Linda L. Carey-What you Hate and Love About Selling?

0

Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Linda L. Carey.

About the interviewee

Linda L. Carey, Chief Marketing Officer of Vibrant Business Today, LLC, dba Health Industry Marketing, focuses on the health industry as a niche. As a “cub” recruiter, she cut her teeth in the healthcare industry doing nationwide recruiting for companies that specialized in start-up and emerging growth companies within medical devices and medical capital equipment. She had the opportunity to work with technology innovators and risk takers who have launched medical devices such as pacemakers and heart valves along with capital equipment such as ultrasound and patient monitoring. In addition, she has had the privilege of interviewing thousands of people through the years. “During a single turn-around assignment, I interviewed personally 600 people out of the several thousand candidates”.  Interviewing candidates, assessing candidates and presenting them really comprised the grassroots of my marketing skills.  Once I decided that they were the best “fit” for the job, I then had to market them successfully to my clients based on their needs.” Says Ms. Carey.  She continues, “ I think if I had to quantify my own skill set, I would say that I am blessed with great intuition which has been tested and validated in many professional settings”. Earlier in my professional life, I did not trust my intuition…but as time marched on, I learned from experience that I could rely on my intuition, no matter what circumstances appeared before me.

“I was not medically trained having graduated with a degree in Psychology from the University of North Carolina”. As as result, I had to spend many hours after the end of most workdays for “normal people” reading and studying my clients’ particular medical product offering while figuring out how the dots connected in order to speak intelligently with my clients and on behalf of my clients to the marketplace.

Her goal was always to live in California and specifically in San Francisco. A joint venture with a healthcare consulting firm that provided due diligence to healthcare companies provided the catalyst she needed to move west to the San Francisco Bay. There she worked primarily with healthcare manufacturers and suppliers providing comprehensive manpower planning services, organizational development and nationwide recruitment that preceded proprietary product launches. Some of her clients in healthcare manufacturing have included Nestle’s, Carnation Infant Formula Division, Squibb/ATL, Thomson CGR Medical (purchased by GE Healthcare), Acuson, (purchased by Siemens). Ultimately, she also migrated into high tech due to former healthcare clients who had migrated and who brought her on board to help them. Some key clients were cc: Mail/Lotus, Inc., Oracle and Silicon Graphics.

Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.). 

While I have had upwards of 50 employees in the SF Bay Area, today, I work exclusively with smart, savvy independent contractors who are experienced in healthcare sales & marketing along with internet-preneurs who are geniuses in the digital arena, including webmasters, seo specialists, content producers, ghost writers, video production and editors for e-books. The advantage to my clients is that I can “scale up” or “down” based on the scope of the assignment.
Type and Size of Clients I work with:

Healthcare Industry Service Providers
Hospitals: 250 to 500 beds
Private Practice Physicians/Groups of Pvt. Practice
Outpatient Surgery Centers
Health Industry Manufacturers
Health and Wellness Products/Service Providers

Size: < 50 million in annual revenues
Average size is 10 to 20 million

What Comes to Mind When You See This Topic?

Answer: Specifically, what comes to mind is that all of us are “selling” or being “sold” most of the time whether we realize it or not. The key in today’s information overloaded environment is not “selling” but helping people through education and advocacy so that they will be inclined to “pick” your products or services. This is why I congruently believe in “Authority Marketing” as a service. I simply help flesh out people’s stories and how they seek to advocate and educate their target audience, patient, vendor, strategic alliance partner, etc.  If someone is not interested in education or advocacy, they are probably not a client for my services.

What are the best practices when it comes to this issue?

There are 5 Best Practices In Selling:

#1 Best Practice is Visualization

Visualization: This is critical. You must be able to envision what it is you want to achieve. Wayne Dyer, a popular author says “You must believe it then you see it”. My Mother always said, “Be careful what you wish for because your wish may come true”. Visualization or “seeing” is a huge gift and an inherent “best practice” for professionals at any level of business and of course, always a “best practice” by top sales people.

Anecdotal Note: I personally landed 2 high visibility corporate organizational development and training assignments with 2 top ranked Silicon Valley high tech companies due to my visualization and follow-on commitment to do business with these 2 companies.  Subsequently, I was invited to become a board member for what has become the top high tech/healthcare women’s not-for-profit board in the Silicon Valley.

#2 Best Practice: Build Relationships Utilizing All Tools at Your Disposal To
Respectfully Connect Your Vision With Them.

#3 Best Practice: Always Be Mindful that You are Educating and Advocating for Your Target Audience. This conviction is mission critical because you are taking yourself out of the “selling” chair and into the “how can I help you get your desired outcomes” role.

#4 Best Practice: Authenticity, i.e., Be Yourself
You really are sufficient in the way that you are…..naturally. People are not attracted to carbon copy sales people. Some of the best sales people on the planet are low key individuals whose instincts are spot on and who quietly persist right into a purchase order.

#5 Best Practice: Deliver Like the Mail Man.
Do What You Said You Were Going to Do When You Said You Were Going to Do It. Why is this important? Most people do not follow up or if they do, it is not in a timely fashion. They may follow up one time and then fizzle out. By doing what you said you were going to do, you build credibility.

Contact Information:

www.healthindustrymarketing.com