Todd Twete on Prospecting Metrics, Touches, and Funnel Math

Transcript

0:00 All right, we've got another episode of Tailwind. Today we're joined by Todd Tweety. And Todd, we're talking about the old metrics versus the new metrics.

0:10 Tell me more about that.

0:11 You bet. So more years ago than I'd like to admit, uh when I was an individual contributor, there was this notion that

0:19 I had to knock on somebody's door at least three times to get their attention to

0:26 to get a meeting for them to understand my value proposition kind of thing.

0:30 Well, that's an old metric. And the one that seems to be most uh uh accepted today is eight eight touches. And and

0:40 touches is kind of Todd speak, Todd nomenclature. Just think of a touch in terms of any kind of outreach, any kind

0:47 of interaction. And that can come in a myriad of forms. Of course, it's a call or an email, but it could be um a

0:54 prospect looking at a LinkedIn post. It certainly could be a prospect downloading a white paper. It could be a trade show booth conversation or

1:02 somebody walking by your trade show booth. It certainly could be a a digital ad, print ad. any of those things um

1:10 constitute a touch or my definition of a touch. So, the new metric, the current metric, if you will, is I've got to

1:18 knock on Austin's door in some way, shape, or form eight different times to get a first meeting with Austin. That's

1:26 not for Austin to become a customer, sign a purchase order, something like that. That's just to get a a first meeting, create some kind of top-of- mind awareness, uh that kind of thing.

1:38 And um again this old metric versus new metric uh conversation we had. I just think that eightouch metric really has

1:46 consequences and consideration in terms of uh prospecting prospecting activity and top offunnel activity. If you start

1:54 doing the the math and figure out how many touches have to occur to move somebody from top of funnel all the way

2:02 through the the sales process sales cycle and come out at the bottom of the funnel. Candidly, sometimes the numbers can be a little bit daunting.

2:10 Yeah. Now, would you say, you know, I should look at eight for just everyone or should I say, hey, if I have a real strategic account I'm going after, maybe

2:17 I do 20. And then if I have maybe some smaller accounts that I'm I'm testing an idea, maybe I do six just to keep the 20 available. How should I really think about that?

2:25 Yeah. Good. Well, great question. And um I'll say it again, it's an average. And there's definitely variables. Of course,

2:33 my industry, my business, that kind of thing is is it certainly can be a variable. Um, from some in in in the uh the lead genen

2:43 space, those that are providing those kind of services, those are providing those kind of data in a self somewhat self-s serving manner, they actually

2:50 push that number up. Often, they might talk in terms of 12 touches or more needed. Um, but there isn't really

2:57 interesting statistic specific to individual contributors. Um the proverbial rain makers, those that are very experienced and skilled, they can

3:06 actually push that uh touch number down just because of their approach to the prospect, how well they communicate, how well they communicate the value

3:15 proposition, and that's about five. So again, I would look at that eight as an average. There's certainly variables

3:22 that could push it up or down. Um, but if you were building a uh salesfunnel process with top offunnel lead genen for

3:31 the first time, I would plug in that eight and then of course uh measure it, re-evaluate it over time.

3:38 Would there be any advantage of let's say I become highly skilled and I'm I'm not there yet, but as I'm thinking about it, you know, and I start noticing, hey,

3:47 I'm noticing I'm actually getting your conversions around four or five and that's great. Would you still recommend keep it at eight? It can't hurt. Maybe

3:55 even put it at 10. And if you're getting through five, then perfect. That's not a big deal.

4:00 I hate giving this answer, but it depends. So, if if uh Austin is a team of one and your entire sales process and

4:09 your lead genen is just built for you, Austin, I would absolutely change it. If we're truly talking about a team of five or 10, I think I'd be looking at the

4:18 average overall for the team and adjusting the process based on is the average across the team eight, six,

4:24 nine, whatever the average is. Um, it's really difficult to build a process

4:31 like we're talking about. Let's use five for Austin, eight for Todd, 10 for Sam, six for Christy, that kind of thing. I

4:39 mean, you really kind of have to take an average across across the team, assuming you have one.

4:44 So, if I'm the sole contributor, am I moving that sequence down to five?

4:48 Because highly likely that steps six, seven, and eight because my average is down, those last three aren't really worth it. So, I should just move on to

4:56 the next person and fill my funnel more to get more outreach in because I have that more likelihood. And that's freeing me up. It's kind of like getting an

5:03 early no and their lack of answer is a by step five is basically it's a no.

5:08 Yeah, waste three more touches on that person.

5:11 I guess the way I look at that is is for the the same reasons you would want to improve um your conversion rate from

5:19 meeting one to say demo, trial, proposal.

5:23 Um just like you'd want to improve your conversion rate from proposal to to close.

5:29 It's similar here in in terms of number of touches. is if I can drive down the number of touches, the lift, the

5:35 resources, the expense I incur to create that first meeting can go down. Um, if I'm doing direct mail, for example, that

5:44 this is just one example, there's absolutely a cost associated with that.

5:48 Well, if I need to send out less direct mail to get uh to create those five touches versus eight, guess what? I just saved a bunch of money. Mhm.

5:57 So there's the practical consideration of just wanting to prove things uh to to move revenue numbers and obviously there's the practical consideration of

6:06 the level of effort and the resources needed to create those prospects in the first place.

6:10 Yeah. And then you were saying like okay if I have a team of you know 10 I want to have the average I want to be the average for the number of sequences.

6:18 What are some of the advantages of having everyone on that same average eight touch um versus customizing it to each? Well, it it it it somewhat um sets

6:28 a bar and and maybe you can even be a little bit more aggressive as an incentive uh and as a coaching and training tool that

6:35 maybe the average is being hypothetical here again, but maybe the average is eight. Well, we set up the the process based on seven because that's what we're

6:43 aspiring to. We want to do a better job on those discovery meetings. We want to do a better job on the outreach. We want to do a better job communicating the

6:51 value proposition. So, um, we're going to set the bar at at seven and see if we can't lift up performance to get there.

6:58 I mean, obviously in the real world that's happening. I threw out the five and eight a little while ago. The proverbial rain makers, the really successful, really skilled salespeople

7:06 tend to get that first meeting after five uh touches. The average is is is eight. Um, so that tells you there's a

7:15 skill set difference, an approach difference, a a a mindset difference.

7:20 And so because of that, I I feel like we could almost set the bar and use it as a coaching tool, an aspirational tool that okay, let's drive down the number of

7:28 touches needed to get to that first meeting.

7:30 Yeah, I like the idea of just simplifying the analysis, right? If if every if you have your average, then you just go, okay, everyone above the average touch, that's where I'm going to

7:38 focus on, you know, creating their messaging and looking at and everyone is at five, what are their what's their messaging? How are they different? Y

7:46 being able to just easily look at it instead of having to run it through some advanced statistical models like AI break it down look for stuff.

7:54 It's like it's simple. There's eight.

7:56 That's our average. Who's above? Get them down. Who's below? Learn from them and pass it on to everyone else. Agreed. Agreed. Incredibly easy. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.

8:04 Um so you were also talking about when you're defining touches, multiple different types of channels or different ways of doing it. um what's the value in

8:13 having more than just picking up the call a phone or just sending cold emails like why are people doing that?

8:20 Great great question and it's very common for for many SMBs across a variety of industries to have one or two

8:27 channels. Um, best practices tells us that if we have three or more channels, our conversion rate, um, suspects to

8:36 prospects, prospects to demos, demos to to to closes, that kind of thing, it goes up by 30%. So maybe I'm I'm just using email today.

8:45 If I add in social media, LinkedIn, if I add in direct mail, if I add in uh Google ads, something like that, all

8:53 those are different channels. Um if I get to the point of three or more, my conversion rate goes up by by 30 some percent.

8:59 Yeah, it's pretty compelling.

9:01 Yeah. And so so what do you think is the the reason that the diversification is driving that?

9:07 Um I I mean we are an information overloaded society, right?

9:13 At least and um that's part of it. The other part is depending upon your your prospect, we

9:21 all consume information differently. Um, you know, some people it's constantly the the the phone, others it's email.

9:29 Um, I know folks that uh when they're doing research, uh, they're looking for new products, looking for partners, it's all about a trade show visit, an annual trade show visit kind of thing.

9:40 So, at the point of somebody being top offunnel, you don't know a lot about this organization at that point in time.

9:47 Assumingly, they're top of funnel and in the category of what I refer to as being a suspect.

9:53 You might have some ideal client profile information like industry type, revenue, number of employees, uh that kind of

10:00 thing. Um there's this old notion of a marketing qualified lead. Uh that was often done on on some rudimentary

10:07 scoring and that often indicated well they've been on the website, they they downloaded a a case study or white paper that that kind of thing. So, we're

10:16 looking at them as a suspect, somebody that might do business with us, but we haven't got that first meeting

10:23 yet and haven't done our our our uh discovery. So, those suspects, again, we don't know a lot about them, and they all might consume uh information

10:32 differently. They might be in a different stage of the buyer's journey.

10:35 They might not be in a buyer's journey a at all. So I feel for all those reasons that's why the multi-channel approach is

10:42 so prudent and so necessary that um you know Austin might be on LinkedIn every day but never checks his email kind of

10:51 thing. So if I was only using the email channel to get to to Austin um he doesn't look at his email he's always on LinkedIn kind of thing. So, it's it's different ways that media gets consumed.

11:03 Um, but it's also different ways to deliver content. Um, I'll go back to that average of eight touches. Those

11:10 eight touches aren't all Todd calling and asking for a meeting. Yeah, those touches should be um I know it's a

11:18 bit of a a cliche, but thought leadership type, value ad type. Um there's certainly going to be a mix of

11:27 Todd calling and hoping he can get that meeting set up, but uh earlier I talked about a white paper download. Um could

11:34 be some industry news you're sharing. So it's not only different types of information. Um hopefully creating value

11:42 the whole time. uh but also just trying to reach people uh you know where they operate where they meet them in the

11:50 middle kind of thing in terms of how they consume information.

11:54 So let's say I'm sitting here I' I've been just sending cold emails. I sit down. I look up somebody on LinkedIn. I look up some information about them. I

12:02 write a really nice email but I'm I'm finding that I'm not getting great conversion rates. Now what would be, you know, my first steps to kind of breaking

12:10 it out? Do I just hit every channel imaginable? Am I trying to be targeted?

12:14 Is it research? Like how would I break out of my funk of here's the one thing I do is to send an email.

12:20 Yeah, another great question. Um I oftentimes ask clients, you know, what does your prospecting strategy look

12:28 like? And as I just mentioned a minute or two ago, oftentimes it's one or two channels that get used. Um, I might dig

12:35 into that a little bit, Austin, and and ask, "Okay, which one seems to work the best?" I mean, show me some some metrics in terms of open rates, response rates.

12:45 Uh, maybe even got some, you know, an anecdotal feedback from clients or prospects about, um, you know, I really look at your newsletter or I really look

12:53 at your LinkedIn post or something like that. Um, so I'd evaluate whatever you're using. And I know you're just being hypothetical in your example. It sounded like that channel wasn't

13:02 working. Um, but I would look at some that you're comfortable with and and um

13:09 sync well with the kind of content you want to deliver. Again, not every one of those touches is Todd calling looking for a meeting. Hopefully, I'm sharing

13:17 something of of value, something of interest to them. Again, back to that thought leadership type content. So I guess I would evaluate it from um you

13:26 know your comfort with the channels and and hopefully you know a little bit about how your prospects consume information their desired channel and

13:34 again how well does it sync with the type of content uh you want to deliver but in the back of my mind I would be keeping the the statistic in mind that I

13:44 need three channels at least to improve my conversion by by 30 some percent.

13:49 Yeah. Are there any uh you know benchmarks or stats out there that kind of say well maybe you're not comfortable with this channel but tough luck it's so

13:58 effective you have to Yeah. Yeah. Well I honestly I I I think LinkedIn is a great example. I mean there there's some school of thought

14:05 that oh gez LinkedIn is so overused and and I get uh inmails and and messages every day from people trying to be

14:13 partners people trying to sell me something. But the uh connection rates on average, the response rates on

14:21 average, it's pretty darn compelling that LinkedIn, even though it feels saturated, overused, is a very compelling channel. So that's maybe when

14:28 you got to shut off the the emotional thinking or the the gut feeling thinking and actually look at the metrics and say, hm,

14:36 you know, maybe I don't like my personal experience with with LinkedIn, but it's pretty compelling as a channel. Yeah. And what about emails and phones?

14:43 I mean, would you say those are Yeah. So, cold email, um, I'm going to spew a few statistics for you. It's somewhere around a one or

14:52 two% uh, response rate. Um, it's pretty low, but it it it's it's a channel that gets used uh, often time a

15:01 lot by a lot of different industries, a lot of different customers. It's one that I I typically recommend. cold calling, there's some variability behind

15:08 uh this percentage uh in terms of how warm the prospect was before they got the call or there there's some outbound

15:15 calling processes where an SDR gets the prospect on the phone and then hands it off to a BDR. So, there's some variability, but in general, you're

15:24 talking about a two and a half to three and a half% success rate there. So, uh you know, I make a 100 cold calls, I'm getting two to three meetings based on

15:32 100 cold calls. Um, and and you know, back to your question about why multiple channels, why multiple touches, it also

15:41 helps with top of- mind awareness because every time I turn around, I'm getting a message from Austin in some way, shape, or form. I see him on

15:49 LinkedIn. I get a direct mail piece from him. Now, I'm getting a voicemail piece from him. It definitely helps with the top of- mind awareness.

15:56 Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

15:58 So, I mean, it sounds like the the step would be to break out of a single channel by saying, "Okay, I need to start doing doing these multiple

16:07 channels, start tracking it." It's totally fine to start with what you're most comfortable with, start seeing how that affects your business, and then maybe test a little bit beyond. Does

16:16 that seem like a pretty decent comfort zone?

16:18 It it does. And um it can be a little bit of a heavy lift.

16:25 I I admit that. And you're going to have to do some tweaking and and measuring to to get it dialed in. But uh you got to

16:32 start someplace and and um you know, I love a lot of things about sales and one of the things I really love about sales, it's a numbers game, Austin. it always

16:41 has been and in the foreseeable future um it will continue to be and it's just a simple matter of fact that if the

16:50 number coming out of the bottom of the funnel, the amount of revenue, the number of customers isn't what you want it to be, guess what? It's just a

16:58 function of swimming upstream in that salesunnel and looking at the numbers upstream. If you're not throwing enough into the top of the funnel, surprise,

17:06 surprise, the right number's not going to come out of the bottom of the funnel.

17:10 So, again, I know it could be kind of a heavy lift, but if you're in a flatline revenue, topline revenue situation or

17:16 god forbid a declining, you got to fix it, right?

17:21 Yeah. Yeah. I guess there's two questions that emerge from that. The first one, I think, would be, you know, all right, so I I have my eight touches.

17:29 Let's say I've only been doing email. I know this is very drastic. Probably no one's just sitting there sending eight meals to the same person, but but I'm going to say like, let's sprinkle in

17:36 some other stuff. And I'm doing like my LinkedIn as well and making some phone calls. Um, but like let's say my last

17:44 one's always an email and that's always like my crash best message email that I send and the email is the ones always getting responded to, but I've been

17:51 adding these other ones in. How do I start understanding the impact of the LinkedIn and the call when I'm maybe not getting any LinkedIn messages or calls

17:59 back even though I've added them in and not feeling like it's, hey, I'm just throwing in more effort. Maybe I should just switch back to email. Yeah, I I think I'm tracking with you.

18:07 So you're getting a response to to email but not via the two other channels. So or maybe like let's say I'm getting LinkedIn and email but none of my phone calls are ever getting like returned.

18:17 Maybe is how do I say well phone is or isn't working out.

18:21 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And and there's probably two possibilities for what you're uh experiencing. The

18:30 fact that you're doing two other touches prior to the email is actually increasing the email response rate.

18:38 Um, again, all these touches are about creating some level of top of- mind awareness. So, LinkedIn post, LinkedIn

18:45 message, uh, a voicemail, and then your third step in the process is that email.

18:51 Well, it could be a case of those two other touches are driving the the response rate to the third touch via email. That's one possibility. The other

18:59 possibility is back to your question about why multiple channels and and part of my answer there was your prospects consume information differently.

19:09 Yeah, it I mean it wouldn't be a complete corner case, but it would be a little bit odd to have very little response

19:17 rate from either of those first two channels, Austin, and then a great response rate just to email. I would expect some response rate for the call

19:26 the LinkedIn again just because your prospects consume information uh differently. It would be odd maybe not

19:34 complete corner case but to have no response rate from two channels and a great response rate from from one.

19:40 So yeah I mean it not impossible but highly highly improbable that it place like that. Yeah, you would start seeing an increase in uh

19:49 in your success rates through that sequencing and then you probably start seeing it happen sooner because you're hitting people in an earlier part that they wouldn't have otherwise realized.

20:00 That's the way I think of it indirectly. you're kind of making a a point for me that if that situation did occur, instead of just kind of having

20:08 this gut emotional reaction of ah LinkedIn and and and calling isn't working, I'd really want to see some metrics before I I would abandon those two channels and say, "Well, email's it.

20:18 Look at the results I'm getting from email." I mean, could you even set it up where it's like, well, that's fine. have your take 300 people, reach out to 100 with

20:27 just emails, 100 with email, LinkedIn and phone, and then and then show me which one actually outperforms. Absolutely. Absolutely.

20:33 Might never get a call back, but the one with the phone calls getting more responses. Yeah. Yeah.

20:39 And um once again, this is an it depends kind of answer. I would just want to um

20:46 have a statistically significant sample size before I I pivoted from that strategy, pivoted from a a channel

20:54 instead of just having this, you know, I tried it for a week or two and it didn't work. I'm abandoning that kind of thing.

20:59 Yeah. Um I I love always gauging stuff on statistically significant. Do you mind expanding a little bit just for people what that term means? When we

21:09 when we started, I I I mentioned something about um you know the sheer volume of top offunnel activity

21:16 oftentimes needed to work a suspect then a prospect all the way through the funnel to a customer. And I I just thought I'd share some statistics here.

21:26 So this is a hypothetical situation, but Austin, let's say we've got a a monthly goal of of four new customers, four net

21:34 new logos. So, based on kind of some standard conversion rates, um, we would need 19 demos, trials, or proposals to

21:44 ultimately get four new customers. I'm swimming upstream in the funnel right now when I'm throwing numbers at you.

21:49 So, to get those 19 demos or proposals, I've had to have 42 meetings.

21:56 So, there's conversion rates going on there. I'm assuming a 22% close rate, which got me from the 19 to the four.

22:02 I'm assuming a 45% conversion rate from the 42 to the 19. And yes, I know those are going to vary based on business and and industry, but they're they're

22:11 somewhat industry standard. So, um that eight number that we keep going back to over and over again. Four customers uh

22:20 means 336 touches. Yeah, that's a lot.

22:27 Yes, it is. And if you move farther upstream now and look at individual channels, here's where the numbers get

22:34 kind of daunting. I I think I used that exact adjective a little while ago. Um, this is going to sound contradictory to

22:41 my mantra about using three channels, but it just kind of hammers home the the the again the magnitude. If we used a

22:49 single channel, say let's use cold email, to get those four customers, we'd have to send out 4,200 emails.

22:59 Jeez.

23:01 To get those four customers on LinkedIn, we'd have to do almost 400 uh requests on LinkedIn.

23:08 Um, cold calls, assuming again that variable 2.5% success rate, 1,800 dials.

23:16 Jeez, it's a lot of picking up the phone. It's a lot.

23:18 Direct mail, which has got about a four to 5% response rate, now we're sending out almost a thousand pieces. Yeah.

23:26 Now, I know that sounds a little contradictory to, you know, my mantra about three channels, but if you were just using one channel, that's what you're looking at in terms of volume.

23:36 And I feel like that's often kind of a missed or misunderstood piece of the entire salesunnel. Um and oftentimes

23:44 what is focused on is um the metrics lower in in the funnel Austin like the number of first meetings like the number of demos trials or proposals we're

23:53 sending out those are really important don't get me wrong but uh if those numbers aren't right back to sales is a

24:00 numbers game. If we swim upstream in the sales funnel, if we're not getting the right number of meetings, we're not sending out the right number of proposals, if we swim farther upstream,

24:09 it's probably a function of we're not doing enough touches to people that are in the suspect stage.

24:16 One of the things as you were saying beyond just that being high volume and a very daunting amount. Yes.

24:22 If you think about it too like there's limitations on all those just from a technical perspective like LinkedIn will not let you send 400, right? Right. Right.

24:31 Right.

24:32 Best practices for sending emails is, you know, you can't send 4,000 a day because you'll start getting flagged as spam. So you can you're limited on how

24:40 many you can send per day. Like which even further supports the three channels. Exactly.

24:47 I'm going to distribute that load because of those techn technical limitations or or end user license uh restrictions, those kind of thing.

24:54 I mean the technical limitations aren't the reason to switch. The reasons are because of everything you already lined up, but I just just like hearing those numbers, it's like

25:03 wow, even if I was stubborn, I wouldn't be able to build my funnel with one avenue just based on how technology evolved and how many limitations put into place.

25:12 So for anyone who's stubborn, I would just say tough luck. You're not allowed to do it.

25:17 Yeah. Yeah. And of course, I was being hypothetical with the the four customer goal, but um say that was a monthly

25:25 goal. We've got to send out based on a 1% uh success rate just using a single channel 4,200 emails. Well, how do I come up with 4,200 emails every month?

25:37 Are they good uh emails? What kind of list do I have? Am I going back to the same 4200 over and over again? So,

25:44 there's other practical considerations, too.

25:47 Yeah. So, as we're swimming through this, I mean, in my experience and kind of what I've heard generally is that sales is kind of clumpy. like you don't get, you know, it's not like you get,

25:56 you know, two wins a month every single month. It's like you get five one month and one another month and zero the next month. And so as you're looking at these

26:03 numbers and trying to understand them, how do I as an individual account for the more maybe like clumpy or cyclical

26:11 or you know inconsistent um you know nature of how the process actually works out.

26:16 Yeah. Yeah. Another great question and and and some of that can be tied to seasonality of some businesses. Um

26:24 whether it's uh you know summer season and I'm in the pool business or I'm selling so snow removal equipment and

26:32 it's winter. There can be some um seasonality associated can be other things in terms of um you know I see a big spike in sales because of a new

26:40 product launch or we attend a national trade show every year and we get a lot of leads from that. So th those are certainly some some variables and

26:48 drivers. Um in general I would say um we've got to be looking at top offunnel activity as an ongoing regular activity.

26:58 It can't be oh we did it for a quarter, we're not doing it. Uh let's do it for a month um and shut it off. Um that alone

27:06 can create that cyclical roller coaster ride that that you just talked about.

27:11 Um, a lot of sales reps, a lot of indivi individual contributors, they struggle with the prospecting piece and being

27:19 intentional about it, meaning actually carving out time and and doing it on a daily basis, on a weekly basis. Um, get

27:27 so busy, you know, doing demos or sending out proposals or or customer meetings that I mean, it's really easy to say, I'm not doing cold calls today because I got all this other stuff going

27:35 on. Well, that too can create that roller coaster ride or or lumpy activity, I think is what you called it

27:42 a second ago, that I I'm not really intentional and consistent about the top of funnel activity.

27:49 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, for my own personal business, it's six months. Like that's how long it takes to like realize those that one customer that I called

27:57 that said, "Yes, let's have the first conversation." And they make it all the way through. So everything I do today is Well, now that we're halfway through the

28:04 year, everything I do today is going to affect next year. Yep. Keeping my head on my eye on the target. Yeah.

28:10 Well, kudos for you for knowing that. I I mean, knowing the sales cycle, time frame, and uh you know, other statistics

28:18 like average deal size, it's critical to creating a revenue forecast.

28:23 Yeah. Yeah. It's a I mean it's a it's it's a hard thing to to deal with because like as humans our brains can

28:31 really only kind of comprehend cause and result for a short period of time and it's certainly not six months. Yeah.

28:38 This constant game of having to remind ourselves that or even if it's three months or even three weeks I mean the immediacy matters and obviously three

28:45 weeks it's easier to see the impacts but let's cut it down to three months which sometimes we do close deals in three months but sometimes sometimes it's a

28:52 year. um having to continually remind your brain that is not programmed to understand cause and effect over that long of a period.

29:00 Yeah. It's just a battle in and of itself.

29:02 Well, since you like uh stats, I'll I'll throw some more at you. When you think about and what triggered me to to uh say this

29:11 was when you're talking about length of of sales cycles, when you think about uh like complex technology sales to some

29:18 large corporations, probably Fortune 500. I mean, honestly, Austin, some of those sales cycles can be 12 to 24 months.

29:27 And it's not a single decision maker.

29:29 It's typically a team, five, six, seven, eight individuals. And so, we've been hammering that eight touches needed for

29:37 an individual contributor. When you're talking about that size company, that long of sales cycle, the number of touches needed, it's way over 200

29:47 because you've got to touch each one of those decision influencers over 12 to 24 months. Yeah.

29:54 So, you know, back to your point of that's hard to comprehend. Yeah.

29:57 Mentally, all those touches over two years. Wow.

30:02 I have a really funny anecdote for this and then we're getting close to time so we can wrap it up but uh my wife worked as a deal desk analyst for a while and

30:09 she started at a company and for those who don't know deal analyst um basically helps get through contracts through accurately in complex uh sales

30:17 environments. Uh and she started at a company she was there for multiple years and she left the company. She picked up

30:24 a case that had already been opened to navigate. It stayed open the entire time she was there and it was still open by

30:31 the time she left. So this was years of and this was a deal that we were just trying to get over the line, but redlinining and you know contract

30:38 negotiations and back and forth and something changed.

30:42 You know it becomes like this incredible incredible amount of touches just to get one deal over the line and meanwhile you know other ones are closing in a quarter.

30:50 Yeah. Well, unfortunately, especially with larger companies, complex uh solutions, big ticket items, um you can

30:59 lose a month or two in a blink of an eye to redlinining an agreement. Yeah. Oh, I'm in the middle of that. Yeah.

31:06 All right. Before I go down all my line of anecdotes, you this has been an awesome conversation. Love the stats basically. It's been fun. It's been fun.

31:14 Um you know, any final parting thoughts?

31:16 one big takeaway or you know primary thing somebody listening in should be like I gotta apply this to my business or I should really start to understand this more.

31:24 Yeah. When I've had this conversation with with clients Austin I I feel like sometimes there's this aha moment and I keep talking about swimming upstream in

31:33 in the funnel. So maybe I'm a CEO and owner of VP of sales and I've got a revenue goal in mind. So that's the the bottom of the funnel, right? If I go

31:42 through the exercise of swimming upstream and look at those conversion rates and ultimately get to the top offunnel activity, those numbers we were

31:50 just talking about, the number of emails that need to go out, the number of LinkedIn connections that need to go out, uh, phone calls, etc., etc., I

31:58 might come to the conclusion that revenue goals, code assignments are or are not realistic based on top offunnel strategies and top offunnel activities.

32:10 Um, if you've got a a welloiled uh dialedin machine, um, you can feel confident about quota assignments,

32:17 revenue assignments, and then truly hold your sales team accountable. But in some situations, uh, we've done this, let's swim upstream and and look at our top

32:26 offunnel activity and come to the conclusion, wow, unless we do something different with top ofunnel activity, we need to adjust revenue goals and quarter

32:34 goals because they're unobtainable or unrealistic right now.

32:37 Yeah. Yeah. You can't you can't fix it in the middle, right?

32:40 Back to that numbers game, right? If the right number isn't coming out on the bottom, it's a function of what's happening upstream.

32:46 Yeah, that's a great thing to think about, for sure. All right, Todd, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Austin. It's been great.