[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another episode of Street Level Marketing. I'm your host, Mark Lampluth and we have a great show for you this hour.
My guest is Jordan Sheffield. Jordan is somebody that I've known for about 15 years. We used to work together doing admissions. And Jordan went on to work for a company that kind of innovated in a space that struggled for efficiency. I, I guess that's probably the best way to explain it. And they really came up with a solution that, you know, really took off and I think they really paved the way for what they do in the space that they do. So I want to have Jordan come on and talk about, you know. Yeah, he's been with the company, you know, since they were new and, and growing and now they're, they got a national reach. I want bring him on and talk about, you know, how they made that happen. So, Jordan, thanks for coming on the show.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about, you know, Verify tx, you know, the solution that they have and, and, you know, sure.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So Verify tx Verified treatment.
We are a software as a service and the goal really is to put insurance verification in the hands of missions, outreach, you know, and our market is kind of structured to where people are really looking for care pretty quickly. As, you know, you have a very limited time to kind of capture their interest.
So what we really wanted to do is be able to verify benefits quickly, but empower the admission team, empower your staff to kind of change the dialogue. I think that's really what our mission is. We're more of a decision making dialogue tool that we solve one problem.
However, our real mission is providing this convenience around a process.
And so that's our goal.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, and, and many, especially a lot of, you know, the viewers wouldn't understand that before, before your company, it could take hours, sometimes a day to get an answer back on whether they can, you know, go into a specific program based on the response I got from the insurance. And, and you guys have really taken it down to minutes, seconds, seconds.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: And you know, as you mentioned, you would have to type out the information, send it off to a third party person. A lot of times they're not even associated with your company. Now you have to wait and rely on that person to either make a phone call, which could take 4, 45 minutes an hour if you had the right information, or you'd have to go and search through multiple websites. That's pretty common these days, is where people have.
I talked to a lady yesterday. Her team is using 20 different websites to log into. And she has about 200 logins that she manages across her entire team. So we bring it down to one login, which can save a lot of time and just processes all around from different departments, communication with different departments. So really process, process effectiveness is another one of our goals.
[00:03:56] Speaker B: So we're talking about marketing here. Like what different differentiates, like selling an SAS service to like traditional sales, like.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Business to business versus business to consumer. Yeah, well, I, so I've been in healthcare for the 15 years, right. And we kind of. I went from business consumer to business to business. And I was working in the lab space.
The lab space requires a lot more strategy, a lot more kind of, you know, looking at the numbers you have to build these relationships. And with verified treatment, it's a quicker turnover time. But usually these customers are with you for quite a long time when you can kind of change their process.
And so there's a lot to it. I mean, you have to build a relationship and provide effectiveness. I think you, if you don't provide value, they're always gonna.
Another business is always going to be kind of biting for your competition.
And one of the books that I like is Blue Ocean Strategies. Are you familiar with that book?
So it, you know, you're looking for this.
Everybody's in Red Ocean. Some of your viewers probably have read that book and, you know, you're looking for a way to, that nobody else offers.
Unfortunately, you know, we're in a space that there's a lot of different competition. So we kind of have to be competitive with some of the other features, tools, kind of staying on top of software development. I mean, that's, that's really the name of the game because you're either growing or you're going.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah. What strategies have you found to be, you know, most effective to reach potential clients?
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Phone calls, I think for me, I love phone calls. Emails are great. You know, I think what's served me well is not being afraid to pick up the phone and have multiple touches annoy somebody. Right.
You're not really being annoying. You're either doing your job, not reaching and getting a hold of them, or you're not. And I don't mind doing anything possible to get a hold of them.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: So, yeah, you know, new, new BD people or sales people, they get this internal fear that they're like being a bother, you know, when they're reaching out and they don't want to call too many times and it's really just kind of getting at, out of your mind and Just, you know, going through it and then once you start, you know, hitting the people and picking up the sales, then you kind of overcome that.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I started out in print advertising and, you know, had no idea what I was doing. So it kind of gave me at least an overcoming of the fear of, you know, making outbound calls because I was taught to not even put the phone down. You know, you hang up with your finger.
It's changed a lot now.
I really have been blessed. I don't have to do a whole lot of my outreach now. I kind of have some, some folks that kind of do a lot of my outreach, but I still don't mind calling people. I'll bug them.
I used star 67 the other day. It works great.
So I'm not afraid to, you know, just get them on the phone or I don't really have usually a perfected way of connecting. I kind of look at it as it, we're either going to have a good conversation or the conversation will not exist because you're just not willing to have a conversation. So I look, use it on my goal list each morning. I say, hey, you know what? I'd like to have a good conversation today.
And if somebody's open to that, rock on, let's talk about it.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah, what, what mistakes do you find new, like sales reps making when they're, you know, just starting out prospecting?
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Usually I think it's head game. You know, you're in your thoughts, you're in your feels, you're hungry.
Uh, you, you're, you don't have a process yet.
Uh, so I think it's really important to kind of start small but use, utilize your time effectively, which, keep track of your processes, your, your leads call back the leads that are really interested because usually those, those quick closes are, are helpful and, and especially for somebody that kind of needs a little bit of encouragement. Right.
So forgetting about leads that are really interested can be kind of a Achilles heel because you might be so hungry looking for 5, 10, 20 clients, but you had two that actually had said yes. But you didn't pick up on those cues.
And with a little bit of kind of emphasis, you probably could have closed them.
I think that's a think that's a big close. You know, someone once told me, one of my mentors, the sales really doesn't start until they say no, because everybody's looking for lay downs, one call closes.
But really nurturing and kind of committing to that relationship is where I've really found success.
And I don't really talk to a whole lot of my clients after I kind of secure their business. I have a team that supports them, manages kind of the accounts and so you should really have to kind of trust your team at that point too.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: How's social media changed your approach to lead gen?
[00:09:43] Speaker A: You know, for me, I started out with a personal Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
LinkedIn's probably still, you know, I know people make jokes, but LinkedIn for me has been the most effective just because it's straight business. I don't have to kind of beat around the bush. I don't even have personal social media anymore. So I've barely kind of went, went dark, gone private.
And so I don't have like that profile, if you will, that presence online. I find that it's just doesn't really suit me and my lifestyle and. But LinkedIn is one of those things where I can be thought provoking, you know, and the use of AI tools, I can have a thought. Usually I don't like to like, hey, I think of something cool but I can utilize AI and kind of really write out a paragraph or so and you know, hey, I make this, you know, bring some points here or maybe do some changes here and it'll actually structure kind of an argument or a thought in a more structured way that I can post or something and, or engaging with people. You know, I like, I like thought leadership. That's kind of one of my probably biggest goals in the space.
I find like our space, behavioral health, mental health in comparison to medical is kind of antiquated. They don't strategize the same way because the profits are higher, right? The risk are higher, but the profits are higher. So they can kind of afford to be a little bit lackadaisical when it comes to their, their strategies. And I find that people that are really well tuned are going to utilize these different tools to maximize effectiveness which really will lead to their processes and more money. At the end of the day it's if they will commit to finding a.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Strategy that makes sense. Well, we're coming out of time on our first segment here, so we're going to go to a commercial break and after the commercial break we're going to talk about navigating client relationships. So stay tuned.
Foreign welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host Mark Lamplu. We're talking to Jordan Sheffield from Verify Tx and you know, we're talking about, you know, selling software as a service and it's a little bit different than a direct to consumer. Your, your Customers, other businesses, and you gotta create value for them, for them to be customers. So we're going to talk about navigating client relationships. So Jordan, what techniques do you use to move a lead interested to committed.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Like not being a customer to becoming a customer? Yeah, usually. Thoughts?
Maybe some examples. And lately it has to do with direct return on investment and behavioral health field. What I've, I've actually been doing some case studies on my own interviewing clients lately. And the cost per acquisition to get a qualified client in the door for a lot of the out of network facilities could be anywhere from five to $10,000.
And you know, that sounds high, but the reimbursement rates are, you know, still higher or so. And when they lose potential admins, you know, that's really what we're kind of saying. Hey, you know, have you ever had this experience? Right. We have a solution to kind of help you. Here's what we've done for hundreds, not thousands of programs that are your competitors.
And this is what, this is why you would want to work with us. So kind of providing some of those use cases I think are probably the best way to kind of speak their language. They can relate to those.
They can kind of. It makes sense, it clicks. You have to kind of make the pieces fit in my opinion.
And it's also personality. You know, the lady that she was really closed off to any vendors, she's like, I don't really want to talk to anybody. And she said something about the way that y' all approached me and you know, it just, just felt like, ah, sure, why not? You know, it was kind of like, hey, you know, let's, let's have a conversation. If it does work out, then that's great. I'm not here to cold, you know, like hard sell you.
I don't want you to feel that way. I want to bring you value. If, if it makes sense to work together and be a partner, then let's, let's be partners. And I think that approach is my favorite personally. And everybody has their own style.
But I don't want to promise the world and under deliver, if anything, I would always rather under promise, over deliver because at the end of the day that client's going to be more satisfied.
And you know, it's, it's a tough, tough world out there. So I don't want to over commit to something that, you know, makes me look bad because I do have a reputation, you know, I on the socials. I don't want to kind of smear my name so that's really, that integrity is really important to me as somebody in sales. So kind of keep that brand going.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: How are, how do you handle common objections or hesitations with a potential new client?
[00:15:34] Speaker A: For me it's been helpful to have the experience.
So you, you have, you know, 10,000 hours of sales and it kind of just, you become a, I wouldn't say master think for salesperson. You are always learning.
And for me I always wanted to be 1% better tomorrow than I am today.
And so if you're not educating, learning, learning about other verticals of the market. Right. Other things, healthcare, what are payers doing?
You know, the goals are really kind of, I'd say trying to handle objections can be like speaking their, their, their language still, you know, kind of addressing it directly. If you don't know the question, answering like hey, you know, let me find out for you, you know, or this is something that I'm going to really have to maybe explore and look into. So you don't have to kind of persuade in the wrong way, but you can build confidence and then you can maybe change the subject to a degree and say, hey, you know what, I know you had that question.
However I did notice that before in our conversation you had said this. So I think being attuned to the conversation to where you can always pivot and kind of my favorite is, you know, if you're in sales, it's your job to really steer that conversation. You're the professional, you have their attention. Hopefully. I really like to engage with, with clients if I can ask them questions. Right. I think questions are probably one of the best ways to really learn what somebody's needs are. And if, if you don't ask the questions on where these needs are coming from or can kind of assume that, hey there, there's this dot, this dot. Let me, let me connect it and then bring it kind of in a summary to solve that problem.
So I think that's really a good way to navigate a rapport is by asking questions, really digging in. You'll never have anybody that really doesn't like to talk about what they do in their business.
And so very rarely do they want to hear what you do. But if you let them kind of tell you, they're usually a little bit more open minded to listening to you because you listened to them.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And part of, you know, part of the listening process is you learn things that you can potentially use to, you know, drive the sale further.
I think, you know, often, you know this, it's a most of the time they're buying you as a person first. If you can't get past that, then you're gonna have a tough time.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Really.
[00:18:24] Speaker B: Well, what when you decide it's, you know, time to stop pursuing a potential client? Like.
[00:18:33] Speaker A: For me, I try not to make too hard of terms, you know, when they say absolutely never, you know, I'll still call them once a month or every, you know, three months, but I'm not going to waste my time and, or theirs. I don't want to upset them. I do find that, you know, that demo is a really good chance for you to shoot your shot. And so it's kind of my responsibility to get into the initial demo, follow up, really provide the use case, really kind of give them my undivided attention in that time and, and try to make them a believer. Right. I kind of, you kind of have that first impression.
So if after that they just ghost you or, you know, then it doesn't really hurt you to take two minutes out of a day and, you know, call them every six weeks or so, sometimes 15, 20 different touches is kind of what I see is, you know, the start of the close.
So I think being long term minded, and you watched me in admissions, you know, I would make outbound calls for years.
So, you know, you have qualified candidates and maybe they're not customers yet, but you kind of have that belief that there are no other products that really can compete, that you will get them to believe at some point in time.
That kind of conviction really drives me to, hey, I know I'm doing you a disservice by you not being my customer because, you know, there are lots of other kind of imitators, but you know, there's only one us.
There's only one Jordan.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: The next question is kind of, I guess maybe a big one for know, potentially new people going out there in the field. You know, you're, you want to, you're telling your boss all the potential sales that you have coming in and you know, some are taking longer than expected. Like, how do you handle, like internal expectations when, you know, clients are maybe taking a little bit longer to get.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: To the finish line, just realizing that you don't have control over when it fits somebody else's narrative.
Right. I think, I think people buy because they have a problem, not because you need to meet quota.
And if, if you're always trying to sound desperate and to just meet quota, it's like blood in the water. You know, it's like sharks. They can just smell it. It's like, well, you're desperate and something's fishy with that, you know, so I never want to get desperate. I always want to speak to their value. And that can be hard. That can be hard to, as an, as a salesperson. Right. You'll have your best month and first of the month next month, you're like, oh my gosh, my roof's gonna collapse, I'll never make another dollar. And you know, I've been commission only for like five years, six years. So you know, it can be a lot of pressure.
But that's where kind of long term usually works out if you're going to put the work in.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Sure.
What's your method for making sure you have a smooth transition from the sale to the onboarding?
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Great question. I was actually looking at a kind of a standard operating procedure today.
Just, you know, communication between departments, usually having some type of CRM and I like to follow it up with some email introductions. You know, we kind of have a process that, you know, we want them to hopefully reach back out to us to set some meetings, set some trainings because obviously stickiness is usually a pretty big goal. If you can't, you could sell the customer all day. What I find that happens is you'll talk to administrator, wow, this is great. You'll talk to one person, they buy for the entire facility. If you can't convince their team to adopt whatever you're selling, or you can't have your support team kind of support that process that you sold, then this is not going to be a long term customer and that their long term success is not going to really work out. So I mean, that stickiness kind of loses its, you know, drive and so you kind of have that one shot. I find it's very hard to re win a customer that did give you a chance and that maybe has a negative experience then kind of just doing it right the first time. But it happens, you know, not everybody is available. Sometimes they have projects going on, they get busy, you get busy. So when, when somebody maybe didn't really grasp it the first time? I like to kind of speak to that. I mean, I can look at their entire history in a few seconds and say, hey, you know what? Like did you use it to the best of the ability? And you kind of place that question to where maybe they're willing to give you another shot. And, and that's all you can really speak to. Say, you know what, we were available and if we fell short, you know, give us another shot.
But sometimes that can be Tough just because maybe they're with another vendor, maybe they're, you know, exploring other options. And sometimes switching vendors can be very costly, as you've seen with Salesforce or with other CRMs call systems. I mean, you're not paying for just software time energy. You're paying for development. You're paying to train your staff. You're paying in lost productivity. There's a lot of factors to that.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: Sure.
Well, we're coming up to another break.
You know, we, that was a great information.
When we come back, I want to talk about, you know, some customer success and account expansion, you know, how we're growing those, you know, existing clients and boosting the customer lifetime value, you know, keeping them as clients. So stay tuned for more of Street Level Marketing after this commercial break.
Welcome back to Street Level Marketing with your host Mark Lamplugh. I'm talking to Jordan and we're talking about growing and building an Sass service, you know, which is a lot different than, you know, marketing and selling to direct to consumers. You're, you're selling to other businesses.
So the tactics are a lot different.
So we talked about, you know, building your pipeline up and, and, you know, finding accounts, onboarding accounts. And now we're going to talk about growing existing accounts and, you know, boosting that customer lifetime value, keeping them as clients once you have them. Jordan, after a client signs up, what's your approach to ensuring they stay engaged and satisfied?
[00:25:50] Speaker A: So we've had some changes here pretty recently where we brought on a new kind of role specifically for that calling customers, you know, really finding out, hey, just, just constant calling and checking in.
I think what I've seen is probably one of the most effective tools.
If you could save them money or if they did have features that maybe they were interested in, they purchased and they're not really utilizing or getting value from, you can kind of have a bird's eye view Bing software to kind of look at their volume, look at.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: Their.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: How they're using the system or just calling them and kind of building that relationship on saying, are you using this feature?
And if it's, if it's not keeping good CRM notes right are vital because if you don't keep good notes, you can't reference that back.
I might not always be around. So if I had a conversation and I didn't log it, somebody else needs to pick it up. It's kind of being a team player. So you might not get to capitalize on that little bit of information, but that might help the company and you Know, I think it's important to just follow through if you're going to, if they're going to tell you, hey, in six months I'm going to kind of need to up my volume, then you might want to put some type of note in there or I really like to use my calendar and that, that's for new sales, for follow ups, for kind of, you know, customers that might be interested in additional features. I usually ask them like, well, when would you want to have this conversation? And you know, do you have your calendar open? Can we at least get something scheduled even if it's six months from now? I don't care. Give me a Tuesday And Tuesday at 11am you know that work for you? They're usually like, yeah, sure. But at least they see that calendar and they see, oh, they see my name usually when it comes to that week.
So I don't think about it until I see it, you know, really until it's like two seconds until the meeting, I don't really think about it.
And that can kind of keep the conversation alive without really doing additional work or trying to hunt that person back down. You've got reschedules, no shows, but it kind of reinforces it touch and you know, asking them what they like, what they don't like, what could be better, really encouraging them maybe to kind of continue to do training. Because usually what we find in our software, human error is, is very common.
We're in an industry where the data.
So we're kind of like a data clearinghouse. The, the data that comes back for these multitude of insurance companies can be night to day. So you really have to learn what you're looking at. And especially when it comes to behavior health, you know, it could be like twice as difficult to really find answers so versus traditional medical.
So it really depends on are they utilizing the tool kind of like how you said it do. They had some. Maybe they had a bump in the road, maybe they had turnover where these new staff's not trained.
So it's just kind of staying on top of that and just showing that you care.
That's the best way.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Sure.
How do you balance chasing new accounts versus nurturing existing relationships?
[00:29:34] Speaker A: It's easy for me. So I kind of become just the closer for my company so I don't have to really nurture those accounts. And I, and I miss it to a degree, you know, where these people, they bought from you, you nurtured. But I, I actually was that nurturer. Support new sales bd. So I've been All the hats at once.
And then I've gotten to kind of experience each, you know, department as we, we get to kind of build it and scale it out.
So it kind of frees me up just to focus on new sales and new opportunities.
However, people, when people build that relationship and trust you, typically they still have your cell phone number. So I get calls all the time. And what I like to do is kind of pass the torch. You know, I have a team.
I do want to delegate. I want to encourage them to reach out to these people.
And although, you know, most of my team might be fairly new or kind of just learning their roles, I want to kind of show them that I trust my, my team and their capabilities and kind of turn it over hands.
If they do have questions, they, I want them to feel comfortable to ask me how I would handle this, knowing that I've had that experience.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Sure. Do you have any strategies for, you know, or even tips for like reactivating inactive accounts or account that left and you might want to try to get.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Back, you know, again? I kind of spoke on that a little bit. It can be difficult, however, usually when you talk to somebody and you kind of just start asking questions around how they used you.
What was their reasoning for leaving?
What were they promised by somebody else?
What did they not maybe understand? So for me it's kind of a puzzle. It's that if you do fully understand why we exist and what we do, there's no why. There's no reason why you'd want to pay less or save a hundred dollars. Right. By switching to a competitor.
You know, it would be so ingrained in your process and you would be relying on the information that that would make sense. Or saving time. So full time employees saving employment costs as you know, can be expensive when you maybe have two or three additional people that might be better suited for another task. So we just really, that's kind of where I lead is really talking about their experience previously, their experience since they last, you know, had used us, what they've been doing in the meantime and trying to find maybe some of the pain points, as you said, asking questions, really finding out, kind of uncovering where we might be a good fit. And I've had calls where they had engineered an entirely new solution.
And I kind of shoot my shot, but I don't really see a window. And I'll thank them. And I was like, hey, you know what? Sounds like you have it taken care of. You know, if something changes, call me back.
So yeah. And a couple times there's been instances where the other company will like fold or they just appreciate the candidness and it's like, well, you know, hey, I'm not, I'm not, I don't need to close you. If you're interested, I'll, let's talk.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I think a lot of times, especially with the, you know, well with AI now there's so many new services and different platforms coming out to try to, you know, sub and make solutions in, in the roles and businesses and I think, you know, they'll, somebody will sign on to the service.
They're the ones that know how to use it. They hire a new team, they're not using it and they're not really getting trained on how to use it. Somebody comes in, sells them, you know, potentially something better and they switch it and they might not be happy with it.
You know.
[00:33:44] Speaker A: Happens all the time. So we, we do see a lot of people. I had a client the other day, really small, he's probably like a 12 bed detox, which is highest level of care.
And he paused his subscription for two months. But he called me back and he's like, man, I don't know what I was thinking because I've probably lost a bunch of admins by not being able to, you know, take night and weekend calls so that insurance companies aren't available 24 7. So you have to kind of have some solution to be able to kind of strike while the iron's hot and make really educated decisions.
I tell everybody that, you know, healthcare insurance, it's all risk based. So there's kind of categorizing where you want to be risky or not risky or what are you willing to risk.
But there's no guarantees. So I think with every business it's, it's risk management.
And so I try to hedge people's bets.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
Do you are leveraging any customer testimonials or success stories like to give future business?
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Oh yeah, like I said, I'm doing, I'm recording these case studies.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: And not only I have the relationships and so they're kind of. I'm volunteering to do this because I am enjoying seeing the, the marketing materials that come out of it. I'm also enjoying the conversations that happen because you have these people who have fully adopted your platform.
They use it in a way maybe you didn't even think that was possible or that, you know, was the initial intended purpose of way the software was built. So you kind of learn some new verticals, you learn new ways to kind of Market. But it also gives me ammo for really discussing with potential clients, new clients.
I've had probably 10 different case study interviews over the past two months and I have referenced those case studies constantly in new sales.
So it really does give me kind of a fresh perspective like, and maybe fresh perspective to new rebuttals.
Some of the old rebuttals, you know, hey, this didn't work for me. Well, Joey over at one two three, you know, said this and he's just, he's saving money. His cost per acquisition is $10,000 and he swears by what we do. So yeah, you, you know, that's somebody who had directly your line that's coming from, directly from one of my customers mouths.
And again, I think people either trust you that you're going to lie. I think some people can kind of smell the genuine, you know, want for kind of connection or can, you know, sense that you're, you're trying to be, you know, too pushy or something like that. So a balance.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we're coming up to another break, so when we come back, I want to talk about the future of software as a service, you know, sales and technology and see where we're headed. So stay tuned for Street Level Marketing after these words from our sponsors.
Foreign welcome back to Street Level Marketing. I'm here talking with Jordan Sheffield from Verify Tx and we're talking about, you know, marketing and, and sales and SaaS software as a service. And you know, now I want to talk about the future, you know, sales and technology when you're selling software as a service.
Jordan, what, what are like current trends in SaaS sales do you think will reshape the industry over the next few years?
[00:37:44] Speaker A: So there's a lot that's happening, you know, and I was reflecting just on how far things have come. You know, you see videos and cell phones of, you know, the late 90s, you know, it's like, oh man, you know, you know, the video quality, you see the kind of trends that have happened, you know, everything from even Facebook, their, their growth over the last couple decades. And so I think AI is definitely that buzzword. Right. But structured data is the goal with any type of AI. And you, you kind of have to have that structured data for AI to be anything.
So a lot of people are kind of making a lot of promises with it, but the data set has to really equal a large enough data set for it to be applicable. So that's kind of what I see is if you don't have structured data, then you have to build your platform around structured data so that tool can be kind of useful utilized by AI, otherwise it's useless.
And you know, someone always told me with CRM it's good data in, good data out. So if you don't fill out fields or you don't check the boxes or you don't really have maybe half the fields are blank. So that can really affect kind of your outcomes when it comes to making decision making tools.
Let's see.
You know, I see a lot of interoperability as well as where being able to work with other tools.
So really being friendly in the sandbox.
Everything kind of seems to have an API these days. You know, you work with maker.com or Zapier or so people want their tools to really flow. They don't necessarily be limited. I find that it's really harmful for too many businesses to kind of be the one stop shop in my opinion. It's like you do five things okay and you know, maybe one thing really well, but if you do one thing really well and you also, you know, have other kind of partners, maybe not rev share, maybe not direct partnerships, but just are friendly, typically you can be sticky for the customer and that's what's what's best for the customer.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I always say this and I talk about this especially with the AI, you know, and even in, you know, software stuff like that, most of the time the new ones come out to directly replace or grow on, you know, what something else was doing and making it better. One of the things I find especially like with marketing and in my role is every day it seems like there's all these new tools coming out almost to a fault to where there's, you know, you try one for a week, you see a new one, you want to try that one, you're spending money on this one, that one. And it's almost getting confusing. You almost got to take a step back and really kind of assess your toolbox and, and what you're using and kind of put it and map it out so you're not wasting time and efficiency.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that made a huge problem because like oh, shiny object squirrel.
Yeah, and there's no shortage of tools. You know on Twitter they launch like files of like hey, here's all the AI bots for this. It's like, oh wow, let me check them all out, you know, so you know, it could definitely be distracting. I do find I like to keep my toolbox fairly small, but I kind of try to stay open minded but no one can really replace phone calls. And, you know, I keep my cell phone right on my desk because I'm. That's what I'm using.
I do find that a CRM is really vital, kind of keeping dashboards, reports, if you can really kind of tune that. And if you have multiple people on your sales team, you know, put a spiff out there, put some metrics that kind of show them, hey, Jordan did more work than you this month. You know, usually for me, as kind of a very type a competitive person, I want to be on top.
You know, I want to be the best. So I. I compete with my comrades. I don't want them to, you know, I don't want to treat them badly, but I do want to be competitive.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: I was going to ask you that. Do you have any particular tools or platforms that you find indispensable that you're using on a daily basis?
[00:42:43] Speaker A: So one that I like is Hunter IO.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: I know that one. Yeah.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: So that's for kind of outreach, business development, really finding, you know, structured email addresses so I can look up, hey, Mark Lamplugh, you know, at, you know, whatever, and it'll give me the structure.
But also their mail tracker. I really like to see when people open my emails, you know, and I think that's big because usually I call email if I've left 10 voicemails, but I know they're opening my emails. I send some funny emails and, you know, maybe they strikes a conversation. I had a lady literally Monday, say, no, send me an email. And I just responded like, hey, you seem to kind of misunderstand what we do.
Here's a graphic on what our mission actually is. And she called me back and she was like, wow, bravo, you got me reback. She left a funny voicemail. And then when I called her back, she was like, did you get my voicemail? Because good job. And I write all my emails usually by hand. I do rely on templates kind of for some sterile type of engagements I don't really have.
You know, I could probably improve my, you know, sales cycle emails by automating it, but I still like that personal touch. I still want to really personalize it. Hey, this is what we talked about. This is why we spoke. And I find that I get better results with that versus just spamming everybody.
But humor is a useful tool for me.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Sure.
How are you staying informed and ahead of the curve on industry changes?
[00:44:26] Speaker A: My favorite source for, like, really good articles is Becker's.
Becker's has articles on payers, on behavioral health, medical, you name it so you can kind of subscribe to those new newsletters. I don't really spend a whole lot of time, but I do like to kind of just be aware.
You know, you can kind of get absorbed in finding out what's going on with all the different payers. But I just kind of like to have enough information to kind of spark conversations or maybe speak to some of these trials and, and troubles that they might be having on the payer side. If when they bring it up in conversation I can kind of just be up to date. So it's like being up to date with politics or something, you know, you don't have to live in it, you don't have to watch the news 24 7. But you can at least kind of like, oh yeah, you know, I know there are Terraforce. Right. Like something going on. So you can at least be informed.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: I want to wrap it up. I got like one more question for you because we're going to be running out of time, but what's the biggest challenge you foresee in software sales over the next five years?
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Really obsoletion. You know, if somebody or some tools kind of beat you or it becomes too saturated of a red ocean or there's a new blue ocean strategy that kind of comes to market, then you know, that can very quickly kill your market share.
And you know, we've been around for a while. So unless there's innovation and unless there's kind of new products, unless you're really kind of engineering for those blue ocean strategies or for a new instance, the market can eat your lunch or payers might organize, governments might say, hey, you know, there could be some governmental changes in healthcare that really change the game to where it, you know, might just create an irrelevance. So you do have to be constantly on guard with kind of where, where the economy is.
I think the best way is to find a use case, build tools that meet that use case and, and try to look for the future, not compete with everybody that's doing that.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: You know, don't just copy your competitors. Like try to meet what your competitors are doing, but then excel past that.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean that's really, you know, kind of the what it is. I mean you can grow and you become big, but if you don't stay ahead of the new trends and, and work yourself into the future, the changes, you'll become obsolete like Blockbuster and you know, you know, there's other businesses that went under. Well, we're coming up to the hour and I want to give you and, you know, the viewers some opportunity to find out how they can contact you, how they can get a hold of your business talk, you know, tell the viewers a little bit about yourself and contact them. Sure.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: So I've done sales consulting. I've done salesforce builds for organizations, really kind of strategizing for them. But sales training usually is kind of where I like to hang my hat or kind of helping with admissions.
But right now, with verified treatment, as far as insurance verifications, you can reach
[email protected] my LinkedIn as well. Jordan Sheffield.
I'll provide a link. The cell phone number is 469-766-2350.
And yeah, probably the best way to get a hold of me.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Great. I appreciate you taking the time, sharing your knowledge. You have a lot of it. You've been doing this a long time, and hopefully somebody can pick up some ideas and, and run with it and become, you know, stay successful in their. In their business and their roles. So I want to thank everybody for watching. And we'll see you next week with another episode of Street Level Marketing.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: This has been a NOW Media Networks feature presentation. All rights reserved.
