66: The Power of Feedback Loops with Jennifer Moore of Clozd

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome back, rampants, to the SaaS ramp podcast. I'm, um, your host podcast. Pete. Got a good one for you today. Got Jennifer Moore, head of product management at Closed. I think you're going to enjoy today. Today's interesting because this is like a service and software kind of combination that Closed does Jennifer's product lead, so she's got a slightly different perspective on it as well. And there's some interesting potential titles here. We'll see when time comes. Whether this one is about feedback loops or it's about conversational gossips, you'll see. And if you stick around to the end, listen for that reference about Jingle Bell Rock. It's a fun little story. It's a fun little story right there. Not seasonal whatsoever, but definitely appropriate for the time. Okay, quick message from the sponsor. Rampant is a GONG certified services firm solving the challenge of revenue disparity among sales team members. So if you're looking to maximize your existing investment in GONG in your revenue intelligence platform to achieve measurable increases in deal size, deal velocity and win rates, connect with Pete at Rampant Cloud. All right, onto your regularly scheduled program. Enjoy. Welcome back, Rampants, to the SaaS Ramp Podcast. I'm your host podcast Pete, welcoming Jennifer Moore to the show today. Jennifer is the head of product management at, uh, Closed. Clozd Closed. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm really glad to have you on. It's super fun to talk to you before the show. There's like this thing, we call it a precast to the podcast. If, like, if we would just go ahead and click record and then we'd like, have like a whole different version of it. But it's been fascinating to speak to you so far. So, uh, I know my audience is in for a treat today.

Speaker B: Thank you. You too.

Speaker A: So you work for a very interesting organization. Kind of been checking you guys out, seeing what it is that Closed does. What do you do for other organizations and everything. And, uh, also kind of in an interesting time, like timestamping this for anybody. We're in April 2023, if you're listening to this later on. And so in the. The industry at the time, the economy at the time, we kind of have a lot going on. So if you would, maybe you could unpack for us. Biggest challenge you have seen at Closed in the last six months or so.

Speaker B: Yes. So just to put some context in there, I have been at closed for almost 90 days, so definitely getting my feet underneath me still a little bit. But Um, I have really enjoyed the time that I've been there. And of course, when you're at a series A, every day feels like a week or longer, right? You just. There's so much moving so fast. And so I think the biggest challenge that we're seeing at Closed is just the need for organizations, especially sales leaders, to focus. It is imperative that they are focusing their energies and their limited resources or limited capacity on the right things. So we are really trying to teach sales leaders that they have another effective lever to pull that helps them meet their quotas, that helps them win more. They're busy with limited resources. They are often asked to do a lot of things at once, and they've been doing things in some instances for the same way for a really long time. So sometimes they're maybe not as interested in trying something new when their job's on the line. We're all under a lot of pressure, and I think one of the things that happens when you're under pressure is we tend to insulate, right? We tend to close ranks. And so especially if you're maybe in a little bit of a culture of blame. And so everyone starts going, hey, our win rates are lower than they should be, and we're not get growing as fast as we should. And then it's, whose fault is it, who's doing what wrong, and where do we need to look? And so my role at Closed, and what I just am loving so far is the ability to build a product that can truly make sales leaders jobs easier. I think that at the heart of every product leader is that goal, huh? Of making someone else's life simpler, easier, making their day to day just more, you know, exciting and enjoyable. So we really want to give sales leaders confidence that they can hit their quota, that they have the data that is able to influence every area of the business that could be impacting deal outcomes. So that includes your product roadmap. I use closed. Our closed for closed, right? Yeah, I use closed for closed all the time to show verbatims on why we should be going a certain direction with our product. Your market messaging, is it landing, is it effective, is it differentiated, your pricing, your packaging and more. So close provides that visibility into why you're winning and losing so you can go make those changes that you need to in order to win more deals. And you don't have to. Doesn't have to come from a place of blame.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good. It's a good point. Like, challenges, last few quarters being. Being like, oh, they're economic challenges. So like we, we have changed. Like the whole marketplace has pivoted and then what you're seeing is, is this is happening across multiple organizations. So like when y' all go talk to sales leaders, kind of hearing them under stress, under duress, and at that point, you know, there might be like finger pointing as opposed to maybe like looking at some data and then seeing what might be the next best steps forward.

Speaker B: Yes. And I think one of the things that we're seeing as well, the problem of we need to win more is shifting a lot more from product marketing or marketing to sales. The CRO, the head of sales is being asked in board meetings, in executive meetings, why are we losing and why, what do we need to do to win more? Right. How do you, how do we win more deals? And so that problem is being handed to that sales leader. More so now than just a product marketing go figure out why we're winning or losing. Right. That those insights and that data is needed across the organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. I definitely see that. And then there's some, well, maybe you dive in later. But I can't help but ask like, um, let's just do the tactical thing. Like how do you collect the data for that? Like how is it kind of captured so that you can get the analytics rolling?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think one of the things just as uh, a to set the context closed sits and kind of sits inside the tech sales stack and complements many of the other revenue intelligence tools out there, like Gong Clary, Salesforce. And so those tools are really helping you understand what's happening kind of as an opportunity is active. Closed really plays in that post op space. So the deal has closed, you know the outcome and, and you want to know why. And that's a gap right now in the market right in that tech stack. So many of those tools are focused around what's happening actively with those ops as you get to an outcome. So the way that we go about providing those insights is we go get the feedback from the buyers. So the people who were involved in those ops from the very beginning to the end, that though for both closed one and closed lost, we're going out and we actively go talk to the buyers, we understand the buyer's perspective and then we're able to collate all of that, aggregate that information and turn it into actionable insights that you can then share with your sales team, your marketing team, your product team, your corporate strategy team. And so uh, the real key there is being able to engage buyers after an opportunity has Closed.

Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Okay. That is very cool. So looking at it, something went well. Diagnosing why and then seeing if you can turn that into like replicate those results essentially.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And if you win. Yes. What went well? What can we do better? And then if you lost, what needs to change? How do we turn those into wins in the future? So the ability to have those insights from buyers gather that buyer intelligence and really that creates these feedback loops that are difficult. Right. Because a buyer doesn't necessarily have a lot of incentive sometimes post op to talk to someone, a third party about that opportunity that they were just in. And so it requires. It's difficult for companies to do that on their own, to do post op deal analysis, win loss analysis on their own. And so that's why having a third party like close that both has strong services around how we go and get the buyer information and insights and then also how we uh, from our technology platform. The product that I am really fortunate to be a part of and help build that technology platform is closed. Really does have a very just amazing usability and visibility into those insights and being able to share those and report those out to the rest of the organization.

Speaker A: So it actually sounds like just to rounded out because I'm interested, like it's a service. It sounds like it's a service that speaks to customers after I close one deal. And a software that might be doing the analytics. Like almost like, like something akin to uh, business intelligence software.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Okay, okay, cool. Software and a service to come in after the close, do analytics, find out what's going on from the voice of the customer themselves. Having like an interview session of some sort of. And then actually taking that data back in.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Yep. Neat. There's a organization I work for called Postman that I founded the enablement function for. And there was a uh, period of time where we were hockey stick growth very quick, 25 million to about 100 million ARR. And one of the things that we had to do to even understand how to keep building this go to market team. It went from like 30 go to market members headcount to 140 was we had to go take Gong Insights, back it up. We did all this crazy analytics on it but we had to pull it out of the back end of it. A bunch of manual work. And then that was still not interviewing the customers but it was at least finding out from the close one deals. And it was a DIY motion. But I'm just telling you this to say like it makes so much Sense, because we did it because we were an enablement team of eight by then had grown all the way up to an enablement team of eight and like started pulling the data out just so we could understand what's working. Why is somebody closing like $2 million in RR and why somebody stuck at 100 and like, what. Why the chasm? Why the gap? And there are like selling behaviors that can be captured now that you can understand, which is super cool. That didn't exist five years ago. People were not just implementing like conversation intelligence, revenue intelligence, capturing these calls on the fly as par for the course. It was very Big Brother. Like, uh, I was one of the earlier GONG customers bringing it into a couple organizations ago and that was the fight, like turning on data capture. And now it's just par for the course. Like, it's like breathing. My calls are going to be recorded, like. So it's very cool to be able to do something with that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. One thing I'm really excited about is our GONG integration. We have all the transcripts coming in from GONG now where you can see the interview transcripts post op, closed, one closed, lost. And then you can go back and marry that data with the call transcripts from Gong. And you can interact with them in our platform in the same way that you would with those transcripts from our interviews. So you can comment and tag people in your organization. You can tag a keyword and see how it maps up what marries between what the buyer says and what the. What the GONG transcripts say.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting because there's like a wealth of knowledge in there. It captures all those pieces and then to be able to actually pull that out and interact with it a little bit more. Gong's got the dashboards internally that you can, but they can't. They're not going to be able to show you everything because it's like an Apple iPhone. I figure it's like the reason I love that thing so much is because it's like, got. It has like two options for me and it's like idiot proof for me. And so you like. Because you're not going to interact with the ui, that's all messy. So GONG gives you some snippets, something to play with. And we do find, uh, because I do some services work on the Gong side, that's what my organization Rampant, does. So I know for sure that like, people typically use it as like glorified call recording. Like, oh, I don't have to press record on Zoom. My sales calls will all be Automatically recorded when you know another organization joins. It's too expensive for that. There's no way that's like barely scratching the surface of its capabilities. But even when people go and look at that, they're still not getting the full measure of what you know, especially a leading platform like Gong can capture. So it makes complete sense to be an organization that partners, pulls that out, gives additional insights. Because I'll tell you one thing, like running fast in an hyper growth software as an enablement leader. That's why we had to start doing that, because we had product releases every week. We had, when I left, 23 million developers utilizing that platform because I had a free tier. We had again, we had like quadrupled the size of the uh, of the sales team. And we're just. And LMS and CMS are the main thing, like learning management system, content management system. You can't keep up with it. You cannot pump data into it fast enough. It's instantly irrelevant. Like instantly meaning like a quarter. And then you just throw more headcount at it. Just keep running after it. And it's, it's still your best guess about what's happening. You're still not being able to leverage as much data as you want. Because then people go to Salesforce, they're like, oh, what's Salesforce say? Salesforce says whatever the rep had time to put in there. And whatever their perspective is, I was a seller. Like I put what I needed to put. It's a hard game out there. Okay. We put what we have.

Speaker B: It's true, it's true. So we actually run a, we ran a study recently and compared our CRM data to 1000 closed loss deals to what the buyers actually said in the win loss interviews that closed conducts. And the results were really shocking on 65% of the deals. 65% the competitor tagged in the CRM. So basically Salesforce did not match up with the competitor the buyer was actually considering. So in that instance who's right? Right. Like the buyer is telling us, this is the competitor that I was considering. But the sales rep heard or thought that the competitor they were considering and that was wrong 65% of the time or they didn't match up. Right. So that's, that type of uh, CRM data is going to be messy generally. But at the same time having just your sales rep's perspective is not enough. You really do want to get at the heart of, okay, what was the buyer's perspective? And especially when it comes to competitive intelligence, you need to understand with uh, precision who that person considered or who they went with instead.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, it's a good point. I have one more business idea for you guys. This is, listen, just.

Speaker B: Oh, I love it. Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, heading on, whenever you, whenever you all take this one to the market and this is stupid by the way, but like, okay, call closed and bring their services department in to go ahead and interview the buyers whenever you're to the proposal stage and you can come in and be like there's a third party and we'd like to know like why are you considering buying this and like what are the competitors you mentioned? And like, like you can just come in and be a third party to that. But like be like you, you talk about some competitive intelligence at that point. Like not only will we picture CRM M in advance, we're going to kind of get you the insight so that you can go ahead and multi thread finish this thing out. That's legal, right? You can do that. There's no NDA required. Nothing.

Speaker B: Ship it. Ship it. Yeah, it's totally fine. I love it. I love it. No, I'm going to get in trouble for saying that. Pete, come on. I've only been there for like less than 90 days. Come on. I gotta, you just tell, uh, you

Speaker A: tell them like, well, two heads are better than one. I'm sorry, like podcasting ideas.

Speaker B: Pete said that we should play in the. Not just post op space. But yeah, pre ops. No, but I mean that, that's the thing. Like so, so one of the, I, I think most interesting things to me, I don't know, human behavior is just always so fascinating to me. But when you're in a sales cycle and you're doing all these calls and they are getting recorded through gong. Right. The thing. Yes. What happens on the call is very important in the sales coaching and the enablement materials that are needed to drive that and to drive the right outcomes. That's all important. But what is truly important is the meeting after the meeting. Every one of those sales calls includes an internal regroup of the people on that call with whoever your sales rep was. And your prospect is having a meeting after the meeting, making decisions and talking about how did that land for you? Oh, uh, their pricing is not great compared to this other competitor. Right. We are the people who go find out what happened in the meetings after the meetings. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, that's so like what they actually thought of and what they actually wanted.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like what are the secrets that were happening in that room that Gong is never going to show you. Right. They're never going to show you why that buyer actually made those decisions throughout the process until you get to the end. And then it's like, okay, this is, these are the real insights for. Yes, this is what happened. Gong is telling you what happened. Super important. But the why did it all happen and why did we get to this final outcome? That's what closed helps to uncover.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense because no, no role actually does that. Net new sales does not do that. Account management doesn't do that. That you have one, you're trying to get to the end of a finish line and you have to move on. Um, customer success does not do that because again, you're just trying to increase adoption of the product. That's, you know, maybe growth readiness or something like that. And then sometimes the CEO or CRO will get like a wild hair. It's not so wild, it's just like a good idea. And they'll be like, we need to find out this. And then they personally do it as long as they can, which is like two weeks. And then they're. And then they're out, they're done. And it still doesn't have that third party verification type of feel to it.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I liken it to these calls I get that are like the people reach out and want to know about the DevOps space or something like that. Because I was in DevOps, like I get a ton of these because somebody's considered an investment. And so they're like, hey, for 45 to 60 minutes of your time as a consultant and just like, oh yes. And it's a different conversation because it's somebody outside of the one to one space that you're in.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And we also have customers who leverage our platform to, you know, self serve and they do their own, we call them our DIYers. They run their own programs and they'll go out and contact their buyers. And that's great too. Right. Everything counts in this space. And so talking to your sales reps, absolutely critical, surveying them, interviewing them internally and understanding what they're putting into the CRM, um, all of that really needed. And then also if you are, uh, if you are someone who is in market insights or competitive intelligence or product marketing in your organization and you're going out and making these contacts to buyers, you know, it's very time consuming. Right. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of our customers, you know, they don't run their own programs, they don't self serve on this in terms of going out and finding buyers to interview. And a big reason for that is because it is very time consuming. And one of the things that Closed provides is that highly efficient, really strong ability to just go get those buyer interviews. Right. Because it does take a lot of follow up and it does take a lot of persistence in terms of taking that information from our customers when they're integrated with a uh, salesforce for example and we get those contacts for the buyers. It takes a lot of follow up, it takes a lot of kind of persevering through that to actually get meaningful insights from multiple buyers, from enough buyers. And to your point Pete, over time, because it is often something that's just kind of this one off, hey, why are we losing more deals than we were last quarter? Or let's look at this whole year and let's do a retro and let's do some lessons learned. And it needs to be a lot more about the ongoing insights that are shared within your organization. So the ability for companies to continually have this as an ongoing feedback loop, that's the part that I think closed can really help with. That's the pain that closed can help with because it isn't a once a uh, year activity or even a once a quarter activity. The market is moving too fast, your competitors are moving quickly, the economy is impacting your, what you're, how you're selling, how your message is landing, what your pricing looks like. So you need to be a lot more agile and closed allows you to do that because we have those ongoing feedback loops and we're just constantly getting fresh new information and also seeing the trends over time. What did change month over month? Why? Who needs to do what now? So that's, that's I think where the real power is is that ongoing nature of win loss.

Speaker A: Yeah, it makes sense for sure it does. Uh, so is there in this like win loss analysis type space is there a certain like path that leads you there? Like what would be your, what are your personal professional kind of experiences that led you into the role you're in by the way? Product lead. Product lead at closed.

Speaker B: Yes. 20 years ago I hadn't even graduated college and I joined an A company that was brand new startup I think Series A, Series B. And this was back in 2003? Yes. So I joined this company right after 9 11. They had started up uh, an Internet monitoring company. So we were working mostly for the Department of Defense and I was the 17th employee hired. And so it was crazy. Like it was so fun. But it was a type of place where there were legitimately, we had cots for people to sleep it on, you know. Cause you'd stay overnight sometimes working, because it was.

Speaker A: Oh.

Speaker B: Cause the startup mode. Yeah. Cause it was a startup and we were. Yeah, there were cots to sleep on, there were shaving kits in the supply closet. We ordered in dinner probably four nights a week. So it was just a lot of fun, but also super intense. And so I. That was my first experience. And then we were acquired by Raytheon and that was my first exit. And I was just a few years out of college and it was really exciting, you know, it was like, oh my goodness, we just got picked up by a bigger fish. And so over the course of my career, I have been kind of chasing that, you know, the whole time is just that feeling of being part of a group that is all very mission driven and excited to make something work, get scrappy. And I have just always really enjoyed that environment. So every company that I've been at, even if it's a big company like Wells Fargo, I was inside of a small little department that wasn't profitable, that was working on a product that, you know, needed a lot of kind of innovation and trying to launch something that could then make money. And so I've just really been at kind of the. A lot of my experience in my career has been around being part of major market shifts that lead to product innovation. And so I think being at Closed, it's kind of come full circle for me because we're a smaller company, but it's a Series A again. And it's just really fun to be part of that environment where you hear a customer problem and then within a week you can go fix it. And as a product leader, that is the best because again, good product leaders, we are driven by making someone's life better and simpler and easier. And so the ability to hear a problem, a sales leader has an issue, needs to be able to do something differently, better. And being able to turn around and solve it within a week, a month, that is just so gratifying and really exciting to be able to build a platform like that again. And so that's, for me, I've just, uh, I've been at really large companies recently and now I just want to, you know, help grow this, this space. And I, I think it's so critical because feedback loops are very. They're just very important to how we function as humans. Right. If we don't have good feedback loops built in our Personal lives, in our professional lives, you don't know what's working, what's not working. If you're not curious and you don't want to create that awareness, then you don't know what to change. You're kind of just fumbling around and why not know? Why guess? Why not know? Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it, it totally makes sense. As a seller, the only thing I've ever done in that regard is like I closed a deal, I closed my very first deal ever. And like as a mid market seller, after being a business development rep, after being a teacher and a coach and then all I just did was I just went for that customer again. I just, I was like, there's my niche, there's my space, there's my industry. Bye. And like that's my use case and that's it. And so I was like going after like these like healthcare tech below a certain size, above a certain size, you know, like with a specific like CPQ type salesforce use case or whatever from the time. And that was it because I was like, I know it works. And so that was my like single threaded feedback loop. Cause it's the best you could do maybe at the time or with my knowledge level at that point. So that's, you know, that's interesting. So like you could do that better at professional level. What maybe to round it out, like what would be a, you know, personal example of like feedback loop within life, the what's the closed one allowances or like the closed setup for, for a personal life thing. There's actually a bunch of examples of this I'm thinking of now I'm asking. So maybe it's a dumb question but for the audience.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I think my favorite is just asking my kids, you know, what is working, what's not working. And it's always so fascinating what they come up with because I think they're going to say something along the lines of you're too strict or I wish I had this freedom. But a lot of times we as parents, my husband and I get feedback around, you know, we. I need more structure. I need you to help me more in this area. I need you to create more structure for me so that I can function better. Because I'm realizing that this part of my life is not as optimal as I want it to be. Right. And so it's just always really interesting when you allow yourself to be vulnerable and really open. And by the way, win loss analysis, lots of vulnerability there. We've actually had customers or uh, I guess I should say prospects, you know, that have kind of given us the feedback. Like we don't want to go with clothes because we're worried about what our buyers are going to say. Like we're worried about the feedback that we're going to get. Right. Like it might be negative. And the reality is win loss analysis and other feedback loops that you put into your professor, your personal life, there is a level of vulnerability there. Right. And opening yourself up to what feedback do you have? For me, that's one of the most vulnerable things that we as humans can say to each other. Yeah, right.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And not. And being okay with that being maybe some positive things, but also maybe some negative things that you don't really have a level of awareness on. And it could be very challenging. But I do think one of the things that is so fascinating when I look at our data at closed, there is no substitute for the verbatim feedback. There really isn't. And of course, in more analytical terms, you call that the qualitative feedback. Right. The qual. You gotta marry that with the quant. Yes. But that qualitative feedback. And it's because the way you. I'm an English major, so I love words and I love, you know, how people put things together and concepts and all of those things that maybe are a little bit more abstract, but you can really see them in detail when you look at these verbatim quotes from your buyers where it's not just someone saying, this was not great or this was good, these very kind of linear ways of expressing ourselves. You get all this like, nuance and it's so. It's like this very delicious data that you get to. Oh, I, uh. You almost feel like, whoa. I'm like, you know, looking at someone's secrets, like their diary, and you're kind of like in the middle of that. It's just so fascinating. And I think that is one of the things that just keeps me coming back for more with those feedback loops, both personally and professionally. And then companies doing that from a win loss perspective. You will just be so fascinated if you actually allow yourself to ask that question. What feedback do you have for me? You will be fascinated. The results.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm absolutely sure. Like that you would be because. And it's very particular to your use cases and not like generalized advice or whatever. This, like this happened and now you're getting feedback from it. It's so funny though. It is a vulnerable situation. And I have an example from this week. This was on Wednesday I hosted a live webinar you bring in people, you tell them about your business, what you do, and things like that. I don't care how long I taught for or sold for. Like, you're host a live webinar, scared to death. You're like, oh, God, he's gonna show up. Am I gonna click the. And you have to set it all up appropriately. Like, show the slides the right way, like, answer the chat. Like, it's a lot going on and it's live. Because I feel like that's more respectful for the most part. If it's 45 minutes, you should be there too. You know, you can pre record these things. That's a little dull. Anyway, like 30 minutes before that started, somebody, a very good professional said, hey, would you. It's like free advice, basically. Would you like some. Would you like some feedback on. And it's just a piece of marketing content that I had. And I'm not even like, very like, oh, my marketing content is the best marketing context. I'm not a marketer. And so this is like a. This is like a little fiverr extra that I happen to have. And I was like, could you give it to me in two hours? I can't. If it's bad, I'm gonna crumble right now. Like, I just can't take any. I just need my confidence. For like the next hour and a half. It was even vulnerable on a piece of like white paper. I'm like, it could have been an editing thing or whatever. I was like, I don't even want to know until after this webinar is over. Because I can use all of my potential confidence right now. And it's hilarious. And that's just like a small example of what you're talking about and vulnerability of a company, but it's their customers. It's a bigger deal, obviously.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And it is very personal. But that's the beauty of it as well, I'm sure.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you can choose, uh, when you choose, you know, you can choose when you read win loss information. It may not be the best time after you've had a really bad quarter and, you know, kind of everyone's trying to scramble and figure out what happened. So choosing more neutral times to have those conversations from like a win loss perspective. It's a great point because you often do want to go to someone and not just say, have feedback for you. That's a little aggressive, right? It's like, are you open to some feedback? Is now a good time? So just your example is great because I think that's one of the reasons why having a central source of truth, like the closed platform, allows anyone in the organization to go see what is working and what's not working. Why we're winning, why we're losing at any time, whatever, whenever works for them. And it doesn't have to be something that is packaged up perfectly in a quarterly report and emailed out at the very right moment. It's like you can go and get that information and act on it whenever you want.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, it makes sense. Okay. Okay. Like we, we went, we zigged around. But like it was very effective to understand about those things. It's very helpful. Let's do two. And these are like, huh. You know, whatever. Like whatever you come up with. And it doesn't have to be from recent because I know you said 90 days ago. So favorite leadership moment throughout your career or. And beyond. And earlier, if it's applicable, sports, whatever.

Speaker B: I am fascinated by the novel, by the new. Right. Just learning new things. It's like, oh, things that kind of go against the grain. Like, I didn't know that could work or that could happen in that way. So I think one of the things that really intrigued me about Closed was we have our two founders, Andrew Peterson and Spencer Dent, who are formerly from Qualtrics and they are still co CEOs. They work together as a unit. And at first I thought, I don't know if this is going to work or how is this going to work. Right. I think it was just more of a curiosity, like is. Huh. Like this is different and it works really well. So I think just watching them in action has been really fascinating. And then the, the. My favorite leadership moment that I'll share is I had a. Speaking of feedback loops, I had a manager. I was at a company for maybe 30, 60 days. So I was new and I had a product launch related artifact that I needed his advice on. And I just went into his office and I said, hey, I would love some feedback on this because I'm not really sure if I'm going in the right direction. And I showed it to him and he kind of sat there, looked at it and I was nervous because it was one of the first things that I had produced. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing yet. I didn't know enough. And this was about probably 10, 12 years ago in my career. And. And he looked at it and said, and he looked up and said, you know, this is actually really good and you're further along and you're doing better than you think you are. And that moment, it was so small, but that moment was so impactful for me because he could have said any number of things at that point. Right. He could have said, try again, or here's an example of a really good one. Go look at that and then come back. He could have said a lot of things. But I think what that taught me from a leadership perspective is err on the side of mercy. We need to give ourselves more grace. We are doing better than we think we are. Right. And I think from a corporate perspective, you get into these modes where there is a lot of pressure to win more, and there's a lot of pressure on the sales team. Sales leaders are, are going in a lot of different directions. They have a lot of different tools and data to look at. And I think we just need to pause sometimes and say, okay, feedback loops are super important. Yes. But we need to pause and really celebrate the bright spots of, uh, what's working and being able to err on the side of mercy when it comes to how we judge ourselves or our teams or our companies. And I think that was just a moment for me that was really indelible. I will remember that forever. Because it was. It was just that moment where I was like, oh, okay, I'm doing better than I think I am. And that phrase just has kind of stuck with me.

Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah, I really like that. It's really helpful and so true. Because this stuff is personal. Like, oh, it's not personal. I'm like, yes, it is. It's so personal. Very personal thing I've m. Worked on for so long.

Speaker B: Totally. Everything we produce, everything we say, everything is personal. It's always personal.

Speaker A: That's cool. It's a good. It's a good perspective. I'll take that one in the weekend too.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, uh, good, by the way, for the audience. Anybody for yourself? Jennifer? If, uh, my daughter met a playmate and they started like, over here through the window. So if it just started kicking up. Apparently the party started at my house. So apologies, slash, having some fun over here to the side.

Speaker B: Yes, I'm. We finally have good weather here in Utah, and I am, um, so excited to just get outside. I'm like, in my play clothes. Right. Just. Let's go.

Speaker A: Your airport. And I've never gotten to step out of the airport. Your airport is my favorite airport. View on the way to San Francisco from the East Coast.

Speaker B: Really?

Speaker A: I have to pass through Atlanta or Charlotte to come from now. We're north of Charleston and we were in Chattanooga before. I have to pass through Atlanta or Charlotte and then we go over to, to Salt Lake City or Dallas or whatever to do the final leg into Oakland or San Francisco, depending on, you know, what flights are the best and everything. It's just beautiful. You see the snow capped mountains right there from the airport view and that's it. And my favorite airport thing ever happened in Salt Lake City Airport too. And that was that. It was a month past Christmas and there was this man walking with headphones on through, through the airport and he was dragging behind him a suitcase with a speaker on. Uh, it. So it had a speaker on that he didn't know it was Bluetooth to his speaker and he had it cranked up and he was playing Jingle Bells Rock Jingle bell Rock in like February just going through the Salt Lake City airport and I was, I had to follow him for like I felt like a mile and I was dying because nobody was saying anything. He's just walking, he's older. He thinks he's hearing it through these headphones. These like the Bose big cover your ears headphones. And he's hearing it because it's coming from his external speaker on his. And I'm just like, this is the coolest, funnest moment. So I got a lot of good memories there. And I've never been outside the airport.

Speaker B: I love it. Jingle bell rock in uh, February.

Speaker A: It was not Christmas. It was not leading up to Christmas. I mean we can say it was in the same quarter if you have. There's a lot of excuses I'm trying to make for this gentleman.

Speaker B: Okay. So I don't know if, yeah, I don't know if you do outro music, Pete, but you gotta do it. Come on. Jingle bell Jingle bell Jingle bell rock Jingle bells timing. Jingle bell uh, uh, Johnny Gammit.

Speaker A: Johnny Gammit Herd marketing. Johnny Gamutt, her marketing. We have one, we have a request. No clip on M. This one. Jennifer, Amazing experience to hear about clothes and yourself and the position you're in. I'm super glad you felt found the uh, the place where, where everything's lining up, all the stars are aligning. From your entire career moving forward into this.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely closed. Yeah.

Speaker A: And so fun to just have some fun at the end of the day on this Friday podcast. So thank you on behalf of like sas ramp audience, myself, everybody. Can't wait to release this one and go have some fun with our networks with it.

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. Are you going to ask me the SaaS ramp question, I was like, so ready.

Speaker A: All right, if you have one this is it, then this is. Okay. Okay.

Speaker B: I know. I was like, I. I prepared. Okay.

Speaker A: Well, when I look at time, I'm like, am I keeping them too long? Is it because, like, sometimes people go and run around SAS ramp. SAS ramp podcast. What does SAS ramp mean to you?

Speaker B: Ramps makes me think of an on ramp or off ramp, you know, for the highway. Right. So when you're ramping like an on ramp, you're accelerating, Right. So I think of it in terms of acceleration, but not just that. It's like, accelerating in a way that's effective. Right. Safe. That's the driving way, but it's, like, effective and as quickly as possible. And then you're also accelerating on an on ramp with others. Right. Like you're with other cars when you're on an on ramp. And so I think of SAS ramp as the ability to accelerate effectively as quickly as possible and doing it with others.

Speaker A: That's so cool. So I've heard. So this is. This has so many different answers to this question that I thought would be very, like, straightforward, because I think of it in a way, and it is like this. But I've heard the on ramp example before, but never with the three caveats of why with the. With others kind of like merging together, like, going fast but safely, things like that. So, yes, kudos to you.

Speaker B: Okay. So, yeah, I, like, I prepared. I was like, okay, he's going to ask me this. I got to have something unique. I listen to other people's answers and so there you go.

Speaker A: It's good. Good. Oh, thank you, Jennifer. This is a. This is an absolute pleasure. Tell Brinley thank you for setting it up and everybody, for sure. Yeah. Looking forward to interacting with clothes again later.