[Sales] The skills needed to sell in a startup with Adam Butler

I read a stat recently that was saying that it's like 65% of hires are basically mishired because the salespeople basically sold themselves, but then they weren't able to actually like, perform in the role within the first few months. And then they're ultimately like, let go.

Yeah. Are they overly selling themselves ultimately? Are they not managing expectations correctly just to get themselves through the door? Because there is obviously, you know, and a bit of empathy here. It is still a tough market and they will say what they can to get through the door. So that's a delicate one because again, you want to have empathy for them and their situation and you want to help them, but equally, you both need to align on what is attainable so that after the first quarter, when the pipeline is dry and empty, it's not a case of, well, you know, you're fired.

Before we get into today's show, I wanted to tell you a little bit about what we have going on over here at Succession. So Succession is a life Science sales membership that includes on demand courses to uplevel your sales skills, resources to plan and execute your sales process, a community for peer to peer networking and learning, and live workshops delivered by experts twice a month. You can get access to all of this as an individual for just $79 a month, or you can uplevel your entire sales team with courses and customized learning designed for each individual rep. Come and join us over at Succession Bio. Okay, let's dive back into the show. On this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Adam Butler. He has 11 years of life science recruiting and he recently started Mason Harding with a focus on life science research and biotech companies. Really looking at how can you find the best people for your company from a recruitment perspective. And a couple of really important things that came out of this conversation were talking about the phenotype of startup sales hires. So how do you find that right person, the right energy, the right characteristics that you need for those early sales hires and. And how those sales hires differ from more of the established company representatives. And then as well, looking at what are the things that you could look for in a hunter versus a farmer? So the people that need to nurture and grow existing accounts versus the people that you need to go and find and hunt and go get new accounts. Overall, I think this is a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it. So with that, we'll jump right into the show. Hey Adam, welcome to the podcast. We're excited to have you.

Thanks for having us, guys.

Awesome. So you know, we like to kick off every episode with the exact same prompt. Give us a funny or crazy story that's happened in your career.

So there's, there's a lot. Over 11 years I had to really think about this one. So yeah, context is in the very first year of recruitment. I started off, you know, as every young, eager, recruited those hungry, ready to go within record time. I think I got my first deal, you know, towards the end stage and completion stage. So for context, usually I don't know if you guys remember, but historically with LinkedIn when you had a third degree connection, you couldn't see the profile pictures. There was no way to see a profile picture. Right. So it was just the old, you know, blacked out silhouette of other person. So vice versa. This candidate and I never knew each other. We didn't know, you know, what we looked like.

Right.

So we got to the end of the process and I did the old school headhunting approach for this case. So I didn't even use LinkedIn. It was, I called them directly at their company workplace, cryptically got through, spoke to him, convinced him to speak out of hours. Anyway, got the CV that way. So fast track, maybe two, three weeks. And we got to the end of the placement and it was a German candidate, a German sales rep based in Munich. I remember it very clearly. And we finally connected and he's really thankful for the help we did to get him the role got him a great increase on his package. So he was over the moon and we connected on LinkedIn and I got a follow up message as soon as we were connections and we could see one another. Hey Adam, really good to work with you throughout this process. By the way, cool accent you have there. Jamaican and a question mark. I just laughed. I just instantly laughed in the office because I mean, you can probably hear I'm the most Yorkshire sounding person you will ever meet. So it's literally gone off of my profile picture, seen a brown man and just gone up Jamaican. So yeah, that not to this day, it just, yeah, really gets me. Yeah, that's crazy. So he's heard an accent, added it to your image and go, okay, that's what it is, funny. The funny thing is I'm actually, my roots are Nigerian, I'm African, so I'm not, it's not even, it's not even. Right. So my question was going to be like, why Jamaican? Like why be so specific? Like, right. It could be even got to go in Caribbean, right. If it's going to be like that, like Be less specific. You're always going to be wrong. He thought he nailed it. I was like, wow, do I sound Jamaican? Okay, it's pretty cool if I do. But yeah, anyway, that, that's, it tickles me to this day. It really, really does. And I think, you know what, thinking about it, I think the guy was trying to just build more rapport post placement and so there was no real malice or, you know, prejudice, racist connotation. But yeah, it was just really funny. Yeah. So anyway, came from a good place but was completely mistargeted. Yeah, he didn't nail it.

Oh, that's good.

What's Jamaica like though? I wouldn't know because I'm from Nigeria. That got me a bit straight away. Repressed emotions came straight out.

Oh, that's a good one. All right.

Yeah, there you go.

Now on to onto the main topic that we wanted to talk about today. We're gonna dive into a little bit about sort of the, the different phenotypes between sort of the early stage sales hires and the maybe more established company sales hires. So like what are the types of things that you really look for there? So maybe from a high level, as you think about, from either recruiting or as you think about, if you're a founder of maybe an early stage company, what are some of the things that you might be looking for there versus your VP of sales at, you know, Adana or Thermo, you know, one of, maybe one of these larger, more established companies. And what are you looking for from those sorts of candidates?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Really passionate about this topic. Just having focused a lot on kind of commercial scaling over the years. And I think people can be quite quick to just make a lot of assumptions based on what they think they know. So to look at it, we'll start off maybe first with kind of the more startup, smaller founder led processes. Right. So typically on paper these companies are going to be possibly bootstrapped. So it's going to be a lot of the, the founders own, own investment going into it, which means they're extremely passionate about, you know, who they hire, what they look like and their background. Right. They're going to be really focused on success to mitigate the risk of failure, ultimately strip that back again. You do also get you kind of VC backed funds and people who actually manage the search and you actually work directly with the VC associate who are managing the portfolio company. And, and those guys are equally as passionate. Right, because it's their investment. Like they need an ROI on the person that they hire. So the typical thing that both of those situations would look for, you're looking at hunters, right? So the old hunter versus farmer kind of cliche analogy, we need to talk about it because that's, that stuff is true, right? That's not an assumption. That's true. So for your very first hire, you know, your Ground Zero, your 101 salesperson, be that the VP of Sales on paper, right? Because there's nobody else. You're not managing a group, but you can, you can be a VP of sales with a few scaling or you could be a senior, senior sales, whatever you're going to call yourself, you are the first company's, you know, commercial person, right? So that phenotype on paper, what we see and what we, we ask to kind of screen for, you want somebody who's extremely passionate about the prospecting process, right? Somebody who really needs to enjoy hunting strategically. So we're not talking knocking on every door of academic institute or pharma or biotech and just kind of hoping for the best. Somebody who really knows the lay of the land. Be that drug discovery, translational sciences, you know, it could be transcriptomics, special biology, whatever the domain is, somebody needs to know and have an informed decision of where they're going to go out hunting. That's first of all. The second piece there I think is somebody who is quite driven, just extremely driven and wants to wear more than one hat. Right. You're not just going to be an account manager doing a very specific role, looking after kind of Pfizer or AstraZeneca. Right. You're going to be thinking outside the box. So you need to be able to leverage your relationships that you have to open doors because you're going to be driving the first, you know, line of revenue for that business. Right. So those people are extremely driven. They enjoy really, I'm talking enjoy hunting. So if you're screening for these kind of people, you know, you want to be asking them, look, if what, what do you do in situations where you've got no, no resources, you're, you're, you're resource shy, you don't know a particular account but, but you need to get in there like, what, what do you do? And if somebody's, you know, saying, well, I'll check the CRM system and I'll look at Salesforce. Yeah, what's, yeah, it's like what, what's a CRM? We're all working off of spreadsheets at the minute. Yeah, yeah, they're red flags to some degree. You want to maybe Probe a little further. You want the early, early kind of like a Nick, a Nick Claire phenotype who would find a way. He would open a door, he would create a scenario where they were getting into that, you know, that account that, that customer. So, yeah, I don't know if we want to delve too further, but that's kind of the picture I'm trying to paint of that phenotype. It's the hunter. It's somebody who enjoys the building, that scaling process, and they don't. And they can manage chaos as well because it is more stressful.

One of the things that you mentioned, which is interesting, which is in the screening process, how do you, how do you actually pull out that this person is a hunter, that they actually like prospecting? Because one of the things that I seen is that some of the earlier stage founders, they don't know what they don't know about sales. So, like, they're probably a technical founder. They started this company for some, you know, probably technical product or technical thing that they're building, but they don't have, like, maybe enough commercial acumen to know, is this person a hunter? Is this person more of a farmer? How do they ask those right questions? Maybe could you give some guidance to, to that? Because I think that's it's. It's hard to screen for that stuff if you don't know what to ask.

It is, it really is. And especially when you are considering senior commercial professionals as, you know, true to. True to form, they're gonna weave and sculpt the story to fit what, you know, they think you want. So you need to really think of ways to, to just, you know, cut back the. And get to the foundations of. Right, this is what you do. Got it. So we give, we give people kind of scorecard scenarios and we give, you know, we'll do a briefing call and we'll ask them, right, what is essential and if it is this phenotype of a first, you know, on the ground salesperson, we'll help them come up with probing questions. So some of the ones we'd look at would be, for example, tell us about a situation where you, you know, in bold and capital, you, not a team, you, you, you created a strategy or a sales plan to target a new segment, or you specifically did. And it's about the onus on that individual because in the bigger, more established businesses, it's a team, and that's not a bad thing. But you are relying on other counterparts to enable that sales process. Whereas on day one, you don't have a field application scientist. You might not have a field service engineer, you might not have a market development manager, but you won't. So you, you're all of those roles into one. So you're asking the you, right? And it's about that individual. And if they talk about themselves and they refer to themselves in that, you know, tense, in that, that way, they're good, reassuring things that I did this, I, I was the first person, you know, we had very little resources, therefore I did this. Right. Versus we, we, you know, collectively. So there's a couple of things. Obviously there's a lot of angles you can go up. You could use video screening. That's not revolutionary. Like, it's not reinventing the wheel for recruitment. But on a video you can see how somebody is reacting and how they're articulating and how, you know, are they scrambling around? Is the eye contact looking consistent? Is their body language looking genuine and sincere? Right. Because again, if you are naturally lying and fabricating, you probably going to be a bit twitchy and you're going to be, you know, coming up with a story. So, yeah, little things like that can be kind of marginal improvements in finding the truth in those situations.

One thing that I've also seen is you have to dig into their process. It's like, what specifically have they done and how exactly did they do those things? Because all these people are going to be able to sell themselves really well because that's what they do. Right. They're in sales, they're there to be able to sell themselves. But if you're getting surface level responses to walk me through how exactly you, you know, broke into this new segment, whatever it might have been like, walk me through exactly how that happened. I think a lot of times you get surface level answers from people, but then if you're not able, I guess it's your job then as the founder to really dig into that second, third and fourth layer that says, how specifically did you do this? Why did it work? Like, you know, how, what did you do? To test different things. Right. I think that's sort of the layer you have to get to, to to understand is this person actually going to be able to sell in my specific environment?

Yeah, no, 100%, I agree with that. That's really a good point because you can take an answer up from face value and kind of respectfully accept it and just hope that it is sincere. But if you just ask that probing, additional probing question. Okay, great. Can you give me more context? Could you just explain A little further what that looked like. And I guess the advice for founders is don't be. Don't feel, you know, embarrassed. Don't feel as though you. You should know what somebody's just said. Right. It's being comfortable to challenge in a. In a assertive way as well. Great. Give me a little bit more context there. Exactly what did you do in that? You know, and it's just. Yeah, because it's your investment, ultimately, it's your company. It's your name on the tin.

Right.

So if you're not probing and pushing, then you know you're going to get possibly burnt down the line with an incorrect hire.

Ultimately, it's your first sales hire, so it's like probably the most important one you're going to make, which is this person might make or break your company.

And absolutely.

The importance of getting this hire. Right. Is so important because if they aren't good or they don't, you know, if they don't, you know, identify enough opportunities, close enough deals, they don't move the needle for you for what you need, you're going to be 612 months down the line before you really probably realize it. And then by then, you know, you're a year out of funding. You know, things have changed a lot within that period of time.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And these guys are like your storytellers. So they are a ambassador from day one. You know that in the field, you are the company's brand as well, which is a really, probably a different podcast altogether, looking at brand. But the first employee from a commercial angle, they're waving the flag for you guys. Right. So they're not just trying to knock on doors and create revenue, but they're creating your market, they're creating your brand. So, yeah, the onus has to be there to push to get, you know, to the bottom of who they are.

I think, I think the other kind of piece adding to this is that a lot of people will hire. I've seen it happen two ways. They'll hire like one individual to kind of maybe a little bit more junior. They come in and maybe their job is to do a little bit more prospecting or they go for the senior route. They get somebody in there who's more experienced. But one of the challenges that I see is that neither person and sometimes has the actual experience selling the type of product or the type of service or like the certain, like, cost value of that service that the company selling. So, for instance, if I'm a newer person coming into sales, I probably don't have that much experience selling. And so I might be doing maybe more of a prospecting, but let's say I'm a more experienced rep that comes in, but I'm used to selling capital equipment. But now I'm coming into a company that's maybe more reagents, maybe more transactionally oriented or on the flip side, I'm coming from a company that was selling reagents, maybe smaller ticket items and now I'm selling larger ticket items. Those sales processes are completely different. And so I think founders also need to think about like the historical sales skills or the sort of size of the average cost of the product that they're selling when they're making these hires.

Yeah, and that is a great point as well. Right. Like if you're looking at a big, massive piece of capital equipment, you know, 500,000, half a million in value. Those, those folks are unbelievable because they know how to position and value sell. However would they be right if you're going to be selling, you know, fluorescent reagents or staining kits? Right. You know, it's more of a. You need the volume with the reagents, you need the run rate, you know, and the consumable element. So that's. Yeah, it's a great point on a resume. Don't just look at a company name. Dissect that further. What division within that business were they focused on? Some people sometimes give like an umbrella term and they'll just use part of the bioscience team in, I don't know, in a company. Well, what does that mean? Like, that's so broad. Right. It's such an umbrella term is, were you focusing within that genomics and then within that, was it capex? Was it consumables? You know, was it software? Was it bioinformatics? Because each skill, each role has a skill that comes with it to sell that product. And it's just having that kind of. I look at it as having like a quality control approach. So think of yourself as like a QC regulatory kind of compliance officer.

Right.

When you're doing these hiring decisions and don't let anything pass if you're not confident on that individual and that experience skill set, don't let that go to the next step because you're not, you're not, you know, keeping the QC there. The quality needs to be there. That's where a recruiter would come in, of course, as the kind of the first line of defense to not let you get those folks in front of your desk on a short list. But if some, you know, we're human as well. So if we do drop the ball somewhere and we miss something, that's where you, you align the stakeholders on the diligence level of, of, of probing. Right?

Yeah, that's great. Okay, so I think we've hit on a lot about the early stage hires. So this, this hunter mentality, these people that you have to have to leverage the network, they have to be willing to really get out there and, and be sort of that brand ambassador in the early days, you don't have the resources, you, you have to have that sort of hunter mentality. So let's talk about maybe more of the established company. So you've got maybe a solid marketing team, you've maybe a couple million plus in revenue on an annual basis. How are you starting to think about hiring? I don't want to call them the plug and play sales reps, but kind of it's like how do you think about building your specific hiring profile that says these are going to be the best reps for us to scale? Because that's a lot different than the early days for hiring that first person.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So on the contrasting side of things, from the start world, these folks tend to be more experienced. Naturally, they've been around for longer. They've got, you know, X amount of years under their belt already.

Right.

Looking after existing revenues. And let's not take anything away from these folks either because it's just as important. So all of the startup founding kind of companies we're talking about, their goal is to ultimately try to go public, you know, drive an ipo, be acquired in some kind of transactional deal. Right? Like that is the goal. Whereas the established players, they've done that. So they are typically public and they've got stock and they've got their stock valuations to think about. So in order to keep that, you know, propped up and in a healthy way, they need their revenues. So, you know, just to make sure people understand neither role is more important or less important than the other. But in this case the phenotype differs. So you are looking for people who can cultivate existing revenue and protect it. So almost kind of the farmer analogy where the, the, the, the crops and the seeds have been laid and your role is to, you know, to cultivate and make sure that flourishes and revenue growth does come year on year. So what does that look like from a hiring decision and from a candidate? So, couple of things. I think the first one would be individuals that enjoy account, you know, account nurturing People who enjoy relationship building, strengthening their relationships. You will get folks that, you know, they perhaps need the resources in place. They need a CRM. They need to know that there is a protocol, there is a process. They know that they have a team. Right. Kind of like a project management mindset where they know around them they can draw on the skills needed to enable the next level of growth. Right. Versus the earlier phenotype. And that's quite hard as well to find. Like you know, these people are embedded already in the big multinational companies. They're being looked after because of that skill set. So they're not that easy to draw away to another, you know, transverse type of established sales role. I think titles as well as to mention is you will come across naturally corporate account managers, you know, account management. Right. That is a buzzword you're going to be looking at as opposed to business development managers or you know, sales representatives or you know, it's a slightly different person just from a screening on a resume level. But yeah, people that enjoy that more consistent revenue streams, they want to, you know, learn how. Okay, how do we embed further, how do we instead of just having four Pfizer accounts in the US how do we scale that operation to cover the global level? So it is quite a strategic thinker, I would say.

Yeah, it's interesting. And one of the challenges I think I've seen companies, you know, maybe mistake in the past is they'll hire for the Rolodex. Right. And so for people don't know Rolodex essentially like your contact list. Right. So the people that you have that you know within certain accounts and I've actually seen, I think people over index on that to say hey, oh yeah, they know all these people at you know, Aspedonica or at Pfizer or wherever. And so they're naturally going to be able to just come into our company and now we're going to get access to those contacts. I've made this mistake hiring in the past as well. And so just kind of curious like is that something that you see regularly or how do you kind of combat that?

Yeah, no, good, good point, good perspective to look at. So in short, yeah, it does happen quite a lot from a candidate and a hiring manager perspective. So of course as we spoke about, you know, a sales professional, true to form, will try to fit the mold of what a client is looking for. So they will slightly over, maybe over over egg the level of relationship in all of these big top five pharma for example. Right. The hiring Manager. They will. They will want to hear that on paper. They'll tick a box. Great. He knows Pfizer as Anica, you know, boringer, whatever. Right. And sometimes they just move on to the next question. Okay, they've satisfied that. But again, this is where the QC diligent hat applies to both hiring managers. You need to then ask further. So it's like, okay, great. So specifically within AstraZeneca in Boston, you know, who do you know within the pre clinical or the translational discovery team?

Right.

Who is your point of contact? Is it procurement? Is it a head of labor? Is it the chief commercial? You know, like, who is the contact? Can you pick up that phone and call them today to get a meeting? Right. And asking that level of question and detailing will unearth the true picture? No, actually not. We don't know them personally, but my friend does, or, you know, my manager knows them, and he usually helps me get the meeting. So then the onus isn't on them. So it's like, okay, well, that's probably not a tick in your box anymore. Glad that you know the account. But we're looking for that Rolodex. Right. So I hope. Yeah. Does that answer the question there, Harrison, in terms of that?

Yeah. Just to add on to it, too, I think it's that you should know that that's the right person for your company to sell to. Because just because you know people at the account doesn't mean you know the right people at the account. To your point, if they're in a different group or. Or whatever, it is like, you. You just have to dig into the details. And I think actually this is sort of the theme that we're getting at here. Right? It's like, how do you get into that second, third, fourth layer of the surface level that people are saying? Yeah, I read a stat recently that was saying that, like, it's like 65% of hires are basically, like, mishired because the salespeople basically sold themselves, but then they weren't able to actually, like, perform in the role within the first, you know, few months. And then they're ultimately, like, let go. Which is a lot of mishaps. And so I'm wondering if it really has to do with this, digging into those second and third layer questions to actually understand is this the right hire or people just settling because they, like, meet somebody in the seat.

Yeah. No, again, another good point to look at. So I think there's a couple of variables there that. That are probably at fault. So is. Is the Product truly ready? Is the product readiness there to be able to sell? Have founders maybe gone a little bit too soon with hiring a commercial individual? So that could be, you know, without putting the onus on, on the sales professional, is the company actually ready to bring in that first layer of commercial people? Should they maybe have waited for another 612 months, got more data, more study data to then build once they had that kind of momentum? Another angle is, you know, is this individual. Yeah. Are they overly selling themselves ultimately? Are they not managing expectations correctly just to get themselves through the door? Because there is obviously, you know, and a bit of empathy here. The market is tough still at the minute. You know, there are a tremendous amount of layoffs still happening. It is, it is tailoring off and it is tapering off. And I think, you know, there's, there's a lot of funding now being, being released by the VC in the PE world, but it is still a tough market. So I think candidates, naturally, they are borderline pushing that desperation line in some cases and they will say what they can to get through the door. So that's a delicate one because again, you want to have empathy for them and their situation and you want to help them, but equally, you both need to align on what is attainable and the goals need to be clearly communicated throughout the process so that after the first quarter, when the pipeline is dry and empty, it's not a case of, well, you know, you're fired.

Right.

It needs to be discussed. So I think there's a couple of interesting points and valid points that underline that success as well.

Yeah. I think coming back to, to the farmers a little bit more, which is okay if I'm looking to, if, if I. Maybe the way I can think about this from a company perspective is if I'm. You have to think about the goals that you want. Right. If my goal is to acquire new logos and get new accounts, I should be looking for hunters. Right. Which is typically going to always be your early stage companies. But if the goal is you need to take your existing accounts and you need to grow them, you should be looking at farmers and you should, you should, you could. You kind of need to like build this scorecard I think you mentioned earlier, which is what are those key traits that you're looking for? But it needs to again, come back to what are the goals that you're trying to accomplish? Are you trying to acquire new customers? Are you trying to expand your existing ones? Because those often aren't the same person. Right. And that's kind of where we're getting at here.

Yeah, yeah, no, correct, exactly that like the phenotypes are very different camps. You know, it's rare that you can cross pollinate and you get somebody who can play both, both roles. Those folks have been around, you know, 10, 15, 20 plus years in the trenches in sales roles and they're kind of chameleons, right? And they can, they can play both roles and, and they know how. Because a lot of the time, let's say going back to the, you know, the invitation days before it was Lifetech, before it was Vermo, like the original brands of some of the big companies, those folks are great examples because they joined the company when they were true startups. They did that well, that they were acquired and they spun out and you know, the success bred a bigger corporation. So if you look at some of the people, for example, use Fisher as an example, they started off historically, you know, with like a gibko for cell media or with the invitation for whatever else and they've come from that startup DNA, but they know how to kind of flourish and survive in a corporate. So there are a couple of exceptions to, to the rule. But yeah, like I say, they are exceptions. The general camp is either Hunter mentality, building new targets versus cultivating, expanding and growing revenue streams for sure.

And what are your thoughts about, you know, for, for all of the people that are just getting into, you know, sales or thinking about making the transition into, you know, sales from a, from scientific perspective, what's some advice that you could give them is like, how do you know which one might be best for you? Right? Big company, maybe more farmer, big company, Hunter. Or do you go like earlier stage, you know, Hunter, and sort of build up your skills that way? What do you think?

Yeah, no, great question. Again, I think you've got to be really truthful to yourself and self reflect before you make any application. So don't just click the easy apply button on LinkedIn. Which you know, by the way is one of my pet gripes in the world of recruitment. But yeah, no, instead of being too trigger happy and applying, I think you need to really think about what is your situation. So are you at the point where, you know, you're, you're newly married, you've got a mortgage, you've got two young kids that are dependents. Right? Because with the startup world, despite it being very exciting and you're wearing multiple hats, there is a higher degree of risk. You know, fundamentally that's just the case. They may not reach the Next trench for funding the product may not be fully ready, they might need to pivot, which means the sales team is no longer needed versus if you can take more of a risk, you know, you're further down the line for whatever reason, your circumstances allow you to be more risk averse, then a startup is probably for you. Whereas again, if you do need maybe a bit of more stability, you need more structure as a person, you might also just need structure over your career. So if you've transitioned from a master's or a PhD or a postdoc that's been quite lead and quite linear in structure, you might enjoy having more of a less chaotic world with resources and with like a blueprint to follow. Yeah, yeah. And on the flip side, if you are more of the kind of maybe type A, more extrovert, making some assumptions here, but if you are that more, you know, you like chaos almost and you almost thrive in a chaotic environment, then a startup is definitely the ride for you, you know, and if it doesn't work out, you can always pivot, you can always change. And it's working with the right recruiter to some degree as well who can give you advice and coach you on each role. How do you highlight skills for this particular role or this particular company. So there are ways around it. So I don't want people to feel like they're going to be solely stuck on one journey for their career. You can pivot. It does happen. But yeah, there's just some things to take into consideration for sure.

Yeah, no, this is, this is great. I appreciate that. That's a good, a good like sort of outline. I think the only other thing I would add to it is that if you go to a bigger company you might get put into more of like a structured sales training program. So that could be a benefit. But that's. Make sure you ask because a lot of these big companies don't actually have great sales training programs. So make sure you dig into that. If that's something you want out of a bigger company, go do that. Sometimes on the startup side, it's a lot rarer that you get those sorts of sales training, sales developments, especially if you're earlier in your career. So, you know, those are other things to consider there as well.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, I think that's a good point. I think, I don't know, it seems to be less common at the minute in terms of hiring managers asking, you know me for, does this individual have professional sales training, like are they Miller Hyman accredited or not? Five years back. I feel like that was a really top of the list kind of criteria. I don't know if that's just me, what, what I'm seeing for certain companies. But. Yeah, just on that note as well, I think that's an interesting one. Sales training is great, but sometimes companies do also prefer you to have, you know, real, real time experience. We've learned a lot of the tricks of the trade as well. But. Yeah, no, great. Great point.

Yeah. Awesome. Well, we are coming right up on here on time. Adam, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for, for coming in and chatting with us. And, yeah.