72: Playing the Long Game with George Penyak

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:24 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support and the return of our sponsor, Vidyard GoVideo. If you're not already familiar with GoVideo. I'll tell you more about it in a few minutes, or you can cheat and visit top1.fm/v where you can get started for free. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, I'm excited to welcome George Penyak back to the podcast. I can't believe it's taken this long to bring anybody back for a second round on the podcast, and it's been about 2 and a half years since I last talked with George in episode 9 of the podcast in January of 2017. At the time, George was the top-performing regional sales manager at Restaurant Technologies, and he came on with the top performer on his team. I brought George back because he made a move that I've seen a few people make and have a ton of success, and that is to go back into the field into a quota-carrying role. And I didn't realize this until a couple of weeks ago, but apparently I coined the term intentional individual contributor because when I Googled it, there were 141 results. Not 141 million, just 141. And they basically all point back to this podcast. All right. Now that I finished the longest intro ever, welcome back to the show, George.

1:43 George Penyak: Thanks for having me, Scott. I'm super thrilled to be back. And, and I know it's been 2 and a half years, but it's been, it's been awesome seeing how much success you've had on this podcast over the last 2 and a half years. I think a lot's changed for both of us. I'm thrilled to be back.

1:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. And I should say it's not the last… you and I have spoken more recently than, than that. And you contributed to the first Sales Success Stories book. So folks are welcome to check that out. And I know this conversation will probably be completely off the traditional script, but I'd still like to start with the top 3 things that you believe have contributed most to your success, especially recently. What, what are those?

2:21 George Penyak: Yeah, 100%. So, you know, going back into the direct contributor role from being a sales leader, you know, having that leadership experience from the standpoint of understanding our own business more holistically. So when I was a regional sales manager, I had 8 reps. One was a senior rep, but I also had my hands in marketing operations. I had a much more clear vision of the company's performance, where we were going, and having that holistic approach to our own business internally really helped motivate me do big things here at the national level. And so I think it's really important that, you know, if you have someone that's thinking about jumping back into it, you're going to have a much better understanding of how the business works. I think all salespeople, they understand how their business works, but I think once you're at that next level, whether it be middle management or frontline management, at least in the company I work for today, Restaurant Technologies, I had a stake in everything, marketing, operations, and it just gives you a much broader vision of the company as a whole. So that would be the first thing. The second thing would be confidence. So You know, leaving that regional management role and shifting my mindset from coaching back into selling directly, there comes a huge sense of confidence in that. And I really think just being viewed internally as once a sales leader, now jumping back into that role, there's definitely a sense of higher expectations as well. So those would be the 3 things that have really driven me since I've jumped back in. And I've been doing my new role now for Under two years, about actually a year and a half. So this is the right at the midway point of my second year in the at the national level. So I would say definitely understanding the business more holistically, confidence from being a a sales leader and viewed that internally as a sales leader, but then also having that higher expectations. So as I look, as I size myself up against my peers at the national level, I feel like I'm expected to do a much better job than they are just because I have that management experience. And all three of those things are really driving me to have a lot of success.

4:25 Scott Ingram: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I'm going to have you kind of. Fill in the gaps and bring us up to speed more completely on what that role is. But first, I want to make good on my commit to tell folks about Vidyard GoVideo. So email isn't dead, but it sure is boring. You can send personal video messages instead to connect, convert, and close with Vidyard GoVideo. Vidyard GoVideo helps you easily record, send, and track who is viewing your video and content in 3 simple steps. First, capture your screen or tab and add a personal touch by recording yourself on camera too, right from your browser. Next, you can share that video through email, social, or anywhere else with just a few clicks. And finally, you get to see when someone watches your video through browser notifications. GoVideo will let you know who clicked play and how much they watched. Install GoVideo for free by visiting top1.fm/v. And if you want to practice, send me a video to scott@top1.fm. Don't worry about perfection. Just send me your first raw take and I'll send one back to you. All right, George, let's talk about just where you've been. Bring it, bring us up to speed. Talk about the role that you're in today and some of the recent successes you've had there. Yeah.

5:44 George Penyak: So since we last spoke, you know, I was a regional sales manager at the time, top performing one in the company that year. And really since then, the biggest change would obviously be jumping back into the direct contributor role, but also at the national level, which is something I haven't done before. And really about the end of 2017. So we last spoke at least on the podcast at the beginning of 2017. By the end of 2017, my internal mentor had approached me about a national position on his team. And he had been a mentor of mine for years in the company, really helped me grow my career, helped me hone in my leadership skills. And he said, hey, I want, I want you to report to me and go back to selling in into this portfolio of accounts. And from a strategic level, they're probably some of the most important accounts that we, that we go after here at Restaurant Technologies. And so I think he saw it as a strategic move to pull me back from that leadership position into this role. And, and, you know, it's, it, there's the financial upside as well. So I really, you know, after evaluating the whole thing, what really kind of, you know, finished it off for me and really solidified my decision is I think a lot of regional sales managers today, or just sales managers in general, they come right up from that that entry-level sales job, or not entry-level, but that frontline sales job. And I didn't have the national experience, not on my resume, but also just in general internally. And I really wanted to round out my own skill set. So I think there's an added benefit to how I'm going to be marketable internally to my company now because I actually have this national skill set and this national experience that I didn't have before. And so really, I always think about my own career as 2 to 3 moves ahead. And so I had a lot of heartburn. I mean, when you leave the, you know, management world, you know, there's a little bit of heartburn because you're leaving your team, you know, you're jumping back into something you haven't done in 2 and a half years directly, at least. And so there was a little bit of angst, but, you know, I really… having a great mentor at my company, and, and I got to give my HR team a lot of kudos, they really partnered me up with the perfect pair for a mentor-mentee relationship. I know he had my career's best interest in mind and the company's best interest in mind as well.

7:54 Scott Ingram: So, and can you just, just for those listening, maybe give just a little bit more clarity on the difference between what this national role is and kind of the sales role and the sales team that you were leading at the regional level?

8:06 George Penyak: Yeah. So our company today is made up of about 40 to 50, we call them local reps, but they might manage, say, a state. And they call on various, various brands and concepts within their state and their territory. It's assigned territory. We have regional managers that'll manage anywhere between 8 and 10. We call them sales executives, local sales executives. So they have a region, and I was managing the Southeast United States. I had 8 reps, and I had been promoted directly from one of those sales executive positions. So I had some regional, local experience, some, a lot of success in that role. And then nationally, what's different now is I'm selling coast to coast. I, I have my own portfolio that I, that I sell into outside of what the SEs sell, so they usually don't touch my business. But then I also do have a small piece of the business that, that I work hand in hand with the SEs on. So what's real interesting is, is I viewed myself when I was at RSM as a player coach, and now I'm more of a player myself, but also I still do a little bit of coaching because it feels like I have about 50 SEs with dotted lines to me. So I still get a little bit of that coaching that I, that I really enjoyed and got a lot of gratitude out of when I was a manager. And that's kind of the biggest difference in what I'm doing today than what I was doing, you know, as a manager or even a sales executive. Got it.

9:26 Scott Ingram: And just to be clear, the SEs, I assume those are, those are the regional sales executives because you're, when you're working on a deal, it may impact many of them, right?

9:35 George Penyak: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there are some deals that I work with them hand in hand and we both get credit on, we kind of split it. So I'll come into their local market, any state really in the country, I'll come into their local market and help them close something from my national expertise, if you will. And then there's a lot of deals that I work, probably more, more of my deals come from just my own contribution without any sort of SE help. And I'm working at a much higher level selling to some of the largest brands in the world.

10:03 Scott Ingram: Got it. And talk about your results recently because you've had some, some pretty big wins.

10:07 George Penyak: Yeah, absolutely. You know, for confidentiality, I can't, I can't name-drop the brands, although I would love to, you know, but we just… I just closed a deal earlier this year and it's probably the largest deal that, that at least my mentor was aware of, and he's been here 10 to 12 years. And we're in the process of rolling out that program to that customer, and that was, uh, that was a big one. So that really set up our operations department in those areas where where this certain customer resides, set them up for years of growth ahead of them. So really massive deal, really excited to roll that partnership out. And then also too, I'm working on, you know, one of the largest brands in the world right now, and we're getting very close to, to kind of doing a pilot test. It's probably gonna be a very long-term process. Sales cycle will go well into years. This isn't going to be an overnight thing or even a quarterly or, or a 1-year thing. I think this will be a year's process. But we've got that going as well. And it's setting myself up for a record-setting year here at Restaurant Technologies. And it's really exciting. You know, a lot of those things that I talked about earlier jumping back into this role have really helped me get me to this point. I don't see myself slowing down from here either. So, yeah.

11:15 Scott Ingram: So let's go back to the RSM experience just a little bit. What were the highlights? What did you enjoy most about that role?

11:24 George Penyak: Oh, I loved having the team. I loved shaping my own culture within, you know, because every company has a culture, but I think good regional sales managers will form their own culture within their team. And I just missing… I really miss working with those guys kind of hand in hand, day by day. You know, I just get really enjoyed getting to know them personally on one-on-ones. And I think the ultimate role for me in a company is a player-coach role. And I see my job now as a national sales executive as a stepping stone getting back to a player-coach role, but at a national level. So my mentor now, my manager, he's the director over our entire retail segment, which is mostly grocery stores and convenience stores. And so I really see myself hopefully here in the future, near future, taking on that role. So he may get promoted and that role is going to be vacant. And that would be a really good role for me, is, is the getting back into that leadership position, because I'll have that national skill set and being that player coach. But that's really what I miss, miss the most. And, you know, it's… there's something special to being able to have your own culture within, within a company. And when I had a team of, of 8 reps, you know, it was a lot of fun just, just seeing the reps grow, seeing them be successful, but also kind of shaping my own world within the company.

12:46 Scott Ingram: And what was that? I mean, when you think about that culture, how would you describe it? What were you trying to build?

12:51 George Penyak: So I was real big on competition, healthy competition. I built a culture of winning in competition internally. So we're a high-growth company. We're expected to grow 10 to 15% a year nationally as a company year over year. And so we're very attractive to private equity firms. And but within, you know, within the sales team as a whole, if you looked at you know, our sales force 4 or 5 years ago, we didn't necessarily have that competitive culture that I had within my own team. And so I always pushed my team to view themselves differently. Like, if they're going to report to me, that we're going to be different than everybody else, we're going to work a little harder, we're going to have the best numbers as a team. And I really pushed that, and that really drove them to to kind of have that healthy competition just between themselves and then look at it team to team as well. And when you do that, the company wins ultimately. So, but now when you have dotted lines, these team members we have, the SEs now, the sales executives, they don't report to me directly. So I don't have as much influence as I had before. Obviously, when you have someone directly reporting to you, I have more of an assistant role when I come in and come in as the expert into their market. And so, so for example, so I really focus a lot on C-stores. I do have a couple of grocery stores in my portfolio. So if one of our reps out in Los Angeles gets a deal and says, hey, I've got a 13-unit deal here, you know, I need your assistance here, I'll fly out and come in as the national expert and work with them. But, you know, just having that day-to-day contact with the same 8 guys, you know, that's really what I miss the most.

14:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What about the flip side? What did you find to be the most challenging part of that role?

14:33 George Penyak: Yeah. So as a RSM, you're not in complete control. So you're in control of a lot. I never like to say that I'm not fully in control. I think all regional sales managers know that, that you're in control, but you're not doing the day-to-day activities to, from the field level to drive the business. You're working at one level up. And so, and at least in my world, and I know there's a lot of different sales professionals that probably listen to this podcast. At Restaurant Technologies, we're all remote-based, so I don't see my team day to day. So I live in Columbia, South Carolina, and my team at that time stretched all the way down from Miami, all the way up to West Virginia, and then over to Alabama. So I covered a vast geographical area having 8 direct reports. And so the biggest challenge there was not seeing them day to day, 'cause it's really hard having the camaraderie and building a culture when you're not face to face. I think there's a huge advantage to being able to have face-to-face team meetings daily. So there's a lot of work environments where sales reps come into the office in the morning, you see, you physically see your manager every day, and then you go out into the field and then sometimes just close the day off in the field or come back to the office at the end of the day. That's not our world. And so the biggest challenge was not seeing them every day, but still trying to drive the culture that I wanted internally, trying to be a little bit different than the rest of the teams. And it's not easy. You know, it's something that you work on every day and you try to be as visible as possible remotely, if that makes sense. You know, you always want your team to know what are you doing week to week? What are you doing to help me day to day? And just being as visible as possible. And I use things like, like miniature podcasts. I would film my own or record my own podcast, send it to the team in my weekly emails, do some videos to spice it up, you know, just change things up to be more visible. And then also I shifted at the end there before I took on this role. I started doing one-on-ones via Skype. So we used to do one-on-ones just on the phone. And so I just included Skype, you know, I could see their home office setup. They could see my home office setup. And, and then lastly, I would say, you know, one thing I do miss too about that is you really get to know them personally. You really get an intimate understanding of, of them and their lives and their background. And that's something that I don't get today necessarily, because now I have nearly 50 of them and they don't directly report to me. So I'm working a lot more independently than I was before. Yeah.

16:52 Scott Ingram: Well, you do a good job of answering the questions I was going to ask, because I was going to ask, you know, what you did to sort of bridge the gap with, uh, with the remote team, but I think you you covered that pretty well. I wanted to talk about just running an effective one-on-one, right? And really from both sides, right? Like, how did you do that from a sales leader perspective, but also thinking about, you know, how do you do that now that you're back in an individual contributor role? You know, how you manage those one-on-ones and what you do to make the most of them.

17:23 George Penyak: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when I was a leader, I always felt, and I really still believe, is the right thing to do, to always have the one-on-ones consistently and on schedule. You know, it's really, as a leader, it's your rep's time with you. It's their time. It's not really your time with them, and you get to dictate the schedule and dictate everything. It's, it's their assigned time with you. And I think, I think it's very important to honor that because I've seen at other companies where one-on-ones are very flexible, like, oh, well, we'll I've got something else going on, so we'll just, we'll catch up next week. And I just really think it's important to prioritize your time with their time with you as high as possible. Now, obviously, if you have a big meeting or you're traveling to a very important sales meeting that's important for the company's growth, then that's one thing. But I think other than that, you really have to make sure that, that you always do them consistently. And then, you know, it's, it's having them weekly. I think is important. I don't know what other companies do. At least my, my history, both as a direct contributor and as a manager, is I had them every single week on Mondays. And it's really making sure that I'm aligned with my team's goals on, you know, where are they with every single account? Because the company I'm at now, Restaurant Technologies, we have a fairly long sales cycle. It's not, you know, it's not something that's… there's quick wins and you know, one call closes and things like that. They're long sales cycles. So I think having a longer sales cycle is important to have weekly calls and weekly touchpoints because you can really get in stone what needs to be accomplished that week to move the ball down the field. So you're not necessarily going to get closes every single week. And then also too, as a leader, it's very important to be candid and speak in facts. I think there's… if you can build a culture around being very candid and culture around candor, That's extremely important. You want to make your reps feel very safe. You want to make them feel that their time with you is 100% their time. And, you know, I think having each rep fully understand where they stand with you as a manager is very important. So I never wanted any of my reps walking away saying, oh, well, he's just saying that, or he's just doing that to make me feel good. But no, I think if you have that candid approach to everything and make that a… make being candid safe, make it a safe thing to do and build the culture around that, your reps are always going to know where they stand. And that's a very comfortable place to be. And it allows you to coach better if you're on the same page with where they stand with you and they are too. So I think that's really important. Now, from pivoting back, going back to a direct contributor, I prepare for my one-on-ones much differently now than I did before. I'm much more detailed. I probably overprepare. And then also too, selling at the national level, there's a lot more to prepare for. And I think that's a, that's a big difference than when I was doing one-on-ones as a local sales executive. I was selling smaller accounts. The sales cycle was slightly shorter. There's multiple things going on at once because you're trying to close a number of small deals at once. And now, you know, I'm working at at a much larger scale with much higher expectations, these deals don't close overnight. And so I think it's important to be aligned day to day with my manager. And really my manager and I talk multiple times a day, but the one-on-one time is specific to me. And then we have a specific set of criteria that we go over and it changes week to week because the business flows and accounts are working themselves through the sales cycle, but I'm much more prepared and I'm very, I'm a lot more transparent than I was. You know, I think when I was a local sales executive, not that I wasn't transparent, you know, but you just, I have more of a comfort level being very transparent with my manager on everything. And I think what helps too is my, my manager now is also, has also been my mentor for the last 5 years. And so that, that really helps with the transparency piece.

21:16 Scott Ingram: So talk more about 2 of those pieces. So you talked about doing a lot more preparation. What, what is that preparation? What are you doing specifically? And, and maybe give us an example of like the type of transparency.

21:28 George Penyak: So what's really changing in my preparation is I just have, having that holistic view of the company, I think about deals much more from a financial impact to my company. And, you know, back when I was a local sales executive without that management experience, I always kind of thought, and this is not a bad thing, but you think selfishly, you think commissions, you think your own pockets. And I think that's a good, it's not a bad thing to do when you're a local rep, but having that management experience and now going back into this role, I think about deals and how they impact my company financially. How can I set my company up better to win? And that is definitely a shift from where I was before. You know, I think, I think you think with your own pockets first as a frontline local seller, and then when you go through that management experience and get to the national level, now you're thinking much more big picture and you're really thinking of how can I position this more? I mean, you always position win-wins, but I just thinking bigger, specifically financially, how does this deal impact my company's finances versus maybe setting the deal up in a different way? And to give you a really good example is we install automated systems into kitchens. What we do, we automate 2 dangerous processes. One is cooking oil handling, most dangerous process in kitchens, and one is automated hood cleaning. And so now I think of little things of, hey, how long is this line run going to be and how can we maybe make a better investment both for the customer and for my company by setting tanks up a certain way or changing the way things are done here and there when before you're just thinking of as a local rep, how can I get the deal done and move on? And I just think it's just thinking more holistically about the company's pockets. And what was that second question? I'm sorry, Scott.

23:14 Scott Ingram: Yeah, no, the second question was you said you were more transparent with your boss now in your one-on-ones. Can you give us an example of that or share what that looks like?

23:23 George Penyak: Yeah, absolutely. So when I was a local SE, let's say you're trying to get a deal done and you're having trouble with finance or you're not on the same page with your local ops manager, sometimes you would tend to hold those in and just try to fight those battles just on the front line. And that's not a bad thing either because you don't always want to bring just problems to your to your manager. Now, if I have any trouble internally or I'm trying to set something up either with finance or changing the way we do something operationally for a customer, I bring that up front to my manager as soon as possible, but I also bring it with a solution. And I think that's a big difference than what I did before. You know what you did before, and I think you see a lot of new reps and local reps, if they're, if they're having friction, they either deal with it and not tell anybody, they just try to handle it. Or they just bring the problem to their manager and they don't really bring a good solution. And having the management experience now, if I have a problem, a lot of times I'm more equipped to handle it because I have a much better internal network than I had before. I have a much better understanding of the business. But also, if I'm not equipped to handle it myself, I'm very quick to bring it up. But I also bring what I think a strategic solution would be to the problem. And that makes my manager's job a lot easier. It makes him more efficient and it makes me more efficient as well. Because I think, you know, at the national level, you're working big deals and they take time. And I think having quick decision-making internally at critical moments is important. And if I'm not slowing my manager down and I'm handling some problems myself because I have a much better understanding of the business, that's going to make us all faster. You know, it's, it's been great. It's been refreshing coming back into the direct contributor role, and it's been a lot of fun. You know, it's been… there's some things I miss, but there's also a lot of things I love about being back, you know, contributing directly.

25:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that, you know, that's some great detail. I'm really glad I asked about kind of the one-on-one thing because I've always been curious, right? I've… having always been an individual contributor, the only experience I've ever had is my own meetings. And my approach has always been, I mean, I take pretty much complete control of what those are, right? There's an agenda going in. I've got stuff that I want to accomplish. And to your point, right, it's, it's a lot of prep. You know, and I know what my boss needs, right? I know, hey, he's got to understand kind of the forecast and where things are and those things that he's got to roll up. That's fine. But, you know, what I'm trying to get out is, you know, just kind of flushing through sticking spots, right? And to your point, like coming in with a solution, I always think of it as the manager's role for me, what I look for is somebody that's going to help polish the diamond, right? I'm going to come with a pretty good idea. And it's just having that, having that sounding board. I mean, probably half the time I just figure it out myself, sort talking it through, and it's just having that outlet. But, you know, what's really powerful is having a good manager who asks good questions. And I think that at the end of the day is one of the best kind of ways to operate is, you know, it's not here's the answer, here's the answer, here's the answer, right? It's allowing the individual to come to their own answers, right? And develop those problem-solving skills. But when you do that, it also tends to be I mean, it's their idea, it's their style, right? It's, it's much more likely to work rather than… because I've had this before, like, you need to go do this. I'm like, yeah, that's not… it's not gonna work.

26:51 George Penyak: Exactly. Oh, 100%. I, I actually was speaking on a different podcast, um, podcast called the Moving Forward Leadership Podcast, and it was one on leadership. They had me on a couple episodes and I talked about specifically sales leadership, and that, that was a huge topic is You know, you don't… it's not really… it's kind of like teach a man to fish or give a man a fish. But I think taking it to the next level of making sure when someone brings you a problem, you ask them the right questions so they can self-realize the solution. And then there's a lot more buy-in on the salesperson's part because they feel like they got to that… they got to that opinion or got to that solution on their own. And it's so critical. It's so critical than just giving the answer, giving the answer, giving the answer. And then in time, over time, they start bringing you solutions quicker. They start solving problems quicker and they become a lot more independent. I couldn't agree more. I think it's a great point. Yeah.

27:45 Scott Ingram: Well, and it works with our clients too, right? You know, it's… yeah, it's asking the right questions and sort of leading them and having them develop their own solutions rather than you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. Like there's no ownership of your idea, right? It's, it's much more powerful when it's their idea.

28:03 George Penyak: 100%. Yeah, 100% agree. And, you know, self-realization will always be received better than it coming from you. If it's… and almost not even collaborative… if you just ask the right questions and probe to get, get a certain customer or a certain employee to come to that solution that you probably wanted them to get to, but they did it on their own. And I think it's… it's… I love that point of working. It works well with clients and customers just as it does internally with your employees.

28:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What else have you taken away from that leadership experience that you apply in the sales role today, or just that you maybe do differently from a style standpoint because of what you picked up through that experience? Yeah.

28:47 George Penyak: It's interesting. I go day to day now with a lot more confidence, not that I wasn't confident before, but I just feel like I understand the process so much better. From being a manager and working with different personalities, different sales styles. But I understand our internal process so much better than I did when I was a local SE. And so I'm not really ever rushed. I'm very paced. I'm a lot more methodical. I think that also comes with the territory work and national deals as a whole. But yeah, it's just a different… it's a different feeling. And I'll be honest, when I took the role, I had some concern that how was this going to be viewed internally? And I think if you do, you got to get over that piece pretty quickly. So I… it was a lateral move, probably, if you looked at our org chart, and we're a pretty flat company, so it's, it's really kind of hard to see. But, you know, I went from having 8 direct reports and having complete control over 8 direct reports into having fully having a quota, my own quota, and then having like almost 41, 45 dotted lines, you know. And I think my biggest heartburn over it was internally, how does this look? Because I don't want my company to think I'm walking away from a leadership opportunity. And, you know, my manager did a good job of saying, no, no, this is what's right for your career. I think rounding out that skill set is critical to get to the next level. And I don't think there's one perfect career path, right? And Scott, you could probably talk about your career path a little bit, but there's not one perfect career path. And I… and when I interviewed for this national role, I met with every single executive and interviewed with every single executive we have, from our CEO to marketing to HR, operations, whole nine. And I had to get the okay by everybody. And I remember asking the question during the interview, is this the career path? I mean, what is the career path? And all of them said, George, there's no set career path. There's just not one. You grow your skillset, your skillset grows, and then opportunities happen in a company like ours. So I had a lot of comfort in that, but really, I mean, you got to look at it from the outside looking in. I felt, oh my gosh, well, I'm leaving this leadership role to go back to directly contributing. This doesn't look good, right? But once I got over that piece, I mean, I completely was at peace with it when I made that decision. I was 100% committed to going back to a direct contributor. So there's a lot of things that change when you leave that management position, that leadership position. And getting back into the front… not the front line, but getting back into the sales game where you have a quota. And now, now you're, you're expected to shift your mindset from coaching to selling. And, you know, it's, it's different. It's different, but it's good. It's really hard to… it's, it's hard to articulate sometimes because, you know, you don't… you never want to catch yourself looking back at the regional sales manager role. Okay, what if I would have stayed there? What would happen this year? And Could I have gotten to this position quicker? You know, you just kind of make the decision and go with it and not look back and, and take what you learned as a manager and, and apply it to what you're doing today. And I really think this will get me to the next step of, of that director-level role where I'm managing now national sales executives. And then I, I'm back on the leadership team and at an even much higher level than I would have been probably sticking with the regional sales management role.

32:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah, you know, it's, it's a topic that I feel like is basically just completely left untouched in just all of the sales content that's out there. There's not a lot of conversation about the career path. And, you know, really something intentionally I'm thinking about right now. I mean, we're recording this a number of weeks before we'll release the episode. So hopefully by the time this is out, I will have solved for the bulk of what the agenda looks like for the Sales Success Summit. But the general kind of broad strokes that I'm working through right now is, you know, the first day is basically going to mirror the sales process, right? We'll have a heavy dose of prospecting on the front end and getting meetings and creating opportunities. And then we'll walk through the varying stages of the sales process, right? We'll cover discovery and we'll cover close planning and joint action plans, and we'll cover really just Closing the gaps in your process. We'll cover whale hunting, just lots of different things like that. But the second day, the again the broad strokes I'm thinking there is we're going to talk about mindset. We're going to talk about productivity. I'm actually going to do a presentation on how the heck I manage all of this stuff. And then you know almost the the second half of the second day is going to focus pretty squarely on how do you manage your sales career, and and we'll talk about. You know, the, I think the more traditional path, which is the, I'm going to go and become a sales leader. And I'm going to put together a panel with a bunch of folks who are in that role, who've been on the podcast. So having experience of, hey, I was, I was a top performer as a quota carrier. Now I'm working to become a top performer as a, as a leader and kind of what they've learned from that and what they wish they knew. And, you know, what they might've done differently to set themselves up for that experience and get into that experience sooner if that was a desire. But also, again, kind of this untapped idea, you're not the only one that made this move. I think your TRIG analysis is a little bit different in that you're thinking about this in terms of really broadening your experience, broadening your base, if you will, so that you can kind of climb higher from a leadership experience perspective. You know, the other side is, and I'm talking with him right now, hopefully he'll come back on as well, I mean, Evan Kelsay was on the podcast about a year ago, had just closed the biggest deal in Seismic's history, and he stepped into a regional sales leadership role and then called me just a few weeks ago and he's like, Scott, I totally understand now what you mean by this intentional individual contributor thing. He's like, I'm still… I'm too hungry. I need to be able to hunt. I'm not ready to not do that because it's the indirect experience just wasn't feeding him. He's like, I had to go back in the field and he's, he, you know, just digging into starting a new territory and everything else. And, you know, I think that it's worth talking about the other person and you're going to sit right in between these interviews, I think, is, you know, the conversation I'm having with Dale Dupree, who also has done both sides of these, had tremendous success, you know, in the field selling copiers. Did some work on the leadership side, and now has gone and taken this third path of, you know, essentially starting a sales training company. So, you know, I really just want to explore those things. You know, people have asked, you know, one of the questions that I often ask late in these interviews is, you know, what do you want to know of other top sales performers? And that's been a fairly consistent theme. It's some version of either Where do I invest the money? And some variation of kind of where do I invest the time, right? How do I either give back or do I start a side hustle? Or, you know, what is… it all comes down to this question of what is the path? And, you know, like the conversation we just had, we're not going to present the answers. I think we're just going to talk through a lot of different ideas and a lot of real-world experience and what that's been so that folks can just make a little bit more of an uninformed decision. And what I love about what you're doing is you're, you're thinking about it, right? You're thinking those steps ahead and giving some thought to, okay, if I want to be in this spot in 5 years or 10 years, what can I do now that's gonna help me better prepare for that opportunity?

36:43 George Penyak: Yeah, 100%, you know, 100%. You know, just going back to thinking about your career, you know, in the career path that you're gonna take or you want to take, I always think… I try to think 2 to 3 levels ahead. Like, what are those next 2 or 3 steps I have to take? And I look at the people that are in those roles today and the skill sets that they have, and I look at their resume. Where have they been? What have they done? Who have they sold? And for me, where I'm at today, based on my tenure, based on my career history, success I've had in various roles, one big gap that I saw was selling into national accounts. And, you know, when I was a local SE, I sold regionally. So you'd sell, and what we call a regional account would be maybe a restaurant chain of 15 to 20 units. And then, you know, managing a team of 8, they're selling into those chains of 15, 20 units, really 30 is the max, 30 actual units and below. Is what typically a local SE would sell into. And so I had… I did that very successfully, moved right up to the regional role. And so then I started thinking, once I had success at the regional role, I'm like, well, what's next? You know, do I, do I go manage regional sales managers? Do I go to a VP level or director level right from here? But what, what would someone else have an edge on me? Let's say I'm sitting side by side next to someone in an interview or going through that process. What could they have the edge on me? And a big gap was national accounts. And I think if you look at a lot of VPs nowadays, you look at a lot of middle management or higher on the sales side leadership, they're going to have pretty sizable national account experience. And at our company, I'm fortunate because the role came open. My mentor, it was his position to fill, and also he felt I would do a really good job at it. So he had complete confidence in my competencies to come in and execute at a high level. And so now that I'm doing this, I really feel that when that next step does come, because you never know timing, especially if you want to stay with a specific company, because you never know when that next position could come, could come open. But I do know that when it does, I'm going to be much more marketable to it than I was before as a regional sales manager, even if I continue to have the high level of success. You know, I just think that rounding out, I guess you can call it rounding out your resume, rounding out your experience to have great local experience, great hunting, great management experience, and now a very high performer at the national level, I'm really, at least from my vantage standpoint, I'm filling in any gap that could be asked of me at the next level. And then after that, as I think 2 to 3 levels beyond where I'm at today, what's after that? So if I get to this director-level role, how do I get to the VP role? What skill set could I be missing then? You know, and so it's constantly how I think about my own career. And I think it's helped me get to where I am. I'm probably the… I was definitely the youngest regional sales manager at the time, maybe one of the youngest they ever had. Everyone… it was kind of unique. Everyone on my team was actually older than me and more tenured. And so having those little things along the way and having success with it, I think is going to help as my career goes on and on.

39:55 Scott Ingram: Well, and the thing that's unstated here that I kind of want to call out is you've also clearly made the decision that this is the right company, right? You're in the right place to grow. I mean, the company's growing, right? So that's meaningful too. I think you need to kind of pick your shots. I mean, I'm thinking about the story that I wrote in the Sales Success Stories book about just being clear about what you want. And I think it's important to have Whether you're working for the same company and moving through different divisions and different roles, or you're working across different companies and getting a breadth of experience. And for me, I don't… I guess I don't think about it so much as rounding out the resume. I've thought about it more just from figuring out what do I like best, right? What do I enjoy? Because I've… I mean, I've worked a giant range. I've worked for very small companies. I've worked for very large companies. And I definitely prefer, I guess I'm, I'm a little bit Goldilocks, but I really much prefer kind of the mid-range, like a few hundred people to, you know, several thousand is fine. Once it gets much bigger than that, I, yeah, it tends to get for me just kind of too political, too bureaucratic. I like to be in a space that's, that's kind of more nimble. Right. So I think there's, There's so many decisions that you can make across all of this, right? So is there one company that you can hang your hat on that you just believe in and you can develop all of that breadth of relationships and experience and grow that way? Or do you want to work across a variety of different companies? And, and that's just the size question, right? Then there's, then there's the industry question and and the size of accounts that you want to sell to. I love selling to big companies. I don't like working for them, but I like selling to them, you know? So, oh yeah, but it's taken me a long time to just kind of figure those out, and I had to do it through a whole variety of different experiences. So talk, talk about kind of the choice that you've made, like why, why Restaurant Technologies, and, and why is this kind of a the right home for you to continue to progress in your career.

42:16 George Penyak: Yeah, Scott, I think we're a lot alike in that stance, and what you just said really hits home for me because I couldn't agree more. You have to find your own personal fit within your company. And for instance, before I worked for Restaurant Technologies, which is, I would describe to your point, a medium-sized to small company, we're about 1,000 employees nationally. We make a big impact in the restaurant industry, And so that, that 1,000, you know, I would call it 1,000-person team or 1,000, you know, employee-sized company. That's a good sweet spot for me. I worked before that for larger national companies, Raycom being one. They own various TV stations around the country. I also worked for McClatchy, which is a newspaper company, very large companies. And also I was selling something completely different. And one of the things that really attracted me to Restaurant Technologies is, you know, when I was interviewing for the very first… my very first role within Restaurant Technologies, I really felt that the company was more nimble. I mean, when I really looked at it and I saw, wow, there's only 1,000 employees in this whole… at that time we only had about 700, and they do such a big impact in the industry. That was attractive to me because the person I was interviewing with was the regional sales manager at that time. You know, he was mentioning conversations he had with the CEO. How his ideas could spiral upward pretty quickly and come to fruition, where if you're at a larger company, nothing against Raycom or McClatchy or any of these large companies out there, you don't necessarily have that kind of clout. And I think even starting from the bottom at a smaller company, you're going to get a little more clout than what you would have at a large company. Now, larger companies, just to piggyback off what we just talked about, larger companies, I think, are going to have that much more defined career path. If you want to stay in one large company, you're probably going to have a large history of people before you that have climbed the ranks, if you will, and you're going to have that very defined. When you work for the smaller companies, that's not necessarily the case. I think you really have to carve your own way through the company and learn things as you go. And so that's one of the downsides for working for the smaller companies. Also, too, working for a company like Restaurant Technologies where We grow 10 to 15% a year. That sounds great to a lot of salespeople, but what that comes with is very high expectations. So, you know, you're growing, but, you know, the goals and our expectations for our employees are extremely high. You know, it's a fast-paced environment. We're a lean team. We maximize everything we can to really better to our customers, you know, benefit really. But, you know, it's just a leaner, meaner machine. Than these larger companies. And so that's why when I left the leadership position to go back into individual contributor, I really couldn't get a straight answer from any executive on, is this the right move for your career path? Is this what I quote unquote should be doing? You know, it was really interesting. And I think you might get that at a larger company. And I think a lot of people would find comfort in that. And then also to your point of finding the fit of actually what you're selling, I could not agree more. I mean, if you don't love what you sell, If you're not passionate about it, you should really move on pretty quickly. It'll be better for both parties, both you and then the company you're currently working for. And I've been there, and I think every good salesperson that's made a few moves in their career has been at a point where they're selling a product or service that they don't fully… not believe in, but their heart's not in it. And if your heart's not in it, you're probably not going to perform to your peak, you know? And it's just… it's best to just move on to something else. Don't be scared to make that change. But yeah, I think those points are super valid and they really hit home to me when I think about my own, my own career so far at Restaurant Technologies.

46:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I always start like number one is, is the belief. There's nobody that I have talked to on this show that was like, yeah, you know, the solution's okay. Like it's a sales job and I'm able to be number one. It's not how it works. Like, you have to be able to feel it, you know. And I've heard, you know, a definition of sales is like the transference of passion. And I think that's… I think that's a good definition. And if you don't have it, you can't possibly transfer it. You… it's not something… it's not something you can fake, at least not for very long and very convincingly.

46:37 George Penyak: Yeah, you know, because you can really tell when someone says, wow, that person is so passionate. It's really what they're doing is they're speaking on something that they truly believe from, from the heart, you know. And I think that really helps make great salespeople great is they do believe in the product. And, and, you know, you can tell someone there that's just kind of spinning their wheels trying to get through the day. It's a job, you know, I'm gonna make my pitch. And, you know, it's just a lot of those… it's that, you know, what, what's, what's the classic rule you have to… you probably can remind me… is it 20/70/10, where you have your top 20%, your middle 70%, and then you have your bottom 10 performers? And you should change out the bottom 10 every year, get the, get the 70 into the top 20 and then keep the top 20 happy. It's kind of like, I think you're going to find a lot of those people in the bottom 10 that they either haven't found that next role yet, so they're just riding it out and, you know, they're just the… they're just not excited about the product. They can pitch it. I think there's some good salespeople out there that are selling tough products to them and they can pitch it. You understand it, you understand the value proposition, you know, so on and so forth. But you're going to find yourself in the bottom 10 pretty quickly if you're not excited about it and it's not something you would buy yourself.

47:47 Scott Ingram: So yeah, well, let's, let's talk about kind of the difference in your process these days and kind of how you're running these deals, because that's the other thing that's, that's significantly different is, is going from kind of a regional, kind of what I assume is kind of mid-sized type deals to now, you know, very large national scale types of opportunities to kind of talk through how that's different.

48:11 George Penyak: Yeah, well, you know, what's interesting about our company is our value proposition to these national customers are actually very similar. Similar to the value proposition we would sell to an independent restaurant, but I'm working at such a larger scale where… so we're in the safety and automation industry as far as offering that to the restaurant industry. I understand a lot more from the national customer's chair how their businesses ran than I did before when I'm just selling to an independent operator because there are things that a national customer cares about that maybe the independent operator doesn't. And, you know, something specifically is scalability. So how is your program going to fit into my operation, and how is it scalable? Because they are dealing with so many employees, and right now labor, we all know labor and turnover is very tight. How is your solution simplified and scalable within what I'm doing? When you're talking to a regional operator that's dealing with 15 locations, or even an independent operator that has application, scaling's not hard. It's not really an issue. I mean, that owner has a lot more control over 15 restaurants than you're talking to someone that has 1,000, right? And so the process of, how is this scalable, George? How can you simplify this for me, George? Those are a lot of the questions I get. How can we implement this and it not be such a big project, get the benefits that you're telling me, but also make this simple enough where 1,000 employees can do it rather than selling an independent operator where like, oh, I can just tell the fry guy how to do this. It's very simple. So you're thinking from that aspect, then also to how the P&Ls are different, how these larger companies are managed. A lot of them are publicly traded. It's a quarterly game for them. Whereas the independent operators, they're private, they're family-owned, decision-making process is a lot quicker there. Having the understanding of how that works in a large publicly traded company will help you work the deal a little differently and get to a positive result. And then understanding their challenges. A challenge that a national customer has versus an independent customer is vastly different. So because we touch the safety component of a restaurant or kitchen, I've got to understand workers' comp. I have to have a great understanding of that, and I have to be able to speak intelligently to it, to my customer because they're going to expect that of me at the national level, whereas a local operator might not expect as much of that out of a local representative. It's more about, you know, the simplicity of it and, and the process versus having a bigger understanding. And so, and a lot of that, I wrote about it in the book in one of my chapters when I talked about my new workers' comp partner that I leverage in a lot of deals. You know, I really educated myself and, and I wanted to understand from my customer's chair Hey, how does putting in a system like Restaurant Technologies impact the safety that's in my kitchens? Because the lower my workers' comp claims, the less workers' comp claims I have, the better my P&L looks. And I just needed to really connect the dots on that. So when I sit in front of a… you're sitting in a boardroom and you're sitting in front of teams that manage thousands of employees, I understand it. And I don't understand it as good as an insurance rep, but I can speak intelligently to it and I understand the challenges around it. So that's really the biggest difference is you have to think big business, think from your customer's chair. Whereas if you're a local rep, you're turning and burning, you're selling deals quickly, you're doing more deals in a shorter amount of time. Nationally, it's just working that next level up and understanding their challenges because they are different.

51:49 Scott Ingram: And talk about kind of the learning piece there, right? So how did you get up to speed on those things? How do you manage your own development from that perspective?

51:57 George Penyak: Yeah. So it's a time investment, right? So as salespeople, we all have quotas, we all have goals to meet, and you have to prioritize where you spend your time. And I really invested a lot of my own time in… and I did this completely on my own. I didn't ask for permission from my company. I just felt it would better me be more of a value to my customers if I could have understanding of it. So I literally, I literally called on insurance companies that offered workers' comp insurance to restaurants. I kind of cold-called them and I said, hey, Here's what I do. Here's the understanding I have. There might be a potential partnership where we could work together on deals, but I need to sit down with you and understand your company, understand what value you bring to the customer, understand why one customer might pay more in workers' comp and one customer pay less. Why is that different? What impacts that? And so it really was my own doing, spending my own time and making the commitment to educate myself. And I think that's something that does make me a little different than many of my peers is, you know, I do spend the extra time, you know, doing things like that and learning, you know, learning about what my customers care about. I'm not saying my peers don't do that, and I think a lot of people do, but I'm not so sure there's a lot of sales reps out there that would actually proactively reach out to spend time during the day reaching out to completely companies that you don't sell to to get a better understanding of how it's important to your customer. Does that make sense?

53:19 Scott Ingram: Yeah, totally. And that story, I mean, super powerful story. In fact, I think we… I shared it as a sample here on the podcast not too long ago. So the title of that story was Overdelivering on Value. And you can go and listen to that because we're overdelivering on value here and you can go get it for free. You don't even have to spend the $10 on the book.

53:39 George Penyak: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not… didn't want to be a spoiler there, but yeah, there's a… it's a really good chapter. It goes into a lot of the details on what you can… your customer's expectations of you as a salesperson, and who else can you bring to the table and add a little risk in the deal on your side, like take a risk that you've done your due diligence on. And if it can better your customer in the end, it might be a risk worth taking. And so that's… yeah. And then at the end of the day, if you take the risk but you brought more value, then you look better to the customer and you did right by your customer ultimately at the end of the day.

54:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, and I think one of the things that you did really well in that process also was just kind of managing the expectations along the way, right? You first, you ask the customer, you're like, hey, I've got this idea. I think there's, there's going to be a big win in it at the end of the day. But, you know, you ask their permission before making that introduction. And again, you kind of set them up that, you know, like, this might not work, but I got this great idea. Would you be willing to try it with me? And then I think I think that part of your process was pretty fantastic.

54:39 George Penyak: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we were in test actually when I brought this workers' comp company in. It was a workers' comp agent I was working with at the time to the table. I mean, we hadn't secured the business yet, so it was kind of a… it made the move real risky because the customer's still kind of feeling me out. But I think I'm all about being transparent, as transparent as you can with your customers. And A, I didn't want them to feel like I'm just shoving this individual in their face and And I think it's real important when you do something like that, when you quote unquote, I don't want to call it lead sharing, but you always have to ask for permission before doing the introduction. And yeah, I was real, real candid, real transparent. So listen, we've never done this before, but I think I've educated myself. I've done a lot of research on various companies and I think you can, I think there's a benefit in this for you. And I want, and I also said, if you don't mind, and this was kind of building the trust with the customer. I said, if you don't mind, at the end of this process, I would love your feedback. Because this is the first time we've done this. I, and I, I value your feedback in this process as well. And it really helped build a relationship. And it was what was really cool. At the end of the day, they went with the workers' comp company that I introduced them to. They went with us as well. And then they called me up, and I'll never forget this. They called me up at the end of the process. They said, George, we can't thank you enough for introducing us to this company. They said, if you have any other suggestions or ideas, please send them our way. And I just thought that was really, really, really impactful. But, you know, at the same time, I was talking to some of my peers about it internally, and, you know, they were looking at me like I was kind of crazy. Like, you know, you're going to introduce this person that you've never dealt with in a large-scale test right at the end of the test, you know? And, you know, but you do what you can. You check all the boxes that you can. You do all the research you can, and then you go with your gut. My gut told me this will work and it's going to be what's best for the customer and end up working out.

56:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, that right there is the definition of getting to that trusted advisor status.

56:32 George Penyak: Yeah, consultative selling, you know, trusted advisor. And, you know, it… and it really, it made me a better salesperson. It made me such a better salesperson. And then, you know, what was real funny is I went to our marketing team after that was done, after we pulled that off, and The Workers Company was able to save them such a tremendous amount of money that I actually reached out to our marketing team and said, hey, I think this is valuable. I think we should do a case study on this. The customers I think they would be willing to give a statement, and I think we can actually kick off a new partnership and actually leverage this new relationship we have with this workers' comp company where all of our customers could win. And then before you know it, after that rolled out, after we knocked out the case study and it got emailed out internally in Restaurant Technologies, I had a lot of reps reaching out to me like, how did you do that? Is this… does this really work? You know, and I tell them almost the same story just like I told it to you just now on this podcast. And other, it's, we're just bringing more value to our customers now, you know, but if I hadn't, if I hadn't taken that risk, you know, if I hadn't gone the extra mile, you know, and just did a little bit extra research out completely out of the normalcy of the day-to-day of what I used to do, you know, we wouldn't be where we are today. And it's, uh, it's just really cool. And ultimately we all want our customers to, to see a better win in our programs. And, you know, it's just kind of thinking outside the box.

57:49 Scott Ingram: You know what, what I love about that is the, the broader impact, right? You not only did you obviously win the deal and you had a super happy customer and they're referenceable and all of that, but the broader implications of that to now you're moving the needle on something that the company is able to scale and bring this to other customers. And now everybody is, is selling more because of something you did. And that's something for me that I always look to as well. Is it's just the impact. And honestly, that's why the giant company… working for giant companies doesn't really work for me because it's so much harder to have that kind of impact. Like, I'm so much of a dot connector and talking to different parts of the organization. I mean, one of the things I'm doing with my current company is we're taking my experience and what I learned from the first Sales Success Summit, and we're getting ready to deliver our first client conference. And in fact, we're going to do it the week before in Austin. It's almost the exact same play. For our clients. And I'm confident that that is also going to move the needle for, for our business. Right. And it's, it goes way beyond, you know, that's, I don't get quota retirement credit for that, or I'm not getting commission for that. But for me, it's, it's fulfilling. It's impactful. I mean, the thing that my clients always ask me for is, you know, what are your other clients doing? Right. They just, we all want to know. I mean, heck, it's what we do with this podcast. Like, what are other top salespeople doing? I want to know. I got to know. And, you know, if I can just put them all in a room together, it's a lot easier and scales much more. And they get to start create… to build those relationships. And we all win in that scenario. I mean, the outcomes I know are going to be tremendous because I look at the outcomes of the summit from a year ago. I mean, I just heard another story the other day that I wasn't even aware. I haven't been in touch with this particular individual who attended. But I heard from somebody else who'd been on the stage. We're working on, again, agenda building for the summit. He's like, oh no, I talk to this guy all the time. And, you know, he took a giant step in his career and has been able to do this and that and the other. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is incredible, right? It's that kind of impact that at the end of the day is what totally drives me. Frankly, don't tell the people who write my checks this, but more than the money.

1:00:15 George Penyak: Yeah. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, one thing I'm excited about going back to the Sales Summit and getting all the, all the great minds together is, you know, I think, and it's the same thing with customers, you know, what challenges are you facing or other salespeople facing today that they weren't last year or 2 years ago? Because I think both our customers and then, you know, we're companies as well, the companies that we work for, the business environment with technology and expectations is changing year by year. I mean, it's, and I think once you get people together face-to-face, you can have a lot of conversations and you're going to learn like, hey, what is customer A's challenges? And let's say you're having a customer event like you're referencing here. What are they facing and what are they concerned about in the future? And then maybe what's customer B facing today and what are they concerned about in the future? Where can we be a bigger value? And then honestly, just being transparent about our own challenges. I think a lot of, you know, to give a great example is What are some of the challenges our customers are facing nowadays is 2 things. Labor is what I hear a lot, and then also distribution. So there's a lot less truck drivers on the road than there were, you know, just say 5 years ago, and a lot of millennials don't necessarily want to drive a truck. And so the cost per driver is going through the roof because it's the classic supply and demand. And not only does every company that ships anything face that, you know, a lot of companies that we do business with You know, my company ships stuff and so does their company. I mean, they're a restaurant, they distribute stuff. And so having those conversations where both, you know, us and our clients can collaboratively come up with, with a solution or address problems going forward is great. And then also just hearing others' perspectives. So going back to the Sales Summit, I think it's gonna be incredible networking. I think you're gonna get a lot of people from, from different walks of the sales industry and their careers. And, you know, what's changed in the art of selling over the last 12 to 24 months with technology. Like, how is technology changing how we sell? And, you know, always thinking ahead. And I think if you get a lot of these top performers in a room together, you'll come up with a lot of very insightful ideas and solutions and also problems. And, you know, what you just said too, also thought about. So last week I was actually in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I sit on the supplier committee for NACS, and NACS stands for the National Association of Convenience Stores. And they host the largest convenience store show in the world, I believe, in the United States once a year. And so I sit on their supplier committee. It's a real honor to sit on the committee. There's not very many chairs out there and a lot of suppliers, about 60 suppliers a year will apply for one spot. So I'm very lucky to be on it. But on that panel, on the supplier board, there's probably 30 to 20, I would say call it 20 suppliers. But there's also 3 retailers, 3 customers that sit on the board. And we all share the same concerns and ideas around how do we move the industry forward and what challenges are facing the industry today. And it's a very collaborative environment. I just had my second meeting. It's a 4-year term and we meet twice a year. And I just had my second meeting last week. And what you're saying about getting everyone in a room, both customers and your own team, you know, you can really address some big problems. And it's extremely collaborative. And no matter how good… I wrote a piece on LinkedIn recently that no matter how strong technology gets, nothing will ever trump the face-to-face meeting. And I think that's something that's very, very important. And I know, I completely understand that some salespeople can be more efficient by doing webinars and phone calls and emails, and you can do a lot more of that than hopping on a plane and meeting someone face-to-face, but I just still think you'll never get quite the same value out of a meeting or a touchpoint than it being face-to-face.

1:04:12 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the same thing with learning and everything else, right? You can listen to all these podcasts. You can read the books and everything else, but there's just something different about being in the room and building a relationship with the person that you're listening to and being able to ask that follow-up question. And I mean, shoot, you and I have been talking now for 2 and a half years, not, not today. Yeah. But, you know, we've been talking on and off for a long time. Actually, we have met now, now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

1:04:44 George Penyak: It was like, it was a restaurant in Austin. It was a really good restaurant, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:47 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I have a good, good friend of mine owns, owns that place. Shout out to Irene's. So, you know, it's, there's nothing like that to, to extend that relationship. And I mean, it's, it's because of that relationship and some of that face time and everything else. I mean, I'm working with your wife to, to help build this President's Club Cruise concept that I've been working on the last couple of years. And, you know, getting, getting close to, I think, hopefully being in a position to at least do the beta version of that in May of 2020.

1:05:20 George Penyak: I think that's a really cool idea. Not only that, shout out, I gotta give myself a shameless plug here, Penyak Travel. Helping you put that together. It's a company my wife and I have owned for the last 3 years now. And we've got, you know, we… it was just us and we've now scaled it. We've got 10, 11 agents. We're doing about $3 million a year in travel sales and we started from zero. But yeah, it's… I think there's… and what you're doing with that, bringing people together, doing a President's Club cruise, I love that idea. Because I think a lot of companies, like my company, we move so fast, you know, President's Club. And I think for a lot of companies, it's evolved over the last 20, 10 years. I think 10 years ago, 20 years ago, almost all companies did these lavish trips. And nowadays, I just think it's a lot different. And I think bringing it back to, hey, let's, let's do something face-to-face in person, but let's do a cruise, make it educational, make it fun, and it can be an an excellent reward for your top-performing salespeople in various companies because you're not only giving them a reward in the shape of a cruise and a vacation and a little downtime, but also if you mix in some meetings in there with other great salespeople, great things can come of that. I love… I completely back that idea.

1:06:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. It's been a little while since I've talked about it, but the real vision is, I mean, I've now worked for 2 companies, the last 2 companies I've been at where we're too small to really justify a President's Club. What, Scott and Tom are just going to go on this trip together? That doesn't make any sense, right? So, particularly for the smaller companies to be able to offer that experience, but really, I mean, for anybody of any size, it's not… I'm trying to check all the boxes, right? You want to incentivize, you want to reward, you want to recognize your top performers, but, you know, at the end of the day, you also want to light them on fire. Right? You want them going back and doing this again. And, you know, the thing that lights me on fire is, is these conversations and getting to hang out with like this caliber of professionals because it's, it's, you know, it's funny. I've been on a number of other podcasts kind of talking and I feel like the Roger Bannister story keeps coming up a lot where, you know, sometimes you just have to see that it's possible and somebody else is doing this. And, you know, the thing that happened at the summit last year that blew my mind, I mean, just the culture of the summit, you know, which I hadn't put a ton of intentional energy into. Now I'm thinking about it even more. But, you know, I was amazed because the level of humility that came out, because I think the reaction across the board, because I mean, so many of the people there are folks that have been on the podcast, right? So, they're outright number one, like, I'm the top performer in my company. They've got a bullseye on their back. But it almost brought everybody back down because now they're in a room where they're like, I'm not sure if I'm the best person here. In fact, I'm pretty confident I'm not.

1:08:19 George Penyak: Yeah.

1:08:19 Scott Ingram: And really taking that as an opportunity to just, you know, humble yourself and go, you know what, there's so much more that I could do. There's so much more that I have to learn. So, you know, I'm, I'm not here to preach. I'm here to, I'm here to absorb and, and learn from, you know, what my, what my peers are doing. And just, you know, the impact of that was, was insane. So, I'm super excited about, you know, just being able to scale that a bit, a bit this year, but not, not too much, right? I'm still really intentional about keeping it super intimate. And anyway, I feel like we're, we're flogging the summit to death. I don't want to, I don't want to do that too much, but folks should definitely go to top1summit.com and get themselves registered because it's going to be, it's going to be a heck of a thing. George, what, what did we miss? Is there anywhere else that… actually, you know what? There was one thing that I wanted to ask, and then I'll ask you that question again. You were talking about about just the customer experiences and those conversations and bringing people together and the challenges. What do you think, just for yourself, what are you seeing is kind of the biggest challenge in your sales role today and in the day-to-day?

1:09:28 George Penyak: Yeah. So you're talking about when I'm working with my customers, right?

1:09:32 Scott Ingram: For you, like just in sales today, what do you think the biggest challenge is? And obviously, hopefully drawing on personal experience here.

1:09:39 George Penyak: Oh, for sure. So I think technology's evolving so much, and I think now that… and cell phones have been around for a while, but now that everyone, literally almost on the planet, has a cell phone, expectations have gone up. And not only on us as salespeople, but also on our customers as well. So I'll give you a great example. When I'm working with an operations leader of a 300-unit chain, I've got to be very empathetic of the challenges he's facing. And no matter what, no matter how bad we want to make a sale on our time as salespeople, like I want it to be on my time, I got a goal to hit, you know, I need this sale to come XYZ, like right now or next month, you always have to have it planned out. No matter what, you have to be empathetic of your customer's time. And it's, it's almost always going to be on the customer's time because they also are running a business as well. And I just think that, you know, they have a cell phone just like we do. Salespeople are pulled in 1 million directions. You have to prioritize. You can't be… you can't be scared to ask for help. You know, I think a lot of great salespeople think they can take on a lot of stuff on their own. That's when I was going back to my example earlier in the podcast where, you know, you're trying to put out a fire, you're having a problem, you want to handle it yourself. Don't be… don't be hesitant to ask for help, you know, because we're all You know, pulled in so many different directions, especially I think the smaller the company you work at. I mean, you probably have empathy for this, Scott. The smaller the company you work at, the more directions you're pulled in, the more hats you wear. And I just think in, you know, having empathy for our customers because they're going through those same challenges as well, you know, it's always going to be on their time, you know, and there's always a polite way to bow out if, you know, say you're calling on someone and you're not getting any feedback, you're not getting anything back, and they're just not responding to you, give them permission to say no. Give them the okay to say, no, the timing's not right. No, it's not a fit. Okay, I'll check back with you next year. Because you don't want to continue to push somebody that doesn't have the time or isn't ready to be sold. I just think that's the biggest challenge today is having empathy for your customers and understanding that they're under the same pressures Unless you're dealing with the owner themselves, which also deals with a lot of pressure. But if you're dealing with another employee or a high-level employee like a VP of operations, which is someone that I would deal with a lot, they've got a lot going on internally too. And, you know, prioritizing your time and being empathetic of your customers' time is big right now.

1:12:07 Scott Ingram: You know what? That's such an interesting callout. And I actually think I'm going to say that that is something that is broken. In just sort of the broader sales culture. And that is like, we try and make it all about us and our timeline, and it creates like, it's short-term thinking. And I think that the result is like this massive erosion of margins. It's a, I don't know, it's, it just feels really dysfunctional. And so it was like, specifically what I'm referring to here is the It's the end of the month. It's the end of the quarter. The customer's not ready yet, but damn it, we need them to be ready, right? We've got our numbers to make. And so we're going to do unnatural things to try and close that deal. And we're not being empathetic to the, to the situation of the client. I mean, I'm flashing back to a conversation I had. One of my clients was in town here for a, for a conference a couple of months ago. And so we sat down, had coffee on a, on a Sunday, and she was telling me a story of a of a marketing technology that they're like, yeah, you know what, we're throwing this particular technology out. You know, it's probably a, I don't know, $80,000 a year kind of investment for them. And the reason it was getting thrown out is because the company that sold them to it did it in that impatient way. They forced it down their throat. Well, they weren't ready to implement it, so they never did. They basically wasted that investment for an entire year and now it's gone, right? So, so the company that sold it to them Right? They, they churned that solution, and had they waited another 3 or 4 months, you know, they would have a much happier customer. It would be installed. They'd be paying that $80,000, and, and knowing that particular client, they'd be paying more than that because these guys are, are just all over it and, and growing and taking advantage of lots of things. So, you know, they might have done $80,000 that first year, and, and then they're at $120,000 in year 2, but instead they got nothing to show for it now. And I think that, you know, some of it comes with… God, I mean, there's… I'm gonna go on a soapbox here. I think there's so many different things going on, right? I think some of it is… I think some of it is the expectation and… not expectation. Yeah, I guess so, right? It's… we're all being pushed so hard on these big numbers that may or may not not be realistic and achievable, right? And so we're, we're again doing it in the natural things, trying to get there. If we set more realistic expectations, right, and sought to more holistically serve our clients, right, that's what it's really about at the end of the day. And when you do that right, you win, right? So rather than having… I mean, this example I'll go back to again. They're now a negative reference, right? They're telling this story, and this was right before a giant marketing conference. So, you know, this is top of mind in a time where they're going to be talking to a bunch of other marketing leaders. So now your word on the street is tainted, whereas again, had you done it the right way, now this is somebody that's happy, that's having success with your solution, that's advocating for you and going out and doing more stuff. And I just, I feel like if we didn't push so hard and we let the natural business cycle sort of drive things now, I'm not saying don't go find a compelling event, find the reason and the timing why the customer needs to get this done and align to that, not to the end of your fiscal period, right? It's not going to do it. And funny, I, you know, I had another conversation with another individual who's been on the show who, again, it was coming up to the end of their fiscal year, giant deal on the line. This customer though, has been with this particular company for a long time, and he knows exactly not just when their quarter ends, but when the deal needs to be in. Because it's, you know, they're a big company, so there's a gap, right?

1:16:07 George Penyak: You…

1:16:07 Scott Ingram: they actually can't close a deal on the very last day of the, of the fiscal year. There's, there's like a week of lead time. So this guy literally, he's like, I've done this so many times, I know the day. He's like, we're… he's just waiting them out. He's like, they have trained this customer to get a 30 per… I'm sure he got some mega discount because I know he got the deal done. So, but you know, he gets some massive discount. You know, it's like, let's just get rid of all this stuff, man. Nevermind. I was going to talk about the first car that I bought being a Saturn.

1:16:42 George Penyak: I drove one before.

1:16:44 Scott Ingram: And you know what their thing was? I mean, I don't know how the company doesn't exist anymore. I don't know. And maybe that's, maybe this is going to like completely erode my entire argument, but You went into the dealership and the price was the price. We didn't, we didn't freaking mess around. Yeah, right. Like nobody, nobody enjoys… if you're selling cars and you're thinking about the customer experience, I don't go, oh boy, I can't wait to spend freaking hours going back and forth with some freaking car sales guy who can't even negotiate directly, who goes in secret to some back room that's BS. And it's funny, I've been thinking about that because I'm listening to Never split the difference.

1:17:21 George Penyak: Yep.

1:17:22 Scott Ingram: And, you know, he doesn't talk about this, but I'm thinking, you know what, next time I have to go through this, this thing with the car thing, I'm just gonna say, look, we're not having this conversation. Like, bring your manager out there. Let's hash this out right now. There's none of this like back and forth because it's all a game. We all know it is because we all play the game, you know, from, from the, from the other side of things. But I just did a deal, really, really funny, and Really good margin, right? This whole thing. And I was working with the procurement guy because he was literally trying to get out on vacation, you know, the the next day. Yeah. And and so I am doing everything I can to get him everything he needs as fast as we can because he's being pressured also to to get the deal done, right? So I'm helping him out. Two weeks later, he emails me and he's like, "Oh, Scott, how is it?" that this, these last 2 deals that we just did are at X rate. And the, the deal previous that we did in December was like, and because again, I don't want to disclose the actual numbers, but let's say it was about, it was probably 20 to 25 or 30% less on a, on an hourly basis.

1:18:31 George Penyak: Yeah.

1:18:32 Scott Ingram: He's like, why was that? And because I stuck to our like printed discount schedule that's all based on volume. I was just able to go back to him and say, Chris, look, there were 3 things that happened. One, last year when you did that deal, you had purchased 4,000 hours, right? So this is the tier that you were at, and we had a slight price increase this year. So here's the current schedule, here's the last schedule. And then the last thing you were asking about was this, you know, we basically gave him a discount for net 10 payment terms, I was like, that's always kind of discretionary based on the cash flow needs of the business. And we really wanted your money when we closed that deal on December 22nd last year. We really wanted it by the end of the year. So you got a hell of a deal for, for, you know, getting us cash in hand before the calendar clicked over. Didn't quite have as much pressure this year. So you still got your net 10 terms, but you know, the discount wasn't quite as aggressive. It was so awesome to within an hour be able to just go, Boom, boom, boom, boom. Here was everything that happened and why. Because there weren't any games behind the scenes.

1:19:42 George Penyak: Transparency.

1:19:43 Scott Ingram: That's it.

1:19:44 George Penyak: That's transparency speeds up, speeds up so many processes, Scott. I couldn't agree with you more. And transparency not only in that stage of the sales process when you when you've already got a customer and you're you're growing with the customer, but transparency when you're trying to get the first meeting. You know, give them the option to. To say no or to say no, not right now. And, you know, I don't think there's enough salespeople out there that do that. And then they push and then you discount to get the deal done on your timeline and then things flutter out to your example and the customer's not happy with the program. I got to give the company I work for a ton of credit right now because we… they want their salespeople and our salespeople to run their business like we are going to become the industry standard. We're not the industry standard today, but we will be the industry standard. And if we're not operating and thinking day to day like that as salespeople, and you're forcing deals to to meet your own deadlines, you're not going to become the industry standard. You're going to have a lot of unhappy customers. You're working on your timeline. And the great thing is, is if yeah, it's a little bit slower at first to work on your customer's timeline, but in the long run, you play the long game. You've got so many advocates, and you're getting so many introductions from. From fans and advocates and champion customers of yours, that it makes your job so much easier. And I think that is somewhat of the secret sauce that has made me real successful is that I worked really hard early in my career to have a lot of champion customers. And no matter what, we all work for our companies, but as long as you put the customer first, that'll go such a long way because going back to what's changed today in technology today, there's a lot of people just working on their own timeline. And if you actually put the customer first, you're going to stand out compared to all their other vendors. And I have… I can't tell you how many times I have my customers tell me, George, I love it because you always respond quickly. You always respond quickly. You always… I will drop everything, you know, especially if it's a current customer. And how I'm paid is I don't get paid on current customers. I'm all growth. So I don't get any residuals. It's something like that. It is 100% hunting a new business. So there's no financial value to me, like immediate financial value to me, to go back and help my, my current customers because we have a team that does that. We have account managers, we have locals, we have an incredible support staff for our customers. But a lot of people like to go back to the person that they formed the relationship with. And you know what? I will always take that call and put off a cold call or put off a a customer meeting if I have to. I will, I will do what it takes to take care of my current customers so I have as many champions as possible. And then, you know, what happens is I don't have to push at the end of the quarter. I'm already ahead of the game. That's, I mean, it's, it's, it's like, it's a longer-term thinking. And I just love that phrase that my CEO pushes is that we're going to become the industry standard. We need to operate as if we are the industry standard and pushing deals at the end of the quarter. If you're the industry standard, you don't do that. You know, it's just, it's a different way of thinking and it's a different, slightly different approach to sales. But I get it. You know, if you're a salesperson, you're new in the company, you're behind your number at the end of the quarter, I've got empathy for that too. I mean, it's a push and pull, but I think if you're transparent with your manager on things like that and you're explaining your strategies and what you're doing, you know, I, that's kind of how I ran my team. You know, it's, it's, it's all those things combined, you know, lead up to that long-term success. Because you… if you're in a big company, and I used to, you know, working at McClatchy and Raycom, you go to the big companies and you see the rock star salespeople and they're never stressed out. They have all these customer advocates and things. You just look at them like, God, things just always work out for them. Or you always hear the phrase, they must be real fortunate, real lucky, they have a good book of business, blah blah blah. But a lot of that just isn't true. It's just It's they don't work, they don't work with undue pressure on themselves and they don't let their customers see that. You know, I don't know. I just, I'm a, I'm a huge, huge believer in that. And then also, you know, one, the power, you know how many champion customers you need to overcome one customer that's a detractor? So to your example of, you know, they didn't even implement that program properly with the, with the customer. Now they're not using it. They spent $80,000. Now they're detractors. Do you have any champion customers you need to overcome that one? You know, every misery loves company, so no one rarely talks about their great experiences, but they will definitely share their bad ones. And so it's just so critical to have complete ownership of your market or of your portfolio, of your segment, and to really limit those experiences, even if it has to come at your own quarterly expense at a bonus. You'll make that up plus some down the road.

1:24:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, and to your point, if you develop that level of relationship, you can say, hey, look, you know, this timing actually matters for us. So, you know, if you've done all of the right things all along and you've done what's right by the customer, they're likely going to have some empathy for your situation. So, and I've certainly done that and said, hey, you know, I know this isn't important to you. And if the timing's not right, I totally get it. But if you're in a position that we can knock this out, it would be really helpful to me. And, you know, shoot, a majority of the time, you know, that's possible. But I think the broader issue, it's, there's 2 sides to it, right? Part of it is leadership, right? Right? Part of it is what is being pushed down and how are we thinking about the business? But to your point, I think, again, in this intentional individual contributor type of space, if you're thinking holistically about the business and you see these broader impacts, I mean, I think about the last company that I was at. It was funny because I didn't do this analysis. We had a change in the sales leader, and it was just after, shortly after kind of my first full year with the company. And I was, I think on paper, I was number 2 or something like that. You know, he was kind of pushing me on some stuff and challenging me on some stuff. And it forced me to sort of go back and look at what had I done really, right, and sort of dissect the deals and dissect my business. And the reality was, on paper, I was number 2. But the difference between what I did and the margins and the profitability that I brought to the business, compared to the guy who was technically number 1 from a revenue perspective, but once you factored in his churn and the level of discounting he did, it was like, this isn't even the same thing.

1:26:15 George Penyak: Yeah.

1:26:16 Scott Ingram: Right? So, again, and being able to make that case, right? It was a lot of fun to be able to go back and do the math and be able to articulate, look, this is the value that I'm bringing. So, if you are thinking about your business that way and you are selling this way, being able to have that financial story that you can share and say, yeah, okay. Okay, sure, I was 95% of my number last year, or I was just short a club or wherever I was. But if you look at the value of the business that I brought and where these clients are now and what this is going to mean for the business in the long term, especially, especially in SaaS today, right? If you're in some sort of like recurring payment model, holy crud. Yeah, you know, like forecast that out. Let's start thinking in terms of lifetime value of a customer and let's forecast this out and play this out 5 years and see what that year looks like. And I promise you, I was number one.

1:27:14 George Penyak: Oh, 100%. I, I, I couldn't agree more. Like, we… and it's, it's to the fault of us salespeople and sales managers that we score on a monthly, quarterly, and, and annual game, but that's not necessarily how our customers play play. But because we score that way, you're going to have a lot of your quote, maybe you're going to have a… and actually, spoiler alert, this is in the book a little bit, but there's 2 ways to go about it. I view it as trying to become the industry standard and doing everything you can holistically to do that. And then you can play the sales numbers game and just burn and turn as much as you can. You might finish number 1 one year, but long-term it's not sustainable. It's exhausting. The sales rep will burn themselves out. Out instead of really trying to own your portfolio and own the market. And you might have a year at 95%, but as long as you're growing year over year and you're getting to that dominant spot, that's where you want to be. And it's just, you know, it's… I gotta think the sales reps out there that purely play the numbers game, and that's to the fault of their managers for playing the numbers game, you're going to have a lot of exhausted reps, you're going to have a lot of low-margin deals And you're going to have a lot of churn. And that's what you're set… that's what sales managers that play the numbers game set themselves up for. I never once played the sales funnel game when I was a sales manager. I wanted to look at each opportunity individually. What's the lifetime value of this customer? That's a big phrase right now in our company internally. What is the lifetime value of the customer? And what I used to say, ripple effect. What's the ripple effect of this one customer? And, you know, if you're turning and burning, I just don't think long-term that that's going to be sustainable. And I don't think it's what's best for the customers either. So, you know, 1 million percent on board with that topic and that, that thought process, Scott.

1:29:01 Scott Ingram: So I love that we went here and, you know, it's, it's one of those things where, you know, even though it'll be, I don't know, 150, 180 of us, in Austin that are coming together for the summit. You know, one of the questions I want to ask, whether this particular topic carries over or not, we'll see. I mean, it's really going to come down to what everybody who's paid to be there wants. But, you know, it's things like these where I think about what can we do? We're not a huge number of people, but I think we're a group of folks with outsized influence. And so, what can we be doing in our roles to start to change some of this culture and some of these misconceptions about what's right. Because I, I promise you, if, if we again showed that set of numbers to any CEO, like, which one do you want? Do you want the sales guy that hit $1 million, or do you want the sales guy who hit $800,000 and yet, you know, had a margin that was 3x the, the guy at $1 million? Like, let's, let's not be so myopic about just the top line, but think about the business more holistically. So, you know, and I think about you know, how do we think about ourselves more holistically? Are we developing? Are we creating, you know, world-class customer experiences? You know, because we can impact that. We absolutely impact that. And the point that you shared earlier about you don't get any commission or any residuals on deals that you sold last year or 2 years ago, but you still put in that work. Work to make sure that that customer continues to have that great experience because of that ripple effect, because of… there is a residual impact in that. And, you know, I'm fortunate. I work with some incredible organizations, and several of them, this is the 2nd or 3rd time that I've sold to them because I've always done what's right. And I have the right to go back, and they trust me to absolutely, let's go do this again, right? And you, you don't get that if you forced that one deal down their throat and you got that commission, but you know, you, you burn… you basically burned the bridge.

1:31:19 George Penyak: Exactly. And then you're starting scratch all over again at the next customer. And I think you, you got your commission, but where… how… what's the impact 6 months down the road when you're calling on someone within that customer's network and they're not happy with how the sales process went? They, they They felt pushed to do it. They're not happy with the implementation. They're not happy with the overall program because if that's your approach, you obviously don't have much time to show that customer any more love after that. You're moving on because you're calling on somebody, you're just shotgun approaching it. And yeah, yeah, you'll get a trophy at the end of the year. You might be number one for one year, but unless you're in some sort of really transactional customer, you know, transactional sales process for a company that just has a very short sales cycle and you do a lot of transactions, unless you're in that game, most of us are in a relationship, the long game. And that's where you were talking about changing companies and where's the fit. If you're really successful at that transactional game, you might not do well jumping into something at scale where you have to work on forming a partnership over the course of 6 to 12 months. That might not jive with you. You know what I mean? Maybe that's… maybe it's the company fit then. So there's a whole bunch of moving factors, but I think a lot of it will fall on managers. I think if you're… if the managers are being managed by the number and managing to the number, that's what you're going to deliver, you know? And, and that's what… when I describe myself as a player coach before, when you asked me kind of my leadership style, as a player coach, I was entrenched in every large-scale deal that my team was working. I would go the extra mile and put the extra hours in traveling so the customers knew who, who I was. You know, even though I'm the manager, I wanted them to know I was there. And, you know, and because I wanted to make sure they were getting the best experience they could, not because I'm micromanaging my reps. That's the exact opposite of what I did. I gave them complete freedom and flexibility. And but I just wanted to be there because I wanted the customer to know who I was. I want to know that, hey, here's our process, here's what our company's like, here's how our sales team is, is structured, you know, you're just completely transparent. And I want to make sure the customer is getting the right experience, because we have… every company you work at, you're going to have those reps that turn and burn. And at the end of the day, it's going to be at the ultimate expense of the company. Because to your point, you might make $1 million in revenue one year, but is it going to cost you one next year? Is it going to cost you 2 next year? Is it going to cost you $300,000 next year to maintain those customers? Customers, you know. So it's, it's big picture. I mean, that… and going from a manager back to a direct contributor, to rewrap this whole thing, you'll get such a bigger picture vision of the company. Not that our managers today at Restaurant Technologies don't do a good job being transparent of what's going on, but just understanding the gross margin that much better, understanding EBITDA that much better, understanding, you know, our operations labor budget that much better, having that just big picture approach and going back into the sales world, it's just, it's so tremendous for your own ability to do right by, by your company, but also having that same empathy and approach for your customers as well, because you're probably selling to someone that's got their eye on their own EBITDA. You know what I mean? It's just, it's just having that greater understanding. I, I'm a big advocate now of if you go, and I know every company's structured differently, but I'm a huge advocate though, if you start at the frontline sales, You're the frontline salesperson, move up to a regional manager, that next sales management role, pivot and go back into a higher level sales role. You don't always have to stay in management. And it's a, it's, it's refreshing. It's, it's just such a different experience now. Cause had I just, I could have, we do promote frontline salespeople to national roles, like what I'm doing now, but I bet their experience and the challenges they have now are much different than what I do. Because of the experience I had, a better understanding of the company as well. Yeah, love it.

1:35:14 Scott Ingram: Well, and that was basically if if there was an answer or a conclusion from the panel we did last year at the Sales Success Summit. So I brought folks who had been in both roles. So they'd they'd been a top producer. They had also been in in leadership. Some of them no longer were. Some of them still were. At the end of the day, it basically came down to you know what this experience. Is something you should probably seek out, even if you don't stick with it or it's not a path that you stay on. You're going to learn so much from it and be better by it. So, George, the family pressures are starting to build. It's been a great long conversation on a Saturday afternoon. I appreciate your time. And I think that you also basically just fleshed out the title for this episode. I think the overarching theme here is all about playing the long game, right? Because if you think longer term, if you think longer term about the way that you're selling and the client experience and the client relationships you're creating, if you think longer term about your career and, and the, the foundation of knowledge and experience that you're building for yourself, all of those things are going to lead to better outcomes. And I hope you'll join George and At the Sales Success Summit here in Austin coming up October 14th and 15th. All those details are at top1summit.com. George, I'll see you there.

1:36:42 George Penyak: Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Scott. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.

1:36:59 Scott Ingram: Them.