Nick Hill: Coaching, Training & The Real Role of Enablement

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Now, today's conversation is with Nick Hill. He is the director of sales enablement at Crunchbase and previously led training for high-performance teams at Miro and Sprinkler. Built his career designing action-oriented coaching and sales plays that drive immediate and measurable results. And this was all enablement all the time. So, obviously, I have a special place in my heart for enablement teams because it's a relatively new role and it doesn't really get the respect it deserves in a lot of ways. But it also, a lot of times, isn't structured the right way either, which is why we got into it. So, first and foremost, we started with his background, obviously, and how he got into it. But then talked about when to invest in enablement, right?

I'm seeing people invest in it earlier and earlier and then 2023 happened and then put a stunt to it. So, he talked a little bit about like when is it right to invest in a full enablement organization. Then we talked about the difference between enablement training and coaching, which all three of those are very distinct parts of the equation. And how to align with RevOps and why it's so important to look at the data but not be married to it because there's so much subjectivity when it comes to enabling and coaching reps. So, we went on to talk about how do you hold the managers accountable for the training that you deliver them. And he has the same philosophy I have, which is you get them involved, right?

You don't just give them the training, get them involved in the training, get their buy-in to it, and how to do call coaching. It is so brutal right now about how to actually coach all these call recording solutions. Yeah, they're great, but I got 10 reps that are reporting to me having 10 disco calls on a monthly basis and I got to listen to every 30 minutes of him. I don't have time to do anything else. So, how do we do that? And he's got a couple of different ideas on how to simplify that process. And then, you know, talking about what good coaching actually looks like. So, we went all over the place with enablement on this one and also ended with the future of where he sees it going, especially with AI and how AI coaching is really going to be, I think, the answer in a lot of ways to some of that frontline stuff.

So, if you're interested in the future of sales and enablement and how we can all level up together, I think you'll like this one. So, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Nick Hill, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? Doing well, John. Thanks for having me on. It's great to be here. Yeah, I was glad you made it through the hailstorm, apparently, as we were prepping for this. Talking through getting, heating those warnings that your cell phone yells at you. Yeah, that's my first piece of advice for your listeners, of course, is listen to the thunderstorm warnings because I didn't and it made a difference. So, Nick, we're going to talk, I mean, from an enablement standpoint, leading up enablement over at Crunchbase and doing some fun stuff over there, and especially with what's going on over at Crunchbase.

I'm very interested to chat with you about that. But I always like to start with the origin story. So, we talked previously, you know, when you're getting on here that you were born and bred in Texas. But I always like to understand kind of where, you know, nature, nurture, where you came from, parents, you know, what kind of influence do they have, your environment, those type of things, the stuff we can't find on LinkedIn. So, give us a little kind of where you're coming from, and then we'll kind of get through the job stuff and some of the cool things you're working on today. Yeah, definitely. You know, I was born and raised in a town called Willis, Texas, which almost no one's ever heard of.

And my parents definitely raised me to kind of go after anything that I want, to go after it with all that I've got. There was a lot of really good nurturing, really good coaching from my dad there. He was always big on, if you want it, you can have it, but you've got to work for it. And that was something that was really ingrained in me at a young age. And then went to college, went to the University of Texas, had a great time at the University of Texas, got my master's there, moved over to Austin, Texas, which is a city that I absolutely fell in love with. And I've been here ever since. And that's what kind of led into my professional career, which I'm happy to talk to you about as well. Yeah.

What made you choose? You did a double major in econ and poli-sci, right? Yeah, that's right. So what made you choose that? Was that just like, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but this is kind of cool? Or did you have like a, you know, like, no, this is, I definitely want to know, like, do this. So I knew I liked economics. Economics was, it always made logical sense to me. I love the idea of supply and demand, about understanding what people want, providing it for them, and then pricing accordingly. That's always made sense. Poli-sci, honestly, was, it was a minor, and I was talking to an academic advisor one day, and they were like, hey, man, if you add like three more classes, this will just become a second major.

And I said, okay, cool, it'd be great to check that box. And so I ended up with the double, and then, yeah, I went for the master's later. Nice. Now, did you go straight to your master's, or did you get out into the real world and then come back? I got onto the real world first, and I actually, I ended up having several jobs, none of which were related to each other at all, and just kind of getting my feet wet in the real world. And then seven years later, I decided to go ahead and go back and get the master's. It's a big expense, and I was taking it all on myself, so I wanted to make sure it was really what I wanted to do. Yeah, that's always, because I always cringe when I see people that go straight from college to MBA, right, because you don't have any real world experience, you have no context to apply to it.

So, and I always say that the MBA is where you get your real education, right? Maybe you're undergrad, you get your social education, right? You get to learn what it's like to be, you know, outside without your parents, all that fun stuff. But you're really just, you're not really, I don't think you're learning a lot, like you might, but it's more social than anything else. Where MBA, you choose, like, hey, I'm going to go back and learn this. And I think when that happens, now all of a sudden, you're actually actively engaged and trying to pay attention. But so many people I see, like, are just too scared to go out into the real world. So they go get their MBA and then just stay in school for as long as possible.

Yeah, you can always tell the difference a little bit. And I think going to what you just said there, there's a level of maturity difference. When I was getting the undergrad, it was, yeah, this is what I'm supposed to do. You know, I'm just, I'm just doing this, but it's real great to party and have fun and all that. When I was getting the master's, it was, this is important and I can use this in my day to day and I'm going to really dig into this. And so it was a huge maturity difference. All right. So what led you, what led you to, I mean, cause you've gone Miro, you've had a bunch of different roles. What led you to enablement specifically? Yeah. So I, I started out in sales. I was selling property management software to hospitals and I was doing fine, but I've always wanted to teach.

I've always wanted to coach. I've always enjoyed that side of the world. And I loved the energy of sales. I liked being in the action. I didn't want to leave that. And so one day I was, I was having beers with a coworker and I was like, you know, I wish there was a job where I could do both. I wish there was a job where I could be in sales. I could teach, I could coach. And he was like, Hey man, you know, uh, you know, that's a job, right? She was like, he was like, that's a job that people do. It's called enablement training development. Like you should go do that. And so originally I had to take a pay cut to do that. Cause in sales, you know, you're making the commission, the paycheck. I took a pay cut.

I moved over. I started making my bones and enablement never looked back. Um, I've done that now through sprinkler through Miro now crunch base, um, been able to train over a thousand reps. It's, it's been one of the best decisions. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process.

Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. And we're going to get into some of your frameworks. I I'm curious though, my, let me, so I've worked with enablement now for a long time right now doing sales training. And I always, to a certain degree, it's weird how enablement sits in most organizations and some, it's a very strategic part of the organization, but in a lot of cases, and I think it's starting to get a lot more recognition and be invested in a lot earlier, but a lot of times it's kind of like a second, it's like, Oh, we're growing really fast.

Oh, we need somebody to train, right? We need to are on board and, and, and what happens. And I always tell the first enablement person in this scenario to watch out because inevitably it's somebody who's like in sales, but has an aptitude for structure and training and that type of stuff and kind of ears that way. And then the, and so somebody, you know, executive points on them and says, Hey, you want to run our enablement training? And they're like, yeah, sure boss. And so now they're riding the bike while building the thing with no budget, with no support, with no real understanding from a business standpoint of like what enablement is from the leadership standpoint. They just say, Hey, we need training.

So go do it. That person gets the ever living shit kicked out of them for like a year and a half. They don't get much budget. They don't get many resources. And then the company gets to a certain level where they're like, okay, now we need to invest and they hire an SVP or, you know, somebody on top of that person. And they always position it as, Oh no, you're going to learn from them and everything else. And it's an absolute crock of shit. It's almost always they're going to, that's the way they fire him. Cause you're going to now transfer all your knowledge to this person. They're going to get all the resources. They're going to get all the attention and they're going to take all the credit.

And then you're going to get so frustrated that you, you know, seeing what's happening, you're just eventually going to leave. So there's like a two year and it's like, I see it over and over and over again. So with that, how should, and when should organizations look to enablement? Because fundamentally kind of is a cost center, right? I mean, yes, we tie ROI to it and all that other stuff, but it's hard to make that investment when you're growing like a weed and you're trying to like, you're trying to manage everything. So what's your perspective on when a startup should invest in enablement and have it as a dedicated thing and how should they look at it versus how it's been looked at? Yeah, it's a great question.

And I, I've been on both sides of what you just described. I've been the person that was trying to be scrappy building the training and I've been the person brought in to, to add the structure. I would say when you're a startup, when you're series A, you really don't need an enablement team. You're going to be doing a lot of tribal knowledge. You're going to, you want your managers heavily involved. You want to bring in people that kind of know what they're doing a little bit. And so they can, they can kind of self-manage and self-direct. And we'll talk about that too. When you get to series C, when you get to series D, your pre IPO, you're, you're starting to see, you know, a couple of sales managers, each with their own team.

That's when you want to at least bring one person or two people in to start to understand how can I make every single seller better? What can I do to increase their productivity, to decrease their stress, to improve the revenue generation, the pipeline generation? Normally around that series C, series D is when I start to see it, um, to see it be effective, I should say. Um, and before I answer the second part of your question, I'm curious if that's what you've seen, because you've been doing this a long time. And I know that you've been in a lot of orgs. What do you normally see? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I see that scenario time after time, right? I see some rep who, you know, thought they wanted to be in sales, same story as you, right?

Like sales, like to be around it, but are kind of sick of like the quota all the time. Right. And, and, and really do enjoy. And instead of going management route, they go in that route and they kind of cobble together something that is reasonable, tribal knowledge, all that fun stuff. And then they hit that wall and then it goes from there. So I, I don't see them. I've seen it start to shift more and more to be invested in earlier and earlier. But quite frankly, what happened in early 2023 kind of threw it all off because when the sat like mostly SAS and tech, I saw it being like, oh no, no, no, like because grow at all costs, you know, money wasn't really an issue free, you know, interest rates and all that stuff that people were investing in real enablement departments much earlier than I, than I had seen in the past.

But then 2023 hit and I think it shook a lot of things up and, and it forced everybody to look back at efficiencies and all that fun stuff and obviously cutting through a lot of things. So, um, I think it, it went two steps forward, one step back maybe, uh, in early 2023 from at least my general perception there, but that's kind of what I'm seeing out there right now. Yeah. I would say I would agree with that in 2023. It's funny. You mentioned that year because that is the year that I started to see a lot of shift. I, and I want to talk about the second piece of your question of, of what should they, what should a company be looking for in making this effective? One thing that I always tell sales leaders is your enablement, uh, your, your head of enablement, your enablement person, they should be asking to see your numbers and your ratios and your success rates and your pipeline generated.

If they're not asking for the metrics, then they're just training. All they're doing is building slides and delivering slides and training can be effective in the right context, but it's a part of a larger enablement strategy that includes one-on-one coaching, call development. You really need them getting into your pipeline ratios to understand where the gaps are first. And that's how you can tell kind of a great enablement person from someone that's just, Oh, I'm going to build a lot of slides and talk a lot. So what's the difference between enablement training and coaching from your perspective? So for me, training is I'm going to go talk to the leaders, the marketing teams, and everyone who creates strategy.

I'm going to ask them what they want me to teach their sales team. And then I am going to go train it. And can I pause you for there for a second? Cause that, that one on the training piece, that's the challenge I see a lot is that they get, so here's VP of sales enablements, right? Whatever, usually in most organizations, VP of sales, the loudest usually gets what they want as long as they're producing. Right. And, but the problem, what I've seen is most VPs of sales, and I'm being very general in my, in my assessment here are, are reactionary in a lot of ways. It's like this quarter, our pipeline's empty. So we need prospecting. So they yell it. They go to enablement. They say, find us something on prospecting.

Enablement runs around like chicken with their heads cut off, trying to put something together. Do right. Take a, find somebody like me. We put together a plan and then the next quarter it's like, yeah, I don't need that anymore. I need discovery right now. Like, go get that. It's like, Holy shit. So when you say that enablement goes and asks leadership, Hey, what do you need? How much of that is a balance of like, Hey, I need, forget about what you think you need. How do we know what you need? And you go back to like asking for those numbers. So how do you put yourself in a position as an enablement person to not just react all the time when leadership is telling you that they need something that they might not need.

Yeah. What you just hit on to me is the difference between training and enablement. Okay. Training is I've gone to my leaders. They've told me, and it's always the same thing, right? We need discovery training. We need account planning training. We need outreach training. Great. I can do those things for you all day long. Enablement is I'm actually going to the reps themselves. I'm going to, I'm going down into the trenches. I'm listening to calls. I'm talking one-on-ones with reps. And I'm saying, what do you need? What is the thing that you're like? If I could, if I could wave a magic wand and solve one problem for you, what would actually make you more effective? And if you have good reps, they know what's going to make them more effective.

They know what they really need. And then your challenge is to go convince the leaders of that. Your challenge is to be an advocate for those reps and say, okay, I, I have been listening to everybody. I've got the trends. Here's what we need to do now to make the right decisions to, to make them successful. So with, with your role and an obvious, you know, with enablement coming up and also rev ops becoming like loud and proud right in front these days, how tied are you to the rev ops team is like, not just looking at, okay, reps, you got some good reps and tell us, tell us what you need. And you do a little bit of survey there, but then the actual data that says, Hey, this is the part of the sales process.

We are losing the most deals, or here's the conversion ratio that we're having the biggest challenge with, or here's the competitor that is kicking our ass. Like how tightly tied are you to rev ops? Very, very, very closely tied to them. I would say at crunch base, it's been one of the closest partnerships I've had. PMM is another one. Um, but rev ops, uh, building an activity dash is a super quick win that can help enablement rev ops and sales leadership to all get on the same page about where the gaps are and what's missing. So the first thing that I do at any organization coming in as an enablement partner is let's build an activity dash. I want to see it at a rep level. I want to see the stages of the pipeline, the ratios of each one, and then we can start to figure that out.

And my, my rev ops, uh, partner here at crunch base has done an amazing job of, of getting me some of those numbers. And we've already started to see where the gaps are. Nice. Yeah. So I, cause that's where to me, the data shouldn't lie. I mean, you know, garbage in garbage out, but now with the AI, it should be able to start to track real metrics, real conversions, real information that we can make real decisions on, because that's the one thing I, I, I try to, you know, sales is a very emotional, uh, and I, you know, coming from a VP of sales standpoint where, you know, I used to be in and I effectively, I guess I still am, you know, it is, I'm getting yelled at for this. My, you know, my rep just lost this deal.

We need negotiation training. So how does it come down to, for you on enablement standpoint on to individual coaching for reps versus macro programs for the org? And how do you manage that as, as the head of enablement with managers or right? Cause managers should coach, but a lot of them don't have the time to. So how do you address the coaching issue for an individual sales reps versus the org when you find out they all need this? Yeah. So what you want to do is when you think about what, let's just make it super simple. Let's say you have your top reps, your middle reps, and your severely low performing reps. If I'm an enablement person, this sounds a little callous, but I really want to focus on the middle reps.

I want to focus on the ones that, you know, I know that if I can just add a little, a little bit of coaching in the right direction, maybe some call feedback, like I can start to move them up to that top performing. I just need to create the processes for them and get the right habits in place for the severely low performing reps. Unless you only have a few reps that you're focused on, you really can't get too in the weeds with every single person, unfortunately. For macro level enablement, what I'm asking myself is, is this a fundamental strategy change? If this is a fundamental strategy change, then I need an org wide training where I'm bringing everybody up to speed on what the change is, why we're doing it, and how it's going to make them successful.

And so that's how I think about kind of org wide versus rep level. And I want to touch on something that you mentioned about the managers without, without manager involvement, all enablement dies. Yes. Always. Every single time. And, and for any manager listening, you know, it's, it's so important that you partner with your enablement. If they're not doing the things you think they need, that's okay. Just tell them, what do I need? But make sure that you can own it with them because it's so important to have you involved. How do you hold them accountable? Cause that, that I will tell you right now, that's my biggest frustration. I, when people ask me when I do training for organizations, I'll say, you know, they'll say, okay, well, John, what's your reinforcement plan?

And my direct question to them is, I don't know, where are your managers going to be during the training? And they're like, what? I'm like, are they going to, are they going to do the prep call with me? Are they going to be actively engaged? Are they going to go through the on-demand portion of my training beforehand? So that they know what I'm about to go through with their team. Are they going to be actively engaged on the zoom session, asking questions? Are they going to be making sure that they follow up and afterwards and then follow up on the, are they going to get certified themselves? Like, are they going to do all that or are they going to be checkup, you know, be checking their emails off screen, that type of thing.

So, uh, you know, I, I almost have this disdain for the question of the reinforcement because I'm not your manager. I'm, I'm like, I always say as a trainer, I'm like the grandparents. I come in, I play with the kids and I leave and I give you a structure and I give you a foundation and I'm here to help, but I am not the parents. I'm not the ones who are going to sit down with the kid every day and walk them through what needs to be done. I just don't feel that. And by the way, you wouldn't be able to afford me if you did want me to do that for crying out loud. And why do you have managers if that's the case? So how do you hold managers accountable for implementing and reinforcing the training that you bring to the table for them?

Yeah. So if I would almost, I would almost slightly pivot that question instead of, instead of how do I hold the managers accountable? Because the short answer is I can't, I really have no, I have no bite. You know, I can go to the SVP and say, please help me with these managers. But ultimately what I really find is how can I get them bought in is the right question. How can I truly get them bought in? And there's a number of ways that I can do that. The first thing is you've got to bring them along from the very, very, very beginning. If like, I need managers helping me craft the strategy. I need managers helping me, you know, approve the outlines and really, and every time at the end I ask them, what's missing?

Am I truly hitting what you need for me right now? Okay. So you're willing to back this even when I'm not there. I get that buy-in. The second thing that you always have to do, you make it as easy as possible for them to follow through on it. So when, if I'm telling managers, I need you call coaching your reps, well, I'm going to give them, you know, these are the, all you have to do is click this link and answer these three questions, man. That's it. Like a click this link, answer these three questions, do that once a week for these three reps and you're done. And I've made it super plug and play, super simple. That way, if they're not doing it, then I can come back and say, I made it so easy.

Like, you know what, surely you just don't want to do this anymore. So that's a part of it. Let me dive into that. So how do you do that? Cause I think that's one of the bigger challenges I see when it comes to, and I don't want to pick on any call recording softwares here. So I'll just, so a broad, all the call, wonderful call recording solutions out there. But the challenge with them is say I'm a manager, I got 10 reps, right? Coaching is the number one thing I should be doing to help level everybody up, but I rarely have time to do it because if I got 10 reps and say the average rep calls, you know, I don't know, three to four discovery calls on a weekly basis. Okay. So say it's four, call it five, 30 minutes per discovery call, five, that's two and a half hours times 10 reps.

So, and when people say, oh, John, you know, well, you could just skip to the part on pricing, right? Wrong. Because if you really are, if you really do coaching the right way, what you said at minute five might've dictated what happened at minute 15 when you said that, oh, well, John, you can use it. You can listen to it to X. Well, no, you can't because realistically, if you really want to coach the right way, I'm listening for tonality. I'm listening for inflection. I'm listening for those types of things to say, yes, you said the right thing, but the way you said it is what put them off. Right? So that's, that's what real coaching is. So in order for me to do real coaching on a 30 minute discovery call, it's 30 minutes to listen to that call.

Maybe I can sift through some of the early crap and some of the late crap, maybe. So cut it down to 20, 25, maybe. And then I got to do 15 minutes of like actual coaching on per thing. So how do you streamline that? When you say three questions, what are those three questions? And, and how do you make it simple so that I can do it like this and, and, and want to do it as opposed to good Lord, I got to go through 50 discovery calls this week. Like, plus do my job, plus do this, plus do that. Like, I don't have time for this shit. It's completely impossible to do, to do what you just described, right? If you're doing 30 minutes for that many reps for that many, that often every week, um, it can't be done.

And so what I typically tell managers is I'm not asking you to coach, you know, this many calls for this many reps every week. What I'm asking for is let's decide what is the top thing you're looking for your reps to be doing right now. What's trending for you? What is, so maybe a manager comes to me and says, we're really struggling with presenting our pricing right now. And I say, okay, cool. Then I'm going to do this part for you. I'm going to go into, you know, whatever recording software you have. And I'm going to set up an alert. That's going to slack you when there's a call where pricing was specifically discussed. And all I'm asking you to do is touch on two to three of those this week, two to three.

Like I don't, it's not even on a rep by rep basis. It's on a trend basis. These are the challenges we're seeing. So I'm going to go coach two to three of these calls, maybe even just two, but, but here's the kicker. Once you've coached that call, do a show that coaching and show what came from that coaching to all of your reps. That's where you scale it. What you do is you find something that you want them to do. Coach one or two. Well, genuinely listen to the entire thing. And I've got tips for that too. There's ways you can do that in your car, on your commute. But listen to the real call, give them in the moment feedback, but then scale that feedback to the rest of your reps so that they can learn from others.

And that's the way you do it. If you try to make it a numbers game, you're going to fail. Yeah. So, so what is good, what does good coaching look like to you, right? What is, what is the, is there a framework or a structure that you use to, to help managers? Because most managers aren't taught to coach. They have no idea how to coach and the mistake that most organizations make is that they take their best performing reps and they make the managers, which is usually the worst possible thing you can do. Because most of the time, those best reps are what I would consider maybe artists, right? Where they just do what they do. They know how to spend their time. They know how to do their certain things and they're just talented in certain areas.

But for them to translate that to somebody else is very difficult for them to do. So what does good coaching look like? And what's a framework that you use to help reps who are, who don't know how to do it or help managers who don't know how to do it? Yeah. You know, it's really, really tough. I think that, um, and this is going to sound almost too simple, but the way that I recommend people coach is, uh, nobody, nobody really responds to, well, don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. It's really hard to, to incorporate that feedback. So what I always tell people, uh, is I'm going to listen to this call. And every time I hear something that I would have done differently, I'm going to pause it and I'm just going to jot that down.

This is something that you said, and here's what I would have said instead. Here's what you said. Here's what I would have said instead. And even though it sounds ultra simple, I don't like to apply a huge, you know, big framework to it. I don't like to create these big complex scorecards. What I want you to do is genuinely listen to the call, jot down your notes on, you said this, and I would have pivoted to this because then what the rep is taking away is these are things that I should say. These are things I should move towards. And he gave me specific examples of how to do it. And if you can coach in that way, then the problem that you just described, the people that were really good reps that became managers, they can still coach that way because they know what they would have said on that call.

So, so, but I have a bit of a challenge with that from, from a subjectivity standpoint, right? Because that rep, um, that manager who was that rep, who said that shit when they said it, like I say this stuff all the time, you know, when I do training, I'm like, look, I'm John Barrow from Boston, Massachusetts. I'm about as direct and in your face as it gets when it comes to selling. Right. And for some of y'all out there, if you try some of the shit that came out of my mouth, like you, you offend people, right? Because, because it's not you. So I focus a lot more on the structure and the science and talk about split testing and trying different approaches so that you can figure out what works for you.

So how do you get that subjectivity, right? Where it's just like, Hey, this was what I did when I was a rep. So I would have said it this way, but Sally is way nicer than me. She's got a much more soft personality, but not, I'm not saying better or worse, but it's just, if she said what I said, it, it wouldn't be her. It wouldn't come out that way. So how do you address that? So I think that, uh, one, what you've said is actually one of the biggest challenges with this approach is that it is subjective. If I'm honest, it's a subjective approach. Um, you always want to think about at the end of call coaching, I'm not just talking to talk. I want them to do something differently. So if, if I want to get objective with it, then what I want to do is I want to write down what are the things that I want them to do differently?

What are the things that I want all of my reps to do better? And then I'm just going to grade each of my reps on those specific attributes. So I say, I want you to present pricing in a confident way. I want you to be asking discovery questions around their pain points. Great. So I'm going to rate you on those specific attributes, but at the end of the day, I need to schedule a follow-up with you where we practice the thing that you didn't do well at. So if I want to get objective, I'm going to rate on attributes, but if I want to still make it actionable, I need to set some sort of a follow-up where I say you come in and now let's practice the thing that you were weakest at. Otherwise this call coaching is, it's just, okay, I've told you and I hope you do it.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that never works. I realized I sidestepped a little. Did I answer your question on that, John? Yeah. For the most part, I mean, it's just, I mean, look, subjectivity is subjectivity, right? I think that's, I think that's the challenge of leadership is identifying the management that has the ability to communicate in a structured way to other people without it being their art form. Right. And I, one of the things I reference is it's almost like, um, you ever done a date night with paint night? You ever done paint night? Oh yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, you go and you grab a few, you know, it's usually at a local bar and there's a couple of easels in there and there's an artist up on.

Right. And, and it's funny because I did this with my wife early days and she is like, I took art when I was in school. My mom's an artist, so I'm a kind of a hack, but I can get around, I can get my way around a painting brush. Right. My wife is the exact opposite. She's a scientist. She literally has a hard time making stick figures. Okay. So we walk into this date night and there's a Monet up on the wall and she almost has a panic attack. She's like, what the, like, this isn't even, why should I even like that? Come on. Like, this is ridiculous. I go, just, let's just go through the, like, let's have a drink and go through the process. Yeah. And what the artist does is stands up there and says, okay, everybody, you have four paint brushes in front of you and four different colors.

Pick up paintbrush. Number one, dip it in the yellow and put a, you know, a yellow circle up in the right hand corner. Okay. Now take the blue paintbrush. Number two, put it in blue and do a swath across the bottom like this. And then blah, blah, blah. And they walk you through a process. And at the end of that process, everybody's shit kind of looks like a Monet. Yeah. Now some look better than others, but there's a structure to it. So I guess that's what, you know, framework structure versus scripts. I never want to script a coaching session. I never want to tell you exactly what to say and how to say it to a rep. I want to give you a framework so that I can help test a bunch of different approaches in here.

And I guess I'm curious because you talk a lot. I mean, you have a, you know, a sales play that we're going to get to like that you build in 25 minutes for that. And there's a structure to it and all these different things. So I'm, I'm searching for, you know, a framework for coaches to just think through how, what, and why they should be coaching on certain things, understanding it. It's not about their personality and what worked for them. Got it. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's essentially, let's dissect what a good call looks like. Let's say we're doing a qualification call, right? Just to make it this example. So we know that for a good qualification call, we're building some rapport.

We're asking questions about their business. We're tying that to our point of view briefly, and then we're building into a next step. I want to learn more about you. Maybe we get a brief demo. So we know the ingredients of a good qualification call. So what I would want to do is I would want to show an example of a good qualification call, maybe from one of their peers. And then as I'm coaching them, I've broken it down into those ingredients. And now I'm evaluating each one. So in your example, it's, let's look at the way you did the horizon line. Let's look at these brushstrokes. Let's look at, you know, how you've brought this part together. And so I think like, as far as a framework for call coaching, that's probably about as specific as I usually get.

Whenever you get into training and coaching, then you can start to break it down into the paint by numbers, which is let's now go from outreach, you know, contact identification, ICP personas, discovery, you know, negotiation, et cetera. And that's when I start kind of painting the painting, if that makes sense. Okay, perfect. Where does it fall on the rep at this point? So, you know, look, best case scenario, rep joins a company that, you know, built out enablement function, great onboarding program, given all the tools in the world. The likelihood is that's not going to happen. The very few organizations have a very well-defined enablement team that actually works well with the sales org and gives a great, you know, usually it's maybe a couple of videos, go watch this stuff and now here's your territory.

Good luck, right? So there's a challenge that I'm seeing right now with a lot of reps who are sitting back and waiting or complaining or blaming their organization for not investing in them. Not, you know, not, I don't have the right tools. I mean, I couldn't believe it the other day. I was standing in front of, I did a keynote and I was talking a lot about AI and chat GPT and all these custom GPTs that I've created to do certain things and showing how they work and legit, one of the kids raised their hand and said, well, our company doesn't give us the $20 version of chat GPT. So what would you suggest? I was speechless. And I usually, I don't like say there's a stupid questions, you know, there's no stupid question.

I'm like, that's a stupid fucking question. I go take out your goddamn credit card, put $20 on it. And like you literally, you can't put a hundred bucks a month on your credit card. To me, that means you're not in sales because if you don't believe that that $100 is going to buy you a million, basically, then you're out of your mind. So I get so insanely with the amount of free information there is out there with, with chat GPT right next to us as the best coach and best trainer I've ever seen in my life, better than I will ever be. Where does it fall upon the rep to coach themselves, to enable themselves, to get their training or to ask their managers who might not be delivering? How does it, how does, where does it lie?

And then how do they do it specifically going up, up to their manager and asking for help? No, I think that's an incredible question. And it's something that I've always said is someone says, well, I'm not being enabled enough. And I say, well, what have you asked for? What have you asked for in the last three weeks that you're not getting? Is it, is it that you're asking and not getting, or is it that you're not asking? And what I would say is you, you cannot wait for good coaching. You have to go get it yourself. And there are a lot of different ways that you can do this. Hey, he's going to give you a couple of examples here of how you can go and proactively ask for training from your managers and your organization, but you can also go invest in yourself in training.

And that's exactly why I put together the JV Sales membership. And I highly recommend you check it out. It will give you everything that I know, every tool, tactic, technique, structure, template. Go to jbarrows.com, click on individual membership and use promo code podcast for 20% off. Now let's back to the show. First, your relationship with your manager, that is your second best relationship that you have second only to your prospects and customers. So your relationship with your manager should be a priority for you and you should be treating your manager as a resource that you are leveraging on a weekly basis. The first thing I always think about is one-on-one documents. People go into a one-on-one with their manager and they're like, well, we'll just see what happens.

Let's see what we end up talking about for this 30 minutes. Absolutely not. You should be going in with a very structured, these are my top deals and this is where I need your help right now. These are the skills that I want to practice and I want you and I to work on these skills together. These are the roadblocks that are pulling me away from revenue generating activity that I need your help getting rid of. I should not be doing that work as my manager. Help me pull that off so I can focus on revenue. And then you should be committing to things as well. So if you're coming into a one-on-one, you should be saying, you know, these are the things that I'm focused on this week. Does that mesh with you?

Is that what you think I should be focused on this week? The second thing that I would mention here is we think a lot about, you know, what are the different ways that we can leverage your manager? Territory and account planning is a big one. Have them review it with you. Have them actually looking through and making sure that you're prioritizing in the right way. But going back to what you and I were talking about with call coaching, managers don't have time to coach 50 calls a week, right? You can make it super easy for them if you tell them the one call you want them to coach. And I would always recommend to a rep, send your manager a call. One, because it shows you're coachable. It shows that you want that feedback, that you want to grow, that you want to learn.

And two, because it gives your manager a very easy thing that they can do for you. They're going to go listen to that call. They're going to give you feedback on that call. And so I think that, you know, asking for those things, asking for career support, those are all areas that I've seen people work very, very well with their manager. I'm curious though, have I, have I missed anything? Because you've seen these relationships quite a bit as well. Yeah. I, I mean, I think you hit it right with just being proactive with what you think, what you know you need. Um, but these days though, I think coaching of all the applications of AI and sales, at least I think coaching frontline coaching is where it can make the biggest difference.

And the reason I say that is because I'm seeing a pretty disturbing trend and maybe you can validate this reps don't like feedback right now. Like the younger generation just doesn't like feedback in general. And so what happens is there's this weird negative loop because, because most kids coming out right now and I'm sounding older and older, like my dad these days, but it, you know, but it is what it is, um, because they don't like feedback and they, a lot of them get offended by it, even if it is direct, they, they put the subjectivity layer to it. Well, my boss doesn't like me. That's why I'm getting that shitty feedback, right? So, and even if it is constructive, even if it is legitimate, that feedback might not be received by that person because of whatever subjective thing is in their head about what they think or how they react to it and all that other stuff.

So then in the worst case scenarios, the rep then goes and talks to HR about, Oh, I'm not being treated fairly. And now the boss is scared to give feedback. So now average feedback across the board. Yep. Yep. You're doing good. You're okay. Yeah. Everything's all right. Fine. And so it's almost like this, it's getting worse, not better because of the maybe generational divide, whatever. Whereas AI is, I mean, for whatever you want to say is objective, right? Cause you can, you can put a call recording and say, here's how they build rapport. Did they ask the open-ended questions? Did they do this? Da, da, da, da. And then right after that call, the rep gets a nice little dashboard to hit that endorphin rush for them.

Right. So that's like, Ooh, I did a really good job here. And then it aggregates that information up to the boss to say, all right, boss, systemically, you have an issue here. Every single one of your reps has this problem. So you need to go get some training for everybody for that. But Johnny over here, he, he needs help in this and Sally over here, she needs help with that. So my hope is, is that AI is actually going to really give managers a leg up and, and help truly engage and coach reps with the front part of it being taken care of with AI. So are you using AI to do that in any way? Or like, how are you looking at AI from a coaching standpoint? Absolutely. I am. And I think that if you're not, you're falling behind.

I think that AI is 100% a way that you can start to scale some of the things that you're doing. The big thing that you have to remember with AI is that it needs context. It needs to know what you're selling, how you're selling it. Like I, I always tell people give AI as much information as you are allowed to give it and then ask it to coach your calls and then ask it to take a look. Um, but I use it. I think every rep should be, uh, you can download a transcript of your call and send the transcript over to AI. It'll give you very quick feedback. And what I always do is I say, tell me the top three things that I should have improved. And, and I did that way it knows, you know, let's just focus in on these one, two, three things, um, all call recording software.

That's good is starting to implement AI and, and give trend analysis, but almost no sales leaders are using it in the way that it should be. And so, um, I've had, I've had leaders come to me and say, well, how are people responding to pricing out there? I say, that's a question I can just go ask your call recording software. How are people responding to pricing? And it'll surface all the trends that it sees. So the short answer is you should absolutely be using AI to coach. If you're a rep, it takes 30 seconds to upload your transcript after every call and get some quick, easy, uh, feedback that is from someone that doesn't dislike you. Actually, that's the danger right now. Apparently with AI is that, uh, it's, it's too friendly.

Yeah. So I don't know if you've seen some of the trends right now. It's, it's, it's doing nothing but praising everybody. Oh, you're the greatest. Oh, you're the best. It's like, no, no, no. I need you to be a jerk. I need you to be, I, you know, I need you to be an asshole here. I don't need you to keep feeding my ego. So that's why customizing the GPT is so important because if you don't customize the GPT, it'll just give you fluff a lot, right? It'll, it'll tell you all the things that you want to hear, which is not what, you know, the goal is here. And we can talk for, I mean, people are using AI for therapy now they're using it for, and it's so validating that it's like, you know what? No, I need you to push back on me a little bit.

That's so I actually, I did my newsletter recently about, I don't know, it was probably like three, three weeks ago. And I, and I, cause I had been scrolling through Instagram and somebody had put together a prompt to be a therapist. And I was like, interesting. And I've, I've personally, I've never done therapy. I've tried it a couple of times, but my whole thing is if you've ever seen, um, uh, Goodwill hunting. Oh yeah. With Robin Williams. Like if I could skip to my Robin Williams and, and find that guy, like, dude, I'll go to therapy every day of my life. Right. But I don't want to go through all the bags of shit to get there. Right. I don't want to have to deal with, you know, all these other idiots that I just don't relate to.

So I was like, all right, well, maybe I can create my Robin Williams. Maybe I can use AI to create my Robin Williams with this post and a little bit of context. And I'll tell you, I, I, I created a custom GPT with it and it, it diagnosed a few of the challenges that I was trying to deal with pretty well. But to your point, it was, it was almost too supportive. It was almost too positive for, you know, for what I was looking for. So, and there's a danger because it will go down whatever path you want it to go down. So if you are really looking for therapeutic help, it's good in some ways, but I, I'd be a little bit worried because of now what it's recommending to people and a few scary things that I've seen out there.

So, uh, but yeah, I, I, without question, I think that that is the, the AI therapist. I already know it's an app, right? It's a real thing that hopefully we'll do more harm than or more good than harm. So, um, all right, let's get into some of these plays, um, that you've put together. Cause you got one that's a 25 minute sales play that helps drive results, you know, right out of the gate. So talk to me a little bit about that. And is that something you do? When did you come up with that? Was that at Miro? Yeah. So, you know, when I was, when I was at Miro, we wanted to implement sales plays. That was the, the directive. Let's implement sales plays at Miro. And that was about what we got. And it's pretty vague.

Well, we put together a really smart team of individuals. We had a lot of great people working on this and we overcomplicated the hell out of it. We came in and we were like, we're going to micromanage every step of the sales process. We're going to give them the exact messaging, the exact people, the exact discovery, you know, every stage is going to be, and we're going to measure it all. We had these big dreams and, and ultimately the sales reps just felt a little overwhelmed. So they were like, look, we, we have no doubt that you can generate some meetings out of this, but this is too much. It's way too much for me to understand and still do all of my, my day to day. And, and it fell a little flat.

And it fell flat even with all of the intelligent people we had working on it. So we went back to the drawing board and we said, let's make this ultra simple. Let's make this ultra simple. We're going to list out a list of jobs to be done that our product does. Well, just list all the cool things that our product can do, the problems that it solves. And then we're going to map that to personas that care about it, right? This all seems very boilerplate so far, right? So I've listed out a list of jobs to be done. I've mapped them to a specific title that cares about each of those things. That's my point of view. And that's my list of contacts. The next thing that I need is a super quick, super easy outreach sequence.

AI. AI can help me with that. I'm going to go to chat GPT. I'm going to say, I'm going to help this title with this specific problem. Build me a six step outreach sequence. I know people argue over how many steps is the right amount and all that, but, but ultimately we need some emails, some phone calls, some LinkedIn requests and give it a case study or two, right? And then, and now you've got your personalized outreach messaging. You've got your list of people. You've got your job to be done that you're solving. The last thing that you need are a very short list of three to five discovery questions and an elevator pitch. And once you have those things, you have a sales play, in my opinion, you have ultra targeted sales play.

That is a specific persona with a specific problem, tailored messaging questions you can ask. Once we took that approach, we started to see meetings pour in. We started, I think I don't want to give the wrong number, but we definitely saw over 120 meetings within the first few months start pouring in from a simplified targeted approach. And so my recommendation, when you think about building out a sales play is what I just said with the help of AI can be done in 25 minutes. It's so easy to put that together. And then the other advice that I would give there is now you've got one. Now take the rest of that list and start building out more and start to multi-thread your sales plays and start to say, okay, well, maybe this one didn't work.

So I'm going to try this one next week. And then you start to hone in on what's actually bringing you success. Versus what isn't. And that's my approach to using sales plays to generate quick, effective meetings. And so the education process along there, right? I find similar to your philosophy, right? If you don't involve managers in the training, then it falls flat. If you don't involve reps in the development of content, right? I see so many companies, you know, let's pick a cadence tool, right? Whatever. Where marketing owns the messaging, right? So marketing locks it down. They come up with the messaging. They create the sequences of the cadences. And they give them to sales reps with almost no autonomy at all.

And they ask them to push buttons. And when that happens, reps turn into robots. And I don't quite frankly understand why organizations do that in the first place. Because why do you need a rep to push the button if you're not going to allow them? So where's your philosophy, I guess, on going back to kind of the structure versus scripts versus full autonomy to do whatever the hell you want, right? Because I'm a rep here. And if you script it out for me, I'm okay, boring. If you don't give me any guardrails at all and tell me, John, do whatever the hell you want to do, you know, any one of those tools becomes a rat's nest and nobody learns anything. So how do you get the rep involved in learning to produce the result?

Yeah. I saw this done very, very well at Miro from our head of corporate sales. What he did, and I wish I could take credit, but it was all him. He came in and basically said, every two weeks, we're going to focus on a different sales play in the exact way that I just described it. And what he did at the beginning of those two weeks is he brought all of his reps in and said, let's build this out together. The strategy is this target persona and this point of view. And he directed the strategy, but he did not direct the details. What he did was he came in and said, let's work together on the details. Yes, we can build some, some basic outreach stuff and we can start to talk about the case studies we would want to use and things like that to generate meetings.

Yes. We can go through some discovery that we think would be valid qualification, but ultimately he allowed the reps and himself to work together on that. And then every two weeks they were doing a different sales play and the reps had direction. We're doing this with these people, but how we do it specifically, we have some autonomy there. And I found that that was the right balance. Whenever I saw him do that, I started replicating that because that was, it was working. Hey, what he just described there is exactly what I recommend clients do after the training to implement it on a consistent basis. I'm about to explain to you how it's done, but if you want to learn more on how to do it yourself, join the JV sales membership today.

Go to jbarrels.com. Click on individuals under training, put in coupon code podcast for 20% off and start executing today. Back to the show. Yep. I love it. Yeah. That's actually, uh, what I recommend coming out of my training. I have this document where it is like, it's like, okay, here's how to do this every month. Get together as a team, pick a persona, do some homework on that persona, what they care about. Ideally go get an extra, a client that comes in, uh, to who fits that persona and just do a Q and a with them. Right. So the reps do some homework on that persona. So they're not asking stupid questions. Like, tell me about your priorities and dumb shit like that. They're saying, Hey, we just read in Forrester where, our CFOs and financial services are dealing with these things.

Are you seeing the same stuff? So they're, they're actually watching and engaging with the person that they're about to create a persona driven cadence to. Then after that, they craft messaging and we break up into groups and you create a message for that. We create a message for that, whatever. And then we collectively put it together into a sequence and then we execute. Right. So literally like two hours at the beginning of the month, we all get together business acumen, learning everything, involvement, and then executing. Now it's just, okay. And you, and the reason I do that from a group standpoint is so that we can get the numbers up there to have split testing and those types of things have any relevance at all.

Right. Cause you got to do a certain amount of volume to start to figure out what's working and that motion, just doing it once a month. Right. It gets everybody involved. And I just, I, I don't understand why, and maybe you can, you know, you come from sales. So I think you understand obviously why it's so important to, to involve the sales team in what you're doing, because if not sales reps are like, yeah, F off. You know what I mean? It's at most sales reps. I know if you tell me what to do, it's going to be like, piss off. If you involve me, I'm in. So why do you think so many enablement teams? I'm going to put marketing in there too. Marketing and enablement think that they're smarter than us to come down and not involve us.

What's the disconnect there? I think the biggest disconnect, I feel like I'm going to get in trouble for saying this one. I think the biggest disconnect is that you have to remember that enablement teams and marketing teams, they also work for somebody. And that person, typically somebody towards the top of the leadership chain, normally they're coming in and giving a directive. They're saying, this is how I want my people selling. This is the gap that I'm seeing. And I want you to go fix it. And I say that that's actually not what I'm seeing. And they're like, no, that's the problem. Let's go fix that problem. So a lot of it, I would say, maybe be a little patient with your enablement team or your marketing team, because sometimes they're being given an order and they're just following those orders as well.

The other thing though, is you've got to keep raising examples when things are not going right. If marketing is giving you messaging that's not working, raise examples, tag them in calls, say, Hey, I tried your messaging and this guy just laughed me out of the room. All right. If you can give them specific examples, probably they're looking for those examples so they can say, Hey, we actually want to pivot. So I would say a lot of times enablement and marketing, it's not that they're just disconnected people. It's that they're actually serving two audiences and sometimes it's hard to balance. And that's why, you know, enablement specifically, you know, marketing, whatever I have my marketing degree.

I got my marketing degree and marketing background. I get it. Right. But enablement is the one that is, is inherently stuck in the middle. Yeah. Right. Because there's no, there's no CEO. There's no chief enablement officer. There's a chief marketing officer, a chief sales officer, a chief revenue officer, you know, but there's no chief enablement officer. And so inherently it's just, it's like HR, right? I mean, yes, there's CHROs, but nine times out of 10, a CHRO is not truly sitting at the table from a strategic standpoint, right? They're usually, Oh, you know, make sure that people are happy and, you know, we're not getting sued for shit. And, you know, maybe some Friday afternoon, you know, beer and pizza.

So exactly. Yeah. So it's almost always this middle ground that they're stuck to your point, managing two masters. It's, they got to manage up, right. And, and maintain those expectations, but still do while still managing down and getting everybody else to do it, which is a brutal position to be in. So with that, let's finish up on this. Where do you see enablements evolving to? Because there's a big debate right now of, of like, you know, with all the AI stuff, with all these different things, is enablement going to become more important, less important? Is it going to be more automated with AI? And there's just going to be a couple of people sitting up at top, like looking at data and pushing things around.

Like, where do you see the next two years for enablement and how is it, how do you think it's going to evolve? It's a really good question. I think that number one, absolutely. We will be able to do more with less with AI. I think that AI can start to take some of the lift out of like, I can build training materials in minutes now, John. I mean, literally some of the training that used to take me weeks to build, workshops that are personalized, that are better. AI is making it better. It's making it more effective because now I can build tailored workshops with tailored personas. I can create, you know, mock calls with actual AI avatars that people are talking to. It's wild. Some of the stuff we're going to be able to do over the next two years.

So I think more with less, absolutely. Counterintuitively though, I think that it's actually going to get, I think that enablement needs to get more in the weeds. I think enablement needs to get more in the trenches. We need to be listening to more. We need to be listening to more calls. We need to be talking to more reps. We need to be working one-on-one with more managers. Like, I think we need to get off the, we're up here doing trainings and workshops and we need to get down into the, almost the sniper approach of where do you need specific help? And how can I, how can I do that within the next two weeks? And so it's something that I really enjoy doing. So maybe some of this is hope. I hope it's, but I think we're going to see more targeted coaching, more AB testing, which can be done with AI and, and being able to do far more with less.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing that I'm a little bit hopeful for, you know, the, the optimistic pessimistic side of me is I'm hoping that, that it is more with less, but it's it's not because we're cutting. It's because we're just not hiring as many. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's like, Hey, we get, we got this base here and we got this solid base of good people in whatever department it is. And now they're going to be able to do three, four, five times more than anybody would. So we're not, we're actually not going to hire anybody moving forward. So that's from a macroeconomic standpoint, that's a, that's tough, but at least it's not a job loss scenario, which everybody is worried about, right?

Everybody's worried about AI is coming in. It's going to cut everybody's jobs. And it's like, well, if you have some experience and you know what you're talking about and you're a decent employee and you figure out this AI stuff, you're actually going to become invaluable in a lot of ways. But if you're, you know, just going through the motions, yeah, you're going to get replaced. And, and that's kind of the balance that I'm trying to figure out where that's going to land. Well, and something really important that you just said is even if you have the most productive AI helping you in the world, you still need someone who is mentally dedicated to doing you need someone who wakes up every day.

Like I do, like an enablement person does and says, my job is to make their job easier. And, and if you don't have someone completely dedicated to that, then all the tools in the world aren't going to help. Yeah. I mean, ultimately what I keep saying is, you know, it comes down to the give a shit factor. Yeah. It's the one thing that AI can't do. They can pretend to care. Yeah. But it fundamentally can't, right? So a human, at least care about humans, AI is going to care about some other stuff, but it's not going to care about humans fundamentally. And so that to your point, it's a, it's the same thing I talk about reps, like stop treating your prospects as a number, treat them as a, somebody who gets up in the morning, puts on their clothes, just like everybody else puts, you know, takes their kids to school, sits in the line to do this and get, has their boss yelling at them.

Like until you think of them from that perspective and you get out of the, I got to hit my numbers, I got up my cadences out there and that type of stuff. Like that's where the bridge is. It's, it's the give a shit factor because I can tell even right now I'm getting, I mean, I'm getting hammered with emails and, you know, and LinkedIn comments and, and all of it is AI. And I could tell, and some of it's really good too. Some of it's like super personalized. I'm like, holy shit, but I can tell it's AI. Yeah. And I, the only way I keep describing it is it's it just doesn't have a soul. There's something about it that just, I, I just pick and maybe it'll get that much better, that much faster, where eventually I'm not going to have any idea what's real and what's not.

And I think we're, we're headed there, but I still think the give a shit factors, the human is, is going to be the X factor for humans. And to your point of getting up in the morning and really thinking about those reps and be like, you know what, that one needs some help today. And you know what, that one, I know them personally, and I know they're going through a hard time right now with their family. So I'm not going to lean on them as much as an, you know what I mean? That's where the humanity comes in from a manager and a coach and that type of thing is, is taking the, the non data objective things and looking at it from a holistic standpoint as a person and saying this person's struggling, but it's not because they're not good at what they do.

It's just, they're going through a divorce there, you know, whatever, whatever the hell it is. So that's where my hope is of, of where humanity still has a, has an edge. Couldn't have said that better. It's an emotionally driven career and we need emotionally driven people to, to care. Yeah, exactly. Awesome. And well, uh, I think the, you know, unpacking where enablement's going is, is a topic all in and of itself that we could dive into the weeds with, but, uh, let's tie this one up in the interest of time here. Where can people find out more information about what you're doing, crunch base, what you're working on, uh, all that fun stuff. Yeah, absolutely. We'd love for you to learn about crunch base.

It's about.crunchbase.com. You can see all the latest and I would love for you to connect with me on LinkedIn. Uh, so LinkedIn it's Nicholas a Hill, all one word, Nicholas a Hill, put the link in if we can. And, uh, we'd love to connect with you. Yeah. And I, I highly encourage everybody out there listening to check out, if you haven't checked out crunch base in a while, check them out because they've made a bit of a pivot to, to, to starting to predict a lot of stuff as opposed to just being a repository of really cool information. So, uh, I'm really impressed with what you guys are doing over there. So thanks again for coming on, man. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.

And everybody hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I said, on the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day in the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going. It would mean the world to me. If you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network.

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