Sales Success Starts with Hiring the Right Team

Pete Thornton 00:06
Welcome back reference to The SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete welcoming Bridget Gleason to the show today. Bridget is the Chief Sales Officer at silk. Welcome, Bridget.

Bridget Gleason 00:17
Thank you, Pete. And I love that podcast, Pete. And just your whole intro. That’s awesome.

Pete Thornton 00:24
Thank you. No, this is one of my favorite parts. The whole podcast is based around my ability to just kind of jump on stage and do my Here’s Johnny. So good. Thank you for the love that. Yeah, like the full on promotional like, is the leap frog is what I also reference.

Bridget Gleason 00:40
I like it.

Pete Thornton 00:42
Well, thanks for being on. I love that you’re the chief sales officer. And then you’re taking this company silk forward. And we know that it’s been a very interesting year in cloud data and SaaS, and software in general. And so we’d love your take on just kind of diving right into, we’d like to look at, like biggest challenges. So if you were thinking back a couple quarters, maybe six months, what would be the biggest challenge you’ve experienced as CSL

Bridget Gleason 01:07
itself? Well, I don’t think Pete, this is going to come as any surprise to anyone off the heels of COVID. And then moving into just a lot of economic uncertainty has clearly been the biggest challenge. We also serve a lot of retail customers, and a lot of the big box retailers, just they did super well, during COVID. And they scaled up and they scaled out to manage the demand. And the money that was spent, perhaps on travel, was now being spent on home goods, etc. So we saw rapid expansion, and then some contraction of some of our big clients. So in terms of you know, when you think about leadership, and uncertainty, you know, we’ve managing Sales Team pre sales, post sales, it’s a couple of things, it’s how do you get laser focused on the customers that you’re going after the message that you’re delivering your execution, all of that has to be really good. That’s one side of the challenge. The other side of the challenge, you have to manage humans, who are also feeling a lot of anxiety. I mean, I think this is the difference between management and leadership, is they’re feeling a lot of personal anxiety, as well as these things come out. And how do you continue to be realistic, but also lead, and just to make sure your team stays in place and intact and focused and doesn’t lose sight of the fact that we’re dealing with humans here and not robots. And we’ve really got to come together to support one another. So I think there’s the personal side, there’s the just economic side, you know, me doing my job and my goals, the team’s goals, but certainly the economic uncertainty has been the biggest challenge.

Pete Thornton 03:18
Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned some words, the beginning of that, like scaling and expansion. And then these were the words like at the turn of the year, and then on the backside of that coming into any form of contraction, and then just the idea of like, trying to become more efficient with what you have. But then you as a leader kind of brought up not the flip side of the coin, but just the sheer fact that there are human beings involved in this. And so it’s not just their business decisions being made, and some pivots happening, and that you, as a leader are trying to actually, you know, lead other human beings through it, who might have a touch of trepidation or fear like this is the circumstance by which they feed their families and things like that. So it’s a bigger responsibility than the average individual contributor on Sure.

Bridget Gleason 04:04
Yeah, and I think also the challenge for the business, thankfully, silk has a very strong message in this economic climate, there’s still a requirement for the performance that we deliver. But at a price point, like you mentioned, efficiencies. So we’re able to deliver that performance and very efficient price points. So it does, even though there’s some contraction, it does make sense for companies to spend on silk and move forward. And I think every business needs to look and find what is the opportunity within this economic climate? What is it and where is it? And that’s what you’ve really got to hone in on.

Pete Thornton 04:53
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And this is just what you said it to at the very beginning. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. because it’s so pervasive, you cannot certainly not look into LinkedIn for even one moment without just seeing it just washing it over you. Certainly not if you turn on one of the 24 hour news stations or something like that. So it’s going to be top of mind for every organizational leader, for

Bridget Gleason 05:15
sure. Well, and just to put, you know, it’s when you can see and find the bad news and the doom and gloom anywhere, like you said, but you also see, and we’ve experienced with the business, that it’s things are slowing, there may be some contraction. But business is still being done. We haven’t moved to a grinding halt, business is still being done. And we’re still moving forward. And we’re closing big deals. So there’s also some positive news in here. And again, when I think about the challenges, we have to do as leaders make sure that we also highlight the things that are positive and going well, you know, you don’t want to over rotate on either side. You don’t want to be Pollyanna, and everything’s gonna be fine. But also if you go too far in the other direction. That’s not good, either.

Pete Thornton 06:13
Yeah, that makes sense. So when you’re thinking when you’re thinking of it, because you’re trying to, you’re trying to balance this thing you’re trying to understand like, which place to be in, because business is not halted, is not, you know, people aren’t scaling out of control. There’s not venture capital money just being given to people on the street is an exaggeration, but like a couple of guests have brought that to my attention about how exorbitant it was before by now standards, but today’s q4 standards, but the one thing then like how can a leader such as yourself actually focus in on simply one thing to make sure happens correctly? Or better? Better put? What is the one thing that you would want to do to make sure your goes correctly so your org can grow?

Bridget Gleason 06:57
Pete, for me, I think the answer is always the same. It’s that I hire the right people. I just think that and it’s hard, it’s hard to make more mistakes on it than I would like to, which is hard on everybody. You know, he never, it’s hard on the company’s hard on the individual, if you don’t hire right. But if you get the right people in the seat, a lot of other things will go more smoothly. Suit taking a little extra time, in terms of hiring being really clear about what you’re looking for, sort of a pattern recognition, in terms of what do the sales for me, you know, kind of on the go to market team? What does that look like? But if you hire right, a lot of other things, a lot of other things go well, and of course, once you hire you, you’ve got to make sure you enable, also, but getting the right people in the door is critical. It’s number one for me.

Pete Thornton 08:01
Okay. You mentioned setting clear expectations, like having it be understood. This is probably from both sides. Like here’s what the role is, here’s what we’re looking for to happen within that role. That’s really helpful. Because you know, when you think of a Chief Sales Officer, you’re not necessarily thinking, think of somebody who is trying to put together like pertinent messaging, who is trying to be like, inspirational to some degree to like, have everybody understand a clear goal and a motivation behind moving towards it. All that blocking and tackling, they might help, depending on you know, where they sit in that org chart. But then hiring is like those things that I like, it doesn’t seem like first and foremost. But that’s not the first time I’ve heard the answer, either. So this is off the cuff a bit. But like any advice as far as hiring for other sales leaders?

Bridget Gleason 08:48
Well, it depends on your stage, also. So there’s a difference when you’re hiring at an early stage and the type of profile you look for. Because typically, you don’t really have a lot of data to go on. And you don’t have a lot of repeatable yet. I mean, it builds so it depends on where. So in a later stage company, you want somebody that can execute on a plan, because you’ve already figured it out. We know, you go after the you, you go after these types of accounts with this type of message. This is what it looks like this is the product. So you need someone who’s just excellent at executing on a plan. I would say early on, it is perhaps a little trickier. You meet people who are really good at pattern recognition. So they have to have some core sales acumen and they have to be able to say yep, this looks like a good opportunity if this doesn’t and it’s been able to quantify and qualify. Now. I think qualification is one of the most Important things that you’re not wasting time, everybody’s time on something an unqualified deal when it gets a bit tricky to evaluate, if, for example, itself, we have a lot of large enterprise deals, long sales cycles and very complex, it may take you months to get to a right group of people, you know, these things take a long time, right. Which means sometimes Pete, that it’s hard to assess if you have the right person or not. It’s not when you have a miracle of velocity sale and you see the at bats and what they’re doing. It’s, you can identify what the issues are, you can also help course correct more quickly. But I would say in an enterprise sale, you don’t always. I don’t always see it as quickly as I would like. And we are aggressive users of these Gongs. So we record all the calls, I listen, if I’m not on the call, I listen to almost every call. Yeah. And it’s again, it’s my job to give these individuals the best chance of success. And they listen to one another’s calls. And, you know, it’s just a great tool to accelerate learning. So you get the right people on, but then you’ve got to make sure that you enable them and give them the tools that they need to do their job. I don’t know if that was sort of a roundabout way of answering the qualification. I think every company is a little bit different, how much technical acumen you need, kind of where you are at what kind of sales cycle, it is, kind of where you are in terms of the sort of product market fit and having that nailed. So I think those are all things to be considered, probably there’s not a one size fits all.

Pete Thornton 11:59
Make sense? That does make sense. Then you mentioned when you got into qualification, this is again, another aside, but like you’re talking about people hiring people in who have the ability to qualify, I have to ask this because this episode will probably air back to back with a gentleman from sales medic group who just kind of broke that down for the audience a little bit as well. Right? Is this it? Does it matter to you the framework that that your hires would know, or is it just that they have that pattern recognition, whether it’s a medic or a band, or you know, any type of acronym that might be helpful? Like, do you have a preference yourself for your hires itself?

Bridget Gleason 12:40
I have a preference. I like medic or med pick. You know, there’s different variations on it in terms of knowing where you are in a deal. It’s a bit of a forecasting tool. Also, there’s also a sales methodology that I like, which is I typically like Sandler,

Pete Thornton 12:59
Sandler, okay.

Bridget Gleason 13:00
Okay. However, the fundamentals of these sales methodologies are very similar, you just have to have a good foundation. It’s like if you play piano, if you can play the classics, it’s a good foundation for wherever you want to go after. And I was fortunate that I was trained early on. at Xerox, I mean, definitely dating myself, they had one of the best preeminent sales methodologies and sales schools. At the time in the country, Xerox and IBM did and we did, weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of training every year. And it’s just as I’ve observed different sales methodologies. They all have very similar fundamentals. It’s important. He, again, sort of roundabout answering your question that we all align on the same one, whatever it is, be, it’s just so you’re speaking the same language, and everybody’s on the same page. But if you’ve got the fundamentals, it doesn’t take a lot to sort of adjust from one to another. I haven’t had a salesperson who knows the fundamentals who’s ever had any issue with a particular named methodology. They just need to know the fundamentals. So I do look, have you had training? How do you use it? Do you still use it? You know, that’s an important qualification as well.

Pete Thornton 14:33
Okay, okay. And well put, I kind of like the music methodology because like, whenever you look at these people who do amazing improvisational things, they typically have some kind of very, like, foundational background, right? You know, and then somebody knows Sandler, someone who’s challenged or somebody knows when he was on someone knows command to the message, then they’re just like, calling out the KFC and you’re like, Okay, we’ll play this one and you No wonder it happened.

Bridget Gleason 14:56
And it’s so funny, all the ones you just mentioned Every single one I have used or am using, like, we just did a command to the message training last week with the team. I know winning by design. And Jocko, I brought him on especially early. So it’s rare. I know all of them have used all I know intimately. And you kind of need to as a sales leader, but they can, you know, be different. They’re also good for different companies in different stages at different times. I think as well, that’s been my experience.

Pete Thornton 15:33
Okay, that’s another podcast. I won’t go down that one. I’ve already had a couple of rabbit holes, but like, that would be another one. Because I would love to know, in your opinion, like,

Bridget Gleason 15:42
What stage are all of them? I’ve used all of them. Every single one you’ve mentioned, I know them. Well. Seemingly. Okay, now for a while. Yes,

Pete Thornton 15:54
I’ve been doing this for just a minute. That’s awesome. Okay, okay. Then let’s maybe make the pivot into that. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Then Bridgette, like, like, you’re in the Chief Sales Officer seat. This is a highly coveted seat. Many individual contributors, managers, directors would love to be in that particular seat themselves. So what are the personal professional experiences that have kind of brought you to this point? You’re

Bridget Gleason 16:18
Pete? It’s so funny. Yeah, everybody, it’s a coveted position, then you get into the position. And you realize, yeah, it’s coveted. But it’s a hard position. I love it. But it’s not a shortcut to get here. You’re gonna need to like my path, just answering the question. I was not I did not take a ladder. To get here. I was definitely in a jungle gym. Lots of experiences in that jungle, Jim. So started as you know, an enterprise sales person has always been pretty much always been in technology. And I just personally, you know, things come into our life personally, personally, I went through divorce with two little kids, single mom, one and a three year old. And I worked for a company part time for a couple of years. And then I went out on my own, which now I think, Pete, what was I thinking, a single model with going and starting my own thing, like the risk that’s associated with that. And yet, anybody who’s done sales for any length of time knows that in sales, it’s like you’re managing your own book of business, and you have to bet on you, you have to bet on you. And I would always bet on myself. I know I’m a hard worker, I need to get from A to B, I’m going to get to B. So I took these years where I started a company, I ended up selling it, I went and did some consulting. And all of the reasons that I did this Pete is I wanted to prioritize my kids. And if it was my company, I can prioritize it. And that was really an important thing. That was a decision that I made. And I would say, one of the great learnings for me that came out of it is I had limited time and learned what to do and what not to do. What’s a priority, what’s not a priority, you just have to cut to the bone. And that has served me well. When I’ve had an ex more time me and my kids are out and gone out of the house more time. But I still apply the same principles of what I do and don’t do and prioritize ruthlessly. So after when I was consulting and I’ll tell you add one in three is when I started this, like a loan journey. I didn’t go work for anyone Pete until my youngest was a sophomore in college.

Pete Thornton 19:08
Oh, wow. You had a team it was the new year?

Bridget Gleason 19:13
Yeah. Now I was working. And I was working with a lot of startups. I was doing a lot of sort of consulting in the role. And I was sort of a fractional VP of sales at a company and the CEO finally just said, “I’m on board, why not? You can always go back to consulting.” And so then I became VP of sales in North America. Then I ran Europe then I came back as their Chief Revenue Officer. So again, it was in a jungle gym. But it wasn’t a shortcut. And I seem super talented. And again, I’m generalizing a bit here. But I’ve seen very talented individuals who have often taken, say, VP of sales roles in early stage companies. And they’ve been backed, they’ve left it after a couple of years. And I think the realization that there’s a bunch of experiences, you just don’t know that you haven’t. I’m not, I want to be clear that I’m not. I think people should go for it. Go for it. Get mentors, just make sure you surround yourself with people who’ve had the experience, because there’s gonna be things you haven’t seen. And just the more you have, you’re just not surprised when these things come up.

Pete Thornton 20:48
Yeah, okay. Okay. Because you just said, you’ve seen it, somebody’s seen it. And you can ask them, and you can just gather some of that experience, even secondhand, probably better. Yeah.

Bridget Gleason 20:57
And I’ll give an example. Sometimes, like this has happened just recently, I had a very good sales manager. And I brought in someone over her, I brought in the VP over her, which never feels good. And, you know, it’s, and I said to her, look at this is, the kindest thing I can do for you, is because I don’t always have the time to do like, I’ve done a lot of direct reports, I don’t always have the time that this individual manager needed. So this is the kindest thing I can do for you, because you are going to get better coaching and experience that’s going to leap frog you. And it was really interesting, Pete because initially, this VP that came in, I had also told her you are under no obligation to keep anyone on the team, you get to choose. And I told the manager, you may or may not you she may or may not decide to keep you, I’m just, I will not surprise you. We’ll make sure we check in but it’s got to work, both sides. And Pete It was so gratifying. Like it now. And this was just this way within the last six months. I’ve seen this manager blossom. I’ve seen more growth in her than she worked for me for about a year, in the last three months than I had over the course of a year. And this VP is super happy. She’s an excellent mentor. She’s an excellent enabler and teacher. And you just see how powerful that is. If we can just check our egos at the front door. You know, just check it there. You can pick it up on your way out. Check it out. And just to see how EDIC celebrated her career? No question. Yeah, that’s all. So I think there’s those opportunities. There’s just, I’ve seen that several times, just there are those opportunities to learn from somebody who comes in and then you go and

Pete Thornton 23:14
take the next step. Okay, okay. Yeah, it’s really interesting. I’m glad to hear that, like, it’s a good positive story, too, because sometimes they don’t go as well, you know, they, they tend the other direction. But it depends on personality types. And it depends on if one wants to be a student, and if one wants to be a coach, like, has worked.

Bridget Gleason 23:34
Yeah, Pete, it’s really true. I’ve also been several times in situations where I’ve been brought in, and the person there is somebody in the org, who was hoping to get the role that they went outside, to bring in. And again, that’s anybody who gets to this situation, you’re going to run into that. Not every time, but there’s probably someone in place by the time they’re ready to hire a chief sales officer. There’s probably somebody in place here who was hoping for the role. And it does take a lot of give and take and, like, I can just think right now of several of the people where I’ve had the situation that they’re, they’re CROs at their other companies now. And so they didn’t again, they didn’t let ego get in the way. They saw, okay, let me take this opportunity to go learn what I can. And then I’m gonna go get it the next time and they did and that’s that’s ideal, you know, kind of fast track, and it’s not really fast track beat. You get some additional experience so that you are more prepared next time around.

Pete Thornton 24:55
Yeah, I love that. That’s great. That’s a great way to look at it as well, because a lot of people get a new opportunity coming into the new year. This happens a lot at the end of the year in sales, as you know, depending on what the quarter structure looks like, and everything. So that’s a good mentality to have.

Bridget Gleason 25:10
Right? What about? What about Silk?

Pete Thornton 25:13
So like, what is it like silk is obviously doing well, moving fast. And it’s in this like Hyper Growth realm that is what we pretty much considered as in software. So what’s the context for growth? At silk? What is it that makes this cycle boom for you guys?

Bridget Gleason 25:31
Here? Well, I think I alluded to it earlier if we thought of a product that sort of meets the economy where it is right now, which is always a good message. But in this economy, it is potentially even an accelerator which is you, there’s more competition than ever, for all the customers and accounts who we’re talking to. So more competition than ever, so you’ve got to have high performance, you’ve got to have operational efficiency. Because as people are laying off and having to contract, you need to make sure that you’ve got a toolset that can actually cover up some of that, I would say that’s number two. And then number three is the cost efficiencies that come with implementing our platform. So I think we’ve got a bit of that trifecta of what companies are looking for in sort of periods of economic uncertainty.

Pete Thornton 26:34
Okay. Okay, that makes sense. What, who is it that is reached out to like, Who benefits the most from the SOAP platform, like when they bring you on?

Bridget Gleason 26:45
It depends on the use case, but I’ll give you some examples. If it’s a retail company, it can be that there’s more operational efficiencies for the DBAs. And it can mean that the end users, so if you and I are going to their online shop, that we’ve got faster performance, that inventories are always updated, that it’s dynamically able to price. It’s taking in all this information often into a big data lake. Yeah, and making sure that data gets to the people it needs to get to when it needs to get there. So it’s just, it’s facilitating fast access to data when you need it, where you need it, etcetera. So I think that’s probably the biggest driver.

Pete Thornton 27:34
Okay. Okay, that makes sense. I mean, you know, these things have to move fast and inventory shipping all around, you have supply chain issues, and then you have pricing trends and differences and things like that. So, yeah, that’s a helpful platform, indeed. Is it folks? Is it kind of, is it a kind of a software tool that you’re speaking to? Yes, technical leads,

Bridget Gleason 27:54
okay. Yes. And it goes up, you know, be one of the things we always that we also talk about is you’ve got a technical problem that you’re solving. But if that technical problem is not tied to a very big business problem, nothing’s gonna happen. Not gonna happen. So we do our thing, we do a trial or a proof of concept. And I always tell the team, we’re not doing science experiments here, people, like, you got to know where the business driver is, and why it’s really important to the business. Otherwise, let’s not do it. Let’s wait. So that’s in that sometimes it takes, especially in large companies, it takes some time to get the right folks at the table,

Pete Thornton 28:47
as you’re moving through the ranks, trying to figure out who all needs to be structured on that side.

Bridget Gleason 28:52
Yeah, because you’re right, Pete, it’s not who it’s who all there are multiple. And sometimes they don’t know each other. They never read, they can’t tell you who it is. So that also speaks to needing to go higher. Because the higher you go, they can least point you in the right direction, go to this team, go to that team, go to that team. But you’ve got to earn the right to have a conversation with somebody at that level, also. So I always talk about blackout bingo. In terms of covering an account. You need to go wide across the stakeholders and you also need to go deep. So why are the different groups that may be involved in security, networking it in for Nino infrastructure, database architects, but then you also need to go deep from perhaps a DBA up to a CIO and because they’ve got different needs and things they’re thinking about at each level as well.

Pete Thornton 29:55
Yeah. Okay. So, that is a complexity. This is like a complex enterprise. When you’re doing introductions, even on a call or something like that a sales call, it almost seems like a nicety. Like let me tell them who I am. And then once you get into the enterprise cycle, you’re like, you might be doing introductions because they are in the same organization, not really knowing who each other are or what they do, but bring your MC that to openly understand, but you still would like introduction, so everybody can smooth into the conversation.

Bridget Gleason 30:24
Sometimes Pete, they’re perfectly open about, we don’t know, these people. We haven’t, we’ve never met them before. And he is, you know, I’ve heard about you. So I think also with COVID, and people not being in offices and more distributed in an effort than ever, that people are meeting each other for the first time. And being aware of each other for the first time. Is sometimes

Pete Thornton 30:49
interesting. That is the world though. And we certainly have software like that, at the leading edge of that world? Would that be one of the top challenges or like, just having to navigate these in a high growth situation when you’re learning on the fly? Or maybe better put? What are the challenges associated with growth? Growth, like a top challenge or many top challenges?

Bridget Gleason 31:11
Navigating an enterprise company that’s always a challenge. So that’s always there. I would say, in a high growth scenario, there’s this balance of when do you hire and how many do hire and you because you don’t want to over hire, because then people are frustrated there. You just have issues, they’re not busy. But if you are under high, you may be caught flat footed and can’t capitalize on the growth. So I feel like that’s always one for me that I try to, I really try to balance it, it’s why data is so important. And sales ops and information is so important, that you can see ahead of when these things are happening. But it’s not only who you hire. But at what pace Do you hire, I would say, is definitely challenging. I don’t have a sense that salespeople are expendable. And sounds like kind of a funny thing to say, but I have, there is a school of thought out there that you just hire as many as you can the last as long as they can. If they don’t work, they’re gone. And you just kind of keep refreshing the troops. And again, it’s not my, it’s not my preferred way of hiring again, there’s people’s lives and careers at stake. So I try to be a little bit more accurate, if possible,

Pete Thornton 32:50
but it’s hard. So hard, right? It is hard regardless of whether you’re that’s part of the plan and just understand there’s going to be like attrition and losses. But yeah, that’s a definite important portion to it. Fortunately, it sounds like you have a heavy enablement, like background and skill set understanding whether it was always called enablement or not like, it’s just like if you know, these foundations and frameworks, if you know these qualification criteria, if you care to show other people like it’s it trickles down, it also creates a culture where other people like, oh, well, Bridget showed me I’ll show you you know, it’s an Airflow pass, I’ll pass back program.

Bridget Gleason 33:26
That’s important. That’s really important. We play, we win as a team, we play as a team, it sales so definitely has an individual component. But it’s really important to also recognize that we’re part of a team. And we’ll all do better if we share and help one another

Pete Thornton 33:46
amazing journey you’ve been on even with the entrepreneurial piece in between as well. You know, as these things go, like sometimes there’s people that helped you along the way. Can you think of any maybe a couple of folks that you’d like to thank for your journey to this point?

Bridget Gleason 34:01
It would be so hard. It’s like the Academy Awards. How many people do I mention here? I think I would say just generally, the people have been on my team and given me an opportunity. They all know who they are. To practice on them. As I’ve gotten better at telling me when I’m right, tell me when I’m wrong. I really try very hard to foster an environment where I can hear what the truth is, whether it’s good or it’s bad, because that really enables me to learn. So I am just thankful for all of the sort of truth tellers out there who would say no, Bridgette, we’re not doing it that way or whatever it is or that didn’t feel good. We did that or that was not a good way to handle something as well as the positive things. But probably if I had to Name one person, if I didn’t name one, I would name my father. My father was an entrepreneur. He was very CDC. He’s passed away. But he’s a very successful entrepreneur. And just growing up with that, the ups and the downs, and also just the joy, and that he got in, he was an amazing leader and inspired a lot of loyalty. And I just watched him in action. And he was so inspirational, that I think of him often, just in these situations. And I think the reason I love startups so much is, I just, it’s what I grew up with.

Pete Thornton 35:41
Yeah, that’s excellent. That’s really and that was before this term entrepreneur entrepreneur was like, oh, let’s make a t shirt out of it, get a t shirt, get a hat,

Bridget Gleason 35:49
you’re gonna love it. And this is more when there were no VCs, either. You mortgaged your house and you like you did all kinds of scary things to think about loans. My father was very smart, very courageous. So that’s very inspirational.

Pete Thornton 36:05
That’s great. I love to hear that as Okay, in closing, this is The SaaS Ramp Podcast. That term means a lot of different things to a lot of different people within, like Cloud software for you, as a chief sales officer or you are just Bridget, like, what does SAS ramp mean to you? No right answer.

Bridget Gleason 36:27
When I think about it, when I think about SaaS, in general, and then particularly ramping, we can’t freeze the sales that start right after the first close. And so to me, when we think about SAS, we think about ramping, you have to have this hyper focus on the customer. There, it’s not a one and done great, we sold the deal, go to the next one. We sold the deal. Now we have to really dig in and help them on their journey so that they continue to realize value from whatever product or service we sold. So I think of the ramp, I think of the journey and I think in SAS, it’s all about the customer.

Pete Thornton 37:12
So as That’s well put, definitely, there’s so many options they have now. And if they’re going to use it, they’re going to use it. I’ve come in from like a product lead growth background, and they’re just there, they rule the roost and with 22 million users at my current company called postman like they just when they get together and decide on a thing you better listen to because add because that’s what we’re that’s what they’re saying they want and you get a lot more feedback points to when you’re when you can stay in touch with them and continue the relationship make the product better, I think so we’ll put point right there. So this was amazing. Really helpful. Don’t forget, we have a podcast where Bridget breaks down all the sales methodologies and tells us where and they fit within your sales cycle because I’m ready to go. So good. All right. We can so much on behalf of our audience really appreciate you.

Bridget Gleason 38:07
It was a pleasure. Thank you.