Inside the Hiring Secrets of a Hyper-Growth Fintech

Welcome to the Switchgear Show. This is Preeth Sarkar, and I'm joined by Justin Myers today. Justin is the Head of Commercial Sales at CreditorWatch, an exciting fintech that is rapidly growing. And we're talking about all things hiring, culture, and building a performance culture of success. Justin, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Fantastic. Now, I've known Justin for a while, and he has a phenomenal story around how he got into sales, grew through the ranks, moved into sales management. He's probably one of the top 3% who've actually done a 10-year stint with a growing company in Australia, and that was Experian, and then moved into a leadership role within the organization for the next 5 years. First 5 years in sales, next 5 years in sales management, and now is leading a fantastic team at CreditorWatch. So Justin, tell me, how did you get into sales?

Yeah, that's a really good question, Pri. I just want to start with a little bit of a story, maybe. Okay, my son's a bit of a character. He's 5 and a half. He loves to dress in suits. He loves Boss Baby. So anything with a tie or a suit. I brought him into the office just before Christmas. And we've got like this really— well, we've got a nice view behind me, as you can see. But He was looking out the window with some binoculars and I didn't think much of it. Anyways, fast forward 3 months and we get a text message from our neighbors. And apparently, so our neighbors are, the son is best friends with my son Jake. The kids were talking and apparently they were talking about how Jake wants to be just like his dad. He wants to be a sales director and they're having quite a funny conversation about it. And he wants to be just like me, the sales director. My job apparently, according to my son, is I I work in the tallest building in the world. And my job is to let sailboats know which way the wind is blowing.

I love it.

So here all this time, I'm thinking my son, he's worshiping the ground I walk on. But actually, he's got it completely wrong. So it's a very cute story. But the moral of that story really, Pri, is there's very few people, particularly 5-year-olds that are sitting there thinking, I want to get into sales. And my story is very similar. I moved to Australia in 2010. be with my now wife, and I just finished a degree in marketing and finance, and I had plans to take over the marketing world. And I sat down with a recruiter and he showed me what was possible in the sales world. I was pretty ambitious, certainly wet behind the ears, but really ready to hit the ground when I moved to Australia and provide for my wife and build a family here. Learning what the sales structure looked like and what was possible, and the cool thing around sales being you can write your own paychecks to a certain extent. I never looked back. So that was 18 months with a recruitment firm, set some really good foundations, probably the hardest 18 months of my career. And then I went into Experian where I spent 10 years. And then of course, now I'm here at CreditorWatch and haven't really looked back.

Oh, that's fantastic. And look, you were with Robert Half?

Correct.

That was great ground. Again, if you can last more than 3 to 6 months in one of those environments, you can sell. So I have no doubt why and how you've succeeded. Tell me about You had a terrific 10 years at Experian. It was classic. You spent 5 years in an individual contributor capacity. You then moved into management and continued to grow and grow. So give me a bit of a snapshot of what that looked like and what it took to move within the organization and grow from within.

First of all, it wasn't easy. In fact, I tell this story often to new reps at CreditorWatch and other when I was at Experian. First 18 months were really tough. I knew how to cold call. That was, that's what I learned at Robert Half. And I brought that skill to Experian. And I was always topping the call lists, but I wasn't topping the leaderboard. I think it was certainly a long journey. But what I'd say is, for anybody looking to make that move from an individual contributor role to a leadership role, I think there's a few things worth considering. Now, first of all, I was listening to a podcast the other day, Prof G, and he was talking about his advice to grads, which is get to HQ. And so, I'd say that's really important right now. I know that there's a trend to working from home, and we encourage that. We have a very flexible working environment. But if you're really keen to get into the next role, you want to be visible.

Yeah.

So, I think that's one of the first steps is being visible. I think the next one is having a mentor, having folks in the organization that are really bought into your success and have some skin in the game themselves. And I think, of course, a ticket to the game is performance. And I was only just talking to my little sister, she's 12 years younger than me. So she's just started her career. And she was talking about motivation is this thing that sort of wax and wanes. But discipline is— discipline sticks. And so I think a lot about that. Yeah, I think a lot about that in the sales environment, because the reality with sales is there is ups and downs. But what gets us out of those downs is ultimately the discipline. And so if you can show that discipline, if you're visible in the environment, and you have mentors that are really bought into your success, then you've really got the ingredients to step into leadership. And then my final one is take the first opportunity that comes. Don't be picky. For me, that meant moving my family to Melbourne from Sydney at a pretty young age. I was 28. We had 3 years married. We were planning to start a family. So, it's just Melbourne. It's only a hop, skip, and a jump on a plane. But ultimately, it was a big move for us. And we spent 4 years there and the rest is history. And I'm really pleased I took that opportunity.

That's amazing. I can just see you clearly have a pioneering spirit. You wouldn't have moved across the world to get to Australia in the first place, and you've just taken those opportunities. So you're living and breathing that, and that resonates so deeply with me because I grew up in India and started my sales career with Xerox there, but then moved to Chicago because that's where the opportunity was, and then worked in the Middle East and then moved to Australia. I think taking those opportunities when they come, That is golden advice rather than waiting for the perfect opportunity to come by. So thank you. That's really good.

Yeah, that's okay. I think it's so important.

Now, in terms of CreditorWatch, I know you're building a high-performance team. I see all the signs of it. You've got, you know, people who are performing really well. The organization's growing. You've got, uh, very much a number of the building blocks in place. Tell me a little bit now as we talk about how are you— let's start in the beginning. How do you recruit people? What do you look for?

Yeah, I think just to touch on the point before, you're right. We have a really high-performing sales organization. Ultimately, I've only been here for 9 months, so I can't take credit for that. There's always been an environment here of high performance. And sometimes that's actually harder to come in and take on a team that's performing and try and take it to the next level. But, but you're right, it's a really strong team. He's got great building blocks. Uh, 27 of 30 reps are, are over budget right now. I just posted on LinkedIn the other day that in, in our— we do thirds, not quarters here, but in our second third, um, 100% of females, uh, hit quota in, in T2, and, and, and 100% of those females are on track to hit, hit target. So we're really also trying to balance some other nuances in the organization in terms of diversity. So there's a lot going on. There's no question. So I think from my perspective, team composition is one of the fundamental things for any sales leader to really be thinking through. You just can't get there without a crash-hot team. I'd encourage anybody that's looking to hire to really look at their team and really try to map out what they think they need. And it's very different for every sales organization. One of the first tasks I was given when I first started at CreditorWatch in May last year was to hire 12 people. And I saw that as a huge opportunity, an opportunity to try and lift the standard of the organization, to bring in new thoughts and ideas. But it's also a really big challenge. That's nearly 30% of this, adding 30% to the sales organization.

Yeah.

So, there's challenges in that too. But what we did is we really got to work on how do we build a hiring process and an onboarding process that's going to drive a level of success in those new starters. There's a number of reasons for that, right? Like, Ultimately, we want people to come in and have a great experience and hit their personal goals. But for CreditorWatch as well, it's a huge investment. So we want to see a return on that investment. And the faster we can see return on investment, the faster we can look to add additional headcount and additional growth into our business. And why that's important, I always say this to my team, is the faster we grow, the bigger we grow, the more opportunity we create for our people. And so this year alone, we added 2 sales leader roles to our organization, 12 people, we had 15 promotions. So the whole point of all this. We've got to really— when the days are busy and the days are long and hard, we always got to think about why we're here. And for me, it's about building that opportunity for the people that are in the organization.

That's great.

When it comes to recruiting, though, I think, look, the reality is I've got it pretty good. I work at CreditWatch. If you look at our Glassdoor reviews, they're very strong. If you look at the employer value proposition, we've got boats in the harbor that we've got access to. Lunch is provided. We've got all those really great— it's a real good sales pitch, right? So the EVP is really strong here. Last year we won top 10 fintech. So there's a whole host of things that when we're trying to do talent attraction, we've got the upper hand, right? We've got— so again, I can't take a lot of credit for all the great talent we've hired. That's been our exec team really rallying around that. But regardless, when you're in that position, we still need to make sure we're hiring the right people.

Yeah.

And so, one of the things that I always get asked is, as we grow, how do we balance that growth with maintaining the culture? And that's on, I'm sure, a lot of leaders' minds, and it certainly is on mine. And when I'm interviewing, I just have one thing that plays on repeat in the back of my mind, which is, will this individual lift the standard of the team? And if the answer is no to that, then It's a no-brainer. So, I think we can overcomplicate interview processes. And I think we can really try and make things scientific. But when push comes to shove, I think if you have some fundamental sort of north stars, if you will, it's really helpful.

That's really good. I really like the fact that you talked about an employer value proposition because I think that that's very situationally aware as well. There is a balance between the employers and the talent pool. And especially when it comes to hiring the best salespeople, they have options. To start with, you've got a great employer value proposition. You've got a team that's performing really well. You've got balance in the diversity and inclusion piece, as you mentioned. And you've got a— I know you do have a set of criteria that you look for in terms of the traits of the people that you're looking for that are going to be successful. So, can you walk me through what those traits are of your most successful people?

Yeah, I can. It's a funny one. We only actually recently did this in an offsite because we, in July, when we were doing the onboarding of all these new folks, we focused on the onboarding plan itself. So, I'll talk a little bit about that later. But we missed a piece, which was, what's the recruitment journey look like? And how do we optimize for that? And so, we had some reasonable fundamentals, but one of the things that we didn't have was a really consistent criteria for looking at the characteristics or traits of the sort of talent that we're trying to employ. So, the first thing we did, which is pretty basic, is we mapped out our top performers and some of the characteristics and traits that they had.

Yeah.

We also mapped out some of the characteristics and traits of people that either hadn't made it In the past, or were below budget today.

Yeah.

And so some of the things that really came out for us in terms of the folks that were ahead were, they might have industry experience, they come across as authentic, they're highly collaborative, they're resilient in the face of adversity, they pick up the phone the next day and they don't let it stop them. They have drive, passion, ambition. And one of the things that we really look for is, do they have skin in the game? When stuff gets hard, which it always does in sales, What's their skin in the game? And so that could be something as simple as they've got a house deposit they're saving for, or it could be more complicated, like multiple kids, and they're the provider, or interest rates are going up, and I've got to pay for my mortgage. So what's their skin in the game? And we really like to hear those personal stories. So there's a lot in that. So what we tried to do is actually just calibrate that down to 5 things that we're looking for, and then a whole host of questions under the hood of those 5 things that we can ask. In in the interview process, those five things are goal-oriented, self-disciplined, open to feedback, executive presence. Can they hold court with senior stakeholders?

Yeah.

And do they have a level of sales skills? And now the first three of those are absolutely non-negotiables for us, e.g., goal-oriented, self-disciplined, and open to feedback. And the rest we know we can train. So again, like there's a lot of science that we can put into this, but I've been in a lot of interviews where. When you know, and you just have to skip a couple things, 1, 2, skip a few, and you've gotta get an offer on the table. But those are the things that we look for, and we're really passionate about making sure that aligns to the candidates, and ultimately our culture aligns to that.

That sounds so good because I think what you've done is you've extracted a bunch of best practices, you've created a scorecard, and you are already ahead. are further ahead than a lot of teams that I've worked with in that you've got this scorecard and you can actually measure people who even walk through the door so that you minimize the time that managers are spending hiring or talking to the wrong people. Salespeople interview well by default. And I think that just really sets you up for building and continuing to build a strong organization. So, Tell me in terms of your interview process, now that you know what you're looking for, how do you interview these people?

Just before I go into that, I think on your point around salespeople interview, it's so true. So, I think my advice to anyone looking to interview is just take goal-oriented, for example, something that we look for, that you could ask a candidate like, what are your goals? And they could say, I want to do X, Y, and Z. But it's really about trying to get under the hood of those goals. What path have they they taken to try and achieve those goals? How far are they on that journey to achieving those goals? What are some milestones or markers that they've set up to allow them to achieve those goals? Why is that goal important? So, I think really getting under the hood of those goals is really critical because ultimately anyone can say, yeah, I'm really goal-oriented. I want to do this. I want to do that. But what in their sort of personality is driving them to that change? And I think that's the fundamental element that you can get a lot out of. So, Not in terms of just whether or not you should hire that individual, but we also get lots of great ideas when we do interviews. So I think it's something— you're right, sales individuals interview really well. So I think it's really about trying to get under the hood, asking one or two layers deep.

Yeah. And I think that just like you've mentioned here, the destination is important, but the journey that they are already on to that destination will tell you a lot more because everyone can tell you what they you know, want to do tomorrow, but what have you done yesterday? Because that just gives a lot more credibility to whether you really are on the journey or you're just giving the right answer that people want to hear at an interview. So that's great.

Yeah, I think as well, like, it's interesting to sense-check folks' ambition as well, or how they set goals and goal cycles. Are they thinking really long into the future? Are they short, more short-sighted? Just how they think and how they orient themselves around those goals is really interesting. Yeah, it's a really fun part of the interview process.

One of the pro tips that I usually give people and hiring managers as well is a question even as simple as, what do you want? And stay quiet. And it's amazing, 7 out of 10 people can't articulate what they want, leave alone when we talk about goal orientation. It is true. It is the minority that say, in 2 to 5 years, I want to be able to do this at work, this in my personal life, this with my finances, or go and do this. Yeah, that's great. Tell me now about your interview process. So how does that work? So you've got a bunch of people who meet a number of criteria, and your, your manager's meeting them. What happens next?

Yeah, I guess we're trying to really balance 3 things in our interview process. The first is authenticity. So what I mean by that is we're really open and honest about what the role is for candidates. There's no sense showing them all the great things at CreditorWatch and hiding behind the tough part, which is that there's going to be prospecting and cold calling and times will be tough. There's great times, but there's going to be some hard graft to get up to speed. And I always say in our interview process, in terms of performance, it's not the sales leadership group that's going to be the ones that drive change to performance. It's actually the team. If you're feeling like you're not contributing, it's not a very fun environment to be in because the team is all driven to high performance. So authenticity, I think, is really important, being really true about what the role is so that there's no surprises. And then we ask for the converse from candidates too. So we're really keen to understand what the individual, just like you said, what do you want? Because there's no sense having a misalignment. So that's really important. Authenticity is really critical in that piece. The other one is calibration. So we talked about a scorecard. Ultimately, there's multiple people that go into the interview process, and I'll talk about specifically what that process is, but there's multiple people. And what can be really challenging is if I think someone's amazing and then someone else meets them, asks them a bunch of different questions that, you know, and they go, I didn't really get that. Then you have this misalignment of what were we looking for? You were looking for this and I was looking for that. And by our standards, yours was off and mine was off or whatever. We need to calibrate. We need to make sure we've got a way to calibrate that. Just like a candidate would, right? Like a candidate's going to come into an interview and they're going to go, salary is important. I want to be doing this. I want to be in this industry. We have to do the same thing. We need to be able to calibrate candidates across multiple stakeholders. And then with that multiple stakeholders, we're also looking for buy-in. Ultimately, what we want to do is get senior folks involved in the interview process so they have a say. And ultimately, if they have a say, they have buy-in. And that's a really important sort of piece to put a bow on it.

That's so good. Carry on.

All I was going to say is to help support that, our interview process is 3 stages. So, we have a vetting interview, which is, I try and do a lot of them. The salesmen that we've been hiring so much recently that I can't do them all, but I do try and do As many as possible. And that's where really where we do the piece around authenticity. I do a lot of selling of why CreditorWatch, but I do the good, the bad, the ugly. And I, again, I expect the same from a candidate. We then have a role play, which is our initial discovery call, which is ultimately the candidate's opportunity to be in the driver's seat and ensure that they want— this is a product in an industry that they can get passionate about.

Hmm.

We then in that we also get folks to do a personal presentation. And those personal presentations are really about them. We do bring our whole selves to work, what drives them, what motivates them. So we're really keen to see that. And then ultimately, we have a final interview, which is typically with some senior execs. And that's the piece where we try and wrap a bow on the buy-in.

That's fantastic. And I really like the fact that you've got a set of traits, you've got 3 to 4 step process, and you are looking for calibration, um, Justin, a majority of companies that I work with or have come across in the last 15 years, calibration can be a key challenge because people are not talking to each other. They don't know exactly what they're looking for, and it creates delays. It creates a whole bunch of problems. So I think that a scorecard and a process and getting people through that and checking for buy-in and authentically getting to know each other because far too many people are selling each ways. And if you don't get to know the real person, when it's all done, like you said, they're the ones who've got to go and pick up the phones and start prospecting. And if you aren't there for the right job and the right reason, that's going to be hard. But the fact that you said that you've got 27 out of 30 people at quota, that is a sensational number. So congratulations. Clearly what you're doing is working. That's great. Now, moving on from that, tell me a little more about how do you onboard people and set them up for success? What does that look like?

Yeah, so I alluded to this a little earlier. And when I first started in May, we had 12 people that we needed to hire. Ultimately, we had a very ambitious goal for this financial year in terms of revenue. Ultimately, we're trying to, you know, Trying to grow the business. And hiring 12 people puts a, it's a pretty big crater in FTE to try and get to that goal. So we needed to act fast. And so we did. So we, once we had everyone hired, we sat down and went, okay, what's our onboarding plan? Giving people a phone and Salesforce and going get 150 prospects into your name is probably not going to cut the cake. And not, I'm oversimplifying it. We did have a process, but we really sat down to work through that.

Yeah.

So what we did first was we just put ourselves into a new starter's shoes. And ultimately people are nervous. They're starting a job for the first time. They're trying to prove themselves. They might be unaware of, and in often cases I've heard of new starters, they don't know what their goals or their KPIs are. So the first step for us is to be really clear on a 30-60-90 plan in terms of sort of key markers and milestones that we're looking for. And then we have weekly one-to-ones with those reps. We do training sessions. I'll talk a little bit more about the operating rhythm in a second. But ultimately, we're making sure that we're constantly checking in on that 30-60-90 to make sure we're on track. I think the other reason that's so good to have is if you're hiring really ambitious people with drive and they want to come in and make something of themselves, they're going to look at that 30-60-90 plan and they're going to go, how do I blow this thing out of the water? Now, if they don't know what the markers are, how can you expect them to do that? It's impossible. And so, we find that by having some really clear markers, It gives them some sort of creative license to go and get things done and make a name for themselves early. So we've seen that in this last sort of round of hires.

That's brilliant. And so these markers are activity markers, milestone markers. Tell me a little bit more because that's really interesting because myself having been a BDM, an account executive, a sales manager, that is very helpful because otherwise people don't know what's expected of them. Whereas here you've got actually milestones. So Tell me more.

Yeah, I think one of the things that was pretty glaringly obvious early on was we'd focus a lot on product-based skill sets. So folks being able to do a demo. And now that's great when you have the skill, if you're booking the meetings and you've got the right sort of discovery skills. But ultimately, if you're booking meetings and just doing a demo, you're just throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. And so we had to reverse engineer that and go, really important, no product. But how do we also balance that with sales discipline, sales skillset, and industry expertise? Because ultimately, we're gonna be going in front of senior stakeholders and organizations and talking to them about their businesses. Now, if we just book a meeting and show a demo, it's over to them to decide whether or not it's valuable. And so we need to make sure that our reps early on have the ability to do that good discovery, to identify the needs of our customers, And then we've got multiple products, right? Ensuring that we're tailoring the right solution to our customer needs. And our first round of intake this year put product to the side for a little while, and we focused a lot on some of the fundamentals. What's a good call? What's a good meeting introduction? How do you do good discovery? So we do a lot of role plays. We do live calls. This is a week of intensive training that we do together as a group to really solidify the fundamentals. And once those are solidified and tattooed on the brain, everything else becomes a little bit easier, a little bit more malleable to play with. When you do a demo, you can tailor the demo to a client's objectives, whereas if you're just doing the demo, it's a script and it's very vanilla. So I think for us, it's really about— I haven't actually answered your question. What are the markers? So we look at things like we do live demos and we give gradings and these sorts of things, but we also look at activity metrics. How much pipeline's generating as a result of that? And ultimately, we're celebrating those wins fundamentally and not necessarily sales in those first early days.

That's really good. I love the focus on celebrating little wins. I think that's with what you've just said there with activity and markers and tracking well and celebrating, that can be such a boost to someone who's ramping up.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

So, in terms of the onboarding plan, tell me a little bit more now about your operating rhythm. What does that look like once they've gotten out of that initial 30 or 60, 90-day? What does that look like?

There's a bit of history to this. And when I was at Experian a couple of years ago, we lost a lot of people pretty quickly to a big tech company who was doing an aggressive amount of hiring. So, we lost a lot of really good talent very quickly. And so, ultimately, what that meant is we had to hire a bunch of people. We needed to onboard them really effectively. And there was a big difference between these new starters and what we called at the time veterans. So, the people that had been in the business for a long period of time. Yeah. And so, we very quickly realized that the people that had been there for 2 or 3 years, when we're in forecast calls, they're talking about closing multi-hundred thousand dollar opportunities. And it's daunting for a new starter. It's like being at the start of a marathon and going, how do I get through this? Like, I haven't trained. When everyone else is passing the finish line in under 3 hours, you're going, it's very daunting. And so we want to give people the sort of training and skills and the right operating rhythm to set them up so that when they get to the start line, they have every opportunity to be successful. So for us, it starts with the data. Like I said, rather than focusing too much on the outputs, we really focus a lot on the inputs. So how are our cold calls converting into meetings? How are demos converting into pipeline? And how's our pipeline converting down the funnel? So those are really important things for us. We really, we really look at the data. In terms of the actual operating itself, rhythm itself, there's a couple of really key sessions that we have in the diary. One of them is we split the new starters out from our veterans. And we have a weekly meeting on a Monday. And that Monday meeting, we have a really nice template on a slide, which effectively is a nice reflection moment for the reps where they get to look at the week gone past and go, what went well? What didn't go well? What did I do? What key learnings? What support did I need? And then they look at the week going forward and they go, so as a result of that, what do I need for the next week? And there's— everybody's on the call. So there's multiple sales managers, there's multiple reps. So there's a huge opportunity for sort of collaboration and cross-learning. It also gives an opportunity for them to commit to something. Based on your performance last week, you booked 2 meetings. What can you do this week? I've already got 5 in the diary. Great. Maybe it's not about meetings. Maybe it's about let's sit down and make sure that your pitch is right.

Yeah.

So we can really make sure that each rep's development plan— it sounds a bit intense, but like that weekly development plan is tailored to the activities that they're set so that they can make sure that those activities are as successful as possible. So that's that one session we do every week. And then we also do training and enablement for the reps because that training enablement is very different for new starters than it is for veterans. And there's nothing worse than being a new starter and being in training and going, this is all over my head, what a waste of time. Or worse, being a veteran and being in new starter training and going, oh my God, I know all this stuff, what a waste of time. So, everything we do, we try and optimize for the individual. So, for us, that's really important. And then, we wrap that operating rhythm with rewards and incentives.

Okay.

So, we've got leaderboards for new starters. We've got leaderboards for veterans. We have awards for new starters. We have awards for veterans. And so, we really try and make sure that they're seen as they're the same team, but they're certainly different, almost disciplines, if you will. What that's helped us do is actually sometimes the standard in the new starters is really high. And they've got new ideas, and we can use those new ideas in sessions that they're in with the veterans and vice versa. So it's a really nice way to focus in on a core set of people and make sure we're sharing that knowledge across multiple teams.

That is fantastic. I love the fact that you give each an opportunity to compete, compare, and collaborate with people in the same season of their journey in the organization, the new starters versus the veterans, because it's very easy to get lost when you mix the two. So that is very good. That's fantastic.

And we don't always get it right, Pri. I'd love to say that every hire was perfect. The other thing that this allows us to do is we can win fast. We can help— we've had new starters smash their ramp targets, be 200%, 300%, 400% of their ramp targets. It also allows us to fail fast, both for our sake and for the candidate's sake. So, if it's not the right role, if it's not working, we need to have an environment where we can identify that quickly. Because there's nothing worse than getting through a probation period and everyone's just latching on because they have to. And it's not fun for the employer. It's not fun for the employee. So, it's a really good opportunity to make sure. But before that happens, of course, we've got all the opportunity in the world because we're having these weekly sessions. We're having weekly one-to-ones. We're doing training and enablement to make sure we're mitigating that downside as much as possible.

Understood. And I was about to ask, That very question. You've obviously got a number of things that are working really well for you. But tell me about the individual who, for whatever reason, is behind the pack, is not making the mark. And what do you do from a performance enablement point of view, whether it's tracking on the metrics to training on the specifics you've given me some really good information. But how do you get someone from a 70% of target to 100% of target?

That's a really good question. Let me just start with how easy it is to identify first. Having that operating rhythm, it really does highlight the folks that are going above and beyond. So it gives them a platform to sing from the rooftops. It also Highlights the folks that aren't doing enough. It can be because they don't have enough meetings in the diary, their pipeline isn't growing, they're not closing enough opportunities. Within a couple of months, you can really— it's extremely obvious. There's a couple of pathways you go down, right, when that's not happening. First is a very frank conversation. Is this the right move? Are you bought in? Are you happy? Because ultimately, we need to make sure that there's some sort of almost correlation between those 2 things. And I think from there, it's about understanding what's stopping them from being successful. And we have had a number of scenarios where we've had slower starts and we've seen a significant acceleration. So it could be as simple as a candidate or, sorry, a new starter looking at the wrong prospect pool. So they've got this great list of prospects, but the prospect pool's wrong. The message isn't aligned to that prospect pool. You switch one thing and next thing, their meetings go up, their conversion rate goes up. And we have all those metrics to track it. So you can, we can look at that very quickly. I think the challenge as a sales leader, a sales, in a sales manager's role in particular, is diagnosing the issue. It's really easy as a sales manager to go, your forecasting is off, or you're not doing enough meetings, or it's really easy to do that stuff. It's really hard to go, let's take 5 steps back and go, what's the cause of that? And I think by having a separate operating rhythm, really closely looking at the data, You can find that pretty quickly and you can make tweaks to give it the best chance of success. And in some cases, that's why drive and discipline are so important is because we need somebody that— we need folks that are going to come to the party and ultimately take on the advice, take on the feedback and do something with it.

Wow. Justin, this has been an incredible conversation. I can see from beginning to the end how Profiling the traits, interviewing to those and getting alignment internally, equipping and enabling and onboarding them, and then having an operating rhythm that just really enables people to move forward. You have, you've really got a great system out there. And I know, like anything, it doesn't work perfectly all the time. But it does work well because you've got all the major components of what a high-performance culture looks like. So, Thank you so much. You've given me a fantastic overview and some very good insights, which no doubt so many of our listeners are going to benefit from. So thank you again, Justin. This has been an amazing conversation.

My absolute pleasure. And it would be remiss of me not to make one last plug, which is we're hiring. Absolutely.

Thank you today, Justin, and I will look forward to hearing about your future successes because I can tell from everything that you've told me, you're going to win.

Awesome. Yeah, we've got a great team behind us, so here we go. Thanks, Preet.

Thank you.