Sales comp can’t fix an undefined GTM strategy: Lessons from Marnie Sprenger

Speaker A: Welcome to the sales Compensation show where we share the latest sales performance insights through in depth discussion with experts. Season three of our show is your backstage pass to discovering how today's most successful sales and revenue ops teams support go to market strategy and improve sales performance. Plus we'll explore what we can learn about incentives from different industries more broadly. Subscribe to hear how leaders are unlocking new growth, implementing the latest compensation trends and their priorities for improving go to market performance. I'm your host CPU CEO of Form AI Vil Alzam. Marnie, it's always great to see you. It's a uh, pleasure to be chatting again and thank you for joining us on the show.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: You have certainly had a storied career in the world of sales comp. You've worked across organizations like the Cisco's Pure Storage, the world now at Nutanix. And I always ask this question because it's the world of sales comp is very, very niche, uh, but very large at the same time. But how did you end up here? How did you end up in this space?

Speaker B: I started, I would say probably at Cisco is when I realized that I had an affinity for sales. Like I loved the fast pace. So when I was there I started with um, planning territories and quota. But quickly I got into a project where we were bringing in a new commission system and through that process I became really close with the um, sales comp leader. The sales comp design leader. And she was amazing. Uh, my whole life in front of sales was more of a yes person and when I met her she would go toe to toe with sales and explain why they were wrong and I was just in awe. So I was like, which is hard

Speaker A: to do because it's all a type personality. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right, right. And at that time I just, I didn't know how she could get there. And so this is like again that I would say that was the beginning of my story and this was meeting Heidi Crozer. I wanted to be her. As soon as I was in an email with her going back and forth the sales she and I connected really well. She hired me onto the sales comp team and the rest is history. What I love most about sales comp is that you get to make people do things for money and like you're really driving a go to market and instant gratification. You change one thing about the plan you can see right away good or bad a change. So that's something that you don't really get in life as much but like in sales comp, you can make things happen like that. So that was always interesting to me. What I didn't realize and why Heidi was able to have these conversations is one of the biggest, I would say, foundations of me being successful in any role I've had is my relationship building with, with the sales leaders. So having that foundational, uh, relationship, then I could go toe to toe and you know, that sounds kind of, um, aggressive, but I could have those difficult conversations with them and explain why they were thinking of it the wrong way. So again, that was, that was really what got me into it. And do I feel like I'm Heidi yet? Um, I feel like I've gotten there. I have great relationships with my sales leaders. I have to explain a lot why things aren't going to work that way. Um, but we always agree in the end what's best for the company. So I feel like, yes, I've, I filled some big shoes, but, um, I'm getting there.

Speaker A: It is a very interesting space. I think the point you call it like being able to like change incentives and actually drive outcomes. I mean I really do believe that the translation layer of uh, how do you take all of the competing priorities of a business and package that up into this very simple, like targeted thing to motivate all different profiles of sellers is so complicated. But because of the complexity. It is the complexity and the difficulty of that that actually makes it so interesting.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Like you have to understand the business priorities, connect with the sales leaders to your point.

Speaker B: Otherwise you have to know the complexity well enough to make it simple for those who you're trying to have a single or a couple targets to run through a wall and drive that go to market, um, strategy. And so yes, it's. But again, I think it's the good relationships that really drive the influencing of what is, um, of what good looks like. Um, it does become, um, the comp plan kind of becomes the easy button for a lot of people. And having the relationship with sales leaders for me comes very naturally when it comes to the corporate side where we're having to um, drive decisions from a, uh, on the comp plan that's a little different. I invest a lot of time in that so I can have those conversations and build the trust. If they don't trust me, they're not going to trust my designs. Another hurdle is not just making, you know, getting those relationships on the internally with sales, um, with the, the C suite or the Steerco, whoever is making the final decision on these so they understand what, how a Good comp plan

Speaker A: looks like, you know, just double clicking on the fact that you recently joined Nutanix, right. You've taken on this new role. So you're coming into an organization I guess like sales times are already difficult enough when you come in you gotta like ramp up on the business. Understand like what's your framework for how you approach kind of jumping in and assessing the current state of an organization that you just joined.

Speaker B: Well first I have to understand who all is involved and what's great about Nutanix and what's great about like the companies I've been at in um, the past is that we have a lot of support from the C suite or the Steerco. You have to understand where everybody's priorities are in that group and how that is impacting the design or the decisions we're making for the comp program, the overall comp program. So it's been interesting because I've come into this role, I'm about five months old right now and we're going through planning and I think I've built a lot of good solid relationships with the Steerco um, I think with my team and I have an amazing team. We've really built the trust, we've built, built our brand and we are now I, I think the Steerco um, and sales leaders are really trusting us and understand believing that our design is going to drive what we are promising so giving us a little bit more leeway on um, on some of these decisions. And it's great again it's great that we have leadership that is so involved or that is so invested in making this a successful program that is 100% critical.

Speaker A: It's one, it's such a massive cost center that like it has a map is a big impact to the business. So even just from like the amount of spend that you're putting there, if it's you don't have the like leadership buy in then it's hard to make significant changes that uh, the entire organization buys into because you need to sell it to any sales team as you kind of make changes and all rivers flow into sales comp. It's the final step in the process. And so you basically have to take everything that's a part of the go to market structure from roles, territory, segmentation, the customers you're after, the product packaging and capture that into your design. And so I imagine you're jumping in getting the buy in, getting those relationships established is so critical if you're going to actually execute change. Final step for sure.

Speaker B: And I Actually I would argue one point about what you just said that it's the final, it is the most sensitive and it is the most expensive. I would say especially when if anything goes wrong, it could be a really expensive mistake. Um, but I would say there's one more piece that that's not the end all, be all. There's also the territory and quota. So like going full circle about when I got into high tech but then again into um, sales operations in general. If you don't have good territory or good quota design, your amazing design for a comp plan isn't going to hold up. So I would say just like yes, it's the, it is the most emotional, dramatic step in the process. But another piece is, is that quota? If that's not going, if that's not aligned, if it's too easy, if it's too hard, that's not going to drive the behaviors you want out of the comp plan either.

Speaker A: It's funny because in my mind when I say incentive compensation I really do think the package, right. It's like self management and you do have to think about that way because a quota drives 80% of what payouts are right. Like and good quota setting, it's like how do you know what a good performer is if you don't set quotas properly, right?

Speaker B: And most, in most cases you um, don't that team, your team, the sales comp team, the design team doesn't own that piece of the, of the territory design and the quota setting. So it's so important that you're a big stakeholder in that or there are or you're comfortable with the, with the parameters that, in which they set those um, and understand how, how crediting works. Everything's tied together. So anyway, not to say that those have to be aligned because it's kind of good to have separate roles um managing the se different pieces of the process to keep everybody accountable. But really there's. The stakeholder piece of it is huge.

Speaker A: I mean it is interesting. It's like you want to have different accountability by bucket but in a way you, you really truly need them fully connected because you would design a different pay curve maybe less aggressive if ah, you knew that quotas based on the data that we have are not that predictive. Right. Like if our quota setting accuracy is X, then we likely shouldn't be very aggressive in our pay comp otherwise we risk some massive financial overages.

Speaker B: Right. And um, actually and that you'd bring in another, another cog in um, like HR and Defining payments. If depending on who owns all that in the whole process sales comp is the biggest, could be the biggest influencer or they could own it. It depends on what what company. But it kind of all um flows together on what roles, what comp plans align to those roles, what the pay mix is and all that. And then yeah it's like this whole, this a huge cross functional um process. Even if um sales comp owns more of the process than that there's always going to be finance and HR and whatever um you know um function that, that sales comps not rolling up to at that moment.

Speaker A: And you know on your point of like that connectivity and ownership coming into this I would have said oh like having a single owner is always great. Like having a single person own all of territory quota comp 17 like really own own everything. It's actually to your point it's less relevant. It's okay and might be more impactful if it's owned by the respective department. But I think what absolutely critical is you need a consistent language to your point of uh, what does crediting rules look like, what does comp and how it ties to quota and if you're not all speaking the same language then the risk of getting it wrong is just so high.

Speaker B: And you know what helps is the tools obviously is like the whole platform is being able to get the systems that actually talk and everything end to end. So that's integral because anytime you put in a manual process it kind of slows everything down. I say it's a huge demotivator. It is a disincentive. Whenever there's um a manual cog.

Speaker A: It's interesting because a lot of the, the automation I find focus is on things like the calculation side but when you actually think about like the connectivity between your business segmentation like how you're segmenting and treating your customer base, your product mapping and kind of packaging to territory quota and then the crediting rules is where a lot of it is just data wrangling by team members and custom hand rolling of like you know stuff which then all of a sudden it's like anytime you want to make go to market change to your point there's this massive like well we can do it but the hurdle rate is X because no one wants to go through this massive complex manual.

Speaker B: Yes, yes and you touched a little bit on the data is a big pain point in the industry on that being accurate. But yes, yes the whole it all goes together and I think that is becoming more of the conversation at least Where I've noticed but um, before it has been siloed sales comp really talked about sales comp design and uh, well, it started that way. It's got, you know, grown to more operations. But like what does that all mean? So I like to really work with my cross functional partners so that we have, we have that cohesity because I don't necessarily think it always has to end up under one person or one

Speaker A: group and depending on the company, like it's, it's hard to make that organizational change. It's easy and it actually makes everyone's job like life better. If you get that cohesiveness as you're talking about, it's interesting because I think one of the biggest hurdles I see to that is getting enough recognition and alignment on the importance of this process of incentive comp, of territory quota at a senior enough level such that they enforce the right incentives. And when I say incentives it's More like the KPIs for Team X, for team Y and team Z needs all be kind of aligned so that there is a motivation to work together versus be separated. And I think that's kind of the biggest gaps I see in a lot of organizations is, doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

Speaker B: Well, one piece too is that when you go to a higher level of making those decisions, they'll say hey, we're going to segment, um, we're going to, we need a different plan for enterprise and it's that generic and it's like okay, have we identified what that is, who that is, what territories those are? You know, like have we defined everything and then what actually is different about them? But it really isn't always sales comp. It could be total package, it could be, it could be equity, it could be depending on, you know, again the company, what they offer, offer. So I'm always the first one that's targeted in those conversations. And so I have to kind of step back and say from a go to market strategy, are we really driving something different in this segment? First of all, like yes or no? If not, then okay, so what are we looking for here? Are we looking for differentiation? Are we saying, you know, this is a higher, should we look at a different market match? Am I going, are we pushing now towards HR to go look at um, ranges and a different market match from what we have today? Is that the starting point? So it's like I feel like in this role I'm a detective quite a bit to figure out what, you know, what they want. I'm all um, we're also, by the way, and I tell my team this all the time. 70% of the time, we're therapists. We're just listening to what their problems are because we can't solve everything. As an example, just what I was saying, like, they weren't looking for anything different from a, uh, sales comp perspective. They were looking for something different from a package perspective, a total comp perspective. So detective therapist, sales comp design, uh,

Speaker A: that is the life. Yeah, that is the life of sales comp. And it really is. You said this earlier. It's a very emotional part of the process and it's very, you know, critical. It's conversation with people's pay. It's, it's emotionally charged and politically charged because there's so many stakeholders involved. So you get this, like, very sensitive part. And because it's the final lever, people come thinking that's, that's the problem. And you're right. You, you have to. This is kind of going back to the hybe, right? Like, the, the, the, the motivation of like, hey, you can push back, but you have to build enough trust to be able to like, ask the hard questions and drive them back, you know, drive them to the root cause, to actually better drive better outcomes of the business. Ultimately, you know, shift gears here a little bit, because to me, like, that is the exciting stuff. The, the detective work. The, the, the, the fun kind of like, novel exciting. You're kind of like setting strategy. As you said, it's 70% of the time you're the, you know, the therapist, you're dealing with the disputes, the questions, et cetera. But there's also another part of, of, of that, that therapy and that structure that we've talked about before, which is like the governance side and the importance of having that governance in order to be able to do the therapy right, and give an equitable, like, you know, outcome to each person that's a part of this. I'd love to dig into that because I know that that's a big part of like, what you, uh, program.

Speaker B: Yes, I do. So I always talk about, like, how sales comp design is like living in the gray and living in the chaos because you are, you're kind of, you're constantly trying to think about how you can get in front of the curb. And so it's such a, it's such a gray area, except rehab policy. And I love that it's there. It's like, it's a security blanket because if it's not there and there's loopholes that can be found, sales will find it. And what I've found is when you stop them from gaming a plan, it's actually demotivating because they feel like they're winning at something. You know, like it, it's a game. It's a game. So like, so how, how is it that we can keep them motivated even when we're going to be delivering bad news? What helps is when we have true black and white language that says, says this is what we do and this is what we do, we don't do. And as long as we can be consistent about it getting simpler and simpler, then they won't have as many areas to find out where they can game. So I really do, uh, I appreciate the whole piece of governance and I always um, look at it as one of the biggest pillars of comp. Just because if that's not solid then you're going to have unhappy people when you try to stop them from gaming. It's, it's, it's kind of a vicious, vicious cycle. But again, this cleaner and simpler the comp plan is, you don't have to worry about that.

Speaker A: Going through the process of writing clear black and white rules of engagement and policy actually helps you uncover the pros and cons and kind of what potential behaviors the plan that you've designed is going to do. And so the exercise is actually beneficial to the design of the program in and of itself.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I've actually redesigned a couple, I would say tweaked a couple of programs because while I was writing it, uh, I was like, wait a minute, they can do that. This is, this is an easy way to get around this. So yeah, it totally trying to make everything rock solid. You're never going to get there. Every year I have a little pad of paper that says I need to write these on the next year's terms and conditions, you know, or include this. But like you're, you know, it's luckily it's, it's, it's always an evolution and you're always making things better. And with everything changing, with the market changing, with the way we consume things changing like, um, we're always going to have to tweak things. We're going to find new ways, they're, they're going to find new ways of gaming, we're going to find new ways of driving behavior and good behavior. And so again it's going to, it's always an evolution.

Speaker A: That's the crazy part of like, and what makes I think sales comp so difficult is it is dynamic by the definition of it. It's not payroll. It's not just business rules on taxes that change once every like 10 years. Whatever it is. It's literally like the, the business rules of go to market are as dynamic as the market is. And clearly as we are looking at the world in front of us every day, it's changing faster. And so it's only becoming more dynamic now.

Speaker B: I don't, I wouldn't want to change too much every year on year from uh, a, from a trust perspective. But yes, yes, we do have to typically touch those on an annual basis, but not. Or on a, a calculation cycle basis.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And hopefully not more than that.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, no, exactly. Yeah. Obviously there's, there's a, there's a cost and a hit to trust and motivation every time you make a change. So it's always a kind of like a weighting of like what's the pros versus the price. You know, curious, from a seller perspective, as you think about, you know, writing up these T's and C's, I think one of the hardest parts that I find is the crediting rules. And most organizations, especially, you know, organizations at the scale of Nutanix and like the Ciscos of the world, where there is just so much complexity in what a sale means and what channels it goes through and how it gets credit to sellers that we, you hear this mandate of like simple, you know, a comp plan that can be written on a napkin. The math can always be written on a napkin. Like unless if you're not able to write the math on a napkin, yeah, you got a big problem. The crediting rules and what actually gets paid out. That is the hardest part. And so how do you think about that from a governance and kind of explaining to sellers?

Speaker B: Well, I think I started it from um, the trust as well. So they have so many systems in front of them, m telling them how they're doing. And it's not necessarily the ICM or the SPM that's telling them that it could be a different tool, a bookings tool, depending on what your compelling event is for, um, commissions. So my biggest priority is to ensure that those match as quick as, as much as possible. And so where the credit numerals document comes in, hopefully you're able to write what the basic, how your credit, basic credit works. Where the challenge comes in is if there are exclusions or if there are something that you need to do that's going to be different than what SFDC or whatever tool Your CRM tool you're using. So I think that's where um, I start with the crediting rules. So I think of them when they get their plan doc. I don't want it to cause anxiety first of all but I also don't want it to be too hard to understand. It should really say, you know, take them to the crediting rules or um, tell them what their coverage is on there. The credit unions document is interesting because what I found is that it really more so than helping like cover the company, it really helps cover the employee as well. The sales employee. When you have everything written there, then they understand exactly how it works. And if there is something wrong in the system or an exclusion or uh, an adjustment or a delay that hasn't been communicated to them, they actually are more emboldened and should be to raise their hand and be like wait a minute, I don't think this is covered. And I want to talk about this like and you know, again, I am a, I'm a huge advocate for sales. I'm a huge advocate for the company and driving the right behaviors to help the company. But I'm a huge advocate for sales. Like I want them to feel like they can trust us and we want them to make so much money on our plan and drive the business forward.

Speaker A: If the plan is reasonably designed like writing a commission check, no CFO is going to be upset about it. It's like yeah, I'll write the business commission check. It just means that you just closed something, you brought business in, you're driving the company forward. And so I do think, yeah, those two things are aligned. Looking up for the outcome of the business and looking up for building trust and maintaining kind of the buy in from the sales organization. You're spending on average for uh, a large enterprise, 10% of your top line revenue on incentive comp. Obviously you want to make sure that that is the most effective spend and the only way you do that is if you have trust buy in. And it really is a motivator.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Again. And uh, I try not to do too many exclusions on that as either because I want them to match. But like as long as that's written out and they know it, then they won't be so upset about it when it's not there. So it's like it's communication but keep it simple. Not too many, like not, not a huge long list of exclusions. Try to keep it as simple as possible.

Speaker A: Because you said something very interesting. It's like maybe there's Another system that has the kind of compelling event or that calls out the booking or whatever it is that provides a context. And I think in some cases we engineer the reporting, the dashboarding at the tail end, the document for the plan to be simple. But then we don't engineer the. Hey, instead of having all these crazy data tables and the business rules, what if we stage gate it and make that visible to sellers in a way where you're almost like designing the crediting steps to make that easier to understand. Because I think that is like, again, when you look at. And we do occasional immersion sessions with like, sellers to understand what they're, you know, as I imagine you do you talk to sell you like, hey, like, do you understand the plan? Do you understand what's driving, what are the biggest challenges you have? And almost always if you go back to the root cause, it's like, oh, it's just complex crediting.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, if, I mean, this is completely relevant in the conversations that are happening now in the industry with the compelling event. The compelling event is like quickly moving to consumption. But do we have a sales force or wherever we're pulling our crediting from, do we have that. That's something that's so visible to them that they can follow the story and understand what they need to push, what kind of consumption they need to push, what kind of adoption they need to push in order to get paid. And so that's a big, again, very timely. That would be a new crediting logic or crediting rule. Or again, it's not that new. But, but it's something different than if you're now, you know, paying on bookings. Now we need, if we're changing that compelling event to something else or to one of the measures, where is that coming from? How is that all connected to that platform? And are, um. And is it motivating? Because if it's not motivating, if it's all done behind a curtain, you're not going to get the good results if

Speaker A: the sellers don't know what they need to do. There's no. The incentive might as well just be a random payout. And that is the exact opposite of motivational. So just moving on to our, our fun segment, I'd love to double click on, um, a common myth or misconception that you see regularly in the industry that you just want to call out.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I think this is. Again, there's been a shift in my, in my thinking on this, and I think it's just because of how I've evolved Through my and looked at big picture. But I think sales gets a bad rap. You know, I feel like there, there's this, like this trust issue with sales. And I see it by the way, I. This, um, is my shift. I remember where I would sometimes have a lot of negative feelings when sale. Some, you know, certain sales people or leaders would ask me things because I would, I would think it was just a very selfish versus a leadership type of request. It was a very self. Very selfish request. And the one thing is, is they can be like I and they're humans. Everybody, you know, can be super selfish and their trust is, is something that's truly built. But when you're putting too much in trust from a. A sales perspective, you're probably not optimizing your comp plan that much and you're more worried about them gaming it than them driving the behaviors within it. So you should probably revisit that comp plan and not worry so much about your trust levels with sales because that's what's solid in black and white. So again, this is kind of an evolution for me. I've always enjoyed working close with sales, but I've had some trust issues in the past. What I've realized they're of my own making. If we can create a design that is simple and drives the right behavior and doesn't have too many gotchas, then we don't have a trust issue. It's written in black and white. So we trust each other. And when it's simple on our side too, it's back and forth. Trust goes both ways, 100%.

Speaker A: I mean, it's the importance of any contract or agreement. It's the reason why you write things out, uh, and you define not because you expect things to go wrong, but when they do hit those edge cases, it's clearly laid out. And I agree with you. This is why, going back to the governance discussion we had earlier, it's like it is the boring part, right? Like it can be or it's. Or it has this like bad rap of being the boring part. But actually going through that process just helps in so many ways. It's like upfront work that pays dividends throughout the year versus you know, taking the shortcut and then having all the issues of lack of understanding and trust.

Speaker B: So mutual agreement. Mutual trust, yeah.

Speaker A: And I also think there's an element of like sales getting a bad rap. 1m okay. Occasionally face an issue. It's compensation. There's. There's an element of like money just makes everything more difficult. Right. Imagine having a conversation with a friend about money, with family, but it's just like it's, you know, it's like no one wants to do it and then let alone like a colleague about money. So that makes right away any conversation that you have around, like a dispute or anything, like slightly more difficult. But two, in a population of thousands of sellers, you are going to have, as humans, we all skew a little bit different. You're going to have the 1 2% that are going to overly index on kind of scrutinizing every single thing. And you'll. And you have to be careful not to bias your perspective to that which it's very easy if you know, in the early stages of your career when you feel like you have a spotlight on you and it's an urgency and all of a sudden you get this misconception. But I think in general, again, most sellers are there, they're there to solve a customer problem. They're there to drive business outcome and their critical gear in the machinery of the entire business.

Speaker B: So, yeah, if you think about it too is the less time you're talking to them and having these triggers, the better, the more time they're selling. You know, you don't want the, um, plans that will cause any of this either. So, yeah, the more they're outselling, the more they're less triggering you

Speaker A: what they

Speaker B: could be asking for next.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, make it clear, make it understandable and, uh, you actually make your own life better. Yeah, yeah. This has been a great episode already. And uh, then I think I really, really enjoy the conversation and deep dive. We always ask a couple questions to all of our guests before we wrap up. So I'll start with the first one, which is if you could take one person out in, uh, the industry to lunch. Ah, who would it be and why?

Speaker B: So after all this talk with Heidi, I would love to have lunch with her. I would love to catch up with her. I think she's, um, she went, she does total rewards as well as, um, as well as sales comp in her background. Um, but anyway, I would love to catch up with her. It's been, um, I've been thinking about her a lot, um, recently for a lot of reasons. So anyway, that's who I would love to have lunch with.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, I feel like I'm glad that, yeah, this, this spurred this moment because, you know, it's funny, speaking of catching up with, with old colleagues or like colleagues in the past, I actually caught up with, uh, a colleague of mine. Uh, yesterday it was actually one of my very early managers. And so it really does, like, it just brings it back and kind of gives you appreciation to all the things that, uh, where you are today is driven off of all the things that we learned from the people that we work in the past. So, yeah, that sounds like a great one. Next question is, uh, is there a resource, whether it's a podcast, uh, a book, or anything that you found has helped you in your career that you'd like to share with the audience?

Speaker B: So there are some books that I've read that I love just from a motivational and Keep on Never Trying. And one is Endurance, um, about Shackleton and his, uh, Antarctica trip. Do I call it a trip? But anyway, um, him getting across Antarctica and making it alive, uh, after his, um, ship going down. The other one, I actually can't think of the name. Um, I think it's Pot of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. It's just interesting. It's about, uh, treasure Hunt and, um, it's a true story about a treasure, ah, hunter who found gold, um, and how it took a long time to get there and how he just never gave up. I would suggest reading the book, by the way, before doing any research on the human. Um, I did it the right way. I found out a little bit more about him afterwards that is like, oh, interesting. This is what he's doing now. But, um, anyway, um, two good books. Um, another just. I love network. Um, I love the network. I love the, um, think tank that you've put this together because this is a great place to be. Like, um, if you have a comp problem or something that's similar to comp. I feel like we've covered that, um, comp sales. Comp is not just one thing that you can send a message out into the group and, you know, get answers and you meet more people. And, um, every time, you know, we come together, even when we had the. The nudge, like seeing my old colleagues and even chatting with them on Zoom during the webinar, like, it was just. It makes it, you know, you feel community, um, but you also feel supported because you are going to be put in front of these human executives that are going to expect so much out of you and have all the answers. And you don't have to have all the answers. You have your network and that's important. So I think that's very important. I've. I've leaned on my network quite a bit in my career and it's helped. It has, um, made Me a better employee, it has made me a better advisor and again it has built those relationships with, with leaders that I've needed. Um, through that trust, like on the network part.

Speaker A: I think it's a very, as I said, it's a niche industry, but it's very big. It's part of every company, right, Every sales organization. And starting when I started my career, like there was no resource. And so what, it felt a little bit more lonely as you kind of like we're trying to solve these, these problems. And so the community wouldn't be a community without experts like you and practitioners that are taking time out of your day to kind of share back with everyone else. And so uh, we all benefit by being together. So it's, you know, it's good to have. And I think on your recommendations for books I actually find that like the biographies, the you know, real life stories from totally different perspectives. Like the world is full of so many different people doing so many different things and sometimes we're very siloed in the things that we're doing that you, you know, you don't see beyond the kind of halo that you are the focus that you're blinded to. And so I ah, do find those kind of stories, those type of uh, resources sometimes are helpful in like opening your eyes to what could be possible

Speaker B: for sure, for sure. And it, and just motivating that somebody had, that somebody was able to do this, um, something that you couldn't even imagine having to do and um, something outside of your, even your brain capacity sometimes, but it stretches that brain. So that's what's amazing.

Speaker A: So in some of the best books you know, around, stories of, you know, based on people and what they've done, the most surprising thing to me is how quick, right like the saying, like people overestimate what they could do in a year, but they significantly underestimate what they can do in 10. I mean that to me is like what's crazy in a lot of these things, like this trip. And I'm going to check out the book Endurance and I think there's an element of like, how long did it take for this person to kind of set their mind on okay, I'm going to do this. And then being able to accomplish it, I think that is usually uh, very surprising and it kind of hope, you know, brings it back to you in terms of like, in your team of like what is possible for us to do in the next two, three years. Probably a lot more than you think. And uh, it's just about having the commitment to go forward.

Speaker B: For sure. For sure.

Speaker A: Marty, it was absolutely great uh, to do this show together and I think, uh, there's so many good takeaways and tidbits. So I appreciate you jumping on and kind of sharing your wisdom and experience over the years. But, uh, always good to see you. And uh, here's to the next community, uh, event.

Speaker B: Yes. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This has been great.

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