Coaching & leading enterprise sales reps

0:00Coaching enterprise sales reps. This can be tough. You know, some of my best friends are enterprise sales reps that you have over a decade of sales experience that are just so good at what they do. And coaching these folks can be kind of difficult because as a sales manager or their frontline leader, for example, there might not be a lot that you can add skill-wise to what these reps are doing. It's likely that they're better at selling than you are and they probably make more money, at least the good ones do, than you do. So it can be really tough to coach them and challenge them and really continue pushing them and making sure that you're a resource.

0:45And that's what today's episode is all about. If you're a sales leader or sales executive and you have these really experienced enterprise sales reps and you're wondering, like, where's the value that I'm going to really add to these folks and how do I manage them properly, these people that are extremely skilled? Because just getting out of their way, yes, absolutely, that can help. But how do we really make sure that, hey, they're giving and contributing to the culture? They were able to extract some of the best practices that they're using, but we're also really able to add value to them. So that's what this episode's about.

1:23Before we get into it, my name's Jason. I'm CEO at Outbound Squad. we're all about helping you create more pipelines. So what we talk about on the show a lot is outbound pipe gen. So anywhere between a third and a half of a company's revenue will typically come from the sales team in the BDR team. So it's the stuff outside of marketing. And that world has gotten very tricky these days, especially with the advent of AI in the last year, two years, Inboxes have gotten saturated. All of the sales engagement tools, like your outreaches and sales lofts, they certainly haven't made this easier when you can mass blast emails with the click of a button.

2:09So the answer to, hey, what's working right now is very difficult. And it's a challenge that we've helped companies like Shopify, Zoom, Rippling, Gong, iHeart Media, Amex. We've helped a lot of companies navigate this challenge in the AI era, right? How do we stand out when everyone can literally use the same tools and put out something that's probably better than what your typical sales rep is going to send out? So we're really big on the point of view and leading with that. We're really big on the phones. We're really big on thinking about what your offer is and how you're adding value to the client.

2:47Another big thing that we've worked with companies on is the frontline managers and how you're reinforcing this, how you're leveraging AI coaches to supplement the manager's coaching. Reps just have to be insanely skilled at outbound to make it work. So the floor is much, much higher. That's what we talk about on the show. Our guest today is Chris Barwell, who we worked with during his time at GoGuardian. So him and Brian Evans, who's been on the show before, we did a really successful project with them three or four years ago at GoGuardian, and we've kept in touch. And Chris and I caught up when I was in Austin a month or two ago.

3:25He's currently vice president of enterprise sales at Octave. So we talked a little bit about his career arc. one thing that Chris, I would say his superpower is, is really coming into an organization and helping them increase their, um, really like helping them move up into like more of an enterprise sales approach. So not just working the enterprise logo, but like, what does it take to really secure an enterprise logo? And one of the big parts of that is, you know, preparing reps to have the executive level conversations. Like it's, it's getting above the line into the clouds and like talking about strategy and business growth and how this impacts revenue and profit and stuff that the executive really cares about because they don't really care as much about the technology.

4:14Speaking that language can be very, very tough as a rep, especially if you've never been the buyer before. So we talk a lot about that, how he thinks about discovery. We talk about how they're thinking about pipe gen, how he delivers coaching and a bunch more. So If that's a position that you're in as a sales leader right now or you want to become a sales leader that will help with this type of stuff, you're definitely in the right place and I think you're really going to enjoy the episode. One quick favor before we dig in. If you listen to this show on Spotify, iHeartMedia, Apple Podcasts, one thing I would really appreciate is for you to leave an honest rating on the show because it will help us get in front of more people exactly like you.

4:55If you've been a listener for the show for a while or you really like this episode, would love a rating from you all right let's get to the interview

5:10so dude it's good good to be jamming on the pod for the first time this is not our first time meeting in person so we met last time i was in austin we did a little iron chef competition and yeah you were talking a little shit out there your team won is that did our team did win We had a ringer, though. She was, I think, a former chef. Okay, that's not fair, dude. Well, hey, I didn't tell anybody. We still won. That was the most, like, one unique dinner event that I have ever been a part of. But the second part was really funny. It was like, oh, most people don't know how to use a knife. No, it was comical.

5:45There was a lot of people that didn't know what to do in a kitchen. Which is great. But our team, I remember that. But a lot of our, we had that one former chef. Yeah. She did everything for us. I think others that were there saw that we were just standing around doing nothing and she did everything for us. It's great. I mean, we didn't win anything. Yeah. Right? But it was still the pride of winning. It was great. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Love it, man. So we met originally through the work that we did with GoGuardian. Yes. And we did a couple of engagements with you guys. That's how I met Brian.

6:15And one thing that really stuck out to me about you during that time was, one, as a leader, you really leaned in with the pipe gen. And I say that because it's not like uncommon for leaders to just passively participate in like really big things like that that are important to the org. Like pipe gen was like something that was huge for the organization at the time. And like you like really leaned in as you and your managers. And then the other thing, too, and it's what we're going to dig into today is like, you know, I've always sort of known you as this like enterprise, like strat, like close the big deals or you typically will get brought in to be like the guy that can kind of like figure out that sales motion, you know, for the company.

7:00So I'm excited to dig in with you, man. I want to kind of backtrack if we could. You've been in sales for a while. It's like two and a half decades. Let's not say how long, but it's been a long time. I mean, you got a thick hairline still. I mean, it's looking great. My daughter is fond of saying I have more salt than I do pepper. That's good. What was your first, like, enterprise role? And, like, what was it like when you had to figure out, like, hey, what I'm doing is not so transactional maybe anymore. And, like, there's, like, a lot of moving parts to this and I have to be more strategic. What was that first role like for you?

7:35Yeah, it's interesting. I had a very widey road of getting into sales. I started off in sales ops first, first job out of college. And I was in there for about eight years, maybe nine years. What did sales ops look like then? It was basically now it's sales ops. Back then it was order management. So I was, you know, helping process deals, doing those things. And I do remember the day I saw some commission checks that these guys, it was at EMC back in the day. Like, again, dating myself, late 90s. And I saw how much money these EMC sales reps were making. I'm like, I'm in the wrong business, right?

8:07So I got into sales and I really didn't know what I didn't know. So I just started taking jobs to try to sell and make money. And I did stumble into a few enterprise-like jobs, but they were still transactional. It was just one buyer, very niche product, very niche solution. And so my career is really defined by two separate decades. It was the 10 years before I got to BMC Software and then the 10 years after I got to BMC Software. And BMC Software, for those that may know, John McMahon, he had just left before I started, but his entire footprint was on that organization. So when I started, that was my first real enterprise job where I managed a certain number of enterprise accounts.

8:51There was a process. I was always the art of selling, and I felt like I could sell anything to anybody. when I got to BMC and learned about the process behind it and why you do things and how you mitigate the risk, that's when I really started to enjoy enterprise sales because it was almost a mathematic equation for me. Like if you do this and you get this and you get that and you get that, you can just walk your way through the opportunity and then you can see where I'm weak here or I'm strong here. I don't know this. You mentioned something about GoGuardian. And, you know, the biggest mantra I remember at BMC was like, pipeline is life.

9:31Like if you're not building pipeline, you're not, your business is struggling. So we had a CRO there. I don't think it was, I don't think we called them CROs back then, but sales leader who used to say, if you're not closing business, you better be bringing me pipeline. So it's always kind of been ingrained in my head that, you know, PG Mondays or PG Tuesdays, like every day that you can, you should be driving pipeline. So when we got to go Guardian, like you said, I know it's an important part of a sales leader's job is to help drive that pipeline. We also had a sales leader there used to say, hey, even if you're a sales leader, I don't care if it says sales manager, director of sales, VP of sales, there's sales in your title.

10:08You're always selling. You're always building pipelines. So we've always leaned in for our – when I was at BMC, a lot of sales leaders leaned in. They prospected with us. They'd ask us, like, what accounts do you want me to target? Who can I reach out to? So it's always, it was ingrained since I got to BMC about like just really focusing. I was there for almost seven years. Yeah. Which is, you know, a lifetime in software sales, but it was, it was great. It really built the foundation of enterprise sales for me and the way you should run a sales process. And if you look at the CRO and VP of sales, like family tree.

10:43Yeah. From there, it's like wild, man. It's insane. I mean, it's crazy. It's, it's, I mean, it's great. I mean, you can just, it's just a common language we all had. Yeah. And I was actually just talking to somebody about it yesterday. Like, our year was planned. Like, you hit, we had an off fiscal. It was April to March. But from April 1st until March 31st, like, everything was planned. Like, exactly when your QBRs were, when enablement was, like, all of these things were built because it was just a process. And I know a lot of people seem to think that's a little too strict and that process is rigid for today's day and age.

11:22But I think there's a I think it still works. I really do. It just helps define what you should be doing every every day. Yeah. That's really, in my experience, oftentimes the biggest difference between someone that can close deals themselves versus someone that can lead reps is the process. Because you can be a little less process oriented on your own and kind of figure some stuff out. But most people are not going to succeed, in my experience, in enterprise sales without a process. Let's maybe start with that. When you think of the work that you've done in the last decade with leading sales teams, how do you think about process?

12:02And what does process mean to you? And I ask that because there's always this fear of micromanagement. And then oftentimes what I see in execution is a complete lack of process where it's like literally just sales stages in Salesforce with no underlying process really at all. So how do you think about process? Well, the first thing I think about it, to me, you know, a process is a process, whether it's Spiced or MedPick or Spam, whatever it is, is a process. For me, the only way it's going to be successful is if everybody at the leadership level speaks that common language. So first and foremost, if I'm interviewing for a job or I'm at a company where they want to roll on a new process, if the executive leadership team isn't bought into it, it's really hard to push it down to the field because there's no checks and balances.

12:55There's no accountability. I'm fond of MedPick as a sales qualification, sales process methodology. But I've been at companies where we've used Spice. We've used other methodologies. And I think it gives the reps direction. And I think the most important thing of all of the processes is some call them your sales gates, your, we call it our, I can't blanking, but verifiable business outcomes. What do you have to get from each gate before you can move it forward? I think that's the most important thing because I do think reps, and I fell victim of this too, you hear things that you think are true.

13:34Yeah. You really do. Like I can be on calls with my reps today and they'll say, hey, did you hear them? Like, yeah, but I heard it a little differently, which is why you have two people on the call because you want to sync up and make sure that you hear the same thing. But if you don't have those outcomes to get to the next exit criteria to get to the next stage, you're missing things. Right. And so I think that's the most important. So I think I have learned over time the activities within the stage can they're all going to be different. Yeah. Right. And they're kind of they flow a little bit like if in stage two, you're supposed to do a demo.

14:09Well, there's occasions when you do a demo in stage one. Yeah. It happens. You can't be too rigid. But it's those it's the exit criteria. Did you get the things and confirm it was a customer before you moved it into stage two? And I think that was my biggest learning from my first true enterprise sales job is like every time I would go to a QBR or a deal review, they'd ask me, did you do that? No. Okay, go do it. And I think when you talk about pulling it through to the rep level, it's being consistent with the deal reviews, QBRs, pipeline reviews, asking the questions that you need an answer to.

14:45Eventually, you're just going to show up with the answers. You don't want to stand in front of a room of your VPs, sales leaders, and your peers and say, hey, did you get this criteria yet in stage one? No. Oh. Now you're standing in front of a room. you want to talk old school like BMC we would do QBRs there'd be 30 people in a room yeah and you're up at the podium and the VP of sales is asking you questions about your deal and then everybody asks questions about your deal yeah and so you're on the hot seat for 45 minutes going through your business and so yeah you know you learn by fire but eventually you want to have the answers to all of those questions that you know they're going to answer and I think that's when you really see the magic of pulling it through and having the rep learn that they can do this on their own.

15:31It's, I also think part of it is some reps get concerned about breaking an opportunity by asking a direct question, right? And being a little bit more applying some pressure to understand what's truly going on. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about. OK, let's talk about that first. And then I want to backtrack into the MedPick and like the process and stuff. Sure. So the qualification framework, whether it's MedPick, Spiced, whatever it might be. The execution of that framework is really the big part, right? We have the common language and we've agreed upon a standardized approach. we have this execution layer um in terms of like the pressure testing the deal and like how to be direct and like that sort of stuff um how have you coached to that in the past and and how do you do it currently with your team uh i think the biggest thing is um what i've seen and really it wasn't until just recently when my cro was helping me with this to this i was still being coached on this.

16:42You know, you need to find something. There's a piece of information you're missing, right? Or there's a deadline coming up and you haven't quite gotten what you needed and you have to push a little bit. And now with my level and what I'm doing, I'm reaching out to executives or my peers and I would run them by my CRO. Like, Hey, what do you think about this email? He's like, it's way too passive. Like it's just passive. Like your intention is there, but you're not actually asking him any questions. Yeah. You're not asking her if she can commit to this. You're just kind of being polite and professional.

17:16So I have noticed that a lot of reps, not just, you know, here, but in my past, they want to be polite and professional instead of kind of pressure testing the validity of what's going on by asking a very direct question in a very professional way. Like, you know, I've always said, I read a great book called Let's Get Real or let's not play. I mean, it's a phenomenal book about, like, basic tenet of the book is you can't lose an opportunity you never had. Yeah. So if you're pressure testing a piece of the sales stage or something that needs to get done, they get upset with you, and they say, I'm not talking to you again, that was never an opportunity.

17:53Yeah. If you really, I think sometimes, and I get it, emotion plays a lot into it if you're a seller. Yeah. And you're trying to not blow up your pipeline and blow up your deals. But, you know, if you're not really qualifying and asking the difficult questions, you know, those problems are going to show up when you lose the deal six months later where you could have unqualified it six months before. Yeah. So I've always felt, and I do with my team, teams, discovery is the most important thing. You should be spending probably 70 % of your time in discovery. It's the most critical piece, whether you're uncovering the pain, quantifying the pain, multi-threading, champions, all the stuff that you talk about, that's the most important piece.

18:42I think, you know, Brian Evans talks about this all the time. Like you need to slow down to go fast. Like that was his biggest thing at GoGuardian. Like you got to slow down to go fast. So when we came in to build the enterprise team, it was like, you're running through the discovery process. Why are they doing this? Tell me more. Like the biggest thing I do see with a lot of sales reps, I try to coach through it. is when you do find a problem, and Gong is great for this now because I can't be on every call. Yeah. And you kind of go through your pipeline review and you hear them talk about the problem they uncovered.

19:17And they do. Like most sellers are really good at doing discovery now, especially enterprise sellers. They're very, most of them have tenure and they know how to ask the right questions. And ChatGPT or Claude helps you do your research in 15 minutes first, you know, pulling down a 10K and reading it yourself at your desk with a highlighter. like I used to do, right? But they ask that question. Sometimes they'll ask a follow-up question and then they just move on to the next question. Yeah. And if you go back and watch the call and realize that if you had unpacked that first problem they identified three or four layers deeper, you've just uncovered a really powerful problem that they need to solve, right?

20:01And they just kind of, sometimes they glance over that because I think in their mind, they're trying to get through the discovery call. Yeah. To check the boxes of what they need to ask to move to the next stage. Yeah. Without actively listening to what they're trying to get through. Yeah. Right? Because the best thing I think I've learned over my career is try to always just say, so what? Yeah. It doesn't matter what you're selling, right? If you're trying to sell, I walk into an iPhone store and I say, I need an iPhone. The guy's like, so what? Like, what do you need a phone? You know what I mean?

20:36Like, it's just asking that curious question. Like, all the time when we get inbound leads. Yes. Like, why did you reach out to us? I need a new software. Why? Why do you need it today? What happened? I just, I think just, I used to always say, I had a matrix of the traits I was looking for when I was recruiting and hiring, or when I do. Curiosity was always one of them. No matter what, like when I started getting a sales issue. Then I changed it to urgent curiosity, like making sure that every day that goes by, you kind of, you know, you're missing, you're losing time. Yeah. I think over time I've pivoted based on some folks I've recruited.

21:19Like I'm now looking for intelligent curiosity. Like have they done their research? Because to me, a more powerful, powerful question, if you're doing it right, you do your discovery, you're multithreaded, you understand the problems. then you finally get that meeting with the executive like asking that executive an intelligent question about everything you've learned right like hey i've learned x y and z about your organization your team saying that it's showing up here it's a problem because of this are you seeing it the same way or do you see it differently that's an impactful question for a c-level executive if you're trying to sell them software it's not like yeah hey i've been working with your team, what's your biggest priority, right?

21:58And I know that's a big example, but those are the things I'm looking for now is like really intelligent curiosity based on the research and the conversations you've had to really uncover what's important. Because in enterprise sales, if you're not solving one of the three biggest priorities in the company, there's no deal. And so somehow you have to figure out how what you sell attaches to one of those priorities. Yeah. And if you can't, you're not going to have the deal. So I think I'm trying to help my teams in enterprise, like, really understand how do you do discovery well, do your research well, to really attach to one of those opportunities, one of those initiatives, because then you've had their attention.

22:42Yeah. Right? Let's backtrack for a second on the polite versus direct. because your ability to be direct in a way that's not super abrasive to someone is such a key to discovery, right? Because sometimes you have to ask these really hard questions that the so what questions, it like really gets the person to kind of think about something maybe they haven't thought of and you're forcing them to kind of do that on the spot. And there's a way to do that that gets them to really lean in. So what advice or how have you coached reps around like being a little bit more direct around these questions and not shying away from it and finding a way to do that that feels like authentic to them but then is like I said not abrasive and like you know making a prospective customer shut down I think you said it I think it's being authentic and curious right like if you're I think so I grew up in Boston and I spent 10 years living in New York City Yeah.

23:46Direct isn't my problem. It's probably one of the areas I need to improve in terms of being too direct. Yeah. Like I remember sitting in a CIO's office in New York City and they were just so direct with me. And when I walked out, my solutions consultant was like, that was real. I'm like, it was refreshing. Yeah. Like that was refreshing for somebody to be that direct and say, you know, you missed the mark or whatever. Yeah. But I think being authentic and curious is probably where I would lead them. Right. And I think there's so many tools out there that can help. I mean, just creating a direct message.

24:23I do think there's always going to be a human element to AI. There has to be. But for me, if I'm naturally direct, I will create the message I'm sending and then literally just throw it in chat GP and say, make this less aggressive, more executive, but keeping the intent. something simple like that. Yeah. And it comes back a little softer. And then you just keep working the prompts, right? So I think it's those people who can naturally understand that they may be too direct or too aggressive to try to use the tools they have around them. But some of the ones I see that are really good at asking direct questions, they're authentic and they have a lot of curiosity, right?

25:10And they do it in a way that puts, you're right. Like I have one guy on my team now, he's great at asking very direct questions. Yeah. And it never comes off as anything but just curiosity and understanding. And I think you have to do it in the lens of helping them. Yeah. Right? If you're not doing it with anything, if you're trying to close a deal at the end of the quarter and it's all about you, like I need this before the end of the quarter. It comes out in your tonality. Yeah. It's really hard to hide that. Yeah. So it has to be through the lens of helping them. Mm-hmm. Right? Like, hey, you told me this was a huge priority for you.

25:42Yeah. We've missed X, Y, and Z. Like, help me understand why, if it's such a priority for you, we haven't accomplished these three things that we were supposed to by the end of today. Yeah. That's not aggressive. That's direct. Yeah. Right. And so I think that's where I try to guide them to is, like, make it about them. Accountable. That's why, you know, obviously you know about the accountability meeting with Evans and, you know, the mutual agreement plan or the OIT, as we call it. But like those aren't tools to just add more work to a seller or to an opportunity. It's truly to help the customer be held accountable.

26:21Like you've agreed to these six, seven steps and, you know, going back and asking him direct questions about it. They agreed to it. Like, why wouldn't you ask? I think people are afraid to do that on occasion. Yeah. So leading from curiosity, I love that. before we dig into discovery, a big part of this is like point of view preparation and like coming in and having an executive level point of view. When we were preparing for this, you said, yeah, let's talk about preparing reps to have executive level conversations. So let's talk about what that is. And if you could please provide examples too, even if it's not for your current company, maybe for previous stuff of like what's the difference between what an executive level point of view sounds like versus something that is really at like the the tools and tactics you know kind of surface level well i think just from a business standpoint when you're talking to executive they don't i've always looked at it through this lens like executives don't care what your tool does.

27:31They just care that you solve their problem. Yeah. To them, the technology is irrelevant. They have a team of people that are evaluating your software, going through the checks and balances, which means if you're at my level, we've vetted out the technology now. How do you solve my problem? Yeah. So it's really about, there's two lenses from that question I'll dig into. One, let's say you've been working on an opportunity for six, seven months. You've multi-threaded. you've done the evaluations you know what their pains are you know what their problems are and then you're going to get that meeting with the executive who signs off on it yeah like you should have built up enough point of view between your discovery your evaluation your champions your other people you've talked to to walk in there and say these are your problems this is how it's impacting the business and this is how we solve it and here's the outcomes that you're going to get from it.

28:26Like, very simple four-step process. Like, that's all an executive wants to know. Like, how can you solve my problem and what's the outcome going to be positively, right? Because, you know, when you're at a technical level, like, you go back to any company I've been at, we solve this problem, which means, I'll just use this example, our current company, right? We solve quality problems for quality professionals, right? When you're working with the director levels and below, you're fixing quality problems. We're talking about quality problems. You've got a problem here. You've got a problem there.

29:00The inspection is not good. The warranty is not good. Product recall, like those are very tactical, technical terms you're working with the quality team to solve. Our solution solves that. When you get to a VP or an executive, they don't want to talk about inspection problems. They don't want to talk about warranty. What they want to talk about is like, how does that improve my margin? How does it improve my cashflow, my earnings per share. Right. So what we're, what we should be doing as sellers is like taking all that information and talking in that language. Yeah. Right. And talking about how our technology solves this problem and helps you reduce margin compression or improve margin or improve cashflow or improve profit.

29:40Right. Cause that's all executives care about, right. All they care about is those metrics, cashflow, profitability, margins. And so when you're talking to executives, you need to present your solution in a way that resonates with them because they're signing off on it. And so if you're not improving margin and this is one of their biggest KPIs for the year, that's a project that's not going to happen. It goes back to what we talked about with the three priorities, right? And I think especially in today's climate, you can look through any 10K and you can see probably one of their top five priorities for the year is improved margins.

30:14Yeah. All of them, right? So how do you attach your solution to that problem so you get the attention of the executive to help shepherd that through the process? Yeah. I call this chunking up, or it's like you have, like, if you imagine an org chart. Yeah. And there's stuff down here that ICs and managers and then directors care about. We have to chunk up to the executive level, and it's almost always, to your point, something revenue or profit or maybe really high-level risk or market share related, right? Yeah, 100%. But the thing I always tell, I tell every one of my teams when we start, and I think this is a BMC thing, maybe not, but you always get relegated to the role you sound like.

30:57Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So if you're talking about, in this example, quality issues and you're reaching out to the CFO, he's like, well, go talk to Jason. Jason, he handles quality. Yeah. But if you call the CFO and say, hey, I want to talk about how I improve your margins because I know it's a priority, he may be inclined to listen to you because he cares about margins, right? And so I always try to remind my teams, if you're talking like an IT director or you're talking like a quality director or you're talking like a purchasing director, the executive is just going to punch you down to that person.

31:30So you have to level up, chunk up your abilities to sound more like, and you know, sometimes it's interesting. Sometimes I'll have my one-on-ones or I've had reps come to me and say, I don't know how to sound like a CFO. I'm like, well, you don't have to. They're like, I don't know how to calculate margins. I'm like, you don't have to. Like, just have a talk track. No CFO is going to expect you to walk into their room as a seller and know how to calculate margins and do all that stuff. They just want to understand if your solution can solve their problem and impact their priority. Like, he's not going to start drilling you on your calculation.

32:04And if he does, you know, good luck. Yeah. So if we talk about the discovery piece a little bit more and like essentially the point of view is you have this problem. Here's how this is impacting the business in a way that you care about. Here's how we can solve it. Are those the three parts? Did I miss something? So it's you have this problem. it's impacting the business this way. This is how we solve it. And this is the business outcome. Business outcome. So if we talk about the problems first, and I think like if we use MedPick as an example, one of the things that I find very challenging with how a lot of organizations think about these methodologies is it's like, hey, here's MedPick.

32:57You're going to want metrics and have you identified the economic buyer. And there isn't really like a, we kind of want to align some of that to the stages because some of the stuff you're not going to get until later, right? Do I really need to know what the decision, what the paper process is the first time I meet a buyer? Probably not, you know? So how do you kind of think about like the problems piece of the equation and maybe layer MedPic in there if you want? And, like, depending on the stage, like, where in the call do you want to get? When do you want to start to get some of this stuff?

33:33I think you can get it. So I agree that you don't ever want to walk into an initial discovery call and ask, like, who's the economic buyer or who's my champion, right? Yeah. we created I created with enablement just a discovery framework and it just goes basically to what I just said so we think about we talk about the executive so I rolled out a discovery framework where it's very basic and I just wanted the sellers to get back to basics like so the and we were scored in gong it was attached to gong so first part of the framework was like what's the situation What's the current state? So just asking questions about that.

34:18And then, you know, to your point, what's the problem? Like, why are you calling us? How's that implicating the business? Those types of questions. And if you're inherently asking those questions, you should start to be able to fill in some of that early stage med pick stuff. Like, you know, what's the problem? Oh, we're burning cash. Why? Oh, okay. So you've got some level of metrics and you don't really quantify it yet. But if you're asking the situation and the problem questions, I think the one thing, one area I know I needed to, and I add reminders of it all the time with my sales leaders, is the impact and the quantification.

34:56Yeah. Right. On discovery calls, if you have a real buyer and they have a real problem, they'll share with you information. Like, I've got this problem. I've got that problem. And we, like I said, we write it down. So that's great. We've got a real opportunity. But you miss the opportunity. How's that impacting you? How's that impacting the business? What's that, you know, all of those good questions. It's three, it's always two to five layers below where you need to go. And you really get those questions answered. And I think you can start to uncover pieces of MedPIC if you have a really solid discovery framework.

35:33Just being, again, curious about their current situation and how that is impacting them. I think that's the biggest thing. I still miss it. And it's a good reminder to always, we always want to understand how the problem is impacting the business. But we fail to ask the person who called us or the person we're speaking to how that problem impacts them. I mean, talk about a great human question. Like, hey, you just spent 30 minutes telling me about all of the issues with your process. Like, how does that impact you? Yeah. When you talk about starting to build champions, like understanding that this person that's just been telling you something, missed his daughter's soccer game, he's missing his son's baseball game because he's working 80 hours a week, his process is broken.

36:19Like, okay, that's a personal element of the impact that we might be able to attach to, right? So I think that's a component we always have to try to remind ourselves that we're selling to humans who have impact as well. 100%. So situation, problem, impact, and making sure that on the impact side, we really get their personal impact and motivators is really big along with the business. So in terms of situations, what I'm curious is like, the way that you kind of get into the discovery part of the call where you're really asking a lot of these questions, is it any different in your experience when it is more of an outbound sourced opportunity, let's say, where we are coming to the account versus they came inbound or through some sort of channel partner or referral.

37:11And the reason I ask that is that, like, do you need to be more sharp with the point of view around why you think that they decided to take the call? Sure. Outbound, you mean? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. What's your guidance there typically? Well, when I got into this job specifically, and I think I try to work with my enablement partners to understand when I get to a new position, what does the intro deck or the discovery deck look like, right? And so I've seen they've all varied. And so what we implemented here at this current place is regardless of if it's an inbound or an outbound, there's a slide that has our point of view on it.

37:58Yeah. Like this is the research we've done. Now, if it's outbound, I'm confident that everybody on my team had a point of view before they reached out to that company and had the meeting. Yeah. So it would be pretty easy for them to understand, like, hey, this is what we heard. You know, the best I see at Discovery, and we have a six-page Discovery deck, seven-page, something like that, very short and sweet. The best is on that point of view side. if we have a 30-minute discovery, I have some reps on my team who they've done 28 minutes just on that first slide, just having a business conversation.

38:35Yeah. Right? And that's where all the gold is found because you haven't even talked about anything else. You've just said, usually our discovery deck or our intro deck is really about your point of view, what we know about the industry, understanding the persona and kind of the challenges they face. it's all meant to drive discovery, right? So point of view, hey, here's what we know about the industry. Is any of this impacting your organization? And then going into like their persona, like typically when we work with folks like you, we see these challenges. Does that, like, so it's a very natural way to do discovery while keeping it conversational.

39:14But the best I've seen is those folks that just stay on that one slide because they've engaged the prospect with such a good point of view that has driven a dialogue of just, okay, we need another 30 minutes or we need another 45 minutes. So yeah, that's kind of how we run our discovery at this company. It's always been similar. You know, when we were at GoGuardian, I think the buyers were expecting like a demo on the first call. Yeah. And having to meet them where they were we kind of weaved our discovery deck with our demo into a kind of a 30-minute process, right? Like some slides up front to do some discovery and then a quick harbor tour of our product so they could, you know, take a look at it.

40:01But it really does depend on the organization, I think. But that's how I try to lead my teams to do discovery. Yeah. So we come in with the situation, we get to the problem, we've had a good point of view to kind of make the conversation a little easier and also to just kind of establish that, hey, we've worked with a lot of people. We've worked with your peers. The impact piece, what happens in that first conversation if the person that you're talking to doesn't really, maybe they aren't the person that, you know, manages or leads the P &L, so they don't really have those bigger picture goals and maybe they don't even know what they are.

40:46What typically happens at that point? They don't. Yeah. They flat out, they don't. Unless you're, unless we're meeting with a vice president or higher. Yeah. Most of them don't. Maybe some directors have some, some pulse on it, but for the most part, the people that we do don't. When we come in our point of view, like I said, especially in this industry, we're selling into who now publicly traded companies, all the data is there. Yeah. So we validate our hypothesis with those folks. Like, hey, you mentioned that you've got this issue with your quality process. I read in your 10K that you have this.

41:24Does that sound about right? Yeah. Right. So we're just trying to validate our hypothesis with those folks. What we're really trying to do is build up enough credibility from one, them to introduce us to the right person to go out of those conversations. Yeah. Or validate enough information so we can go talk to that person by ourselves. Yeah. So I would say eight, nine out of 10 times the person we're initially speaking to just knows they have a problem, but they don't know how it impacts the business. And we more than anything turn into an educator at that point of like, this is how it's impacting your business.

41:59And that's kind of how we start that process. Got it. so there's some multi-threading that's going to be needed there, which is sort of the next thing that I want to talk about. How do you guys think about multi-threading, like in and like kind of around the deal? So for example, like if I know I'm not talking to someone that's a VP plus in that first call, am I maybe sending some emails to folks, letting them know that we're talking to people on their team? Am I asking in that call for an intro to them or for them to invite them to the next call? Like, how do you guys think about getting, like, more executive level involvement in the deals?

42:37Well, what we're trying to do is, again, to educate them. We're trying to show them that when you're working to solve this problem, it's going to take a village internally to do it. Yeah. Right? It's not just you. Like, we understand, Jason, you have this massive problem. You've never bought our software before. You maybe never bought any software before. Like there's probably 10 to 15 people that get involved when this process happens. And we start to show them all of the people who typically get involved. Yeah. And then we ask them to introduce us to, you know, IT always gets involved, right?

43:16Right. At some point, like supply chain always gets involved and then procurement gets involved and then executive level sponsors. So you're coaching the buyer on how to get a positive outcome from your solution. Yeah, we have to because they're just looking at the problem they're trying to solve and not how do I buy this. Yeah. And so we try and it doesn't, listen, nothing's perfect. Some buyers don't want to get anybody else involved. Yeah. And that poses its own set of challenges. But it also gives you an idea of like the validity opportunity. Like if somebody is not willing to take you to their boss or introduce you to IT, is it real?

43:55Yeah. Right. And so, yes, early and often we're asking for introductions or, you know, if they won't introduce us, we know we don't have a champion. Yeah. But we at least ask them, are you okay if I reach out to them? Yeah. Nine out of ten times, they're fine if we reach out to them. Yeah. And so that's how we're managing that these days. Yeah. What are you guys seeing in your deals? Like is it any harder or easier to get executives involved in deals these days or dealing with finance or having a tighter business case, any of that kind of stuff? It's interesting in this space that I'm in right now.

44:36We're seeing executives. When I see executives as an opportunity here, I know we're solving a bigger problem than we realize. yeah um typically we'll most of our time is spent with this vps of quality or the vp of the supply chain and they have enough juice to get deals done without us needing to speak with executives but yeah if executives pop into meetings or show up somewhere that's kind of my idea that this is a bigger problem we need to lean in a little bit more here yeah yeah yeah even when the vp gets involved and it's it's a challenge we're continuing to try to to face is you know we try to get up to a vp early you know data shows us that our current company that our win rates are significantly higher when we're at the vp level yeah which is i mean that's just kind of makes sense but a lot of the vps don't want to get involved until 75 of the sales process has been done and you know so So we do our best to get up when we can.

45:44Most times we don't meet with the VPs until we're a finalist or very close to the end. Yeah. Let's shift gears a bit and talk about things through more of a lens of a leader who is either directly managing reps or someone directly managing managers.

46:05We were talking about this idea of coaching versus feedback. Yeah.

46:11um and having a process and helping reps execute that process is one thing but then like the day to day coaching throughout this stuff and like really transferring the skills a whole nother beast as you know yeah um how do you think about the coaching element and what kind of rhythms do you like to have with the teams that you've worked with around like when the coaching happens and how we have one-on-ones dedicated to this. Is it more ad hoc? Is it both? Is it, you know, I want the rep to kind of coach themselves a bit. And like, how do you think about the whole coaching, you know, aspect of it?

46:50Yeah. Ever since COVID, I've tried in how busy everybody got with their calendar. I did eight to five every day. I have tried to be more deliberate with the meetings I have with my team to make sure that they have enough time to go sell. So we do regular one-on-ones with everybody. That's, you know, a non-negotiable. We try to do, we do a bi-weekly team meeting so they have more time to do that. We have a weekly forecast review. Those are the two meetings. I think the coaching and the feedback, for me, it comes down to who the individual is. Right? Some folks can be very, they love coaching. They want coaching.

47:34I have a couple of reps on my team who send me their gone calls and say, hey, I need your feedback on this. Yeah. Great. So those individuals, coaching is easy because they're open to it, right? You know, over the years, there's been individuals who aren't open to coaching. And it's more subtle. It's more during the one-on-one and have you thought about this or what if you did that, right? So it does, I think one of the lessons, one of the things I've tried to, I've learned and I continually struggle with it, just because of the way I sold was successful doesn't mean it's the way everybody has to sell.

48:11There's a lot of different ways. So when I think about coaching, I continually try to check myself to make sure, am I coaching them on something that was successful for me, but doesn't have to be something for them to be successful? So I'm always trying to understand the individual and understand how they work, how they like to work, and their process. Because their process most likely is so different than my process. So one-on-ones, not too many ad hoc right now, but occasionally you'll need that. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, with your current team, like to deliver the coaching across the, like, how does it typically?

48:55fluctuate across the reps? It's all in person, I think. You know, sometimes it needs to be through chat if you have to, like, but for the most part, it's always on teams when we're doing a one-on-one. Yeah. So one thing that you've mentioned a couple of times is this phrasing of, have you thought of this or how are you thinking of this? I don't want to gloss over that. That's like there's a huge difference between coaching someone and leading them to the solution to where they feel like ownership over it. And they've also kind of thought about it and been resourceful versus just telling them what they should do.

49:37So do you have an example of like, let's say that you've identified that this rep has trouble getting like to the four to five levels deep of the so what question. Like, how do you bring that up to them and kind of lead them to that versus just telling them what question they should ask next time? How do you think about that? I never, I think gong is an amazing tool. I don't want this to be a gong commercial, but for a lot, you know, a lot of the time when I see that, it's after the fact. I'm not on a discovery call and I try to block off two to three hours a week throughout the course of the week to just review gong calls to see if there's anything I need to know or for coaching and all that stuff.

50:18So when we put the discovery framework into Gong, I did tell my team, I'm going to start just the feedback on your discovery calls is going to be in Gong. So don't be surprised if you see a message pop up and there's some feedback from me. And, you know, somebody once said to me, Tiger Woods doesn't just show up on Sunday and win a tournament. Like he practices. He looks at his film. He understands what he needs to improve. So I told him through that lens, that's what I'm doing. I'm looking at your calls. It's very easy for me to Monday morning quarterback this, like three days after the call.

50:55I'm like, you missed this. You missed that. You missed that. But in my feedback, I'm just going through the discovery framework. Yeah. And I'm like, hey, you did a really nice job asking this question. You built credibility. Like, great question. Here was the moment you should have asked two more questions. Yeah. Right. And it's not, I don't tell them what those questions should be because that's for them to try to, in the moment, know what those questions are. But the goal is next time he hears or she hears that answer, they're thinking, okay, I need to ask another question or another question.

51:29So right now when it comes very much to discovery, it's all through the Gong scorecard. And I've given the expectation up front that I'm going to be giving the feedback through this channel because that's where you need some help or will improve our process if you get some of these things earlier. So that's where I'm doing it mostly right now. Yeah. So a big part of this, it sounds like, I know it just, again, it might be very obvious to you, but you're blocking off two or three hours a week to just listen to calls. Yeah. Most leaders that I know do not do that. Most of it's riding shotgun here and there or just showing up to one-on-one and asking a rep what they want to talk about and what they need help with.

52:12There's no proactive kind of element to it, you know? When I first got into leadership, actually, no, it was GoGuardian. Our CRO said to me at one time, he's like, you're accountable for all this. You may have sales leaders. You may have a team of 20 reps. But ultimately, this number is yours. Yeah. And not that I wasn't involved before because I love selling. I love it. There will probably be a time in my career where I go back to just carrying a bag. I love it. I like being part of the sales process. I love being on meetings. I love traveling to meet with clients. Yeah. So even though ultimately the number rolls up to me, I still enjoy being in the field.

52:57I still enjoy asking discovery questions and solving problems and helping them be better. So for me, it was very natural. And I think if any sales leader isn't out there in the field or being with their team, it's just a missed opportunity. And I do know back, it's probably just a foundation again from BMC. I remember our sales leaders used to put their quarterly calendar together. And if they had a team of six, they were in the field two weeks a quarter with each rep. So in the field for 12 weeks and back in the office for the last week of the quarter closing business. Like it was just ingrained that your sales leader would always put time on your calendar to be with you in the field.

53:40Yeah. And I do think though the challenge, sometimes that challenge is now with everything being so remote. Yeah. Right. It's hard. It's hard to just be in the field with somebody. Yeah. We try in this role, this organization, this industry, we try to get in the field. Like we ask, we make the request. I think I've been on site six times in 15 months. Yeah. Right. So it's, there's still a lot of challenges to overcome when it comes to getting in the field. Yeah. There's nothing like getting in person, man. The relationship that you build and then the rapport. Yeah. That happens around it. It just, it's like being in the office again, man.

54:20Yeah. You know, it just doesn't happen. Like it can really accelerate a relationship. Last thing I wanted to ask you about is PipeGen. What do you see in working right now from a PipeGen standpoint? I know it's a lot harder these days. I'm going to turn that question around to you, Jason. Yeah. Okay, Jason, what are you seeing that's been successful in PipeGen? Well, I think it depends on the sales motion, but there's kind of a couple of very distinct things. I think if you are in vertical SaaS or you are very niche around specific industries, a lot of the traditional outbound works pretty well because you can be so specific with the message without having to customize everything so much.

55:01So, for example, you know, a client of ours sells an automated welding solution. It's an example I give a lot. And it's specifically like a use case would be a company that sells really large trailer parts. there's a labor shortage around welders right now people aren't getting into the trades and these are really large metal parts that need to be welded that are traditionally very hard to automate so like you're reaching out to like manufacturers and heads of operations it's so like specific niche and like really big enterprise and so so specialized that you can do quite a bit of volume of outreach and not have to like individually customize everything because it's so centered around this like problem that everyone is having.

55:45Yeah. Right. So I think that the traditional outbound works really well there. When you say traditional, are you talking just pick up the phone? Pick up the phone, send the emails, LinkedIn messages, et cetera. Ken, who heads up Enterprise BDR at Rippling was on the podcast. He talked about something I see working really well is, you know, the old groundswell motion of I'm going to talk to ICs and managers and get insights and bubble it up to someone a little more senior, like a director of quality, let's say. The way that they use gifting and gift cards and, you know, like Grubhub cards or whatever is to get the meetings with the ICs and managers because a director is not going to be enticed by a$50.

56:26Me saying I'll give you a$50 Grubhub card is not going to make you want to take a meeting with me. With my kids. You know, but an IC, it might, right? And then using that as a way to get intel and just a foot in the door with the account really quickly so that you can get insight that's not showing up in a quarterly earnings call, that's not showing up in a 10K or a 10Q, et cetera. That's worked really well. And there's the whole other element of if you can figure out how to do stuff in person, like Matt was on the podcast, Matt Rogers, yesterday, and a big way that he built pipeline at Neo4j at first was, you know he went into a territory he said where the previous three reps had not hit quota right so it's like a failing territory in an industry he's never sold in before with a product that he's never sold before and his whole thing was like finding the networking and trade groups in like atlanta for example around like data and just like getting to know people and like there were people in his accounts there at these events then him and brian would go out and like sponsor some of these events i think hosting dinners like the thing that i really think about a lot from an outbound standpoint right now is really three parts it's it's a disqualify offer and provoke disqualify is even at the strat level there are accounts in your book that like you shouldn't be engaging with right now.

57:55You need to figure out like what those signals and triggers and like all of the ICP fit stuff so that you can say, you know what, because outbound is harder and it takes more effort, I'm going to be really picky about where I choose to spend that effort. The offer piece is like, what do I have to offer you besides just asking you to hop on a call with me? Is it an executive dinner that I can show up to? Is it that you have insight around something my peers are doing? Is it that you've already talked to people on my team maybe and you know something that I don't know. Is there some sort of, depending on what you sell, some sort of, you know, with an e-com company we worked with, it was, they go through the whole purchasing process on the website at Home Depot, let's say, and they've run like a cart audit and they have all of these things that they're not doing.

58:39Like that's really valuable. Maybe it's a workshop. I don't know. There's all kinds of things, but like, what's the offer? And then the provoke piece is the messaging. It's the point of view stuff we were just talking about. But I really see like the offer, like really thinking about like how to articulate what they're going to get from that first interaction with you is really everything, man. But I'm still seeing a lot of success with the traditional channels. You just can't spray and pray emails anymore. You know, you can't just load up a bunch of people into a dialer and start having random conversations like the expectation from the buyer around what you need to know about them before they ever interact with you is like really, really high.

59:22It's extremely high right now. It's interesting you say that. We have noticed in this space particularly,

59:31most of the time we get an inbound, it's really qualified. Yeah. And then we learn through the process that they're already 75, they've done 75 % of their evaluation. And it kind of blows your mind to think like they reached out to us, they've already narrowed it down to three finalists and they're setting out RFP in 30 days. And it's like, yeah, we're working with Gartner and we just picked the top three. And it's like, wow, you guys are. So it is, that is the personalization. We've been working a lot on personalization. We haven't had a ton of executive success right now. We are seeing our most success through LinkedIn.

1:00:10Yeah. And sales nav is where we're seeing most of our success. The one that interests me the most that you just talked about was the offer. Yeah. I think we should probably start thinking about regional events like the one you just mentioned where we could sponsor some things and maybe just start to get to know people. Yeah, what are the associations that these quality folks, like that's the thing is like you want to get engaged with the executive, but the folks in quality, there's got to be, this has got to be like no different than how developers have all of their kind of special stuff that they do that's really niche.

1:00:44There's got to be some organizations that they're a part of that you can sponsor, contribute content and thought leadership to and like host events and dinners and like team up with, I think would be really big. And the companies you're reaching out to are publicly traded, all of them, right? For the most part, I mean, there's private. I mean, this industry is fascinating, Jason. Like this, we mainly, we have where we can sell into any vertical, mainly manufacturing, heavy industry, you know, is kind of our sweet spot. there's some large manufacturing companies out there that are private. Yeah.

1:01:19Even public. You've never heard of before. Yeah. And you're like, they're in. I mean, most of the Fortune 500, I feel like, is like that. It's just like companies you don't even think about. Right. I mean, so we're working with some companies that I've never heard of before. They're like$4 billion companies. They're located in Georgia. I'm like, okay. And then what I love about it, what's so cool, is sometimes you find these companies who manufacture things that you use every day. Yeah. But they're in products that you use every day. Yeah. You don't know the manufacturer behind it. You just know, like, the Apple phone or anything, right?

1:01:53Yeah. So they're building the parts for that. Yeah. And it's like, wow, I didn't even know you existed. I just figured it was a phone. Yeah. And it's really cool. So you do stumble upon some cool technology. Yeah. As you go through this space. Well, I'm also wondering if there's some sort of analysis, because you're already doing the point of view. I'm wondering if there's some sort of analysis that you can put on that sort of estimates certain margin compression and the opportunity for that and like the quality and like there might be some sort of thing like that. Is there an opportunity for you guys to experience the, like you mentioned that they manufacture some products and things.

1:02:32Is there anything that is like a consumer facing brand that's like they manufacture something that you could buy? like a consumer product like yeti or something like that oh um yeah like so think of somebody like they're not on our radar but like somebody like ge who manufactures refrigerators like that would be a prospect for us because they've yeah they're manufacturing refrigerators and they're selling them all across the world yeah there's something to like so i'll give you an example one of the reps and this is not quite the prince just kind of the principle here is is what will apply because it's b2c consumer brands and it was like patagonia was an account i mean she just went into a patagonia store talked to some of the folks to figure out how they were doing some of the e-com stuff and then just took a picture of herself in front of the store and then sent it to the vp of marketing with some of the insights that she found and she leaned into meeting it's like that would be hard because we have to walk into like the ge manufacturing plant take a picture of their process.

1:03:36But I'm wondering if there's some sort of equivalent of where can that in-person component come in that? Yeah, I get that. And it's an interesting one, and it could work. It really could. Because one of the things that they're most concerned about, any manufacturer, is recalls, warranty, customer issues. So there could be a component of that where if we have a product that they're using and we know there's an issue with it. I mean, talk about provocative. Yeah, and there's all kinds of research online, I'm assuming, where people might be complaining about stuff, are recalls. I have one more idea for you.

1:04:22What I'm wondering also, because I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of someone. And so there's this referral play that we are rolling out at Outbound Squad. Okay. So the referral play is we have a list of about 5 ,000 people that have participated in the training in the last two or three years. And then I also have a list of people that have participated in a deal. So we call it the buying team and the training team. It's about, I think, 6 ,000, 6 ,500 between the two. and then what we will do is we have a tool now that will automate some of this but you can do a lot of it through sales nav is all of the people that are like a manager director plus we will look through their first degree connections in sales nav to see if there are first degree connections with anyone that is at a company that we want to work with and i don't see a lot of sales teams running that play at scale it's like when you think about your company's called octave right yeah you think about octave it's like think about all of the customers that you have that are likely first degree connections of the people that you want to get a hold of and it's like there's so much opportunity there to work like the warm intro into that account through a customer yeah that is a play like scaling that out the champions, the people that have been a part of like the user, like one of the users of your product looking at their first degree.

1:05:52I mean, there's so much there, dude. I think oftentimes what we tend to do is we just look through team link and see if anyone that works at our company is a first degree connection. What about the people that fucking love our product already? Yeah. So, you know, interesting you say that we, um, I have a list of all of our customers uploaded into my sales nav. And I run that play. And so it's, I don't know if I go to, I do, okay. I, you know, I started the top, like, so what we're looking for, and I actually just took one of my reps through it yesterday because I, he had heard us talking. He, either way, he kind of misunderstood what we were trying to do.

1:06:28So I finally took it through yesterday. And it's amazing. I put in all of his top 20 accounts. you know our prospect our customer list and it pulled up 6 700 people from those 20 accounts that have some done some type of business with us before in the past yeah dude and but then you start narrowing it down like it's like you don't need to talk to people marketing you don't need to talk to people sure so what there's probably a couple dozen people there that he could so what we ended up aligning on was that there's like 60 personas that we align with that he can go now target. And then there's also maybe like 150 that would be interesting to talk to if he could get a meeting with them.

1:07:14Like to your point, maybe the IC or the managers or somebody in an ancillary position that might be able to add some value to the quality conversation. So he went from, you know, not having anybody warm to target to potentially 200 people he could reach out to and just start prospecting. So we do, I do love that play. and so I don't know if most of my team is running it. I don't know how successful it's been yet. Yeah. I run that play. Like I said, we all have sales in the title. I'll prospect. Yeah. I'll run that probably once or twice a week. I'll run that search and I'll just start prospecting into some folks just to see if I can get an introduction or get a bite or something for my team.

1:07:57And, you know, occasionally it works. Sometimes it doesn't, but at least that's a better way to get in. 100%, dude. Yeah. We got to take off, man. We do. So my one rapid fire question for you is. I forgot you do these. This one's a fun one. Okay. I just learned this one today. What is your fuck you money purchase? Oh, geez. Now that I'm a dad of two, I don't know if I have a real. I don't know. Maybe it's a new house or something, you know? That's a good one. Or a mansion. Wow.

1:08:32That's a good one. the only thing that comes to mind. Okay. And it did change. I mean, obviously the house and all that stuff. Like I'd love to have a, I still look at a New York city market and I'd love to buy like a, an amazing condo somewhere in New York city. Like that would be, if I had that, like I would definitely buy something in New York city. That was, you know, a lot of money. But the first thing that came to mind was I've always, I, before I got married and had kids, I was, I loved watches. like I'd love I'd go buy myself a really nice watch like probably a nice six figure watch somewhere that and I would love that yeah yeah dude I'm always looking at watches I just can't can't pull my pull the trigger to spend it when I have two young kids yeah no kidding dude can't do it love it man before you take off where can people go to connect with you and let us know too is you know is Octave hiring yeah can people go check out Octave and if so we're yeah so So Octave.com, our business unit is Octave Reliance.

1:09:35It's a quality piece. I'm happy to say I have been off of most social media since 2008, but they can find me on LinkedIn. I'm there. I'm starting to be more active. It was my 2026 goal. Yeah, and Octave is hiring across the board, all positions, sales. I currently have one open ad on my team, but we are hiring across all of Octave too, so they can go out to Octave.com. if they're interested they can reach out to me I can put them in touch with the recruiters but yeah we're growing or you could cold call them that would be the I won't give them my number yeah you're gonna have to find it on Zoom info scary if it's in there alright that's a wrap

1:10:30Thank you.