Jeremy Barnett is the Founder & CEO of Rad, a platform that uses AI to improve the ROI on influencer marketing.
I’ve known Jeremy for a while, as he has run several Wefunder community rounds down the years, and I’ve always been impressed by his mad sales skills.
In this episode, he talks about how he significantly accelerated Rad’s growth in the last 6 to 9 months, by making two key changes to the sales process:
Firstly, Jeremy and the team re-worked the sales demo — to show their AI working. I think this is a very powerful point, which has wide application in all manner of sales. Oftentimes when you’re trying to sell something — especially something that is complex, or abstract — it can really help to communicate the “vision” or the “value” by making it tangible, and bringing it to life. Don’t tell. Show.
Secondly, Rad’s sales team started much more aggressively qualifying leads upfront. And getting as many stakeholders looped in to the discussions, as early as possible. “We used to pussyfoot around all that stuff. And we don’t do that any more. We’re really really intentional now.”
I ask every Closing Time guest to articulate what they think makes someone awesome at sales. Jeremy highlighted three principles:
(1) A ridiculous amount of persistence. This has been a recurring theme in almost every Closing Time interview to-date. And Jeremy highlighted how persistence can be manifested in multiple ways:
“Persistence is trying to solve the problem with very intentional feedback”.
“Persistence is pushing really really hard to get the product in a place to where people are going to buy it”.
“Persistence is not giving up because the first couple of customers that bought the product had a bad experience”.
More generally, “Persistence is doing what you need to do to break through”.
(2) Being an incredibly good listener. And not just listening, but understanding. And having the emotional intelligence — both to pick up on hundreds of social cues and respond to them; and also to “lead” the customer through the sales process.
I thought it was really interesting how Jeremy used the word “leadership” in talking about excellence in sales. I had never thought about that word pertaining to sales before. But I really like it. I might even go a step further — and say that not only is great sales leadership, but a lot of great leadership is sales! For example, selling the team you’re leading on your vision, and your plan for achieving that vision. I imagine there’s a very high correlation between “great leaders” and “great sales people”.
(3) Numbness to rejection. This is another recurring theme on Closing Time. Jeremy even took it a step further, and said that he is also pretty low-key about the wins (which is a little more controversial I think). He gave the example of LaDainian Tomlinson, who I think was a Point Guard for the Los Angeles Saltpackers, or something like that. (OK fine. He was a Running Back for the San Diego Chargers). Apparently, LDT eschewed extravagant celebrations when he scored a touchdown. He just calmly passed the ball to the ref. No drama. “This is just what I do. I score touchdowns. What’s next?”
Thanks to Jeremy for coming on the podcast. You can find him on LinkedIn here.
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