The Transaction

TT - 047 - Maria Boulden - Full Episode
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Maria Boulden: [00:00:00] But anybody who thinks that they're going to close over a steak dinner because you have a great relationship you got another thing coming. Those days that the nineties called may want their sales technique back.

are, if you have the privilege to lead a commercial organization but if you're not occasionally visibly and vocally in front of your front line sellers, you lose the handle.

Not broken is not good enough in this environment.

there. We need you in the C suite, not trying to close today's number, but setting up an organization that's going to close next year's number.

That's your

it was not my aspiration that they would have world class sales skills. It was my expectation.

Craig Rosenberg: since that the hat has increased, uh, social conversion rates. Matt

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: bias, but so, but now it's become a challenge for me to make sure that I can bring a hat, but for Maria's session. Are you ready?

Hold on. I got my hat.

Matt Amundson: Oh, here we go. I like it.

Maria Boulden: A special

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm. Oh, I [00:01:00] I

Maria Boulden: I'm melting like

Craig Rosenberg: How about that hat? This is

Maria Boulden: sun. I'm just melting. I feel so,

Craig Rosenberg: the most appropriate hat for this conversation of all time.

Maria Boulden: I feel And actually, yeah, you should. This is like a thoughtful hat presentation. Matt, what do you think? Is that, is this?

Matt Amundson: mean, it's as thoughtful as thoughtful can be and I just came from SKO. So I also heart sales.

Craig Rosenberg: yes you do, but you're going with this sort of like run DMC era New York look, right? You got the Yankees, Brooklyn Museum. What's up with

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah

Craig Rosenberg: that. Um, all

right. Yeah, that's right. That's where he's coming. Um, all right. So, by the way, I, if, Sam, would you like to jump in and let the audience know that's not on video, that I'm wearing an I Love Sales hat?

Go ahead.

Sam Guertin: Yes, uh, for the listening audience, uh, the hat Craig is wearing says, [00:02:00] I heart sales.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh my God, dude, this is unreal. Yeah,

Maria Boulden: might be good there too.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, we're off to a good start

Maria Boulden: Pipe it in.

Craig Rosenberg: All right.

​

Craig Rosenberg: So here's the coolest part about today's show that, um, Matt and I live in the tech bubble. And so, Maria, actually, I don't know if you look into her back. We're surprising that with Maria. I don't think you guys have met.

I got to meet Maria during my time at Gartner and I'll tell I have some funny, funny little anecdotes on that, [00:03:00] but the background selling at DuPont like that's like a talk about a Main Street. Uh, uh, organization and bringing that perspective to the show is totally unique to us, right? Everything else we, we like live in SaaS and NRR, ARR and all this stuff.

And so talking sales and revenue with Maria is a, is a new perspective for us. Uh, you were there for a long time and

then you, uh, did you 33 years.

Maria Boulden: I was

Matt Amundson: Wow.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. I was

Matt Amundson: Oh, good for you. What a wonderkind.

Craig Rosenberg: Man,

that is so cool. it was wild.

Maria Boulden: I was just an engineer doing what engineers did for the first 10 years of that. You

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, that's amazing too.

Maria Boulden: R& operations, all that stuff. And then I went into a tech service role. And now that Wicked is popular, I can say this without dating myself. Uh, it was like that [00:04:00] scene in The Wizard of Oz when it goes from black and white to color.

You know, I went from

Matt Amundson: Nice.

Maria Boulden: equations and fixating on unit operations and being really nerdy to, why are some commercial professionals world class and can really do this well and others are just going out there buying steak dinners trying to close? Like even 33, even 23 years ago that was really noticeable. Except there

Craig Rosenberg: that, see?

Maria Boulden: Yeah, it was nuts. Except

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: a lot of steak dinners,

yeah. now and then, 23 years ago, it worked. Spoiler alert, 23 years later, it doesn't work.

Yes,

there you go.

Maria Boulden: protracted argument, flat out argument, the middle of a pretty big presentation with CPG manufacturer with one of their channel partners who insisted the steak dinner still worked.

Matt Amundson: Huh.

Maria Boulden: yeah! Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: By the way, can I just mention something? [00:05:00] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Maria Boulden: By

Craig Rosenberg: Well, first of all, how dare he Oh, see, now that's what I was going to say, by the way. I do, hold on, I have a whole bunch of things I've got to say. So one is, uh, the, the guy, just for the fact that he, um, You know, rerouted your, uh, presentation, conversation, et cetera, to talk about steak dinners is fireable. Uh, the fact that he was taking that stance is fireable, but I have a fun fact. This is driving me crazy. So my associate, Mark, he does well done steak, like I was making fun of people that do well done steak with ketchup. he's like, oh, well, I do well done steak. And I was like, bro, you can't do well done steak.

So if you are going to have, I know, let's pray for him at this time. I don't know. I don't know what's going on, um, uh, so, so by the way, on the double fisting of Coke, Sam may want to, he might just see warning Maria, like in [00:06:00] the actual production, there'll be an interlude from Sam that says that Maria is currently holding up to Coke zero cans for her double fisting. Yes, there you go. Um, the, uh,

Maria Boulden: a coconut smile!

Craig Rosenberg: but that, so I met Maria at Gartner and I remember when I started, everyone's like, oh, you got to meet Maria. And, um, I don't know, it took us a minute and then I met her and the, the, the meetings at Gardner, they're very serious people, right? So, like, there's not a ton of, like, crazy amounts of energy.

I have a meeting with Maria. And that shit was like, I'm like, oh, okay. I feel so much more at home. My God. And it was like And it was like, yeah, you know, it was just, things were just moving and shaking. It made me, uh, feel like I was at home again. And then, uh, just, uh, a real idea person. And, um, like as you 33 years, whatever, you know, just the experience level is incredible, but [00:07:00] delivered.

With enthusiasm

in a way that's, uh, amazing. So we're very excited to have you on the show. We obviously, we prolonged some of the Gartner folks just for a while, just for a lot of reasons, but now we get to have you today. So everyone, this is Maria Bolden. She, uh, you've heard a little about her background, but I, I just want to say that.

Uh, she is a person that I love talking, shop with, revenue, sales, et cetera. I'm really excited to introduce her to the audience and to Matt and Sam. You know, it's funny, we don't always think about, you know, the audience sort of gets the benefit of the fact that we just like having really amazing people on the show and getting to know them.

And, and so this is great. So Maria, welcome to the transaction!

Maria Boulden: Thank you. I love the name. And I love that, you know, you love thee, starting everything with thee. Um, I love the transaction. My career is, is around transactions. And as I [00:08:00] think you've probably heard me say a bunch of times at Gartner's, at Gartner, which was the equivalent of me taking people by the shoulders and shaking them.

A lot of really smart people with a lot of really provocative research and powerful research that is very relevant to today's commercial ecosystems. But what I kept finding myself asking over and over again while there is, this is really powerful, this is really provocative, this is really relevant. How do I execute against it?

a, as a Mm. as a CCO, as, as a CSO, I get it, like I, I, how do I execute it against it at that level? And then, how does that leader make sure that it is executing through everyone in their remit, right to the sharp tip of Mm hmm. where everything seemed to unravel. That's where that leadership linkage always seemed to break apart. And that was always my thing. If you are not the CRO, or [00:09:00] the CCO, or the CSO, that doesn't have the people who have the people, who have the people, To get to the front line and you still get to the front line yourself You have a problem Mm. gonna carry that flag and you have to have every leader including yourself hands on I'm sorry, there's no autopilot has to be especially now.

Craig Rosenberg: Dan Gottlieb, uh, has a LinkedIn thing today. I know, I know he's amazing, but he has a LinkedIn thing today, which is like, uh, know, this it's essentially, Hey, this is thing. These are things that AI can't do to drive revenue. Mm hmm. You just brought one up.

Maria Boulden: It's

Craig Rosenberg: I mean, without a doubt.

And we can, uh, we have already a number of things queued up here, but before we do, we have to do the Matt Amundsen feature enhancement 2. 1 of the transaction, which is uh, I'm, I'm excited for this one, which is can you tell us, um [00:10:00] to market story could be funny,

could be heroic, could be heartwarming.

It's okay. But like, we just, we've started to lead with the story. It's led to some great stories. As you heard, we had the maggots on the plane story, which was,

which shocked us. that, that

Maria Boulden: grossed

Craig Rosenberg: shocking.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: we had, uh, in a future episode, Nick Thoman talking about driving, uh, what's his name around in a, in a small car?

What the, uh, not, um, Neil Rackham. had to go to Neil Rackham's cabin and they were driving around some, yeah, spit, I know, I know.

Maria Boulden: Wow

Craig Rosenberg: that 25, 30 years

ago.

Maria Boulden: all

Craig Rosenberg: Um, all right, so, so here we go. Tell us a story, Maria.

Maria Boulden: All right, go to market story. That's so hard. This is really hard to lay out, to, to, to, to lay out. And I was trying to think of a funny one, but I got a very real one. One of the things that was

Craig Rosenberg: Ooh, we love that. Hmm. Right. Haha,

Maria Boulden: things through the eyes of hundreds of, of other sales [00:11:00] leaders, which was fascinating to me.

And it almost starts out like a joke. I'm sitting with the CRO, CCO, CSO of. commercial real estate company, an insurance company, a media company, and a CPG company. I put them together. And I put them together because they were all complaining about the same things associated with their go to market strategy.

And these were powerful companies that had strong data science organizations that were doing really great analytics on really important stuff and had built a pretty crackerjack go to market strategy in their own right for each one of their respective markets. And they were all tripping up on the same thing. And the same thing they were all tripping up on was their ability to align their channel partners to see the same vision they did, to see what was in it for them, and to align with it. So they did this miraculous desktop [00:12:00] exercise that by rights would win awards like crazy because it was so brilliant.

And every single one of them was dying on the same hill. With their channel partners and didn't want to call them out on it they were worried about offending them, losing them or whatever, because they needed them too badly. And I kept saying, but they're not doing what you need them to do. And until I put them in the same room together so they could hear the madness in each other, did they recognize, Oh shit, I really am not.

And I learned that the hard way too. I mean, when I had the solar portfolio in DuPont, we were, business went from a hundred percent share because we basically, We're part of creating the technology. Classic DuPont, create the technology, create the category, short the market because you can't run the plants, and then usher in some other competitor because the market's not gonna wait.

So that was

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Maria Boulden: we did that in the solar portfolio. We went [00:13:00] from practically a hundred percent share to like twelve for the portfolio, and I had to come in and pick it back up. And what I found

Matt Amundson: Mm.

Maria Boulden: like so many Manufacturers and not just manufacturers of stuff, but providers of services and clearly insurance, commercial, real estate, media, and CPG.

They had basically abdicated all power and access to their, to the people who extract the value of their brand to some partner. And

Matt Amundson: Mm. Mm hmm.

Maria Boulden: was formidable and capable. But in the current market environment, that had somehow atrophied, and they weren't doing it anymore. So, what I had done with, in the solar portfolio, is I said, Look, this is great, but clearly this is not working.

We're not, we're at 12 percent share, something's broken. So, back in 2011, when nobody knew what a go to market strategy was, decided to architect a team that marketed downstream. Didn't just go to the people who made panels, didn't just go to the people who made the parts for [00:14:00] panels. We went to the people who installed the panels, who were generating the power, who financed the power arrays.

We went completely downstream and leps, we lepped over transactional partners and their transactional partners. And I remember being in Germany with the biggest solar panel manufacturer in the world who was from China, as were the next five in the world. And I remember our transactional partner, who was a converter, um, sitting in a meeting with me.

Great meeting, great progress, breakthrough progress to get all the parties in line in the value chain to say, Yeah, this is how we're going to do things, this is how we're going to partner. And it was just breakthrough. Nobody had ever had these conversations before. And we're all feeling pretty good and this converter asks to talk to me in private, and he, he gets me a side in a room, and no, no shit.

Um, he gets me in this room, and I'm probably two months into the job, and, uh, I architected it, [00:15:00] so I felt pretty good about it. This was a really good meeting with the biggest player in town. No lie, the guy gets this close to my face. Right up in my face, and he's like a foot taller than me, which isn't hard.

But he basically, basically, he's looking, the dude's looking down on me and he's wagging his finger at me.

Matt Amundson: Oh.

Maria Boulden: so he's wagging his finger at me and he says, have supported this customer for 13 I take care of this customer. You need to take care of your customer. And that's

Matt Amundson: Whoa.

Maria Boulden: Right? Dude

Matt Amundson: Wow.

Maria Boulden: I mean, it was hilarious. It was absolutely, because, I mean, in the broad scheme of things, DuPont, at the time, you know, at the time, 80 billion company,

Matt Amundson: Sure.

Maria Boulden: guy, this company's not even a billion. It's this, like, fleck on the radar

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah,

Maria Boulden: And I was surprisingly cordial, because [00:16:00] being from Philly, by the way, go first.

Um, being from Philly, I was about to go native on him. was a part of me that's like, I'm going to drop you like a bag of dirt, dude. Um, but there

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Mm.

Maria Boulden: of me that said, with respect, do you really believe that a company with the scope and depth and breadth of our technology and our span is really going abdicate all power and access to the most powerful influencers in this.

ecosystem to you. And he says, well, I've been in this industry longer than you've been here. And I'm not going to, this is even better. I'm not going to take instructions from some girl.

Craig Rosenberg: No,

Matt Amundson: Oh.

Maria Boulden: No shit. No shit. Oh. Oh.

at that point, I'm not going to repeat the

Craig Rosenberg: I didn't

Matt Amundson: I imagine. Yeah. Although this is for mature audiences.

Maria Boulden: it that's [00:17:00] true, you know what? he, he, he went into business for himself after that. And, imagine I, I wished him Godspeed,

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, Jesus Christ,

Maria Boulden: the long and short of it is, you know, in that particular case, the, the outcome in, in his own personal view of taking instruction from some girl, um, was the same as what we had to do as a company with this channel partner. And that was put them aside because if they're going to be in the way

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: where we have to execute.

This is about practical execution. It's not about history. It's not about feelings. It's not personal. It's about how you execute so that everybody's successful. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. So that's what we did. And it was interesting because, you know, same thing happened with this insurance and media and CPG manufacturing commercial real estate.

They were being held hostage [00:18:00] by partners who were living in the past. The old go to market

Matt Amundson: Sure.

Maria Boulden: was, was

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Maria Boulden: made them successful for so long. And maybe that's not true in SaaS. Maybe that's not new in tech. You know, for a newer company that's, that's used to today's world order. But for so many of these companies that I saw at Gartner, and to this day can't even figure out their, their CRM.

Matt Amundson: yeah, Yeah,

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: out there. They are, you would be

Matt Amundson: Oh yeah.

Maria Boulden: how many are still out there. And, you know, we would do the work with them. They would come up with a great go to market strategy. And yes, it takes guts to actually execute. It's hard to do the work. But the hardest work is to actually execute it.

You would be

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: how many get into the red zone and they just can't push it through. Because they're afraid or they're nervous or the CYA kicks in. Or frankly, and this was the hardest part of the job, A lot of times these strategies require you to right, wipe the slate [00:19:00] the

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm

Maria Boulden: have at the sharp tip of the spear can't do the work. And they're wonderful humans and you find them the softest landing possible, but they gotta go or you're not gonna go.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm

Maria Boulden: And it's yeah, And that's where a lot of people get cold feet. The best thing you can do for them is the best thing you can do for your organization. And that's find them a soft landing and everybody moves on.

it's yeah, otherwise. And that was hard. It's hard to recognize that. It's like, and last story that I swear it's the last story, um, or

Craig Rosenberg: no these are great,

Maria Boulden: this is germane, even though it sounds very unrelated. was seven months pregnant with my now 28 year old, lots of kids in our family, but this particular one, seven months pregnant.

And I was working with DuPont on, on our corporate lobby for clean air and with different state air resources boards, but we were also trying to execute at the federal level. Both for climate change [00:20:00] and for, um, ambient ozone. And I was really feeling good about myself. I'm taking the train down from Wilmington Station, Joe Biden State, whatever, um, station to Capitol Hill.

And I'm in this hot red A line dress feeling like I am the stuff! I'm

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: in to do some cool work. I'm meeting in Jesse Helms off like some cool stuff going on that

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Maria Boulden: like me from Philly is going in representing DuPont. Um, with some pretty high level people that I was grateful to even ride their coattails on.

Um, so I'm getting on the train in Philly. We pull in, um, to Union Station and I pick up my briefcase in my fancy red dress and I get up and I'm walking through Union Station. And I'm getting a lot of attention. Now, I feel like I look pretty darn good.

Matt Amundson: sure.

Craig Rosenberg: can.

Maria Boulden: number of men saying, Hey, baby.

Like, and I'm like, yeah, I look [00:21:00] good, I know. I, I, I am attracting a lot of attention and I'm pretty darn proud of myself because it's the first time I wear this dress and I'm like, yeah, pregnant women can look good. And I get out to that outdoor part where the taxi line is queued up and, and you're waiting in line on that little thing under the overhang.

And the sweetest old woman comes up beside me, grabs my dress, and says, Honey! You need to pull down your skirt!

Matt Amundson: Oh, no,

Craig Rosenberg: I

Maria Boulden: So,

Craig Rosenberg: got him. Yeah, boy.

Maria Boulden: walked from the train, through the, the platform, through Union

Craig Rosenberg: Oh,

Maria Boulden: out to the taxi line. My dress is up to here! showing my, my pregnant butt and half my pregnant belly to all of Washington, D. C.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, lord.

Maria Boulden: I think sometimes that is a metaphor for some of these sales leaders who just can't [00:22:00] recognize that their ass is exposed.

Matt Amundson: Oh my God.

Craig Rosenberg: Jesus, Kermit.

Maria Boulden: I

Craig Rosenberg: that

Maria Boulden: of myself.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, Oh my God. okay, I, that was a top three story

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Uh, yeah, I don't know. There's. I don't know if there's two that are lower than that, but,

uh, all right, all right. out of me.

Craig Rosenberg: we can do, we can do a live show without, okay, wait, hold, all right, so that, was

amazing,

Maria Boulden: go,

Craig Rosenberg: which, Yeah, that's okay. You should see my desk over here. I just, I don't want to make any more noises so Sam doesn't have to cut any of my little noises out.

The um, alright, so hey, before we go to the big [00:23:00] question though, can we dig in on the steak dinner? So the steak dinner is, is dead, according to Maria from Phil Woah! Coming in hot, Matt, where's your Coke Zero?

Matt Amundson: Dude, I need one bad. I need one

bad.

Craig Rosenberg: you need like five.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: have you had? How many have you had today, Matt?

Matt Amundson: No, I've just had coffee. I just had coffee. I just had the horrible United coffee and I made one for myself when I got home to try to get tuned up for this.

Maria Boulden: I Oh my god, yeah. Mountain Dew, but I was twitching in front of my husband. He's like, are you really Oh good lord. of, when you're doing a

Craig Rosenberg: Ha ha

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. take it. But, um, alright, so, steak dinner.

Maria Boulden: steak

Craig Rosenberg: Um, Sam, We are, we are about to do a cut from Maria from Philly on The current state of the steak dinner. Go.

Matt Amundson: yeah. Sam, turn the TicTok camera on. Here we go.

Sam Guertin: I'll, I'll hit the button.[00:24:00]

Matt Amundson: All right.

Craig Rosenberg: So is it dead? Is that what you're saying?

Maria Boulden: Now, I'm not saying that you can't take a client out and have a wonderful dinner you have done everything you need to do to close that deal the right way with the right

Right.

and the right and the right process. to help that client understand something about their business that they don't already know and really should because they can be better and you're an enabler to them being better in a way that might not get the sale the first time but you came around the, you know, whatever, you're the right partner

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Maria Boulden: and you Yeah. work to establish that you're the right partner.

You want to have a steak dinner after that? You have at it. But anybody who thinks that they're going to close over a steak dinner because you have a great relationship and you're going to blow, you know, a few thousand on some nice wine and some great steaks, you got another thing [00:25:00] coming. Those days are over.

And there are, it is shocking and disappointing to me that there's people who still believe you can do that.

Craig Rosenberg: Matt, what are your thoughts on the steak dinner? Has anybody ta Well, tried to sell you shit taking you to steak dinner recently? Ha

Matt Amundson: I mean, the fact of the matter is just take me out for a burrito. You're more likely to get a deal that way. Uh, I, you

Know your customer! Know your

yeah, I don't,

Craig Rosenberg: That's

Maria Boulden: God's sake.

Craig Rosenberg: Ha ha ha

Matt Amundson: I, yeah. Uh, I mean, here's what I will say in, in my experience and in the sort of the B2B space is like, um, depending upon the price point, depending upon the product, depending upon like how competitive a sales cycle is.

What I have found is by and large, most people in, well, I'll just say it. Most people can be bought. That's the way I feel about it. Like, I don't think you can go sell. Here's the thing. Like the barrier to entry is pretty low. I don't think you can go sell a 500, 000 enterprise deal. Or a seven figure enterprise deal?

[00:26:00] Absolutely not. Do I think you could sell 30, 000 piece of SaaS? Absolutely. Absolutely. And what I will say in the SaaS space is that by and large, people have become so comfortable selling from behind their desk over zoom, that anytime that you can create a personal interaction between. The buyer and the seller, you're probably going to have a gigantic leg up on a competitor.

If you are indeed running a competitive sales cycle. Now, if you're like selling a novel product where you're like. Hey, it's me versus the status quo where like there is a solid option to basically do nothing. I don't necessarily know that you can convince a buyer to get off of the, Hey, what we're doing now is fine to, Hey, for $35,000 I'll, uh, I'll move into your product.

But most of the time, like it's not that hard to outsell another salesperson because The, what we see as high quality selling and SaaS has gotten so poor, so [00:27:00] poor.

Maria Boulden: People actually want to go out on their own private time and have dinner with

Matt Amundson: Oh, they do. Yeah, they, they definitely do. They

definitely do.

Maria Boulden: in the wrong places then. Cause, in the

Craig Rosenberg: Well, but

Maria Boulden: it's like, you wanna go to a ball

Matt Amundson: Yeah, but you're selling, you're selling huge deals, huge. It's a different, it's a different motion, right? Because I think, I think people, you know, I think that there is a generation of buyers who are like, Hey, like I want to be wined and dined a little bit. I want to be, you know, treated well. And sellers have largely.

Yeah, and sellers have really gotten away from that, right? They're just kind of like, Hey, my BDR put this on my calendar or this person requested a demo. I'm going to do this whole thing over zoom. I'm going to send a follow up email with the notes from our conversation. I'm going to set the stage for the next steps.

We're going to move towards a close. We're going to bring in the buying committee. I'm going to, you know, identify my champion, identify, you know, my, my support group here, and I'm going to run a cycle, you know, [00:28:00] largely virtually. Uh, and, and, and for those people who are willing to get out and shake a hand, whether you're taking someone to a steak dinner, to a burrito, to a frozen yogurt out for drinks or whatever, just the mere fact that they get to see you as a human being, I think goes a long way towards getting a deal done nowadays.

Maria Boulden: And this is really interesting because I think this is where generations start to come together or, or show their

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: Um, so I, I, I, the same 28 year old that I was describing, um, when I was seven months pregnant with him is now a sales manager, Aw, and he leads a team of people who are all virtual.

They all work. yeah. Mm-hmm physically meet with their customers. It's all done, um, virtually and, and by phone. So he does often speak about. difficulty to engage, you know, there aren't many opportunities. And even when there are people aren't necessarily interested. Whereas my [00:29:00] generation, people like me who are like two days older than dirt, who grew up in a, in a company that really believed that a good engineer could do anything.

Yeah. find any that had some degree of charm and communication skills. You handed them a set of keys and a, a piece of paper with your customer list because literally, you know, you didn't get smartphones back then. Yeah. that went into sales. And no lie, here's another story.

When, when I was thinking about going to sales as a tech service person, I don't know how many people I had who pulled me aside and said, it's not for you. have a Mm, mm-hmm with eye contact and Right. a conversation without going technical. Sales isn't for you, besides, you're a woman, and that means you can't come to Cabo with us when the distributors want to take their not wives with them.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure.

Maria Boulden: And I'm like, [00:30:00] Which made me, of course, like, I'm guaranteed if you tell me I can't do something, that's like, okay, done, I'm doing it, so let's Yeah.

So maybe that's, maybe that's where the separation has come. Having come through very manufacturing, product focused, complex,

Matt Amundson: Yeah,

Maria Boulden: cycle stuff. Um, I have seen a lot of sellers, um, who have not recognized, you know, if you think about what people are doing wrong and, and, you know, leaders thinking, well, my, my sellers are selling badly.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: badly. It's just that the nineties called may want their sales technique back. They're not

Matt Amundson: Mm.

Maria Boulden: way that's consistent with what a 2025 commercial environment requires.

Or, you

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: not even the nineties in this environment. 2019 called and wants

Matt Amundson: Sure. Yeah.

Maria Boulden: There's a lot of people stuck in the [00:31:00] teens

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Yes. Yes. why what they're doing is wrong. And a lot of leaders see are like, well, just put more people out there, add more salespeople, get them back out there.

Maria Boulden: it's not about putting a body on a buyer.

Matt Amundson: Mm.

Maria Boulden: All the Yeah. and and Yeah. time and what do you have them say and what's the data you have them walk in with because the other thing I notice a lot of is these elegant go to market strategies with amazing marketing communications and great content and great thought leadership and great air cover for any person with the privilege to go out and close in this environment but they're going out with a message and Craig we heard about this nine ways to Sunday and Gartner They're going out with a message that is either in conflict with what the customer's learning online Mm. New [00:32:00] to what the Yeah, learning online and instead of getting a I'm interested.

Let's talk about it. You get an oh wait I'm confused and that's where all deals go to die yeah, yeah. probably die

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, here's what I, I would, um, I have two, two things. One is a comment on, on Matt. and then the other is a funny story that complements, uh, what Maria says, but, but, but like, so one is, I don't know, Matt, that in a, like, we don't fall for the AE saying, oh, I'm going to be in town. Do you want to get coffee or like, hey, but like, if, but the, here's the thing on Maria and the world of that we're in on SaaS is like, there's 25 competitors and then everything SaaS.

And then the only way. for us to get above the din is to build personal relationships. In some cases, that'll be Something outside. [00:33:00] But then the second part is you still have the tenets of like what we're all talking about, which is you do have to be valuable. You can't just say, Hey, I'll get you a burrito at at Pancho Villa.

Like you do have to have some level of credibility that Matt would know that like, Hey, I'm not just going to sit there, eat the burrito and the person's going to sell me stuff

Matt Amundson: Sure.

Craig Rosenberg: it's still you would have a valuable conversation. not one play, but it's one of the things, but like everything that in that SaaS world where everything's virtual and everything so muddled, anything we could do to put a human connection to the deal is likely going to benefit the seller.

That's kind of the thing

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: The, I did want to mention what Maria was saying, which is like, well, you got, you've done everything right. Then, yeah, go out to dinner. So, like, my buddy Ted Purcell, and he's Matt's buddy too, and we'd be like,

Matt Amundson: Oh God.

Craig Rosenberg: Bill McDermott stories. And he's like, he had a bunch of really [00:34:00] funny ones, but one of them is like, look, McDermott believed in the signing party.

If you got a big deal, That he would fly in um, for a signing party and he'd say, and it has to be the best restaurant in town. uh, Ted's like, so I get my first big deal. McDermott's like, great, where are we having the signing party? He's like, I go, I look it up. It's like, there's top tens, all this stuff.

I go book them. Where's the signing party? He's like here. He's like, nope, not good enough. It's like, okay, all right. I'll do the next one. He's like, gets the next one. McDermott's like, no, not good enough. And so Ted's like, Jesus. So he goes out, he's like, dude, I need the most expensive, exclusive. Dinner place in town.

A five figures ad delivers in McDermott's like good enough. I'll see you in two days. And they come in, have this dinner called. They called it the signing party. And that's what you said, which is like everything's now buttoned up. We've run the we've delivered value. We've run the sales process. We're about to kick off and let's go [00:35:00] celebrate together as new partners.

Maria Boulden: That's

Craig Rosenberg: a really good use

case. Yeah, and

Maria Boulden: and this happened. So I was at one of those signing parties and I was totally cool with it because we did the right work.

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Uh,

Craig Rosenberg: yes,

Maria Boulden: it. And it was the manufacturer, the channel partner, and, and my DuPont team. And I, I won't mention the ecosystem because people will start knowing names that were in it. But we were in Japan celebrating a big, big signing. and, and. The channel partner selected, ready? Fuckin Gentleman's

Craig Rosenberg: Let me guess.

Maria Boulden: to celebrate.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh I didn't think you're I thought you're gonna say TGI Friday's. Okay. All right. All right,

so

Maria Boulden: happier than having some poor sitting across from me while the guys in the party were out having their party and celebrating. Um, and this poor, you know, 20 [00:36:00] something is looking at me like, What am I supposed to do there? So I,

Craig Rosenberg: Lord my god

Maria Boulden: gave, her a nice tip and left, but it's like, seriously?

Well, and, and then a, that's another opportunity where people lost their jobs. Why do I keep talking about these things? Um,

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, by the way, I'm pretty sure you can tell your your family that you're gonna kill it on tick tock with this show you just did cuz these are

Matt Amundson: This is hot.

Craig Rosenberg: TikTok clips, bro. Alright, hey, by the way, we have 16 minutes to

ask you the big question. Ready?

Maria Boulden: Ready.

Craig Rosenberg: So, what, what's something that the, uh, market thinks they're doing right could be a methodology approach,

tactics, and they're actually wrong,

and what is that and what should they be doing differently?

Maria Boulden: Okay, there's a few of them. One of them I said before. If, if you are, if you have the privilege to lead a commercial organization as a CRO, as a CCO, as a CSO, all of the above, I, I like the CRO and CCO model, but whatever [00:37:00] you are, if you're not occasionally, not all the time, but if you're not occasionally visibly and vocally in front of your front line sellers, you lose the handle.

Now, don't go and Mm, them, but if you are not an entity in front of them in a way that they respect. able to be shoulder to shoulder with them. I see a lot of them were out there trying to do their old job. That's not what I'm saying yeah. that your people have to know that if they call on you to walk the walk, Yeah. You can actually Right? Yep. that don't have that respect of their team Mm-hmm can't fully understand and appreciate what that CRO is asking them to do. their chain of leadership has been whispered down the lane, and when the CRO said ZIG, somehow at the front line it ended up as ZAG.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: So even if you trust the leaders in [00:38:00] your organization, you still have to occasionally get face to face with those people on your team looking to you for leadership saying, Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth? Like the rush hour, the

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah,

Matt Amundson: Mm

Maria Boulden: quote. Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?

then, there's a couple more to that. Not broken is not good enough in this environment. There's too many out there holding on to what worked and hunkering down, just waiting for whatever the hell this is to clear, to pass over us, to be done. And you know what? When it is, there's going to be something else behind it that's probably worse.

Hunkering down doesn't work. It's not good enough. You've got to figure out what the now is. whatever's coming in after this, if you haven't already done the homework for now, you're screwed.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: the time, and a lot of times people are pulling me in and it's already too late. It was too late a year [00:39:00]

Matt Amundson: Yeah. Mm.

Maria Boulden: And a lot of

Craig Rosenberg: Yep. Love that.

Maria Boulden: that there are some things probably working. And this is probably the the last thing, like, to make sure it's not just a desktop exercise, when you figure out what you need to go do, part of that has to be a cognition of what is still going right? Yeah, there have been times in my career I had to wipe the slate.

hard. the hardest

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: had to do. I, you know, I could be cavalier saying I had to wipe the slate, I had to let all these people go. It doesn't matter. That person's name on a spreadsheet is still a human with a family that you got to go talk to.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah,

Maria Boulden: It's hard to recalibrate and go to market strategy and recognize there will be people who don't make the evolution

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: through it.

But you also have to recognize that sometimes of the time, there are some things that are going right [00:40:00] in your current strategy. So as you evolve, you gotta know what those are and you gotta keep them for a couple of reasons. Number one, you can't afford to lose them because they're going right and you need to.

And

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: people are watching you as a leader and judging you as a leader if you're not smart enough to see that that's still going right. And if they think it's right, but you know it's wrong, you got to go through the change management steps to say, this is wrong, this is how I know, and this is what you're going to see when we change to doing it this way. And a lot of people miss that important change management piece. So

Matt Amundson: Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm

Maria Boulden: this elegant, excellent, data driven go to market strategy that they've launched, and three quarters of their organization is now executing against. the one that actually closes against it isn't. And we call that a

Craig Rosenberg: [00:41:00] Yeah.

Maria Boulden: exercise.

Matt Amundson: Mm.

Craig Rosenberg: Boom.

Maria Boulden: So a lot of

Craig Rosenberg: All right. Those are great.

Maria Boulden: And it's hard.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah, for sure.

Maria Boulden: But they're not,

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, for sure.

Maria Boulden: mile.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Okay. So, um, on, I want to mention on number one about the, you know, the leader of revenue, CCO, CRO, getting out there and being able to prove that he or she can go shoulder to shoulder. a quick note to the audience. We're not talking to someone who's dealing with startups here.

We're talking about a recommendation from people leading massive organizations. So that's important because, you know, we'll get the, well, I mean, I have a big organization I can't do. And that's definitely not true. And by the way, I would say. For you to be able to understand truly what's working and like, I think your number, your number three combines with number one, which is the truth is out there on the street when you're out there, you know, with the folks,

Maria Boulden: Exactly.

Craig Rosenberg: like, if you had to give an example of [00:42:00] yourself or someone that you've worked with over the years leading a big organization, like what did they do to go out there and get to the front line?

It was like once a quarter and they would go out there and do sales calls or what would that look like?

Yeah.

Maria Boulden: there's two ends of the spectrum. The wrong end, there's one end of the spectrum that, that just goes out and does sales calls all the time. It's like, no, no, no, no. Your sellers don't

Craig Rosenberg: that, yeah.

Maria Boulden: we don't need you there. We need you in the C suite, not trying to close today's number, but setting up an organization that's going to close next year's number.

That's your

Matt Amundson: Right.

Maria Boulden: Like,

Craig Rosenberg: Right.

Maria Boulden: for the right customer, for the right deal, for the right circumstances, a salesperson needs to pull you in, and you've got to show that you can execute. And that's somebody that can go in understanding the sales process. What are the buying signals? What do we know about their buyer journey?

What is the technique that you have used to even get us to the table to have these conversations? You know, [00:43:00] and the reason I feel so strong with that is I made that mistake enough times as a middle manager where I'm bringing in the CEO or I'm bringing in the CRO. And, you know, you're always going to get an end around even at the signing table.

And

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm

Craig Rosenberg: Right.

Maria Boulden: do when that end around comes. And I remember, classic, again, sitting in Asia, this time I think it was in Beijing, we're sitting at the signing table and I told the guy, they're going to do the end around, here's what you say, here's what you do. And this guy, I did not prepare properly.

So I should have known that he wouldn't have been prepared. As a commercial leader, you should be prepared anyway. you also have to ask for preparation if you're not ready. So we're at the signing table. I thought I had them all prepared they do the end around they want a lower price and This guy looks at the customer or you know This is the CEO of the customer talking to my boss at the time saying well I I [00:44:00] guess what we need to do here and he looks at me and we're all working through a translator He looks at me and he goes have Maria go sharpen her pencil And fortunately, the translator we were using knew what not to translate.

And I remember

Craig Rosenberg: No way!

Maria Boulden: Yeah. Well, he knew what not to say of our

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: Like he would know when it was time to translate and when it was just a conversation between us. And when he said, when the guy said, we need to have Maria go sharpen her pencil. Um, I looked at him and I said, Oh, why is that?

So I can stick it in your fucking eye? We had this conversation!

Sam Guertin: Hehehehehehehehehehe

Maria Boulden: anyway, we didn't end up signing. Um, we did eventually deal back. But, you know, as a commercial organization, the executive has to realize they need preparation. Don't just go barreling in there thinking, I know everything.

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: has to recognize no matter how much that executive thinks they're ready to go, they're not.

And then, I, [00:45:00] I think the executives that, that thrive the most, and I'm not saying I did everything right, but they find the right forums in which they engage their sales teams. It could be a town meeting. It could be a certain event scheduled at the SKO.

Matt Amundson: Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm

Maria Boulden: actually found, in my case, I was certified to train people on advanced negotiation and arbitration.

I was a challenger certified Um, and I had other, you know, channel certifications and things like that to train people. And one of the things I would do when I got a new commercial organization, and I always got the broken ones. That was like my thing at DuPont. Give Maria the broken one, have her fix it, bolt it onto her remit, fine.

one of the things I would do as soon as I got that organization is I would schedule some sort of negotiation training, challenger training, whatever, because number one, um, I could get to them and see who the good ones were. And, and see

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah. [00:46:00]

Maria Boulden: the not, good ones were. And the other thing was I could help them see point blank. I knew how to do what they needed help doing. And number

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: it was not my aspiration that they would have world class sales skills. It was my expectation. That's why I took the time to get good enough to be a trainer. And that's why I was having these conversations with them so we could scrimmage and figure At the execution level, they needed to go do. And if they needed to call me and say, Hey Maria, I, I know you've got, know, six billion dollars of, of revenue to close here for the company, but I need to talk to you about this, know, half a million dollar deal. Okay, let's go. All day. I love it.

Craig Rosenberg: That's Wow. Wow. okay, and then, remind me on number two, what was number two?

Maria Boulden: if it's not broken, is it good [00:47:00] enough?

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: hunkering down. That did resonate. It sort of melded into my brain that, but just tell me, you mean that someone says once this economic environment sorts itself out or this new, I'll just go back to my old ways and we're just waiting to go, is that what you mean?

That's It could be, it could be terrible. the digital, you know, the, the consumerization of, of B2B sales. It could be, it could be everything from the tariff situation to, you know, it could be anything. just Yeah. We're not going to talk to customers about anything different. We're going to do what we've always done.

Maria Boulden: We're going to deploy our sales team the same way. Because when this is over, it's all going to go back to normal. No Right. never No. it yeah. I mean, but, but this is a strategy that people are employing all over the place. I know Craig, you're [00:48:00] like, Hey, you can't, you can't do that. But Jesus, it's every time I opened the stocks app, I'm seeing another company that's doing it. You know, we, you know, a thousand people got let go this morning.

Matt Amundson: I'm hearing 2000 people at another large SaaS company getting let go next week. Uh, This is what people are doing, right? They're like, let me just jack up the stock price. I don't want to learn to sell in a different way, or I don't want to release a new product that's purpose built for the now now. Let me just cut back a little bit, and then I'll jack my stock price up.

Like, that is,

that is what people are doing all over the board.

Maria Boulden: Absolutely! Let's

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Maria Boulden: many times do you see a company cost reduce their way to what they think is going to hit their number? It's like,

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: That works.

Matt Amundson: Mm hmm.

Maria Boulden: My god, I sound so

Craig Rosenberg: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: happened? I

Sam Guertin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:49:00] Yeah. Yeah,

Matt Amundson: ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Maria Boulden: for a long time, I I have a suit.

Craig Rosenberg: Are you kidding? got,

Matt Amundson: Oh my God! Oh my God!

Maria Boulden: I could wear some body

Matt Amundson: Oh,

Maria Boulden: That was, there was a nobil You know what? I I was, I was always very privileged in DuPont, um, there was a nobility to selling some some things that we did, and I was really proud of

Matt Amundson: oh sure. Of

course. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Hell

yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Kevlar, yeah, I mean, I, I, If you had worn the Kevlar today,

that, when drank, your, yeah, mainlining Diet Coke, or, Coke Zero, and telling stories about poking people in the eye, that would have, that might have, but, yeah, you did it, you did it, you did it. Um, So, okay, so yes, Matt. I do. I see, I see your point.

I would say, by the way, um, I don't know if you saw, but [00:50:00] Salesforce ha you Yeah, you did. Because remember, Mark's strategy before was hire more sales reps. And now they're realizing in the world of AI to sell ai, we need more

Maria Boulden: Yep.

Craig Rosenberg: folks that can work on the use case. That that's an example of someone making a strategic adjustment to the, now

I know there was also people let go, but, um, but, but

Maria Boulden: But

Craig Rosenberg: the point of like.

Maria Boulden: that's what you do.

Craig Rosenberg: Yes, that is the now,

Maria Boulden: when I had to retune the, the construction business that I had in DuPont, we didn't go out and hide. We had to sell to a whole new part of the market. And that was one of

Craig Rosenberg: right?

Maria Boulden: where, you know, I had a lot of people who sold on Charmin Communication Skills.

I needed architects and designers to sell to architects and designers. So, you know, I kept the same headcount, but it was a whole different set of people. Because we were going

Craig Rosenberg: Yes.

Maria Boulden: We

Craig Rosenberg: Right. Right. I'm sorry. [00:51:00] What's a donut run? Because this could,

Maria Boulden: it sounds like. I'm gonna meet with my distributor and bring a box of Joe and a of donuts. And we're gonna

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: for an hour.

Matt Amundson: Tell you

what.

Craig Rosenberg: run. Oh, I, I mean, I'm sorry. I mean, that, that is exactly what I thought it was. You are correct. I

just wanted to make sure I didn't, I didn't run off because I, there are some terms from this. Uh, podcast episode today that I will be using, one of which is Donut Run.

Maria Boulden: Right?

Matt Amundson: Yeah, no shit. That is going into the vernacular. Oh

Craig Rosenberg: the

Maria Boulden: found this a lot at Gartner, you know, people are asking me for guidance on what I do with my go to market strategy, or, you know, how do I work with my sales team, and, and I call them ask holes. It's like, you're asking me the same question every time, and you never do anything with what I'm suggesting!

If you're gonna ask my guidance, at least execute against it, dammit! And

Craig Rosenberg: [00:52:00] Oh, shit.

Maria Boulden: then let's have a conversation about

Craig Rosenberg: Assholes.

Maria Boulden: doing it. It's like we talk about this, it's like Groundhog Day. You ask my advice, tell me it's bad, or go fucking do it. Sorry.

Matt Amundson: Oh my God.

Craig Rosenberg: The asshole, oh lord. We gotta bring that, that's in the lexicon now.

Matt Amundson: Oh my God. Is it ever?

Is it ever?

Maria Boulden: to where that is very relevant?

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, of course, the asshole is a real It's a real world thing.

Matt Amundson: Oh, yeah. leader, you gotta not, you can't be that either. Like, how many people, you know, you'll be in the C suite and it's like, well, I'm gonna have a town meeting, I'm gonna hear what my people are saying. You don't, you're gonna get some input. And you're gonna have to execute against it. And if you're yeah, you gotta give them, you, you earn their trust and their respect by saying, this is what I heard, this is what we're doing about it.

Maria Boulden: And some people are concerned about X. is why I can't [00:53:00] execute against that right now. gotta hit yeah, because people yeah, respect you if they think, in fact they'll lose respect for you if they think they were heard and then they think they were ignored. And that's yeah. nature, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

But for some reason, a lot No, but that, get to that level of executive leadership, that privilege, and they forget the basics of change management and leadership.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: when you I love it. massive, whether it's a go to market change or a strategy change of any kind, hey, going to do a pre mortem.

This is how that we're taking a lot of risk here. you're used to hunkering down, but we're about to execute a massive change. it's a big shift for us. And here's the parts of the horizon that we're going to watch to know that we're doing things right and how we'll know [00:54:00] If we're doing things wrong, or the market's not buying it. And that's how we're gonna guide ourselves. And this is what I want you to watch with me, so that when it happens, we're all ready to pivot. Or we're Yeah. ready to run faster. And so many people miss that, and they end up with a team that's either too scared to execute, or they don't believe you and they won't execute.

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: Hey, Matt, if you do a pre-mortem and you call it a pre, you take a picture of the meeting invite and it says pre-mortem, I'll give you 50 bucks cash.

Maria Boulden: love doing pre

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Maria Boulden: They're even better with alcohol. But I, and I don't drink, really, but are, these are

Craig Rosenberg: Well, I

mean

Maria Boulden: they are liber I, I tell ya, if somebody does a pre mortem with their teen, it is cathartic. Because people get

Craig Rosenberg: Matt,

Maria Boulden: out.

Matt Amundson: I'm

gonna do a pre mortem.

Craig Rosenberg: love this. I know this is. So, think [00:55:00] about the last couple things you just brought up, but you put product names on them, Premortem being one of them, Ascol. These are all things we can relate to, but we didn't have a good product name for them and now we do. So

Matt Amundson: Yeah.

Craig Rosenberg: By the way. mortem is epic.

Askhole, number one. Yeah, I mean that was, that, that was an

Matt Amundson: I've had beat. I've had. I've had BDRs and, you know, SDRs, inside sales appointment centers in my remit for the last 15 years. So yeah, I know a lot of assholes.

Craig Rosenberg: is the truth. That is the truth. Alright, cool. So we did it. Um, by the way, uh, Maria, this was, uh, a lot of fun, so I didn't anticipate anything otherwise, but we gotta do this again,

and um,

Maria Boulden: What a

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, it was, great.

Maria Boulden: was,

Craig Rosenberg: That

Matt Amundson: I'd love,

Maria Boulden: been following you and I hear the, Jesus, Kyle, poor, Sales Loft, and Brent, and all these other people, and I'm like, [00:56:00] one of these things is not like the other. I

Matt Amundson: ah,

Craig Rosenberg: that is true.

Maria Boulden: people and I'm honored. I am absolutely honored. And you guys are

Craig Rosenberg: Well, first of all, you are, yeah, well, thank you. You are a big time person.

Matt Amundson: absolutely.

Craig Rosenberg: and, uh, your stories may out do all of them, although both of those had really good story. This,

Matt Amundson: They did.

Maria Boulden: I did

Craig Rosenberg: yeah, this was,

Maria Boulden: And I didn't try

Craig Rosenberg: yeah,

Maria Boulden: Benioff or anything like that. That was

Craig Rosenberg: no, you're, you're, you're good. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Um, all right, well, thank you so much. That's what we try to do on the transactions, just have some fun learning together.

So, and I'm glad Matt and Sam got to meet you because. You are an amazing person. So this was all, this was a win.

win, win, win.

Matt Amundson: Yeah, this was amazing. This is why I woke up at 1 a. m. Pacific time to fly back from Miami to be here for this podcast.

So yes.

Maria Boulden: You guys

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, that was bad.

Maria Boulden: in the mid Atlantic, Rehoboth Beach, right [00:57:00] here? got a

Craig Rosenberg: Wait

Maria Boulden: chair and a cold drink with your name on it.

Craig Rosenberg: in Delaware. Is that where you

are? kind of cold now, but a warm drink.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not now, but yeah, I, uh, and hopefully if Philly wins, we'll try to find a way to celebrate with you.

Maria Boulden: Let's

Matt Amundson: are all, I think I speak for many of the people who are listeners and people who are actually on this show. We are all behind the Eagles this, uh, this weekend.

Sam Guertin: Fly eagles fly.

Matt Amundson: Go birds.

Craig Rosenberg: the whole Yeah.

Matt Amundson: Go birds,

Maria Boulden: from KanSaaS City, you want the three peat. Everybody else? Let's go hunt!

Matt Amundson: Yeah, let's go. If they win, I will take my kids mattresses and throw them into the street and light them on fire.

Craig Rosenberg: Oh, please don't do that. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Lord. Alright.

Maria Boulden: yo!

Craig Rosenberg: That,

Matt Amundson: right.

Craig Rosenberg: Philly. great. Alright, guys. Thanks for everything. Maria, great to

Matt Amundson: This was amazing. Maria, Thank you,

Maria Boulden: Bye. [00:58:00]