Marketing and Sales Alignment in the Enterprise

Paul Clinton: Foreign. Clinton again with uh, the B2B marketing how to Stand out podcast. And we interviewed John Wright, a uh, sales leader at various online recruitment SaaS providers. Uh, most recently he was the SVP, uh, at Employ. Uh, we talked to John about a couple of really interesting topics. Uh, we covered um, alignment, uh, in sales and marketing in the enterprise and what that looks like. Uh, we talked about whether lead attribution is necessary and, or helpful. And we also talked about the three parts of an all bound motion for your go to market. And I hope you enjoyed the interview. You've been in interesting environments. You know one thing that really stuck out um, you know, on your, on your LinkedIn profile for me was I believe you said, um, you know, your last role that you um, had um, partnered with product marketing and customer success to refine value messaging and icp. Let's just kind of start with that idea. I mean I, you know, not everybody necessarily um, would say that we, yes, we need like sales and marketing working you know, closely together. But many people would. But it, it is a worthy goal, right?

John Wright: Yeah, I think so. Right. I think that's the, the, the goal. And uh, in a lot of companies you see it you know, manifest uh, as you have like a CRO who oversees both. Right. And trying to have some sort of alignment and cohesion between the groups. Um, it's also difficult. I think a lot of what we, we've run into in, in my past experience is um, you know, how are KPIs different for, for marketing versus sales, right? Like what are, what is sales viewing as success versus marketing viewing as success? Which I think, you know, if there's misalignment there, it's incredibly tough to have, you know, common goals and success that everybody stacks hands on. Right. What you, is those meetings where both are pointing their fingers at each other saying well, you know, we sent you enough leads. Well, the leads you sent us aren't quality.

Paul Clinton: Right?

John Wright: All of that, that infighting that just leads to uh, you know, a lot of problems.

Paul Clinton: Well, let's, let's kind of um, start kind of back up a step, you know, with kind of the business strategy piece. And I always feel like, you know, like I said, that seems to be like the, the root of the problem in a lot of cases. Um, so you know, obviously it's going to come from the executive level, um, business strategy and we all need you know, strong executive leaders who, who you know, who support this idea. Um, but, but let's say we'd have that. Um, and so I Guess the, you know, the first thing that, that, you know, when you talk about refining your icp, I mean, that's your ideal customer profile. A lot of times, you know, sales owns that. And I kind of feel like a lot of times marketing, uh, the marketing side of the house doesn't take enough ownership, uh, on the icp. Refining the icp. But, um, you know, what do you see as like, marketing's role, you know, in helping with the icp? They always hear the phrase, you know, like, sales is closest to the customer. I don't think anybody would do that. But like, but there's a way for, you know, do you feel like marketing, uh, the marketing side, you know, perhaps could sit in on sales calls or at least listen, uh, to like the gong, uh, calls or look at transcripts. What are some things that you think, you know, ways that the marketing team can get involved in helping with the icp?

John Wright: Yeah, I think that's great. I mean, in a lot of terms. In a lot of ways. Um, and thankfully at my last company where we did a lot of work on this, marketing had a big presence there and it had a lot of opportunity to influence direction of where we're going to go. Um, I think sales is kind of like the leading edge of. Here's what we're seeing and what do we do with this? Tie all that with Revops being able to help piece some, some past successes and some of the data points together. Um, but I think from. From a marketing view, like, you know, the. To me it's all about like, ICP is one thing, but it's within that there's the silos of like, you know, the Persona within the ICP of the company that we would want to talk to. Right. What are the different Personas? How do we message them? What do they even care about? Sales isn't equipped, I would say, to be. Define all of that, um, in a vacuum or on their own. Right. I think they're not always keen and up to date on like, best practices for certain components and marketing is. And they can leverage their expertise and even their past successes of where they're seeing, you know, different mediums or different types of messages land well or not well with different Personas. So I think there's a lot of, A lot of, you know, creation a lot of work that can be done there together in that, um, the thing you mentioned about Gong, right. We were trying to get into that one, one big thing. And this may take off of kind of where you're wanting the conversation to Go. But, um, your marketing has kind of always looked, at least in my experience, on how do they help further in the funnel versus just top of funnel. Right. Like, how do we help with deals that are in flight or, you know, deals that are stalled, um, that have been working for quite some time. Is there any velocity they can add behind that? Um, we were starting to get into that, right, like gong and tools like that are really good for, you know, kind of aggregating all that data and giving you some results that say, like, these are the common places where getting stopped out. How do we get ahead of that? Is that marketing proactively messaging things, um, you know, stuff like that. I think is, is, is, is thoughtful, but also like, kind of could be like the nirvana world, right? Where it's like, it's the perfect, the utopia of what you're trying to get to, but difficult to, to really land. Uh, yeah.

Paul Clinton: Ah, yeah. And so we, I don't know, you know, how you would look at it. I mean, we always hear like, funnel and pipeline, and I know those are kind of, you know, sometimes used interchangeably. But, you know, the way, the way I look at it is, you know, marketing's job get people into this pipeline, uh, where, you know, we're, we're, we're kind of moving people along from, you know, traffic to MQL to SQL to opportunity to close one. Of course, that's like the way I would see, like an ideal situation. And I feel like each of those, each of those touch points, um, you know, marketing has an opportunity to play some kind of a role, um, and, you know, depending on the size of the organization. But, but, you know, I think of marketing, um, you know, really understands, uh, the prospects and the ICP on a deep level. Um, you understand the pain points, you understand what people are trying to solve. Um, you know, then perhaps you can develop, you know, resources that can, um, you know, like, I talked to a fractional CMO a couple of weeks ago and he said, I said, well, what do you think about sales enablement? Because I'm a big believer in like, um, you know, sales enablement, developing battle cards, developing messaging, things like that. And he said, you know, actually the way I would put it is like buyer enablement. Buyer enablement, um, you know, and kind of reframing it a little bit and just thinking about, you know, ways, you know, for kind, um, of taking sales and marketing, that verbiage out of it and just sort of focusing, you know, it kind of puts the focus on the buyer a lot more um, and then I think there's opportunities, you know, like where marketing can come in with, with um, you know, I don't know, like a loom video audit or just different pieces of collateral, certain, certain um, you know, value, um, um, you know, pieces of messaging or content that can kind of help support that buyer along those steps. I, I know I put a lot out there, but what do you think of, of of that idea?

John Wright: I'm a big fan of like, you know, and, and it serves a, uh, selfish purpose, but like a buyer's guide being, you know, relevant content and digestible or consumable content on a website or you know, sent out via some sort of, uh, you know, campaign. Um, as one, it helps steer the company in the direction of being able to actually purchase something you're selling. But two, you know, give sales somebody that they can connect with and reach out to. What's interesting though is like, it's almost like what we're needing to see and, and get better at is, is you know, marketing going further down the pipeline or the funnel, you know, more and sales coming up more. Right. Versus that intersection of where there is that handoff, call it as an MQL or a hand raiser, where sales really had no influence in it. Um, but they take it over from that point and then you know, everybody just kind of like backs up and you know, it's a true handoff where um, what a lot of times, uh, what we were trying to do and we had some success in this is um, you know, as like marketing is putting content out there as people are digesting things and maybe they're not scoring a threshold high enough that rates, you know, uh, a hand raiser or calling it a qualified lead, but giving sales access to those lower score threshold leads that are digesting some content and continuing to be relevant and reaching out to them directly. Maybe not with a hard ask, um, but that really helps, right? Like putting the human inside of that and putting a person at that level. Um, similar where as you get kind of into the middle or the end of the funnel and you're the sole sales rep reaching out to, you know, the buyers and the evaluators at a company having that marketing voice is helpful as well as like, kind of like the air cover, you know, just continuing validation of like case study type things, ROI scenarios, stuff that's going to help them, you know, feel more confident about moving things forward.

Paul Clinton: When you, when you hear that phrase buyer enablement, um, you know, what, what do you think about it? Or if you prefer Sales enablement. Either way, what do you think about, you know, when you hear a phrase like that?

John Wright: When I heard buyer enablement I immediately started thinking about like the buyer's guide that we were talking about. Right. Um, Sales enablement to me, right, is, is by default always just viewed as like training um, you know and, and usage of, of systems and, and, and you know, bettering, you know, execution of skills and things like that. The buyer enablement, I mean it's a concept of a word I hadn't really heard, probably have, but not really felt about until you brought that up.

Paul Clinton: It's an interesting reframe, isn't it? Interesting reframe. But maybe you need both buyer enabled and sales enablement. Because I think you do need something like sales enabled the way I look at it. And you know you've worked in kind of enterprise and I don't know if you were near uh, enterprise or enterprise. You've worked at a lot of different kind of, you know, online uh, recruitment, you know, websites that uh, so you, you're kind of in a little bit of a different world than kind of, you know, smaller companies that are trying to figure this out. Um, but you know, at that level, um, you know you, you things like uh, competitive intelligence or looking at win loss scenarios or getting, getting good head to head, um, you know, um, positioning um, analysis uh, versus you know, competitors. I mean that kind of stuff can really help the sales team, right?

John Wright: Yeah, absolutely. I mean um, we, I, I think a lot of sellers would probably say the same thing but you know we were in a pretty saturated market with tons of competition. Um, you know, whether it be point solutions that could kind of nip at the heels of what you're trying to sell and take a little bit of the market share away or you know, larger platforms that could just gobble up in entirety, you know of somebody's budget and leave no room for, for you to have that. So it's pretty important like to get ahead of that quick learn like the span of you know, all of the competition that's out there and the level at which their, their engagement will be. Because we knew right if you're going up against a larger platform like an hcm, you know, coming from the applicant tracking world, uh, an HCM provider that has an ats, that's part of it, odds are, you know they're at a level, the HCM providers at a level of, of executive that they're speaking to that it's way higher than we are at. So like our, we're Going to be butting our heads up against something that's probably an immovable mountain, uh, that we can't, you know, overcome. Ver, you know, a point solution we could figure out how to sell around better. But yeah, I think it's all, um, relevant and needed. I, I don't know if it pertains like how, you know, you, you've got yourself a hard job. Right. I think everybody's realizing that most buyers or those evaluating now are trying to do way more on their own independent research before they talk to a person, um, and get themselves 80, 90% of the way to a decision and even maybe a product identified that they want to buy before they have to and maybe even reluctantly connect with somebody. Um, so figuring that balance out is, is tough, right? Because messaging, I think is, is key and how forceful you're trying to push a, um, you know, a product awareness or a meeting getting booked or something along those lines. Uh, but how do you balance and kind of like, uh, you know, have that, that, that thread, that needle, if you will.

Paul Clinton: So give me your thoughts. I mean, I'd be happy to share my thoughts. Of course. This is what we do every day, help companies with messaging. But give me, you know, what do you think good messaging looks like? Um, and what is it? What are the components of like good messaging? If you could.

John Wright: I don't, I feel like I don't even know anymore. Right.

Paul Clinton: That's the tough part.

John Wright: Right? Because like the old school seller me was always like, um, you know, you use the most common used medium of like LinkedIn, email or phone. And you know, back in my days of when I was selling things at like Career Builder, um, you know, it was pretty, just direct, hey, do you want to have this meeting? Let's get on a call, talk. And there wasn't that opportunity for them to be able to research so much more. So I think it's more awareness campaigns, education, messaging, softer asks around meetings, opportunities to say, if you want to connect, let's do that. But I think this is more of a world where you've got to give a lot more. Um, and everybody always says like, you know, bring value to me, sure, like that's, that's relevant, but it's, it's hard to figure out what that value looks like. But it's more along the lines of, you know, hey, we, we've built all of this content. We're just going to send this to you in an opportunity to see if, if this is going to help, you know, whatever you're up Against. Right. Like I, like I say you build something like a buyer's guide that they can use to internally navigate the complexities of purchasing software at their company. That's m. A value add, uh, that you can send their way. Right. And that's agnostic to your product. But it gets your brand and gets your awareness, you know, on their radar.

Paul Clinton: Definitely. And I, you know, I think the reason why I, you know, to tie it back to what we started with in the conversation about business strategy nailed up front is to me that, that, you know, in our experience with the clients that we help, you know, that that actually makes the messaging a lot easier because, uh, especially if you have like, sales and marketing, uh, on the same page with refining the ICP look, you know, doing buyer Personas, understanding those, um, doing the positioning, the differentiation. So once you kind of do those steps, setting company goals, even potentially doing okrs, I don't know if you guys had okrs, ah, where you were, uh, but getting all of that stuff clear, um, and then writing the messaging from there. Um, and of course you still need a framework to write the messaging, but when you understand the audience, the person you're writing it to, um, it makes it a lot easier then to kind of. What we see so often is to try to reverse engineer it by starting at the messaging piece and trying to work backward and then trying to take some stuff and plug it into AI and, and hoping you. Hoping for the best and trying to figure it out. Um, to me, something like that is, is not going to get you the same results as sort of starting at the foundation. Like when you build a house, you know, you got to put the foundation first before you can do the walls and the roof. Uh, if you try to start with the roof, it's not going to work. So I don't know.

John Wright: Agreed. Yeah, we're. I told you. Yeah, I told you that I left employee back in December and I'm talking with, uh, a couple folks here about a interesting opportunity that, um, I might jump at and like their startup. But they are incredibly thoughtful of how they're going to take this to market and like, being narrowly focused on, you know, a tight icp.

Paul Clinton: Oh, good.

John Wright: Um, and I think that that's key, right. For a lot. Right. Unless you want to have this wave of, you know, pandemonium or hype that just grows your product and you're going to be something to everyone. If you could, you know, get in really tight to an ICP and master that and move on from there. I think, uh, I Think that's, you know, key now, right? Because, because all of your messaging is highly tuned to that, um, to the commonalities that they have. The Personas are all relatively similar. Um, you know, the list is endless as the value behind that.

Paul Clinton: Well, you're, you're, you know, especially for like a startup, I mean the, the growth trajectory is like an emotional roller coaster. You know, we've all experienced that. Anybody who's worked with a startup or in a startup, you know, I, I've worked, uh, I, you know, I have a startup and I've worked in with startup know and uh, it's, it's wild. And so it feels like, you know, as, as you kind of grow and as you, as you start to figure uh, it out, obviously you have to have a product and an offer nailed. But you know, you're, you're looking for not, not you're trying to kind of straighten out that line a little bit and get the, the, the growth to be a little bit more predictable. Right. As opposed to having these, these wild swings. Like one month you're up, one month you have nothing. Um, and so you know, when you, I feel like when you get the business strategy right. Nailed and then you, and then you get the messaging nailed, um, you know what I've seen is that, is that you start seeing a little bit more. You get some systems in place. You know, you start. And it's not just kind of like all um, based on, you know, what the founder does from uh, uh, 6:00am to midnight or whatever his hours are. You know, it's not based on his, his, his work schedule. You know, you're kind of putting systems in place. So, so then you're, you're looking for more predictable growth. Right? Isn't that the goal?

John Wright: Yeah, I would say so, yeah. And, and it makes it, you know, you, you brought up a good point. Right. So like most organizations, I mean there's, there's more now that are like industry focused, have their divisions that are in industry focused. But even where I was just at it with employ, we had three flagship products, um, literally every company in the world, we could sell something to someone. Yeah. And that was kind of the approach at one point was like how do we generalize messaging to get in front of everybody to try to pull them in and realizing quickly that, you know, you have to take this down to the product level and message with somebody, you know, specifically that's going to fit better in this bucket. Um, you know, this Persona here differently than you're going to message to somebody over here. Um, you know, all while kind of finding that balance. Yeah, I think it's, it's, it's key. Otherwise, I mean, you, you probably see it all day. The, the generic messaging that's reaching inboxes and, and LinkedIn inboxes is just, you know, skipped over entirely because there's. There's zero, zero thought behind it and zero, um, you know, personalization that matters.

Paul Clinton: Yep. 100. And. And actually I, I literally just wrote a blog actually about this. Um, you know, the ways, I mean, I've written a lot of blogs, but you know, the post about this, but the way, you know, messaging is generic and that makes you invisible. Um, but now I, I see even, um, you know, in, in cold email, I, I see quote, unquote personalization where they will say, you know, quick note, Paul. So, um, even they, you. Even though they use like a personalization token and my name is there, it's still, it's still completely generic.

John Wright: Uh, totally.

Paul Clinton: The way I, I mean, the way we think about it is we kind of think about messaging as like three, three parts, right? We think, you know, put the focus on the prospect, not you. Not, you know, I don't use the word I, you know, so put the focus on them. Number two. Um, you know, speak to a pain point. Don't, don't speak to your product. Don't pitch slap them. You know, don't say, you know, what you're, what you're offering. Ask them a question about, you know, even if you don't know exactly what their pain point is. You know, take, take an educated guess or do some homework, uh, do a little homework on it. You know, and that, that starts to, that starts to, you know, speak to like, are, do you even have an ICP or are you just doing like a spray and pray email campaign? That doesn't work. So, um, yeah, so if you have an icp, you know, that's detailed, you're going to understand that, that, um, the pain points that you've heard from actual customers or prospects that you've talked to, that you've tried to make customers, um, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna understand what their pain points likely are. Um, so yeah, you can at least say give an educated guess. And then, and then part three of that is, um, you know, offer. When I say offer something of value, you know, offer. Hey, you know, would it help if I did like a, you know, an audit of your website messaging or would it help if I, if I came out and did a Free estimate of your roof to see if um, you even need our help. Just something like that. So to me, when you use that three step, you know, um, messaging approach, you know, that works a lot better than saying, you know, hey, just circling back, just checking in, quick question, you know, none of that stuff works anyway. What are your thoughts?

John Wright: Yeah, I like the uh, the audit angle is always key. Right. I think that's, that's a good way to get into a good conversation and possibly show people things that they're not necessarily thinking about today. I'm curious, from your, your experience right now, um, given you know, what you're focused on is like, what are you seeing as like, like common expectations or goals of like the balance of like a true inbound lead, you know, that's coming in organically versus what you know, marketing or sales is, is generating through, you know, targeted outbound efforts. Like, is what's like common ratio goals that folks are having right now.

Paul Clinton: You mean, when you say ratio that you mean like what, like what part of your campaign should be inbound versus outbound?

John Wright: Yeah, exactly. Or what part of the, the, the, the leads. Right. What part of what's actually coming in, um, and attributed to uh, inbound versus outbound?

Paul Clinton: Well, I, I think it's a great question and I think, you know, getting into that classic discussion about attribution is always one of those things that you hear a lot about. And, and you know, I'm, I've actually never been like a huge fan of, of, of kind of getting into like, oh, is it last touch? Is it multi touch? And you know, all of these, all of these attribution things. Um, to me I just think that's, that's kind of a waste of time and it just shows that um, sales and marketing don't have alignment. If everybody's saying fight, like you said earlier, fighting over this is our lead or that that's.

John Wright: Yeah, yeah.

Paul Clinton: So, so that should be off the table. So I mean the whole, you know, but, but, but I feel like, um. So I mean the way I, the way I, I actually think about it myself is like, you know, inbound, all uh, outbound and near bound. So near bound would be like the referral, um, side of the it, uh, so having those three pieces and then, and then. So that's like your true, like what you would call like an all bound campaign as opposed to um, just focusing on one or the one, uh, number one, number two or number three. Um, so I think you kind of need like all three of those pieces. You Know, kind of set up and kind of running and having them all, you know, and then the way I've been thinking about lately, just in terms of my own, my own, um, you know, outreach is, you know, things are not, you know, as kind of simple as they were, you know, five or 10 years ago, where like you send an email to somebody as, as cold outreach and then you try to call them and then you try to email them again, and then you try to call them again. Um, so now, now all of these things are kind of interwoven where like you're doing the email campaign, you're doing the outreach, you know, on LinkedIn, DMs, you're doing uh, YouTube videos, you're doing a podcast maybe. Um, so, you know, separating, you know, obviously you have to have clarity of like, what's our outbound campaign? Okay, that's going to be our emailing, our calling, our DM messaging, you know, what's our inbound campaign? It's going to be uh, the content we produce, the social posts, the LinkedIn, uh, the LinkedIn post, uh, um, the podcast we do, the YouTube video content we're creating. So that's our inbound. And then we have to think about our near bound, you know, and our referral, uh, business and possible partners that could be bringing us business and think about, you know, how is that different? You know, that's going to be very different, you know, um, in terms of the messaging, uh, and the value add versus, um, you know, like somebody who comes in either as an outbound or an inbound lead. Um, an inbound lead, of course, you know, is going to be a lot more like people, um, call it now, like pre sold. You know, that's a very optimistic way to say it. But like when you create a lot of content, you know, like you said earlier, they're all, they're looking at all the content, they're doing all this research. So somebody who's going to be an inbound lead is going to be a lot more, um, you know, familiar with you, whereas the, you know, the outbound lead is going to be, um, you're going to have to do a little bit more work to kind of speak to uh, their pain and give them something of value. And then the near bound, the referral lead, um, you know, that's going to be a very different, um, conversation what they're looking for as far as a, uh, you know, partner, um, partnering, um, on that, on that. Um, but so when you get all those three kind of working together, you know, to me that's very complicated. But also um, when you kind of keep it straightforward and you get those pieces in place, um, to me that's, that's kind of the answer now. I mean I know that's like a really complicated answer to question. Yeah. If that answered it. But um, I think I need all three.

John Wright: Yeah, yeah, I agree and I, and, and I just think, you know, the quest of getting more of all three is always there. But obviously, you know, a lot of companies, until they figure it out, are heavily reliant on just hand raisers. Those pre sold folks, you know, being the source of, you know, majority of our pipeline and ultimate revenue that's coming through. Um, while the other two remain relatively um, untapped or at least not tap to their full potential.

Paul Clinton: Yeah, and I don't know, you would probably, I'm sure you would have thoughts about, you know, lead quality versus quantity. Um, you know, and that's where, you know, that's where like I'm a big believer in quality over quantity and fewer, you know, fewer touch points if you have to. But it's, if it's the right people, you know, because that, that's where you, you can really succeed when you do the business strategy and then get the messaging right. You know, you're going to get, you're going to get better customers, you're going to get people who are, who are more relevant, who actually need what you're, you're selling, you're offering. Um, and I just feel like the, uh, it also helps you, you know, just based on some companies I've worked with, it also helps you on retention and your churn rate because when you're bringing people in the door who, who actually are more relevant and, and actually feel a real urgency uh, to use your, your solution product or service to get a certain result, then they're probably going to be more committed to continuing with you as opposed to um, you know, getting in the door and then leaving after a month or three months or six months trying to get out of the contract. So I feel like um, that that's going to help you um, with that as well. But do you have any thoughts on that?

John Wright: Yeah, um, I agree. Yeah. I mean thoughts are that I'm aligned with that.

Paul Clinton: Right.

John Wright: I think you nailed it there. Um, yeah, I just, it's always again kind of of this balance of you know, especially if you, if you take uh, you know, an AE or an sdr like you know, how, how heavy and how much, you know, expectation you have on self generated Pipeline again, I'm, I'm relatively aligned with you and the fact that ultimately I never cared where it came from in terms of like, who to give like credit and you know, um, and, and where to you know, um, you know, say success came from. It was all supposed to be a cohesive kind of machine moving and everybody had, you know, influence in, in different areas. But that said, right. I mean it's obvious that there's a, a volume disparity and sometimes even a quality disparity of like what's coming from again those self generated or you know, inbound leads versus uh, you know, I, I picked five accounts or five companies. I for months researched them and reached out to people. Well now I've got two opportunities that came from that. That volume, um, smaller quality is likely a lot higher and even you know, um, revenue potential could be potentially higher in some of those scenarios as well.

Paul Clinton: Um, so yeah, boy, it helps when you, you really understand the customer, right? I mean the more you can understand the customer, the better you're going to be. Right?

John Wright: Well and again that's where the ICP comes from because otherwise you just like you're going to give an AE 700 accounts because they've got the northeast territory and tell them to go have fun. Like they always don't know where to start. Right. You kind of hone in from there and try to get to that. Depending on what solution you're selling and the volume of which and their sales cycle. Right. What are the 10 that you need to go after and, and focus primarily on that?

Paul Clinton: Are there, what, what's your advice for um, first for you know, uh, SDRs, or AES, you know, um, working a territory. I mean, are there some ways that they can um, some things um, that they can do to, to improve their messaging? Do you. I noticed that I think at your last role you, you did sales training. Um, so I don't know. Um, do you have any thoughts about um, you know, ways that the, the sales reps can, can um, get better at messaging?

John Wright: Yeah, I mean again I think it's just total personalization and it's, it's like getting to a shorter list essentially. So again, if I give you this territory, it's huge. What do you do with that? Right? You're not going to just start at the, that go alphabetically or by employee size. Maybe that's your strategy. It's probably not the best thoughtful one. Um, but it's, you know, how do you identify with, with in the industries? Where are we strongest? Um, within that. Right. Who has the highest propensity to spend based upon, you know, the, the makeup of their organization. Um, and then it's researching. Right? It's. We, we used to do a ton of front end auditing, um, around you know, what's their current applicant tracking system, what's the, their current a candidate experience. Go apply to one of their jobs and see if it's, you know, subpar and, and let's provide that feedback to the right people. And as you move up the chain in your outreach, you get more, less of focus around, you know, the, the nuance of features and more focused around the impact of the business. And I like the, the lack of change and, and the impact of, of either not or actually changing.

Paul Clinton: I like that you guys are out there doing some, some uh, some kind of first person research, you know, applying to their positions that you have to be doing right. So well, it's like how would you know what their process is unless you kind of tried to go through yourself?

John Wright: Yeah, it's kind of a luxury and I don't know if every industry has that right. If you're selling CRMs, you know, are you able to see who's got salesforce versus Slack? I mean you could use those tools out there that try to guide you in that direction. But it was fairly easy when we were selling something that was, you know, website facing and, and candidate facing, you could just go and view it and see what, what, what's the current setup in the current tech stack audit. It you, you now have you know, the roadmap and we've given you the, the intel to say if they have this solution, they likely have one of these three pain points. Um, surface that and talk about what that impact would be.

Paul Clinton: Fantastic. Well, this is really insightful. Um, yeah, John, thank you so much for you know, taking a couple minutes to, to, to talk to talk to me and uh, it was, it was a, a really great conversation.

John Wright: Yeah, agreed. Bald.

Paul Clinton: Thanks.

John Wright: Good luck with everything too. Okay. Let's stay in touch.

Paul Clinton: Yeah, absolutely. John, thank you so much. Take care of yourself.