01. Ryan Bott (Sodexo, Global Vice President of Inside Sales)

What does it mean to sell with purpose? How can you bring immediacy and purpose to every conversation, no matter what you’re selling? What if success doesn’t just mean one more closed sale, but one more life saved?

Join Andy Paul (Host of Sales Enablement Podcast) and Ryan Bott (Sodexo, Global Vice President of Inside Sales) for a unique conversation exploring what it means to sell with purpose in the era of COVID-19 and beyond.

Learn how Sodexo has successfully taken their sales teams remote and why selling with a sense of purpose helps you form stronger and more impactful connections with customers.

Learn more about Selling with Purpose podcast.

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Conversation Transcript

Andy Paul: Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Bott: Well, thank you very much.

Andy Paul: Pleasure to have you here. Where are you calling in from today?

Ryan Bott: Well, I’m home sequestered in Salt Lake City, Utah, which is, which is where I live most of the time when I’m not traveling, which I’m not traveling these days.

Andy Paul: No, very few of us are. I read this morning that, we’re recording this in the first week of May, that last week on US airlines the average number of passengers per plane. Can you guess? 

Ryan Bott: 12

Andy Paul: Close. 17.

Ryan Bott: Terrible, terrible.

Andy Paul: For people like you and I that travel extensively, have traveled all over the world, as you do I know you’re doing your job and I certainly did for years, it’s like, yeah, hard to believe. Seventeen, it’s like, almost like throwback days to pre-deregulation days in the 70s, when they’d fly the planes, no matter how many people they had on them.

Ryan Bott: Right? Well, right after 9/11 I was on a flight. And I couldn’t tell this was because I was coming out of Las Vegas on a Friday night, which no one ever does. Or if it was due to 9/11, but it was myself and one other gentleman. 

Andy Paul: Wow. 

Ryan Bott: And I had this sense of duty that I needed to keep track of him, you know, like, and he said, and I think he felt the same about me like, “Okay, keep an eye on this guy. You know, maybe something’s gonna go on.”

Andy Paul: Yeah, yeah, that’s funny. Yeah, I think the last time I had so few people on a plane, I think it was about seven years ago. Decades of flying, and I’m on a flight from San Francisco to Memphis and they got a warning when we were flying across that they couldn’t tell whether it was our plane or the one after us that had left most of their tires on the runway. And so we had to do flybys of the terminal, but as I said they’re only less than a couple handful of us on this plane, so we’re all sitting in like the first two rows of the plane, assuming the crash position and so as they come in to land. So anyway-

Ryant Bott: So anyway, Andy.

Andy Paul: Forget those stories. So you’re Vice President of Global Inside Sales for Sodexo. So tell people about Sodexo because they come into contact with Sodexo, most likely in their lives, but maybe aren’t aware that they do.

Ryan Bott: Well, yeah, exactly. So I mean, 100 million people interact with Sodexo every day. Every day, so think about it, it’s 1% of the planet. So, we end up so servicing, lots of things that you would recognize. So for example, if you went to the Superbowl, any of the food there, any of the services there, that was all through us. If you’ve gone to LinkedIn headquarters and had a coffee or had lunch, that’s us. If you had a churro in college, that’s us. But what I like to think about right now is the loved ones that you care about that are in hospitals right now. And how those hospitals are being cleaned. The people on the front lines. So think about the staff that needs a break, and that need to grab a coffee, or need clean room. That’s us. We’re making all of that happen. Think about all the kids who are home from school who didn’t have meals, consistent meals other than at school, and we’re providing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of meals to schools right now, for kids that didn’t, you know, kids that would otherwise go hungry. So that’s all us too. So it’s an amazing company. It’s, you know, 400,000 plus employees around the globe. It’s not just food and facilities, we do a lot of HR software. So recognition, employee recognition, software, benefits and rewards, employee survey software. And it’s pretty interesting, and you know, for spending my whole life almost working in Silicon Valley and Silicon Slopes, if you will, back and forth between those two, and then finding this place, it’s, it’s quite different. And it’s, it’s, it’s honestly, it’s changed my life. It’s a great company.

Andy Paul: And so you have responsibility for the entire portfolio?

Ryan Bott: I do. So when I started, I started sort of in the employee recognition side, and the software side and then we had success which, you know, great. And I guess some people noticed and I got called up to and was asked to run all of inside sales around the globe as well as a big sales enablement piece, and in particular around North America. So it’s global. We’ve got teams all over the place, my team is spread out across the globe. And we’ve got four centers of excellence that we’ve built which are inside sales and digital marketing centers around the globe.

Andy Paul: So how many people in that organization?

Ryan Bott: So total in that organization. I mean, if I, if so, so, it’s very matrix-ed. Not everyone reports to me, but you know, we’ve got…

Andy Paul: Let’s just say your sales team.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, so it will total sales team around the globe, you know, 700. And then we’ve got sales enablement, sales and operations people probably to the tune of 40-50.

Andy Paul: Right. Got it. So, in your inside sales -and I guess it depends on the product cuz you have to set food services, you’ve got the facilities, you’ve got software – are they handling lead generation like SDRs? Or are they handling full cycle sales in many cases?

Ryan Bott: Yeah, it’s such an interesting model. S, the inside sales team is mostly doing – it depends on which division – so if it’s the food division, it’s mostly SDRs. It’s finding the opportunities it’s passing them over. And the reason we do that is like all companies, I mean you have to segment by skill set. So we segment by function and it turns out that Field Sales is pretty hands-on. If you’re going to put a facility for example, in LinkedIn’s headquarters, they want you there. They want to see it. They want you to bring the CAD designs and the mock-up, they want to show you which walls you’re going to knock out and where the cafe’s gonna go. And so that one’s pretty hard to close over the phone. Even though I would argue, and I continue to argue with our business, there’s more that we close over the phone than we think. And now with COVID, it’s just everything’s changed. So I mean, like, you’ve interviewed lots of people, everything’s virtual now. So how are we going to do all that? But then on the other divisions, they do close. In fact, some of those, in fact, 90% in some cases all over the phone, and we’re talking still $700,000-1,000,00 ASPs, still being closed, which is great.

Andy Paul: Yeah, which more and more I think, we as you said, we are gonna see because, yeah, it’s not clear exactly when we get back to whatever the next normal is. It certainly will look different than what it is today. 

Ryan Bott: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s going to, it’s gonna take a little bit. I mean, we keep thinking, Oh, yeah. In business, just our minds play funny tricks on us. Like, we’re just going to get back to where it was. But I think the longer it goes, we realize there’s really no getting back. I mean, things will be changed permanently in some areas forever. So-

Andy Paul: So what are some of those areas that you’re seeing in your business that you think might be changed forever from a sales perspective? Do you see more people working remotely versus the office? Or more of the Field Sales transitioning into an inside sales function?

Ryan Bott: Yeah, I think forever we’ll be changed to how a company treats its safety and the cleanliness of the facility. So I don’t think that changes, I think people will enable and enact a new level of norm around keeping a facility more sanitized than it was before. So that’s, that’s very interesting for a company like Sodexo. Because people are calling –

That’s a big part of our business. So people are asking. I think forever will be changed the way people manage. I think we’re just now beginning sort of mitigation and litigation, and that’s unfortunate. So I think companies, like I think the litigious side of this is going to really pick up. Employees you already see or, you know, taking litigation against the company. The company is taking litigation against governments and so on. So it’s, it’s really, that’s the sad side of it, but I think that reaction will cause a sort of a clamp. And people will react very differently. In years to come, there’ll be procedures and policies that just we can’t get away from because of COVID. And you know, even our kids will grow up and enter the workforce. And they’ll say, “Well, due to COVID..” You know, just like we have for 9/11. I mean, you hear this at airports, now we say, since 9/11. Like that was a demarcation point. And we’re gonna say things like since COVID.

Andy Paul: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re unmindful of the fact of how much things have changed in the aftermath of 9/11 for travel, security, in many, many dimensions, and we’ve accepted it, right? I mean, we would’ve considered them huge impositions, none of us could have envisioned. I think you’re right, and some of the changes will come. It could be as long lasting as you talked about. So, you’ve obviously had to transition a huge number of people around the world to work from home status. And how did that go for you?

Ryan Bott: Well, how is it going? Andy, that is the question.

Andy Paul: I was just talking about making the transition. Not the ongoing work. Well, first things first.

Ryan Bott: Yeah. So, first things first is, I mean, everyone sort of immediately realized, “Okay, this is not going to be short-term” and so we have conference calls non-stop, we have Zoom calls non-stop. We’ve picked up the video calls, we’ve picked up all of the touchpoints where we normally would touch base with the whole sales team once a month, it’s now several times a week. We started an employee page where we just did a quick pulse survey to get a pulse on how people are doing so we’ve done that for example with the sales teams. So how did it go initially? I mean, it was rough. It was rough, it was exactly what you would expect to get people who are in the field nonstop, who were used to visiting customers, who had customer site scheduled, implementations scheduled, you know, drawings and layouts all scheduled. And that stopped. And so those orders, you’re trying to manage us over the phone. At the same time, there’s this sense of, “Okay, but I got to take care of me.” And so it’s tough. I mean, we’re all in this boat where, yes, I’m a corporate person. But I’m also individualistic. There’s a sense of safety that I have to produce for myself. And, and so we find ourselves in this rough balance of “Okay, my customer orders are on pause, these projects are on pause. I gotta worry about my family and I got it, but I guess we got to check in at work and what’s next.” 

So, I think we’re just now entering that phase of “Okay, now we’re settled. So what’s next?” And the good news is we got marketing teams, a couple of weeks ago, if not over a month ago, to really start to push and drive a new level of marketing and get out on the front lines. And the reaction was pretty visceral at first, like, what are you doing? Everybody’s in a pandemic, you can’t talk about how we can help them. I was emphatic and said, No, now’s exactly the time we’re strong. So I mean, we made a case to the CEO, in this time, which is really, really tough. Think about this, when we’re cutting parts of our business or things are on hold, because the unknown is so great. And we said, we got the CEO’s ear and said, and now you have to spend money in marketing more than ever. And to his credit, he listened. It’s been amazing. So you’re gonna see some big campaigns come out from us that talk about how we can help, how we can be present for you in a time of need.

Andy Paul: How you can help the return to normalcy with the product offerings you have and the service offerings you have.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is people shouldn’t have to go through this again at a company. So think about what they have to go through. The litigation side alone will help our business because if you’re a company who you have employees, hundreds of thousands of employees, and you have X amount dedicated to your facilities, to your food, and if you ran this self-operated, say you’re a museum and the museum said, “No we cater food and we’ve got our own cafe, we run it, we sanitize it.” And you’ve got customers coming in, who might end up catching COVID. And let’s just say a couple of them decide, “Yeah, that wasn’t safe” and they’re going to sue. You don’t ever want to go through that again as a company. So see we’re bigger and better protected that way because we’ve had to deal with that for you know, 50 plus years. We understand those ramifications. So one of our suggestions to employees is put it on us. You don’t have to go through this again, there are companies like us, and there are others, you know, some of our competitors, great, great respectable companies, put it on those people. That’s what they do. And so anyway, it’s a really interesting message that we can go out with right now.

Andy Paul: And I’m sort of wondering, too, is you obviously you have a ton of employees who have been affected by this, all the food service workers, and so on, all the arenas that are closed that, you know, games aren’t going on and, you know, just sort of this multiplier effect. It seemed like in your business that your sales team would be really acutely aware that the ability to sell something really benefits their fellow employees by selling something that can put people to work.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, that momentum is starting to pick up. There is a sense of duty to our company. We, on the front lines of sales, have an opportunity to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people right now, which is why when we started talking about marketing and spend when the visceral reactions came in, I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, realize what we’re trying to do here.” We have an opportunity. The numbers of people online, including our buyers, have doubled over the last month. You think about all the internet traffic now. There’s two things that are really interesting about our current situation. Internet traffic is way up. People are on our site more than ever, but that’s just in general. It’s everywhere. Okay. Secondly, people are at home and they’re more open because of the spirit of you know, spirit of unity, we’re all in this together, they’re more open to taking your call to taking your LinkedIn and taking your invite. So an inside sales rep on my team, send it a note that says, “So sorry. We’re here to help when you’re ready,” is getting way more exposure and reaction than it ever did before. So it’s really interesting. So when we think about pushing our marketing and sales efforts right now, we’re starting to feel this sense of duty because of the people that have been affected. You got to think I mean, our stadiums, we cover thousands of stadiums, and I mean, 97% of stadiums stopped within three weeks of each other around the globe. And it was it’s you’ve never, I mean, you hopefully never see this something like this again. We never saw it. We’ve never seen it and so a lot of those frontline employees, unfortunately, have been impacted. Now we created, the first thing we did, is we cut back expenses, all the management layer around the globe, including myself, we took a decent cut on our pay, we donated, and we created, based-on our board of directors also, we created a $30 million fund to give employees that lifeline for as long as we can. And, that’s now our sales team to start bringing it back, bringing back some of these orders, these projects. And we’re seeing that, you know, what’s interesting is some places, like our corporate service segment. So, we divide our business into segments, but our corporate service segment, there’s not been a real slowdown, people want to talk, they want to talk about these projects. Now, of course, our sports and leisure like our stadiums, that’s a major hole.

Andy Paul: Airports, I imagine, right?

Ryan Bott: Yeah. Airports have been on hold but not indefinitely. So they’re having conversations with us about “Hey, when it comes back, how are we going to make sure we’re clean.” And so that’s really interesting.

Andy Paul: Yeah, when you think about this as a sort of this fundamental need. And we talked about bringing the economy back. But you’ve really identified – and I hadn’t really thought of it in this context – is clean is the baseline, right? We’re talking about testing employees and a lot of that’s going to go on but you can’t have the employees come back into an environment that’s also not safe from that perspective. So imagine that probably there are a lot more companies thinking about this than they ever did before.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, it’s one of those, then that’s why I say as a company, you don’t want to have to make this the number one thing you worry about and guess what you do now. The number one thing you have to worry about as a company is how are you going to keep your employees safe. Because a non safe work environment will lead to a lot of employee frustration from now on. And so they’ll be a little bit of a curve, right? Well, so we’ll peak out probably within the next year where employees and companies are at odds with each other saying, “Hey, you didn’t keep me safe, I got sick. I came back, you told me to come back, I came back, it didn’t work. Now my family’s affected.” My guess is we’ll see that peak within a year but then it’ll kind of flatline and it won’t come back down to the bottom. So companies are gonna be left holding this bag of, well, “I got to keep my employees safe. I’m gonna have to check in constantly with how they’re doing. How are we going to do that?” And that’s not you want a company’s number one focus to be on their, their delivery to their clients. And then and in their bottom line. No I gotta be careful because employees are what make a company. Okay? And so you want them to always focus on employees. And so, you know, I’m a student of Southwest Airlines, you know, Herb Keller, met him and studied, you know, a lot of his work, sold a lot Southwest. They’ve been on our campus a lot. So number one at Sodexo is we are dedicated to our employees because employees are what give the output. A customer’s reaction and interaction with you, it comes through an employee. But you want to be able to focus your measures on those employees’ productivity side. And if you’re caught up all day long, we have to worry about the safety. And then you start to lose productivity. And I think that’s my point. So companies don’t want to deal with that. But they’re going to have to so what do they do? It’s really interesting. I think there’s this level of, you know, in all sales, what’s really interesting, you start to peel back Why did someone buy and why did someone leave? And I find these studies super fascinating, right? It’s really easy when we say why did someone buy we have qbr hours with each other at the end of the quarter, we all get together and say well, this is why they bought. When we ask the question, why did you leave? It’s actually a little bit different of a story. So when you ask someone, why they purchased you. It’s usually because, and I’ll just pull up our studies for example. So if I say why did we choose Sodexo? People perceived the outcome, and they had a really good experience with our salespeople. Price was only the issue maybe eight percent of the time. So you see this kind of constantly happen when you ask the question, so why did you choose us? 

Andy Paul: The buying experience.

Ryan Bott: The buying experience is number one. And number two is they perceived an outcome. But then you ask the question, so why did you leave? When it’s time for them to leave, and it’s basically it goes something like this, “You didn’t deliver on what we expected.” So think about the two differences there, one they purchase you through buying experience that showed them an outcome they perceived would happen. Now, when they left, they literally left because you didn’t deliver on that outcome. So what does that say about selling? It says up front, we have to build a process of trust. We have to be accurate about what we’re going to deliver.

Andy Paul: Setting expectations,

Ryan Bott: Setting accurate expectations, right? Setting accurate expectations. That’s probably one of the hardest things to do in this new environment. For example, for us, we’re going to set an expectation around safety but we may not get every piece right. So how do we then manage this along the way? We’re trying to predict, you know, we’re trying to, it’s a little bit of shooting at a moving target. I think a lot of companies are gonna go through this where selling is this motion of building trust, creating expectations up front, that the company can perceive an outcome that will happen. We’re going to help deliver X, I’m going to save you some money, I’m going to save you some time, I’m going to give back, you know, I’m going to deliver more of a safety protocol, we’re going to reduce your number of, you know, email, security email issues. You know, whatever the promise is in sales, I’m going to give you a better experience is going to be a better car. We set up this expectation, I think COVID is going to change the way we have to manage that. So what it means is we’re going to adapt to be much more hands on in the middle of the process, to say to someone, “Hey, by the way, here are some things we need. We need to schedule this meeting, it’s imperative that I get all four buyers, all six buyers, on this call. We need to talk about what’s changed since I last told you what the outcome was going to be,” and then when they close the deal. Your client success team is going to be just critical to manage expectations. “Hey, what we thought six months ago. It’s not the same anymore.”

Andy Paul: Well, I think that’s one of the really critical things, especially in the field you’re in, is that, you know, assume you’re gonna have some number of buyers who are brand new to this, right? And they don’t, they don’t really know what to expect. But also, I think that given how the situation is so fluid, yeah, you could scope out a project and say, you know, this is what we’re gonna deliver. And we’re very clear about what the expectations are. But the environment changes around it.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, and that’s where we’re gonna have to be principled as companies, as sales teams, to be really clear on what we can and can’t deliver and be really clear about what can change. See the thing I love about Southwest, and my favorite story about Herb Kelleher is when somebody called to complain and said, “The experience was really rough on the plane compared to another airline, you know, your snack services were terrible. The options were pretty limited. I didn’t like the unassigned seats.” And Herb Kelleher, rather rather than say, “Great, we’ll look into how we can, you know, accommodate your needs.” Basically, the reply back was maybe we’re not the right airline for you.

Andy Paul: Exactly.

Ryan Bott: We are principled around how we go to market. This is how we go to market this way so that you can enjoy a really excellent staff, which I hope they were good, you know, this is what he says, I hope they were good. And it turns out they were. Great pilots and a decent airfare. But we’re principled about what we do. And I mean, you gotta imagine they entered the market when Continental and you know, all these companies were just laughing at them. They were in meetings about how to expand, you know, services in their lounge and how to, you know, up their uniforms and just sort of all these random services that are Herb Kelleher said, “Well, I don’t know if the customer cares about this.” 

Andy Paul: So a question for you around this is, so what are you having, finding or thinking about, maybe you’ve started this process already, but what are you sort of planning relative to, well, okay, well, how do we, how do we, you know, educate our sellers, to be more careful about how we set expectations on appropriately size deals. I mean, I think even to some degree, you know, perhaps you in some case may start a little bit smaller deal, right? Just to make sure you can manage expectations appropriately. How are you teaching them about what the expectations could be?

Ryan Bott: Yeah, great, great point. Well, first off, we’re starting with the management layer. So we believe in a core principle that is just critical for all companies to get and that is if you if you look at the data that says, You ask now go to employees why did an employee leave, right? 

Andy Paul: Manager, right? 

Ryan Bott: The data has not changed since Gallup and others have been tracking this for really 50 years. And that is when someone says what percent of my- It’s interesting when you ask a boss and you ask her say what percentage of your team is performing at the highest level they say 20% and then you ask the employee, what is the number one thing that will help me perform better and they say their boss. So you have this just massive disparity between the manager thinks only 20% of the team gets it and employees think that the boss isn’t actually helping them and then that’s the number one reason they leave is their boss. So we’re starting with our management layer to say, “Listen, we got to help reset expectations. You’ve got to be an empathetic manager.” We’re asking all of our managers to check in with your team’s daily. Daily scrums are starting to happen. And during this, we’re sense and now we’re starting to get the feedback from the ground up teams are saying, “Well, actually, I don’t think we can deliver on this.” And we’re having open and honest and real conversations, that feedback is, then our next move is to go back to the product and delivery teams and say, “Okay, urgent need to rethink. Here’s the feedback from the frontlines, need to rethink this product or this offer or this delivery.” So you’re doing both, because at the end of the day, your product is what expands your TAM, your total addressable market. Your product is also what dictates whether a seller can or can’t say something. So you need to get to the point where the product and the product teams and the sales teams are so aligned during this time, here’s what we can deliver, here’s what we can deliver. Because that expectation, that’s where the expectation goes awry. And so we’re doing that. I think the other thing, though, is just, it’s just back to this point of empathy. Sitting down with your sellers, helping them understand what the moves they can make. There’s a lot of caution right now. I don’t think I can call. I don’t think I’m gonna reach out. I don’t think I can do it. Now, you can. There are things you can do, right now, that set the tone with the buyer, that let them know that you’re there and available. And so it’s, it does happen to be a lot of one on one. Apart from that, I mean, the normal things you’d expect, we’re having a lot of webinars. We call it Sales Clubs, so you get all the sellers around the globe on a Sales Club call. Been hosting those every other week now.

Andy Paul: And what have been sort of the key themes of those?

Ryan Bott: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. The first couple of Sales Club Calls were “hang in there, we got this, we’re all in this together,” like a lot of companies. The next call was, hey, we’re gonna start going out or going out to market. And that’s when we started getting reactions of “Well, what do you mean, we’re going out?” So then the next call after that was very specific tactics. Here are things you can say, here’s a message we had from our chief growth officer named Sylvia, she’s an amazing woman. She put out the new messaging. And I love this because at Sodexo we were so used to going through brand studies that would take a year. Well, here’s how we’re going to say it. And overnight, these meetings are occurring, where we say what’s our new messaging? Oh, it’s this great and we’re given the stamp of approval. So within, you know, within two weeks, she said, this is the message and we’re taking it out to clients. So that’s hitting marketing and sales all together at once. And we’re starting to change that immediately. So, she put that out. And then it was very tactical, call number three of what are the things you can say? We started on webinar number three, we started giving a lot of hope. You know, we started telling stories of where we had hope, stories of our frontline. Stories of- we still had it, we had a deal close, a great deal that actually came through my team, my inside sales team last week, you know, $2 million deal and that gives hope. So we started talking about, “Okay, you can do this” and that’s when interestingly, and I saw people reaching out to me directly saying, “Hey, Ryan, that was great. I didn’t know we could do that,” and now you see people’s ears kind of perk up and they’re saying, “Oh, wow, maybe there is more good here.”

Andy Paul: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s, you touched on earlier and I think it’s the right message, which is, yeah, we’re, we’re here when you’re ready. But in the meantime, we’re gonna be letting you know what we’re doing and things that we think could be important to you. Ways that we could help now. And that’s fine. You know, I think that the flip side of what many companies are trying to do, or at least they think they’re encouraging people to do is just, yeah, things still haven’t really changed just people working from home now. And it’s like, no, that’s not the case. Right? Just because they change locations doesn’t mean everything else is the same. Everything has changed as a result of that. And if they’re unmindful of that they’re not messaging that the right way. Yeah, they’re gonna box themselves in a bad way.

Ryan Bott: Yeah, another way I think about this Andy, if I can just share-

Andy Paul: Sure.

Ryan Bott: That might be helpful for some of the listeners. When we think of growth. And in this case, when we just think of getting back on track, I’ve come to the conclusion This is Ryan Bott:’s opinion, but I’ve come to the conclusion is it as a sales leader, there are only three things you can impact. And one of them, you can only impact tangentially. So what I mean by that is the three are their three P’s. So its Product, its Pipeline, and Productivity. And, and so the product is basically how you, is what you offer. That’s what establishes that trust that dictates your TAM. So how big is the total addressable market that is totally dictated by the product and the offer? Pipeline, we can impact. We don’t have to wait and sit back. We can actually get pipeline now. And you can change your messaging into a message of help. And you can change your message, you can be very acute on the prospects that you’re going after. And then Productivity is being able to, you know, move the needle. If I have a rep that closes at 30%, and I can get her to close to 35%, well, now I’ve moved the needle. So I mean, those are kind of the three dials that we’re constantly playing with as sales leaders. I got to go back to my product teams and, and give them feedback on what this doesn’t do and how we can expand the offer. Two I need to get my teams to develop pipeline, and three, I can dial you know, I can, I can dial-up and dial-up productivity, we need to be thinking about all three right now. So our product is going to change. Based on these times. The pipeline, we can impact but we can actually put more efforts in the pipeline. And then productivity is, gosh, you’ve never had a time in the world where prospects have put some of their orders on hold, sit down and get your team so trained. So dialed-in on CRM, so dialed-in around, you know, the sales process and deal flow and negotiation. I mean, we’re doing this non-stop. We’re practicing with our sellers or reviewing CRM tactics. We’re cleaning the data. So also that productivity can move from, say, 30% close ratio to a 30% closure. I mean, that makes a world of difference if you can move that up.

Andy Paul: Yeah. And it’s surprising. And I talked about this often on this program this how few sales leaders are really focused on that. Yeah. Often now, in software in particular, it’s all gone. Yeah. Because 20%. So we just need to expand the pipe. It’s like, it’s like, well, wouldn’t it be easier to move that up to 25? And then we’ll work on getting to 30? Yeah, that mindset hasn’t taken hold. So it’s encouraging to hear you talk about that because that’s, that’s the way to do it. 

Ryan Bott: I mean, can you imagine if you can impact all three? I mean, this is Nirvana. I think about this if you want to know what I do when I lay awake late at night, and I’m thinking about the three P’s. Did you imagine if you can get your product to expand and so you have a bigger TAM. You’ve got more pipeline, a more effective pipeline. Really, truly acute account-based marketing pipeline, and then your productivity went up. I mean, you got all three to move at the same time. I mean, you’re talking about changing from I mean, you could be doing a $10 million startup that moves you to a $60 million startup, you get those three, functioning. You could be us, you’d be a $23 billion company with, you know, a $2-3 billion new business growth number every year, which is that’s the nut on my head.

Andy Paul: That’s it?

Ryan Bott: Yeah, exactly, right. Just a mere 2 billion, Ryan. That’s all we need. 

Andy Paul: Yeah, man up, make it happen.

Ryan Bott: It’s just amazing.

Andy Paul: Well, it’s good. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.