Unlocking Outbound: Strategic Sales Tactics and Tools with Sakinna

Ivor: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to GTM Tales. This is the podcast where I sit down with GTM leaders in B2B to hear and exchange stories that have unlocked growth. And perhaps, Share some Battlescar stories as well. So following on from the episode with Kanako from SmarterX, this is our fifth episode. So today I'm really pleased to have Sakina who's a RevOps leader and is currently on the global revenue team at Shopify.

Really great to have you here, Sakina. How's it all hanging?

Sakinna: Nice to meet you. Uh, it's going really well. It's a little bit of a colder day in Montreal, but it's alright. Keep them busy.

Ivor: Cool. I actually, um, [00:01:00] Moved over to to Madrid and I seem to have brought the weather over from London because it's also cold here um, but actually before we dive into the RevUps talk I have to ask how your Jamaican patty skills coming along? Any secret ingredients or recipes or tips to share?

Sakinna: So many secret ingredients. None to share. Um, I kid. It's going really well. So I basically have a business with my friend, uh, that she mostly runs, but it's our, it's called Auntie Dee's Kitchen. And we've been like really just working at handcrafted Jamaican patties. So if you've ever had a Jamaican patty, you know, they're like really flaky and flavorful.

And so we've kind of tried to bring that like, Montreal pastry focus, uh, into the patties themselves. And it's been really good. It's a lot of cardio. It's a lot of cardio. I don't think I knew that starting out, but I'm definitely an expert dough roller now. So that's exciting.

Ivor: Maybe we don't need to go to the gym anymore. Maybe we just make [00:02:00] Jamaican patties.

Sakinna: Just start rolling. If you're not tired by the end of the day, I'll be shocked.

Ivor: Okay, so I imagine that kind of creativity and hustle plays a big role in your career as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited to dive into, and maybe on the theme of patties, get into like the meat of the discussion. And, uh, you've had, uh, really interesting career journey and you started from nonprofit work and now transition to the tech industry.

Could you talk about your background and, you know, how you got to where you are today and give a high level overview of that, please. Let's

Sakinna: for sharing. So, a little bit, actually, while I was in university, I kind of started working for a non profit as far as the student union, and that just gave me a lot of experience, I would say, like, serving students as well as just helping out people. I worked at [00:03:00] a women's center and a food bank and for workshops and education, and so that was really, I think, My basis in teaching and learning how to support people.

And I got to do that in another role at a crisis center, managing essentially a counseling program. And within that, I learned a lot about just how people behave, obviously how people are in crisis, how to deal with crisis, and really like, I credit that role with all of my crisis management skills, like there is nothing that will touch the intensity of working in that type of a crisis center environment.

And it taught me some. Very, very, very, very valuable skills that I've definitely taken over to opera, uh, operations. And so from there, I actually went into sales for a little bit. I was a BDR, uh, for a whole, like a year. I was technically a BDR for like four or five different companies at the same time, uh, because we were an agency.

So I got like the really, I'd say all of my early Career moments can really just be characterized by like trial by fire. I just learned a lot about how to do a lot quickly [00:04:00] for a lot of different people. And being in an agency environment was honestly so very informative. Uh, it taught me the foundations of sales.

It taught me the different value ads and how to apply what I'm doing in one industry to something entirely different. I sold everything from like pharma tooling to security, to user research, to literally like, printing, uh, like direct printing, uh, via social selling as well as email outreach. So that was something I got my really big foundation in Outbound.

And so that was kind of that transition portion. And then after that, I got into operations and it's been upwards from there

Ivor: And I want to dive into getting into the, the operation space and specifically what I found really quite interesting was, um, your experience at knack where you played a key role in scaling the company from a bootstrap state to, to series a. And I think a lot of the lessons of this [00:05:00] podcast will be. At one point of that journey, so I think it'd be really interesting to kind of peel the onion a little bit on that.

And, um, perhaps a good place to start would be just what are some key kind of strategies that that helps with, um, growth that.

Sakinna: for sure. And so I would say that for anyone going from a bootstrap to a Series A, I think that's when you really realize, and even more so now, the amount of Data you don't have the amount of information you don't have about your business is when VC start asking for it And you have like an oh no moment And it's not usually that you haven't thought of the concepts before I don't understand them in relation to targets But the amount of granularity that that type of funding and that type of oversight and assistance and support Requires to be able to track a sustainably growing business is something that is usually difficult Pretty unfamiliar to a lot of first time founders, even second time founders.

And so [00:06:00] what we did at NAC was one, they brought me on board for my outbound experience because they were mostly inbound company. And so at that uh, company, I had the opportunity to help scale their outbound strategy, start scoping out a partnership strategy as well, because I think that what a lot of people, even today honestly, aren't.

Aware of is how big of a deal partnerships are. Uh, a lot of huge companies, like I think it was Salesforce at the time. And a couple of the really big enterprises had moved a lot of their focus away from direct selling to really pushing on their partnerships ecosystem. And so being able to just kind of take that strategy and understanding and take a look at how it would be applied to an early stage startup was something that we also focused on.

But I would say the other thing that we really pushed on outside of outbound was really just. Getting strategic from an operations perspective. And from my end, I think it was really as a first time sales operations person and as somebody who rose the ranks from like a solo team of one to someone who had a team and then led the department essentially, uh, [00:07:00] was really just.

Ensuring that we were pushing from a reactive to a proactive and from a tooling and more of an administrative role to a strategic decision making role. And so being able to push that perspective from operations, I think allowed us to scale a lot quicker and also simply scale more sustainably. We were doing and implementing strategies and tooling that were probably Not something that you would see at a regular startup looking for series a, they would be, I would say, a little bit behind in that respect, but we pushed on a lot of those tooling because we knew that we were going to scale very quickly.

We were already scaling ridiculously quickly, and we assume that with VC funding, obviously, that would continue. So being able to set all of that up in advance, kind of, it's definitely a lot of upfront investment, but the idea is if you're scaling a business, you want to make sure that it succeeds. And when you're at that growth point, when you hit that trajectory, the last thing that you want to do is have to re look at everything that you put in place and say, now we need to change this.

You want to scale [00:08:00] what's successful, not scale, it's broken.

Ivor: And what strategies did you employ there? So you talk about outbound and you talked about the, um, Partnership strategy as well. How did that look from, you know, the beginning of when you actually, um, thought about that, um, strategy to employ at NAC and how did it look for month one, month two, you know, what data did you, um, use to maybe measure the efficacy of your success and what tools did you use to actually, um, help you along that journey?

And yeah, let's let's talk about the specifics and, um, the actual tactics. I want to get into the real nitty gritty.

Sakinna: So the nitty gritty, I would say there's one area, which is our inbound motion. And with our inbound motion, it was really just. Understanding [00:09:00] strategic automation and what areas within the funnel, especially the pre sales funnel, that we could speed things up. And so for a lot of people that looks like throwing automation at the wall, but for us, it looked like really taking it in a great direction.

A good look at the analytics and saying, okay, our conversion rates from MQL to meetings booked are here. We want them to go up, but we obviously don't want to continue pushing one on unqualified MQL. So really taking a look at our lead scoring strategy was something that we did and making sure that we focused on really, really high intent.

But then the second thing that we did was actually just automate booking, which we hadn't done before, and so that was really a matter of just saying we know that these conversion, or these channels, which essentially were site pages, these different entries to sales are performing really well, and because they're performing well and they have minimal spam, let's actually put a booking capability there for people to book directly on those calendars.

What that then resulted in was obviously a great amount of time saved for sellers, and it increased our conversion and our pipeline, which Uh, [00:10:00] by a good amount. I think it was initially was at least like a 30 percent bump, but aside from that, you also had to take a look at your qualification strategy there, because now you're actually qualifying within a certain period of very short period of time.

Um, so really identifying and digging in on what are the qualifications that somebody needs to actually have that meeting. Not only set, but attended to by an AE and how do we leverage our SDR team to run that qualification motion quickly and efficiently. So really pushing in on what are the key qualifications for like an ICP and for a persona and taking a look and saying, can this person actually make an opportunity?

If not, maybe we redirect them to a certain area within sales where we can qualify them further. So really pushing on that channel I think was one thing. As far as partnerships, I think it was really taking a look at the different motions that work for you. So there are co selling strategies, there are referral strategies when it comes to partnerships.

And then there are giant enterprises that are more there for that, um, value add for their portfolio. So when you talk about VCs, that's [00:11:00] definitely a big portion for them. They're not really looking for your 10%. They don't, that doesn't really matter for them. What they want to do is have some insights and some influence on what you're doing as a company and how you're growing and understand how, excuse me, they can take the successes that they have with one area of a business or one, Company within their portfolio and apply that to others.

So if they find you useful, that can be a big portion for you. So I think a lot of what we did for our partnership system at the moment was actually just scoping out those different motions and understanding based on the pros and cons, which ones would work well for not only our business size, but our platform and our value and how to showcase that to different interested parties.

And obviously making sure that partnerships is a lot of investment upfront. It's something that I think is really should be applied to outbound as well. But in doing so, you really have to be strategic and not only like, this is a great partner, big company, obviously dollar signs in the eyes, but focusing on are they actually a good fit for us to grow with because of partnerships is a very [00:12:00] long term commitment to relationship building.

So really pushing in that perspective and actually looking at that from a growth standpoint.

Ivor: A lot of different tactics there. A lot of detail. It's really, really interesting. Um, so from the lead scoring to automating booking and looking at conversion rates and something that you touched on, which we've been working on a lot with different companies. Yeah. Understanding exactly what's needed. Um, perhaps first is actually understanding the sales process.

How does someone go from not even knowing what are the company you're working for and how do they go from that stage to the end of being a raving customer? And I think a lot of. Businesses don't have like a structured way to actually map that whole process out. And when you get into the sales side of things in the sales process, you need to have that qualification criteria and understand exactly what needs to be checked at [00:13:00] what stage, and then what needs to happen from, yeah, that initial conversation to maybe the demonstration meeting or however it works for your sales process.

And actually, if you want help with that, there's, um, a sales. Playbook that's free to download on the Omnifia. com website that details exactly what you need in each step there. So feel free to download that. Um, I did cut you off there, Sakina. What did you, what were you going to

Sakinna: Oh, no, you're all good. I was going to tack on to that and say, definitely not even just for qualification, but all the way across the pipeline. I think what we also see with a lot of like, earlier stage startups, whether that's bootstrap series, a honestly, is that 1. Entry and exit criteria are lacking, uh, and the enforcement of that is something that you definitely need somebody with enough capacity as a manager to push in and do.

But one, so having entry and exit criteria, that's step one. Per each stage, I shouldn't be able to move forward if I don't have a [00:14:00] qualified buyer, if that buyer is not showing a certain level of intent. threaded opportunity, we want to lose quickly and early. We don't want to invest our salespeople's time in pushing forward an opportunity for 30 days or have an MQL or meetings booked, Sal, whatever you want to call it.

It's sitting in pipeline for two months because something might happen to it. We don't want our sellers focus there. We want sellers focus where they can win. So having that entry and exit criteria and also time bound limits on each of those is really, really important. Uh, but then the second is making sure that.

When you're speaking of an opportunity and that entry and exit criteria, you're not just saying I've handed you a proposal. So therefore we are at proposal. You are now qualified for this, but did they actually ask for one? Did they show intent? Are they going to show that to their director? How does that work?

And making sure that your, Criteria isn't necessarily just based on the actions your sales team are taking, but they're based on what the buyer is actually showing you. Because the buyer will tell you whether or not they want to buy or not. You have the choice whether or not to [00:15:00] listen is usually where you kind of get that nuance.

Ivor: Yeah, getting a fast no enables you to focus on the opportunities that matter. And if you're not getting those fast nose and you do, um, perhaps go into temptation and keep, um, um, trying to nurture a lead that isn't. Um, qualified. There's all of those problems that come with opportunity cost and not being able to then focus on a lead that is potentially much more likely to to convert and become a customer.

So one of those tactics that you did talk about, but briefly was something I want to delve into a little bit more was the lead scoring. And I think a lot of companies have heard about lead scoring. I think some have implemented them. How did you actually go about creating that [00:16:00] lead score and yeah, what made up that lead score and why?

Can you share any tips there?

Sakinna: So I'll definitely say I worked with my marketing ops counterpart on that one, so definitely have to give him a good amount of credit there. But we work together essentially alongside the

Ivor: it's all you Sakina.

Sakinna: said, that would be nice. Um, no, I was saying that essentially, yeah, we work together, but we work alongside our sales leadership and our sales managers, and I think that that's something that I would also like to emphasize, especially for the ops folks out there, we can't create these things in isolation.

You actually need sales feedback. And usually a lot of people will take forward and they'll add you in one conversation. They'll put it live and say, give us feedback. Now, a project is not just ops. A project is ops and all of their stakeholders. So we really pulled in everyone to say. If we're taking a look at these options of signals, whether it's like email open, time spent on page, anything like that, we're scoring this in like an excel sheet together and saying what matters most and what combinations of actions show the [00:17:00] most intent possible so that we're only Pushing the highest intent to sellers and when we actually put that live, we made a differentiation between a lead scored MQL and what we had as an MQL previously, so that that was essentially meetings booked so that we could really gauge the performance of those different channels and optimize as we kept going.

So we kept that feedback loop going. really continuously going for a long time, because I think that it's like, it's an age old industry wide notion, especially when it comes to lead scoring, that it's never quite as good as people say it is. And to a certain extent, nothing's ever going to be good as a meeting booked on your calendar, as far as an MQL.

So it's got a high bar to live up to, but I think that it is really important that when we talk about targets and reassessing these things, that everyone is involved and that ops plays that center role of making sure that each stakeholders listen to, and that their impact is understood within the project and that they actually have go, no go capabilities.

They have responsibilities. They have a say in what you're about to do, because at the end [00:18:00] of the day, it, it affects their teams as well.

Ivor: Great, now switching gears a little bit, and there's a lot of talk about outbound sales And to be honest, I think that's a bit of a, um, I think that is a bit of a, um, templated social media post where you just talk about X being dead, right? Um, and it just captures attention, but I think you've proven otherwise, and I'd like to dig into that a little bit and understand why you think that perception exists of, you know, outbound sales being dead.

Sakinna: Yes, let me step on my soapbox. Um, as far as I will always be a huge outbound champion when I started and I understand the value of the pipeline. I think where a lot of folks get confused is that when you [00:19:00] start off a company, you either start really heavy on outbound or really heavy on inbound and because of the focus on marketing and simply the conversion rate of inbound, usually that's prioritized by a lot of companies outside of That first potential, like establishing product market fit.

But when you get to that point and you have sellers that are only dependent on inbound, my first thought was always what happens when it turns off. And so a lot of people aren't prepared for that and shown there's no backup in place. So it is important, like deeply, deeply important to have an outbound channel, but I think we're all of the outbound is dead conversation is coming from is definitely one.

Social media aspect. It's something to talk about in that respect, but I think a lot of companies don't understand that an outbound channel actually needs, I would say. Ideally the same focus, investment and strategy that a partnership channel does to the same level, obviously the ROI on a single partnership is very different than a direct deal.

So that's something to be accounted for, but people [00:20:00] think that you can essentially batch a bunch of emails. Send them all out, ruin your bounce rate and your domain health. And when that only results in one to two meetings, oh well, outbound didn't work. Let's go back to inbound. But you didn't actually identify the fact that in a lot of cases, your inbound ICP and your outbound ICP and your inbound personas and your outbound personas are two entirely different categories.

The messaging that you use for your inbound calls, you can't use for your outbound calls. It's an entirely different world than channel, and people think that they can copy and replicate what they're doing with inbound, apply it to outbound, and when they don't work, they say outbound is dead. But you actually need to restructure it as you would any other channel and say, what works?

Do actual experimentation. I'm talking A B testing. I'm talking not just automating all of your emails, but maybe I'm sending manual emails at first working and experimenting with different industries and different ICPS and different people because a lot of ways you might get referrals experimenting with cold calling.

[00:21:00] LinkedIn and social, social selling. Social selling is actually huge when you do it correctly, um, as well as really understanding the difference between inbound, especially inbound and marketing copy, versus what should go in an outbound cadence. Your 15 features is not what you should be putting in an outbound cadence for somebody who's never seen you before.

Ivor: Okay.

Sakinna: avoid that folks.

Do actually strategize around your outband and I promise you will see success.

I think the ironic thing is that I'm tempted to title this podcast is outbound sales dead.

But I mean, it'll get traction for sure.

Ivor: Um, okay. So what do you think, um, [00:22:00] is perhaps we can actually move on to, um, your experience now and what you're working on today at Shopify. So you're working at an enterprise level. What are some like key differences in managing, you know, the Ops from Shopify to when you, um, saw the growth you did at Knack,

Sakinna: for sure. I would say that there are a lot of difference between a startup and an enterprise and Shopify is an amazing place to be able to show those differences and show what you can do to scale successfully. We're the, I think the largest Canadian enterprise as far as tech goes. So being able to really see what is possible at that level has been a great eye opening experience and it allows me, excuse me, to tell that story better.

In really understanding the importance of a structured revenue operations process, funnel and strategy. So I think that that has been really great. I would say some of the differences that you see are definitely that global application. You're not going to see that as early on, but really understanding that regional selling is [00:23:00] not just a.

Like add on, you can't really just be like, Oh, I changed the language. I translated it. Therefore it's good to go for any region selling in China is hugely different than selling in England. Selling in Germany is deeply different than selling in America. And so all of those things actually have to be pulled back at a strategy level and started from the beginning.

You can't just simply replicate what you have for different regions. So I'd say the regional difference is something huge as well. I think the other thing and working in rev ops that I've had the chance to do is simply work with other rev ops people. Which has been really great for my own career understanding and the level of specialization that everybody at Shopify and our revenue operations department has is really incredible.

I get to specialize in certain areas as well as like move on from those areas and try new things. When I came on, I was focused on campaigns and really getting outbound campaigns. Now I'm focused on really pushing. Optimizing our tooling and user workflows. So I really get to take a UX perspective to a lot of these things, which has been really huge for [00:24:00] me, I think across my career is looking at the human centered aspect of rev ops.

And so being able to say like, what does that extra click mean? What does that extra five seconds mean? If you have to multiply it by 200, what about this process? Can we make incrementally better to have compounded impact? And so you get the space to do that. You get the support to do that. And being able to specialize in those areas means that you can have really, really targeted impact versus focusing on the entire funnel, which at some point, obviously for a RevOps person, because it becomes unsustainable.

I don't think you could have a, I think if you have like a team of 200, And you still have one RevOps person, I'm concerned for your person and I'm concerned for your company. So like being able to know how even a RevOps function scales and the different ways that you can segment that, similar to the way that you would segment a sales org.

Are, are something that I'm able to see now and understand a little bit better.

Ivor: Yeah, I experienced the same actually, I did the reverse. So I worked for a listed company and we [00:25:00] used to serve the biggest banks in the UK and globally. And I found, yeah, there were people that were very, very, um, you know, had expert knowledge in real niche areas within marketing. They're around 300 marketers across the organization, and so that was really beneficial to learn from all those guys.

But What actually made me move and go into the startup world, which is probably about six years ago now, um, was the fact that I just wanted to get my hands dirty and perhaps the, the red tape for me was something that I became a bit frustrated by and I just wanted to press forward and do things myself and, and grow my team.

Um, but okay. So switching gears a little bit. So looking ahead. What trends do you think will dominate the rebel space in the next few years? And, um, perhaps we can focus specifically on outbound, [00:26:00] um, as you know, that's, that's where your expertise really lies.

Sakinna: I would say for outbound, I think there's a portion about leveraging AI. Everybody's conversation along with like outbound is dead becomes SDR is dead. And I don't think that's the case. Um, where I see a lot of companies using strategic AI or using AI strategically. Is to actually simply take away a lot of the manual work necessary currently that takes up a seller's time and doesn't best maximize their skills.

What I want to be able to see. With outbound and AI is not that people are using AI to send out messages or send out emails because everyone can tell And it doesn't work But really saying how do we use AI to grab all of the context that we have available? And so that's like it's your data warehouse for a lot of customers.

It's your sit like it's Salesforce It's pulling in demand base is pulling in your monic marketing automation How do you use AI to pull all of those things together to provide? it Insight to your sellers [00:27:00] and also to help them make more strategic choices. So being able to push that, I think with it, with AI is going to be really huge for outbound outside of that.

I think that I would like to see, and I hope this is the way that outbound is going is simply becoming a lot more strategic. So I'd like to see it. I think we're seeing that a lot more. With people who are sales leaders pushing back and saying, outbound is not actually dead. You just need to do it properly, but really pushing.

What is an outbound playbook? What are the best practices for outbound across industries? And when that pushes from social selling, like when we're talking about LinkedIn, I don't think we've really pushed the boundaries on. What we can do in LinkedIn, we have people who are just putting comments on random posts and saying like, DM me, that's not a social, like, that's not a social selling strategy, really pushing that from a strategic standpoint and asking our sellers to say, we pulled all of this manual work off of you.

We can give that to whoever we can give that to whatever tool that is now that you have the focus How do you actually push? Personalization and [00:28:00] personalization at scale specifically which I would argue in a lot of cases is actually just relevancy Because well how you get the information and how you put it in the email Or how you put it in the message doesn't matter as long as the person receiving it Things that it's for them specifically and when you really get to that point, I think that's when we start seeing really, really excellent results.

So I would say, yeah, definitely AI is going to be a portion really pushing strategy on outbound instead of like the spray and pray motion that it's kind of known for. And then from that point on, just really pushing on how to personalize and how to make sure that your buyer not know, not necessarily knows that you're You have your eyes on them, but the things that they do are interesting to you.

The things that they do indicate a need to you and how to speak to that need proactively is going to be really important going forward.

Ivor: think that person that said DM me must have got lost on his way to, or her way to Instagram. [00:29:00] Um, okay, so. Yeah, I think that's super interesting. And it's what we've discovered as well is it's really important when you're using AI to actually give it all the context and we were testing out this data story selling feature in the early days and not giving it too much context of. Um, such as like recommended actions our customers can take, but also the, um, benchmark data and things like this.

And the AI would just come back with so much rubbish that was just completely unusable. So you really need to give it all of the context and that whole piece takes quite a long time to actually bring that data together. And then the prompt as well needs to be. Um, well adapted and tested in itself, and you typically need like a couple of points to actually check the work as well.

Um, [00:30:00] so, yeah, I completely agree with the data context piece. But once once you get that right, it can be so, so powerful for for your operations and, um, getting to decisions and, um, producing more output and so on and so forth. So we're now. the end of the session. So we have one last thing that we do here on this podcast.

So, um, before we close every episode, we ask each guest to recommend a book for the next guest with a short reason why, and our last guest was Kanako from smarter X. And she said, and recommended a book called Range from David Epstein. And the reason why is something that you touched on in the episode.

And it's all about this, there's a narrative of having to specialize in one thing. But [00:31:00] actually, there's a lot to be had in being a generalist, and that's particularly helpful in a RevOps role, as you're, you know, working across different departments, right? So she recommended that one, Ranged by David Epstein.

What's yours, Sakina?

Sakinna: That's so interesting. I'm definitely gonna have to read that because I told, I think I told somebody yesterday, I was like, being a generalist isn't a sin. It's okay. It actually provides you some more perspective. But my book, uh, that I'm going to recommend is Cold Calling Sucks, and That's Why It Works.

It's by Armand Farouk and Nick Siegelski. I'm hoping that I'm saying that right. My apologies if I'm not. But really keeping that thread of outbound, I think. One of the areas of outbound that people find a lot of fear and understandably so is cold calling. Nobody wants to call a stranger's phone and tell them information that you don't know that they want to hear.

And people can be quite rude over the phone, uh, when you do so. But I think that cold calling is one of the areas that we have the most opportunity for outbound. So I would push it and I would recommend it [00:32:00] for anybody aspiring to be in sales or anybody pushing to be excellent in sales. You need to know how to cold call.

And for people receiving cold calls, be a little bit nicer. I think

Ivor: I actually have a bit of a story from cold calling, and you sometimes catch people at the wrong time. So I was ringing up a few numbers and a lady answered the phone and I asked if she had 20 or 30 seconds for me to, um, Talked to her and she said, oh, it's not the best time for me. And I said, oh, why is that?

She said I'm mid labor. So I was like, oh, okay. It definitely isn't the best time. I apologize and Best of luck with yeah Everything.

Sakinna: that's a note. If somebody can be in labor and be polite while receiving a cold call, I'm sure the rest of us can give it a try.

Ivor: was incredibly polite. So Yeah, that's off to her. Um, okay. So thank you so much [00:33:00] for such an amazing episode. Super, super interesting. Loads of, you know, packed full of loads of great insights there. Um, so if people want to reach out to you, how can they, how can they do that? LinkedIn.

Sakinna: LinkedIn. I'm on there all the time.

Ivor: Okay.

Sakinna: Yeah,

Ivor: make sure we tag you in the post so folks can, can find you there.

If you're interested in the topics or want to be a guest, then please reach out to us. If not, then speak next time. Thanks for listening.

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Ivor: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to GTM Tales. This is the podcast where I sit down with GTM leaders in B2B to hear and exchange stories that have unlocked growth. And perhaps, Share some Battlescar stories as well. So following on from the episode with Kanako from SmarterX, this is our fifth episode. So today I'm really pleased to have Sakina who's a RevOps leader and is currently on the global revenue team at Shopify.

Really great to have you here, Sakina. How's it all hanging?

Sakinna: Nice to meet you. Uh, it's going really well. It's a little bit of a colder day in Montreal, but it's alright. Keep them busy.

Ivor: Cool. I actually, um, [00:01:00] Moved over to to Madrid and I seem to have brought the weather over from London because it's also cold here um, but actually before we dive into the RevUps talk I have to ask how your Jamaican patty skills coming along? Any secret ingredients or recipes or tips to share?

Sakinna: So many secret ingredients. None to share. Um, I kid. It's going really well. So I basically have a business with my friend, uh, that she mostly runs, but it's our, it's called Auntie Dee's Kitchen. And we've been like really just working at handcrafted Jamaican patties. So if you've ever had a Jamaican patty, you know, they're like really flaky and flavorful.

And so we've kind of tried to bring that like, Montreal pastry focus, uh, into the patties themselves. And it's been really good. It's a lot of cardio. It's a lot of cardio. I don't think I knew that starting out, but I'm definitely an expert dough roller now. So that's exciting.

Ivor: Maybe we don't need to go to the gym anymore. Maybe we just make [00:02:00] Jamaican patties.

Sakinna: Just start rolling. If you're not tired by the end of the day, I'll be shocked.

Ivor: Okay, so I imagine that kind of creativity and hustle plays a big role in your career as well. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm excited to dive into, and maybe on the theme of patties, get into like the meat of the discussion. And, uh, you've had, uh, really interesting career journey and you started from nonprofit work and now transition to the tech industry.

Could you talk about your background and, you know, how you got to where you are today and give a high level overview of that, please. Let's

Sakinna: for sharing. So, a little bit, actually, while I was in university, I kind of started working for a non profit as far as the student union, and that just gave me a lot of experience, I would say, like, serving students as well as just helping out people. I worked at [00:03:00] a women's center and a food bank and for workshops and education, and so that was really, I think, My basis in teaching and learning how to support people.

And I got to do that in another role at a crisis center, managing essentially a counseling program. And within that, I learned a lot about just how people behave, obviously how people are in crisis, how to deal with crisis, and really like, I credit that role with all of my crisis management skills, like there is nothing that will touch the intensity of working in that type of a crisis center environment.

And it taught me some. Very, very, very, very valuable skills that I've definitely taken over to opera, uh, operations. And so from there, I actually went into sales for a little bit. I was a BDR, uh, for a whole, like a year. I was technically a BDR for like four or five different companies at the same time, uh, because we were an agency.

So I got like the really, I'd say all of my early Career moments can really just be characterized by like trial by fire. I just learned a lot about how to do a lot quickly [00:04:00] for a lot of different people. And being in an agency environment was honestly so very informative. Uh, it taught me the foundations of sales.

It taught me the different value ads and how to apply what I'm doing in one industry to something entirely different. I sold everything from like pharma tooling to security, to user research, to literally like, printing, uh, like direct printing, uh, via social selling as well as email outreach. So that was something I got my really big foundation in Outbound.

And so that was kind of that transition portion. And then after that, I got into operations and it's been upwards from there

Ivor: And I want to dive into getting into the, the operation space and specifically what I found really quite interesting was, um, your experience at knack where you played a key role in scaling the company from a bootstrap state to, to series a. And I think a lot of the lessons of this [00:05:00] podcast will be. At one point of that journey, so I think it'd be really interesting to kind of peel the onion a little bit on that.

And, um, perhaps a good place to start would be just what are some key kind of strategies that that helps with, um, growth that.

Sakinna: for sure. And so I would say that for anyone going from a bootstrap to a Series A, I think that's when you really realize, and even more so now, the amount of Data you don't have the amount of information you don't have about your business is when VC start asking for it And you have like an oh no moment And it's not usually that you haven't thought of the concepts before I don't understand them in relation to targets But the amount of granularity that that type of funding and that type of oversight and assistance and support Requires to be able to track a sustainably growing business is something that is usually difficult Pretty unfamiliar to a lot of first time founders, even second time founders.

And so [00:06:00] what we did at NAC was one, they brought me on board for my outbound experience because they were mostly inbound company. And so at that uh, company, I had the opportunity to help scale their outbound strategy, start scoping out a partnership strategy as well, because I think that what a lot of people, even today honestly, aren't.

Aware of is how big of a deal partnerships are. Uh, a lot of huge companies, like I think it was Salesforce at the time. And a couple of the really big enterprises had moved a lot of their focus away from direct selling to really pushing on their partnerships ecosystem. And so being able to just kind of take that strategy and understanding and take a look at how it would be applied to an early stage startup was something that we also focused on.

But I would say the other thing that we really pushed on outside of outbound was really just. Getting strategic from an operations perspective. And from my end, I think it was really as a first time sales operations person and as somebody who rose the ranks from like a solo team of one to someone who had a team and then led the department essentially, uh, [00:07:00] was really just.

Ensuring that we were pushing from a reactive to a proactive and from a tooling and more of an administrative role to a strategic decision making role. And so being able to push that perspective from operations, I think allowed us to scale a lot quicker and also simply scale more sustainably. We were doing and implementing strategies and tooling that were probably Not something that you would see at a regular startup looking for series a, they would be, I would say, a little bit behind in that respect, but we pushed on a lot of those tooling because we knew that we were going to scale very quickly.

We were already scaling ridiculously quickly, and we assume that with VC funding, obviously, that would continue. So being able to set all of that up in advance, kind of, it's definitely a lot of upfront investment, but the idea is if you're scaling a business, you want to make sure that it succeeds. And when you're at that growth point, when you hit that trajectory, the last thing that you want to do is have to re look at everything that you put in place and say, now we need to change this.

You want to scale [00:08:00] what's successful, not scale, it's broken.

Ivor: And what strategies did you employ there? So you talk about outbound and you talked about the, um, Partnership strategy as well. How did that look from, you know, the beginning of when you actually, um, thought about that, um, strategy to employ at NAC and how did it look for month one, month two, you know, what data did you, um, use to maybe measure the efficacy of your success and what tools did you use to actually, um, help you along that journey?

And yeah, let's let's talk about the specifics and, um, the actual tactics. I want to get into the real nitty gritty.

Sakinna: So the nitty gritty, I would say there's one area, which is our inbound motion. And with our inbound motion, it was really just. Understanding [00:09:00] strategic automation and what areas within the funnel, especially the pre sales funnel, that we could speed things up. And so for a lot of people that looks like throwing automation at the wall, but for us, it looked like really taking it in a great direction.

A good look at the analytics and saying, okay, our conversion rates from MQL to meetings booked are here. We want them to go up, but we obviously don't want to continue pushing one on unqualified MQL. So really taking a look at our lead scoring strategy was something that we did and making sure that we focused on really, really high intent.

But then the second thing that we did was actually just automate booking, which we hadn't done before, and so that was really a matter of just saying we know that these conversion, or these channels, which essentially were site pages, these different entries to sales are performing really well, and because they're performing well and they have minimal spam, let's actually put a booking capability there for people to book directly on those calendars.

What that then resulted in was obviously a great amount of time saved for sellers, and it increased our conversion and our pipeline, which Uh, [00:10:00] by a good amount. I think it was initially was at least like a 30 percent bump, but aside from that, you also had to take a look at your qualification strategy there, because now you're actually qualifying within a certain period of very short period of time.

Um, so really identifying and digging in on what are the qualifications that somebody needs to actually have that meeting. Not only set, but attended to by an AE and how do we leverage our SDR team to run that qualification motion quickly and efficiently. So really pushing in on what are the key qualifications for like an ICP and for a persona and taking a look and saying, can this person actually make an opportunity?

If not, maybe we redirect them to a certain area within sales where we can qualify them further. So really pushing on that channel I think was one thing. As far as partnerships, I think it was really taking a look at the different motions that work for you. So there are co selling strategies, there are referral strategies when it comes to partnerships.

And then there are giant enterprises that are more there for that, um, value add for their portfolio. So when you talk about VCs, that's [00:11:00] definitely a big portion for them. They're not really looking for your 10%. They don't, that doesn't really matter for them. What they want to do is have some insights and some influence on what you're doing as a company and how you're growing and understand how, excuse me, they can take the successes that they have with one area of a business or one, Company within their portfolio and apply that to others.

So if they find you useful, that can be a big portion for you. So I think a lot of what we did for our partnership system at the moment was actually just scoping out those different motions and understanding based on the pros and cons, which ones would work well for not only our business size, but our platform and our value and how to showcase that to different interested parties.

And obviously making sure that partnerships is a lot of investment upfront. It's something that I think is really should be applied to outbound as well. But in doing so, you really have to be strategic and not only like, this is a great partner, big company, obviously dollar signs in the eyes, but focusing on are they actually a good fit for us to grow with because of partnerships is a very [00:12:00] long term commitment to relationship building.

So really pushing in that perspective and actually looking at that from a growth standpoint.

Ivor: A lot of different tactics there. A lot of detail. It's really, really interesting. Um, so from the lead scoring to automating booking and looking at conversion rates and something that you touched on, which we've been working on a lot with different companies. Yeah. Understanding exactly what's needed. Um, perhaps first is actually understanding the sales process.

How does someone go from not even knowing what are the company you're working for and how do they go from that stage to the end of being a raving customer? And I think a lot of. Businesses don't have like a structured way to actually map that whole process out. And when you get into the sales side of things in the sales process, you need to have that qualification criteria and understand exactly what needs to be checked at [00:13:00] what stage, and then what needs to happen from, yeah, that initial conversation to maybe the demonstration meeting or however it works for your sales process.

And actually, if you want help with that, there's, um, a sales. Playbook that's free to download on the Omnifia. com website that details exactly what you need in each step there. So feel free to download that. Um, I did cut you off there, Sakina. What did you, what were you going to

Sakinna: Oh, no, you're all good. I was going to tack on to that and say, definitely not even just for qualification, but all the way across the pipeline. I think what we also see with a lot of like, earlier stage startups, whether that's bootstrap series, a honestly, is that 1. Entry and exit criteria are lacking, uh, and the enforcement of that is something that you definitely need somebody with enough capacity as a manager to push in and do.

But one, so having entry and exit criteria, that's step one. Per each stage, I shouldn't be able to move forward if I don't have a [00:14:00] qualified buyer, if that buyer is not showing a certain level of intent. threaded opportunity, we want to lose quickly and early. We don't want to invest our salespeople's time in pushing forward an opportunity for 30 days or have an MQL or meetings booked, Sal, whatever you want to call it.

It's sitting in pipeline for two months because something might happen to it. We don't want our sellers focus there. We want sellers focus where they can win. So having that entry and exit criteria and also time bound limits on each of those is really, really important. Uh, but then the second is making sure that.

When you're speaking of an opportunity and that entry and exit criteria, you're not just saying I've handed you a proposal. So therefore we are at proposal. You are now qualified for this, but did they actually ask for one? Did they show intent? Are they going to show that to their director? How does that work?

And making sure that your, Criteria isn't necessarily just based on the actions your sales team are taking, but they're based on what the buyer is actually showing you. Because the buyer will tell you whether or not they want to buy or not. You have the choice whether or not to [00:15:00] listen is usually where you kind of get that nuance.

Ivor: Yeah, getting a fast no enables you to focus on the opportunities that matter. And if you're not getting those fast nose and you do, um, perhaps go into temptation and keep, um, um, trying to nurture a lead that isn't. Um, qualified. There's all of those problems that come with opportunity cost and not being able to then focus on a lead that is potentially much more likely to to convert and become a customer.

So one of those tactics that you did talk about, but briefly was something I want to delve into a little bit more was the lead scoring. And I think a lot of companies have heard about lead scoring. I think some have implemented them. How did you actually go about creating that [00:16:00] lead score and yeah, what made up that lead score and why?

Can you share any tips there?

Sakinna: So I'll definitely say I worked with my marketing ops counterpart on that one, so definitely have to give him a good amount of credit there. But we work together essentially alongside the

Ivor: it's all you Sakina.

Sakinna: said, that would be nice. Um, no, I was saying that essentially, yeah, we work together, but we work alongside our sales leadership and our sales managers, and I think that that's something that I would also like to emphasize, especially for the ops folks out there, we can't create these things in isolation.

You actually need sales feedback. And usually a lot of people will take forward and they'll add you in one conversation. They'll put it live and say, give us feedback. Now, a project is not just ops. A project is ops and all of their stakeholders. So we really pulled in everyone to say. If we're taking a look at these options of signals, whether it's like email open, time spent on page, anything like that, we're scoring this in like an excel sheet together and saying what matters most and what combinations of actions show the [00:17:00] most intent possible so that we're only Pushing the highest intent to sellers and when we actually put that live, we made a differentiation between a lead scored MQL and what we had as an MQL previously, so that that was essentially meetings booked so that we could really gauge the performance of those different channels and optimize as we kept going.

So we kept that feedback loop going. really continuously going for a long time, because I think that it's like, it's an age old industry wide notion, especially when it comes to lead scoring, that it's never quite as good as people say it is. And to a certain extent, nothing's ever going to be good as a meeting booked on your calendar, as far as an MQL.

So it's got a high bar to live up to, but I think that it is really important that when we talk about targets and reassessing these things, that everyone is involved and that ops plays that center role of making sure that each stakeholders listen to, and that their impact is understood within the project and that they actually have go, no go capabilities.

They have responsibilities. They have a say in what you're about to do, because at the end [00:18:00] of the day, it, it affects their teams as well.

Ivor: Great, now switching gears a little bit, and there's a lot of talk about outbound sales And to be honest, I think that's a bit of a, um, I think that is a bit of a, um, templated social media post where you just talk about X being dead, right? Um, and it just captures attention, but I think you've proven otherwise, and I'd like to dig into that a little bit and understand why you think that perception exists of, you know, outbound sales being dead.

Sakinna: Yes, let me step on my soapbox. Um, as far as I will always be a huge outbound champion when I started and I understand the value of the pipeline. I think where a lot of folks get confused is that when you [00:19:00] start off a company, you either start really heavy on outbound or really heavy on inbound and because of the focus on marketing and simply the conversion rate of inbound, usually that's prioritized by a lot of companies outside of That first potential, like establishing product market fit.

But when you get to that point and you have sellers that are only dependent on inbound, my first thought was always what happens when it turns off. And so a lot of people aren't prepared for that and shown there's no backup in place. So it is important, like deeply, deeply important to have an outbound channel, but I think we're all of the outbound is dead conversation is coming from is definitely one.

Social media aspect. It's something to talk about in that respect, but I think a lot of companies don't understand that an outbound channel actually needs, I would say. Ideally the same focus, investment and strategy that a partnership channel does to the same level, obviously the ROI on a single partnership is very different than a direct deal.

So that's something to be accounted for, but people [00:20:00] think that you can essentially batch a bunch of emails. Send them all out, ruin your bounce rate and your domain health. And when that only results in one to two meetings, oh well, outbound didn't work. Let's go back to inbound. But you didn't actually identify the fact that in a lot of cases, your inbound ICP and your outbound ICP and your inbound personas and your outbound personas are two entirely different categories.

The messaging that you use for your inbound calls, you can't use for your outbound calls. It's an entirely different world than channel, and people think that they can copy and replicate what they're doing with inbound, apply it to outbound, and when they don't work, they say outbound is dead. But you actually need to restructure it as you would any other channel and say, what works?

Do actual experimentation. I'm talking A B testing. I'm talking not just automating all of your emails, but maybe I'm sending manual emails at first working and experimenting with different industries and different ICPS and different people because a lot of ways you might get referrals experimenting with cold calling.

[00:21:00] LinkedIn and social, social selling. Social selling is actually huge when you do it correctly, um, as well as really understanding the difference between inbound, especially inbound and marketing copy, versus what should go in an outbound cadence. Your 15 features is not what you should be putting in an outbound cadence for somebody who's never seen you before.

Ivor: Okay.

Sakinna: avoid that folks.

Do actually strategize around your outband and I promise you will see success.

I think the ironic thing is that I'm tempted to title this podcast is outbound sales dead.

But I mean, it'll get traction for sure.

Ivor: Um, okay. So what do you think, um, [00:22:00] is perhaps we can actually move on to, um, your experience now and what you're working on today at Shopify. So you're working at an enterprise level. What are some like key differences in managing, you know, the Ops from Shopify to when you, um, saw the growth you did at Knack,

Sakinna: for sure. I would say that there are a lot of difference between a startup and an enterprise and Shopify is an amazing place to be able to show those differences and show what you can do to scale successfully. We're the, I think the largest Canadian enterprise as far as tech goes. So being able to really see what is possible at that level has been a great eye opening experience and it allows me, excuse me, to tell that story better.

In really understanding the importance of a structured revenue operations process, funnel and strategy. So I think that that has been really great. I would say some of the differences that you see are definitely that global application. You're not going to see that as early on, but really understanding that regional selling is [00:23:00] not just a.

Like add on, you can't really just be like, Oh, I changed the language. I translated it. Therefore it's good to go for any region selling in China is hugely different than selling in England. Selling in Germany is deeply different than selling in America. And so all of those things actually have to be pulled back at a strategy level and started from the beginning.

You can't just simply replicate what you have for different regions. So I'd say the regional difference is something huge as well. I think the other thing and working in rev ops that I've had the chance to do is simply work with other rev ops people. Which has been really great for my own career understanding and the level of specialization that everybody at Shopify and our revenue operations department has is really incredible.

I get to specialize in certain areas as well as like move on from those areas and try new things. When I came on, I was focused on campaigns and really getting outbound campaigns. Now I'm focused on really pushing. Optimizing our tooling and user workflows. So I really get to take a UX perspective to a lot of these things, which has been really huge for [00:24:00] me, I think across my career is looking at the human centered aspect of rev ops.

And so being able to say like, what does that extra click mean? What does that extra five seconds mean? If you have to multiply it by 200, what about this process? Can we make incrementally better to have compounded impact? And so you get the space to do that. You get the support to do that. And being able to specialize in those areas means that you can have really, really targeted impact versus focusing on the entire funnel, which at some point, obviously for a RevOps person, because it becomes unsustainable.

I don't think you could have a, I think if you have like a team of 200, And you still have one RevOps person, I'm concerned for your person and I'm concerned for your company. So like being able to know how even a RevOps function scales and the different ways that you can segment that, similar to the way that you would segment a sales org.

Are, are something that I'm able to see now and understand a little bit better.

Ivor: Yeah, I experienced the same actually, I did the reverse. So I worked for a listed company and we [00:25:00] used to serve the biggest banks in the UK and globally. And I found, yeah, there were people that were very, very, um, you know, had expert knowledge in real niche areas within marketing. They're around 300 marketers across the organization, and so that was really beneficial to learn from all those guys.

But What actually made me move and go into the startup world, which is probably about six years ago now, um, was the fact that I just wanted to get my hands dirty and perhaps the, the red tape for me was something that I became a bit frustrated by and I just wanted to press forward and do things myself and, and grow my team.

Um, but okay. So switching gears a little bit. So looking ahead. What trends do you think will dominate the rebel space in the next few years? And, um, perhaps we can focus specifically on outbound, [00:26:00] um, as you know, that's, that's where your expertise really lies.

Sakinna: I would say for outbound, I think there's a portion about leveraging AI. Everybody's conversation along with like outbound is dead becomes SDR is dead. And I don't think that's the case. Um, where I see a lot of companies using strategic AI or using AI strategically. Is to actually simply take away a lot of the manual work necessary currently that takes up a seller's time and doesn't best maximize their skills.

What I want to be able to see. With outbound and AI is not that people are using AI to send out messages or send out emails because everyone can tell And it doesn't work But really saying how do we use AI to grab all of the context that we have available? And so that's like it's your data warehouse for a lot of customers.

It's your sit like it's Salesforce It's pulling in demand base is pulling in your monic marketing automation How do you use AI to pull all of those things together to provide? it Insight to your sellers [00:27:00] and also to help them make more strategic choices. So being able to push that, I think with it, with AI is going to be really huge for outbound outside of that.

I think that I would like to see, and I hope this is the way that outbound is going is simply becoming a lot more strategic. So I'd like to see it. I think we're seeing that a lot more. With people who are sales leaders pushing back and saying, outbound is not actually dead. You just need to do it properly, but really pushing.

What is an outbound playbook? What are the best practices for outbound across industries? And when that pushes from social selling, like when we're talking about LinkedIn, I don't think we've really pushed the boundaries on. What we can do in LinkedIn, we have people who are just putting comments on random posts and saying like, DM me, that's not a social, like, that's not a social selling strategy, really pushing that from a strategic standpoint and asking our sellers to say, we pulled all of this manual work off of you.

We can give that to whoever we can give that to whatever tool that is now that you have the focus How do you actually push? Personalization and [00:28:00] personalization at scale specifically which I would argue in a lot of cases is actually just relevancy Because well how you get the information and how you put it in the email Or how you put it in the message doesn't matter as long as the person receiving it Things that it's for them specifically and when you really get to that point, I think that's when we start seeing really, really excellent results.

So I would say, yeah, definitely AI is going to be a portion really pushing strategy on outbound instead of like the spray and pray motion that it's kind of known for. And then from that point on, just really pushing on how to personalize and how to make sure that your buyer not know, not necessarily knows that you're You have your eyes on them, but the things that they do are interesting to you.

The things that they do indicate a need to you and how to speak to that need proactively is going to be really important going forward.

Ivor: think that person that said DM me must have got lost on his way to, or her way to Instagram. [00:29:00] Um, okay, so. Yeah, I think that's super interesting. And it's what we've discovered as well is it's really important when you're using AI to actually give it all the context and we were testing out this data story selling feature in the early days and not giving it too much context of. Um, such as like recommended actions our customers can take, but also the, um, benchmark data and things like this.

And the AI would just come back with so much rubbish that was just completely unusable. So you really need to give it all of the context and that whole piece takes quite a long time to actually bring that data together. And then the prompt as well needs to be. Um, well adapted and tested in itself, and you typically need like a couple of points to actually check the work as well.

Um, [00:30:00] so, yeah, I completely agree with the data context piece. But once once you get that right, it can be so, so powerful for for your operations and, um, getting to decisions and, um, producing more output and so on and so forth. So we're now. the end of the session. So we have one last thing that we do here on this podcast.

So, um, before we close every episode, we ask each guest to recommend a book for the next guest with a short reason why, and our last guest was Kanako from smarter X. And she said, and recommended a book called Range from David Epstein. And the reason why is something that you touched on in the episode.

And it's all about this, there's a narrative of having to specialize in one thing. But [00:31:00] actually, there's a lot to be had in being a generalist, and that's particularly helpful in a RevOps role, as you're, you know, working across different departments, right? So she recommended that one, Ranged by David Epstein.

What's yours, Sakina?

Sakinna: That's so interesting. I'm definitely gonna have to read that because I told, I think I told somebody yesterday, I was like, being a generalist isn't a sin. It's okay. It actually provides you some more perspective. But my book, uh, that I'm going to recommend is Cold Calling Sucks, and That's Why It Works.

It's by Armand Farouk and Nick Siegelski. I'm hoping that I'm saying that right. My apologies if I'm not. But really keeping that thread of outbound, I think. One of the areas of outbound that people find a lot of fear and understandably so is cold calling. Nobody wants to call a stranger's phone and tell them information that you don't know that they want to hear.

And people can be quite rude over the phone, uh, when you do so. But I think that cold calling is one of the areas that we have the most opportunity for outbound. So I would push it and I would recommend it [00:32:00] for anybody aspiring to be in sales or anybody pushing to be excellent in sales. You need to know how to cold call.

And for people receiving cold calls, be a little bit nicer. I think

Ivor: I actually have a bit of a story from cold calling, and you sometimes catch people at the wrong time. So I was ringing up a few numbers and a lady answered the phone and I asked if she had 20 or 30 seconds for me to, um, Talked to her and she said, oh, it's not the best time for me. And I said, oh, why is that?

She said I'm mid labor. So I was like, oh, okay. It definitely isn't the best time. I apologize and Best of luck with yeah Everything.

Sakinna: that's a note. If somebody can be in labor and be polite while receiving a cold call, I'm sure the rest of us can give it a try.

Ivor: was incredibly polite. So Yeah, that's off to her. Um, okay. So thank you so much [00:33:00] for such an amazing episode. Super, super interesting. Loads of, you know, packed full of loads of great insights there. Um, so if people want to reach out to you, how can they, how can they do that? LinkedIn.

Sakinna: LinkedIn. I'm on there all the time.

Ivor: Okay.

Sakinna: Yeah,

Ivor: make sure we tag you in the post so folks can, can find you there.

If you're interested in the topics or want to be a guest, then please reach out to us. If not, then speak next time. Thanks for listening.

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