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I want somebody that is a relationship builder. Real relationships. Is not a transactional salesperson that can really work with a client to solve a real problem. I don't want anyone that does transactional anything.

Now, let's jump right in.

left

for the doors. It's actually, it's a relaxing, fun day to really talk to people and whatnot.

And I'm glad to get a chance to catch up with you.

Yeah, it's always awesome to talk to you and woke up this morning, saw the snow and saw that Nashville doesn't know how to deal with snow. It wasn't loud. There was no salt people falling down on their face. it's been a great vibe for us and great to see everybody as always.

I saw some of the CIOs. I remember Robin was here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We had a lot of our clients stopped by a lot of our prospects stopped by. We had a very busy booth and yes, it is true that You could spend your whole day, I think, when you're a company like SureTest just fielding calls from people that want to give you money and it's nice to say I don't need any money right now.

I'm okay. But we're getting the growing, we're getting to that inflection point. I want that

to happen more to me. It's hey, would you like some money? No.

We're getting there though, you want to really scale and grow a company that gets to a point where it's time.

founder of a company like yours, a software venture that's growing and taking on more clients.

You always have to have those relationships. You never know when that next step is going to happen. And it's

like anything, Bill, you always hear me say all the time, I don't want to be a vendor. I want to be a partner. I want to be a partner with my clients. And it's important when you make that next step that you get a good partnership.

Here's what I want to talk about. You have this conference. Some booths I go to, people are like, Oh, it was a dud. Other people I go to, it's like, this was great. Yeah. What makes it great? I do consulting for some people. I don't get paid, but I do some advising for some people. And when we talk about the conference, I'm like, look, your conference is set before you even get here.

If you do the right pre work, you're going to have a great conference. If you don't do the right pre work, and you wait for people to come by your booth, you're going to be severely disappointed.

Absolutely you think about our clients time, and the demand for their time. You want to make sure that you're in long time in advance, letting them know what you want to meet about, what you want to talk about, and, you've got a plan for it.

If you just sit back and wait for it to happen, you're never going to see what you want to see.

there was a Khaleed had a great post. Oh my God,

We were actually talking about this before I read Khaleed's post.

We were talking about this. It's we're walking by some booths and everyone in the booth is on their phone. Yeah. No one's even making eye contact with me or anything like that. And just as a team, we're like, what does that commute? I understand you have to get work done and that kind of stuff.

But. There has to be a right way to have a booth. I noticed you had a person who was greeting people the whole time. And the booths that maybe are at scale or whatever, they all have a person who's there to say, Hey your meeting's in a couple of minutes, that kind of stuff.

What else struck you about that post?

Oh my gosh. When he said. Don't send the email that says, Hey, it was nice seeing you. We had coffee and what you talked about was completely wrong. If you just didn't even, be present enough to really be able to follow back up on what was meaningful to the conversation that you had.

I was getting scanned at a badge because I stopped to pick up something. I don't know, lip balm or something. Which is my favorite thing to pick up.

We have the best one here.

Oh, do you?

I thought I gave you a couple. Short test,

lip balm, there you go.

It is the best. People come back year after year and say, do you have more of those lip balms?

but as they were scanning my badge, I looked at Jairus. I said I will get an email. I'll get an email about, Hey, have you considered blah, blah, blah. And I'll be like, I have a 15 person company. We don't deliver any care. We have no doctors on staff. And I will get and by the way, I won't get that one email.

I'm in their funnel. I will get a series of emails probably through HIMSS.

Yeah. I'll tell you, we use Pardot. We use some of these tools, but. When it comes to connecting directly with our clients and the gala, the one that's making sure that we all our engines all run, I'm like these emails.

We've actually segmented our email. And one of the reasons we did this So we send a lot of emails to health systems for our events and that kind of stuff.

A number of them have said, Hey, your stuff's getting blocked. And when we looked at it, like we could send them an email, like I could send them an email and it got through, but from our CRM, it recognized it was coming from a CRM and it blocked all those emails in order to alleviate their inbox.

And so

we've gotten to the point where I send out emails, almost the equivalent of a handwritten note. Now the email came for me and it's

absolutely and you can use those tools for certain things, but you've got to be, pretty strategic about how you use them versus when you really need to have a meaningful connection.

So I thought his post was great.

Yeah, just had a meeting on our 229 HCSP certification, which will close by the time people listen to this show. Oh, okay, cool. We're actually closing it today. did a soft launch, and we have a group of people that are going to help us build it. Actually, the group of people is over 100 now, so we have a bunch of people in the community.

And, one of the things about the 229 project we talk about is, Leaders in isolation are sure to fail. Sales professionals in isolation are sure to fail.

Absolutely. They

need each other. They learn from each other. They do. And so we created an online community. It's really fascinating to see them going back and forth.

I'm

seeing it develop and it's so cool. I'm a big believer in everybody can win. Everybody can win. And how do we help each other win? So I'm so excited that you've taken on this initiative because I think it's going to make a difference for our CIOs. I think it's going to save them time.

The other thing is helping people to understand what actually goes on at this conference.

So as a, as I have three former CIOs. One of the things is for us, , why do we come to this? We don't want to get our badge scanned and we don't want to be marketed to that kind of stuff. However, it's incredibly efficient to have this many of our partners at one place, right?

And so we can have 15 meetings in a day I could let you in on what my strategy is for the upcoming year We could talk about various things. I'm looking for your company to do maybe something that's going on with the current project it's interesting too because from time to time I would go do these things I'd sit down with somebody they go, we're this project stuck in contracting.

I'd be like as a CIO I'm a little disconnected and I'm going How is this stuck in contract? You got to be kidding me.

Let me tell you, we got a couple over the finish line just in that exact scenario. There's a lot of benefit to having that last little bit of face time that you need to have, getting some barriers broken down.

I like what they do with the speed dating because it's a way. It has

an official name.

Oh gosh, I should do

it.

Hosted buyer meeting. Hosted

buyer meeting. Sorry, I call it speed dating. Holly, our camera

person is whispering to us.

Hosted buyer meeting. That's the speed

dating. But, it makes it for the provider to, take some cost out of them coming, which I think is great. They get to pick and there really is a matching capability. I talked to Phillip and he said I had some great meetings and people really leaned in.

So depending on what problem you're trying to solve as a provider, you can pick, the companies that you want to talk to. I just think it's a great economical way to make it less expensive for the providers to come. And again, it's a win. He loved it.

Let me ask you this. So you went from Steve, who's phenomenal.

We still

said Steve's not gone away. He's still here. He just wants to retire a little bit.

Semi retired Steve. And then you have you have Phillip, who you just brought on. Here's the question I want to ask you and we'll ask it from two perspectives. What were you looking for in a salesperson?

Yeah, it was. So what I said to Steve is, you can go part time, but you have to find your replacement.

And we talked to a lot of candidates, a lot of candidates. And I told him I want somebody that is a relationship builder. Real relationships. Is not a transactional salesperson that can think about sales in a conceptual way. Really work with a client to solve a real problem. I don't want anyone that does transactional anything.

That was my number one prerequisite. And I wanted somebody that was going to be a good cultural fit with us. As the founders SureTest, we've worked together. for a long time. We care a lot about our team. We've got modern health care is best places to work. I think the number six this past year.

So that's what I look for.

That is tip of the spear stuff. When people interact with that person they're interacting with your

absolutely right.

With your name, your brand, your product, but they're also interacting with your team. That could be their first interaction and it's Oh, I like this team.

I'm looking forward. What do you expect from a salesperson at this event?

A lot, probably too much. I expect him to walk away and feel like he made meaningful connections. That's really at the end of the day. That's what I expect from him. Same thing I expect from us all. That's it. I don't expect him to, get any deal signed.

me. It's interesting, it's very relationship based.

You didn't talk about leads, I didn't hear the word leads out of your mouth once. Is this a good place for leads? Or is it more of a moving all the things along?

I believe everything we do is about a building block with relationships. For me. This isn't about getting leads at all.

It's about making our relationships.

Because your leads come from your existing relationships. Exactly. Exactly

right. Our expansions come from our existing relationships. Our referrals all come from our existing relationships. And, it's just about moving down the value chain with our clients.

I don't expect leads out of a conference like this. And I think a lot of people do, but that's not at the top of my list.

So should we bring him over here? No.

Just

have some fun. it's interesting because I'm wondering if people are going to feel like this is a dud because the last day is so dead.

Yeah.

I thought it was a great, I thought it was a great event, but you

had two full days. We

had two full days with

people.

We're all done, but. Yeah, but , it was a great conference.

No, that's fantastic. Laura, I want to thank you. Another news day in the books with you.

Always great to talk to you. And

your support of captain's campaign.

Oh, yes, always. We we'll announce what the

number is, but it's over 15, 000.

Yay! I think we're upwards of closer to 17 or so that we raised at the bottom. Awesome,

awesome. Really

exciting.

Awesome. Everyone's still coming by to say hi?

Hi to Captain, exactly.

Alright, get home safe. Alright, thank you. See ya.

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