Noob School - Episode 28: How to Become an Outside Sales Pro with Bradley Smith

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Bradley Smith has been on both ends of the sales spectrum. He joined Datastream as an outside sales rep, excelling at technology sales. He transitioned to real estate lately after taking an interest in it as a hobby. John and Bradley talk about some of the lessons they learned during their time together at Datastream, including the uncomfortable moments and some valuable outside sales tips. Follow John on social media: Instagram: instagram.com/johnsterling_ Facebook: facebook.com/johnsterlingsales Twitter: twitter.com/johnsterling_ TikTok: tiktok.com/@johnsterling_

All right, welcome back to Noob School. This is where we interview great business people and salespeople, and we roll them back to when they started in sales so they can give you some advice on things to do, things not to do. Today, we've got one of my good friends, Bradley Smith. Bradley went to college of Charleston. I won't hold that against you, Bradley, went to college of Charleston. And his first job was done in Bradstreet, you know, big, successful company. Eventually, he eventually. came to work for our company, Datastreamer. I got to know him quite well over a number of years, and he was really good. He became really good at selling software to big companies. When he left Datastream on very good terms, he worked for several different tech companies in the area, and eventually found his dream job, which had nothing to do with software. And he'll tell you more about that, and I'm very happy to have you today, Bradley, on the show. Thank you. Very excited to be here.

Yeah, man. Well, tell us, I know you went to college, Charleston, I was kidding about, you know, I'm not holding it against you. It's a great school. But tell us about how you got in the sales and how you knew you wanted to start in that field. Sure. And I will say, I did get accepted to the Citadel. Oh, you did.

I wanted to go to school on the coast, and it was either College of Charleston with a lot of girls or Citadel with no girls. Very easy choice right there for me. You got me on that one. Having said that. Yeah, I was working at Duna Brat Street and I was a business analyst and just would see what the salespeople were doing. They were coming and going. They had the freedom. They had nice cars.

They just seemed to really have a lot of outside interaction with their clients. And I said, I want to do that. So back up for one second. What does a business analyst do? So I would interview companies, owners of companies about their financial status. and they're basically the Dunabrad Street reports. I created Dunabrad Street reports that people would use to decide to give credit to businesses. And how did you qualify to be able to have that job?

What did you major in? I just had a business degree. Okay. Just a standard business degree. And like a lot of companies, you know, you get your foot in the door and then they train you. Okay. So you were an analyst and you were seeing at your company, at your company, how much the salespeople were making.

and what their benefits were. That's right. Okay. And you said... They had a lot of freedom to go out and be out on the road all day, visiting with clients, lunches with clients, golf games with clients. I said, that's a pretty good gig. Yeah.

Well, that's smart. That's so smart. I mean, if you see something like that in your life, you ought to go get that. You shouldn't sit around the cooler, coffee cooler, and whine about it with the other whining analyst, right? That's right. They'll say, well, I'll just go do that then. Yeah. That's the way I've worked.

the salespeople because they would just come in, laugh and joking. They obviously loved what they were, they loved what they were doing. Well, good for you. I'm glad. And eventually we got you, back up. How did you know you wanted to go in sales? Was that what triggers you? You thought you wanted to be more of a business analyst type person before? That was being in, so my dad was a banker. Coming out of school, that was my plan. I was going to be a banker because that's what my dad is. What I knew, sales was the furthest thing from my radar. And then when I was, was in that office and I was in Washington, D.C. at the time, I had the ability to interact with the sales team. And I'm like, that's what I want to do. And that was my objective from that

point forward is I want to get a job in sales. Okay. All right. So, and that's when we met, when you came over to Data Stream and you became a salesperson. That's right. So tell us about, you know, what that journey was like from you from starting as a noob, like everyone else, to becoming not just a great inside person, but outside person, large accounts, the whole thing. Tell us about that journey. Yeah, it was a roller coaster ride. So, again, my dad was a banker. I knew nothing about asset management.

I knew nothing about manufacturing, facilities management. And I'll never forget, and these are just classic words that when I got the job, I said, I'm going to take this job, get some sales experience because they'll hire me as a salesperson, and then go work for a real company. Well, I got on the rocket ship right as it was. was taking off. So, again, got my foot in the door, got the training that we had, which was the news training, maybe.

And, you know, I was lucky enough to have Georgia and Florida as my first territories in inside sales. And I would talk to a lot of people in the Georgia area, in Atlanta area, and say, hey, you're in Greenville, you're not far away. Come see us. Well, we were an inside sales organization. we really didn't have outside sales. Well, I remember this is one of my favorite stories is I finally went to you and said,

John, I could probably sell these people if I go see them. They're kind of holding out because they want to see somebody. And so we negotiated and finally came up with an agreement that I had to have three appointments a day. And I would have to schedule the company laptop because I think we only had one at the time. And I had to schedule it. It was just like 1941 or. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This would have been the 90s, right? Yeah, mid-90s. Okay. Yeah. And so I would schedule the laptop. I would get up at like

five o'clock in the morning, drive down to Atlanta, have three meetings and, you know, face-to-face, and I always had the pressure, you know, I've put my neck out on the line to do this. So I had to make those sales, you know, to make it worth my while also. And so, you know, that sort of picked up speed and momentum and kind of approved myself. I could demo the software and have the meetings and go down and sell the software to these, these, you know, larger clients. Yeah. And then that just led to the next step was when we expanded into corporate sales and had people

actually flying all over the country. Yeah. Meet with corporate, you know, multi-site deals, you know, actually do the face-to-face demos. It was just kind of a natural progression. Yeah. Well, I love that. That story for a lot of reasons. One is, I mean, you created your job for yourself with, you.

your thinking and your assertiveness to become an outside salesperson. I mean, nobody came along, you know, the outside sales fairy didn't come along and say, hey, let's work with Bradley on this. I mean, you came to us and said, I can go do this and it's going to bring you money. I'm like, well, hmm, okay, let's do it. Under these terms. Yeah, under these terms, of course. But the other thing I like about it, it's kind of a sideways way to get to this point, is great salespeople find clever ways, not dishonest, but just clever ways to help the client create a pressure point around a certain date, you know, that they come up with these different ways, whether it's end of a quarter, end of a year, I can only come see you if I can get the order or maybe

80 percent. I get, you know, those kinds of conversations tend to get prospects to move. Right. And we're okay if they say no, right? But we want them to say yes or no. Well, I set the stage and when I would have these appointments, yeah, I would make it a big deal that I was coming down there, taking the time and meeting with them. And, yeah, there was a kind of a lot of pressure on both sides. The expectations were set, you know, I'm only coming once because that's what it's going to take.

And, you know, it's either we're going to go through the software, answer your questions, and I'm going to walk out with an order or I'm moving on. Yeah. Well, that's it. That's the way to do it. You have to do that your whole career in terms of creating these deadlines to make things happen. So when you moved on, let's say once you got out to outside sales, talk about some of the bigger deals that you close. Oh, there was, it was kind of funny. It was a run-and-gun offense.

We were obviously making things up as we went along, and it was interesting to see the progression of how the inside sales, basically seeding a base and then the corporate guys would come in and kind of oversee that. Okay, let's connect the dots and then let's get to standardized. So I remember working with Frito Lay. Classic story is they came to Greenville. I took him out to play golf. The beer card came by. I said, would you guys like a Coke?

And they said, no, but we will have a Pepsi. Lesson learned there with Warehouser. And I remember there are a lot of just Enron was a customer of mine. this was the legitimate side of Enron. Went down to their corporate headquarters and met with them in Florida for a couple of... But that was a situation where we had a pretty good smattering of their local sites, and we were able to roll it up and make it a corporate standard. Yeah.

Well, that's a good point, and I think the noobs ought to understand that. Still, the way it works in most... We're selling Fortune 500 companies is you find your way like a rat or a snake or something. You find your way into the business through one site, and you try to make that one site happy with your software, and then you find their buddy, and you find a few more sites. And so maybe they've got 100 sites, and you have three or four that are happy. And then you send Bradley to corporate to meet with the CFO or the CIO or whoever to roll it. When you get your foot in the door and you understand how the business operates,

and you understand how they're effectively using your product, whatever it is, in this case it was our software, then that definitely gives you leverage for all the other corporate sites. And so Goldkiss was a great example, the chicken processing company in Georgia. We got into multiple sites. I didn't know anything about chicken processing, but I got invited to their plant managers meeting that they were having in Northern Georgia. And I came to you and said, they've invited me to the plant manager's meeting, John. I know nothing about chicken.

Should I go? And you said, well, yeah, just go. You can go, but just shut up. Don't say anything. And they're at this meeting, and they're at this meeting. and they're getting this big discussion about something. And I knew all these plant managers individually from having, you know, work with them in the software.

And at one point during the meeting, they looked at me in the debate that they were having and said, well, Bradley, you know a lot about chicken processing. What would you do? I knew nothing about chicken processing. And I just deflected. I said, well, Steve, you and I talked about this. What was your opinion? And just, you know, they went back to talking and I sat back down my seat and, you know, thank goodness.

Yeah. But again, it was learning how it was used to effectively get into other sites and using that as a reference point or launching point to just continue to grow and expand. Well, you definitely made it happen your career at Data Stream in terms of forcing yourself to outside in a good way because you figured out a way it was good for the company, prospects demanding it. And there was other ways people tried it. There wasn't such a good way where they were just kind of pestering. You know, I want to be an outside sales, that kind of thing. So, very good job of figuring that out. So what was one thing you wish you'd have known about sales when you started?

Patience. I was young, aggressive, eager, money motivated. It was, I want to get this done and go to the next and get this done and go to the next. And there were so many probably wasted hours, weeks, months, years in spinning wheels and just trying to get everything done as fast as I can. And, you know, in hindsight, looking back, it's okay to step back. Yeah. Take a breath.

Assess the situation. What's important? Is this the best use of my time? Are they really ready? I mean, that was back in the days that we just push, push, push, push, push, call you, call you, call you, until you bought. And probably wasted it a lot of time when it should have been effectively used somewhere else. So patience is probably the biggest thing, yeah.

Yeah. And knowing the difference between. you know, Acme Sock Company in Exxon. I mean, I'm telling you, I think we treated them all about the same. It's just whatever the next record was in the system we would call them, try to sell them some software. So I'm with you on that. I'm with you on that.

Do you remember your Colby scores? No, I don't. Again, I remember something to the effect of self-starter, aggressive, and money-motivated. Okay. Those were. Well, let's just say it was perfect fit. for data stream sales. So what is your favorite word?

You know, watching these podcasts, I know a lot of people have used determination and persistence and all those are absolutely, you know, qualities. But I step back and I said, you know, what am I looking at these days when I do things? And again, it's essential. Essential. What is essential?

And back to hindsight being what it is. You know, saying yes to something, probably means you're saying no to something else. And so with limited time, limited capacity, what is essential and what I'm trying to accomplish, be it personal, professional sales, exercise, whatever it is, you know, being able to kind of filter through, set priorities, and is this essential to me getting to where ultimately want to be? I like it. That's a good word.

It's a good word. The first thing's first kind of thing. That's right. Yeah. Do you have any last bit of advice for the nubes? I think from somebody just getting into sales, you know, and it's kind of a looking at it from the standpoint of saying it's okay to take a risk, but at the end of the day, process is something that's going to help you be successful and have the kind of.

confidence because if you just go out there and wing it like we did back in the day. We do. We spun our wheels a lot and waste a lot of time. And then once we progress into actually having a process, then, you know, that's your filter. That's your confidence. That's your game plan moving forward. So the biggest thing is look at the different processes, evaluate a process, find one, stick to it. And just, you know, use that process as your backbone, if you will, your springboard to be able

just move forward and hit your objectives. I love it. So I kind of tease the audience at the beginning that we're going to get to what you're doing now. So again, Bradley, after college Charleston, Dunner Bradstreet, Data Stream, some other tech companies, you know, got very good at selling software. Tell us about your transition to selling, like, land and big, you know, big kind of mountain properties.

So it just started out as a hobby. Okay. My brother started the company where land brokerage and just being with him one time. he said he's got more than he can handle. And I looked at it and said, okay, all my other hobbies are costing me money. I need one that makes me money. So got my real estate's license, started doing it on the side because it's land, just kind of small type of transactions and fell in love with it.

I mean, just absolutely having a great time. Jumped in with both feet a couple of years ago and went from selling, you know, just single residential lots to now working with developers, helping them acquire land or helping people that have large strikes of land, sell that land to developers, do some commercial deals. So it's just something that, you know, I fell into, passionate, absolutely love every single day of what I'm doing. But I will go back and say, no doubt the, you know, I call data stream my MBA.

It's where I learn sales marketing process and that that experience, like so many people that have been on this program, have been able to leverage that and go out. start companies and, you know, continue to press on and do, you know, do what they love to do, but just in a variety of different areas. I agree. I agree. It was obviously good for all of us.

But, you know, the fact that you didn't know, land brokerage was what you wanted to do out of college is okay. You went ahead and learned how to sell, how to prospect, all those things. And when you did find it, then, gosh, you're ready. You know, and you're killing it now. And so you started it, you know, as a hobby. it just a little bit on the side. And then once you saw, you could really do well here. Then you just cut the cord and you went for it.

Yeah. I mean, I went from a couple of transactions to, you know, now I'm doing several, several million dollars a year. And it's, again, fell into it, love it, a prying the plot process process to it. And that gave me the, you know, kind of confidence, just rampant scale and give me where I am today. Well, I'm not surprised, Bradley. You always seem to find a way to what you want. And I think it's fantastic. And I just want to thank you for being on the show today. And what's the name of the company or the website in case anybody needs some land?

We're Cross Creek Realty, and the website is Cross CreekRE.com. All right. Go get you some land. That's right. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Hey, is John here. Thanks for listening today. Please check out noobbschool.org. That's my website. That's where we have other videos and content that can help you get started in sales.