S4E43 - One Thing That Indicates When Its Time For Your First Sales Hire

What's up everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Surf and Sales podcast. I am Scott Lease, one of your co founders and co hosts of the Surf and Sales Summit and Servant sales podcast along with my good friend Richard Harris, who is back in action, looking better than ever. How's it going, bud?

It's going good, man. Thank you, thank you.

I feeling strong.

I do. I lost about £12 too. So you know, there's nothing.

This is the upside to medical procedures and surgery that people don't talk enough about is what a great weight loss plan it is.

Exactly. And it resets my need for reducing my sugar intake, which is, you know, no mudslides. For those who Mudslides.

Yeah, they Richard had his sweet tooth surgically removed is what happened. For those who are asking, we're here today to talk to Michelle Peach, who is a long time go to market sales leader, has worked at a number of companies that you've probably heard of of including Datadog, Drift, Dually and probably more that I don't have memorized. But I'm sure she'll tell us about them if she feels like it. Richard, tell everybody real quick about our wonderful sponsor and then we'll bring Michelle onto the show.

Sounds good. As always, thank you to HubSpot and the HubSpot Podcast Network. If you didn't know this, they've got a new support mechanism out there for all of us called the HubSpot Sales Hub. And it lets you unify your data, tools and team inside a smart, powerful platform. There's a new prospecting workspace, a deal management tools, AI powered tools. And there's a bonus. Reps can automate their busy work which I know Scott is all about. Like might be the one technical thing Scott would learn is how do I automate my busy work because he does not like it. So know he doesn't. He doesn't like to shuffle paper. So anyway, so thank you to HubSpot and the HubSpot Sales Hub. All right, back to you in the studio, Mr. Lease.

All right, we welcome Michelle Peach to the show. How's it going, Michelle?

Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Let's talk a little bit about your current venture whose name I'm going to screw up even though you told it to us a couple times. Minute, no. Minot Lite Consulting co founder, founding partner. What is Minot Lite Consulting? Tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you're up to.

Yeah, so we work with early stage companies.

To build out their go to market team and Processes. So really help scale, whether it's first time founders or you have series B and a VP of sales has never built before. We come in and we help build what is needed to build that foundation for you to have repeatable success. Typically at early stage. Early, like first time founders, they're in the weeds. They've never sold before. They've never managed teams before. We do that for you. So we roll up our sleeves and we get in the weeds. We basically become an extension of your team for a short amount of time. So you have a repeatable process and then we scale back.

Richard, what we've done is we've just invited a direct competitor of mine.

Yes.

How come we never invite your direct competitors onto this?

That's not true. We've had Barrows on and Jason Bay was on. You missed that one. But yeah. And a couple of people. So don't, don't, don't pretend like.

All right, fair enough. Fair enough.

You're not the.

What, what are some of these foundational elements that founders and sales teams either skip over or screw up? What is like one or two of the. Okay, that's the most common thing of all time. What are those things that you find.

Nailing your value proposition early on, making sure that everyone in the org knows what it is, does it resonate with your prospects and your customers? And I mean like thinking deeper about your value prop. Okay, so we make your team more efficient. Like what does that mean? How do you make your team efficient? And if they're more efficient than they can accomplish, what and how does that resonate with your prospects? And then probably the overall discovery process where people, especially first time founder led sales, they skip over discovery because they are very close to the product that they're building. They don't, they don't have that sales background or core foundation. But what does that discovery methodology look like? And how do you build that process for your first sales rep and make it repeatable so the two go hand in hand.

Do you think that they is my competitor, Scott?

There you go.

Good.

Then we're both at risk equally. Do you think that when they skip over the discovery part, do you think that's because they don't know what questions to ask and why they're asking them? Or do you think that they just have happy ears and think everybody on planet earth is a potential ideal customer and could be a buyer, so what's the point of discovering more about.

Whether they're the right fit for us?

Yeah, I think it's both because they Ask one question and they get the prospect gets excited. So then they think they're, they're done with discovery and they don't need to do any more selling or ask any more questions. Also just asking those open ended questions to dig a little bit deeper. Once you find that pain, stop at one thing.

And if they hear one aspect of the call that they think that they can solve, they just stop there. And that's where the happy years comes into play. But it's not even first time founders, you know, sales reps who have been in the seat for two plus years still gloss over the basic discovery stuff, Sales 101, which is so frustrating when you're listening to the sales calls and you're wondering why deals are stalling or, or not closing.

So do VPs of sales. By the way, I'm sure this, if you haven't already.

Yeah, I was going to say it doesn't have to be two years. I've worked with people where it's just 10 or 15 years. Right. And they're. Oh yeah, you know, they've. For me, those reps are the ones that, that often.

You know, they're servicing their current clients. Right. They're not after net new so they're just trying to build that on that relationship side of stuff. So what.

How do you do you.

Get a lot of resistance? Right. Like it's interesting when I talk to people and I've talked to Scott about this, like people want our help right up until the point we tell them exactly what they should be doing differently.

Yeah. I think where we specialize in really early stage, they don't know. So for once people actually listen and take the coaching. When I was managing many sales reps, there was so much resistance because they always thought, okay, well my way's better. But when you're curious and you don't know and you know that there's a problem, if you've outlined the problem to them and identified, okay, you totally blew this call. Have them listen back. That's how you build the trust. And they're willing to take the feedback. But depending on how many years of experience they have, there's definitely resistance, which is frustrating.

So what do you do to manage that? Right. And we can even shift that management to what if it's your sales team? Right. Like this is a surf. So it could be about, you know, your clients you're currently servicing or like, well here's how I did it with my own sales team.

Yeah. Getting in the weeds and listening to the sales calls with Them. I do call reviews with a number of different reps and listening to snippets of the call, which is basically like the first 10 minutes in the last five minutes of the call, having them listen back and getting them to repeat what they should have done better, and then a constant coaching and making that part of their day in the life as you're building that process so they can hear themselves and where they've missed and have it resonate with them. So everyone takes feedback and coaching a little bit differently. So one, identifying how they take feedback, but no one likes to listen to their own calls. If you can identify a couple key pieces of the call and have them listen to like 1, 2 minutes here and there, it starts to resonate. And then once they implement that on a couple of calls and they start to see wins, now they get it. But they have to be able to tie it back to how you're going to help them, which is make more money. Right. Or, you know, close more deals, you know, velocity. It's just identifying that. What. What motivates these reps and the sales leaders that you're trying to coach that are resistant.

Yeah. I love what you said about the first 10 minutes in the last five. I never really thought about it that way. Like, that was like, if you focus on that first 10, what happens in the middle shifts? Right. And that's what we all know inherently, as all three of us know. But I really like how you pointed that out. And then that last five about. I interpreted that as making sure they ask for next steps. And what are those?

Commercials. Yeah.

Yeah, I like that approach.

How do you. How do you determine.

When a company is ready to actually hire other people? What is that, like, benchmark?

That is a great.

They ask you this question every single day that you talk to people.

I guarantee you every single day. I think it depends on where they are and also the skill set of the current founders or what's happening within the organization.

So let's reset that. So let's say you have no. They have no salespeople so far.

Yeah.

And the founder is. Let's call it marginal at best.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

And they say to you, Michelle, how do I know when we're ready to hire somebody other than me to do this full time? Whether that's ahead of sales or AES or whatever? What is your. What is your, like, criteria or milestone?

Yeah. So one is the value proposition. Do they know it and can they articulate it back? And do they have some type of motion where they hire this person, can they coach them on that value prop and the pitch. So this is a perfect example. I'm working with someone that is a really bad seller and they're a co founder and they cannot, which is very.

Common, by the way.

Yeah. And. And another individual is way better. I think that they should hire not a sales rep at this point, but an SDR to take a lot of the Outbound and Legion off their plates. Now, because there is one person in the organization that can actually sell and pitch. But look at what their weak areas are and where their strengths. If no one can actually sell, then hire your first ae, but make sure that you can actually articulate back to them what you. What pain you solve. So it's working with the founders to make sure that they clearly understand and they're not pivoting from, you know, over here, over here. Like, one day they want to, you know, create this tool that solves X and then the next day they're talking about something else. You have to focus and identify what you're creating and the value you bring. Then you hire that AE so they can run wild and do it for you.

Do you. Do you have an answer when they ask you what's our bare bones kind of sales tech stack? Like what. What tools do we need to use? Not nice to have kind of stuff down the road, but like, we're just barely getting started. What do I need to be looking at?

Yeah. Call recording. Number one. Call recording software.

That's your number one. Call recording is number one for you?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Richard, would you rather have call recording or a CRM?

I was gonna say a CRM's next.

Hold on now. You don't get to backtrack. Michelle.

She said next.

Yeah, but that's still. There's a reason one is one and two is two. Richard.

Yeah.

You pick call recording or CRM.

I'd never thought about it that way, but I like the idea of it from a stack perspective. I think my answer is sales enablement, which then becomes all of those things.

But that is such a Richard answer.

Exactly, Scott. That's exactly why I gave it.

So I want to hear Michelle defend her answer of call recording over CRM.

Wait, before she does that, I want to. Scott, what do you think?

Now you're trying to flip it around? I've never heard anybody say call recording first. I would not say call recording first.

You don't even have a CRM as people.

But we're not talking about how I run my own business as a consultant. We're talking about, what would Scott do when he's a VP of sales? And what would I advise somebody to do? Would I advise somebody to purchase a conversational intelligence call recording tool or a CRM first? I would not pick conversational intelligence call recording, but I want to hear Michelle explain why.

So I'm thinking early stage, right? You have no customers right now and how are you going to hear what's working, what's not working, what's resonating with them? Why aren't they responding? Well, I thought I had happy years. They really liked the tool and they like talking to the CEO and the first time founder. So this is a given deal and then crickets, but you have no way to go back and actually listen to yourself and get the coaching needed or feedback. And if you don't have any deals and you don't need a CRM yet, so the first couple, keep tracking an Excel and then push it all into CRM.

It's interesting. I don't have, like, I don't have a good counter argument to what she just said. To be honest with you.

I don't. You know, I was sitting here thinking, I was thinking about Scott, our lovely days at Leapfish.

And you know, yeah.

I'm living proof you can go to 0 to 20 million without a CRM.

But you know, your biggest thing when you, when you had us as leaders and managers was making sure we were sitting on every, sitting next to every rep, on the call, sitting in the bullpen listening no matter what, 20 years ago.

So there was no such thing as call.

Right, right. So, but, so it, so it's interesting that, that at that point, that was your go to motion and then sort of hearing you hesitate on the, on the call recording side. I don't have the rebuttal either. I just, you know, it's, it's a, I've never heard anybody say it either. And it, and it does make sense because I don't need, you know, if I'm a founder, I, you know, and everything I got going on, I got maybe 100 client potential clients I could call. I don't need that in a CRM yet.

There's interesting arguments though, because somebody else might say, well, you're both wrong. You actually need leads, so you need a list of people, therefore you should actually purchase. Unnamed lead lists.

I was gonna say. Yeah, unnamed future sponsor. Exactly. Right, right. I think those three, which, which, by.

The way, that is the holy trinity, the same three that I tell all of my clients, these are the only things that matter in the very beginning.

Yep, exactly.

So we're, Michelle and I are aligned on this.

I, I have a question I want to. I want to flip one of the questions you asked earlier, Scott, to Michelle, because I'm curious. I've never asked you this one, which is, you know, when it. What's the one thing that indicates when it's time for that first hire? I love Michelle's answer of, you know, they've really got to have this value to prop down because if they don't, you're bringing in some salesperson who is, you know, going to flap in the water. Right. What is your thought around that, Scott? Do you think that's a. The one indicator? You think there's a different one?

I don't know if I would frame it as value prop, but.

I, I think that somebody, whether it's the founder or somebody else in the org, somebody has had to make inroads and tried to sell this thing themselves and had some level of success. I actually don't think they have had. Have to have closed a bunch of deals, but they should have been able to get into conversations, build some pipeline, get people, you know, interested, and they're kind of on the hook or whatever. Ideally, they've closed a few deals, but I don't think they have to have closed a few deals. So if that. Because that tells me, like, okay, there's this founder who is not a salesperson by trade at all, and most of them have no fucking skills in selling at all. Let's be honest. If that person can make progress because they've nailed the value prop to Michelle's point, they know how to, you know, highlight and find, find the pain, create some level of interest and urgency. If that person who's not very good at selling can do all that and maybe close a few deals, then somebody whose main skill set is to. Should be able to succeed. So that's a trigger event for me.

I, I totally agree. Yeah, that's great. Be a handful of deals. But that's where call recording comes into play too, right? Like, hey, I. We. This resonated with these three people here. Now go, go sell.

All right, let me, let me give you a real scenario. I want to see how you would deal with this. I dealt with this last year sometime or early this year, I can't remember. You've got a. You kind of come into the picture. There's a small sales org. There's no culture of coaching or training or listening to calls and providing feedback, especially critical feedback. So all of the sales team is petrified and revolts over the idea of call recording technology, doesn't want to participate, and now feels like they're being, you know, big brother or whatever.

Micromanaged. Yeah.

What do you say to this founder who's dealing with this situation?

I'm pretty data driven and I would look at the individual reps in the team. You know, how much pipeline is built, how much pipeline is, how much pipeline they need.

Where, where their deals are, quota attainment, and then how much is getting closed, lost, or stalled and being able to articulate that back to the team and explain the why. So, for example, you lost 40% of your deals, and if you didn't do that, if you won those deals, you would have been at 110% of quota. So this is what we're going to do. We're going to start listening to your calls so we can close that gap and you start to make more money.

Being able to paint the picture for them based off of the current state of their book of business and having the reps articulate back, you know, what motivates them, where they think their weak areas are, and we don't know where those weak areas are and how you can. How we can make you better if you're not recording your calls.

It's kind of a kinder, gentler version of me saying, how's that working out for you?

Yeah, exactly.

And you look at the numbers and you're like, you suck. Like, you're at 0% for the year. What are you talking about? You don't want to listen to your calls. If you were doing well, I would do what you wanted, but you're not doing well. But Michelle articulated it, you know, much kinder.

Yes. So she's. She's a softer, gentler.

I've had the. Had the conversation many times. So it's not easy.

Yep. Do you find people will, because again, you know, here we are. Here's the one way to handle it. Do you find that most reps are amenable at that point, or do you feel like there's still this resistance?

Most. When you paint the picture of how it impacts them, specifically, whether it's their wallet or whatever goals they have, it does resonate with them. Some still have resistance. You know, they'll have the excuses of, well, my clients don't like it.

So that's our company policy. Then you have to have a tougher conversation with that rep. But most people are open to it. It depends on how they like to be coached and if you figure out what you can dangle in front of them, then that's the way to do it.

Yeah. What do you see is.

This could be a weird, weirdish question.

What are the things nobody ever tells a founder when they're going into this revenue world. Right. And it doesn't mean, like, how to scale sales. Like, what, what's, what's the other stuff? Like, we already kind of know. Oh, founder led sales to sales. You know, here's the playbook. Right. There's always something. I always feel like that's, that's never taught to them. What's the one thing that they, like, had no clue that was so important?

How about managing up to your investors and your board?

That's a good one.

What about caring about your employees?

Which I think. Yeah. That managing up trickles down. Right. Like.

That'S, that's.

There's a reason Michelle and so many other people have been a head of sales God knows how many times and are now running their own business. There's your answer right there. That's what they need to learn.

Yes.

That nobody teaches them or talks.

So how do you, how do you teach someone to manage the board?

That's a great question.

For. Okay.

I think being honest with yourself.

And being able to have a difficult conversation, which is typically the truth about the business with the board is extremely important. Right. You sold your soul. You told them. This is just an example, not talking about any specific companies or whatnot, but told them, we're gonna do 4 million this year, but you're only at 200,000.

How are we going to get there? And the plan doesn't make any sense, but you're convincing yourself over and over and over again. And then you're like three months left of the year. Not even close. But you need to be honest with yourself. Like, let's look at the plan. Let's look at our operating model. The numbers don't make sense. Being able to then be honest with the board and the investors, like, this is the operating plan. We did adjust it and here's why.

Those were some very specific numbers that felt very much spoken from experience, Richard.

It does.

Leave it at that. We'll just leave it.

We'll just leave it at that.

200K versus 4 million. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a stretch. Right?

That is possibly a real life experience that somebody has had somewhere.

Somewhere there. Yes, possibly.

We're gonna pause for a quick little mid roll and share podcast we like. We'll come back to Michelle with some more questions and then of Course. Michelle, if you have any questions you want to ask us, you know, you're welcome to. We want to be supportive to. You want to mention our good friend Donald Kelly, Sales evangelist and he has a podcast on HubSpot Podcast Network called the Sales Evangelist for Business Professionals. He interviews tons of amazing people. He's interviewed gitamer, Jill Conrath, Bob Berg, Guy Kawasaki, Scott, we suck. We can't get those people. We, I don't know, we're gonna have to have Donald help us. So if you want really smart, you know, podcasts, go check out our friend Donald Kelly over at Sales Evangelist.

But Richard, Michelle just simultaneously insulted the both of us. I don't know if you know.

Yeah, thanks, Richard.

He's real good if I think about it that way.

I was, I was insulted. I meant to insult Scott and I.

In terms of there's another person here. Richard.

Scott.

Sorry, I'm not good enough. Richard.

Yeah, I tend to be not so present all the time.

Yes, yes. I'm here to remind you to stay in this.

I apologize, Michelle. That was not Michelle, that's okay.

How did you finally know that it was time for you to cut the cord and go out on your own?

So was in the weeds for basically my entire career. Early stage startups, working 12 plus hours a day, weekends, holidays, thought that was totally normal. Even after I had my first son, I thought it was totally normal. I went right back into it and then fast forward 14 months, like shit. My nanny has taught him how to eat solids and has more experiences with him than I have. And it took over a year for me to realize that. And then just, you know, I was expecting my second son and I thought that I can't miss out on his life like I've missed out on my first son. But I love to work, I'm very motivated. I. I gave my notice at Drift and everyone said there's not a chance in hell that you'll not be able to work. They were right. But I was able. Luckily it was Covid so the work from home stuff was able to, you know, help with that work life balance a little bit.

And was able to. When I went to Dooley, which had a very work from home, it was all remote at the time and very family friendly environment, so that helped a little bit. But then still the startup life, right. So because I am who I am, I'm always work, I will always work. But having to be in the weeds even though my kids are here, it just, it dawned on me that I don't want to have to report up to someone else. I don't want to have to take that call on Christmas Eve anymore if I don't have to.

Life is just too short. And especially these times with the kids being really little. I wish someone told me that five years ago when I had my first son. But during the time of, you know, over the last several years, a lot of first time founders and peers were asking for best practice recommendations, was taking calls for free on the side all the time. And my business partner Niche was let go from his role and he said, let's do something because we're doing the same thing. We've seen the story so many times before. I like helping and let's just do it. So it was super scary. And we did it about a year ago. And I'll never turn back because.

Is there anything that you miss about it at all?

Maybe more of like the interaction with, like, coworkers here and there, but, um, that's about it. Yeah.

Did you ever. Were you ever fortunate enough to realize one of those.

Big magical exits and windfalls that they, that they sell you on? This is part of the dream. I'll move into an executive role. And now you have equity and you can have like a big kind of event because. Yeah. Did you ever. Were you ever fortunate enough to experience one of those? That's my first question.

Yes. So two acquisitions and then Datadog's ipo. So I wasn't there for the ipo. I. I kind of wish I. I stayed long enough to be there. It was about a year after I left. But yes, I've been fortunate enough to see successes. Yeah.

Do you ever miss the potential of another one of those? Or are you just like. No, I'm savvy enough to know that that's very unlikely.

I have locked. I have locked out. So three out of four, I think. I. I'm good.

She knows when to walk away from the table.

Does she? Does she? Does.

So, yeah.

Yeah. I. I don't see myself ever going into the grind again just for that rocket ship.

Yeah. Yeah. When you. When you look at your. How you. When you left, did you leave cold turkey, or did y' all already have a little bit of business built up before you sort of made the leap?

Total cold turkey. No idea what we were doing. See, listening to, reading books, listening to podcasts, YouTube channels, which actually got me more excited because I've never had the chance to, like, sit down and think about it and see how other people grew their businesses. You know, Scott, looking at your LinkedIn. The stuff that you post, other individuals like yourself, like, okay, that's doable.

So she's over there saying to herself, if this idiot can figure it out, so can I. That's, that's what she's saying.

But now everyone's doing it, so I.

Don'T know that's true.

So now that everyone is doing it, do you find it harder to kind of stand out or carve out a name or a niche for yourself?

I think I never really valued the, the importance of networking and the relationships that you have with past co workers and, and whatnot. So up until a year ago, I was like, I'm not gonna go there. I don't need to do that. But now I think that's super important. And utilizing those, those relationships. Yeah, that's helpful.

Let me tell you, you'll feel even more strongly about that when some person with 1/100th of your experience wins a deal out from under your nose.

Yes.

Because somebody knows about them because they posted 900 cute selfies or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I talk about this all the time. I'm like, yes.

You'Ve been doing this for nine months.

Like, yeah, it is. It's interesting.

You're a bdr.

It's interesting to see that this year has been really interesting around that too. Because to your point, lots of people now have the opportunity to do it. I was just reading an article that, you know, a percentage of people are starting there, particularly because of work from home. One of the advantages of work from home is you can start something on the side. Right. Like, it's comfortable to do that and you can do that.

So it's interesting to see how all that's going to play out. I, you know, I, it used to be that I would see people come into the, I'll call this our sort of consulting industry, and they'd get two or three clients from people they know that get them through six or nine months, and then it would just fall off a cliff.

Yep.

For whatever reason. And there's, and then there's this hump of, okay, well now what are you going to do? It's. I don't know. For me, it seems a little different. I don't see people falling off the cliff as much. You know, I was, I was sort of thinking like, okay, by, you know, the end of this year, people will start to have to go back to A, a W2 for those who tried and, and couldn't sort of get it there. But it'll be interesting to see. I don't know if you.

But those people can't find those jobs right now. That's the thing.

That's the thing. Like, that's what I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out, like, where is that?

If, if Michelle and I, you know, were one of these people that had this initial burst and then have gone totally dormant and dry and can't close deals and we tried to go find VP of sales jobs right now at early stage companies, there aren't very many.

Right, right.

So a lot of those people that, that on the surface, maybe Richard, you think they haven't like washed out because they're still doing their own thing? They're doing their own thing as best they can. They're also parallel pathing, trying to find a new role and can't.

Yeah, exactly.

I know because I get like a hundred text messages a day from these kids.

Yes, yes. Yep. Yep. Same.

Cool.

I'm glad we do this. So, Michelle, any questions for us? This is the part where we sort of turn the podcast to you and you're. You can ask us anything.

Yeah. I was on a panel for Underscore last week and I got an interesting question. Because of AI, do you think the SDR role will no longer exist?

Take it away, Scott.

Lis, in what time horizon are we.

Talking about in the next year?

No, in the next year. No, it'll still be around.

Five years from now. I think it's gone entirely.

Really?

Yeah, entirely.

What about sales roles in general in five years because of AI?

I think the.

I think that they will still exist, but it will be like the elite of the elites who still remain and utilize everything and do really, really well. And everybody that we've hired in the last 20 years, that's like a B player on down that we've tried to work hard to make succeed. We won't fucking waste our time with them anymore at all. The reason I think that SDR function is going to disappear eventually is because our behavior has changed completely. We do not answer the phone the way that we used to do 10, 15, 20 years ago. I, I promise you, you're younger than Richard and I, but you're probably from an era that when your house phone rang, there was still some level of enthusiasm around the house because, oh, maybe that's one of my friends or something, right? Yeah, that doesn't happen anymore. When your phone rings, I guarantee you. Okay, right now imagine you're two little kids. Do you think that in 20 something years when they are C level executives, do you Think that somebody's going to be able to cold call them and get a hold of them on the phone?

No.

You think you're going to, they're going to respond to cold emails? Do you think email will even be a utility by then?

Nope.

Okay, so how are we going to get into accounts and opportunities?

It's a great question.

Yeah.

And there you go. So I think that the SCR role is in big, big trouble. Not within a year. In five years? Yes. In five years?

Yes.

Yeah. I, I accelerate that timeline to three years just based on generative AI, but have the same opinion. I also think there will be some function of that. What that function is and who controls it will be different. The skill set will be different. Like, I think, you know, the full cycle ae. Well, a full cycle ae, I agree, is, you know, is going to be there, but they're still going to. Right now, if you tell someone they're a full cycle, they're still acting like an sdr, emails and phone calls and all that kind of stuff. So they're going to have to get smarter. The eight, anybody in the revenue roles is going to have to get smarter around the technology and those kind of pieces. And I think there'll be a shift towards.

Perhaps understanding human behavior or the tools will tell you that this is the way to do it because that's how Michelle responds versus Scott. So I think that's, that's one piece and I think that it'll. That SDR execution still has to happen somehow, some way. And it's, it's not going to be the youngest person just out of college. You know, I think that's going to be the challenge. I also think the hiring is going to be the challenge in five years of like, well, so what does that mean? How am I going to find salespeople?

I don't think you have to. I don't think you have to. I think in five, five plus years, this is what's going to happen. The three of us and every other person who are, quote, unquote, really good at sales, with lots of experience, you'll be able to take all of the data points, meaning books that I've written, content that I've written, the audio recordings of me on, on podcasts and webinars and all this stuff, and somebody will transcribe an avatar version of Scott and Drift Datadog, Whoever will have 20 versions of an AI version of Scott, Michelle and Richard actively selling for them, and that avatar AI figure will understand sentiment, will be able to adjust tone and Cadence will have humor, will have empathy. And that's the only way some of us are going to exist. By taking ourselves and digitizing ourselves. That's what's going to happen. Imagine you can hire all the best salespeople that you've ever known and they can work for every company on the planet simultaneously, all at once, adjusting styles, size of deals, speed of sales cycle, industry expertise, all this kind of stuff. Yeah, that's where I think that we're going. I don't think you need to hire.

Yeah, where to any of the VC's listing listening, Scott will gladly take your money and grind it out.

Yeah, that, that's really, really not true.

What else, what else, Michelle, what are the other questions? Before we get out of here and let you get back to your, your.

Real world, what are you hearing about outbound emails, response rates? I've been asked, what's that?

They're terrible. Yeah, they get worse every year.

Yeah.

Yes, yes. And so many people are just like outbound, outbound, outbounds. And no one, well, they don't know.

What else to do, Michelle.

I know.

Yeah.

I've been talking about this a lot for, for a year. Plus, like Go to market is going to be replaced by Go to Network and it's going to Outbound is going to be replaced by this near bound function where Richard and I are pals. Michelle and Scott are friends. Michelle doesn't know Richard. Michelle comes to Scott and says, hey, can you get me a meeting with Richard? Here's what I do. I'll cut you a piece of the commission on the deal. And I reach out to Richard and say, hey, I have this friend Michelle, she wants to talk to you. Richard automatically now has this trust and he's like, oh, I do have that problem. I trust Scott. Scott trust Michelle. He's not going to waste my time. I'll take the meeting. And so the only calls and emails we're going to respond to are people we already know and trust. You are going to have to have a large network in order to execute this particular function. But I don't care how good your email is, if people don't use email anymore, it's an absolutely worthless channel. Same thing.

It's so saturated too.

Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah. You're what, you're one of 500 people trying to email. How many emails a day do you, do you still get, Michelle, of people trying to sell you something.

Probably 20. And none of them are even close to accurate about what we do or how they can help me.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Scott, do you still get them?

Oh, yeah, they're. And they're bad. It's like, are you the right person to talk to at Scott Lee's Consulting?

Right.

Like, my name is on the yes.

Company.

Yes. I'm probably the right person to talk to.

Yes. Hint. If they are the ultimate, you know, if the name of the company is the person you're contacting, they're the ultimate decision maker.

They probably are.

Yeah. Pro tip.

Exactly.

So what's the best place for people to get in touch with you, Michelle, if they want to talk to you and learn more about what you do.

You can find me on LinkedIn. Michelle Peach mine at, like, Consulting.

Yeah, she's there now. She now understands she needs a network, and yes. Might participate and no longer thumb her nose at us thinking that we're, you know, too cool or snobby.

Richard, I'm out of my comfort zone with networking, so I'm used to it now.

She'll. She'll think you're cool. I'm. She'll still think I'm snobby and sort of dorky.

Well, that's only because you insulted her.

That's what I mean. Right?

That's all right.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for spending some time with us, Michelle. We really appreciate it. And we'll see you all next time on the Surf and Sails podcast.

Thanks, Michelle.

Bye, guys.