from comedians to scientists to UFC fighters. You know, it's a really good mix of, you know, pop culture people, but also, you know, people that are way, way smarter than me and I can really see outside the box. Um, I like Tim Ferriss a lot, um, because, you know, there's a lot of similarities in the business world and building businesses and things like that. I remember reading his book, you know, 10 years ago or however long ago it was, and seeing that evolution has really changed. And then, you know, I like to listen to random podcasts. And one of the things I do a lot is, you know, I'll see an interview or I'll read an article by someone. So, you know, say it's Mark Cuban or some Richard Branson or someone like that. And I'll actually just go into the podcast. You know, app and search for that person and see what other podcasts they've been on and listen to an interview by them from a different, you know, interviewer, a different perspective. And so instead of really saying, okay, I want to listen to 10 episodes of this podcast, I may go listen to 2 or 3 about a certain person that I've read something about that I liked their view on something and kind of see how their personality changes as they're being interviewed by different types of people and different podcast leaders.

41:16 Scott Ingram: Nice. That's a, that's a really good, interesting approach. And it's one of the reasons why I like the Tim Ferriss Show so much is they're just so deep and involved. It's not this 20-minute skim the surface and hear the same thing that, that they always say in every conversation. It's really getting, getting into the, into the weeds. So along the lines of tools and apps and things like that, what is your kind of personal tech stack look like?

41:43 Reed Clarke: Sure. So we've got a, we've got a very, very large tech stack here at LeadMD. We've got a little bit of everything. So obviously we have Salesforce, we have Marketo, we have Engagio, we have for data, we have DiscoverOrg as well as LeanData. We use obviously LinkedIn Sales Navigator, we use Datanyze, and then there's a handful of other tools working in the background as well. So Outreach as well for our BDR team. So we've got a a lot, a lot of tools. And, you know, one of the things that I really like, and I really loved when I got to LeadMD, is that even though we have lots and lots of tools, a majority of my day is spent in Salesforce and our integrations are really flawless. And we really do drink our own champagne when it comes to the recommendations we're making to companies on how to set up their tech stacks, how to audit their tech stacks, and really make everything work together. Because the worst thing that can happen is, you know, you go in and work for a company where everything's duct taped together. You're constantly switching between lots and lots of different applications and programs to do lots of different things, and it really takes a lot of time and a lot of focus on learning how to do that. So being able to do pretty much everything within Salesforce has been really great for us. It makes our efficiency levels go up quite a bit. So, you know, I'm not… I may have lots and lots of tabs open on my browser, but I'm definitely not a company, and I'm not a person where I've got 20 different applications open just to do my job each day. So, you know, email, tasks, research on LinkedIn, research through our data partners and things like that, and creating a plan and then creating those plays for our accounts within Engagio.

43:22 Scott Ingram: Love that. Well, and that's the story of this whole professional services play, right? I mean, the tools can only do so much out of the box. The real power comes from integrating them and pulling them together and and matching them to your specific process and really enabling people to do what they do best, right? Technology should be a tool. It shouldn't be this big heavy rock you have to push up a hill.

43:46 Reed Clarke: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, that's one of the main messages that, you know, I talk to my clients and my prospects as well is that, you know, we're a consulting agency and we're an organization that really is going to learn about your business as if we owned it. We're going to take a look at what's your go-to-market strategy? How does marketing work with sales? How does the business development team fall into that, into that structure and really taking a look at what are the processes and how you do things without ever looking at systems. Because when it really comes down to it, no matter what marketing automation system you use, whatever CRM system you use, whatever tools you have, they're not going to really solve your problems. Those tools should be used to optimize the process in place. But if that process is poor from the beginning, you could go spend millions of dollars on tech stack and still have the same issues you have from day one. So You know, taking a holistic view at what's the business process and the go-to-market strategy and really understanding how to optimize that and then use the tools as one large tool, that entire tech stack to make that happen. You know, that's really the philosophy that we put on our clients every single day. Yeah.

44:46 Scott Ingram: It's, it's funny in the SaaS space, you know, I used the same analogy, I think across 3 different companies, which is, you know, at the end of the day, and I worked for Eloqua, so, you know, having been on the other side and competed with Marketo for a couple of years, you know, it's one of those like technology is a tool. And at the end of the day, I'm going to tell you that I have the better toolkit, but it just like if you were to go down to Lowe's or Home Depot and make a selection between a toolkit, you're going to come back home and now you've got saws and wrenches and, you know, whatever else. So you have what, the ability to like bang on things, cut things, and, you know, who knows what else. It's really about what are you going to do with that toolset? And then I… it was really a pivot into the services side of things because what you're going to need to pull this off is an architect to help you figure out what is it that we're trying to build, right? What… how does your family work, right? What do you need to support your lifestyle and the things that you want? So we've got to build that plan together, and then you need to execute that plan. So that's the trades and the master craftsmen and people that are gonna be able to do each piece the best. So at the end of the day, you've got a fully functional property or house versus a hammer and a saw laying around that, you know, well, they look shiny at Lowe's.

46:09 Reed Clarke: Sure. Yeah. It's, uh, you know, analogy I saw recently, I think it was, uh, you know, it's not always the wand, but it's actually the wizard holding that wand. And that person has to know where they're going and how to wield that tool more than anything.

46:22 Scott Ingram: Exactly right. Exactly right. It's a great, great analogy. As I'm in the middle of…

46:27 Reed Clarke: where are we?

46:27 Scott Ingram: I think we just started book 6 with my youngest daughter of the Harry Potter series. So yeah, you can't just pick up the wand and start like mumbling strange incantations. God knows what'll happen. Awesome. So Reid, what motivates you? How do you think about motivation?

46:41 Reed Clarke: You know, in sales, there's 2 things that motivate people. And, you know, I'm… I've been an athlete my whole life and being at the top, you know, being you know, the leader and whether that's a gold medal or winning the championship or whatever that is, you know, that's always been my thing is just what is success and thinking about how do you define what success really means to you. And, you know, that's the first thing. It's just having that spirit of saying, I'm going to put out a plan to do something, make it happen and say, okay, I'm going to become number one by doing that. That's always been on my mind, but being in sales, I mean, let's be real. Number 2 is always money as well. So being motivated properly and making sure that you know, you really are worth the effort that you put in. And sales is one of the only true equalizers, I believe, in the business world of you get exactly what you put into it. There's no easy sale. You know, I don't think I've ever had something dropped in my lap and said, oh, here you go, here's a sale. You know, you really have to put work into it. So, um, the motivation and that success factor is, you know, knowing that as hard as I work, the more I strategize, the more I stick with my plan, I'm going to be rewarded at the end of the day and, you know, making sure that One, you understand your value and your worth to an organization, and then making sure that you're working for an organization that understands your worth and your value and what you're putting in to be properly rewarded for that effort. Um, that's the perfect motivator for any salesperson, I believe.

48:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what is that for you? How are you defining success at this stage?

48:09 Reed Clarke: For me, it's growth. It's, you know, always, you know, sharpening the sword a little, but not spending too much time, but making sure that each day or each week or each quarter, each year, I'm doing just a little bit better and better and better. So, you know, I think saying, hey, I'm going to double my sales next year, that would be definitely a tough hurdle to climb. But, you know, really taking a look and saying, okay, where am I on track this year versus last year? Where am I at this quarter versus last quarter? You know, what's changed? What could I do different? You know, maybe I just need to stick with it to make sure that that growth is getting up there. You know, I, um, I got to hear someone speak recently that was talking about climbing Mount Everest. And, you know, for every 1 or 2 steps you get to go up the mountain, you actually have to take 10 steps back to kind of breathe and get, and get your, your, uh, your breath back. And I was thinking from a sales perspective, that's exactly the same. You know, nobody's closing at 100%. You know, you're always taking shots and missing and saying, well, how can I adjust, take a few steps back so I can eventually get there? And I think if you can kind of keep that slow and steady pace and not pressure yourself too much on a daily basis and always be, you know, judging and, and, you know, you make creating conflicting messages in your mind of, well, is this the right thing? Is this the right thing? You know, that could get you in a lot of trouble. So just sticking with the plan, believing in that plan and making sure that that growth and that you're getting those 2 steps up the mountain every single time, I think that's really huge. And, you know, just being able to judge that and say, yep, I'm progressing both in my career as far as, you know, my personal growth every day, I feel like I'm doing bigger and better things. I'm working more efficiently and that's going to turn into more closed deals, bigger deals, growing accounts, and creating more and more relationships for the potential future as well. So that's kind of how I judge myself.

49:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, love that. Now, is there something that you believe or that you do that the average sales rep would think is a little bit nuts?

50:05 Reed Clarke: You know, my biggest thing is, you know, challenging. So, you know, one of the biggest things is people assume just because I'm talking to someone, I should sell them. And I think one of the most valuable things is learning when it's not a good fit. You know, we talked about kind of overqualifying, and the last thing you want to do is work with people that, you know, either aren't pleasant or you don't really want to work with or aren't going to be true partners for a long-term future. So, you know, telling people no and saying, I don't think we're going to be a good fit to work together, and these are the reasons why. It's nothing about you. It's just these are the reasons why I don't think we should work together, really challenging that. You know, some people would say, what are you doing? You know, you have that fish on the hook, why would you throw it back? And that's the problem. It's just because you've got that fish on the hook doesn't mean it's going to be a good tasting fish. And again, heavy qualification, knowing your buyers, making sure that you're not wasting too much time, that you're using your time properly for the right buyers, is going to yield way more in the long run than, you know, a bunch of small fish that didn't end up turning out being very well at first. So really challenging, not being able to be afraid to say no and not being afraid to be told no as well, kind of goes right along with that as well.

51:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, you know, it's interesting you say that. I think particularly in the professional services space, a toxic client, like somebody that is not good to work with, the money may look good, but that can have a real cost. I mean, we work for, for, you know, relatively small or not tiny, but we work for smaller organizations and the cost of that wrong kind of client, even though you're getting the revenue, can be really bad.

51:44 Reed Clarke: Sure. You know, when you don't have a product with a true cost of goods sold where your only asset is people and their time, and those people are very smart and their time is very valuable, the last thing you want to do is waste someone else's time. So, you know, really understanding in a services organization that every single person who's servicing an account, their time is just as valuable as yours. And that, you know, that really is precious because you can only sell so much of it. And the last thing you want also is to be, you know, throwing deals over the fence to an organization and they go, hey, you sent over another dud. We really don't like these people. They're impossible to work with. This isn't a true partnership. And they don't believe or understand that we really are a part of their business and understand their business. That's just, you know, you said the perfect word. That's toxic.

52:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. Now, what about the flip side? Is there something that the average seller believes or just about the, I don't know, the standard standard sales dogma these days that you think is BS?

52:39 Reed Clarke: Yeah, just, you know, the whole used car salesman thing, you know, it, you know, it really just turns me the wrong way when people think of sales as this, this negative connotation of things. It's… I don't understand it completely because I love being sold, you know. My favorite thing is going into a store and, you know, getting pitched and being sold. And, you know, I'll ask immediately, you know, are you guys commissioned? Because if you are I love it even more because I know you're going to work hard for my business. You know, if a kid comes to my door to sell chocolates, I may or may not buy depending on how good he is, but I'll definitely help him out and tell him some tips on how to sell my neighbors. So I really love sales and I love, you know, how, you know, the strategy behind it and the process, because I truly believe that a professional salesperson does not believe, should not stay in that same category as a used car salesman and that negative connotation. So, you know, that pretty much pisses me off when I, when I start to hear that. And the greatest thing about working in one, the tech industry, but also the sales and marketing industry is that everyone understands how vital sales is. So, you know, we don't have to deal with that too much in this world because we're working with sales teams, we're working with marketing teams. They understand how sales works and we're doing the same things that, you know, they wish that their organization was doing. So I love being in this space because that connotation goes away for the most part, because very consultative. They understand what we're there to do, but at the same time, you know, we're not trying to put the wool over anybody's eyes or sell them something and take it away from them or anything like that. There's really no bait and switch in this. The proof's in the pudding when it comes to services and consulting.

54:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Great, great stuff. And obviously, I mean, this, this whole thing about, you know, not being proud of this, this profession and your role, it's funny. I see a lot of people hide. I think in a lot of ways, this sort of showed up a number of years ago. Well, and it's, it's even maybe happened to us to, to some extent as, as a byproduct where my title isn't really sales and, and neither is yours, right? Like, why are we afraid of that? And we've, we try and hide it. Like, there's nothing to hide behind here, right? That like, this is a valuable thing that we do.

54:46 Reed Clarke: Yeah. And, you know, in the consulting world, it may be a little bit different because, you know, our sales process is highly consultative. We're providing a ton of value upfront, everything from auditing our prospects and benchmarking them against our 3,000 previous customers and providing them with documentation of what their business looks like way before they've ever committed to pay anything for us. And so I think in our world, you know, as a solution consulting director, which is my role, yeah, that kind of is a fancy title for sales, but we are providing a lot of value above and beyond what a typical salesperson may do in a software sale. You know, in a software sale, you've got you know, an SDR or BDR who's setting a meeting. And then you've got a guy who doesn't want to show you a demo. They're just going to tease you and kind of lightly qualify. And then eventually we're going to let you talk to an account executive who is going to show you that demo. So all of that doesn't work in services. You know, we are showing value from day one. We're bringing in and giving, having high-level business conversations to really understand the business, to make sure that we're a good fit because software can be ripped out. And replaced by another software the next year, no problem. But if we make business decisions for your business and for our clients that fail, that could be a huge revenue drop for the company that has much, much bigger consequences than just, you know, we paid $50,000 for software. Next year we're going to pay $50,000 for a different software. It's, uh, it's much, much, you know, a higher level and a higher threat level for them. So if we're not coming in showing value from day one, And it's, uh, it's really tough.

56:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well said. So Reed, are there decisions you've made or lessons you had to learn to really get where you are today?

56:30 Reed Clarke: Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest things that I've learned is that, you know, the person who is out there selling might not be your normal person every day. You know, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm on the, on the spectrum of introverted versus extroverted. I'm definitely on the introverted side and I, I truly believe that the best enterprise salespeople are more on that introverted side because you can't be, you can't have that ultra extroverted person who's super excited to sell you in a 7-month sales cycle. You know, you just, you know, you're just not that excited about everything for 7 months. I think, you know, being patient and being more strategic and being more introverted actually lends itself much, much better to create those relationships in an enterprise sale. Now, that being said, there's certain things that I've learned along the way of that is, you know, you can't let your ego take a beating. And going back to what I said about you're not your true self when you're selling, because sometimes you have to be more on that extroverted side. You have to create that energy if it's not there. And, you know, another piece I like to think about is, you know, putting on your sales armor. So, you know, wake up every day and put on that uniform of sales. And at the end of the day, if you got told no 10 out of 10 times, take off the sales armor, and go be your normal self again. And that, you know, you're not being told no because of you. You're being told because the persona of you who's the salesperson didn't work out that day. And, you know, really being able to shrug off that and say, well, hey, it didn't work out today. Let's, let's throw the armor back on tomorrow and see if it'll work better tomorrow. So, you know, once I learned that, you know, it really helped with the rejection portion of sales, which I think a lot of up-and-coming salespeople end up quitting sales much, much too soon because of the rejection piece of it. You know, Nobody bats 1,000. You got to think of, you know, the baseball. If you hit .300 for a career, you're in the Hall of Fame. So 3 out of 10 is not bad. And sales, that's kind of the same way.

58:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know if this is a continuation or you've got a new line of thinking for us, but what advice would you give to someone just starting out in a sales career today?

58:31 Reed Clarke: So I always think of sales as something you're always doing. So even if you've never had a sales role before, maybe you only worked in customer success or customer support, you still had to interview. You still had to sell yourself. So go back and think about the things that you did to get that job or to get into school or whatever it might be where you had to go out and sell yourself. You really, you're always selling. Every decision you make, you're selling to yourself on if that's a good or bad decision. As a child trying to get your parents to do things, you were selling yourself on the idea. You know, you're always selling. So anyone who says, well, I've never been in sales, I'm not cut out for it. You know, you are made out for it. Everyone's made out for sales if you really want to do it and understand that Everything I've always done is sales. I've always been in sales, but now how do I use that knowledge that I've used in the past to actually go out and sell a product or a service or whatever that might be? And then from there, be all in and be proud. You know, like you said, don't be hiding behind the sales title. Go and say, hey, I'm a salesperson and that's a good thing. And that's what, you know, makes business happen. And, uh, you know, just go all in.

59:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now what about for somebody who's a little bit further in and either Uh, and I'll let you pick which, which tack you want to take, but maybe they've hit a rough patch. Maybe they've gotten too many nos in a row and it's really starting to impact their, their confidence, or they're, they're doing okay. Um, but they're, they're nowhere near the top and they've got room to grow. What would you tell them to either break through that challenge or get to the next level?

59:58 Reed Clarke: Yeah. So I've seen this before. So, you know, I was a VP of sales previously and ran a sales department and understood You know, I'd see guys go on a streak and then I'd see the absolute extreme of that where now they, they've failed months in a row. And, you know, the main thing that I've always coached on is just go back to the basics, take a look at what you've done, have some people listen to your calls, have some people tag along with you and give you some honest feedback and be open to making changes. So one of the things I see a lot is people get in their own way. And, you know, one of the biggest problems I've always seen in sales with people is as they get longer and longer in an organization, they continue learning more about the organization. They know more and more about the software than they could possibly ever know, or whatever their product might be that they're selling. And they get in their own way. You know, they're, they want to spill the beans and show everyone, I know everything. I'm going to present to you everything. And when you're presenting, you're not asking questions. You're not getting the pain. You're not overcoming objections. You're just showing your knowledge. And that seems to be one of the biggest problems I see with people who start out real good and then start to dip down and have a, have a problem getting back there. So get back to the basics, keep it super, super simple. You know, try not to know everything about the product you're selling. Don't worry about features and benefits, but think about the emotions of how is that going to help your prospect? What does my product do or my service do to help them get to their goals or make their day easier or alleviate the pain that they're feeling and really getting back to that, you know, just stay out of your own way. That's generally the biggest issue I see with, uh, with people who made it to the top and then, and then fell off a little bit.

1:01:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now you mentioned, we talked a lot about relationships up at the top. How do you think about, is there a qualifying process? Let me forget it. I'm just going to leave this open-ended, right? How do you think about relationships and, and really maximize those opportunities?

1:01:53 Reed Clarke: So start by, so for the overqualification I do with prospects, I do the exact opposite for relationships. You know, you have to understand that there's not a dollar figure on everyone you meet and that you never know what might lead to what. I remember when I had my own agency, you know, one of the smallest deals I ever closed ended up being one of the most valuable I ever closed. I think my monthly recurring revenue was under $100 for this potential client. So literally my smallest client ever. And they referred me to my 10 largest accounts within 2 years. And that really opened my eyes to everyone has value in different ways, whether that's, hey, this is a guy I want to go have a beer with, or this guy might be a great referral source for me, or this person might be a great client someday. And really looking at everybody as not, you know, a dollar sign, because it's really hard sometimes in sales. You're always looking at that number. How do I get to my quota? How do I, how do I get there? How do I get there? How do I get there? Well, take that away. Take the dollar sign off of everyone's head and just make solid relationships. You never know who you're going to meet, who they may know, who they may introduce you to, or maybe you just create a lifelong friend that doesn't create any business at all. All those things are fine. And, you know, if you keep an open mind and know that, hey, occasionally, and again, like I said, I like to keep 20% of that open to, this is my relationship building, this is my networking, this is somebody that I just want to talk to. On an ongoing basis, even if it's just grabbing coffee every few months, you know, keep those relationships alive, but also know that it's a lot of work. You know, you have to continue those relationships to really keep them going. You have to make an effort. And I noticed that most people don't do that. So you need to decide that, hey, I'm going to be the person that keeps that relationship going and not have any regrets about it. Just saying, hey, haven't talked in a while. Let's chat a little bit more. You know, may not lead the business, but hey, I'd like to, uh, just talk and see what is going and keep those going. So that's kind of my view on how relationships should be looked at from, from a high level and then kind of how to keep them going.

1:03:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And is, is there a particular tool or way that you are managing that, or is it similar to just the way that you're making decisions about here's the key things I need to do, that it's just kind of an always top of mind thing? And as, as people come up and opportunities come up, you just just, you're attacking it that way.

1:04:14 Reed Clarke: I wish I had some magic, uh, magic tool to manage those relationships, but I really don't. It's kind of, you know, just more free-flowing and, uh, you know, definitely I'm a person who creates lists when I know I have to and I've got too much in my brain, but, uh, no, no specific, uh, specific way to manage those at all. Yeah.

1:04:33 Scott Ingram: Now, if you were in my shoes, if I were wearing shoes, what question would you want to ask Uh, top sellers in other organizations? What do you want to know?

1:04:43 Reed Clarke: Yeah, I just, you know, love to know how they're one, you know, dealing with failures for one, you know, how do you take a look at, you know, what you consider a failure and then, you know, how are you learning from those? Because I think we learn more from our failures than our wins, but then also taking a look at, if you looked at your best client, what were the things that you, that that, you know, made them that best client. So what do you really feel and what could you try to replicate to find more people like that? So, you know, we're always looking at trying to replicate our wins and how do we really take a look at that from failure perspective and a winning perspective and say, okay, these are what my failures look like. These are the things I should be looking out for. And then these are my biggest wins. These are the things I should be looking out for to make sure I know that I can focus my time there. And I have some of those things that, you know, ring true in my head, but what are those for other salespeople that I could learn from to say, okay, these are the key indicators that you're looking for upfront early on in the sales cycle to say this has a lot of success written all over it, or this could crash and burn.

1:05:48 Scott Ingram: Nice. And how would you answer those questions for yourself?

1:05:52 Reed Clarke: So knowing that for myself, you know, and the biggest thing is you know, challenging prospects early and how do they commit? How do they feel to that? You know, if people get real guarded and real closed and don't like being challenged and don't want to answer your questions, they may either not want to be a part of your process or they, this might not be that important to them. There may not be enough pain. They already feel like your solution might not do enough for them. So they're real guarded from the front. That's a huge indicator for me of like, well, they don't really want to work hard to get over my challenges. On the flip side of that, you know, we ask some real challenging questions early on and, you know, really get down to business early and they're excited to go through that. You know, they make comments like, hey, no one's ever really talked to us like that. We've talked to your competitors and they didn't challenge us this way at all. And that's what we expect, especially out of a consulting services organization. You know, that's a big green light for me to know, okay, I'm not wasting my time here. I can spend more time on this client because there's a lot of potential and opportunity. So those are kind of the triggers that I see quite often. Yeah.

1:06:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And that's when you say triggers, that's kind of the triggers on the ideal client side and the signs on the onset.

1:07:04 Reed Clarke: Yeah. So definitely, you know, we understand a lot from our ideal, from our, you know, our profiles and our account work we've done, our buyer work we've done upfront that we know we're targeting, you know, high potential clients. But what you learn is that, you know, a tier C client, you know, may still be your best client out there and being open to that, that kind of goes back to the relationships. They come from where you don't don't expect that some of your highest value can come from anywhere, but knowing that when those types of triggers happen in your mind, that, okay, great, this person gets it, or this company gets it, and they really understand why we're having this conversation, and there's going to be value coming from both sides. Um, that means a lot.

1:07:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what about the dealing with failure and learning from your losses? What, what's your process there?

1:07:48 Reed Clarke: You know, really, you know, take a look at, you know, what are the lessons learned? So what is What are some of the key indicators of why this didn't do it? Was this my fault? Were there some things I didn't do? Did I not have the right alignment with the right people? Or, you know, maybe my eyes just got too big from the beginning. So, you know, one of the things I want to look at is going back to the beginning. And sometimes I'll go back to my very first call and go back and listen to it and say, did I hear something different than what actually was said? And, you know, one of the things that we do a lot with our clients is we confirm the items, say, hey, these are the things that we heard from you. Are those right? Based on what you said, we think this is the problem you need to solve. So I'll go back and do that to myself as well and say, okay, this is what I heard. This is what my note says. We went this direction because of this and going back and saying, did that really happen? Or did I get happy ears and say, that's what I wanted to hear. So I created something that's not there. Um, that's one of the biggest things that I like to go back and do on the failures and say, okay, maybe I need to qualify better in the future here. Maybe I need to slow down and take a step back and make sure and ask the right question of, is this what actually heard, or am I acting on something that I want to hear?

1:09:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Now, when it comes to professional services, why have you chosen to sell that versus a product-type solution?

1:09:09 Reed Clarke: I feel that services really can make a difference. You know, at the end of the day, I really want to help my clients move the needle. I want them to be successful. Um, you know, the last thing I want to do is spend a lot of time making a great relationship you know, making a true partnership between our companies and then it failing. And I think software comes up short there quite a bit because there's lots of promises in the world. There's lots of softwares that demo great. They show you the ideal scenario, everything their product can potentially do, and then it falls short. And there's not a lot of transparency there. With services, I believe that there's lots of transparency. It's truly honest stuff. We have this team of people who's going to spend this many hours to create this outcome for your organization. And at the end of it, if we haven't done that, it's a failure. And if we have done it, it's a success. It's very black and white. Again, it's going back to whatever we put into it is what we're going to get out of it. And I love services for that because it's very transparent from the beginning. This is exactly what we're planning on doing. You know, there may be some, some forks in the road where we learn new things as we, as we get in there, and we'll account for those when we get there. But it's all out on the table the whole time. No, there's nothing that's going to be done or sold that actually doesn't happen. And I really love that transparency in services because that's how you make a difference in a person's life, in an organization's growth, of really helping them optimize their system from business process, go-to-market strategy, all the way down to the systems themselves.

1:10:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's interesting. And even if you looked at it from a contractual perspective, right, you were you're contracting based on deliverables and outcomes versus, well, um, you're going to have a login and we promise that the software will work the whole time the contract is up.

1:10:55 Reed Clarke: Sure. Yeah. I mean, we, I mean, uh, a large percentage of our clients come to us after they've gotten their software. They've had it 3 months, 9 months, a year, 2 years. And they say, you know what? We really are only doing about 10% of the things that we saw in the demo. How can we get to 50%? How can we get to 75%? But they were sold on 100%. You know, they, they were never happier than the day they signed their contract for that new software system because they were going to get to do all the things that they were… that they saw in the demo. When the truth of it is, they probably don't know how to set up any of those things at all because it was sold without a services aspect, without a proper setup. And, you know, at LeadMD, we're really able to up that level of marketing maturity and sales maturity and make their systems more mature to be able to do the things right away that they need to be able to do.

1:11:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Awesome. Reed, who is the most successful salesperson you know personally?

1:11:52 Reed Clarke: Um, you know, I've known a few, um, both in organizations that I worked in and partner organizations. Um, you know, there's been a few in the IT space that were very, very successful and, you know, I think they were all kind of cut from the same cloth and I don't know if I've modeled my career completely after them, but I've definitely taken up some of it, which is, you know, take every single meeting you can. Don't, you know, don't fall short if you can. There's not, there's not any reason to not be able to, you know, take that meeting, take the time, and potentially just create a relationship. And I think that, you know, being able to, to take a look at them and saying, hey, these are guys that they were hustling all the time, and that doesn't mean that they were always, you know, cold calling. That doesn't mean that they were always sending people proposals, but they were always working in one way or another. And it all came back to relationships. So, you know, the most successful people I've ever seen in sales were relationship people by far, and they didn't waste their time. They didn't see any time as invaluable towards their career.

1:12:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And, and of those, like, who was the best one? Like, who was, who was the single best example?

1:13:02 Reed Clarke: Um, you know, I remember, I remember one guy, um, you know, he was definitely more on the extroverted side. So we were very, very different on that side, but he, uh, I remember he had one small region out here in the Southwest. I think he had Arizona, maybe a couple other states. And one of the biggest problems he came up with a couple of years into his career is that he had ran out of people to talk to. There was no one left in his target account. Account in his region that he hadn't talked to, to the point where his company actually had to give him some additional states to go after because he knew everybody. Everybody knew his name. He was in every single deal, competitive or not, winning, losing, he was there no matter what. I think he was an overachiever by a lot, but definitely a good person to be able to look at from a long distance and say, yeah, that's how I want my sales career to be.

1:13:53 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. Good example. So to summarize, we always try and end on something very actionable. And I'll ask that you come up with a challenge for the listeners, something that they can do over the course of the next 2 weeks until the next episode comes out and they've got a new challenge to take on. What would you suggest that they do?

1:14:12 Reed Clarke: You know, really, you know, take a step back and take a real good look at the things you're doing. Like I said before, you know, one of the biggest things I see is people are overanalyzing, overthinking, and really getting in their own way. Go back to the basics. You know, solve people's problems. You know, don't worry about the number. Don't worry about the quota. Don't worry about the commission that you may get from it, but really understand your prospect's problem and think about it from their shoes. If you were them or you were their boss and you were asking the questions that you're asking, how would that look? How, you know, how would you feel? What would those answers mean? And is there value being shown? So, you know, one of the hardest things in sales is how do I continually show value time and time again in every outreach that's personal and every email and every phone call and every direct mail piece and every social interaction? How can I show value? And that's a really, really hard thing to do. But if you get back to the basics and really take a step back and say, okay, if I was in my client's or prospect's shoes, would I be getting value out of this? Would I want to buy from this person? Is their product really going to solve my life? Whether that's software, whether that's services, whether that's a product, does that really solve my problem? Does it make my life better? Is it something I need to have? And do I need to have it now? And if you can answer those questions and you come up with no, I don't solve their problem. No, they don't need it right now. That would be a nice to have, not a need to have. You know that maybe you're one targeting the wrong client, or you're not getting enough pain and asking the right questions to really understand those true needs. And again, that's, that's sales 101. Is there pain or is there going to be gain from my service or my product to them? And I think people lose sight of that. I know I definitely have and have to step back sometimes and say, okay, we're just selling to sell here. We're going through the motions. We're not really providing the value that we need to provide.

1:16:09 Scott Ingram: Reed, this has been great. Thank you so much for your time today. And we talked about a little bit earlier, you're providing a piece for our Sales Success Community that is a little bit of the audit that you do and the way that you add a lot of upfront value for your clients, just to give folks who are listening to this an idea of some questions that they could ask perhaps in their discovery and some ideas of how they can add additional value, particularly on the front end of their sales process. So anybody who wants access to that piece from Reed, if you go to top1.fm and get on the mailing list, the very first email you'll get is an invite to the Sales Success Community. Also, if you're in the US, you can text TOP1 to 444999 and you'll get access exactly the same way. That's TOP1 with the number 1 to get that access. Reed, again, thanks so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

1:17:06 Reed Clarke: Scott, it's been great. Thanks for having me on.

1:17:10 Scott Ingram: 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.