15. Rich Isaac ~ Sandler Training, Hauppauge, NY

Transcript

0:03 All right, so we have another episode of Tailwind. Today we're joined by Rich Isaac. What are some highlights people should know about you uh before we dive into the conversation?

0:12 Thanks for inviting me, Austin. I'm looking forward to to this conversation.

0:16 So, I'm a Sandler franchisee like some of the other folks you've probably um had on your show. I've been in the business this year. It'll be 30 years,

0:23 which is hard to imagine how that how that those years flew by. I happen to be in the New York territory, but we're affiliated with franchises all over the

0:32 country. And it's been just a great joy to be able to help people um predominantly as it relates to sales and

0:38 business development, but uh as you may know, Sandler goes beyond that in terms of helping people become better communicators, um more confident people, and so on. So that's who I am.

0:49 Yeah. Nice. Well, we were talking before we hit record about um inbound and how to handle that. I'd love to go back to that example that you were talking about and kind of dig in.

0:58 Sure. Yeah. So, obviously there's a lot of focus as it should be on how do you generate leads? How do you um whether

1:06 that's marketing based things through podcasting like you do or through email campaigns or through outbound phone

1:13 calls or the or trade shows or whatever it might be. Um and we can't minimize how important that is and I know you spend a lot of time on that.

1:21 But on the other hand, once that works, then people ideally are going to email you or even better call your organization.

1:30 Um, and I think what we've seen, and I have a real example that I'd like to share of a uh a confused company,

1:38 happens to be a law firm. We work across sales organizations, but also many other professional organizations that have to sell their services. Yeah,

1:46 in this case it's an estate planning law firm who have done a good job of generating inbound calls. Um, but I think people minimize, okay, what

1:54 happens when that person actually gets, you know, that inbound phone call, how well do they handle it, just as that outbound conversation has to be

2:03 extremely well thought out, extremely um, you know, has to build rapport instantly, has to do all kinds of positive things.

2:12 It's just as true on inbound. In fact, I would argue that if there's an inbound lead, it's very often someone who's looking at several options. They might

2:18 be calling three law firms or three IT firms or whoever you might happen to be. Yeah.

2:23 So, I've noticed I asked them uh because they were having trouble converting to appointments and I said, "Can I just listen to some calls?"

2:31 And boy, I'll tell you about how that worked.

2:35 Yeah. Um I mean, so what do you think is the the foundational mistake that they were making with those inbound calls that, you know, maybe they should have been paying attention to?

2:44 Yeah. So, first things first is, as I think is unfortunately often the case with people who are doing the outbound calls for a company, they're taking

2:52 something that's maybe the hardest thing to do to build instant rapport with someone um to find some initial pain to use a sailor term, you know, a need, an

3:01 opportunity, and they're often giving that in the outbound side to people who aren't as well trained, aren't as experienced, and it's a darn hard thing

3:07 to do. The same thing I think is true in many organizations inbound, whether it's an administrative administrator type of

3:15 person answering the phone or in this case what they refer to as an intake group. And you know what they're tending to do? They're order takers. They literally you can hear the Yeah.

3:24 name, phone number, totally clinical.

3:27 So they're placing people, no disrespect to them, but listening to a few of their calls, one person was better than the others.

3:37 Um and and um what do you need to do on an inbound call? Similar to what you need to do on an outbound call, which is

3:45 what are you doing, saying, acting to immediately differentiate yourself from the other three calls that

3:53 someone's probably making to law firms or IT firms or distribution firms or whoever they might be reaching out to if the marketing got to them,

4:01 right? applying that pattern interrupt in the inbound as well because you know we talk about that for the outbound but then being like hey how do we make it so

4:09 that experience is different. How do we answer the phone and not just go what's your name? What's this? You know let me just you like treat you like part of bureaucracy which nobody really enjoys.

4:20 Yeah. Yeah.

4:22 For sure. Yeah. So, just to give you some examples, you know, sort of the way it's sounding as I was as I was describing it. One person was a little bit better than the rest, but it was

4:30 still like, "Can I have your number?" This is one of my least favorite little ps. Can I have your phone number in case we get disconnected? I mean, how many

4:37 people have heard that like a thousand times? Is that even valid? I mean, it's in your system. You have my phone number. Let's let's not go there. Can I have your name? You know, and in this

4:45 case, these are people who are very often calling with something quite serious. It could be as simple as, you know, my uh we really need to um we

4:54 realize our wills are not up to date. We hear about these trusts. I mean, it's pretty serious um and meaningful stuff

5:01 to these people or worse um you know, I have a relative who's on Medicaid and I don't really know how to handle the billing. I mean, this is kind of stuff

5:09 that's has sort of instant pain and if people are not capturing that. So, let's think in terms of the typical whether

5:16 outbound or inbound call from a sal perspective. Austin, which I know you're familiar with.

5:21 First things first is you have to build rapport, right?

5:25 So, when you're going name, number, ain't no rapport there. That's for darn sure, right? Second of all, you want to build a little upfront contract, which

5:33 you know, they have this scripted, but that's exactly what it sounds like. Do you have 10 minutes for this call? You know, that kind of stuff literally, you

5:39 know, quite literally. um they um they're hearing someone who is articulating some pain indication if not

5:48 direct pain. pain indication being something like yeah we're really concerned you know we really don't know if we have the kind of right will and trust and something about a a uh a

5:57 healthc care proxy you know so they're confused there's now that's not pain as you know in Sandler you'd have to ask a few questions tell me about that how do you know about that how do you get them

6:05 to dig a little deeper but sometimes they're literally calling with emotional stuff like I'm really worried about my mom and they go I and this is what

6:15 they're saying things like this I understand no you don't understand not when you say it that way. Yeah. Exactly.

6:21 So to me the the skills that would be required in an inbound not so different from an outbound would be oh you know

6:29 just simple like Austin thank you so much for reaching out to us. I really appreciate the call. Um by the way I

6:36 know you reached out to me but uh do you have a few minutes so I could just ask you some questions? Make sure I put you in the right spot for example.

6:43 Oh sure. Yeah. Great. So again, right and just you could just it's the tonality is 90% of it in our humble opinion.

6:51 Like we kiddingly say that you could say this to someone which I wouldn't ever recommend but if you say in the right tonality you can get away with it you

7:00 know to be perfectly honest Austin from my experience um really honestly you'd be crazy not to

7:07 buy from me. You just would be you know now I would never say that but if you if you have the right tonality you can almost get away with it. But the right

7:15 words like do you have 10 minutes? I understand with the with the wrong tonality accomplish nothing

7:23 right. I mean it makes perfect sense. Um so what was the you identified the problem they're clearly like not building rapport. I mean even if it's

7:32 not cold this is the beginning of the trust building exercise which is a sales process 100%.

7:37 And so you need to to fix that. You know what were the fixes that you put into place to address this concern?

7:43 Coincidentally, this is actually real time and I just listened to these calls. Oh. Oh.

7:49 Quite literally. I mean, I listened to the calls like two days ago. And so I I'll share with you what we you know what we will talk about in terms of of the fixes that would be required here.

7:59 Um I'll give you another quick example by the way of some things that were happening there. They were saying things like the person would say, "Well, can I

8:07 talk to a lawyer?" And they were going like, "Yes, it'll cost you $500." I mean, literally, that's what they were saying. Yes, you can speak to one of our lawyers, but the initial fee would be

8:15 minimum of $500, potentially $1,500 if it's a long And what do you think the people are saying? Thank you. That's what I heard several time. Thank you.

8:22 I'll call you back. Yeah, hold your breath on that. Never get called back.

8:26 Yeah, exactly. Uh there was another one where they apparently have an interim person uh an account manager of sorts who's not an attorney who they will

8:34 sometimes I don't know what this yet what the circumstances are but they'll say um hey what we'd like you to do is talk to Austin who's our account manager and he can explain things to you first.

8:44 He can't give you legal advice. He's not an attorney but he would be able to understand all the different options that we have understand your case better and then we'd be able to put you in

8:51 touch with the right attorney if it seems like it makes sense. Sort of like what I just said.

8:55 That's not what they're saying. What I heard was something like um uh yeah, you can talk to Austin. He's our account manager. By the way, he's not a lawyer. It's okay. You can't talk to a

9:04 lawyer. You were apologetic about this process.

9:07 So, to me, um and by the way, when someone asks about, as you may know, whether it's an outbound call or an inbound call, they

9:15 start asking about price too early. In the Sandler process, we know that talking about the money too soon.

9:22 Yeah. before we establish any rapport or pain is almost always problematic. It's also problematic to talk about it too late where the first time the person ever

9:30 sees or understands the prices when they get a proposal that you just wasted an hour writing. Yeah.

9:36 But um but in this case, you know, the appropriate thing if someone's asking about cost would be something like this because it's valid which which would be

9:44 um obviously the fees associated with what we do vary depending on different circumstances. So, I really would be guessing right now. I'm not even sure

9:53 it's a good fit. So, um let me share with you the process we typically go through. Um and then we can figure out

9:59 whether it's a potential good fit in in terms of us helping you and what the and then some other folks would be able to share with you the fees once we get that

10:07 far. Does that make sense, Mary? You know, right? Right. To be able to really get validation on something like that.

10:13 And that's that's typically the way I I might put it. So yeah, the thing that that the first question would that we'd ask,

10:20 which is always a hard question, is do you have people who are either skilled enough or capable of being skilled enough? Mhm.

10:28 Um to be able to do this job effectively, which might often mean you're paying someone because of their role as an intake person not very much

10:37 money and it's not working very well. So you tell me how that investment is working. Maybe you need to upgrade the people in terms of experience level,

10:44 skill level, communication skills, bonding, report, rapport skills, and so on. So then from there, it's like what's

10:51 the process, not the script. I don't even know if I have a problem with the things they're trying to gather in terms of information. Might that might all be totally relevant.

11:01 Yeah.

11:01 Even if they have to type things into a computer, at least say something like, "I hope you don't mind, but I do want to capture some information, so if you hear me clicking on my keyboard, you'll understand why." Yeah.

11:11 Right. Just something as simple as that.

11:12 Some of this stuff is when you're when you and I are talking about it also.

11:15 It's like this makes complete common sense, which is I think the beauty of Sandler. It just makes sense. It's just a logical approach. But we would talk about do they have the right people?

11:25 What is the process? How are they building rapport? Are these people capable of learning that?

11:30 Yeah. We're a big fan of explaining to people the step-by-step process they're going to go through

11:38 because that builds a lot of credibility. It would sound something like, "Let me share with you our process if you don't mind. My job is to gather a little bit of information to see if it makes sense for us to take it further.

11:48 The next step, if it does, would likely be to meet with one of our uh client engagement people. They have a much, you

11:56 know, a very broad understanding of all of our options. They could ask a lot of really important questions about your current situation

12:03 and and they would even be able to help you understand what the different pricing options are. And from there, if it makes sense, then certainly a meeting

12:11 with an attorney would be the third step. So, if you don't mind my asking Austin, does that work for you? Does that make sense? Right? And people are

12:19 like, yeah, that that makes perfect sense. Right? They're not doing any of that. So, it's a combination to use Sando expressions of

12:26 bonding and rapport building, upfront contracting, and at least initial painfinding.

12:32 But really, when we think in terms of rapport and pain, they're they're tied together is are you showing empathy to

12:38 these people to one of the people who I was listening to of the calls did a really good job with that. The person really seemed to engage on the pain

12:47 issue with the person seemed to really get it. Interestingly enough, the person answering the calls was Hispanic and the

12:54 person calling was Hispanic and fairly quickly they realized why are we speaking in English. Yeah.

13:00 And they broken into Spanish and you can see immediately the rapport was was was better, you know, so it was just easier for both of them. And I and my Spanish

13:09 is poito, so I didn't understand everything that was happening. But it was a good example of being flexible and not just saying I have to talk in English because that's part of my job.

13:20 Um it was it was good rapport building.

13:22 So there's there's a lot of room for improvement. It it's interesting because it seems like almost the structure that was put into place took them out of the

13:30 ability to be empathetic and like even just like what you're talking about here is like you know restructuring how they're thinking about this is going to allow them to have the space to be more

13:39 like have more empathy during the process cuz like as you're describing this this buyer's journey essentially right it's like if they're asking for

13:48 the attorney it's like well I don't know I'm calling you you're supposed to be the expert like do I need to talk to an attorney next and you go oh no no I I understand why you think that But

13:55 actually, there's a great first step or interim step that's not $500 an hour and like if they don't have that structure in place to be able to kind of

14:03 gently guide them direction like I'm I would never know what to do if I need to do some like estate planning. So I'd be calling being like help me out here. I'm

14:11 lost. I need to talk to somebody and then be able to not just go like well I'm just going to answer you like you said this answer here.

14:18 It's actually a well no here's we have a journey. You don't have to worry about it. Let's shepher you through our process. you know, Sandler always processoriented, right?

14:26 That's right.

14:26 And making sure that like, hey, let's think about what that person's going through, not just say, well, we have to get this information and then kind of

14:35 we'll not think about their side of the whole story here.

14:39 Yeah, very, very well said. You know, I think that there's another principle that we use in Sandler called the okay not okay principle. How do you make sure someone feels okay? And I can imagine

14:47 have them asking the question like, if you don't mind my asking, are you familiar at all with how this whole estate planning thing works? And the person can be like, "I'm totally

14:55 confused." And we say, "Not unusual." Most of the people feel the same way. In fact, when I first looked into this, I didn't understand it either. Oh, good. All of a sudden, it

15:03 just makes people makes people feel better.

15:06 I'm going to go with a wild guess here that if you are familiar with the process, you've already picked or worked with somebody and you're not doing it.

15:14 You know, you're not engaging in this inbound thing. And I would say, you know, I would assume I don't know the process. So, if I ever need to do that,

15:22 I'm going to call and then if I work with somebody and they're great, I'm not looking for an alternative option. I'm I'm stuck with them. I'm gonna keep working with them and like I'm not going

15:30 to do like an inbound motion at any point in time, I would imagine. And and if they if they are someone who's familiar, it could just be that they're shopping around for

15:38 a better price or something like that, which then implies your ability, this I think cannot be underestimated. your ability to make that person feel more

15:46 heard, feel better, feel more um, you know, listened to, feel more comfortable in many ways could be the

15:53 differentiation that allows you to charge $1,000 more than someone else does because and the people won't even

16:00 in Sandler, we often say people will buy emotionally, but they'll make the decision intellectually. In other words, they're going to pay someone $1,000

16:08 more, but if asked, they won't say because they made me feel better, right? they'll say because they seem to be a much more capable attorney. They're

16:16 intellectualizing their emotional decision. Um, interestingly enough, in this case, I uh one of the things I'll call into question uh as we continue

16:25 with this process, I'm going to have them watch this podcast. They're going to know what I'm going to work with them on is the question of, you know, they're

16:32 hellbent on not allowing at an attorney to talk to someone without a fee, which seems to make sense, as we say in Sandler, no free consulting. You don't

16:39 want to be doing that. But I would say this, if you're getting $500 for every appointment that they set for you and

16:47 they're not setting any appointments for you, how's that going? Right? So to me, is there an opportunity

16:54 this can this account client engagement person, whatever term they use, be really, really, really good to be able to sell this, you know, before they see an attorney?

17:05 Or is there an approach where there's an attorney who's really good at a 15minute conversation after this first call to win the deal that's going to be $5,000?

17:14 To me, that's a very good use of their time. To me, it's all about ROI on time and money. So, of course, we're talking

17:22 about this particular case, but I think this always applies. Don't think that um somebody has to take the ball all the

17:29 way down the court, all the way down the field who might not have the expertise in the products to be able to ask the kind of questions you would ask. Look,

17:37 this inbound person, you can't expect them to be the expert to be able to ask those perfect pain oriented questions that somebody else might be able to um

17:45 who is more experienced, but just experienced enough to get them to that person in a way that the person, you know, the inbound feels, you know, really comfortable.

17:53 Yeah. And it's interesting that like there's almost a prevailing thought that like the initial contact with an individual

18:02 shouldn't be with an extremely like valuable individual. Instead, it's like, hey, this get your best person on the first call. If you get the first call

18:09 dialed, you might be able to flub the second call, but if you flub the second call, there is no second or third, no second call, right? Like exactly.

18:16 It's like why why do we have this idea of devaluing the activity of trying to start the relationship when that's like

18:23 almost the most important time to have that most skilled individual in? Like if you think you know often times like my SDR team is reaching out to people.

18:32 They're the people who've only been around for you know you know 90 days in the role. Like they're still learning the company and now they're the first representation of your organization or

18:40 like at the intake. you know, the first representation of your organization is these people who are newer to the org or you know, being invested in as much,

18:48 which is like I get it from like a a big numbers game, but at the same time, it's like, h, but maybe we be more effective with the numbers we're getting. And then

18:55 we talk about inbound. I mean, that's the best possible starting point is somebody actively coming to you. And it seems like well, that's what started this this

19:04 thing. They they notice they're getting inbound calls. Whatever they're doing is working, but they're not converting. And as soon as I listened, quite quite literally, I

19:12 listened and then reached out to the person who had sent me them and all I said was, "Oh my goodness." Yeah.

19:18 And she was like, "I I know. I know." You know, it's it's sort of it's it was Anyway, so how we might go about changing that, but uh but that's exactly

19:27 right. I can even imagine saying under the right circumstances, do I want the higher level person, the expensive person answering the phone? It even as a

19:36 differentiator. Wow. for everybody else I I call I just get you know someone who's typing into a computer and here I

19:43 am talking to the owner of a business here I am talking to the a senior executive here I am that could be a differentiator itself obviously you'd have to do the math to see if that makes

19:52 sense if the person has time for it but one of the things Stanley used to joke about the guy who invented our whole system was those CEOs they're sitting around doing nothing anyway you know

20:00 they have nothing to do I don't believe that by the way but he would say they're the easiest people to call because they're just waiting by their phone and everybody, they've delegated everything

20:08 else. Don't think that's quite true, but uh that was one of his jokes back when.

20:13 So, I mean, and could you imagine if if the right ROI is coming in on that, why not have somebody start that conversation?

20:19 It's worth at least the experiment and then you could always start the process with like however that inbound is happening, you know, if it's a a form on

20:26 a website, you know, you know, ask them some details on what they're interested in. So, like, hey, we just need to know a little bit more so we get you in touch with the right person,

20:34 right? I'm sure that they have like, all right, I know that if they're reaching out about these five things and these other 15 things, these five things are

20:41 the ones that I want directly talking to a partner because this is the $50,000 payday and 5,000.

20:48 And it's like, great, these are the huge ones. Get the best people on it immediately every single time. And coincidentally, there, believe it or not, there's another uh estate planning

20:55 law firm I worked with a couple of years ago, and they discovered that the people who were far best at a closing these deals, you know, they they did they did have train an inbound person.

21:06 Interesting. The inbound person, they had the intake person, she wasn't an intake person originally, and she was really sort of shy. I don't know if I'm good at this. And and and having

21:14 listened to her, I'm like, she's really good at rapport.

21:18 She really is. get her sell her on the idea somehow to help her discover that she can do that job and

21:26 and she is. But who is she referring it to? They discovered that the the two partners who were the attorneys are the by far the best closers. And they were

21:34 trying to avoid that for some time, but they found that it's just it is it is just it's math, right? You have to do the the math that that mass numbers. Um,

21:43 I mean to me it's I look at it as the opportunity these folks have to do better is so dramatic. It's just so

21:51 dramatic. Um, and to me that's very encouraging. They just they called and said, "What's wrong? I don't understand what's wrong." And I said, "Let me listen to some calls." Now I know what's wrong.

21:59 Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that's going to grow in value as we see like AI replacing so many

22:07 things and automation coming in and like getting rid of a lot of grunt work, just the ability to build rapport and to establish and maintain trust is just

22:16 going to become more and more valuable as these things start to get um progressed more and more and we have more solutions and things are more automated and we get all that stuff.

22:23 It's like it's only going to be more important that these people that are great closers or these people that are higher up in the organization, it's like take stuff off their plate, start

22:32 building trust. That's what's going to win in the long run. Um especially with things being like there's going to be so many alternatives. It's like the alternative won't be like but if you

22:40 have trust with these folks, the alternative is not going to be interesting. And like to your point, they're going to intellectualize it and like oh they, you know, has more uptime

22:49 or you know works better, you know, blah blah blah. But really, it's like I I know that I can just call and I can get somebody able I'm not going to get an AI chatbot. I'm actually going to get

22:57 somebody who's going to do something for me and cares about me. Yeah. Is what the real reason's going to be.

23:02 So, so, so true. Yeah. Well said. I think that that uh you know, Sandler put this bonding and rapport sort of as the first step in our process,

23:10 but it's not really a first step. It's the whole thing. It's it's there as a reminder that it has to go throughout the entire process. And if you mess up

23:19 rapport, not that you can't recover from it, but uh but generally speaking, that that's the problem. You have to start with it and continue to grow it. And the

23:27 more pain you find from people and and and they real pain means they're sharing things and they understand that you understand and there's true empathy,

23:36 that's the best rapport, you know, you could build.

23:38 Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny because like I worked sales jobs early in my career. I was not very good. I can come up with a

23:47 whole re list of reasons why, but needless to say, like I had a distinct idea of what a salesperson was and did.

23:53 And then we all have like the bad experience with bad salespeople, which unfortunately outweighs the good experience with good sales people.

24:00 And sometimes you even just forget that you're talking to a salesperson and like have to double back like, "Oh, wait a second. That that's a person that's genuinely here to help me. Oh, and by

24:09 the way, they're a salesperson." And it's so funny cuz it's like this whole thing is like you know sales doesn't have the connotation enough of being like this is the trust builder. This is

24:17 your leaison. This is a person that you can lean on within the organization and that's like something that's just that's at the core of it all of it right 100%. Yeah.

24:27 And what's interesting about what you said a moment ago is if people don't have a process for doing what we talked about for really building rapport with people, um even if they have experienced

24:36 those bad quote bad sales people, pushy sales people, whatever term you want to use, um the default setting is to do that because they don't know what else to do,

24:44 right? If someone doesn't teach you how Yeah.

24:46 to do it otherwise, they're going to be like, I think I'm supposed to be aggressive, aren't I? And then that makes them uncomfortable and that makes the other person uncomfortable. It's like a lose-lose. But how are they

24:55 supposed to know? you know, they've been trained in whatever product, services, you know, or, you know, career that they have. But,

25:02 you know, these uh these these skills are are lifetime learning type of skills that uh to this day. I just we I just

25:11 recently used an a pretty cool uh it's an AI software tool so that you can practice. It's a roleplay tool.

25:18 Um and while it's doesn't sound like a real conversation per se, it does allow you to do your thing and then it critiques you. I've been doing this for 30 years and I found three or four

25:26 things that I'm doing that I could do better and I've been doing this for a long time. So, it's a lifetime opportunity to keep getting better at it.

25:34 Yeah. I I think you know to the point about like the position that you put in like people will behave in the system to what the system expects of them. So like

25:42 if you're like hey I am getting contact information and I'm trying to get the next meeting and that's what I've been told is my job and then my KPI is just

25:51 based on get that information do here and that's right that's what you're going to do. But if you can just step in and be like hey your first task isn't to

25:59 get anything. The first task is just to check in with them. Let them have a little bit of information on what's going to happen next. Then do this part

26:07 and then actually we don't actually care about that first book meeting. We care more about the higher quality first book meeting to the right person and just

26:15 even changing that system is going to you know that's going to be as and to use a word that you used before it's so much about the mindset you know

26:22 the mindset right now it's get the data get the appointment and they're getting data and not the appointment no change

26:29 the mindset but the mindset is is is be that first engagement with this organiz with this with your organization from

26:37 that person that has that person immediately think feel say oh wow this feels good I like these I want to spend

26:44 more time with this organization not necessarily with that person but uh that I think is the key regardless of what product or service you're

26:51 you happen to be selling and you know people talk about the challenge between marketing and sales oh my leads stink I don't get enough leads that whole thing I think this could be a key part of it

26:59 is that is that maybe the marketing messaging isn't right to generate leads or maybe the leads that are coming in

27:06 are um are not being handled Well, so um it's way easier to blame the marketing folks for the crappy leads, pardon my

27:15 vernacular, than it is to say we're not handling them well. So, uh quick aside on that, my co-founder comes from like a marketing background

27:23 and he's just been he's also doing salary training and so he's like getting on the sales side and he just laughs about this all the time. He's like, "I don't understand why marketing and sales

27:31 are always butting heads." He's like, "We're on the same team. We're doing the same stuff. Like, we're kind of the exact same thing." like but he's like I remember being a

27:39 marketer and just being pissed off at the sales team because they weren't using my inbounds well and then them coming back and like you guys are giving us bad inbounds and I just it's so funny

27:48 to have seen his evolution of being like oh I was so wrong in the past about that. That's kind of sorry for the tangent but like you're just making

27:55 that's grow that's growth and change. I think that's great. Absolutely. Um, well, this is going to be a silly reason to stop the conversation, but I have a

28:04 limited Zoom call and Okay, it's it's counting down and I don't want to get cut off before we can wrap this thing up. No problem.

28:12 Worst worst reason to end a conversation, but we are.

28:15 Um, any like parting thoughts uh or anything you want to, you know, say in summation that kind of puts a bow tie on this whole conversation?

28:22 Sure. Sure. First, I want to thank you for the opportunity. I know that several of my Sandler colleagues and if any of you are watching this, hey, it's good to see you guys too. Um, but uh, you know,

28:31 from my perspective, if people are watching this, my goal would be to think like, huh, what is happening in my sales

28:38 process or lack thereof that I just might not be thinking about. We're just talking about one aspect of it, whether it's outbound, inbound, or we're further

28:45 down the road. What are we doing to truly differentiate ourselves from the the likely scenario that someone is reaching out to two or three others of

28:54 us and how we always try to differentiate in product and services.

28:58 But there could be things associated with just the conversation itself that can be if not if not more important certainly as important as a

29:06 differentiated product or service. After all, that's harder to do. People have competitive products. Can you make your interaction with people a key differentiating point?

29:15 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's and it's like this the best opportunity. They're coming to you actively. So, it's an indicator that they're interested and

29:23 all you have to do is start with some great rapport instead of just being like, "Well, just get you in the meeting. Let's just schedule that meeting." It's like, "No, no, it's, as Sandler would say, sometimes you just

29:31 have to get out of the way of the sale and they're putting a process in there that's in incredibly getting in the way of the real conversation." So,

29:38 well, cool. Uh, Rich, really appreciate you uh spending the time sharing this insights. I hadn't thought about inbound in that way, but now I've got some own

29:46 think my own thinking to think about for my own business and to be aware of, which I'm excited to to apply.

29:52 My pleasure, Austin. Great to great to see you and talk with you. I really appreciate it.

29:56 We get