Kleer cuts out the insurance middlemen to expand access to dental care

Raise your hand if you like picking up cold calls. OK, how about this — raise your hand if you want to pick up a cold call from someone selling insurance.

Well, Fred Morgan’s first sales job was dialing those calls to hawk car and homeowners’ insurance. It was one of the multiple jobs Morgan held while studying marketing at Temple University.

“I chose marketing because I’m extroverted and I love talking to people,” Morgan said. “That translated into the rest of my career.”

Still, the experience developed his skills so he could flourish at Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Kleer as the company’s manager of sales development. Kleer is a cloud-based software that allows patients to access dental care without going through an insurance provider. Dental providers use the software to build customized care plans and offer them directly to patients — allowing them to control prices and manage patient experiences without interference from insurance providers.

Morgan was Kleer’s first employee, behind CEO Dave Monahan. Initially, Morgan was presenting Kleer’s business model to dental providers in the tri-state region; 150 agreed to join. Kleer narrowed that pool to 25 practices to pilot the program. After a successful pilot, in January 2018, Kleer began offering its solution to dental practices across the country.

Today, Kleer works with more than 6,000 dentists across all 50 states. As for Morgan? He recently earned a promotion managing a team of sales development representatives (SDRs) and coaches them through making hundreds of daily dials.

“Before he even had the title, Fred was mentoring, running huddles and developing a training program for new SDRs,” said Ed Kaighn, the VP of sales at Kleer. “As the first sales representative, and year after year top performer, there is no better person to hire, onboard and coach our future sales talent.”

“One of the coolest things about working for Kleer is that, I’m not exaggerating, I wake up excited to go to work. Actually, I’m a human, so 90% of the time, I wake up excited to go to work,” Morgan said. “It’s because of the mentorship that’s available. Every member of the leadership team has positioned themselves in a way that I can learn from them. It’s really rewarding to offer that insight back to our SDRs.”

Read more to learn what it’s like to be a Kleer employee.

###

Coming out of a sales position, how did you develop your management style?

Fred Morgan. (Courtesy photo)

I definitely have to credit company leadership again for how open they have been during my entire time here. Working closely with them really helped prepare me to lead this team of SDRs.

A lot of open conversations drive my management style. We start each day with an SDR huddle, and we listen to each other’s calls to go over everything … the good, the bad and the ugly. And instead of putting anyone on the spot, it’s a team effort for all of us to openly discuss how we can improve. Even if it’s the most incredible call, we break down what went down so the entire room is best prepared for every call that comes their way. The most amazing part of this process has been their growth. In the beginning, I was leading these conversations, and now I’m sitting back and watching them take the meeting over with all they’ve learned.

It must be rewarding to watch the team grow and lead those conversations themselves.

It’s super rewarding. What’s even more rewarding is that we have these goals in mind as a team. Of course, each one of them wants to be the best and they’re all competitive, but they still work together to help each other hit these goals. At the end of the day, we’re doing this because we know that Kleer is doing huge things for dental care.

What’s the company culture at Kleer that drives your team?

It’s always been a transparent environment where truly every voice is heard. If you want a place where you can speak up and see the results, this is the company for you.

What do you hope for in the future at Kleer?

All I know is that 2022 is going to be a huge year for Kleer. I don’t see the company’s culture changing, just the team growing. It’s just really exciting to know that each individual contributor does have an impact.

In terms of my development, management has done a really good job of incentivizing my career development. Over my three years at Kleer, I’ve consistently been presented new opportunities to take advantage of. I believe in the mission at Kleer, but leadership’s motivation to also keep employees personally fulfilled really stands out.