ITF Office Hours Podcast - Episode 2

Speaker A: I think with say, a more seasoned salesperson, it's very much, let's talk about the numbers, right? Like, what were you hired to do and what did you actually do? Really dig into the performance, dig into like problem solving, tough deals. How do they handle that? You know, really situational type of stuff to figure out how they think. And you're really trying to find somebody that matches your kind of the values and what's been successful on your sales team. And different companies have different key values and what they feel is important.

Speaker B: Okay, team, we're back again with another episode of ITF Office Hours. And as always, we're joined by my pal Dave Hanley, who's the author of the Delusional Founder. And by the way, if you're out there running a startup or you've got a smaller sales team, anybody Anywhere near the SaaS industry, you need the book the Delusional Founder. Fantastic read. And it's in the mode of, uh, you know, the wealthy barber or the one minute manager, where it's a shorter read packed with great information and super interesting. So Dave would never do this for himself, but I'm doing a little commercial here in the Office Hours for the Delusional founder. Dave, good to see you.

Speaker A: Yeah, you too. I appreciate the shameless, uh, plug there. Right here at the top.

Speaker B: Got to be done. That's how you sell these books on Amazon.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: So good news on the mailbag. It keeps. The digital mailbag keeps filling up.

Speaker A: That's piling up. Mark, we got a lot of good questions. I think we got some good, good response from our first Office Hours episode and people sent us in a few more so we can keep the ball rolling here and answer a few more questions.

Speaker B: Let's jump in. Looking forward to it.

Speaker A: Let's look at question number one here. We've got Jim. So Jim says, I've been in sales for 20 years in the enterprise software industry and I'm getting a little bit concerned about the future with all of the hype around AI, My company seems to be really embracing it and they're Even experimenting with AI based SDRs to help with lead generation. How concerned should I be about my future as a seller and what can I do to stay ahead of the curve? So really good one from Jim there. Hot topic off the, uh, off the top here, Mark.

Speaker B: Yeah, super, super hot. So the ITF Office Hours just became an eight hour podcast based on response here. So first of all, Jim, thanks for the question. Dave, thanks for the question. Of course, this is on everybody's mind and team. This is on my mind too. So as with anything, I still am this believer in the atomic, uh, habits approach to things, which is, you know, lifelong learning. Always trying to get 5, 10% better. I don't worry about trying to get 30 or 40% better in any short period of time on anything because it's just not going to happen. You'll just feel bad. So just on the AI front, you know, the future we'll talk about in a second, but the first message to anybody out there is just get in the game a little bit. So whether it's ChatGPT or Claude, start to think about how do I get in there, how do I start to have conversations with AI versus just asking for research. So a great pal of mine, Mike Sparling, who's an AI thought leader, suggested in my commutes and then out of Toronto, he said, trying to have a conversation with AI instead of just asking for one question or some piece of research. So he said, you can make use of dead time commuting. I thought that was a great idea. Um, but first of all, let's take brass tacks here. So AI is today. As of the recording of this podcast, everything will change. But it's a great tool today. But. Or it's a great opportunity today. It's not a tool. It's a great opportunity. But it only works if you really understand your sales playbook. So the truth of it is, you do have to go back to the fundamentals. So let's. He brought up SDR work. Let's think about that. So we look at our sales playbook. First we have to understand our value proposition and our value proposition messaging. Then we have to understand our, uh, target market, which means start with your ideal client profile and then understand your buyer Persona. If you do not understand those two things, AI can't help you. It's just going to spray and pray the way many companies do today. And by the way, Dave, this is a huge problem still today with many of the companies, and we hear from thought leaders like you all the time. Many of the companies out there, they don't spend the time to truly define their ideal client profile. And they go after everybody and they waste too much time on smaller deals that have no impact on their business and it creates a lot of noise. But let's say we did go through the delusional founder and learn to love selling. We really understood our ideal client profile. Then, uh, what I can do is I can use the AI that's embedded into a lot of the sales enablement tools out there today to help me with firmographic data. So size of the company revenue, all employees, technographic data. What's their tech stack today? I can help it with trigger event monitoring. Okay. For sales training a trigger event is they have a new chief revenue officer. Boom, we want to reach out to them. They got funding. Boom, we want to reach out to them. Or on uh, LinkedIn they're hiring nine or ten salespeople. Boom, we want to reach out to them, but uh, we don't want to reach out to everybody. So it's only helpful for my team if in fact we actually have gone through that effort of understanding really who that ideal client profile is. Will it take over a little bit of the work of SDRs? I think it's going to take work off the table, uh, of SDRs for sure. Because those three things that we do research on that I just talked about, pharmagraphic technographic trigger event monitoring, those things take like 30, 40 minutes per prospect today. And so if I can get that in two minutes or I can walk in every day and that's already done for me, that's kind of interesting. Or if I have AI kind of leveraging all of the data that I've, the attributes I've talked about when I walk in, it's already been through my database and it's gone through this. And he said, mark, if you only have time to reach out to 10 people today, these are the 10 people you should reach out to. So I got one other thought, Dave, but does some of that resonate? Do you think that's helpful?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think talking directly to Jim's concern, he's in the enterprise software space. That's a very much relationship based business. I was in enterprise software for 15 years. I don't think Jim should be too concerned about AI agent taking over his, his sales complete sales process and he's out of a job. I think going forward the sales people that are going to win in this more AI based environment are a, the ones that use AI as a tool to basically do their job better and an enabler. And also those salespeople that are going to be the most human, the ones that actually connect with their, you know, their buyer and help them solve problems and talk to them, hey, what are you actually concerned about here? How can we help get over that? Just connecting because people buy from people, right? So I think that's a key thing going forward for Jim is lean into that because that's not going to get replaced. By, uh, AI anytime soon.

Speaker B: Beautifully said, by the way. You know, we always say on the podcast today, B2B Sales is management consulting. You know, management consulting is where you're really having that authentic conversation with a client or prospect where you've got a point of view as to how you can really help them because you have experience and expertise. It's not about pitching, it's just about helping. I think that's absolutely right. Now, if there's folks, uh, out there today listening who are SDRs who've been trained to do nothing but pitch or be talking brochures, I absolutely think AI sort of speeds up the removal of those folks from the ecosystem. So you've got to elevate your game to get to that point where you can add value, insight, knowledge in a live conversation dynamically with empathy. So I love that idea. This will help the best get better. It might bridge a gap between the best and the rest.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think Jim should start to think about using AI as a sales assistant, frankly. So, for example, even in my roles today, instead of sitting there after a sales conversation and putting a, um, PowerPoint slide together to present on the next meeting, I just plod and I go in there and have all of my. The brand assets in there already loaded. So it knows how to, you know, formulate this. And it's like, here's what I'm thinking. Hammer that in and you get something back that you're not just going to turn around and send. But you can certainly use it as a really good baseline. And then beautifully said. And it's basically like, think about asking, you know, you've got a junior sales assistant. Hey, put this slide together. We need this for the next presentation. You use it like that, and that's going to be super valuable and save you a ton of time that you can spend prospecting or, you know, talking to existing customers and spend your time better.

Speaker B: Yeah. Beautifully said, Dave. By the way, your answers on both of those were probably better than mine. And so I'm learning today, too. I just love it. Thank you.

Speaker A: Good stuff. All right, Marco, we got another different one here from Cheryl. And Cheryl says, I lead a sales team of sales reps who are quite autonomous, but I feel like too often they're jumping to giving a discount to a prospect to try to get a deal over the finish line. What can I put in place as a sales manager for them to just let them do a better job with negotiations?

Speaker B: Yeah. What a great question. And thank you, Cheryl.

Speaker A: Thanks.

Speaker B: You know, so for me, Dave, you Default to discounting if you don't understand the true value of your offering to that particular client. So to me, when we think of our sales process, you know, we always talk about the most important parts, discovery, where we're really trying to figure out what's going on with them, their business, what's the desired outcome they're trying to achieve. And the reason we're trying to do that is we're hoping to add some value and insight, knowledge. And then we're also trying to figure out can we help them achieve that outcome. So can we collaborate and work with them, um, not pitching a product, but figuring out the impact of that product on that prospect's business, et cetera, et cetera. We also, by the way, as part of discovery, we want to collaborate to say, listen, if we can drive a desired outcome that's meaningful for you, great. And if as we go through this process it highlights that, this won't help you, I'll tell you that too. So the idea is let's just figure out what's ah, right for the client. But if we spend enough time in discovery, then price doesn't matter because chances are you're working. You've defined a return on investment that is significant with a, uh, 5x10x return to that client. And because you worked on it collaboratively with them and built it kind of bottom up in their financial language, they'll believe you. What happens today, particularly in the SAS world, you're going to get a sell sheet that says this gives a, uh, 378% return on investment. The buyer doesn't believe you. But if you actually work with them and actually build that business case, then you know what the impact is going to be. And so to me, if we do that properly, when they come back and ask for a discount, then I feel like I have a little more negotiation leverage because I know the impact of the solution on their business. They have the negotiation impact, sorry, the negotiation influence. They've got all the sort of weight and leverage. So that would be my advice to Cheryl when she's managing the team, when she's doing an opportunity review in the next sales meeting or the next one on one. First ask why is this the right thing for the client to do and how do they build a business case to cost justify the investment? Because if the salesperson has done that, that in itself is going to become negotiation leverage for them. If they haven't done that, they've got more work to do. What do you think, Dave?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think this is like you said, mark, this is something where I think a lot of times less experienced salespeople a little bit more of like SaaS, churn and burn, get the deals in the door type of thing. They kind of fall victim to this.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I think, you know, I learned this years ago and it was kind of from two sources. One, you, because you'd always ask these questions in our meetings. Number two was it was probably 15, 20 years ago I did a like literally a two day negotiation course. It was like, ah, I think it was Keras or something.

Speaker B: I did the same one and except I did mine in 1929.

Speaker A: Yours was done by Keras?

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: So this was, it was actually super interesting. First of all, we went to this course and I'm like, how do you do negotiation training for two days? Right. It was insane. But what you learn is a lot of people don't ask the right questions to determine what's actually important to the other side of the table in the negotiation. In this case the prospect. Right. So they're just like, they always assume, oh, it's price, it's price, it's price. When half the time if you ask the right questions, you're going to say, hey, what's important? Let's prioritize this stuff. Is it price? Is it features, Is it time frame? And then when you ask the right questions and prioritize that in terms of what their, you know, top to bottom priorities are, like, you know, price really isn't that important. They really want this thing implemented before June 1st so we can rejig a couple things and charge full price and doesn't mean anything to us to kind of bump them up our priority list. But it's huge for them. So just a lot of people, a lot of salespeople don't ask those questions. And I think Cheryl's perspective in a sales meeting, it's like, hey, what are their priorities in terms of all of these categories? And really get the salesperson to think about that. And half the time, like you said, they haven't even asked the question. So they don't know. But once Cheryl starts to probe into that, they're going to say, geez, I'm on the sales call. I better ask them what are the priorities across the board here for all these, all these areas.

Speaker B: So great. Dave, by the way, so funny about Karras. Just another thought. We also have to think about, you know, and out of empathy for the sales team, if they're doing a larger SaaS deal, uh, they're probably getting negotiation questions from business leaders. And that's where the things you and I came up with kind of apply. And then eventually they're going to get negotiation questions from purchasing agents or buyers.

Speaker A: That's always a fun one.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so you have to understand who and prepare appropriately for who we're speaking to. And then also try to understand the dynamic between the two organizations. You know, sometimes the buyer and the economic buyer, the business buyer and the purchasing group, they're not that well connected. So, you know, one of the things I did pick up from Kerris, by the way, is, um, buyers get more negotiation training than sellers do typically. And they are trained very tactically to ask for a discount two or three times.

Speaker A: So those procurement people have been through these courses, you know, more so than any salespeople, I think. Right.

Speaker B: That's their job. Yeah, exactly right. So part of that job is ask three times. So you have to actually get a few no's. Uh, they're taught to ask two or three times. And at some point in time you just have to be comfortable and just say no. That doesn't mean that kills a deal because there's always these escalations that, uh, might take place. But just thinking through that, and then when somebody comes back and says, well, that's unacceptable. Like, how can you take that position? That's what a purchasing agent might say. They might come back because again, they have good questions on their side. You need a response for that. So whether you point to the market, whether you point to if they're trying to negotiate things like cost escalators and so on and so forth, industry trends, market trends, escalators, sometimes even pointing to educating the purchasing agent as to how their business operates. So for example, in sas, when you have, hey, uh, we have an annual price increase of 7% or 6% and you're selling to a large bank, you might say, and they come back and go, that's unacceptable. You might just say, well, listen, what did your fees increase by last year? It's just kind of an interesting thing. But we have to understand them in the business. And one of the overarching themes always gang is prepare for these things. When you're going through into that kind of negotiation, your teammates, you've been through this before. Your sales leader's been through this before. So coming up with the five, seven, nine questions you know they're going to ask, be ready for the answers so you don't look like you're caught, uh, in the headlights when it comes up. And you're trying to dance or respond on the fly because we don't tend to do well that way.

Speaker A: Yeah, 100%.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's really good.

Speaker B: Hey, by the way, we could do an entire. And we should. We can do an entire this selling well podcast just on negotiation. Yeah. So team, keep your questions coming in and you know, it's probably high time for us to find the global thought leader on negotiations to figure out, okay, how do we all keep current with this and keep our training current? It's funny, I still have those karas materials.

Speaker A: Uh, I think I might have them somewhere too. It's like from Cheryl's perspective, if she hasn't taken some kind of negotiation training, like I said, it was a two day program. So that's something to look into more in depth on that because it's pretty eye opening and they set it up to be at the end. I remember it's like this is very eye opening just the way their program is. You gotta ask the questions. You have to know what's on the other person's card. Right. Because you don't do all these role plays. And that was the whole thing they were trying to teach you there. It was cool.

Speaker B: Back in the days of the, uh, billion dollar deal. When I did that deal, first of all, helpfully, two years prior, I'd been to Harvard for their two days on negotiation training. And one of the big things was trying to expand the size of the pie. So rather than thinking the pie and I've got my piece and I've got their piece, is there a way of making this pie a little bit bigger for all of us? So the split between the two of us, uh, doesn't really matter as much. And then always kind of understanding with negotiation the difference between a position and the interest. So if you can build that trust where somebody says, uh, I want a discount or I want this or I need unlimited liability, saying I understand the position, why? And the more they start explaining why they're asking what their real interest is, the better off you're going to be. I'll use one super quick example without boring folks here, but back in the day when I did those huge deals, we were always negotiating check processing, meaning processing checks. Dave and I bet back in the day he'd write me a check and then I'd cash that check. And what they would always negotiate is to liability if you make a mistake. And I'd say, keep telling me more. And the more they explained it, they'd say, well, if Dave writes you a check, for 10 million bucks. And Mark, you cash it and then you guys make a mistake on that one. We're out 10 million bucks, so you have to pay us back. And the more they explained it, the more comfortable, uh, I felt in my counter position, which was you're paying me 3 cents to cash that check and

Speaker A: you want me to take unlimited liability.

Speaker B: So now I'm going to take unlimited liability and kill my company. And by the way, that type of mistake is an inherent risk in the business you've chosen to be in. We're not taking over your risk. We're just processing the check better than you did. So now at least I feel like I have a response. Obviously, I still have scars from that one because I probably spent two months trying to negotiate that particular point.

Speaker A: That's exactly it. Yeah. And market, just talking. One thing that came to mind in terms of, like, making the pie bigger, I think a lot of times salespeople can get a little bit more, a little more creative in terms of, you know, how they deal with this kind of stuff. So we, and I think this is something we talked about many years ago. It's like if the, uh, prospect is really pushing you for some kind of discount, okay, expand the size of the pie. It's like, look, if we're going to give you this 10% discount, we're going to ask you to do a case study with us so that we can share that in our marketing. Because for us, that's worth probably more than the 10% discount. But all sudden they're like, sure, why not? Right? Doesn't cost us anything. So just think about that, like, get more creative. What else can you put on the table? And the whole concept of if you're going to give something up, make sure you get something in return.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, hey, two year deal. Give me a five year deal.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Right. And by the way, I think you can, you know, you don't have to answer. You can always have a collaborative conversation. The one Cheryl, by the way, I always loved. Dave probably did this to me back in the day when we were helping his companies. Hey, Mark, can you give me a discount of 15%? And first question I go, well, listen, uh, totally get it. I'm not sure, but hey, Dave, how'd you come up with 15%? Why didn't you come up with 12? Or why didn't you come up with 17?

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: So getting into this sort of level of detail, Dave had a partner whose name M will remain protected. His name's Dave DaCosta. He used to nickel and dime everything. Okay, so he couldn't squeeze enough lemon. Enough juice out of our lemon. Eventually you just have to say no.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Sorry. Dc, we love you, buddy. Should we try and squeeze one more in here? Speaking.

Speaker A: Yeah, we got one more. I don't know if this one's going to take too much time. The negotiation topic's so huge. I think this one is a little.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure it is.

Speaker A: We do a two day podcast on that, but this one's a little more to the point, hopefully a little more tactical. So this one's from Ryan. Ryan says we're building out our sales team and I've been doing quite a few interviews lately. When it comes to reference checks, I feel like they aren't very useful because references aren't that keen to open up and give me the straight goods. What do you recommend to help actually make reference checks effective?

Speaker B: Oh, what a great question. And thank you, Ryan. So, first of all, a couple of thoughts. One reference source I would point to, which I still love to this day, is a book called who by Jeff Smart and Randy Street. Who by Jeff Smart and Randy Street. And this is a tip I picked up from M. Reading that book, whether it was 10 years ago or 15 years ago. So when you're doing a top grading interview, you know one of the questions you like the candidate to speak to. When they're speaking about their different roles, there's four questions. When they're telling you the story of their career, what were you hired to do? What stands out as your accomplishments you're most proud of in that particular role? What were some of the more difficult parts of that job? And then why'd you move on? So if we go to the third one, what were some of the more difficult parts of this job? That's where on their cv, I, uh, definitely take notes when we're talking about this. So I'm interviewing Dave Hanley. He's telling me that, you know, 10 years ago he didn't love the management style of a particular company at a particular time. Okay, got it. Uh, I keep track of those because three weeks later I might be calling Dave's reference. And when you're speaking to a reference, they wouldn't be a reference unless they're going to say great things. But sometimes putting some distance between the conversation and the candidate is helpful to the person you're speaking to. So I might say, hey, Peter, Dave mentioned 10 years ago when he was working with you, he had some difficulty with the sales reporting and the management cadence. Can you tell me a little bit about that. So two things happened with Peter. First of all, he doesn't feel like he's throwing you under the bus because this is 10 years ago. And then secondly, the fact that I said, Dave told me about this, now Peter opens up a little bit, or I might ask a question, say, what were you coaching Dave on back in those days? I know that was a long time ago. Now, again, he's never going to say something bad about Dave, but he might highlight one or two things that I'll consider if I noticed it. Because clearly we understand that Dave Hanley has a problem with authority. Anybody who knows Dave Hanley knows that the case. That's the case.

Speaker A: Hypothetically speaking.

Speaker B: Hypothetically, of course. Hypothetically. Oh, yeah, we now we're winking to the camera. But again, this won't change my opinion, but this might actually give me some help for any different thing. I might push on a little bit. It might give me some insight in terms of how to best work with Dave today. I don't think it's going to change whether we move forward with a candidate, but it might be helpful insight in terms of how I best work with a candidate today. Uh, that would be one thought. What do you think, Dave? And you can use me as the example. Yeah, yeah, send me back.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, by the time you make that reference call, I mean, usually you're pretty convinced that this person is right for the role. I think part of the issue might be it sounds like they're doing a lot of hiring on Ryan's team there. I think part of the root problem with a lot of these hiring processes is they're using the reference as, like, validation while, um, they're making the right decision here. Yeah, right. I've always thought, and it's. It's tough, it's sometimes hard to find the right people for the role. But I've always kind of thought, like, if it's not a hell yes, it's a hell no. If I'm not super excited to hire this person, you know, the reference check ain't going to make much of a difference. If I'm like, I'm not quite sure, you know, let's see what the reference says. Because they're not giving us references. Aren't going to give great feedback in terms of references. One thing that I've always found useful is when you talk to them, it's like, person's good. They're good at this. Great. Yeah, Great to work with. It's like, I Like to ask kind of straight up, this is helping you kind of dig in and try to figure out, like you said, not necessarily am I going to hire them or not, but like, give me something useful that when I do hire them, you know, actually figure out how to maybe manage them. It's like, yeah. On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put this person? Right.

Speaker B: Fantastic.

Speaker A: No one's gonna tell you one or two or three or four. But, but if it's not a 10, if it's a 10, it's like, great. I thought they sounded amazing. Perfect. If it's a 7 or an 8, it's like, hey, thanks. But like, what do you think could get them to a 10, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So then at least they're like, yeah, good question. Ah, uh, you know what, they could be a little better at prospecting or they're a little sloppy with contracts or something. Right. So that leaves you like. Okay, good to know. Tuck that one away for later type of thing.

Speaker B: I got one more question for you on this, but team, just a couple of thoughts. When you're doing reference checks, so do them right, even though it feels self evident. Hey, you know, because we've heard this with some folks, Dave, where they say, well, they're only going to give people who love them double check. Secondly, the reference should be somebody they reported to not appear. Uh, you want to check, ask my neighbor. What I'm like, you're going to get one point of view. Can ask somebody I reported to 10 years ago. You're going to get a different one. So make sure it's somebody reported to Dave, out there today. When you're interviewing, you've done so much of this. When you're interviewing, what are the attributes you look for in a new candidate?

Speaker A: I mean, it kind of depends on the role. Like for example, right now I'm actually helping somebody hire an sdr. Yeah, those people don't have a lot of experience. Often they're pretty early in their career, coming out of school in many cases. For those types of roles, I'm really not digging into, like, tell me about your work experience at working at Target before you went to college. It's more like, hey, tell me about a time when you did something really competitive. Tell me about a time when you got some really tough feedback and what did you do with that and how did you improve? You know, tell me about something where you've actually got significantly better at over the last several years. So that type of thing. And then I think with say, a more seasoned Salesperson. It's m. Very much. Let's talk about the numbers, right? Like what were you hired to do and what did you actually do? Really dig into the performance. Dig into like problem solving, tough deals. How do they handle that? You know, really situational type of stuff to figure out how they think. And you're really trying to find somebody that matches your kind of the values and the what's been successful on your sales team. And different companies have different key values and what they, they feel is important.

Speaker B: Yeah, culture. Culture is for sure a big part of it. I love that. And I also, like always just defaulting back on. I have a little checklist of things I'm looking for. Intelligence, drive, humility, passion and optimism. Those tend and I just rank them as having an interview.

Speaker A: You can't beat somebody with all those, right. I mean, it sounds pretty good.

Speaker B: Yeah, it does sound pretty good. Again, none of that is industry experience or depth selling. If somebody's got all of those things, I could probably teach them to be an scr.

Speaker A: That's true. Yeah.

Speaker B: So the humility is a big one, gang. No matter what stage of career, humility to me means it's not shy or retiring. Just means somebody understands they don't know it all.

Speaker A: 100%. 100% market. Here's another quick story for you. You'll like this one too. So this goes back to. This is another. We didn't just hire people named Dave, but Dave Dasta and I were interviewing another fellow you know quite well, Dave Pittman.

Speaker B: Love him.

Speaker A: And again, fresh SDR role out of school. We just interviewed a guy that in earlier and we asked him straight up like, hey, have you ever worked with a CRM M system? It was clear this other guy had not ever had his hands on a CRM M system. But he started kind of like BSing us a little bit. Oh, you know, this, that, the other. You know, Dave and I are looking at each other like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And that's a massive red flag, right?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So fast forward. Next interview is Dave Pittman, who we all, you know, we all love Dave Pittman. He comes in again right out of school, no experience, and we asked the same CRM question and he says, you know what, guys, I'm going to be honest, I don't know what a CRM system is, but I am willing to learn and I'm eager to come in and, you know, sink my teeth into this and just kind of be a great asset for the team and we're like, boom, you're hired. But that's right, because nothing kills your credibility on a sales call more than prospect asking you some technical question. And you're like, oh, blah, blah, blah, B.S. this, that, uh, the other. It's just like, you know what? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm going to talk to the team and find out and get back to you. And they're like, perfect. Sounds like credibility.

Speaker B: Done. Humility, check. Trust also, you know, on the culture side, integrity. Tell me the truth with mature salespeople on that front, by the way, do I do look to say when somebody left a role? Is it, hey, we agreed it was time to part come. No, you didn't. So how do you position ask me about my career and I'm going to point out two or three major mistakes I made. You know, one, I took a job for money and that was a big mistake. So, but just be honest and upright because what you want with somebody is can I completely trust them? Um, do I get the whole story? So just that, ah, transparency and authenticity is what we're all looking for with people and we interact with in life 100%, you know. Hey, by the way, what a great discussion again today. These, uh, office hours are super fun. Thank you.

Speaker A: Uh, keep. For all the followers and listeners out there that, you know, have mark on LinkedIn or any of the other kind of social networks. You know, keep sending us some great questions because this is, you know, I'm learning as much as, as you are here. It's, uh, it's a fun conversation. It reminds me, you know, of a lot of things that I need to keep thinking about.

Speaker B: Yeah, me too. And team listen. Hey, Dave, thank you for today, team, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. And as Dave mentioned, Whether it's through LinkedIn, Mark Cox or uh, email Mark Coxinthefunnel uh.com Please keep filling our digital mailbag and we'll take on all the topics you want to talk about in the ITF office hours. Thanks for listening today and have a great week.

Speaker A: Thanks, Mark.

Speaker B: Thanks, Dave.