The Exit Engine Podcast Episode 34: Meet Maria Meadows

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Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast. Episode 34. Good morning, John.

Good morning, Joe.

How you doing, mate?

I'm doing great. And yourself?

I'm doing really, really, really well. I'm excited today because we've got a really, really fun guest today.

Yes, an expert, which is always good when we have actually at least one expert on our podcast.

That's it. That's the thing. So if you can't count us as experts, then at least what we can do is go out and find you other experts to be able to talk to, right? That's the whole thing.

Right.

Maria Meadows, how are you?

Good.

How are you both? Thank you for having me.

Of course.

It's awesome.

It's really, really great for you to be here. Thank you so much for joining us today. Um, we are, we are very excited because Maria is an expert in growth acceleration. All right. She is a business development expert. She spent 15 years, uh, before she started her own agency called The Residence Agency. And she basically works, has worked in as a new business development person, as a salesperson. She's got an incredible business. And what she does is she helps you come into your business and essentially takes over your sales force and starts driving pipeline like right away, and then sets up and creates an entire sales system for you in like 6 months, John, right?

It's Well, yeah, that's when I heard about what Maria was doing and could do. It's that lost piece, right? People and entrepreneurs start businesses, even salespeople who are entrepreneurs start businesses, and they get to a point where, oh my gosh, I can't be the only guy doing this. And that's where I think Maria comes in and the Residence Agency comes in and helps them put a method to the madness.

Absolutely. So, Maria, welcome, welcome, welcome. It's so awesome to have you here. So, Maria, let's just start off. Okay, let's just get— give us a quick overview on kind of how— what your kind of approach is here and why it's so important, obviously, for, especially for mid-market businesses to be able to kind of have an actual, like, sales playbook.

Yeah, well, let me walk you back a couple steps and explain, you know, my approach is It really comes from my firsthand experience. So just like you guys mentioned, I spent the last 25 years building and scaling sales organizations of all sizes, whether that's a team of 5 to a team as large as 3,000. And I think one of my differentiators operating in a CRO type of role has been the science side of sales, finding that repeatability, finding the ability to not just have 1 or 2 rock stars on the sales team carrying the weight, but that situational leadership that's driven by data that enables us to make sure everyone is performing at their best and having that repeatability. I think that was one of my differentiators and kind of the jumping-off point for starting the Resonance Agency. We wanted to bring that to early-stage scale-ups. And I say this all the time, I think, Even in my executive role running a sales organization and working with various consultants, I didn't need more people telling me what to do. I needed bandwidth. And so when we think about, you know, what we do and what we bring to the residence agency, to our clients, it really is resourcing, but experts that can, to your point, just jump right in and start executing from day 1. While we start to define what that framework is for repeatability. Every organization is different, every process is different. And so what we don't want to do is spend 6 to 8 months figuring it out. No one is afforded that time.

Right, right.

We figure it out, it's evolved again, right? We're, so we're trying to help founders embrace this chaotic road to growth by resourcing them appropriately, but also taking a step back in parallel and finding out, okay, what is working? How do we document this? How do we create this framework that enables them when we exit out, anyone that comes in can just adopt it from the beginning and, you know, perform at their best? And that really is the spirit of what we're looking to do.

It's so amazing because, you know, the hardest thing for people to do, especially relatively early on or in an early growth stage. So imagine it's the scenario, right, where I think where Maria plays best is a situation where the organization exists.

Right.

And you might be kind of early on or relatively early days, but when you are in a situation where, you know, the hardest thing to be able to do, in my experience, is— and I've done a lot of new business development in my career as well— is understanding even where to start, right?

Yes.

Right. And because it's a matter of— I think what happens is the natural— your natural instinct, especially as any kind of sales guy or anybody who's just even done any kind of sales, is is to get out there right now and start talking about it, right? So that you can get this stuff starting to happen. And of course, the problem that you come across that I found is, is that it is really hard to know exactly what to do and what works without having like actual information first.

Yeah. Yeah.

How do you— what's the— what is— what are the things that these founders, especially early on, should be thinking about when they're, when they're starting to put together their—

Oh my gosh, this one is so important to me. There are so many founders that we come across when we work with them at the Resonance agency, the first thing they will tell us is what forecasts, what, what their numbers are.

Right.

And then my immediate follow-up question is, well, walk me back. How did you get to those numbers? Right? And, and very rarely, it's tied to a framework based on the customer buying journey. It's based on a commitment to a board. And they're already behind, and they need a miracle. And so while we can execute, we're not miracle workers, but we will, the first thing that I advise is let's take a step back and understand how your ideal customer, A, who, who are they? Have you defined it?

Right.

And B, how do they buy? And then does your revenue and does your forecasting cycle mirror your customer's decision-making cycle? It's 9 times out of 10, those 2 are not aligned. So what happens as a byproduct is you have a revenue commitment, you've spread it out by quarter, and your team continually misses and you're missing projections to the board. And it could be you have a really great team, your pipeline's real, but your forecast is misaligned with your decision-making cycle for your customers. So to me, that is the very basic and most important starting point is take 20 minutes, make sure your ICP is documented, and then take a step back and look at how this ICP and this buyer actually goes through a process and how long it's actually going to take them to make a decision. And as an example, You know, we have a client that was going after healthcare. Their forecast was assuming revenue every 90 days, so they were, you know, pretty aggressively growing quarter over quarter. But what they didn't take into consideration was it takes a healthcare facility 9 months to make a decision.

9 months, right.

All these variables.

And also, I can imagine it's internal, right? Before you even get to the customer buying, you have to align, like, and see what the internal sales team is like, right? You can't have a You can't have revenue every 90 days or revenue every month if you don't have adequate sales folks, right? So I think that's part of your assessment. You could talk a little bit about that sort of at the beginning would be helpful, Maria.

Yeah. So, I mean, look, we don't all have the luxury of just building a powerhouse team of 5 or 6 sellers. So we understand that, you know, out of the gate, it's really the founder leading sales and maybe 1 or 2 salespeople that they bring on board. But in my opinion, where I see the misalignment is those salespeople and the founder all have a different understanding of how a customer, who the customer is, how the customer should buy, and what that experience should look like. So whether it's you as a founder with a fractional contracted SDR, or if you are, you know, have 2 or 3 sales folks, is, are we clear on what the process is? Are we clear on you know, how they're going to buy. And, you know, I always fall back on, it's just sales infrastructure over star performers.

Yep.

I say this all the time too, at least in my experience, we hire these really great cowboys. They come in, they'll tell you, I can do $1 million in revenue. I did this in my last job. And so you put all of your hope and your entire business projection on these miracle workers. And I just don't think it's a reality. And I don't think it's sustainable. And I think what we need to focus on more is what's your system, not who the heroes are to get you, you know, this big elephant or this big whale, because the reality is, is it going to sustain? Are you going to be able to replicate it in the following year?

Yeah.

So I always say, you know, map your process first by understanding your target customer, their buying behavior, what experience you want to create, and then document that in a CRM. That's the framework. And so the idea here is, anyone that you bring into the organization has that framework and can replicate those wins. Because while you, as a founder, may have, you know, intimate knowledge and be extremely charismatic, and people will gravitate to where you want to buy from you, you cannot wear the CEO hat and the sales hat and the individual contributor hat. There's a reason these are all 3 different jobs. But then what happens is they either look for someone that's just like them or someone that can come in and can close $1 million, which is great. But they're going to fall flat to a bad system if it's not defined. So this is where I tend to harp on what is the infrastructure first before you start to pull in the team.

And what's, what's the big pushback when you get, you know, because you're dealing with founders, obviously you're dealing with one or maybe two. What's the major pushback that you get when you suggest process over rock stars, as you call it?

I think that time, right? Honestly, it's just they feel that it's a big lift and they've got to get going today and We've committed this number; we've got to deliver. I, most folks tend to underestimate the science of sales and just want to jump right out there. And you'll get some early wins, which is great, right? But the idea here is, do you have an engine? Is there a machine? And I always say this, a good testament to your framework, and I know I'm kind of jumping all over the place, but let's say you hire someone. The reality is that individual should be at optimal performance within 60 days of your operation. If it's taking any good hire longer than 60 days, you have no process. And what happens is you have this, these really great individuals that come into an organization that just fall victim to a lack of a process or this kind of chaotic environment. And then it's costing you more as a founder because you're turning them over, you have these fits and starts. So you may be costing yourself 2 years Right. Or if you would've taken a week, actually built out a process, instilled it in a CRM, and then made your hires, evolve it, right? It doesn't mean it's gonna be perfect, but everyone should have a methodology that they're selling against to ensure that you can predict your business and you can sustain it, and then you can replicate it once you bring on more hires.

I think that's why, in some cases, why there are so many cowboys out there, right? And why they get so much notoriety for being cowboys, because they're often probably in situations where most people don't have process, where they are relying on this stuff. I remember trying to sell responsible for new business stuff at a very large consulting firm.

Yeah.

One of the biggest issues was the whole thing was based on the only people who were ever going to be successful in that role were going to be people because there was no process. And I'm looking back on it now realizing that was actually the problem, was that you needed to have a personal relationship with these people out there. So everything was kind of always based on who you already knew. Right? Can I go to this place now and do this stuff? And so the people that were successful, the high-performing sales guys, were often the guys who were like, you know, had these existing relationships, right? And like you said, it's like, it's great early on. It gets— it probably works that way, and maybe you get a handful of big, big clients or big customers that way. But, but then, yeah, then what? Exactly right. And so we would always— we would— I mean, every single situation I was in would feel like that? Because I didn't realize, even for myself, that what you end up having is a bunch of individual salespeople with their individual processes. Yeah, their own, like, thing, and no, no, and no glue and no kind of, you know, like you said, nothing holding it together.

I mean, look, I think buyers today are more informed than they ever have been. So the notion of hiring someone based on a Rolodex is antiquated. And I think we all know that firsthand, right? But even if you do have someone that's come in and has built a relationship, it doesn't sustain because they're going to hit the the wall eventually, and they move on. You typically, you can tell on a resume immediately, anyone that has, you know, 1 or 2-year stints will come in and exhaust their immediate network and then not be able to consistently perform and hit goal. But I do think, in general, the buying cycle and framework is just more, it's a beast. It's more fragmented. And it's multithreaded, right? So what used to be one individual that could carry you from business development all the way to, you know, expansion, reality is, that's not the skill set anymore. You typically need 2 or 3 resources. And this is kind of the notion of a sales pod that we're seeing a lot of organizations adopt of, I have an expert that's in, that's focused on new business development, and I have an expert that's focused on strategic you know, scoping with a client, and then an expert that's focused on retention and customer service. And this, these individuals work together as a team. And to get the most of that resourcing and handoff, you need to anchor to a process. They need to understand, and this is where I fall back on, what, what is the system? What's our infrastructure? What, what's the experience we want to drive? And what role do I play along this journey? And so We're seeing a lot of organizations, you know, hire an SDR, sales development representative, plus an account executive. And the idea here is that you have this pipeline that's always on, you have top-of-funnel activity in addition to pipeline velocity that's moving all the way through. But where they fall short and they start to become disconnected is we're not on the same page of what happens after the first meeting, what are the triggers, what assets do we give them, how do we drive a a great customer experience. So these buyers are extremely informed; they can go out and do their own research. They're inundated with messages and outreach on every platform they interact on. And so the reality is, what is your differentiated approach? How does, how do you creating value at every interaction with this individual? And is the team aligned and moving in the right direction on, you know, not only what experience we want to create for the individuals, but like, What are the triggers? Right? So there, it's never surprising to me when I look at someone's pipeline and it's inflated, meaning there's a lot of really great first meetings that are happening.

Right.

Right? But nothing's moving through. And then you tend to follow up, well, you know, it's the sales rep or it's our industry or it's a segment. Maybe, yeah. Or your team is not aligned on what happens next and you're not creating value in those early stages enough for the prospect to want to stay engaged with you. Right? So everyone's kind of, spinning their wheels in different directions and you're getting a lot of noise, but not the value of opportunities that are moving through. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. It totally does. And like the pipeline, pipeline discipline is what we talked about in our setup call. Can you just go into it? Because I think you touched on it, but like, what is pipeline discipline sort of in specifics?

So for me, pipeline discipline is being able to look at your pipeline and predict exactly what's going to happen with accuracy. That, that to me is a signal that you have a really great pipeline and a disciplined organization that manages your pipeline. And tactically, what it means for me and how we look at it is not only having a sales process, meaning we have our— and every CRM out of the box is going to prompt you to do this, right? What's, what happens first? What's, what's stage 1, stage 2, stage 3? And so it's very easy to stand that up. But where I encourage folks to take a step back is, OK, you have a first meeting. What are the triggers to know that this is the right meeting for your organization? So your sales team is on the same page. And how do you know it's ready to move to the next stage in the process?

Yeah, right.

You know, your, your early stages, it's emotional, right? Every opportunity is a big deal because you're building a company from scratch. It's not easy. But you've got to set the emotion aside. And, you know, and what I mean by emotional is you'll have a really great first conversation, you're like, that's in the bag. Like, we're putting that in the forecast for sure. But where we kind of start to press a little bit is, what are the buying signals, right? How do you know it's the right fit for your organization? And what were the triggers or signals that you have defined in your process to make sure it moves to the next stage? And this is not a heavy lift. I mean, it's a—

Right.

As a Word document or PowerPoint to say, here are our sales stages. Here's what needs to— here's what the signals are of a good meeting. And here's what needs to happen before you can even move this deal to the next stage. A lot of founders that I've talked to will say, you know, we need a really great forecasting tool, or I don't feel confident that the forecast that I've gotten from sales is accurate. So I pare it back. And the reality is you have really great pipeline discipline when you can just export forecast directly out of your pipeline and know it's accurate because you have the triggers defined, meaning—

Right, yeah.

Everything's clear, and you're inspecting it, right? So it's not just, give me the forecast for the end of the week, but there are some critical questions that as a founder, you can ask of the sales organization once a week in a 20-minute meeting to qualify each of these gates before they move to a verbal.

Right. So, like, so moving people along to your point earlier, moving people along, like, hey, you know, hey, Jo, why did you move Prospect A into the 2nd stage at the, you know, in this week? Did you have a conversation? Did they indicate something? That type of thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was just gonna say that, that I, again, I'm going back to this, you know, this was so frustrating. It's one of the reasons why the integration with selling my digital marketing company to this big firm was such a letdown. was because there was— we were expecting that we were going to walk into a place with process, right? We thought we were walking into a large organization. I mean, the largest large organizations still don't have this stuff. And this was an established— this is not a startup, right? This is an established place. And I always thought it was like this Monday morning sales meeting, right, which lasted about an hour and a half and had about 25 people on it. What should we— why aren't we just talking about, you know, why are we, why are we going around the room And talking about everybody, you know, in terms of, it's just that everything's like a qualified, we're talking about the quality of the lead or where, what is the status of this, which by the way is in the doc, like the stupid Word document or sorry, the Excel document that we're using, right? I mean, it's insane. It's like to be able to, what you should be talking about in those meetings is the disposition, right? And then potentially, What is, what is right or wrong about the way we're looking at it? Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. Uh, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

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Right?

Yeah. I mean, look, I, I would like to see meetings in founders, and I know they don't like to do this, right? I want to spend less time qualifying the forecast that I got and more time talking about the strategy, where I'm needed, which deals need support, where we've seen slippage that's impacting the forecast, right? And this is where I just keep going back to. Take that time, define the process, define the triggers at each stage, define your ideal, you know, everyone uses this term ideal customer, but take it a step further. Like, what are the behaviors we want them to adopt, right? What, why are they a good fit for the company? Who is not a good fit for our company? And that should happen in that first meeting, right? And every CRM out of the box now will give you that criteria that you can answer those questions for can just answer it automatically. You know, ABC, depending on what you're looking for in qualifying an individual, and then moving them to the next stage. So it's less about, you know, hey, Jo, what's closing this week? What's not? Are you sure? How do you feel about this? And more about, what can we do on this account to move it forward? I see you had a really great session with them. They're making up about 50% of our forecast this quarter. Right, where do we need some executive presence? I'd rather see a founder use their brainpower that way versus trying to get accurate data.

With ICP, I just want to dig into that a little bit more. When they're developing, like, I would imagine some founders believe that they know who their ideal customer is, right? But like, how much does that change when you come in and sort of put process to it, right? Is it changing a lot, in your opinion, or is it, is it just sort of around the edges?

Oh, I love that question. It doesn't change much, but it just, we just take it a couple steps deeper, meaning, you know, which titles within an organization specifically are the decision-makers versus influencers? And what, where do we, what problems do we solve for them? Making that very clear upfront helps scale, especially as you onboard reps, right? So you may intuitively know it, and you're kind of working your way through it as you're meeting with them, but someone walking in off the streets and onboarding in your company needs to be very clear that, you know, within this healthcare system, these are the 3 titles that actually can make a decision, but you still need to meet with these other 3 titles within the organization because they play a key influential role. Here are the problems. That they have. Here's how we solve the problems for them. Here's who's not our customers. When you see any of these signals, they're just not ready to buy from us, and that's okay too, versus trying to fit, what is it, a round peg in a square hole for the clients. It's going to turn out anyways. Having that clear and fully fleshed out, it, I think, to me, takes it a step further versus just saying, you know, we work with healthcare systems, between this size and this employee size? You know, one step further.

Right.

You work with the chief medical officer, is that who our ideal target is, right? Or is it the VP? And what are their pain points compared to the chief medical officer? Where do we start? Do we start with the VP or do we go straight for the chief medical officer? There's 2 steps down, well, you know, unlock and unleash your SDR team for top-of-funnel activity, in my opinion, because they're very pointed and clear versus just trying to cast a wide net.

Right, right, right. So the more, the more specific you are in terms of who the decision-makers are and being able to get to those people faster, right, is obviously part, a huge part of being able to accelerate the process. Spending too much time at lower-level people might look good on a report or whatever, but at the end of the day, it's probably not going to move the needle.

It's not going to move the needle, and it'll help with those meetings too. Like, did you meet with a decision-maker? Right? And maybe the first 2 meetings you're not; you're working your way in the organization, and that's fine. But just because you met with you know, a key influencer that showed you some buying signs, but still has no power to sign, it should not be put in verbal. And defining that upfront, it really kind of prevents this missed forecast, because what'll happen is you have a really good, all these really great signals. Yes, we have the budget, but at the end of the day, they still need approval from a level up in the organization, but you have it at 90% of the forecast. You're going to miss that forecast this quarter.

Right.

Because they're not ready to sign. You haven't even met with the person who actually can say yes. Right.

When you go into a place, what's the— you've gone into a lot of places, obviously, and seen the kind of like the state of things when you arrive, right? What are the big, like, common things that you see when you kind of get into these places that are just— that kind of just blow your mind? Positive or negative?

Oh my gosh. I continue to— on the positive side, just the founders we work with are absolutely brilliant. And maybe this is just me being a salesperson, but, and not a product innovator yet. But they, they're just brilliant. They have a really great problem that they've identified in the market, and they have a product that's going to solve those problems. They're, they're just inspirational. They're amazing to work with. And my thinking is, how do we unleash them, right? How do we get them to stop being all things to the business and to focus on what they do best, which is either, you know, thought leadership or being out there evolving their product? And how can we equip them with the right systems and tooling that enables them to be successful? That, that's just kind of my biggest driver.

Yep.

What, where I get frustrated, and it happens no matter the size of the company we've worked with, is there's a pressure to commit to numbers that just are not realistic. And so you set everyone up for failure to begin with. And so out of the gates, they've committed to, you know, a revenue, and I get it, you know, whether you've taken investment and you have to commit to those numbers, but now we've got to reverse engineer it somehow. And while they may look attractive initially, and then also what I see too is you take the number, you divide it by 12 months. So this is our monthly goal. And I'm like, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss, you're gonna miss. And this is how we can offset it, right? So I think that that tends to happen, and then you're setting yourself up for more pain later on. And the other thing is how they measure the sales organization has been one of my biggest frustration points. We focus a lot on lagging metrics like cost of acquisition and, you know, average deal size and all these metrics that, you know, when the books are closed, you look behind, you can slice it and dice it 1,000 different ways. But what's happening is they're taking these lagging metrics and they're trying to manage an organization forward with it. And then they start to become frustrated, because if you have a 9-month sales cycle, and you forecasted your revenue against a 90-day close, your cost of acquisition is going to look really high.

Right.

Initially, right? So what's happening is they're starting to like throw these, you know, or our CAC is really high, we're investing too much, and sales just starts to feel awful. And you're not empowering them, and you're setting them up to fail. And you can have some of the best sales team, But I guarantee you, if you mirrored your model to what actually how your buyers make decisions, you'll see that catch up. And so this is where it's like, yes, these lagging indicators are important. And I know we've been conditioned to report that way. But what about the leading indicators? Are you looking at any of them? Right?

Right.

And so that's often missed too, of how many quality meetings are you setting up on a weekly basis? And initially, there may not be a number, right? You may be in a new space, or, and we're not just setting activity metrics for the sake of But the reality is, what are these indicators that are predicting where you're going to end up? And are you managing to them as close as you're managing to your costs?

Right. Well, and I can imagine this leads, like what you just were talking about, where you have the 90-day sales cycle and like a 9-month buying time, like that can lead to disengagement too, right? Because the salespeople see those numbers and see that they're not making an unrealistic set of numbers, and that could just lead to them either leaving Or just like not doing what they should be doing.

They're not making money. It's not fun to work in that environment. People aren't thinking. So then they start to sell like promotions, right? We start cutting and doing like fire sales.

And people get desperate, right? They get desperate there.

Yeah. And here's the thing, and I've seen this play out 1,000 times. Well, if we discount it at the end of the month, guess what? Your buyer is going to know you're going to discount it again next month. Like, we are all very conditioned now to know that a deal is going to come when you need to hit your quota. But you just don't want a reactionary sales organization. No one operates their best that way. And so I, you know, for me, and I can't harp on this enough, but understanding what this buying cycle looks like, projecting and forecasting and setting goals for your sales team against that buying cycle, and then balancing your lagging indicators, right? Everything that you've been conditioned as a founder to manage to, with these leading indicators of How many new appointments are we getting each week? How many of those appointments are converting? How's our pipeline growing week over week? And not just in the top of funnel, right? But, and then what is our deal velocity? And managing to that on a weekly basis enables you to course correct in real time.

Quickly, right, right.

Then it's a team. What we, and I said this earlier, it's selling today is multithreaded. It is not just one person that can carry a very complicated sale from You know, cold outreach all the way to closed won. There's a lot of people that get involved at different stages of the process, the founder included. And so setting that team up to think strategically about a deal is a win for everyone. And then setting your goals where your sales team, to your point, John, can make money and be in it with you.

Yeah.

It's a game changer. You really unlock the potential of everyone in the organization. You have a multiplier effect.

Yeah. And it seems, you know, when you're, when you're defining people's roles very specifically and you're giving them tasks along the way to like, Jo, you are coming in at this stage and John, you are responsible for building top of the funnel. It's easier to train on that, become an expertise and find a new person to replace Jo or John if they leave the organization. You don't need to find a rock star. Yeah.

Oh, oh, speaking of that. The interview process is something that I always, I think people—

Oh, yes.

Don't take full advantage of. That, this is your very first opportunity to set the expectations. And in the early stages, because we have 1,000 things on our plate, and we're wearing 50 different hats, you will hire someone that you've had a really great, you know, either got as a referral. And they, they're a rock star. They come in, and they're, I've watched this, they sit, And they have no clue what to do Week 1, Week 2, Week 3. And so I always encourage folks, in the interview process, make sure they understand what's expected of them and what the productivity metrics and outputs are 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days. And again, you have a really great framework if they are producing by 60 days at their optimal. That, you know, you have a system, you have a really great onboarding, right? And you've set clear expectations, and you're measuring those expectations. If the minute they start the organization, they can hit the ground running. We just can't afford— Yeah. Especially in the early stages, to burn daylight by letting them figure it out. And so while they may be experts in their field, right, I've seen some of the best sellers walk into these organizations. They're behind you because you're a founder, and you've got this innovative product that's going to make a huge difference. And you're trusting them to go in with your baby and execute. They still need direction on what is the process, right? What, how are we going to solve this problem for this particular buyer? What are their pain points that my product solves? So, you know, taking the time to train them and set those expectations during the interview process just prevents any surprises for anyone. But I see a lot of organizations, like you typically see, like it's 6 to 9 months before you've got this person performing at their best, because they're trying to figure it all out and catch in between meetings and set up time and meet with all these different individuals to figure out, how do we sell here? What, you know, who is our customer? And we may have the high-level points, but sitting them down and being like, this, this is the framework. This is our sales cycle. This is the interaction. This is, these are the assets that we create at every step. It feels like a lot when I'm saying it, but I promise you, it's workshop it with your key people in your organization in 1 week and involve it. It doesn't have to be perfect.

Right away, right.

The view is A big differentiator.

One of the things that we come across too, and I think we've all kind of felt this, is that the sales force in hiring, how far ahead of the curve, right? You know, obviously revenue, it matters. We're paying people on commission, but there might be draw, there might be obviously, you know, different remuneration schemes. What can founders kind of do to be able to kind of like, you know, grow, grow, outpace the cost, right? From a growth standpoint, when you're talking about hiring salespeople?

To outpace your costs, I think you're gonna need, well, gosh, we should probably title this podcast A Framework because I feel like I've said it 1,000 times, but to outpace your costs, you need a system to onboard them into. That's going to be important. And 2, I think, don't be cheap with hiring talent. And I think that's a luxury to say, because it's not my wallet I'm talking about right now. But I do see folks, you know, set really aggressive targets and underestimate how much it's going to cost them for the right talent in the organization.

Yeah.

And so that, that in and of itself, you know, if you, if you're going to hire a junior resource, and groom them, just be prepared for what that ramp time looks like versus a senior rep. People have options today. And I see folks just trying to, you know, get talent at as low of a dollar as they can. But if that's the case, make the upside very competitive and attractive, right?

Right.

Incentivize, at the very least, you got to incentivize them enough. I always find that basically it's figuring out when you grow the sales force that it's a matter of, Are you growing against opportunity? Like, are you— do you hire against what you see as opportunity, or are you hiring against what you see as— it's like a cart. It's just, to me, it's always been the, you know, which comes first. It's a chicken or the egg thing, right? And to be able to actually go out there, it's one thing to be able to go out and do, you know, completely, you know, commission, you know, straight commission salespeople that don't get anything until they sell, right? That's obviously one way to do it. But When you have to, you have to have a certain amount of free cash and all that stuff to be able to get these people ramped up. And I guess what you're saying is it's in your best interest to have that process so that, that ramp-up period can be as fast as possible.

Fast as possible. And they want to win too. And no one has a problem. I mean, look, you work with an early-stage scale-up company because you want to be able to put your fingerprints on, right? And I say, let them do all, you know, let them mold the art of selling. But not the science of it. Make it very clear on what is expected. Give them a framework, and then sit down in 6 months. What's working? What's not? How do we continue to refine our sales process based on what we're learning? That's where they start to shape the next iteration of your sales growth, but not in the early stages. And so I think that that's, that's one thing that's really important too. And then what else was I going to say on that point with a sales I just lost my train of thought on the sales individuals. Oh well, it'll come to me, sorry.

When you talk about like learnings and playbook, right, because you're taking, you know, I think one of the things you're doing, Maria, when you go in is you're creating a playbook for them, and by playbook I mean like a series of processes that they're able to follow. Can you talk about like how that, you know, grows over time or is improved over time by the learnings that you make from The takers, the customers that sign up with you versus also the customers that don't sign up with you?

Yeah, that's a great question. So, in terms of the playbook or framework, what we'll do is we start by documenting a sales process and literally writing out, here are the triggers for each stage and here's the content and assets each stage, meaning what do we send to a client after the first appointment? What do we do after the second meeting, right? What do we do after the third? And then what resources in the organization should be involved at different stages? So if you're a tech services firm, for example, you're gonna need to bring the engineers and the team on by the third appointment so they can sit on the scoping meeting with you, right? So this kind of helps with that connectivity in the organization and helps make sure that deals move through faster by getting the right folks involved at different stages. But all that's documented on one slide.

Yep.

We stand it up in the CRM. And then what will happen is we then will do the training by, by doing it with them, right? So you get one individual on there and you start working it through and you may refine. And then what we'll then do is give it 90 days to execute, just make sure that we get enough deals through. And then you start looking at what you layer on into the organization, right? Do we want to put more marketing dollars in? Like, where do we start? Where do we want to get to? And what do we expect? But by the first 90 days, and tell me if I'm not answering your question, but within the first—

We are.

I have enough metrics to understand what happens when I put fuel on the fire. Right? So if I know I'm getting 5 meetings a week out of this activity from one individual, do I feel like they're at their, you know, and this many, and they're converting at this rate, and they're moving through at this sales cycle? What, you know, what is the ROI of just this, flow right now? And do I want to grow by adding another individual to multiply that activity right now, assuming this is my baseline, or do I want to allocate to marketing as air coverage just to either shorten my sales cycle or increase the top of funnel if I believe there's more productivity gains out of this one individual?

Got it.

Oh no, it definitely does.

That answers my question.

Thank you.

My curious, and this is again kind of a personal, probably a personal thing, but my question is, Have you ever come across a situation where you're like, look, we did all this, we've got all this stuff, we've got a process in here, and man, we're just not selling anything? Like, has it become, you know, a system of like, this is really just the product is bad? Or, you know, I mean, you know, have you ever come across a situation where the sales stuff just doesn't work? Or is it just really just a method of like, if you have You know, if you sell it, they will come kind of thing, right? Like if you're out there.

That's a really, really great question. I think there's been 2 instances where it really caused me to, to look internally, right? Because, you know, you've done this for 20 years. You keep— it's very humbling of a job, especially as you work with different founders. I think there's 2 instances that come to mind. One was a company that we were working with. And they were advised to accomplish certain metrics to be able to sell themselves. And they hired us to help accelerate this objective, right? And so what happened was, to me, and so we, what the value that we bring as a pod is the agility. So we are able to test, we're able to pivot quickly. You've got a team of experts. You don't have to wait to hire individuals and ramp them up, right? All this is kind of a driver for hiring us to be able to accomplish their objectives. And what was interesting and where I had to take a step back was maybe you're being advised wrong. Maybe you are not a software company and you're trying to replicate a SaaS selling model as you've been advised, but you're not actually selling SaaS services.

Right.

So you're seeing constant turnover and You feel like you're failing because this isn't your market. Maybe you don't need to go after it this way. And so just to land that point, right? If I'm a services business, right? But I have been coached and advised to show how many new appointments I can generate and how many new clients I can generate in a services-based business. It, it's not apples to apples as SaaS sales, as service sales. And so you're going to have to take a hard look to say, who are we and who in the market? And are we setting ourselves up for success in that model? So that, that one was very eye-opening where I wish I would have taken a step back to be like, wait a minute, but you're not selling a SaaS product. So why are we chasing this model when we can't deliver on it? Because it's not even what you offer. And what was really great about this client was they built an amazing base through a lot of white label partnerships.

Okay.

But we're being advised to go direct and accomplish these metrics as if they were offering us. And I'm like, this, you're not selling SaaS. And so, right. So that was what was interesting was maybe get a couple of opinions from different advisors on what you're, how you're going to sell yourself in the market first, and then make sure you hire the right sales team to do Right. Otherwise, you're going to set them up to fail. And then the other was, in terms of the frustration point for us and the aha moments, was a misalignment on how we're measuring success of the business. So, and that kind of goes to the point that I mentioned earlier, was I think, before we take on any engagement, and even if it's not hiring a team like ours, Do you have the right mix of leading and lagging metrics that you're going to measure the business to? And if you're overleveraged on TAC as your key driver, then make sure you have a very clear understanding of the buying cycle. If you're still trying to figure out the buying cycle, you're going to need a balance of these leading metrics are going to help you predict a little bit better and adjust and to feel good about The endgame, right? So this goes to the point, like, if CAC's my goal, but I keep looking at the expenses on a 30-day clip, that's— and it's gonna take my team 9 months to get this deal through, right? Then you need to give it that time.

Yeah.

And can you talk a little bit about— because we focus obviously on sales like a ton, but can you talk about like what you expect from the marketing group that you're bringing? Because you have a whole other side— not other side of the business, you have a whole group That's marketing. So what are you like? Just talk a little bit about how you guys align the marketing and the sales aspect of the organization.

Okay. So, you know, I'm a corporate CRO, which means I am your typical really, really annoyed with marketing type of individual in the past. And I felt like we were—

A marketing person, I feel that, by the way, just so you know.

You know, so like marketing would march in the meeting and like show all these metrics. I'm like, this did nothing for my pipeline. Like, why are we not on the same page here? here. And until I started working, you know, look, there's a lot of great people that are super talented, but it was very disjointed, especially in large corporate environments. Everyone operates in silos.

Yeah.

And there's 15 different initiatives coming to marketing that aren't just tied to sales, right? So like, that's, that's fair to everyone. I just want to be very clear. But then I started working with some really great demand gen folks, in the scale-up world. And yeah, I convinced a few of them to join us at the Resonance Agency, because what I saw was when the team is aligned, how quickly—

Magic.

You can make an impact. Yes. And so what that means for marketing is taking the time to really understand how sales is gold, how sales actually generates opportunities cold. And then solutioning how they can help grease the wheels, for lack of better words, right? So when we bring kind of that, with marketing and sales at the table done right, this is where you start to map that customer experience and define roles, meaning, you know, the SDR is going to run point here, but they're going to be enabled with these assets generated by marketing. And here's the triggers that we know that it moves to the next stage. And so having that framework marketing then knows where to pivot, because everyone's aligned on the gates of the customer experience, and everyone's aligned against one dashboard, one reporting metric. And then everyone can bring their own creativity to the table, meaning like, our marketing team thinks of things that we would have never thought of and can focus on what they do best while we're heads down, swarming an organization, right?

Yeah.

So we may, we have a target in mind, and we're working all levels of that organization. Marketing's casting a wider net for us, giving us air coverage, but then is watching these metrics move along and say, hey, you know, we understand these 20 meetings are critical to the forecast. Is there some additional content that we can generate and send out to these individuals, right? How do we engage them differently versus just through the sales side of the house too? And this is where that creative thinking really starts to come into play and that collaboration that I think is just so instrumental to The feedback loop, right?

I mean, the reality is that all marketing people can do is start trying something and then be able to adjust based on what actually happens in the real world, right? I mean, and that's really what I love about your process. And look, this is the process that just about everything happens, should be happening with marketing, which is to be able to test and then optimize and then scale it, right?

Yeah.

And look at everything that you're doing. You know, my favorite thing to say is about failing fast, right? We want to get in there, try stuff and adjust quickly so that we can, so that, and then make sure that everybody has that information and everybody is part of a feedback loop. Real collaboration is so rare between marketing and sales, in my experience, that the organizations that do it really, really well are probably the ones that you'll find are the ones that are the most successful. Yeah.

And too, with the, I was going to make this point earlier. When we're building organizations with companies, right, they've got the investment, they're ready to make a couple hires, they've, we've built the framework with them, we've helped them execute. Now they're ready to bring the team in-house. The first thing the founder wants to do is say, if they're working with a limited budget, I need a CRO and a head of marketing. And so they tend to stack the deck at the executive level.

Yep.

And I'm like, who's gonna execute, right? Like, if you find someone with a title that's going to roll their sleeves up, but don't Don't build so many layers in the organization, right? And I always say, look for the doers first, especially as your first round of hiring. And that means the founder is going to be managing these individuals, right? But if you have a really great engine already defined, and you have a process, you're not doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It's more executive type of oversight and management, right? Because they're coming into this, this is the, this is the way we operate here. This what winning looks like. Here's the formula for you. Right here are all the assets and tools. And so the, the best organizations that we've worked with, that actually have gotten a pretty instrumental round of funding, starts with that ground level, you know, a salesperson and marketer that are both doers.

Yep.

And not someone that, you know, has been doing this for 20 years that just wants to direct, you know, air traffic control in the organization. I think you need folks that are willing to roll their sleeves up. And I think that, that to me is a decision point in the hiring when you onboard the team is, do I start at the executive level and build my leadership? Or do I build, you know, a couple of really good SDRs and AEs and a really good director of marketing and manage them to the system that I've defined, and then kind of grow from there? And it could be a growth path for them too. I mean, in 6 months to a year, you may hire them. Yeah, the organizations, that's another one that was always, that's always baffling to me is, well, why do you need more executives in the organization to start?

Yeah, and one thing that sort of resonated with me when you, you know, going through the, when we were talking before, is when the CEO is, when all the sales are dependent on the CEO. So like, what is your strategy to, and asking selfishly, what is your strategy for convincing the CEO that they don't need to be involved in everything? Or said differently, that, that they really should empower the team to not need them for every sale?

I think when the team depends on you for every critical deal, you have no framework and you're never going to get out of the ground level, right? So I always go back to, you know, you should be a multiplier as the founder. And the biggest value that a founder can bring to me on the, are the internal meetings when we do a strategy session at the deal level. Because they have really great ideas and they can think differently because they're a little removed from the deal, right? As a rep, you're emotionally invested to it. You're looking at it like, I got to get this over the fence.

Sure.

If you have a right cadence on a weekly or monthly basis to, to do like a strategic account review as a founder, I think to me, that is the first step. to getting out of being the hero for every deal. And I don't think, you know, look, yes, we're going to invest in you as a founder. You're the reason we're behind you. But at the end of the day, like, I don't know if I would buy a founder for revenue. I would buy an engine.

Right.

So to me, you know, I always look back and say, if you're, if you're out flying around and you're in meetings all day, you're doing something drastically wrong. And you're doing a disservice to your sales team. And that can mean lack of system, lack of training, lack of assets and tooling, right?

Lack of empowerment, right? You can't be everywhere. You can't be flying around and be running the business.

Yeah.

And that's what we say all the time. I mean, the reality is too, is that if you ever, I mean, just to bring it back a little bit to M&A, the reality is that if that is your system, as we talk about all the time, if this is how you are operating on a daily basis, then you can pretty much forget about trying to sell your company. Because the reality is you are so locked up in this stuff.

And how exhausting.

And I think it's what people do, though. I mean, we see this all the time. People are just exhausted. The number one reason people start to think about selling their business is because they're tired.

Right.

And so you start with a— you're already starting at a place where you're like, I've spent all this time and now you're asking me to be something completely different. Right. It's really hard to do. So your point is you've got to do this earlier than, you know, earlier in the cycle or earlier in the journey.

Right. I just do. It's like, know your leverage points. Right. Which is easier said than done. But I read an analogy about a month ago about, and I'm going to butcher it. My husband always tells me not to use sports analogies, but Messi, the soccer player.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, there's commentary that, you know, when he's on, he's on, but there's other times he just looks aloof walking around the field.

Yes.

And that's because he's not burning his energy on every single play. Like, he knows his strengths and he will— when he locks in, he locks in and he can execute it seamlessly.

He knows when to rest.

And it's a great analogy because what he— you know, we went to the game last year with Messi. I'm a big Messi fan, but he sits around and waits for the first couple of, you know, for the first couple of minutes. He observes everything. And that's, that's sort of what you're doing is you're creating it. He's creating a process in his mind of how he's gonna play this team in the same way that you're setting up for the process for the business. And then he executes. And when he executes, I mean, he is fast when he runs.

So, yeah.

Well, this is—

I don't think we would ever be able to replicate a founder. Right. And so in this analogy, they are messy. Right. And so this is where I go to. If you have the right dashboards and the right leading and lagging metrics, right, then your meetings shouldn't be about what deals do you need me in this week? And I'm out in the field and your team doesn't have access to you because you're in front of customers all day, every day, right? And more about understanding the 5 or 6 accounts that will make or break your forecast.

Sure.

And asking and drilling in on those and having a strategy session on each of those is invaluable to unlocking the growth, right? And I always do this. I ask founders, like, how can we make it more visible to you on the most critical deals? this quarter and this year to you hitting these projections, right? That, that if there's anything that I want you to lock in on sales is that the top 5 or 10 accounts that are going to make up 80% of your revenue and, and not for you to be out closing those deals, but for you to just sit down with your team and be like, how do we collaborate? Where do we feel this deal is? How's it moving compared to prior week or prior month? And then you have all your resources in the room. And that That to me is where I geek out. And I think it's the most fun because you see marketing light up, you see the SDRs light up, and it's just a full-court press working this one deal to get it over the finish line. That makes it fun.

The job of the CEO should be to be able to say, be in the room, right? And be able to say, okay, what, what, what can we do? All the people I have here that I've hired to do the job, right? Not me coming down from the top down, but for me, but from the bottom up and saying, what are the ways in which we can solve this problem? Who's got an idea, right? Right.

And that's fun, right? But I mean, look, I have been up against the wall with numbers and it's so much easier to just be like, just move and let me go in.

Right.

It's exhausting. And then what happens is, you know, 15 other deals start slipping behind you because you're so locked in on building a relationship with what, you know, one of these enterprise deals. And it just, it's not the value of the business where they need you anymore. Right.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about tech, the technical side of this, because obviously we throw around CRM and you've mentioned, obviously, you know, customer relationship management software and stuff, you know, a few times. And obviously, we know this is a crux of, obviously, of the, of, you know, the development of things like Salesforce and all that stuff over time have obviously really made a difference in how we can manage this, you know, sales teams, right? What is your view kind of, you know, in general about the tech, about tech stacks, and what are the kinds of things that people, you know, should be, you know, should make sure that they have? And, you know, and obviously there might be some ups and downs to some of the technical side of things too.

I think there's a lot out there in the market today. I don't know, it depends on where you're at in your growth stage of the business, in my opinion. And at its most fundamental, I would say, a CRM. The CRMs today are just so incredibly robust. And so even HubSpot for $500 a month gives you a pretty comprehensive capability, not just for deal management, but for outreach and automation. And, you know, all the AI that's being layered on top of the CRMs now are just amazing signals for your sellers to not only, you know, manage a deal, but enrich it and Keep it, keep the records clean. And it will, once you define your process in a CRM, it will give you the triggers automatically. Like, is this deal ready to move forward? Right? So a lot of the administrative work that used to be a burden on sales just doesn't exist anymore with the right tools. So I, you know, I see a lot of folks still operating in Excel or using monday.com, like get a real CRM.

Yeah, but you're agnostic as to which one they're using, right? HubSpot or any of the ones out there?

You know, I have my personal favorites, but I think Zoho, Pipedrive, HubSpot, you know, all these are really great small to midsize CRMs. And of course, Salesforce for your larger enterprise organizations, we tend to see as a common one. And then if you're heavy on new business development, a database, like a list generation tool. There's Seamless.ai, there's ZoomInfo. I mean, ZoomInfo to me is the most accurate, comprehensive, but not everyone can afford a ZoomInfo. I think you can get a lot out of your Apollo.io, your Seamless.ai. They're not as accurate, but if you're very clear on your ICP and the titles in an organization that you want to go after and the pain points, like, You can get a lot out of this, this tool. I get asked a lot about LinkedIn automation. I hate it.

Okay.

I just, so what I value for any sales organization, and I use the word sequencing a lot, is for your SDRs and with marketing support, if you have a marketer on staff or with, look, you don't need a team of experts to sit down and say, what's the first interaction, second interaction, third interaction? What do we wanna say on the first email? What do we want to say if we make a phone outreach? Not every segment's right for phones. What do we want to say on LinkedIn? Scripting that out. HubSpot will enable you to have this automation that's going, and it will also give you now filters on engagement. So for some verticals that it is a, you know, you want to grab as much as you can. And so you're blasting out 500, 500, 500 contacts a day, it will start to tell you who your highly engaged individuals are.

Right.

Other organizations, it's, we have a 50, top 50 target list, and we're going to swarm it, because we believe that they fit our profile and we can solve it. And then, you know, we enrich that list; some come off, some come on. And so, depending on your strategy, there's capabilities in both. But the tools will enable you to balance outreach with the phones and the LinkedIn. But there's so much noise on these social media platforms, and I think people have abused the automation that there's no engagement anymore. So I'd rather you take more of an authentic approach and sound like a human speaking to another human with a point of view of what's the email that you want to send, right? And I'll say this all the time, but like LinkedIn now, it's so obvious, like, hey, Maria, you know, just want to add you to my network. And the minute I hit accept, Boop.

Yep, you get the audit slamming you over the head with the thing.

Like, I don't want to work with you because you clearly aren't taking the time. You're like, you don't want to meet with me, you just want a meeting.

The worst part, the worst part is getting the ones where it says either— it says, you know, it'll say Stapleton, right? It won't even say my first name, whatever. Or it'll say, you know, it'll just— it'll still be— I got one the other day, it still had like the, you know, the first name, last name thing. First name, last name.

Awesome.

Yeah, great. You're like, you didn't even try. Man, like, like, I'm, I'm actually open to this stuff right now because, you know, we, we, we want podcast guests. There's lots of reasons for me to take those things. But the worst is you're just like, dude, you don't even try, you know?

Yeah, I'd rather you just email me and be like, Maria, I am desperate to sell you my product, like, would you take a meeting? Like, I'm gonna get your attention. But this, like, beating around the bush and then hammering me with messages and then counting how many messages— Maria, you know, this is my third attempt to get you— I'm like, I don't You're the only one counting, like, right?

Exactly.

So this is where it's like, activity for the sake of activity. And this is where you start to hurt yourself, is you get, you get these junior resources that are hungry and have the drive to make as many phone calls and outreaches. But I'd rather them do 15, 50 to, you know, 15 to 50 quality outreaches a week on a very target-defined list and a very clear point of view of like, why do I want to work with Joe and John? What value do I think I bring them? And I don't want an automated tool to point out Maria went to Murray State 100 years ago and to tell her, you know, go Racers.

What, just, you know, we get towards the end of our time, but I want to ask one thing. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you feel is important for founders to know about, about sales and about how you can help and how you do help companies?

What they can expect out of their investment.

Yeah.

To me, I think, you know, I mean, look, every dollar counts. I get it. I run my own company too. And, you know, I think I was just telling you guys, like, I've cut out and stopped paying for services that I should have never stopped paying for. But I, for folks that just didn't grow up in sales, they're business operators or they're product innovators, immediately think that whatever they put in, That's the miracle is going to happen overnight, right? Or they overinflate the ROI, or they're looking at metrics. So I just think even, even calling around and asking and, and saying, OK, if I'm going to invest X, what can I get in return within what timeframe? And I always feel like it's misaligned. And so what I've learned starting, you know, year 1 versus 6 years in now is we took a lot of engagements where they looked at us as a Hail Mary.

Right.

You know, like, hey, I missed my targets consistently last year. I, you know, I need to do $1 million this year over. And you're looking, you're like, over what baseline? There's no baseline, right? And there's no clear process. And you come in and, you know, of course, us, we want to help everyone. And so in our early days, we're like, yeah, sure. And then it was miserable the first 60 days. So I think it's, you know, be realistic about what return you can expect out of sales. And I think realistically, you can get a 3x. Multiplier out of it. But you have to know your segment to know when you'll start to realize those dollars. It's, you know, it's not going to happen in 60 days. So if you've been trending zero for a year, no matter what caliber of talent you bring in, they're just not going to turn it around that soon. So I think being realistic just sets everyone up for success. That, that's my number one. And then also just knowing how to actually qualify your pipeline and When to hit the panic button and when not to hit the panic button. And I know that's subjective right now, but there's just a lot where deals stall.

Yeah. Yeah.

For lots of reasons that have nothing to do with you or the product or anything else, right? I mean, internal issues and budget stuff and larger macroeconomic things and all that stuff, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how do you have the right metrics and kind of review system where it's not— they're not surprises? You can start to see that and figure out contingency plans, right? And then, too, the, you know, just knowing what the pipeline should be and how to qualify that pipeline. So we always tell folks, you know, depending on your vertical, a 4x multiplier in your pipeline is a really great, safe place to be. So whatever your gap is, you need 4x that in real opportunities to ensure that you hit the number, right? So it's just understanding some of, kind of, now we've got our sales team, we feel good about our projections, How do we actually know we have enough to be safe and execute? And usually there's never enough in the pipeline, or what'll happen is the balance, if we overinvest in top-of-the-funnel noise and underestimate kind of how we're actually gonna carry it through, so.

Good, that's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, really great. Maria Meadows, she is the founder and CEO of The Resonance Agency, and she is a former CRO, Chief Revenue Officer, She is, and she knows everything that you need to do to be able to grow the revenue swiftly in your business. And again, listen to what she says. She is— I think the key things to take away today, guys, is that it's about process, right? And about understanding who your customer is, building a process around that, and being able to train people on that process, as opposed to bringing people in first and having them be, you know, the Wild West and just doing their own thing. You can control it. You have a better opportunity to be able to obviously measure. And of course, in order to, especially for rapid growth, right, which is what we're interested in with our clients, because we are in a situation where you've got a timeline and you've got to make this happen in a year or 2 or whatever it is in order to be able to get to your place. So again, the process is great. Thank you so much, Maria, for being here today.

Yeah, thank you guys.

Really, really great stuff. And, you know, good luck with everything, and we'll talk to you very soon. John, another great one, man. We are so lucky to be able to— honestly, we are so lucky to be able to know these people, and Maria is just one of our favorites. Absolutely great. She's just, just really fun to work with. Thank you so much.

100% agree. Thanks, Maria, for taking the time.

Excellent. Thanks.