Transcript
Dave Chandre
Sr. Director, Strategic Accounts & Medical Supplies
MXR Imaging
Ryan Hahn
Territory Portfolio Manager
Midmark Corporation
Eric McNamara
Director of Sales, Northeast Region
CME Corp.
Moderator: Scott Adams
Publisher
Repertoire Magazine
Joint Call Themes
Scott Adams: As I look at the screen here, it takes me back to 2020-2021 when this is what we were all doing. And I haven't been on one where I've had four people on like this. Usually when I do my podcast, it's just me and one other person.
I want to talk a little bit about some of the themes. Now, these aren't specifically questions, but just some themes that we have. And I'm going to hit each one of you with a different one.
Eric, if you could talk about the theme of a ride day or the theme of a joint call, and what you're wanting to get out of that. I know both parties are working at the end of the day to try to close some business, but it's also more than that, right? It's relationships. It's the things that you get by being together and being face-to-face. If you could just speak to that a little bit.
Eric McNamara: Yeah, absolutely. For us, our second-biggest customers – after customers who are utilizing our procurement and services on the distribution end – are our manufacturing partners. We want to make sure that we can build rapport with them and help them do their jobs too.
They're going to be feet-on-the-street, talking to other shared customers at other times, the same way that we are for them. So helping introduce them to different folks that they may not have had relationships for and vice versa, right?
It's a little bit altruistic, I think, on both ends. But for us, we want to make sure that that theme can be building a relationship with each other, with the customers so that we can all uncover new opportunities.
Not every opportunity is just going to be a repetitive “purchase the same product” type of situation. We want to uncover: What else can we do together? What other solutions do we have for that customer?
Again, Midmark's a great example. They offer a lot of different solutions that a lot of our customers are not aware of. So we try to pull them into the fold and be able to uncover new opportunities, instead of just talking about the same things – that customers have standards, or things of that nature. We want to be able to enlighten them in some way. So that would be a theme, I would say.
Scott Adams: I love it. Ryan, to come back to you. You know, when we were doing the discovery call on this, we talked about how ride days were done in the past and kind of how they're being done today. Can you talk a little bit about that and, and maybe we're going to end up back kind of at the old ride days as we start seeing some new reps coming into the field as some of the boomers, I think I'm allowed to say the boomers, the boomers start to retire out and some younger folks are coming in. And just maybe express to them as somebody who's been doing this of the things you value you can gain from riding with a manufacturer in the field, some techniques and things like that.
Ryan Hahn: Yeah. I think the biggest thing about doing it in-person together in the car or spending that half a day together is just working on your cadence together.
But – getting “at-bats”*. I think as an industry now post-COVID, what we're craving in the manufacturer world is getting “at-bats”. Back home you tend to get distracted, so I love being in the car – actually going and knocking on some doors. You might see four to six accounts that day.
And I love what Eric was saying: You might generate something you weren't even expecting, which happened all the time in the old days.
That was the value of the ride-along. Zoom calls in the hybrid world are definitely necessary – these virtual meetings – but we're just not getting the sheer number of them. So, I do think ride days will come back and I think being together has an extremely high value, especially for newer folks to the industry.
*In sales, an “at-bat” refers to each sales interaction with a prospective customer. The term is borrowed from baseball, where batters “at-bat” have an opportunity to hit the ball. Having more “at-bats” in sales means more opportunities to close deals.
Best Practices & Etiquette
Scott Adams: The next question is probably my favorite one of the list that we came up with for this discussion. I'm going to ask you all three to comment on this one. We'll just go round the horn to Ryan, Dave and Eric.
What are the no-no’s on a joint call? What are some things that just shouldn't happen when you're in a joint call together?
Ryan Hahn: So, you know, you’ll be “on stage” together. This is why you want to do your work off stage before you get on stage: You want to always be affirming each other.
Scott Adams: I love that, “on stage”. That's great.
Ryan Hahn: Yeah. I think the most damaging thing you can possibly do is not be reaffirming of each other in front of the customer. Find your agreed-upon points and stick with them.
Now, customers are really good at trying to derail that; things happen when you're “on stage”. But again, just going back to supporting each other again and just trying to stick together no matter what. And, sometimes they make it hard on you.
David Chandre: Scott, I can go next. Great points, Ryan, I would agree: Don't jockey for the relationship. Understand what that is before you go in. Hold to those roles as we had mentioned earlier and don't go beyond their scope.
I think: Don't confuse. It's easy to confuse the customer as well in not only that initial meeting, but follow-up sessions, right? So keep each other copied on communication going to the customer.
The customer may try to – or will – call one or the other, and if the other isn't most up-to-date on the information, the team as a whole is not going to hold a strong position. So stay in communication with one another and make sure you're following up appropriately.
Eric McNamara: And again, on our side for distribution, when we're going in with a partner where there is a team, I know everybody here said it already, but we want to go there as a team that's focused on, combined shared goals, right?
So we don't want it to derail it by talking about anything else. We don't want to pull in anything about different competitors and things of that nature.
We go in there with that shared mindset. You know, we're there for purpose. We're there to talk about certain things.
Like everybody said, you can talk about in your pre-planning who's going to be able to rein that back in with the customer who's got that relationship with them where we can tailor that conversation to make sure that we're not going off the rails too much.
We can always have a sidebar with them at another time.
But we don't – that's definitely a big no-no for us. We're not trying to get involved with pulling anything else into the conversation where they're together.