Sales Management

Office Hours - Episode 8: Finding Sales Unicorns And Fixing A Struggling Team

The Selling Well Podcast | Finding Sales Unicorns

Finding sales unicorns and fixing a struggling team are two of the biggest hurdles founders and sales leaders face when trying to scale a business. Without the right playbook or onboarding structure, hiring top-tier talent and turning around underperforming reps can quickly stall growth. In this Office Hours episode, host Mark Cox and guest Dave Hanley, author of The Delusional Founder, break down proven strategies for recruiting performance-driven salespeople and revitalizing team performance. They address real listener questions on securing equity-based sales hires, transitioning founders out of day-to-day selling, and managing team turnarounds during leadership transitions. Tune in for actionable insights to build a resilient, high-performing sales organization.

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Office Hours - Episode 8: Finding Sales Unicorns And Fixing A Struggling Team

Dave, welcome. Looking forward to the conversation. How are you doing?

Mark. Great. Looking forward to it. We've got some really good questions. I’m so excited to dive in here.

Let's get at it.

Number one, we've got a question here from Greg, and Greg says, “I'm the founder of an AI business, and I'm trying to hire my first head of sales. Our product is great, but I need someone to help me figure out the sales side. I'm having trouble finding a candidate who will come on with a performance-based comp to start, which includes equity. How do I find these types of unicorns?”

Hiring First Sales Hires & Overcoming Startup Skepticism

Greg, when you figure this one out, please start your own podcast and share with everybody. There are a couple of challenges, maybe, Dave, that we could talk about that Greg needs to think about. First of all, your first sales hire is always going to be very difficult. Just a couple of thoughts. For startups, I do not like the idea of hiring one sales hire. The idea of hiring a couple at a time because, first of all, they'll boost each other's performance. They'll raise the level of the game.

Get two people doing it. They'll have a little bit of community. They can share some learning, and so when you think about this, see if you can grab the budget for two salespeople. Secondly, I think the challenge is if you're a startup, your value proposition does not yet resonate in the marketplace. It's highly risky for a salesperson to take a job with your company because, as a founder, you might believe in the value proposition, but you have no social proof.

It's going to make their job very hard because nobody wants to take a leap to be the first couple of clients of a new startup. It's just too risky. It's too hard to sell it. One of the things you might want to think about, Greg, is when do you bring somebody on board? Do you first try and take on that sales role yourself? I know a lot of founders. You're your EOS systems, your strategic coach. Everybody says it's who, not how.

The truth of it is if you're a startup, you actually have to prove out your own value proposition before anybody else can come on and replicate it. You have to create your sales playbook. By the way, those of you who have not read the book, The Delusional Founder by Dave Hanley, you should check that out because Dave's done this at least two times and then built companies that he sold for a really significant number. It will not embarrass them, but that's what he did. Dave, you can speak to this more than me.

I appreciate the shameless plug there, Mark.

If you're a startup, you actually have to prove out your own value proposition before anybody else can come on and replicate it. You have to create your sales playbook.

You came out of the gate. As the founder, I think you've got to go out and just prove your value proposition in the marketplace. Beg, borrow, and steal to get your first 5 or 10 clients. Once you've got a value proposition that resonates in the marketplace, then you can teach other people to communicate that and try to sell through other people. The last thing before I love to hear your opinion on this, Dave, the other thing to think about, Greg, when you're bringing somebody on board is no one's going to be as good at selling your value proposition as the founder.

If you cannot do it, they're only going to be 50%, 60% as good as you for the first couple of years. There's no chance they're going to come on board and be successful. There's also very little chance that a very successful salesperson wants to go from making whatever it is, somewhere between 250K and 500K, where they can count on what they're doing every year. They know they're going to be successful by coming with a startup to take equity that has no value to begin with.

I know we're not answering the question or making it easy, but really it's a very difficult situation you're in. My recommendation would be maybe get some marketing support first for attention, awareness, get a decent website up, get some basic LinkedIn messaging up to get some, a few inbound leads perhaps but see if you can get out there and first get your 5 to 10 clients. You have a referenceable client that new salespeople can leverage to get more clients. What do you think, Dave? What do you think?

Mark, as you mentioned, this one's right. This is a fastball down the middle when it comes to what I've been thinking about and what my book's about. The thing that really hit me, I think, with Greg's question is that the product is great, but I need someone to help me figure out sales. There's nobody coming, unfortunately, to save you, Greg. As the founder, your job is sales. You do not have a business right now if you do not have a sales capability, and you have to figure that out. I do not think I've ever seen a successful scenario where a founder's like, “I'm going to bring in this great salesperson. They're going to figure it all out and run with it, and this thing's going to take off.”

Why Founders Must Own Sales Before Scaling

You have to figure it out. You have to prove the market. You have to prove the value proposition. You have to build the playbook. Once that's proven, you can bring somebody in and say, “Look, I've already got this started. You need to take the ball and run with it.” The most successful actual way to execute this, as you said, isn't like hiring some “stud” from Salesforce or somebody to come in and do that because those people, they do not have that skill set. They're going to come in and go, “Where's my lead? Where are the accounts? How do I farm this stuff? There's nothing there. You do not have a brand. You do not have clients.”

The best approach is to say, I, as the founder, am going to run sales, and I'm going to bring somebody in to support me. Whether that's like lead generation, and dealing with all of the like sales admin stuff. As part of that person doing that role, they're going to pick things up. Ideally, at some point you go, “I'm going to move you from, like, lead generation into more full cycle.” Typically, somebody who's a little bit younger, hungrier, doesn't have all the experience, but they can come in and really run with it. I've seen that, and I've done that right. Created that sales talent yourself. Unfortunately, Greg, it's on you, buddy. You've got to really get the ball started here.

By the way, team, Dave's done this very successfully. When we think of what I've been good at, I've actually been good at coming into a company that's like a two out of five and has something, and then we can blow that up. Dave's been very good at going from 0 to 2, and then blowing it up to 5, and then great things happen. Here's the real positive news, though, Greg, I think, just to take away from this conversation. You started your company for a reason. Presumably you saw a problem in a marketplace or an industry. You created the company. You got out of the gate.

Great on you. You've got this passion and enthusiasm for a problem you're solving in the marketplace. My recommendation would be to have as many conversations as you can with buyers about that problem and get their validation that the solution you bring to the table could resonate and can actually address that problem. As the founder, those initial conversations are easy to get because you do not have to come out and say, I'll just pick a name. We're not going out and saying, “We built the ITF Academy, Dave Hanley.”

I'd like to have a conversation about how we're going to help your business grow. I could reach out as the founder and go, “Dave, I see you've got a scaling business.” We're contemplating a technology that actually enables your sales teams to sell much better with self-directed learning on their time, at their pace. I'm not sure it resonates with your business. I'd love your opinion as the CEO yourself, because we're in the process of refining the offering.

The Selling Well Podcast | Finding Sales Unicorns

Finding Sales Unicorns: No matter what stage of your career, the most important thing is: am I going into an environment where I can be successful and where I can learn?

I wonder if I could pick your brain for 30 minutes. There's something about leaders where they really appreciate being asked to collaborate. They do not want to be “pitched at,” but they'd love it when people reach out and say, can I get your opinion? Try that. That literally starts that conversation. That's a good conversation starter for sure. You have that conversation 50 times in the next 90 days. After that, “You're going to find some opportunities.”

Those people, when they're collaborating with you, are always sure to say, “Who else do you think I should speak to?” If at the end of it, they go, “This was a really interesting conversation, thank you so much.” Given what we're trying to do here, is there anybody else you might recommend we speak to? Most people do not think clearly in the moment. When they're in the middle of a conversation, they cannot actually process everything.

What you might want to do is just follow up a week later and go, “Dave, loved our conversation last week. Thank you for suggesting that I speak to David Pittman and Dave Da Costa. I've got them on my list. I just wanted to follow up.” Oftentimes when I do this, about a week later, a whole bunch of other ideas come to somebody. Does anybody else come to mind? You give them a week or two. You keep checking in with them. Greg, it's a great question. By the way, good on you. We love entrepreneurs. Good on you for getting out of the gate.

Greg, know best of luck with that, taking that sales burden on yourself. Once you get to the point where you've built a great sales capability, maybe you've got a small team, you need to bring in whole sales leadership. That's the whole other challenge. Hit us back when that time comes. We'll talk about that, and we'll try to be helpful. Awesome question. Thank you, Greg. Number two here, we've got a little bit of a different one here from Sherry. Sherry says, “I started listening to your show a few months ago as I'm graduating soon. I wanted to get into B2B sales. I've already learned so much. What's the best way to get my foot in the door to get a great start in my sales career?”

Breaking Into B2B Sales: Advice For New Graduates

Great question. By the way, Sherry, thank you for this question. I get this question or conversation, Dave, I'm at that age now where I have friends whose kids are going in there or clients whose kids are going into the marketplace. They reach out. I love this conversation with new entrants to the marketplace today. Like, “What should you look for?” At the end of the day, team, no matter what stage of your career, to me, the most important thing is, am I going into an environment where I can be successful and where I can learn?

Obviously, with every job, Sherry, you're going to have for the next 30 years, the most important determinant of your satisfaction on that job is going to be your immediate boss. We're going to make sure we've got alignment. Who's the person? What culture is it going to be? Are you going to enjoy learning from this person? The second thing is, what am I going to learn? The truth is, larger companies tend to invest more in training and developing their teams.

You want to think about that. Second thing, you want to ask them about what the onboarding plan is. In the first 90 days, what's the formal onboarding plan? Even some very large companies have very poor onboarding plans. They leave it to you. They throw you in the deep end. You've got to figure out who to talk to and who to learn from. They go, “Go travel with a couple of people.” You're traveling with Mary and then Sue, but there's no real formal onboarding program except trying to observe them in the field. Go to a company that's got a training program.

Go to a company where you have alignment with the leader, and then go to a company where the sales cycle is reasonably attractive. By that, I mean, what are you selling, to whom, and why should they buy it? There are very attractive sales cycles out there. I'd really love to work with the head of retail banking to understand how to grow their business. I've got a technology that can do that. Very unattractive sales cycles out there that are very tactical in pitching. I say, tell me about the sales process. How do we, from getting a lead to close, what does that look like? What does the process look like?

In the early stages of a career, I think it's really important to learn, and then given the fact that it's your first job, I think it's important to get some company on your resume where the rest of the world would know they invested in you, that if you succeeded there for three years, it would be very clear to somebody else that they taught you how to sell, they invested in you, and you stayed current with important technologies. The problem with smaller organizations, they do not always have the money to invest in sales hires.

As the founder, your job is sales. You don't have a business right now if you don't have a sales capability.

They're actually taking more from you than they're giving you. I'd almost think of your first role as it's part of your continuing education, but it's a paid part of your continuing education. Go to a company. A lot of times, those are bigger companies. The sales forces of the world, the HubSpots of the world, the Microsofts of the world, the Oracles, the SAPs, at least you can have some comfort that they have something to teach you in the first couple of years. What do you think, Dave?

I was coming at this a little bit more. My thoughts are around how do you get and how do you actually land that role? It's really tough today to actually get someone's attention in the hiring process. As we know, Mark, you put a posting up there from a company perspective, you're going to get hundreds of applicants because it's so easy now on LinkedIn to just click a button and apply. Cutting through the noise, and then it goes into the applicant tracking system. It's all filtering and AI to figure out who the candidates are, and everybody looks the same. I talked to some younger people that are looking to get into sales from time to time.

How To Prospect Your Way Into A Sales Career

The approach that I recommend to them is to treat this job search like a sales process. Actually, do not just throw your resume into the ring. Literally go after it and prospect and reach out to people, connect on LinkedIn, go above and beyond and do something like, reach out, “Joe, I saw you posted for this sales role, wanted to share top five targets that if they're not already in your client base, I think that would make sense for your company,” or, “I came up with this potential outreach script based on what I know about your company. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.”

Great idea.

Basically, you're doing what you would do as an SDR, which is probably where you're going to land in an entry-level sales role. You're showing that person who's on the hiring end that you've got what it takes to do that job. You're willing to think outside the box, go above and beyond, provide solutions, sell yourself into that company, which I think is like, guess what? Nobody else is going to be doing that. It's so rare. If they've got 200 candidates in the applicant tracking system and they get an email from Sherry here who's telling them, here's what I think my first 90 days would look like in your company. It's a no-brainer. “Sherry, get in here for an interview. We want to talk to you.”

Crazy good idea. Actually building your 90-day onboarding plan, sharing it in advance. I would count speaking to members of the existing sales team. Send them a LinkedIn note and say, “Listen, I see your company's hiring. I wonder if I can pick your brain for 30 minutes. I just want to understand what the culture is like.” See if you can do that. One of the best interviews I've had was with somebody who was going to become a sales leader, actually not an entry-level, but I think it could still apply. I actually went and spoke to three clients and said, “Tell me about your impression of XYZ company.”

Let us say these companies were on your website. I called them because I said, “I was investigating your firm. I wanted to know what the experience was like, just knocking our socks off.” I love that idea, Dave, of just going above and beyond. A couple of tactical tips. I call HR a necessary evil in this process, where, by the way, I love people in HR. We have a lot of clients where a lot of the training comes through HR. At the end of the day, do not be afraid to go to the chief revenue officer or the hiring manager or other people on the sales team. They'll understand a little more about the day-to-day.

That's what you're going to be doing in that role is reaching out to people that are all over the organization and trying to find the right person to talk to. They're not going to be like, “Do not talk to me, talk to HR.” They're going to be like, “This is some serious initiative.”

They'll appreciate it because that's what you're going to be doing. Whereas HR sees it as if you're professionally persistent on LinkedIn, HR, they may not see it that way. They're recognized. They're an influencer in the decision, but they're not really the economic buyer for you. I love that idea, Dave. Here's another thought, team. Do not spray and pray. The same way we recommend this old-school world of trying to sell by spraying and praying and working on everything.

I sent out a hundred CVs, and three of them came back. They won't send out 15, but do it properly, and you get a buy. Really zone in and focus, increase your win rate, and keep learning from the process. Remember, there is this professional persistence required, and that's what you're to be doing professionally once they hire you.

The Selling Well Podcast | Finding Sales Unicorns

Finding Sales Unicorns: Do the research and discovery first. Gather data from clients, sales, marketing, and product before coming to the table with your assessment and playbook.

I would say lastly, do not hesitate to just focus on the companies that are posting jobs. I would say find companies that you think would be great to work with and reach out because I've got news for you. Everybody's always looking for good salespeople. Have you come across a company yet where it's like, “No, Mark, we do not need any more sales. Our revenue is good.” I haven't yet.

That's it. The conversation I've yet to have. I have a time machine, and it's never been that case. I got a time machine. It's my memory. First of all, Sherry, I'm so glad you're going into the industry. We're in a different world now. 30 years ago, 25 years ago, when I started, nobody left college or university saying, “I want to go into sales.” By the way, your parents weren't tapping you on the shoulder saying, I think it's a really good idea for you to go into sales. They weren't.

They also were not saying 30 years ago, “Mark, why do not you start your own company?” They were going, “What's wrong with you? Why did I invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in your education?” It's all different now. The number of venture capital buddies I have. My pals are presidents of banks. They're running major top three law firms. All of them go, actually I've suggested my son or daughter start in sales because every one of those jobs, the most important thing is still sales.

It's true.

We do it literally twice a week. I've got two conversations. Twice a week, we're talking to friends, neighbors, clients, children, anything of that nature, new people going into B2B sales. I just love these conversations. You're going to the right spot, Sherry, just let's make sure we learn ramping up. Dave's advice is fantastic in terms of getting that first opportunity.

Mark, sales might actually be cool now. Who knows.

Philip Squire in the UK. Team, his book's going to come to me in a second. Check out the other episode. We've interviewed him twice. He's a fellow. He runs a company called Consalia in the UK. He actually got professional sales identified as a formal profession in the UK. It's the University of Middlesex where he did his work. His tagline on his LinkedIn page is, “Check him out and connect with him.” He's a fantastic guy. His tagline on his LinkedIn page is, “Making sales the world's most sought-after profession.” Isn't it great? Just fantastic. He's a superb guy, a great individual.

I love it, Mark. Cool. We got one more. This one, I think the first two were more in my wheelhouse, but this one's definitely in yours, Mark. This is from Rajiv. Rajiv says, “I'm starting a new role as a sales manager next month at a large global software company. There's a lot of potential, but the sales team is struggling with both people and process. I'm expecting to make some significant changes right out of the gate. How do you think I should approach the first 60 to 90 days? I'm worried about making changes before fully understanding the problem.”

The First 90 Days: A Playbook For New Sales Managers

Great judgment, Rajiv. Great question, by the way. One of the things I'd suggest is to get in and not be afraid to let everybody know, “For the first 30 to 45 days, I'm in listen and learn mode.” Too often we come in, and we want to say, I'm going to put my stamp on it, context matters for every type of business. Being in that listen-and-learn mode of sitting down with all your direct reports with a formal way of assessing what's going on, get out into the field, make sure you've had 30, 25 conversations with clients.

One of the things I love about being a new leader in a business is I could be on for three days and reach out and go, “Dave, it's Mark Cox. Just took over running the sales team at the Hanley company. I wanted to get a chance to introduce myself and perhaps take 30 minutes of your time. I'm looking to do a bit of an assessment of how we're doing. Before I learn everything about our business, I want to get the customer's perspective. I'm reaching out to some of our most important clients to see if I can get a little time on your calendar.”

Treat this job search like a sales process. Don't just throw your resume into the ring, literally go after it and prospect and reach out to people.

That's huge. It's almost like triggering that health check conversation with a new set of eyes. Guess what? That client's going to feel pretty important if you're one of the first people they're calling as the new head of sales. I like that idea a lot.

People often say to me, Dave, they say, “Listen, I do not feel comfortable doing that mark until I know a little bit about the company I just joined.” I'd say, “No, the sooner you go out, the better.” When you come in and say, “Listen, I want to be very clear. I'm two weeks on board. I'm still with my business, but I'm here to listen to you. How are we doing?”

You do not have to have all the answers. You're just there to learn and ask questions, and you're going to absorb a lot and probably learn a lot quicker about the real status of the business than you would talking to the internal team members, I think.

If you looked at it, Rajiv, and said, “Listen, I'm going to give myself 30, 45 days to gather data and input. I'm to target 60 days, where I definitely need to go back to the team with an assessment.” You think, “I'm going to put everybody in the team room. I'm going to talk about what I've seen.” What I'd want up there is this first slide that says, I've talked to 30 clients. I've talked to everybody on the sales team. I've talked to everybody on the marketing team. I've talked to everybody on the product team. I talked to everybody in HR. I've had these discovery interviews.

I've done some work. Now here's my assessment. Here are the core elements of the playbook. Here's where I think we're knocking the ball out of the park. Here's where I think we've got an opportunity. Here's what we're going to do in the next 90 days to capitalize on these things. It's that research, discovery, and evidence that I think is super important. The second thing is to have a process. Think about that timeline you're on a boarding plan because both your team and the people you're reporting into, they want to know you're working on a process to come to the table with your game plan.

What's your playbook going to be moving forward? I definitely lived through this a couple of times, Dave, but one's very poignant where we had a very reasonably successful company where I was a contributor. I was a first-line manager, let's call it. A new chief revenue officer came in and, in the first week or two, just told everybody what was wrong and what they were going to do. They had come from IBM. Huge global company, 400,000 employees, everybody in their super high-level talent. They had no context on us, our business, our customers, but a lot of us did it this way. We're going to do it this way here.

A pretty good way to start off on the wrong foot and burn a lot of credibility out of the gate.

Just check, and then you're also making your mouth start writing checks. Your capabilities cannot cash. You're saying, “We're going to reinvent the product development cycle, and we're going to get products to market faster.” No, you're not. It is an IBM. Get some context first. In this particular case, by the way, the individual had left the business within 90 days. There's always the story, well, this crazy good opportunity came up, but the truth of it is, I think they've gone in and had this belief they could just take everything they learned at IBM and transfer it down to a much different company with a much different culture.

It just did not work. A little bit of caution. The book I love in this category, Dave, this one, because I'm working from home, is called The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. This is just a standard template for any senior job you take over where you're managing people. What are the strategies to shrink your time to value, and how do you build that plan to ramp up? It's such a great read. If memory serves, he's a Harvard professor, and this thing's been a best seller for fifteen years. I suggest it to everybody.

It looks like a good one for Rajiv here. Mark, what would you say? Rajiv comes in the door, sales team, probably certainly some people on the team know there's issues and he comes in and says, “I'm to take 30, 45 days to really get the lay of the land.” If there are people out there on the sales team that are like, “I might be on my way out the door,” or “I do not like what I see here. There's changes coming down the line.” How do you set those people at ease while you are out there getting acquainted with the business and the customers and the team?

The Selling Well Podcast | Finding Sales Unicorns

Finding Sales Unicorns: As a new manager coming in, you've got to earn the team's support and show that you're there to help them grow and succeed.

Building Trust And Managing Team Dynamics As A New Leader

First of all, I meet with everybody in the direct reporting line immediately. Let's say if I start on a Monday, I'm literally asking my admin assistant or whoever to book meetings with these people three hours after I get there. I have a bit of an agenda for every meeting. The first one is just tell me about you. Who are you? Tell me why you enjoy working here. Why are you here? Tell me a little bit about your career aspirations. First, I just want to get to know people, to start to get to know the team and why they're there.

I might have a couple of quick questions in these initial meetings. Things like, tell me a little bit about what our competitors are providing our clients that we're not. Where errors you'd think about focusing if you were me in the first 90 days. Tell me about some of the priority things you're working on right now. High-level stuff after we learn about them. The first thing is to build a bit of rapport and learn about them.

Secondly, ask a few questions, and third, share your plan and say, “Listen, my first 30 days here, I'm going to be just learning. We'll have a few more of these meetings. We'll start to set up a sales management cadence. I'd like to know the five clients in your portfolio that are most important to you, your top clients, because I'm to reach out to them and go meet them. Please give me their names, emails, and phone numbers, because I'm to book those meetings.” Here's how we'll stay in contact moving forward. Just set that cadence up. If you spent the first couple of days immediately doing that, let's say you've got 8 or 9 direct reports. First of all, it's going to tell you a lot. Secondly, I think you owe it to the team to give them a sense of what's coming.

That's important. You build that trust. You're interested in them as a person. They're like, “This isn't just some this isn't Hatchetman Cox coming in the door here. He's a person and he cares about me and the company.” That's huge. Just build that trust out of the gate.

The other thing I forgot to mention, Dave, we said, “Why are you doing this? Why do you love your job, and why do you do this?” Tell me a little bit about where you're taking your career. I'd also share why I took the job. Here's why I'm here, a little bit about what I've done, and here's what I thought was exciting. Here's why I took the job. You're probably validating the company's value proposition to the marketplace. Communication is a good way to do it. It doesn't mean anything. It's going to be easy. We're still going to be challenging people. We're certainly going to be trying to grow people. I do think that the fear of the unknown is really distracting and paralyzing.

A hundred percent. That's when you get people who cannot be productive because they're too worried about their job, or they just get up and say, “I do not feel secure here. I'm going to start looking for something else. Maybe it's a top performer on the team,” or whatever the case is. I like that approach for sure, as opposed to on the other end of the spectrum, getting up in front of the team going, everybody, we're going to whip this place into shape. You're not really getting to know the individuals.

I wouldn't do this. That's a bad idea. Why would we do this? Why didn't we do this? All this stuff. Do not forget if you're in a sales organization and you got brought in to be a manager, or you've got it brought in to be second or third-line leader, nine other people wanted that job. They had an existing team. Those people wanted it to be the manager, and they didn't get it. Now somebody else is coming in. The truth of it is you've got to earn their support because some of them might be more interested in seeing you fail.

That's a really good point.

Sorry, Rajiv. Not trying to. I've done this a number of times.

Communication is key. The fear of the unknown is distracting and paralyzing, so give your team a clear sense of what's coming.

Watch your back.

Rajiv, I've done this a number of times. By the way, the endgame to that thing, truthfully, is after a reasonable period of time where you give people a chance. Whether they wanted the job or not, they didn't get it. Now we are executing the learn love selling, the Mark Cox model. That's what we're going to do because I'm at work. You either get on side, and you get in and be supportive of that, or you're going to need to look for a career somewhere else. One of the mistakes I have made is certainly as an early new manager day.

I took too long to make those kinds of conversations while two or three people who wanted my job were trying to chip away at my confidence, not supporting the team. Once you've done this a few times, you go, “Make it very clear you're supportive, give everybody the opportunity.” If somebody declares they do not want to play the breakout that I organized for our hockey team, I cannot have them on the ice doing their own thing. I got to get somebody else. You can go play for the other team.

It wouldn't be an office hours episode without a hockey analogy. We've got to the point where we're good.

That's right. Great questions.

Some good stuff. I love it.

Greg, Sherry, and Rajiv, thank you so much for the great questions. Team, by the way, thanks a lot for your support of the show. We're at the Apple Marketing Top Ten show. That's the first time we've been at that level. Thank you. If this is helpful, please let us know, and then like, share, and comment when we do post promoting it, and tell your friends about the show. At the end of the day, we are trying to help people in B2B sales have a better life. We actually want to improve the lives of people in B2B sales. If your friends keep those comments coming in or those questions coming in through the LinkedIn posts, they can email me at MarkCox@InTheFunnel.Com. Dave, thanks as always. This is awesome.

Mark, thanks. Have a good one.

Important Links

Office Hours - Episode 4 - Cracking The Code On Sales Career Advancement


Deciding on the next step in your professional journey is never easy, especially when you are a top performer eyeing a leadership position. In this episode, Mark Cox and Dave Hanley discuss sales career advancement, offering a roadmap for high-performing salespeople who are contemplating a transition into management. Beyond the promotion, they explore the complexities of internal sales approvals and the delicate balance between managing existing accounts and driving new business. Listen in as they provide tactical advice on building a sales playbook, prioritizing your time effectively, and ensuring you have the right support before making the leap into a leadership role.

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Office Hours- episode4 - Cracking The Code On Sales Career Advancement

Dave, welcome back to the show. Thanks for driving this. We're in Friday casual attire.

It’s good to see you. It's a short week here in the US. I get the joy of celebrating both Canada Day and Independence Day here.

A Canadian in the US. I notice you enjoy celebrating all holidays.

I try. It's important.

Lots of different nationalities. Multicountries. You're on the Tim Ferriss one-day workweek.

I'm trying.

Dave, what do we have?

Transitioning From Top Salesperson To Effective Sales Manager

We got some good ones. The first one in particular is something that is always a tough one. I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this, and we can talk through it. Question one is from Sharon. Sharon says, “I'm currently the most senior salesperson in a small but growing company. The CEO has approached me about moving into a sales manager role, but I'm not quite sure whether I want this opportunity or not. I enjoy my day-to-day, but I am curious whether this is the natural next step for me. How should I think about this opportunity?”

Sharon, what a great question. We can take our time on this one. You're in a great position to weigh in on this as well. Sharon, there are probably three ways to look at this when this opportunity presents itself. First, you're looking at it from your perspective. What do you want to do? The second thing would be looking at it from the company perspective. What are they going to do for you? The third might be looking at it from the team's perspective as well.

There are three different ways of looking at it. As always, you've got to start with the why. It's nice that the opportunity presented itself. The first question for you, Sharon, is what do you want to do with your career? When you think of what you're doing and what you're enjoying in your lifestyle, only you can answer that question.

 What are your career goals and aspirations? What are you looking to do? Are you looking to stay in sales? Do you want to go into management? Are you looking to continue to be ambitious, grow in business, and do other roles and senior management roles outside of sales? Starting there, Sharon, is probably a good starting point, first and foremost. What are you looking to do with your career?

There are a lot of people that we coach and a lot of people that come into our workshops that are career salespeople. They realized early on in their career that they wanted to be direct contributors. They love working with clients. They love autonomy, and frankly, they love mastery. It’s easier to be a direct contributor salesperson, be good at it, and continue to be the Wayne Gretzky of the hockey team when you're playing. It's far more difficult to be the coach of that team.

Sales Career Advancement: It’s easier to be a direct contributor salesperson, be good at it, and continue to be the Wayne Gretzky of the hockey team when you're playing. It's far more difficult to be the coach of that team.

The other thing I’d take a look at, Sharon, as well, particularly because you said it was a small business, and we're a small business, is to take a look and ask yourself how long you have been doing your role. Do you understand sales enough before jumping into management? This is the first filter for all of these things. What's right for you?

One of the things we see very frequently is that because of the growth of the SaaS industry, and it exploded over the last couple of years, a lot of it was outside money coming in. That money had to be spent on sales and marketing teams. That's what the boards wanted to see. They grew too quickly. Those companies did very well, but for the most part, it was order-taking.

What would happen is somebody became an SDR for eight months, then they're managing a team of SDRs, and then they become an outside sales rep. They made every leap too quickly. As long as they were selling for Salesforce or HubSpot in 2016, it was order-taking. They might change industries. They got to a senior management position. They hadn't developed the skills along every stage of the process to be able to compete in a market that might not be growing, where you have to steal market share from somebody else. These are things to think of for you, Sharon.

The second thing that I think about is what's the company going to do for Sharon? Commonly, entrepreneurial companies are the same way. In The Funnel is an entrepreneurial company. Frankly, we're trying to get out of that. We pull a lot from the people who work with us. What Sharon needs to ask is, is the company going to provide any management training, or is she going to stop being a salesperson on a Friday, and on Monday, she's managing the team? Where is the training that's going to help elevate her skillset when she jumps to this next level?

What's the onboarding plan? Oftentimes, the Friday promotion and on Monday, I'm doing the role, what's the expectation? Are we going to give her a reasonable ramp-up to get good at this new job the same way we would give a new salesperson? Does she have 90 days before we're squeezing her to make sure the whole team is hitting their numbers? She's going to be pretty unhappy quickly, and that'll convert into her making the team unhappy pretty quickly. What do you think? Do some of these things resonate with you?

I seem to remember an excerpt from your book. You told the story about going from being the best salesperson on the team to the worst manager on the team. Companies need to be wary of that problem, taking your best salesperson and going, “You're the best salesperson. Let's make you the manager.” Not only did you lose your best salesperson all of a sudden, but you gained a manager that's not very effective.

It is a different skillset. I've seen a lot of people struggle with that transition where they go from getting their hands dirty every day, rolling up their sleeves, and doing deals to having to sit in a room with underperforming salespeople, coach them, and resist the urge to say, “Do this. Here's how you do this.” You have to sit back and say, “I need to coach this person to develop them and make them better.” As opposed to being tactical. You have to be a lot more strategic.

It's so much harder. Then, it is understanding why you want to do that. That was the thing for me. This is a long time ago, but the first time I made the leap, it felt a little late to me. I’d always thought, “I'm going up the ranks. I want to be the CEO of a large corporation. I want to get to senior executive levels at a minimum, so I've got to get going.” I never took the pause and said, “Why do I want to do that? Is it money?” Frankly, if it was money doing certain things, I could have made a lot more money continuing to be a direct contributor.

It's not uncommon for the top salespeople in the company to be making more than the actual sales leader. I've seen that several times.

Frequently. First of all, that comes into play. The second thing is I hadn't reconciled in my own mind that leadership was about developing other people. In my mind, I was still thinking leadership is making me look bigger and better. This is the Friday-to-Monday problem, where everybody on that team is arms and legs helping me get my quota. That's the real job. My quota is eight times larger than it was on Friday. That's the issue.

In fact, looking back, I was a better coach, in that particular instance, to the other seven people on the sales team. I was a better coach to them when I was a peer because I could be balanced and calm. I listened well. I didn't feel any pressure. When they were asking me what to do and how to do it and were looking for coaching, I could give them reasonable feedback. I had a lot of time for them. I enjoyed them. I liked sharing that way.

As soon as I got put into management, with me, there was no ramp-up time. A week later, I'm forecasting for the whole team. I'm looking at them, saying, “You're not getting the job done, and I'm not happy.” Since I didn't know what to do, I defaulted to telling them what to do. Nobody wants to be told what to do.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: When To Hire A Sales Leader

Let's look at this one from the flip side. We have a lot of people who tune in to this show who are entrepreneurs, business owners, or CEOs, and they're running sales. What's the alternative here for them? I know it's not the easiest thing to do where you have a sales team with 3, 4, or 5 people, and you go, “Everyone's doing great. Now, I need some leadership.” Can you bring in somebody from the outside to become that sales leader? That also is a sticky situation. All of a sudden, the salespeople are like, “What's going on here? Why don't you promote one of us?” What does that look like? How do you do that effectively?

First of all, so many of our clients are entrepreneurs. I have a lot of love for entrepreneurs. There is certainly a very specific profile to a successful entrepreneur. There's almost a similar profile at every level. An entrepreneur getting a business from $0 to $5 million, one getting from $5 million to $15 million, one getting from $15 million to $50 million. There are these profiles of entrepreneurs.

My coaching to people tuning in would be that if you've got a sales team under 6 or 7, and you're an entrepreneur. You've got a product in the marketplace and revenue, and you're profitable. I'm sorry to say this, but you have to run the sales team. There are a number of reasons for that. First of all, you need to run the sales organization so that we can figure out how to scale this thing and capture what was in your brain and the way you were able to convince a client, and how you articulated your value proposition, and how you intuitively knew the ideal client profile.

If you're an entrepreneur, you have to run the sales team so that we can figure out how to scale and capture what was in your brain.

We've got to communicate those things to the first team of up to 6 or 7 salespeople. It's important for the entrepreneur to do that because they also start to have empathy for what the sales team is going through. It's going to get them in front of more clients and see it from the salesperson's perspective. They need to get to a point where they have a definitive sales playbook for the business. Meaning, we can articulate and share the value prop. We prioritize the target market. We have a demand generation program. We understand our sales process. We understand sales strategy.

When you get to that point, and you've run the team, and you have a playbook, that's when I'd go away and hire somebody else. You’re like, “Now, I need to get the team to fourteen people or I might need two sales leaders.” That's when I bring somebody else in. If I do it too soon and I try to absolve myself of that ownership and accountability, the new sales leader coming in to manage four people has to go to the owner-operator-entrepreneur so often anyway that it's like the owner-entrepreneur needs to run it.

That's a sweet spot for us. Those companies come to us to coach the entrepreneur to run the sales team. We build the system and the sales operating model with them, which is what we call our sales playbook, then they hand it off to somebody else. We've done that very frequently. We won't step in unless that owner-entrepreneur goes, “I'm in. We're going to be doing sales day one day a week. The funnel is coming in. We're going to be running it. We're going to be coaching the team, doing one-on-ones, and doing some training.” That's what I would suggest to the entrepreneurs that are tuning in.

It's super important to get that playbook in place. A lot of the entrepreneurs that find themselves leading a sales team are like, “I never signed up for this.” They want to bring in somebody that they see as a silver bullet to come in and formalize everything. That very seldom works. That person will come in, and they'll try to bring in whatever they were doing previously, which may or may not be a fit. You might get lucky. Many times, I've seen it fail. That’s a great point.

It's not fair on the person coming in. The cost of a failed new hire, particularly in an entrepreneurial environment, is so expensive. When you bring somebody new into a business, everybody spends so much time ramping them up and sharing information. You expose your client base to them, and then they don't work out. I've brought them out to the clients and all of these kinds of things.

That's my coaching for the entrepreneur. Try to build a playbook. You don't have to engage with companies like ours in consulting. Companies like ours have books that you can read for $25 or an online academy that you can go and learn from. Go to SellingWell.com. Any way you want to ramp up, go and do that. You have to walk in the shoes before you bring somebody else in to try and do it.

Staying Top-Of-Mind During Long Sales Approval Processes

That's great advice. Good stuff.

Thanks.

That’s a big topic.

Thank you so much, Sharon.

Let's move to number two here. For number two, we have Dan. Dan says, “I'm a big fan of the show. I love that you're doing these Office Hours episodes.” That's great. Dan says, “I have something for you that's a little bit more tactical, but I would love your feedback. Once we present a proposal, our clients usually have a pretty long internal process of approvals to shepherd it through to completion. How do I stay engaged with the prospect so that I'm not sitting there wondering what's going on without being a nuisance?”

Nice one, Dan. First of all, when they've got that long process, what you're always trying to do, through discovery, is build that relationship with the client where they get a sense that your primary goal is helping them. The whole intent of our sales process and discovery is that they get a feeling, and they understand truly that you're adding insight, value, and knowledge, and you're trying to help them.

Sales Career Advancement: The whole intent of our sales process and discovery is that they get a feeling, and they understand truly that you're adding insight, value, and knowledge, and you're trying to help them.

You only exit the discovery stage of a sales process when both you and the company believe there's a meaningful desired outcome for the company. There's an opportunity on the table. You both agree. You built a business case and a return on investment that makes this worthwhile for them, and then you do your best to prove that you can help them get there better than anybody else. The truth of it is the way you prove that you can get them better than anybody else is by knowing them better than anybody else. The whole process of discovery enables all of that.

When they then take it and go away, what you're trying to do through discovery is you're trying to work with them to understand, “What is going to happen once we put this together? How do you make a decision on this?” Try to get as much insight as you can. I can only do this after I've earned trust, built some credibility, and built relationships. Too many methodologies out there start to tell you, “I've got to qualify up front.”

Depending upon the size and scale of the offering you've got. You're going to be asking them at some point in time pretty detailed questions, like, “How do we get to a decision? Who's involved? What's important to everybody? Who's got what degree of influence?” Nobody is opening up and telling you all those things unless they completely see you as a consultant trying to help their business. Timing matters on this.

When you're doing all that in discovery, if this does go well, and you've earned the right for that kind of trust and credibility and earned the right to ask those questions, then you won't be seen as a nuisance. You're seen as a partner in the whole process. You might ask them and say, “How do we get from here to a decision?”

Somebody's going to come back and say, “I'm not quite sure. There's an executive steering committee meeting a week from now. First, I'm going to present it to my boss, and then they're going to go into the executive steering committee meeting.” You might help collaborate, think through that with the prospect, and go, “The last time you made a decision like this, what happened?”

I remember back in the day when we were working with you and the great team at RCT, Risk Control Technologies. Even having that kind of conversation, I remember you said that oftentimes, when you asked some of the buyers that question, they'd say, “We're going to go to my boss and then go to an executive steering committee, and they're going to make a decision.” You were smart enough to ask them, “When does IT get involved in this? How do they sign up?”

They were like, “Good point. Maybe we should include that in the process.” We've been burned so many times on somebody not including that in the process. It’s a great example.

That would be such a great example when you ask them that, and they go, “That's a pretty good question. I haven’t even thought about it.” It’s like, “I'm glad I brought it up.” First of all, they're saying, “Dave's not just waiting to figure out when he's going to get a signed contract. Dave is helping me do the right thing.” I remember you used to say, “How can I help you in that IT meeting?” I said, “We do this all the time. We know the 5 or 6 things you're going to ask and look for. Can I join you for that? Can I help in any way?” What a great way to slow down to speed up.

Specifically in a larger enterprise-type sale, the role of a salesperson is not to go in and be like, “Let's close these guys.” It's more like a project manager. I read a great book a little while ago. I don't know if you've read this one. It's called Selling With. It's by a guy named Nate Nasralla. The concept is that people think that salespeople are in there, closing deals.

He says over 90% of B2B selling happens during internal meetings. As a salesperson, how can you help the internal conversations move forward with you or without you in the room? It's a great read. It shifts the mindset, certainly of people who have that, “We've got to close this deal,” to, “We're here as facilitators. We're trying to help the prospect get this deal over the finish line. How can we do that?”

Over 90% of B2B selling happens during internal meetings. As a salesperson, how can you help the internal conversations move forward with you or without you in the room?

It's very similar to Brent Adamson. He was the original author, with Matt Dixon, of The Challenger Sale. There was The Challenger Customer and a couple of lead-ons. He wrote an article in HBR called Sensemaking in Sales that elevated to a book called The Framemaking Sale. We interviewed him on that. If you're tuning in to this episode, all you have to do is go back 4 or 5 episodes. We talked to him about it. It's the exact same thing. He said that the role of the salesperson is, first, you're trying to get an organization to say, “There's some pain we need to solve for.”

A lot of times, you're trying to say, “We want to give you confidence that we're the right company to help fix that pain.” He said that the real issue is you need to help the buying group get confidence that they're making the right decision. Not that they’re picking you, but they know they need confidence to make the right decision. It will inoculate against the biggest threat, which is the threat of doing nothing. They need to develop that confidence to make the right decision. When they're losing confidence, they do nothing. It’s an interesting topic.

The long and short of it is these things all keep coming back to this constant theme that says, “We're consultants. We have to calm down.” All those questions you asked about, “What's going on in the timing and the qualification?” Salespeople ask those questions because their boss asks those questions. The boss is trying to forecast deals and does nothing but say, “What's the qualification? Is it qualified?”

What we need to do is figure out how we work less, win more, and earn the right to be able to spend more time with the deals that matter because they are our ideal client profile. They're big enough for us. They matter. We know we can win because we add value. There's a lot of doing less and being better required in professional sales.

Good stuff. I love it. It's a good one, Dan.

Thanks, Dan.

Prioritizing New Business While Managing Existing Accounts

That was a good topic. Lots of good stuff. We got one more. We got Ravi here. Ravi says, “I'm a senior account executive. As part of my role, I'm tasked with bringing in new business as well as managing existing relationships to drive incremental revenue. I often find myself having difficulty prioritizing because my existing clients take up a lot of my time,” which I've seen before. He said, “The way our commission structure is set up is that I have more incentive to bring in new logo revenue. What are some things I can put in place to help me prioritize better?”

Let's spin it around. I got a lot of thoughts on this one. Why don't you start? What do you think?

Structurally, there is often the case where a sales rep is tasked with both of these things. As a company evolves and gets larger, they should scratch their heads to think about whether that's the right structure or whether they should have some kind of account management to take on existing clients. When you have somebody that's good at bringing in new business, they should be focused on that 100%.

Specifically on a tactical level for Ravi, think about time-blocking. It's like, “I'm setting aside Monday, Wednesday, half of Thursday,” or whatever it may be in terms of how much time you want to allocate. It's like, “I'm not doing anything in terms of existing customers. I'm only doing outbound.” Put your computer in Do Not Disturb. Do your research. Do your outreach. Put the blinders on and get that stuff done. That stuff is hard. You sit in a sales kickoff with 100 salespeople and go, “Who here loves prospecting?” There are not that many freaks that are putting up their hands up there, going, “I love being rejected all day long 90% of the time.” It's not that fun.

The real issue is you need to help the buying group get confidence that they're making the right decision.

That was my favorite answer.

It's so easy when you're doing both. It’s like, “A client emailed me. I better get back to them ASAP.” You’re tricking yourself into not doing the hard work. That’s the most tactical, simple way to address this. I would love to hear your thoughts.

I have a couple of thoughts. I agree on all fronts there. We're in this unique world where it is evolving. You do get someone who's not just an account manager and not doing outbound demand generation. It's a bit of a combination of both. Most organizations are coming and saying, “I need the revenue.” It's so hard to hit the revenue number.

There are always those spiffs for new logos. The first thing starts with basic territory management. Let's take a look at our client base. Let's say I've got 50 clients. How do I want to prioritize and spend my time with my existing clients, and then how do I prioritize and spend my time going after demand generation? It all starts with thinking through it first.

With my existing clients, how do I prioritize spending time with the biggest clients? I've got to do it. The second level is those clients that have the most upside potential. They might be my competitors' biggest clients where I get nickels and dimes. It's creating the short list and saying, “My job is to create sell cycles and grow business. How am I going to grow that business? Part of it is my largest clients. Presumably, there are other things I can be doing. Secondly, there are other clients that have been very little with us, but have a lot of upside potential. Let me get in and check that out.”

On the demand generation front, I have to prioritize the pursuit of that market. What happens with demand generation is anybody who's got a pulse, who responds to anything I do, salespeople are going to want this tendency to say, “I'm going to go after their new logo. I'll take the meeting. I'm going to work on it. I've got a friendly person. Our kids play soccer.” You're wasting time. We have to prioritize the account we want. It's much harder to get in front of those accounts and have that conversation, but if we do, the upside is much greater.

All new logos are not the same. We have to prioritize. Depending upon your business, your industry, how contracts are structured, renewal dates, and all those kinds of things, sometimes you are locked out of an account for a while. In other businesses, you're not. You can get in and start chipping away. Think about that. It always starts with this ideal client profile. Whether it's my existing clients or a new client, who's the ideal client profile for us? What's my value proposition to them?

One of the things that's a trigger for us is there are certain clients that are going to value what we do, and there are certain clients that won't. I'll use an example. On paper, you might be a $50 million SaaS business. You might have a large sales organization, and they need training and coaching. There are going to be behavioral aspects or more subtle aspects to that ideal client profile after I speak to the CEO.

Some CEOs will come to us and go, “I have the best product in the market by a country mile. My sales team is terrible. They should be doing way better. Come on in and train them. They either make it, or they don't, but I churned them. Who couldn't sell this product? Every time I go to an account, I win it.” Those kinds of CEOs have a view of the profession of sales. We don't agree with their view at all.

We have another type of CEO in the same company and the same sales organization who say, “I believe one of the competitive differentiations we have in our marketplace is we sell better than competitors. We're trying to help a client. We're not in love with our own product, but I do want to help elevate and invest in my team to make them better because we believe selling can be a competitive differentiation.” That's our client. That's the one we want to work with. It’s thinking through that ideal client profile for you and how you go through the pain of having that first meeting.

Team, another tactic for demand generation is not something people love. It's easier if you're in the Peloton. This is a very difficult thing to do. If you're isolated, working remotely, and trying to do it on your own, help yourself out. Book in time with your other four sales reps. It’s like, “None of us want to do this, but we need to. Every Wednesday, let's jump on a call at 8:00 in the morning with a beautiful cappuccino in front of us.”

“We're all going to share the twenty companies that we're going to reach out to. We’ll go around the room and go, ‘Does everybody have the name, validated number, and validated email?’ To the best of our ability, we validated them as ideal clients for us. We're all getting back on this call in two hours.” We're going to go around the room and go, “How many people did you reach out to? How many people did you have a live conversation with?”

“If you didn't get the live conversation, you had to leave a voicemail. Did you also complete your hat trick, which is to leave a voicemail, an email, and a LinkedIn note? Do the hat trick. Every time you reach out, do three things because you never know what somebody's checking.” It is going through that with a team and then getting back on at 11:00 or 10:00. Maybe we did it back with you.

We were also sitting in the same room together, so it was even more fun.

Somebody's going to have success.

It's not only that you get back on the call and you're sharing, “I got this great prospect.” You're also going, “You should have heard what this one guy said to me.” It’s commiserating a little bit and having a little bit of fun with it because it's a tough job, for sure.

It's a tough job, but you've got to keep doing it. There's slow prospecting, and there's fast prospecting. To me, the phone is still a fast-prospecting tool. It still does work. If you go to HubSpot, Salesforce, and all these places, always download their latest state of sales. It'll validate that you can connect with people and get a meeting with people. It takes professional persistence, for sure.

For slow prospecting, we love the idea of always building your network on something like LinkedIn. Don't connect and pitch, but do build your network of people and expand your base. If you're going into every conversation thinking about adding value, insight, and knowledge to the client or prospect, and you work very hard so you can be able to do that, from a mindset perspective, as long as you're giving, it's much easier doing demand generation.

One more thought for Ravi. The existing clients that are taking up a lot of his time, it's worth looking at that as well, as one more thing to say. What is this time being spent doing? Is it revenue-generating activities, or is he going to have lunch with them and build rapport? Not that you never want to do that, but you want to systematize that. Look at what you're spending your time on. Are you having lunch, or are you setting up a quarterly health check meeting to see where there's more opportunity in the account?

Maximizing Client Relationships With Strategic Health Checks

Thank you for bringing up the health check. Team, you can check out the health check component of the book. We talked about the health check meeting. There's also a video in the Selling Well Academy at www.SellingWell.com. Check that out. The idea of the health check is I'm setting up a regular quarterly touchpoint or twice-annual touchpoint with somebody where we're learning about them and their business, and then understanding their perception of how we're helping them achieve their most important desired outcomes. It does, at times, give us a chance to share what we're up to.

Sometimes, when you structure it this way, then when you do want to launch whatever, it can be pure relationship-building. You have that cadence to get in front of this important conversation with your existing clients so that you're understanding where they're going. That's going to identify for you, “Is there future opportunity within that account, or have we maxed out what we can do, and now it's about making sure service delivery is 10 out of 10? We're constantly building a moat around that particular account, so our competitors can't penetrate it.”

Your clients are much better when they prepare for those conversations and give you thoughtful feedback. They can't do that when you take them out for lunch and ask them off the cuff, “How are we doing?” There are a bunch of cognitive biases that are going to be entirely based on what happened to them. That was a great question, Ravi. It’s a challenge for all of us.

Another good episode. We had some good questions from readers. As you always say, keep them coming. There are no questions too big or too small. Whether you're an SDR all the way up to the sales leader or the CEO, a lot of this stuff comes down to the same principles. It's worth talking through this stuff.

It's one of the most difficult things in business. Most organizations out there, if you gave them truth serum, they wish they were growing faster. It's a hard thing to do. It's a tough business discipline for every business out there. It's probably not getting easier with uncertainty at the macroeconomic level and all of these things that come down. We appreciate your questions, everybody. Thanks for sending them in. When you see these links on LinkedIn, you can fire questions to either Dave Hanley or me, Mark Cox, through LinkedIn. We'll add them to the show. We'll see you next time. Dave, thanks as always for hosting these.

Thanks.

 

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