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Episode 15

Catherine Dutton

VP of Marketing EMEA

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Making marketing your business’ most valuable asset

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Hosts Richard Lane and Simon Hazeldine welcome marketing expert Catherine Dutton (VP of Marketing EMEA) from Pegasystems. Catherine shares how qualifying and nurturing leads appropriately can win more customers and drive growth. She also discusses:

  • Why it’s important to be a data-driven storyteller
  • The skills marketers need to add business value
  • How measuring the impact of marketing can drive alignment and growth

“Marketers need to be flexible, adaptable, and think more strategically, alongside being able to use insight and analysis to inform your conversations both internally and externally.”

Catherine has an impressive background, with 18 years of experience working for large B2B tech companies in various senior roles. After assuming the position of Global Chief Marketing Officer at Atos, she transitioned to VP of Marketing EMEA at Pegasystems to continue making her mark in the technology world.

Transcript

Speaker 1:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

 

Richard Lane:

Simon and I were delighted to be joined for this episode of The Insiders by Cat Dutton, VP of EMEAR Marketing at Pegasystems. Like many of our guests, Cat transitioned into marketing, having previously worked in a number of sales roles. Perhaps this is why she’s so on our wavelength when it comes to an integrated “mar-sales” approach. Listen on to hear Cat’s views on what metrics actually matter, the power of language and storytelling, and how using specialists at the right time could support the buying cycle, of course, so much more. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Insiders from durhamlane.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Hello and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast giving you the inside track on all things B2B sales and marketing. I’m your host Simon Hazeldine. I’m an author, sales expert, and keynote speaker on sales and negotiation. And I’m joined by my co-host, the CCO and Co-Founder of durhamlane – Richard Lane. Richard, great to be back with you for another Insider’s episode. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about durhamlane before you introduce our guest?

 

Richard Lane:

Will do and thank you, Simon. Great to be back in The Insiders Podcast studio. Yeah, durhamlane is sentenced to an integrated sales and marketing agency. We help our customers to create always on channels of meaningful, well-qualified sales opportunities that business development managers love to follow up. Thrilled to be joined in The Insiders studio today by Cat Dutton. Cat is the VP of Marketing for EMEAR within Pegasystems and enterprise blue-chip organization. Really excited about today’s conversation. Looking forward to hearing more of your journey and some of the ideas that we’ve chatted about pre-cor. So, Simon – back to you.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful. Thank you, Richard. So, Cat, thanks for joining us. First question we normally ask to our guests, just to give us a little bit of background so our listeners can get to know you, how you came to be in the role you’re in currently.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, sure. And thanks for such a warm welcome to the podcast. Really excited to be here. So I’ve been in predominantly large B2B organizations in tech for just over 18 years, which does make me feel old. And I originally started my career in, I would call more client-facing roles. So, I worked in a lot of different roles around account management, sales and bids, and then I made a decision about four years in to join marketing. I’ve not looked back since.

 

I’ve done a number of different business-related marketing roles, account-based marketing roles, focusing on different industries in different countries globally. And over the past few years, I’ve taken more senior roles. So most recently I was global CMO at Atos, and then I recently joined Pega in May this year to lead on the marketing for the EMEA region within the organization.

 

A lot of people have said, “Well, why have you taken a VP role rather than doing another CMO role?” For me, I really love marketing and I enjoy the execution of marketing. And for me, it’s really important that I’m out there talking with different clients, making a difference to an organization. So, I’m really pleased that I’ve joined Pega in the last few months and it’s quite an interesting place to be, so that’s how I’ve ended up where I am.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Wonderful, thank you. Well, I’ve been doing a little bit of LinkedIn stalking, Cat, if you’ll excuse me. And on your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned that you have focused passion and belief that marketing can truly add business value. How do you think marketers can convince, say, a very metric-driven head of sales of the value that marketing brings?

 

Catherine Dutton:

In a way, Simon, you’ve answered the question, which for me is you’ve got to use those metrics to show what the impact of marketing is. And I don’t mean talking about marketing-specific metrics, but metrics that are really important for the business strategy of the organization. So, whether that’s around driving revenue for that company, whether it’s around increasing new pipeline, and sourcing new opportunities, or whether it’s actually about building relationships and engagement with existing clients, and expanding out your footprint within them.

You’ve got to use metrics that are really valid to sales and also talking the same language. sometimes, we get a little bit heads up in marketing on talking about language that we use amongst ourselves, but actually sales are only really interested in what’s the true opportunity. And how does that help me win more business? So, it’s really important that you use the same language and talk about those strong ROI metrics that you can prove, and use examples that you have of previous campaigns. Or activities that you’ve done to drive that ROI.

I would say the third thing as well that has really helped me actually in more recent years is use some of those sales account teams, other people around the business to be an advocate for you with people that maybe you are struggling to build that relationship with. sometimes it’s always easier if those sales teams can hear from their peers around what the impact is or what the difference is in terms of what you are doing from marketing on the business. And it’s definitely really helped me in recent years on bringing those advocates into those conversations.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

It’s like the Robert Cialdini social proof, isn’t it?

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah.

Simon Hazeldine:

A salesperson’s going to be most persuaded by another salesperson, no offense to the marketing function when I say that in any way at all. Richard, from your perspective, does that resonate with you from a durhamlane point of view?

 

Richard Lane:

Yeah, 100%. And I’d describe us as the ‘middleware’ that often connects the world of marketing and the world of sales together. So, all of that thought, effort, creativity, going into picking the interest of the right people, hopefully at the right time comes through as an MQL, however it might be. But sales people just are too busy. It’s too early stage and nothing happens, so we provide that conduit between the two.

I was just thinking as you were talking there, it’s almost like you could create ABM for marketers to work internally, like an internal ABM program you described there. Your background in sales, and we have this quite a lot on The Insiders that we have marketing professionals that have come from a sales grounding. And that makes a big difference. So, there’s a little book for you to write there, like internal ABM marketing for internal marketers.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Amazing. Good to know. I’m laughing because over the past few weeks, I’ve also been drilling into it into my new team at Pega, that we’ve got to promote what we’re doing and we’ve got to talk about the successes. Even where they’re really small wins, they really make a big deal out of it.

 

Richard Lane:

Stories.

 

Catherine Dutton:

The more storytelling you do, the more resonance it starts to have internally and the more that people that you want to engage with really want the marketing you’re delivering. And I’ve actually just been on a call, which has just been around that actually, sharing with some of our senior executives around a couple of the account-based marketing programs that we’re running, and the outcomes it’s driving. And it is amazing actually what insight you get from just having those conversations and sharing some of the successes that you’re driving.

 

Richard Lane:

Amazing.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

But I spend a lot of time with heads of sales and if you talk about increasing pipeline, you’ll have a very attentive individual listening to you. In our pre-interview, Cat, we were discussing demand and lead generation, and you commented that the concept of a lead doesn’t really mean anything. Could you expand on what you mean by that?

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, Richard just talked a little bit about it as well. A lead for me is really a marketing term. It’s not necessarily a real opportunity. And account teams, sales teams, business individuals, their time is really limited. And if you start talking to them about leads, it’s like Richard said it’s sometimes a little bit too early in that process. And it also depends on how you determine what a lead is. And some organizations call a lead, well, if someone’s clicked on a white paper and they’ve gone on a website, it’s a lead get all over. It’s not appropriate for a salesperson to then pick up the phone and speak to that person. You need a full nurturing cycle before it.

So, for me, leads are great from a marketing perspective to understand where people’s interest is, but it’s almost… I can’t think of a better word, but misleading, to have that word because it’s not an opportunity. It’s not a business conversation to be had. It’s just a small bit of insight that you get into an individual who started to engage with your organization. So that’s where I come from, Simon on… Doesn’t really mean a lot in terms of when you look at it from a business matter X perspective.

 

Richard Lane:

I call those ‘flickers of interest.’ You’ve clearly caught someone’s attention, which is really the job of marketing, which is a… That’s a great thing and it’s something that should be celebrated, but it’s not yet sales ready. It’s not ready for conversation. So, at durhamlane , from an MQL point of view, we talk about direct and indirect. And so indirect might be that they’ve looked at page nine of that e-book 35 times so quite clearly, there may be some interest we don’t know. But let’s take that intelligence and maybe go and try, and have a conversation. And start to explore.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Absolutely.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

That conversation about the definition is important because I’ve got visions of sales teams across the world, marketing saying, “Well, we’ve given you 100 leads,” and the eyes of the sales team rolling, “What actually are we talking about?” What’s definition of making sure that, that’s agreed within the organization and between those functions?

 

Catherine Dutton:

And sometimes as well, Simon, there’s almost a conflict of interest. So, if you’re saying to a salesperson, “Well, I brought you 100 leads,” and they’re going, “Well, that’s great, but actually I’ve got two opportunities here that are close to closure. That is my focus, that is my priority for the next three months.”

Also, you’ve got that conflict of interest but there’s also a danger of limiting your ability to then go, and reengage with that customer. Because nobody’s following up on those things so as marketers, we have that responsibility as well to make sure that we’re focusing on the right things for where our business is in terms of the ability to then follow up, and execute where we’re generating new pipeline, new opportunities.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

And you mentioned nurturing cycle. What do you have as part of that nurturing cycle at Pega?

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, it’s quite interesting actually. So at Pegasystems, we are embarking on more of a formalized account-based marketing approach across those organizations or existing clients that we work with globally. As part of that, we’re actually discussing at the moment all of the different tactics that we use along the customer lifecycle journey and where all of those different things come into play.

For me, there’s almost that ongoing always on type stream of activity that you would do to nurture specific individual relationships within a client from a marketing perspective. And that can be anything from, Richard, you picked upon, someone’s shown a real intent there. They’ve looked at a white paper 35 times, great, actually we could build them into a formal campaign where we’re feeding different content in every couple of weeks every month around that particular topic because that’s a sheer interest for them, or we could invite them into a user group for example. Or we could put them in contact with different peers that we are working with other clients.

There’s lots of different tactics and channels that you can use to help nurture those individuals, but it’s thinking about them as an individual. And making sure that, that nurturing is right for them in terms of campaign activity.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

To expand on this a little on the subject of ABM… So you won an award for best use of ABM previously, and it will be great to get your perspective. What do you think is most important in making that work for an organization?

 

Catherine Dutton:

A few different things. Firstly, ensuring that you’ve got that real integration between sales and marketing. Sometimes as marketers, we’re real creatives at heart and we absolutely want to show outcomes. We are convinced that our program, our campaign is going to be successful. We’ve put our heart and soul into it but actually we’ve got to put more effort in as marketers in that upfront, engaging directly with the business when we’ve come up with an idea, or a concept. And we are not too far down that route of going into full on let’s create it and then let’s execute.

It’s so important that sales account teams are really involved early on and also clients in terms of testing some of this, but having that full integration with the right people in the business to make sure that the approach that you’re taking is spot on. Because ultimately, you need to have those people anyway on board in terms of follow up when you get to that opportunity. So that integration is really key.

The other thing is accepting that, depending on what account-based marketing is relevant for your organization, if you are embarking on what I’d call more strategic one-to-one ABM and a one-to-one approach, it’s making sure that the organization is behind, and realizes that it takes time. It’s not a quick fix solution and having a decent timeframe of 12 to 18 months to start showing the results. It’s really important. Strategic ABM is really about engaging with individuals, building those relationships and the only way you can do that is over time, as people start to get to know your organization, start to trust who you are as a brand. So that’s really critical is having that ability to really think about the timeframe but having that process internally to do that.

The third thing that I’ve learned in making ABM really successful is marketers themselves and marketers having that mindset that they are almost the CMO for that account. They’re bringing people in where it’s relevant. They’re thinking about the wider client picture. They’re thinking about, how is this campaign? How is this content? How is this messaging going to resonate with these individuals? And taking the time and understanding that client organization and bringing that insight in to challenge the business, and to work with the account teams to make sure that you’ve got a fully integrated strategy. So, it’s probably a bit of a long-winded answer, Simon, but you can probably tell I’m quite passionate about that topic.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, no, no. The time scale thing is so important, particularly where you might have a sales function that are operating on a quarterly time horizon, that thing. 18 months is forever.

 

Catherine Dutton:

It’s forever. And having those aligned objectives up front is so important because you’re right, you can’t have completely different goals to what a sales team that’s driven by quarterly cycles. If you’re bringing ABM in, that’s a 12-18 month outcome-based activity so it’s really important that those things are considered.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

But you mentioned that Pega’s had relationships back to 1983 was there and so part of your ABM approach is to help the organization move into other areas of those clients’ organizations.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And typically, we are deploying certain propositions, certain solutions that hit specific stakeholders within an organization. But what we’re finding is that as more and more people within that client organization are adopting our technology, and using it on a day-to-day basis as end users, it’s about building that community approach with them in that longer term engagement, and relationship. But yeah, we have got some incredible clients that we work with, incredible length of tenure that we have with our clients and retention rates, but also satisfaction from them, which is amazing. It’s a great organization to be part of.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Richard, a durhamlane perspective? Particularly I’d be interested in your take on the sales timeline and the marketing timeline if we divided it by function.

 

Richard Lane:

One of the sad realities is that you’re probably dealing with different sales directors across the course of a 12–18-month campaign program. The status, something like 18 months is the average tenure for a chief revenue officer. So, talking to prospects, we are at pains to talk about it takes time. If someone wants quick hit in sales, then it’s old school dial for dollars, lack of value.

It’s not based around anything apart from you relying on a spreadsheet and that’s not worked for us, so it has to be well thought through. It has to be an integrated plan and ultimately, if you’re going to bring on a customer that’s going to stay with you for 20, 30 years, then you need to respect the fact you’ve got to build a relationship.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

If you are cross-selling for want of a better word, one of the things you don’t want to do is damage your existing business by behaving in a way that’s going to alienate your clients straight from the stars, so having that more strategic consideration and that… Ah, nurturing. Actually mentioned nurturing cycle. That’s quite a nice description of your ABM approach.

 

Richard Lane:

I loved some of your comments there around ABM, Cat, and just a question, do you think that the skills of marketing professionals is needing to change based on that? Because it sounds like there’s a lot more internal dialogue that you’re needing to deliver to be successful if you are building an integrated campaign that runs across multi divisions internally, let alone speaking to actual customers.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah. I do. We actually also run a piece of research and a report off the back of it, that talked about what skillset marketers need, particularly if they’re looking at technology platforms. But some of those things that came through really resonated with me from an ABM perspective and that research basically showed that skills in terms of really being able to be flexible, and adaptable. But thinking more strategically are really important alongside being able to use insight and analysis to inform your conversations, and discussions not only internally but externally.

The biggest thing for me on skillset and where I talked about almost being that CMO for an account is very much being able to influence, and tell the stories. And we’ve got a great opportunity as marketers that we know how to tell a great story. We’re just not always that forthcoming in ourselves verbalizing those stories. We’re more, let’s help the account team shape that story and actually, we’ve got that responsibility as marketers to be able to tell the stories ourselves, and the only way that we can really influence internally within an organization is being able to do that. So I’d say that’s a really big skillset.

The other thing that I just briefly mentioned was insight and being data-driven. That’s actually really critical, particularly in the climate that we’re in. We’ve got so much data to our fingertips but it’s being able to lift that up, and use that to give us insight to give us a picture on what is really happening within that account. And use it to have different conversations with our account and sales teams then, and it just helps switch that conversation where sometimes that conversation really does happen where an account. Or sales team says, “I just need you to do a video for me.” And that’s not the conversations on what more marketers to be having.

It’s more around how can we help you grow your account? The only way that we can switch that up in terms of dialogue is by bringing in new insight and giving ourselves that credibility to have that conversation.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Yes. Sometimes referred to as when we’re working with sales teams, data to insight to action, and it sounds like you are talking data to insight to conversation, or to story maybe, which would then prompt the conversation.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, you’ve got to take those internal sales account teams on the journey with you. It’s got to be a full collaboration. It’s not a marketer, drive the data, create the insight, create campaign and action. You’ve got to do this in full collaboration with people because otherwise, they’re not bought into what you’re actually doing, and ultimately, you want them to work with you to drive the outcomes.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

So collaboration’s the key message there, isn’t it? And customers can be at all sorts of different buying stages when they enter a marketing funnel. As a marketer, how do you think companies should interact with and manage customers who are entering at different stages?

 

Catherine Dutton:

I mentioned it earlier as well. We’re starting to actually map that out within Pegasystems of where people are really engaging at different parts of their buying cycle. It just generally depend so if someone’s right at the start of their process, and you’re trying to build up a new set of new clients who haven’t interacted with you before, then I would say majority of your time will very much be on that digital landscape journey that they go on. But also influencing some of those people that might be influencing them so like analysts, or sourcing advisors, and maybe different partners that are engaged.

Whereas if you’ve got an existing set of clients that already know you for a specific thing within your organization, then it’s about broadening out that conversation to focus on actually what the wider breadth of your company is about. And that involves different tactics, which are, I would say, more direct, more face to face because you’ve already started to build that relationship. So it does depend on where someone is in their journey around what tactics or channels they would use.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

It always fascinates me how organizations will assume that customers are always fully aware of the breadth of your portfolio and customers segment you, in my experience, into little boxes, and I’ve lost count of the number of times salespeople have, when I’ve advised them to have those conversations. And they say, “The customer didn’t know we did that.” And I go, “Yeah. Well, they don’t spend all day looking at you, do they?”

 

Richard Lane:

So on that point, a little story. So our previous logo, underneath it used to have training, outsourcing, recruitment because we offered those three services, and we only do integrated sales. And marketing outsourcing, that’s all we do. And the number of times I’d have a conversation with a customer who’d go, “Oh, I didn’t know you did training.” It’s on the logo. It’s really comfortable. Someone knows you for something and selective perception. That’s all they see. So the number of times that I had that conversation, it was unbelievable. It’s literally on every invoice you get from us or every statement of work, every document I ever shown you, it’s on the page, but it still don’t see it.

 

Catherine Dutton:

It’s so true though. It’s so true. I do it even with external agencies that we work with. I have them in my head on, they’re really strong on here, here, here but now what I do is when I’m meeting with one of the agencies that we work with, I always start with a bit of a conversation that, and I say, “What’s new with you guys? What things are you working on that I might not know about?” To give them the opportunity to share actually what their credentials and capabilities are, because things change over time. So yeah, we all naturally do it.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

There’s going to be thousands of salespeople listening to this going, “Why can’t all my customers be like Cat?” That’s probably what they’re saying.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Well, I have [inaudible 00:24:23].

 

Simon Hazeldine:

I’m sure that’s not true.

 

Richard Lane:

I bet there’s a dark side.

 

Catherine Dutton:

But any of my previous teams know.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, do let us know. Best answer on the postcard wins a prize. And I would love to know, how’s your background in sales influenced your approach as a marketer? Because obviously, some guests are marketers from the get-go, whereas you started in sales account management, Cat. So, it’d be interested if how that’s influenced your thinking philosophy or approach.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Yeah, quite a lot actually. I’m quite respectful of people’s time. When I was in those customer facing roles, if a client needs something or there’s something going on with the service that’s not being delivered, you pretty much do drop everything else that’s going on, and that’s where you need to focus. So I’m more appreciative of account and client teams’ time where if I’m requesting time, I’m really specific around what it’s for. I try and do it in shorter time scale as I can.

I don’t tend to put an hour in, for example, with any sales leader or having for two hours, which I’ve seen happen, because you’ve got to be respectful. And that also makes sure that you maintain that relationship that they know that you understand, that their time is precious. And I know they talk about that a lot but genuinely, if something is going on within the client, you need to drop everything.

The other thing that I’m definitely more appreciative of is, I’d say, it’s deadlines or pressure. And regardless of what someone’s targets are in a client facing environment, you can guarantee at the end of a quarter, or an end of a half, or an end of a year, depending on how the financial sales cycle works in the company, they are having a lot of internal pressure put on them to deliver those results. So from almost a mindset perspective, I’m always conscious of that in the back of my head and making sure that we’re not doing anything from a real proactive perspective in that last week of the financial year where they’re just going to be head down.

It’s just the same, it’s the same everywhere. So, it’s understanding those pressures that people have on them but the other thing that it’s also helped me do is really make sure that if I’m engaging with a client, or I’m in engaging on a campaign, or event, or whatever it is as a marketer, that I’m doing my research in the background. Because you do need to understand the clients or the people, or the individuals that you’re approaching with your marketing.

So, spend that time researching them because that is going to land and resonate with that client. And from a sales perspective, they’re going to absolutely lap that up if you can get them in front of a senior individual within their client that they’ve not been able to get in front of. Because actually you’ve been really smart about your approach, it’s really hit the right person at the right time. It’s: have the right content for them that’s resonated. It makes a difference so you really spending that time to get to know your clients is really important.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, thank you. That’s a really, really great point to bring things to a close. Richard, do you want to give us a little recap, main points for you from our conversation?

 

Richard Lane:

Yeah, that’s been wonderful. Really enjoyed that and Simon, and I in The Insiders are on a quest to find those people that really get the integrated marketing and sales mindset. And well, we’ve spent 30 minutes talking about it so that’s brilliant. Yeah, just I’ve made some notes here, metrics that matter, language, storytelling. We go back to our Graham Hawkins episode, Simon, we talked about sense makers and storytellers. Well, that’s the same for sales and for marketing.

 

I love that idea around helping marketers to sell internally to almost be sales people but internally. Had a really great conversation actually in the middle of the episode around ABM and being the CMO for your customer, so that’s a really nice mindset positioning. Data, data, data, buying cycle, using specialists at the right time and the virtual world that we are still in is helpful to that, because you can involve specialists without having to fly them over from the west coast or wherever. So that becomes more possible and then threaded throughout our conversation, Cath, has just been your grounding in sales and your understanding of your target market in lots of ways. Your internal customer is your sales team because working with them then you create success for the business. So yeah, I really love the conversation so thank you very much.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

And we’re looking forward to seeing the Internal ABM for Marketer’s book when it hits the box stands, Cat.

 

Richard Lane:

With a thank you just on the inside to me.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

It was Richard’s idea so you might have to cut him in on the royalties. Just before we go, we got a final question for you, which many of our guests find to be the most challenging question. We’re building The Insider’s Spotify playlist and we’re asking every guest to add a song. What’s your chosen song to go on the playlist?

 

Catherine Dutton:

Can I do a couple? Just because it depends.

 

Richard Lane:

Yeah, go on.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Yeah, go on. Why not?

 

Richard Lane:

You’ve been a good guest. We’ll give you a couple.

 

Catherine Dutton:

For those that are really struggling outside, I’ve got Survivor by Destiny’s Child. Survival is pretty critical and then just because I am who I am, I’ve got Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Excellent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that your conference walk on music?

 

Catherine Dutton:

That’s my most played.

 

Richard Lane:

Just before the curtain goes up, then you’re on.

 

Catherine Dutton:

Upbeat songs though, guys. Upbeat songs.

 

Simon Hazeldine:

Absolutely. Well, that’s wonderful. Cat, thank you very much for joining us on this episode of The Insiders by durhamlane . Thank you to my co-host Richard and thank you for listening in folks. Subscribe to The Insiders podcast on your preferred podcasting site and you’ll be notified of new episodes and if you want to visit durhamlane.com, you’ll be able to learn more about selling at a higher level, so thank you to everybody for listening in. Good luck with all your sales and marketing.

 

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