The Power of Feedback Loops

Pete Thornton 00:06
Welcome back friends to the SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcast Pete. Got a good one for you today: Jennifer Moore, Head of Product Management at Clozd. I think you’re gonna enjoy today. Today’s interesting because this is like a service and software kind of combination that closely does Jennifer’s product lead. So she’s got a slightly different perspective on it as well. And there’s some interesting potential titles here. We’ll see when time comes whether this one is about feedback loops, or it’s about conversational gossips, you’ll see. And if you stick around to the end, listen for that reference about Jingle Bell Rock. It’s a fun little story. It’s a funny story, right? They’re not seasonal whatsoever, but definitely appropriate for the time. Okay, quick message from the sponsor rampant is a gong certified services firm solving the challenge of revenue disparity amongst sales team members. So if you’re looking to maximize your existing investment in Gong in your revenue intelligence platform to achieve measurable increases in deal size, deal, velocity and win rates, connect with Pete at rampant.cloud. All right onto your regularly scheduled program. Enjoy. Welcome back for evidence to The SaaS Ramp Podcast. I’m your host podcasts Pete welcoming Jennifer moore to the show today. Jennifer is a Head of Product Management at Clozd. Welcome to the show, Jennifer.

Jennifer Moore 01:28
Thank you so much, Pete. Great to be here.

Pete Thornton 01:31
Yeah, I’m really glad to have you on this super fun to talk to you before the show. There’s like this thing. We call it a pre-cast to the podcast if we would just go ahead and click record. And then we liked a whole different version of it. But it’s been fascinating to speak to you so far. So I know my audience is in for a treat today.

Jennifer Moore 01:48
Thank you. You too.

Pete Thornton 01:51
So you’ve worked for a very interesting organization, kind of been checking you guys out, seeing what it is that close does, what you do for other organizations and everything. And it also kind of in an interesting time, like time stamping this for anybody, where April 2023, if you’re listening to this later on. And so in the industry at the time, the economy at the time, we kind of have a lot going on. So if you would maybe you could unpack for us the biggest challenge you have seen closed in the last six months or so.

Jennifer Moore 02:24
Yes. So just to put some context in there, I have been closed for almost 90 days. So definitely getting my feet underneath me still a little bit. But I have really enjoyed the time that I’ve been there. And of course, when you’re at a Series A every day feels like a week, or longer, right, you just there’s so much moving so fast. And so I think the biggest challenge that we’re seeing at closed is just the need for organizations, especially sales leaders to focus. It is imperative that they are focusing their energies and their limited resources or limited capacity on the right thing. So we are really trying to teach sales leaders that they have another effective lever to pull that helps them meet their quotas, that helps them win more. They’re busy with limited resources, they are often asked to do a lot of things at once. And they’ve been doing things in some instances the same way for a really long time. So sometimes they’re maybe not as interested in trying something new when their jobs are on the line. We’re all under a lot of pressure. And I think one of the things that happens when you’re under pressure is we tend to insulate, right, we tend to close ranks. And so especially if you’re maybe in a little bit of a culture of blame, and so everyone starts going, Hey, are when rates are lower than they should be, and we’re not growing as fast as we should. And then it’s whose fault is it? Who’s doing what wrong? And where do we need to look and so my role is closed and what I just am loving so far is the ability to build a product that can truly make sales leaders jobs easier. I think that at the heart of every product leader is that goal of making someone else’s life simpler, easier, making their day to day just more, you know, exciting and enjoyable. So we really want to give sales leaders confidence that they can hit their quota, that they have the data that is able to influence every area of the business that could be impacting deal outcomes. So that includes your product roadmap. I use clothes close to our clothes, right? Yeah, I use clothes closed all the time to show verbatims on why we should be going a certain direction with our product, your market messaging, is it landing, is it effective? Is it differentiated? Your pricing, your packaging and more so Closed provides that visibility into why you’re winning and losing. So you can go make those changes that you need to in order to win more deals, and you don’t have to doesn’t have to come from a place of blame.

Pete Thornton 05:10
Yeah, that’s a good point, like, challenges in the last few quarters being like, Oh, they’re economic challenges. So like we have Trent changed, like the whole marketplace has pivoted. And then what you’re saying is, this is happening across multiple organizations. So like, when y’all go talk to sales leaders, kind of hearing them under stress under duress? And at that point, you know, there might be finger pointing, as opposed to maybe looking at some data, and then seeing what might be the next best steps forward?

Jennifer Moore 05:40
Yes. And I think one of the things that we’re seeing as well, the problem of needing to win more, is shifting a lot more from product marketing or marketing, to sales. The CRO, the head of sales is being asked in board meetings, in executive meetings. Why are we losing? And why? What do we need to do to win more? Right? How do you win more deals? And so that problem is being handed to that sales leader more so now than just product marketing? Go figure out why we’re winning or losing, right that those insights and that data is needed across the organization?

Pete Thornton 06:21
Yeah, for sure. I definitely see that. And then there’s some, well, maybe you dive in later, but I can’t help but ask like, let’s just do the tactical thing, like how do you collect the data for that? Like? How is it kind of captured so that you can get the analytics rolling?

Jennifer Moore 06:41
Yeah, so I think one of the things just is to set the context, closed, sits and kind of sits inside the tech sales stack, and complements many of the other revenue intelligence tools out there, like Gong, Clary Salesforce. And so those tools are really helping you understand what’s happening, kind of as an opportunity is active, closed really plays in that post office space. So the deal has closed, you know, the outcome. And you want to know why. And that’s a gap right now in the market, right? In that tech stack. So many of those tools are focused around what’s happening actively with those ops as you get to an outcome. So the way that we go about providing those insights is we go get the feedback from the buyers. So the people who were involved in those ops, from the very beginning to the end, that though, for both closed one and closed last, we’re going out and we actively go talk to the buyers, we understand the buyers perspective, and then we’re able to collate all of that aggregate that information and turn it into actionable insights that you can then share with your sales team, your marketing team, your product team, your corporate strategy team. And so the real key there is being able to engage buyers after an opportunity has closed.

Pete Thornton 08:14
Yeah, interesting. Okay. Okay, that is very cool. So looking at it, something went well diagnosing why, and then seeing if you can turn that into, like replicate those results, essentially.

Jennifer Moore 08:25
Absolutely. And if you win, yes, what well, what can we do better? And then if you’ve lost, what needs to change? How do we turn those into wins in the future? So the ability to have those insights from buyers gather that buyer intelligence, and really, that creates these feedback loops that are difficult, right, because a buyer, it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of incentive, sometimes post op to talk to someone a third party about that opportunity that they were just in. And so it requires, it’s difficult for companies to do that on their own to do post op deal analysis win loss analysis on their own. So that’s why having a third party like close it both has strong services around how we go and get the buyer information and insights. And then also how we are from our technology platform, the product that I am really fortunate to be a part of and help build that technology platform is closed really does have a very just amazing usability and visibility into those insights and being able to share those and report those out to the rest of the organization.

Pete Thornton 09:50
So it actually sounds like just to round it out. And because I’m interested like it’s a service that sounds like a service that speaks to customers’ effort. was one deal in a software that might be doing the analytics, like almost like, like something akin to business intelligence software? Exactly. Okay. Okay, cool software and a service to come in, after the close, do analytics, find out what’s going on from the voice of the customer themselves having like an interview session of some sort, and then actually taking that data back in? That’s right. Yep. Neat. There’s an organization I work for called postman that I founded the enablement function for and there was a period of time where we were hockey stick growth, very quick 25 million to about 100 million arr. And one of the things that we had to do to even understand how to keep building this go to market team and went from like 30, go to market members headcount to 140, was we had to go take Golang insights. Back it up, we did all this crazy analytics on it, but we had to pull it out of the back end of it, a bunch of manual work. And then that was still not interviewing the customers, but it was at least finding out from the closed one deals. And it was a DIY motion. But I’m just telling you this to say like, it makes so much sense because we did it because we were an enablement team of eight, by then had grown all of it to an enablement team of eight, and like started pulling the data out just so we could understand what’s working, why is somebody close in like $2 million in ARR? And why somebody stuck at 100. And like, what, why the chasm, why the gap. And there are like selling behaviors that can be captured now that you can understand, which is super cool. That didn’t exist five years ago, people were not just implementing conversation, intelligence, revenue intelligence, capturing these calls on the fly. As par for the course, it was a very big brother, like I was one of the earlier Gong customers bringing it into a couple organizations ago. And that was the fight, like turning on data capture. And now it’s just par for the course, like his breathing is gonna be recorded like. So it’s very cool to be able to do something with that.

Jennifer Moore 11:59
Absolutely. One thing I’m really excited about is our Gong integration, we have all the transcripts coming in from Gong now, where you can see the interview transcripts posted up, close one close last. And then you can go back and marry that data with the call transcripts from Gong. And you can interact with them on our platform in the same way that you would with those transcripts from our interviews. So you can comment and tag people in your organization, you can tag a key word and see how it maps up what marries between what the buyer says and what the what the gong transcripts say?

Pete Thornton 12:47
Yeah, yeah, that is interesting. Because there’s like a wealth of knowledge in there, it captures all those pieces. And then to be able to actually pull that out and interact with it a little bit more. Gong has got the dashboards internally that you can, but they can’t, they’re not going to be able to show you everything because it’s like an Apple iPhone, I figure it’s like, the reason I love that thing so much is because it’s like a gap is like two options for me. And it’s like idiot proof for me. And so you like because you’re not gonna interact with the UI, that’s all messy. So Golang gives you some snippets, something to play with. And we do find, because I do some services work on the Golang side, that’s a small organization ramp that does so I know for sure that people typically use it as like glorified call recording, like, oh, I don’t have to press record on Zoom. My sales calls will all be automatically recorded when I set up, you know, another organization joining is too expensive for that there’s no way that I am barely scratching the surface of his capabilities. But even when people go and look at that, they’re still not getting the full measure of what you know, especially a leading platform like Gong can capture. So it makes complete sense to be an organization where partners pull that out, giving additional insights. Because I’ll tell you one thing like running fast in an Hyper Growth software as an enablement leader, that’s why we had to start doing that because we had product releases every week, we had to when I left 23 million developers utilizing that platform because I had a free tier we had again, we had like quadrupled the size of the of the sales team. And we’re LMS and CMS are the main thing like learning management system content management system, keep up with it. You cannot pump data into it fast enough. It’s instantly irrelevant like instantly meaning like a quarter Yeah. And then you know more headcount at the seat, keep running after it and it’s, it’s still your best guess about what’s happening. You’re still not able to leverage as much data as you want. Because then people go to Salesforce, they’re like, oh, what Salesforce say, Salesforce says whatever the rep had time to put in there and whatever their perspective is, I was a seller like I put what I need. Yeah. It’s a hard game out there. Okay. We put Well,

Jennifer Moore 14:57
It’s true. It’s true. So you We actually run a set, we ran a study recently, and compared our CRM data to 1000, closed lost deals to what the buyers actually said, in the wind loss interviews that closed conducts. And the results were really shocking. On 65% of the deals 65%, the competitor tagged in the CRM. So basically, Salesforce did not match up with the competitor, the buyer was actually considering. So in that instance, who’s right, right, like, the buyer is telling us, this is the competitor that I was considering. But the sales rep heard or thought that the competitor they were considering, and that was wrong 65% of time, or they didn’t match up, right. So that type of CRM data is going to be messy, generally. But at the same time, having just your sales reps perspective is not enough. You really do want to get at the heart of Okay. What was the buyer’s perspective? And especially when it comes to competitive intelligence, you need to understand with precision, who that person considered or who they went with instead?

Pete Thornton 16:12
Yeah, that’s a good point. I have one more business idea for you guys. This is just Oh, I love it. Yeah. Well, whenever you are, I’ll take this one to the market. And this is stupid, by the way, but like, like, Okay, call closed, and bring their services department and to go ahead and interview the buyers whenever you’re to the proposal stage. And you can come in and be like a third party. And we’d like to know why you’re considering buying this and like, what are the competitors you mentioned? And like, like, you can just come in and be a third party to that. But like, be like, you’re talking about some competitive intelligence at that point. Like, not only will we fix your CRM in advance, we’re going to kind of get you the insight so that you can go ahead and multi thread finish this thing out this legal right, you can do that. There’s no NDA required. Nothing. Ship it.

Jennifer Moore 16:54
Ship it. Yeah, it’s totally fine. I love it. I love it. No, I’m gonna get in trouble for saying that. Pete. Come on. I’ve only been here for like, less than 90 days. Come on. I gotta

Pete Thornton 17:07
tell him like, well, two heads are better than one. I’m sorry. Like, yeah. Yes.

Jennifer Moore 17:12
Pete said that we should play in the not just post op space. But yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, that’s the thing. So one of the I think most interesting things to me, I don’t know, human behavior is just always so fascinating to me. But then you’re in a sales cycle. And you’re doing all these calls, and they are getting recorded through Gong, right? The thing? Yes, what happens on the call is very important in the sales coaching and the enablement materials that are needed to drive that and to drive the right outcomes. That’s all important. But what is truly important is the meeting after the meeting. Every one of those sales calls includes an internal regroup of the people on that call with whoever your sales rep was. And your prospect is having a meeting after the meeting, making decisions and talking about how did that land for you? Oh, their pricing is not great compared to this other competitor? Right. We are the people who go find out what happened in the meetings after the meetings. Right?

Pete Thornton 18:23
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s so like, what they actually thought of and what they really wanted.

Jennifer Moore 18:28
Yeah, exactly. Like, what are the secrets that were happening in that room? That Gong is never going to show you right? They’re never going to show you why that buyer actually made those decisions throughout the process until you get to the end. And then it’s like, okay, this is these are the real insights for yes, this is what happened. Gong is telling you what happened. Super important. But why did it all happen? And why did we get to this final outcome? That’s what closed helps to uncover?

Pete Thornton 18:56
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Because no, no roll actually does that. net new sales does not do that account management doesn’t do that, that you have one, you’re trying to get to the end of the finish line, and you have to move on. Customer Success does not do that. Because, again, you’re just trying to increase adoption of the product this bit, you know, maybe growth readiness or something like that. And then sometimes the CEO, or CRO will get wild hair. It’s not so wild. It’s just like a good idea. And they’ll be like, we need to find out this and then they personally do it as long as they can, which is like two weeks. And then they’re and then they’re out they’re done. And it still doesn’t have that third party verification type of feel to it, right. Yeah. And these calls I get that are like the people reaching out and wanting to know about the DevOps space or something like that, because I was in DevOps, like, I get a ton of these because somebody’s considered an investment. And so they’re like, hey, for 45 to 60 minutes of your time as a consultant, and just like, Oh, yes, that’s a different conversation because it’s somebody outside of the one to one The space that you’re in.

Jennifer Moore 20:02
Yes, absolutely. And we also have customers who leverage our platform to, you know, self-serve, and they do their, we call them our DIY errs, they run their own programs, and they’ll go out and contact their buyers. And that’s great to write everything that counts in this space. And so talking to your sales reps, absolutely critical, serving them, interviewing them internally, and understanding what they’re putting into the CRM, all of that really needed. And then also, if you are a, if you are someone who is in market insights, or competitive intelligence, or product marketing, in your organization, and you’re going out and making these contacts to buyers, you know, it’s very time consuming, right. And that’s one of the reasons why a lot of our customers, you know, don’t run their own programs, they don’t self-serve on this, in terms of going out and finding buyers to interview. And a big reason for that is because it is very time consuming. And one of the things that closed provides is that highly efficient, really strong ability to just go get those buyer interviews, right, because it does take a lot of follow up. And it does take a lot of persistence in terms of taking that information from our customers, when they’re integrated with a Salesforce, for example. And we get those contacts for the buyers. It takes a lot of follow up, it takes a lot of persevering through that to actually get meaningful insights from multiple buyers from enough buyers. And to your point Pete over time, because it is often something that’s just kind of this one off, Hey, why are we losing more deals than we were last quarter, or let’s look at this whole year. And let’s do a retro and let’s do some lessons learned. And it needs to be a lot more about the ongoing insights that are shared within your organization. So the ability for companies to continually have this as an ongoing feedback loop. That’s the part that I think closed can really help with, that’s the pain that close can help with because it isn’t a once a year activity or even once a quarter activity, the market is moving too fast, your competitors are moving quickly. The economy is impacting what you’re selling, how your messages landing and what your pricing looks like. So you need to be a lot more agile and closed allows you to do that, because we have those ongoing feedback loops. And we’re just constantly getting fresh new information and also seeing the trends over time. What did change month over month? Why? Who needs to do what now? So that’s what I think, where the real power is, is the ongoing nature of win loss.

Pete Thornton 23:02
Yeah, it makes sense. For sure it does. So is there a win-loss analysis type space? Is there a certain light path that leads you there? Like, what would be your What are your personal professional kind of experiences that led you into the role you’re in, by the way product lead? Product lead closed?

Jennifer Moore 23:22
Yes. 20 years ago, I hadn’t even graduated college, and I joined a company that was a brand new startup, I think series A Series B. And this was back in 2003. Yes. So I joined this company, right after 911. They had started up an internet monitoring company. So we were working mostly for the Department of Defense. And I was the 17th employee hired. And so it was crazy. Like it was so fun. But it was a type of place where there were legitimately we had costs for people to sleep on it, you know, because you’d stay overnight sometimes working. Oh, because it stopped. Yeah, because it was a startup. And we were Yeah, they were caught sleeping on their shaving kits in the supply closet. We ordered it and dinner probably four nights a week. So it was just a lot of fun, but also super intense. And so that was my first experience. And then we were acquired by Raytheon. And that was my first exit. And I was just a few years out of college. And it was really exciting. You know, it was like, oh my goodness, we just got picked up by a bigger fish. And so over the course of my career, I have been kind of chasing that. You know, the whole time is just that feeling of being part of a group that is all very mission driven and excited to make something work get scrappy. And I have just always really enjoyed that environment. So every company that I’ve been at, even if it’s a big company like Wells Fargo, I was inside of a small little department that wasn’t profitable, that was working on a product that, you know, needed a lot of innovation, and trying to launch something that could then make money. And so I’ve just really been kind of the, a lot of my experience in my career has been around being part of major market shifts that lead to product innovation. And so I think being closed, it’s kind of come full circle for me, because we’re a smaller company, but it’s a Series A again, and it’s just really fun to be part of that environment where you hear a customer problem, and then within a week, you can go fix it. And as a product leader, that is the best because, again, good product leaders, we are driven by making someone’s life better and simpler and easier. And so the ability to hear a problem, a sales leader has an issue needs to be able to do something differently better, and being able to turn around and solve it within a week, a month, that is just so gratifying, and really exciting to be able to build a platform like that again. And so that’s for me, I’ve just, I’ve been to a really large company recently. And now I just want to, you know, help grow this, this space. And I think it’s so critical because feedback loops are very, they’re just very important to how we function as humans, right? If we don’t have good feedback loops built in our personal lives and our professional lives, you don’t know what’s working, what’s not working. If you’re not curious, and you don’t want to create that awareness, then you don’t know what to change, you’re kind of just fumbling around. And why not know why guess why not know, right?

Pete Thornton 27:04
Yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense. As a seller, the only thing I’ve ever done in that regard is like, I closed the deal, I closed my very first deal ever. And like as a mid market seller, after being a business development rep after being a teacher and a coach, and then all I just did was I just went for that customer again, I just I was like, there’s my niche, there’s MySpace, there’s my industry buy. And like, that’s my use case. And that’s it. And so I was going after these, like health care tech, below a certain size above a certain size, you know, like with a specific CPQ type Salesforce use case or whatever, from the time. And that was it, because I was like, I know, it works. And so that was my, like, single threaded feedback loop, because it’s the best you could do maybe at the time, or with my knowledge level at that point. So that’s, you know, that’s interesting. So like, you could do that better at professional level, what, maybe the rounded out, like, what would be a, you know, personal example of like feedback loop within life. The, what’s the closed one allowances are like the clothes setup for, for a personal life thing. This has a bunch of examples of this, I’m thinking of now masking, so maybe it’s a dumb question. But for the audience.

Jennifer Moore 28:12
Yeah, I mean, I think my favorite is just asking my kids, you know, what is working, what’s not working. And it’s always so fascinating what they come up with, because I think they’re going to say something along the lines of, you’re too strict, or I wish I had this freedom. But a lot of times, we as parents, my husband, and I get feedback around, you know, we I need more structure, I need you to help me more in this area, I need you to create more structure for me so that I can function better, because I’m realizing that this part of my life is not as optimal as I want it to be right. And so it’s just always really interesting. When you allow yourself to be vulnerable, and really open and by the way, win loss analysis, lots of vulnerability there, we’ve actually had customers, or I guess, I should say, prospects, you know, that have kind of given us the feedback, like we don’t want to go with closed because we’re worried about what our buyers are going to say. Like, we’re worried about the feedback that we’re gonna get, right? Like it might be negative. And the reality is, when loss analysis and other feedback loops that you put into your professional your personal life. There is a level of vulnerability there, right? And opening yourself up to what feedback do you have for me? That’s one of the most vulnerable things that we as humans can say to each other.

Pete Thornton 29:38
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Jennifer Moore 29:41
And not and being okay with that being maybe some positive things, but also maybe some negative things that you don’t really have a level of awareness on. And it can be very challenging, but I do think one of the things that is so fascinating, when I look at our data closely There is no substitute for verbatim feedback. There really isn’t. And of course in more analytical terms, you call that qualitative feedback, right? The qual, you got to marry that with the quant? Yes. But that qualitative feedback, and it’s because of you, I’m an English major. So I love words. And I love you know how people put things together and concepts. And all of those things that maybe are a little bit more abstract, but you can really see them in detail when you look at these verbatim quotes from your buyers where it’s not just someone saying, this was not great, or this was good. These very kind of linear ways of expressing ourselves, you get all this like nuance that it’s so it’s like this very delicious data that you get to, oh, you almost feel like whoa, I’m like, you know, looking at someone’s secrets, like their diary. And you’re kind of like in the middle of that, you know, and it’s just so fascinating. And I think that is one of the things that just keeps me coming back for more with those feedback loops, both personally and professionally. And then companies doing that from a win loss perspective. You will just be so fascinated if you actually allow yourself to ask that question, what feedback do you have for me? You will be fascinated by the results?

Pete Thornton 31:31
Yeah, absolutely sure. Like that you would be because then it’s very particular to your use cases, and not like generalized advice or whatever like this happened. And now you’re getting feedback from it. It’s so funny, though, it is a vulnerable situation. And I have an example from this week. This was on Wednesday, I hosted a live webinar, you bring in people, you tell them about your business, what you do, and things like that. I don’t care how long I taught for or sold for like your host a live webinar scared to death, like he’s gonna show? Am I going to click that? And you have to set it all up appropriately, like, show the slides the right way, like answer the chat, like it’s like going on. And it’s live, because I feel like that’s more respectful. For the most part. If it’s 45 minutes, you should be there too, you know, you can pre record these things. That’s a little dull. Anyway, like 30 minutes before that started, somebody very good professional said, Hey, would you like free advice? Basically, would you like some? Would you like some feedback on it and it’s just a piece of marketing content I had. And I’m not even very like, Oh, my marketing contests, the best marketing context. I’m not a marketer. And so this is like a, this is like, a little Fiverr extra that I happen to have. And I was like, could you give it to me in two hours? I can’t, if it’s bad, I’m gonna crumble right now. Like, I just can’t take any, I just need my confidence for like the next hour and a half, it was even vulnerable on a piece of like white paper, I’m like, it could have been an editing thing, or whatever. I was like, I don’t even want to know until after this webinar is over, because I can use all of my potential confidence right now. And it’s hilarious. And that’s just like a small example of what you’re talking about and the vulnerability of a company that puts their customers on a bigger deal, obviously. Yes. And yeah, it is very personal. But that’s the beauty of it as well, I’m sure.

Jennifer Moore 33:07
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think you can choose when you choose, you know, you can choose when you read win loss information, it may not be the best time after you’ve had a really bad quarter and, you know, kind of everyone’s trying to scramble and figure out what happened. So choosing more neutral times to have those conversations from like a win loss perspective. It’s a great point, because you often do want to go to someone and not just say, I have feedback for you. That’s a little aggressive, right? It’s like, “Are you open to some feedback now is a good time?” So just your example is great, because I think that’s one of the reasons why having a central source of truth, like the closed platform, allows anyone in the organization to go see what is working and what’s not working, why we’re winning, why we’re losing at any time, whatever, whatever works for them. And it doesn’t have to be something that is packaged up perfectly in a quarterly report and emailed out at the very right moment. It’s like, you can go and get that information and act on it whenever you want.

Pete Thornton 34:18
Yeah, yeah. Very cool. Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, okay. It’s like we zigged around, but it was very effective to understand those things. It’s very helpful. Those two, two, and these are like, you know, whatever, like, whatever you come up with, it doesn’t have to be from recent because I know you said 90 days at clubs, so favorite leadership moment, throughout throughout your career or, and beyond and earlier, if it’s applicable, sports, whatever. I am fascinated

Jennifer Moore 34:47
by the novel by the new, right, just learning new things. It’s like, oh, things that kind of go against the grain like I didn’t know that could work or that could happen in that way. So I think one of the things that really intrigued me about closed was we do have our two founders, Andrew Peterson, and Spencer dent, who are formerly from Qualtrics. And they are still co CEOs. They work together as a unit. And at first I thought, I don’t know if this is going to work, or how is this going to work? Right? I think it was just more of a curiosity like is, hmm, like this is different. And it works really well. So I think just watching them in action has been really fascinating. And then, the My Favorite leadership moment that I’ll share is I had a speaking of feedback loops. I had a manager, I was at a company for maybe 3060 days, so I was new. And I had a product launch related artifact that I needed his advice on. And I just went into his office and I said, Hey, I would love some feedback on this, because I’m not really sure if I’m going in the right direction. And I showed it to him, and he kind of sat there looking at it. And I was nervous, because it was one of the first things that I had produced, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing yet. I didn’t know enough. And this was about probably 1012 years ago in my career. And, and he looked at it and said, and he looked up and said, you know, this is actually really good. And you’re further along, and you’re doing better than you think you are. And at that moment, it was so small. But that moment was so impactful for me, because he could have said, Any number of things at that point, right? He could have said, Try again. Or here’s an example of a really good one, go look at that, and then come back. He could have said a lot of things. But I think what that taught me from a leadership perspective is err on the side of mercy, we need to give ourselves more grace, we are doing better than we think we are. Right. And I think from a corporate perspective, you get into these modes where there is a lot of pressure to win more. And there’s a lot of pressure on the sales team. sales leaders are, are going in a lot of different directions. They have a lot of different tools, and data to look at. And I think we just need to pause sometimes and say, okay, feedback loops are super important. Yes. But we need to pause and really celebrate the bright spots that have what’s working. And being able to err on the side of mercy when it comes to how we judge ourselves or our teams or our companies. And I think that was just a moment for me that was really indelible. I will remember that forever. Because it was just that moment where I was like, oh, okay, I’m doing better than I think I am. And that phrase just has kind of stuck with me.

Pete Thornton 37:47
That’s cool. Yeah, I really liked that. It’s really helpful. And it’s so true, because this stuff is personally how it’s not personal like, yes, it is so personal, very

Jennifer Moore 37:54
personal. We have worked. Everything we produce, everything we say, everything is personal. It’s always personal.

Pete Thornton 38:06
Yes, cool. It’s a good, good perspective. I’ll take that one on the weekend too. Yeah. And good, by the way for the audience, for yourself, Jennifer, if my daughter met a playmate, and they started like we’re over here through the window, so if it just started kicking, apparently the party started at my house. So apologies slash having some fun over here. To the side. Yes, I’m,

Jennifer Moore 38:28
We finally have good weather here in Utah. And I am just, you probably can’t hear it over the podcasts that I am, like, so excited to just get outside. I’m like in my play clothes, right? Just let’s go.

Pete Thornton 38:43
Your airport. And I’ve never gotten to step out of the airport. Your airport is my favorite airport view on the way to San Francisco from the East Coast. Really. I have to pass through Atlanta or Charlotte to come from nowhere North Charleston and we were in Chattanooga before I have to pass through Atlanta, Charlotte and then we go over to to Salt Lake City or Dallas or whatever to do the final leg into Oakland or San Francisco depending on you know, with flight to the best and everything is just beautiful. You see the snow capped mountains right there from the airport view. And that’s it and my favorite airport thing ever happened in Salt Lake City Airport too and that was that it was a month past Christmas. And there was this man walking in with headphones on through the airport and he was dragging behind him a suitcase with a speaker on it. So it had a speaker on it. He didn’t know it was Bluetooth to his speaker and he had it cranked up and he was playing Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock and like February, just go in through the Salt Lake City Airport. And I had to follow him for like I felt like a mile and I was dying because nobody was saying anything. He’s just walking. He’s older and he thinks he’s hearing it through these headphones. These like the Bose Big Cover your ears headphones, and he’s hearing it because it’s coming from his external speaker on his and I’m just like, This is the coolest bonus moment. So I have a lot of good memories there. And I’ve never been outside the airport

Jennifer Moore 40:06
Jingle Bell Rock in February.

Pete Thornton 40:09
It was not Christmas. It was not leading up to Christmas. I mean, we can say that was in the same quarter if you have it. There’s a lot of excuses I’m trying to make for this.

Jennifer Moore 40:17
Okay, so I don’t know if Yeah, I don’t know if you do outro music Pete But you gotta do it. Come on.

40:22
Jingle bell, jingle bell, Jingle Bell Rock. Jingle bells, time and jingle dub. Dada. Dada.

Pete Thornton 40:30
Jonny Gamet, Heard marketing we have a request. Jennifer, amazing experience to hear about clothes and yourself. And the position you’re in. I’m super glad you fell. Found the place where? where everything’s lining up. All the stars are aligning from your entire career. Yes,

Jennifer Moore 40:53
yes. Absolutely closed. Yeah. And

Pete Thornton 40:56
so far to just have some fun at the end of the day on this Friday podcast. Thank you on behalf of like, SaaS, Ram audience myself, everybody. Can’t wait to release this one. And go have some fun with our networks with it.

Jennifer Moore 41:07
Yes, absolutely. Are you going to ask me the SaaS RAM question? I was like, so ready. All right.

Pete Thornton 41:13
If you have one, then this is okay. Okay.

Jennifer Moore 41:18
I have prepared. Okay.

Pete Thornton 41:21
Well, when I look at time, why am I keeping them too long? Is it because I’m going around, SaaS, RAM, SaaS, Rinpoche Yes. What does SaaS ramp mean to you raised, it

Jennifer Moore 41:33
makes me think of an on ramp or off ramp, you know, for the highway. Right? So when you’re ramping, like an on ramp, you’re accelerating, right? So I think of it in terms of acceleration. But not just that it’s like accelerating in a way that’s effective, right? Safe. That’s the driving way, but it’s like, effective, and as quickly as possible. And then you’re also accelerating on an on ramp with others, right? Like you’re with other cars when you’re on an on ramp. And so I think of the SaaS ramp as the ability to accelerate effectively, as quickly as possible. And doing it with others.

Pete Thornton 42:13
That’s so so I’ve heard so this is, this has so many different answers to this question that I thought would be very, like straightforward because I think of it in a way and it is like this, what I’ve heard the onramp example before but never with the three caveats of why with the with others, kind of like merging together like going fast but safely, things like that. So yes, kudos to you.

Jennifer Moore 42:35
Okay, so yeah, like I prepared. I was like, okay, he’s gonna ask me this. I got to have something unique. I listened to other people’s answers. And so there you go.

Pete Thornton 42:45
It’s good. It’s good. Oh, thank you. This is an absolute pleasure to Burnley. Thank you for setting it up and everybody for sure. Yeah. Looking forward to interacting with Clozd again soon.