The Clinician Transition

A Clinician’s Guide To Ethical Sales Careers

• The Clinician Transition • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Sales has a reputation problem, and a lot of clinicians write it off before they ever understand what the job actually is. 

We wanted to fix that. Emily Kelly sits down with Emma Brady to separate sales myths from reality.

We break down what modern sales really is and how clinicians can thrive in SaaS without becoming pushy or fake. 

Emma shares the mindset shifts, quota realities, and practical ways to evaluate sales roles so you can decide if this path fits your values and 

If this helps you, subscribe, share it with a friend considering a clinician transition, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so more clinicians can find it.


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Welcome And Why Sales Matters

SPEAKER_01

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Clinician Transition Podcast. My name is Emily Kelly, and I'll be your host today. I have the joy and pleasure of being here with my wonderful co-host, Emma Brady. Hello, everybody. And today I am gonna grill Emma a little bit. We're gonna get into all things sales. We haven't really covered sales yet. We've done a lot of different careers that people are interested in. But sales is a big one that people could go into. And I don't want it to get overlooked ever because it can be a great career as Emma has shown the world. And among some topics that we're gonna talk about, we're gonna get into the mindset that you may want to be in if you are considering a career in sales. And also some topics around, you know, professional growth and soft skills. So it's gonna be a really fun one today. I'm super excited. To open things up, we're gonna do a fun little game. I I have the sense that there's a lot of myths around sales. And so we're gonna do a fun little game called sales, myth or fact. So I'm gonna read a statement and Emma, the sales queen, is going to say if it is myth or fact. Okay, you ready?

Emma Brady

Yeah. As ready as I'm gonna be, just for all of you listening, even up beyond these clinic walls, it was hard to get me to agree to this. I just always like talking about other people more. So I hope you find this valuable and I appreciate the nudge Emily to give sales the spotlight it deserves.

SPEAKER_01

It truly does. And uh like I said, it it doesn't get uh it doesn't get enough airtime, and you're so good at it. So thank you also for doing this. I also want to highlight, wait, a couple other things before we get going. You might also be wondering, um, what is Emma's story? How did she actually do it? Emma is kind of a superstar now, and she is going on other podcasts talking about her story. She's covered a little bit of her story on other podcasts in the clinician transition and beyond these clinic walls. So once those come out, we can link those and be sure to share those with the community. All right. Without further ado, we'll get to our game. Great salespeople are naturally extroverted, myth or fact.

Emma Brady

Myth. Although I will say, as someone who has been extroverted most of my life and I'm going through a more introverted period, it's much more draining to be in sales if you're introverted. So it's not impossible. And there's definitely some benefits to being introverted, but I would keep that in mind in terms of what you need to do to unwind and take care of yourself if you find it more draining.

SPEAKER_01

That is a great perspective. It's not impossible, but you need like recovery strategies if you're introverted, but you want some of like the spoils that sales has to offer. Perfect. All right. Next one. If someone says no, the deal is dead. Definitely a myth.

Emma Brady

If you if you left it at that, you would not, you would have a tough time in sales.

SPEAKER_01

Do you have any strategies to get around like someone says no, then what?

Emma Brady

I'm not trying to get around people or convince people. It's more, you know, help me understand where the no is coming from. And is it something that I can do a better job of clarifying?

SPEAKER_01

I have noticed that about you, which honestly, for me, getting to work with you has really changed my view of sales because it it changed from, yeah, like the convincing to I'm an educator, help me understand. Well, that that goes nicely into our next one. Sales is mostly about convincing people.

Emma Brady

No. And that's very much what gives salespeople a bad rap and what makes people hesitant to even consider this as a possible transition. I can totally see that.

SPEAKER_01

I think we've all had those interactions with a salesperson where, like, as a consumer and the customer, you walk away just feeling like a little icky. Okay.

Emma Brady

Clinicians are actually naturally good at sales. In the most respectful way possible, huge myth. Not good at sales at all. And even a lot of times resent sales when whether you like it or not, sales is a part of your job. And if you want to help people, you need to, however you want to phrase it, you're selling them. You're selling them on their plan of care, on doing their home program. So the the better you are at sales, the better PT or OT or speechy you'll be.

SPEAKER_01

Um, okay, the next one. The best salespeople talk more than they listen.

Emma Brady

No. And this is something we have technology to tell us. So the other day, I, you know, I have one call where it said you talked 70% of the time, and I thought, oh boy, that's not great. And then I had one where the other person talked 80% of the time. I thought, oh boy. So it's it is definitely something we keep an eye on and work towards not talking more. And that's maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't want to do this podcast. I like other people talking more.

SPEAKER_01

And you're so good at it. Like you're so good at talking and then listening and really like trying to pull the best information out of people. That makes total sense. That's another thing in my brain that changed when I got to know you as a salesperson. Um, okay, last one. Objections are a bad sign. We should be scared of objections.

Emma Brady

Most of the time they're helpful. If you want to do your friendly neighborhood salesperson a favor, tell them what's going on, tell them where you're at, and they'll be able to help you more. When it's this vague guessing game, it can make things frustrating for everyone involved. That makes total sense.

The Mindset Shift Into Quota

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you. That was fun. Love that. So we're gonna we're gonna transition over a little bit here and really get into the meat of the podcast. Um, I want to start first with the mindset, like what mindset people can get into if they want to transition into sales. In your opinion, what is the hardest part of a non-sales professional, like a clinician, um, our audience, what's the hardest part to wrap their head around when they first get into it and they start carrying a quota?

Emma Brady

Mindset is gonna come up a lot during this episode. If you don't have your head in the right space, sales is going to be really tough and soul sucking for you. So, the main thing, the a really big shift for a career transitioner is you're going from a rehab professional where for the most part your patients are really excited to see you. Oh, thank you so much. You helped me. I'm gonna bring you in cookies and write you little notes and tell you how great you are. And you're you're going from not always, but for the most part, it's a happy profession. And people are happy with what you're doing, and you can feel very fulfilled. And you're an expert at it, also. Yeah, there's always things you can learn, but you're walking in feeling, I got this. Maybe you're asking phone a friend here and there, but for the most part, you're feeling really confident in what you're doing. And then when you switch to sales, this isn't just sales specific. It can be really humbling to go from that higher education doctorate, you know, whatever it is, to an entry-level role where there's someone who you don't even have to go to college to do a lot of these roles. I'm not saying that's good or bad, and I'm not saying that in a notch mental way. It is what it is. So that mind shift can be really tough for people, and you need to not have an ego about it and let yourself be humbled, start from you know what some people would think of as the bottom, like start at those entry-level roles and work your way up. And if that's not something you want to do, if you're gonna try to skip those entry-level roles and go straight into a more advanced sales role, that's logistically gonna be challenging. And I don't think you're setting yourself up for success if you don't get those foundational reps in for real. The theory is a lot different than doing it in real life.

SPEAKER_01

That is great advice. I found that in CS as well. That was a really hard transition for clinicians in general to go from the expert to I'm new here and like here at prompt and like here to the profession. Um, the most successful people that you've seen, and yourself included, did they have like an inflection point when they were like they kind of got over their that hump? Did they come in with the right mindset outright? Or like what did that look like?

Emma Brady

People have come in trying to have the right mindset. And there's definitely been many conversations I've had with people who have followed this path on the team and they've needed a bit of a motivational speech, so to speak, of listen, you can do this. It's okay that someone's hanging up the phone on you. It's okay that they're not signing up or whatever outcome you're looking for for your own professional goals. Just control what you can control and do the best job you can do. And if you do those two things, the rest will come. And it's some people get really in their head and have a hard time getting out of it.

SPEAKER_01

That I feel like is a theme of sales, of controlling your controllables. And it seems like maybe there's a correlate there to clinical care. I see a lot of burnout when people maybe feel rejection if their patient isn't adhering to their HEP or people are not getting better. And that same principle, it seems like can apply. Like people can practice this today.

Emma Brady

Very much so. We're and when I say control, we can control on that list of things is not other people. Yeah. We can control what we're saying, what we're emailing, what sales techniques we're learning, what we're studying about, the prospect, the industry, the product, everything you can control, your effort for not controlling other people.

SPEAKER_01

That actually like gives me chills. I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions about sales. What do you think the biggest misconception about sales is?

Control What You Can Control

Emma Brady

Salespeople reek of commission breath and they spend all day talking people into things. And that's certainly true for some salespeople. That's not the salesperson that you want to deal with or be. And it doesn't have to be. That's the reputation that it has. Modern selling and the salespeople you want to follow are not teaching that.

SPEAKER_01

Because when you say it, like I know exactly what it is. What like how do you stay away from having commission breath? It's the end of the quarter.

Emma Brady

I think of it like then speaking of commission breath, that that term came from my favorite salesperson, Josh Braun, who I will try to give him credit. It's so ingrained in me now what I learned from him. That was one of them. And then the other big one, speaking of also that you don't control other people, that's him. And then the other thing is that I am the arbiter of unbiased information, and it's up to the other person on the end of the line to do what they want with that information. Beautiful. So you are in um education, would you say very much? I very much try to be more consultive, particularly with what I sell, which is an EMR. That's a major decision for someone. So and that impacts a lot of other things. It's not just like downloading an app on your phone, and if you don't like it, you delete it. It impacts the entire foundation of their whole business. So I take that very seriously. There is more to it than just here's where you click. You might need to change this workflow, you might need to change this hiring structure.

SPEAKER_01

Speaking of change, motivating change, that is a lot of what rehab professionals do. We motivate change, we help people, but how do you move from I help sick people get better to selling people something without feeling or actually compromising your integrity?

Emma Brady

I'm not trying to be glib, but it's just don't compromise your integrity. It's as simple as that. Unless you have a personality disorder, most of you are gonna feel really bad if you're misleading someone and selling them something that's different than what they think they're getting. Anyone can make mistakes. Me or anyone on the sales team can make mistakes, and when we do, we feel terrible about it and it's not intentional. Back to the point of what I sell being very complex, there are thousands, thousands of features, truly. So if you either tell them we don't have one that we do or vice versa, and something goes wrong, you feel terrible. That's having integrity and then owning up and saying, hey, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do that. How can we solve this problem? I was at a networking event once, and the entire topic was how do you motivate your sales team to sell something that doesn't work? Yikes. I left. That's A, I didn't resonate because I don't have that problem, and B, I would never do that. And I'm not, and again, I'm not saying this in a judgment way. Like we all need to put food on the table, we all need jobs. Maybe you got into something you didn't mean to, and when it starts to eat away at you and you see what's actually going on, I would highly recommend getting a new job. So there's lots of things to sell, you can find a new job, and that's why it's so important to do your research and not just take any job, especially in sales. And what I would recommend doing, if you're curious about that, is reach out to people who used to work for that company.

SPEAKER_01

Ooh, I have not heard that one much. Like I've heard reach out to people at the company, but who used to work at the company, that's telling.

Emma Brady

Yeah, because if you think about it, if some first of all, I'm like one of the conductors of the prompt train, I think you all know by now. I really like prompt. But let's say I didn't. Let's just say I didn't, which again is not true. If someone reaches out to me, I'm not gonna talk smack about my current company while I'm working there. I need the job. I might allude to things, but I'm overall probably gonna give you a pretty rosy picture. You want to reach out to someone who doesn't work there anymore. And if they say something like, I had a life change, I moved, I got this really great opportunity, but I'm still in contact with that team. I wish them all the best. Those would all be green flags. But if they say things like they messed with my comp plan, they messed with my customers, with my book of business, that would be a flag that you don't want to work there.

SPEAKER_01

Let's move on to measuring success. So as a therapist, you knew you did a good job if like the patient had a good experience or you hit some like KPIs, your units or whatever, your productivity. But how have you seen or how even in the industry is success measured in sales?

Commission Breath And Consultative Selling

Emma Brady

And this is from one of our listeners. This was one of their questions. So thank you for submitting this. Sales is gonna be way more numbers driven than patient care. So if you're at a baseline, resent the business side of things and you don't like talking about money, sales might be a pretty uncomfortable shift for you. Sales is about meeting your quota. We're gonna do it in ethical ways, we're gonna do it right by the customer. At the end of the day, you do need to sell them things and deliver results. So, even speaking for myself, you know, I hit my quota with a month left in the quarter, which is nice. That's not easy to do. And people, oh, you hit your quota. I'm like, I don't even really care. I'm already stressed about next quarter. It's it's a it's a very different if there's no plateau. There's no, all right, I've hit the plateau. It's okay. You hit, you go up, and then you start at zero. So when we say it's a roller coaster, I really mean that. And so that can be really hard. So, and most people who are transitioning into a non-traditional role are gonna go into business development or sales development, so BDR or SDR. So, in those roles, it's typically making a bunch of cold calls, whatever that company's goal is. Sometimes it can be really high, like hundreds of dials a day. I would be wary of that. And then how many demos do you book and how many do they show up? That's a general gist for a BDR role in software sales. And then there's account executive. And so, account executive, same thing. They may have outbound goals of booking demos, making cold calls, but the real thing is getting people to actually sign up for the service and how much revenue are you generating from that? Non-members-wise, I'm looking for people who are self-motivated, coachable, and the no-ego amigo. You can be confident, sure, but you can't have an ego that's a culture killer. That's a hard stop for me.

SPEAKER_01

With all the, I mean, every salesperson, if you even if you're selling the best product in the world, you're gonna have a ton of rejection. So, like, if you did have an ego, I don't even know how that would go, how you would handle all that rejection.

Emma Brady

It's it's not easy and it's something sometimes people really need to work on. You gotta have a you have to have a healthy ego to be a salesperson, right? It's a lot, it's a again, looking out for culture. You want to have a friendly competition. Just talking about today, if you know, me and another salesperson are talking about something that happened Q4 2022. Who be who be who on the last day of the quarter? We're still talking about it. That's a motivating, silly thing. Versus if it's it can get toxic. So you gotta be careful about that.

SPEAKER_01

It's almost like um it's like athletes, I want to say. Like you have to be good with like losing and getting back up and losing and getting back up and then winning and then being motivated to win and win and win. It's a good analogy. I'm thinking too of like the types of clinicians that might be really good in sales. Have you noticed any like uh correlations with like types of therapists, or am I being too reductive about that?

Emma Brady

It's really people who can get past the mental rejection part of it. If you can get past the being very humble at the beginning, have being think about when a telemarketer calls you. What do you do? You hang up the phone. So imagine that's your job. You're calling people 10, 20, 50 times a day, whatever it is, and they're hanging up on you most of the time. If you can get past that, it's not about you. If someone is really mean to you on the phone, chances are they have something else going on in their life, and you need to have the mindset of giving them the benefit of the doubt. You have no idea what happened to that person. And chances are the second they hang up the phone, you're thinking about them way longer than they're thinking about you. And if if people can get to that point and say, all right, back to the controlling what you can control, studying themselves, uh being very humble in the sense that, okay, I something didn't happen. I this customer would have been great for us. Let me study my calls and see where I fell short. Or let me reach out to a more experienced team mate or my leader and see what I could have done differently, and then learn from that for the next time. So very analytical, methodical people. You have to be really organized too.

SPEAKER_01

That is something I had not heard a lot of in sales. Analytical, organized, but clearly that works very well because those are, I would say, two of your biggest strengths is your organization and how like analytical you are.

Integrity And How To Vet Companies

Emma Brady

While everyone's different, I know what I need to say at the right time to get the information I'm trying to convey to the person on the other side. So I do have a pretty solid, consistent system. And that the other thing, something all salespeople have in common is they love to talk about how good they are at sales and why their sales strategy is better than everyone else's. Okay. So I'm saying I have a system, I'm so organized. There's someone else who could be selling more than me who's doing everything on the fly and it's all in their head.

SPEAKER_01

That okay, that's fair. But I have to say your system tends to work pretty well. So it's hard to argue with that.

Emma Brady

Yeah, that is true. And a lot of what we do now is based off of that. So I I did have the opportunity to build the entire sales motion from scratch for that type of that type of uh task. You do want to have it be systematic. And then once people can come, they can come in and kind of put their own flair on it. Nice, nice.

SPEAKER_01

All right. There was a couple of more uh listener submissions, which I want to make sure that we get to. Um Clara asked, What is your most difficult sell and how did you navigate it?

Emma Brady

I was thinking about this a lot, and out of respect for the people I work with, I'm not gonna go into the difficult sale itself because this is a really stressful thing they're going through, and I'm gonna give them brace. So what I think is difficult or challenging is it's kind of like dating. Like you think you had a really great date and then they're ghosting you, or they are you and it's like, wait, what? I thought we were good to go.

SPEAKER_01

We had a connection.

Emma Brady

Yeah, I thought we had a connection, then you're and then it's it is my job. It is my job when I meet with someone to call and email them until they give me yes or no, uh up until a certain point. So if if you if that person on their side knows that they already went with another option or they're more likely statistically just staying with what they currently have, it is really helpful to just tell that salesperson that because otherwise, so that I would say that's the most difficult thing is people feel uncomfortable telling someone no, they feel bad, they know this person has put in effort, and so they they just put it off and it ends up being more stressful for that person.

SPEAKER_01

Do you have a way of like phrasing things to kind of pull that out of them? Like if it's a yes or a no, like we kind of need to know.

Emma Brady

Yeah, I there it and it's seasonal too. I mean, what I did five years ago is different than what I'm what I'm doing now. So it just kind of depends on the the person, and you'll hear that a lot in sales too. Like a good salesperson will say, Well, it depends on this and that. And but you need to be cool living in the gray area in sales. It there is no like the brachial plexus where the innervation and the all of the motor and the sensory innervation, all that it's yes or no, or black and white. It's not like that at all. So if you have trouble with that, it might be a skill you need to learn. To be successful in sales.

SPEAKER_01

I'm noticing that as a trend too, as I listen to your story and Casey and even my own, getting out of the clinic into health tech or tech, living in the gray is a really key, really key skill. Yeah, I agree with that. So, those of you listening, if there are um situations in the clinic where you're struggling to live in the gray, maybe there's not the perfect protocol for a really complex patient. That is a skill that you can work on if you want to make that transition out um into something more non-traditional. I want to talk about what people see on job descriptions when they are applying for roles. So in sales, the OTE, as they say, and pleased for everyone, what does OTE stand for? On target earnings. Okay. So if you're reading and you see the words OTE and there's this big flashy number behind it, we're gonna talk a little bit about that. So the OT on a job description, it's essentially like a marketing brochure. It's the best case scenario. So if you're looking at a comp plan today, what are the three questions you should ask yourself to see if that number is actually achievable or if it's just like a carrot on a stick that no one really ever reaches?

How Success Gets Measured In Sales

Emma Brady

So how you could see this phrased is maybe it's something like a 50, 60k base, and then OTE is 100K, meaning no matter what, you get paid 60, whatever that base is, and then you have 40k of variable comp. So if you like we were talking about earlier with those KPIs, if you book this many demos, you make this many calls, whatever it is. So the first question, first of all, I make sure it's within market rate, which you can do on the Bets Compensation Guide. They put one out every year. Really like that guide. I highly recommend doing that, or Gemini or Chat GPT or whatever. So number one is is it within market rate? And if it is, if this is your first sales job, that's probably it. You don't have a ton of leverage. I really like basic comp plans, especially if you're starting out. So the goal should be aligned to that. So, for example, if you're getting comped on how many calls you make, but the job expectation is demo booked, that would show a misalignment between the goals and the leadership, and that's likely going to lead to issues down the roll, down the road, excuse me. Um, I also would never take a 100% commission plan, and I would never do a plan where there's a cap on the commission, unless the cap is like$2 million or something, like basically not a cap. You know, I just I don't get I would never do that. That would show me there's misalignment between whatever's going on at that company and what the goals of the salesperson are. You don't want to de-centrize your sales team.

SPEAKER_01

I never even thought about that. That is really, really good advice.

Emma Brady

Um the other thing I would say is ask, and this is another thing you can verify by talking to people who used to work at this company, right? Because hopefully not, but you people can say whatever they want to say, and it's hard to verify it. But ask how many people are hitting their quota. If they say, yeah, 100% of our team is hitting quota every quarter, that means the goals are too low. And I would be, or that they're not being truthful. And then they say around 60% of hitting quota, it sounds low. That's actually pretty normal for the market. So if they say, yeah, about half our team are hitting about 25% or above that, 25% or is above that, that would be an answer that would give me confidence. And if they say, yeah, basically no one's hitting quota, I would that would of course be a flag. And then this is all assuming that this is your first software sales job. If you're in an experience situation, that's completely different and would be outside the scope of this podcast, because those plans can really get quite complicated. But again, you don't have a ton of leverage when you start. If someone came to me and said, Hey, I noticed that your listing is below market rate. Here are the sources I used. Would it be possible to go to market rate? That would be no problem. But if they're at market rate, I would, I would just leave it alone. Because if I have a salesperson who's really worried about the base salary, you should be so confident that you're gonna be successful in the role that the base salary you're not even thinking about. You're focused on what the what your OTE can be and not having a cap on that. Who cares what the base is? Because I'm gonna book so many demos, it's no problem.

SPEAKER_01

So for listeners out there to recap, for your first sales job, try to keep things simple in terms of what you ask for. If they swing in either way of the pendulum for how many people make their commission, possible red flag, and show confidence by saying, Yeah, base salary, cool. I'm just I'm gonna blow this out of the water.

Who Thrives In Sales Roles

Emma Brady

So yeah, no big deal. I know we have mouse to feed, I know we have real real lives and everything. There, that is a real factor. But that's the thing about sales. It's the long game. You're not gonna start day one and have a bajillion people sign up. It's gonna take a second to build your book of business, and part of that is having the comp plan that reflects that. And then on the flip side is I don't know of a non-traditional role that has the earning potential that sales does, especially without going back to school. So it's like you take a short-term hit, and if you're good at it and you have a good product and a good company and all that, it'll more than make up for it in the long run. And that's another thing you can ask about is what's the ramp? How long does it take for people to hit quota on average and all that stuff? Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's also something a lot of people don't talk about is if they want those earnings, sales is a great place to go, but not right away.

Emma Brady

Yeah. Your own business when within the business. You have so much that's in your control. The sky is really the limit of amazing.

SPEAKER_01

All right. If someone wanted to go into SaaS tomorrow, what skills should they? We kind of, you know, covered some of these, but what skills should they start practicing?

Emma Brady

I really like Aspireship. I've had a lot of people take Aspireship, and it's such a good foundational course that's really well priced for what it is. And what I really like about it is if you just go out there and try to teach yourself sales, back to what I said earlier. What do salespeople like to do? Talk about how good they are at sales, and there is no right or wrong answer. So if you start following a hundred people, you could have one person say, Oh, this is the best thing to do. And then five minutes later, you see a post that's under no circumstances should you ever do this thing. It's the worst idea ever. And it's really confusing. So I like about Aspireship is they've rounded up all of the salespeople that sell in the way that I think, you know, the salespeople that you would want to be, that I want to be, put them all in the same room, so to speak, and then you know who to follow. And so as you go with that content, it's all gonna align for the most part. They're selling sales products to other salespeople. So they're very visible and they're doing lots of webinars and those sorts of things. So it's kind of ongoing. It's not just like you take the course.

SPEAKER_01

Fantastic. And for anyone listening, Emma is a the if I were ever in sales, Emma is the type of salesperson I would want to be like. So any resources that she says, they're good ones. All right. What is the green flag in a hiring manager?

Emma Brady

I would ask how many people have been promoted under them. Make it clear that you know that. So we're talking about BDR. Make it clear that you understand you know it's a one and a half to two year role on average. We're confirm that with them. However, it's very socialized in the sales world that most people aren't looking to be in a BDR a role forever. If they are, no problem. Most of the time they're not. So it's okay to ask, hey, really looking forward to getting to know your company, getting to be on the sales team, yada yada. Just curious how many people have been promoted to AE from the BDR role or in BDR leadership or somewhere else? That'll tell you a lot, really, because if they go, oh, oh, they either leave before that happens or we only hire experienced AEs. That's gonna give you an idea, maybe not not taking the job, but that you're most likely gonna have to get another job and it's gonna be hard to go from BDR to AE. Not impossible, but it's gonna be harder at a different company.

SPEAKER_01

I love that. Like in the sales world, it's a little more accepted to be transparent about hey, I want to start, this is my entry point, but I want to move up. Um, how about red flag and a job description?

Emma Brady

One of the reasons sales has a reputation it does, is it's not always known for having the best culture, especially in tech. So it is supremely important that you are diligent about this during the job application and interview process, especially if you're a woman. Or, you know, sales is traditionally a male-dominated field. Even the word I just used, dominated, right? You got to be really careful in the job description. It can give you hints. If they say, like we're we're a really hardcore team or we're full of aggressive hunters and we're hustling and we're grinding or work hard, play hard, like that type of verbiage. It's it would lead me to believe that that might not be the culture that I am looking for. I'd also look at the diversity of the team on LinkedIn. You can kind of get a view of what's going on there. And then Glassdoor. Usually people will post on there. So make sure you're definitely checking out Glassdoor. Um, I would also be wary of a company that's letting you skip BDR and go to straight AE. So account executive is generally the next step up, so to speak, from BDR. So I would ask a lot of questions about that, especially in this day and age and what the job market is. If there's a company letting people skip BDR to AE, that is it's probably too good to be true. I'm not saying it can't work. I mean you'd at least have to be a full-cycle AE. And okay, yeah, you're you're gonna hire as an AE, but you're functionally gonna be a BDR for six months. And if they give you a reason for that, that would that would make more sense. I would take that on a case-by-case basis and just ask a ton of questions about that.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Another thing I would have never thought of also the diversity on their team. That's like across the board. That's a great advice to give, is if you're looking for um a new role in just researching a company. Okay, one book every salesperson should read.

Understanding OTE And Comp Plans

Emma Brady

Okay, you guys. So as you know, this podcast, we're very transparent about ourselves. And I am here to normalize that if someone asks you or me a question like this and you're not a voracious reader, that's totally okay. Just throwing that out there. So if you are someone who likes to read for work, I would recommend never split the difference, gap selling, how to win friends and influence people, smart brevity, and then some type of mindset book so that you're taking care of your mental health or whatever resource you need for that. What I prefer over books, I like reading for fun. I don't have enough time to read for fun and works. I like to do the webinars. The webinars are gonna keep you up to date, they're gonna be more interactive. You can chat with people, you can throw, hey, here's my LinkedIn, let's connect. People will connect with you from them. You can connect with people there, and that's just gonna be to me such a better use of your time, at least when you're getting started out. It's really hard to read all these sales books when you don't have a sales job. There's nothing to contextualize it with. You can't apply it to anything real. I could, and again, some people could completely disagree with me. This is my perspective. You're gonna you can watch how the salespeople talk, how they make eye contact with the camera and the other people, their body language on calls. You can learn so much just beyond the content, or you can even sometimes learn what not to do. Like, oh, this isn't resonating with me. I don't want to do that. So, anyways, I love the webinars. It's really helpful to talk to people who have been doing sales for a while and just get so many different perspectives. Now I'm breaking a sales rule and rambling, so I'll stop doing that.

SPEAKER_01

Um you are the the featured person.

Emma Brady

And you're not gonna have trouble doing this. You're probably not gonna have a problem getting people to talk to you. I was doing informational interviews all the time from going to these virtual events or even in a lot of them are in person too, especially if you live in a city. I also, speaking of something that can help you in your current job and you can get CEUs for it, I really like courses on motivational interviewing because some marketing person or I don't know who did this, some motivational interviewing is the same thing as sales. It really is. It's just been rebranded to be more embraced by therapists or in the healthcare industry. So I really like motivational interviewing. It'll help you in your current role. It's gonna socialize what I would say is basically sales. And Medbridge has some really good motivational interviewing courses.

SPEAKER_01

I'm gonna do what you always do when you're the interviewer and frame this for our people. So put this in your brains. Motivational interviewing, it's gonna help you be a better therapist and it's gonna help you in sales. It will really help you in any career. CS, you name it. Motivational interviewing is just such a great skill. And Emma, I also love your number one, your transparency and your approach because there's a lot of people out there. I just got someone who made a comment on one of my things and they were like, I'm super busy. I'm a single income household. Like, how do I do this? And like it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the books because who has time to sit down and read? Some people do, but the webinars are so great because it's a shorter thing, and you're well, like once you sign up for it, you're accountable to go. Love that. So last one, the Saturday test. What is it?

Emma Brady

It's if you're thinking about your pipeline on a Saturday morning morning. Is that a sign of passion or burnout? And I would say it means you're a real salesperson. Give yourself a round of applause. And then you're gonna and then you'll give yourself a round of applause and then you'll start stressing again. And that's you're just you can't really turn off from it. I don't mind that if I really need to, I will. But you're gonna be working odd hours, probably weekends sometimes late at night. You gotta what do you think? Sometimes you fall to bed asleep at 10 o'clock and you think, oh my goodness, I forgot to call the insurance company. 100%. You know, you just if you want to be successful in sales, you gotta meet people where they're at. People ask me all the time, what's your what's your time zone? Say I'm whatever time zone you need me to be. That is a salesperson right there. Yeah. So I've I've taken calls at four in the morning, I've taken calls at eight, eight, nine o'clock at night. I've taken them in the back of Uber before. I mean, I try to be very available.

unknown

Yeah, yeah.

Learning Sales Skills Before You Start

Emma Brady

Um, so I'm pretty much always available. And then if I don't want to be, this is another strategy that might most people find to be a bit extra, but it's a lifesaver for me. And that's having a physical second phone. Pretty sure I might, I think I'm the only person on the entire salespeople that has two phones because everyone says, Oh, do you know? I just, I don't know, some people smarter than me know how to have two phones in one. I need the true physical separation so that if I do want to be unplugged, I just leave the phone at home and I'll get to it when I get back. So that's been a great strategy for me to set boundaries. You're gonna have to work odd hours, and I think that's okay because at least for my situation, I'm able to make up for it on my own time at my own pace when I need to. Um, and another question we didn't get to that brings up weekends is conferences. So you do want to ask Yeah, you do want to ask about travel requirements, and then maybe whatever they tell you, don't put it up by 25% just to give yourself. So if they say five times, maybe assume you're gonna be doing seven just to give yourself a buffer. Because not that they're misleading, but if things are going well and they're growing, they're naturally gonna go to more events. So keep that in mind too.

SPEAKER_01

And if you're at a very popular and good company, let me tell you, conferences are a lot of work, they are a lot of work um done, but uh they're a lot, so you have to be ready for that. Do you know how many work trips I went on last year? I have no idea, but I would love you to say 15.

Emma Brady

And that I can't fathom that. I cannot fathom that's a that was a combination of like work trips plus conferences, and that was a high, that was a high year. So then the weekends I did a conference, maybe I took the Monday off, or I took the next Friday off, or I'm my own business within the business. So within the parameters that I've been set, I'm able to do that myself. I don't have to ask permission. Again, I have my own guidelines I follow. So I really like that. And then for now, I'm kind of in a season where I'm not having to go to a bunch of conferences.

SPEAKER_01

So you you just want to ask about ask about that and do what you're comfortable with, and be a person who enjoys that, maybe gets some energy from it and knows how to recover from them.

Emma Brady

Would you say yeah, if you're naturally introverted and you're taking a role that's a bunch of conferences, that's I just don't know how that wouldn't be really draining.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Hiring Signals, Boundaries, And Travel

Emma Brady

Do you want it just but if it's one conference a year, like, oh yeah, we have this one really big conference, it's actually really fun. Or we're all gonna travel for SKO for S for a sales kickoff, and we're gonna get the whole sales team together. That's a one once a year opportunity where you might find energy from that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Any like get together I've ever experienced, at least at prompt, has always been really fun and life-giving.

Emma Brady

Well, hopefully this got you all. Well, actually, no, sorry, I'm not convincing you of anything. So hopefully, this unbiased information about sales, if you were ready to receive it, may made you excited about sales if that's the path you want to go down. And if not, also good use of your time so that you can kind of mark that off your list and your journey for where you want to go next. This is the most I've ever talked about sales publicly ever. So hopefully these were the questions you were hoping for. And if you want more, just let us know and we will do our best to answer anything you're thinking about.

Key Takeaways And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_01

I have to bring up just some little tidbits of Emma Brady wisdom. Even if you're not in sales today, a lot of what Emma talked about, you can apply to your life in the clinic right now. Many times I hear people wanting to leave the clinic for a lot of, you know, burnout reasons. And some of those reasons can be related to trying to control things that you cannot control, not setting good boundaries. Yeah, and just, you know, being resilient. So if you want to go into sales, those are just great things to practice here and today. And it's gonna hopefully even make your life a little bit better even prior to making a transition. Emma, thank you so much. Yeah, I agree. I don't think I've ever heard you talk this much because you are so good at getting other people to talk. So that just makes me so excited. This is gonna be so valuable for people. Thank you. And please, if um this has given you a lot of value, please share with your friends or someone else that you think could get value out of this. And one way to do that is also by writing a review on us on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify. Um, that helps other people who might be looking for the same information to get the valuable information that Emma is putting out here.

Emma Brady

But only if it's a nice review. If you don't have something nice, just say DM us and we'll try to fix it first.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, just that is actually true. We love feedback, so tell us your feedback.

Emma Brady

Well, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Bye.