Episode #13: Unlocking Revenue - Integrated Revenue Growth for Industrial Leaders with Ed Marsh
In this episode of U.S. Manufacturing Today, powered by Veryable, host Matt Horine is joined by Ed Marsh, Founder of Consilium Global Business Advisors (operating as Ed Marsh Consulting) and architect of the Integrated Revenue Growth Framework. The discussion centers around sustainable and integrated revenue growth within the manufacturing sector. Ed shares insights from the frontline of industrial transformation, highlighting the importance of updating marketing and sales processes to align with changing buyer behaviors, maximizing overall revenue effectiveness (ORE), and the critical necessity of having a superb sales team. The episode also explores current trends like automation, reshoring, and the impact of AI on sales strategies, providing practical advice for manufacturing leaders to advance their growth strategies in a rapidly evolving industrial landscape.
Links
- Ed Marsh Consulting
- Ed Marsh Socials
- Industrial Growth Institute Podcast
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 Introduction to U.S. Manufacturing Today
- 00:30 Guest Introduction: Ed Marsh
- 01:15 Current Trends and Challenges in Manufacturing
- 02:50 Growth Strategies for Industrial Manufacturers
- 06:44 The Integrated Revenue Growth Framework
- 13:11 Adapting to Changing Buyer Behaviors
- 20:13 Practical Steps for Manufacturing Leaders
- 23:53 Future Outlook and Final Thoughts
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome back to U.S. Manufacturing today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of the industry, the changing landscape policies and more.
Today we're talking about a topic that's on every industrial executive's mind, revenue growth, not just short-term spikes, but sustainable integrated revenue growth. Even amid the uncertainty to help us navigate this, we're joined by someone who's been on the front lines of this transformation.
Ed Marsh, founder of Consilium Global Business Advisors, and operating as Ed Marsh Consulting, and the architect of the Integrated Revenue Growth Framework, or overall revenue effectiveness for industrial manufacturers.
He also hosts the Industrial Growth Institute podcast, has consulted for numerous companies and is a former Army Infantry Officer and Ranger. Ed brings a powerful lens to this conversation and is a hundred percent committed to helping manufacturers seize this moment.
Ed, welcome to the show.
Ed Marsh: Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I'm thrilled to be here.
Matt Horine: Well, we're excited to have you on and I think we should just jump right into it. A lot of the topics that we discuss on our show change week over week, so certainly predictions are difficult. By the time we record, sometimes by the time we get to the show debut date, we're already behind. We'd love to set the stage with you on the current trends, challenges, and disruptions, and really nothing's off the table.
We'd love to hear what you're seeing out there.
Ed Marsh: Well, certainly there's a, I think, a sense of optimism. There's a renaissance, I was at the automate show in Detroit about three weeks ago, I think from when we're recording, and there was a lot of excitement, a lot of people talking about automation and, and changes in manufacturing.
On the other hand, I think sometimes. We paint a picture that's too dark of how manufacturing has been for the last 20 or 30 years. I mean, the number of family owned industrial manufacturing companies that I talk to that are thriving, that have been in business for, you know, 30 or 70 or 120 years, however long it is, is, is, I mean, it's impressive. There's a lot of those out there. And have they had ups and downs? Have there been [00:02:00] difficult periods? Have there been challenges? For sure.
I think manufacturing, I believe fundamentally that there's something that's, uh, very virtuous about manufacturing and bending metal and, and, and making things. And I think that we've got a strong tradition of manufacturing in this country. And certainly there's some high profile cases where manufacturing has moved offshore. But in general, I think manufacturing remains strong and I think there's a lot of excitement around a bit of a renaissance now.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. That's a lot of the sentiment that we've seen with some guests and if you're really paying attention to the details, something you highlighted, there are those small, medium sized businesses that really are the backbone of manufacturing in the country. And you know, we've seen a lot of different personas in our work at Veryable, you know, working with other businesses, we see people in some type of mode where they're focused on survival or maybe optimization or growth.
What's the overall trend towards, you know, what we're gonna talk about today, which is growth, and how are you seeing people take, uh, stock of where this is going?
Ed Marsh: The interesting thing in industrial manufacturing is [00:03:00] that you can't grow like you can a software company. You can't just spin up another license. If you are a family owned business that's, you know, been in business, you're on G three right now and you're in a facility that you built 10 or 15 years ago and you're getting close to maxing it out, the idea of 20 or 30% per year growth may not actually be appealing.
Because suddenly you create for yourself a whole other range of problems. So we're, we're conditioned, I think as a society now to think that growth means somewhere 30 to 50 or a hundred percent every year and you know, hockey stick kind of stuff, but that's not necessarily the goal. However, you could while maintaining the same production output. Increase your margins by 20%, or you could make an acquisition that gives you another facility with a complimentary product that lets your sales team use that as a way to get into new target customers that you've never been able to penetrate. There are lots of ways to grow that, you know, still are, are consonant with a fairly conservative outlook and approach.That being said, I think there's broad agreement. Certainly I'm in this [00:04:00] camp.
That stagnation is, you know, not the alternative to growth, that you can't just stay the same because you lose customers, customers get bought by other companies. You'll end up in a downward spiral if you are not consistently growing, adding new logos and maintaining or expanding margin.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. You see people kind of get stuck that way or they're longtime customers. We've had somebody on recently that was talking with us about, you know, they'll get a PO for something from a customer doing, you know, capital equipment, expenditure, and they don't hear from 'em for eight years, and that's probably really the sweet spot.You've probably seen it multiple times, but. In the manufacturing space right now, the momentum is, you know, we get the general sense of momentum is building. Where do you think is the biggest pain point or where manufacturers are still stuck or do you see a lot of people moving towards this incremental type change in the operating model where they're looking to increase their margins?Or do you see people aggressively trying to grow their business to, to three x, like you mentioned before, which is very difficult to do in manufacture.
Ed Marsh: [00:05:00] So I'm biased and I'll, I'll admit my bias upfront, um, based on where I spend my time. I think that where most manufacturers are stuck is in selling, marketing and selling. I mean, they've spent 20 or 30 years refining their lean practices. They've got black belts, they've got a fours, and they run kaizens. Can they always get better? Yes, of course. That's the essence of continuous improvement or total quality management. But in general, they've put a lot of thought and a lot of resources into improving the way they make stuff and the way they run their operations. And in very, very precious few cases do I see companies that have brought similar rigor and mindset to their marketing and sales. And so I think that where they're getting stuck is in the way that they approach the market to try to, to try to market and sell their stuff.
Matt Horine: That's really great insight and it is something that we see all the way down to, you know, the bottom level.A lot of sentiment that I get is, you'd be shocked at how much you know, good customer you feedback you get just by answering the phone. But when you take that to step level, change. And you're not only returning quotes or [00:06:00] returning and doing things, but you're pro-growth and you're looking at how to refine your marketing and sales strategy. I imagine that it's quite a different conversation.
Ed Marsh: You would never walk into a single manufacturer anywhere in the US that would be manufacturing some kind of a complex device and doing it from memory. They've got a bomb, they've got explosion drawings, they've got jigs. They've got fixtures. They've got a process for doing it. Yet, I don't know, 80 or 90% of the sales forces of those companies that are so precise in how they manufacture, have no documented sales process for how they sell. There's a complete dissonance between the two, right?
Matt Horine: Yeah. Something that is very prevalent in the manufacturing sector, and we do see that a lot, which is a great lead in and to talk about your model and and your framework and you know, just in overall, you know, practical terms. You've built a model you call the Integrated Revenue Growth Framework. Can you walk us through what that is and why manufacturers need it?
Ed Marsh: I think most manufacturers know OEE overall equipment effectiveness. So my model is called ORE, overall Revenue Effectiveness. And you're right, it is [00:07:00] an integrated growth framework, but it plays on many of the same kind of best practices or, or ideas that are part of OEE.What's funny is, you know, when people think about OEE, let's say you've got a 10 step manufacturing process and each step is 97% efficient, and that sounds pretty good until you realize that the net quality output is a product of those. Which is 83% efficient, which isn't so good. And then if you start thinking about, okay, well somewhere in the sales process we've got only 1% of our web traffic becoming a lead. We've got a 20% closing rate on the deals we're working on. Multiply that and efficiency across, let's say there's a hundred steps in that sales process, you realize you need scientific notation to understand how inefficient. The marketing and sales processes, and so let's take that mindset that's made us effective on the backend.
Let's view board governance and strategy and marketing and sales and customer success as an integrated system with a number of steps. We need to [00:08:00] identify where there's inefficiencies, prioritize those and fix them because from the customer's perspective. It doesn't matter that you've got one group of people you call the marketing department, one group of people you call the sales department. I often like to use the example of a chat bot. If I'm on a website and I wanna ask a chat bot a question, and I want to connect with a person. I don't care what department or job title that person has. I want the right answer. I. And that's the buyer experience. And so we need to step back from our own way of looking at the world and solve for the buyer. And ORE helps companies do that.
Matt Horine: That's a great metric and one that I really like As somebody with a commercial background and being in manufacturing, it makes a lot of sense to me. It kind of bridges those two worlds. It also highlights something that I think is very common in most companies, just even outside of manufacturing, but particularly in manufacturing companies. How does this framework connect departments and strategies that are usually siloed? Because we see, and we have a lot of operations professionals that listen to our show and probably a lot of commercial professionals, and oftentimes people's bias is that those are usually siloed or one hand's not talking to the other. How does it connect [00:09:00] those two usually siloed departments?
Ed Marsh: So let's talk about how it connects marketing and sales, and we'll talk about how it connects sales and operations. The research shows that buyers are somewhere 70 or 80% of the way through their buying journey before they wanna talk to sales.And 70% of buyers want a rep free experience because most sales reps don't deliver any value. Most sales reps are a conduit for information that somebody can get by asking Chad, GPT are going to a website anyway. So in that case, the sales reps aren't delivering value. So now certainly some sales reps do, and the battle that those good sales reps have is that buyers wanna avoid them.So what we need to do is understand that now marketing needs to do some of the selling, but marketing also needs to create opportunities for sales to get involved. So we can't treat those like we used to where marketing does the trade show planning, the journal advertising and a few bingo, bingo card decks.And then sales does everything else We it. There's an integrated continuum.
In terms of sales and operations, I think a great example is inaccurate forecast, I mean operations. How often does operations go to a meeting, take the [00:10:00] sales forecast, groan, and go away and kind of recast the sales forecast in their own spreadsheet to actually determine how they need to staff and order raw materials?And that's a shame, and it's inaccurate and it's inefficient and it creates waste. If we had sales teams that forecast accurately, is it gonna be a hundred percent accurate? Of course not. However, the, the kind of inaccurate baloney that we often see is just mind blowing. So if we have a great understanding of our ideal customer profile, I.If we've got very rigorous opportunity qualification against an opportunity qualification scorecard, if we've got a very detailed sales process that helps us all stay aligned around where we stand, then we ought to know that our forecast is gonna be reasonably accurate, which I think creates a lot of goodwill and, and collaboration between operations and sales.
Matt Horine: There's a lot of room for improvement, but one, you see organizations, you know from time to time, and I'm sure you've come across a few that are either right there or they are really good at that without, you know, naming [00:11:00] any names or, or dropping any customers or clients of yours. What's a real world example of a company that broke through those barriers?That somebody that you saw this play out or you identified that link where they weren't integrated or where they weren't getting the, you know, they were creating a lot of waste potentially, or any of those things that you mentioned. Do you have a really good example of that?
Ed Marsh: Unfortunately, the hard part is it's hard to visualize that all upfront, and the way I see it play out is that a company will say, oh my goodness, we need to do a better job with digital marketing, create a bunch of leads, and none of them get sold.Then they say, oh my goodness, we need to upgrade the sales team. And then once the sales team's in place, then we start to reach a point where we're operating on a plane where we have the opportunity to do that kind of integration. Often it's really hard to paint that picture upfront to a company that isn't close to it in their maturity model.And honestly, the change management is, is a challenge. I think it often works best and works naturally that you, you kind of arrive there gradually.
Matt Horine: I think one of the big things [00:12:00] that I see both in your model and in our previous discussions is companies needing the urgency to do this. Because I think we're at a pretty unique moment right now.I've talked to a lot of folks who believe some of the policy changes, some of the regulatory rollbacks, whatever the, the situation is, they see something of a rising tide coming over the next few months, uh, which we strongly believe here too.
So we're biased towards that. If you could, you know, emphasizing the urgency and opportunity in the current macro environment, you've said before there's a unique window here.Is it just that climate or do you think it's because the pace of change in the world is happening so rapidly? You mentioned AI earlier. What is the urgency for these companies and is it just being prepared or ready to really take their growth to the next level?
Ed Marsh: I'll answer that two different ways. I recently had Michael Fs from ITR Economics on my podcast.And for folks in the industrial space, most are probably familiar with ITR. There are many of the trade association meetings and they're quite widely known now for their forecast of a 2030s depression. The flip side, what? What people don't often hear 'cause they close their ears when they hear that, is that [00:13:00] ITR also predicts that the balance of this decade is gonna be a great opportunity, particularly 2025.An opportunity for companies to raise prices, to increase margins, to sell more, et cetera. So that's, that's one aspect to it.
The other aspect is that buyers and buyer expectations of buyer behaviors are changing, and most companies are failing to adapt on the sales side. So the particular opportunity, there's maybe on the one hand, the rising tide.On the other hand, most companies, despite all of their protestations about how unique they are, consign themselves to mediocrity and, and blending in with everybody else just because of how they market and sell. And so. If companies can actually adapt the way they market and sell to what buyers expect now, they will so substantially differentiate themselves based on how they do business, that they've got a huge opportunity, I think, to not only take advantage of this rising tide, but also to leapfrog many competitors.I.
Matt Horine: That's really good insight. Mostly because people have either sat on the sidelines or they've been some type of sidelined optimist maybe, or, you know, sidelined expansion, waiting for the [00:14:00] right moment. But a lot of times, even if they're ready to meet the moment, what does that entail? So I, I think that's really great.I think some of the bigger questions that we have, you know, shifts like reshoring and digital transformation and some of those things, if you look at, you know, the gap between 2025 to 2030, really big trends on that, but how is that buyer behavior, which was so, such a great stat. I think you said 70% of industrial buyers have already made a decision, or most of their decisions.It's moving fast. How do those shifts in the bigger macro trends like reshoring and things that we're seeing come back? What, what is the tailwinds for growth for that, especially in here in the United States?
Ed Marsh: So maybe the reshoring creates a tailwind for growth, but the changing buyer behaviors create a headwind for growth for companies that want to persist in the same marketing and sales approaches. Because AI is now enabling buyers to shelter themselves even further from having to, to speak to buyers. Most companies see their marketing as an opportunity to know when there's a project they can participate in. And they see their [00:15:00] outbound prospecting as, as the, the goal of their outbound prospecting is to find out where there's an active project.
As soon as you restrict yourself to participate in active projects, then you put yourself in this bucket where, um, 70% of the. Vendors on Shortline buyer shortlist were known to the buyer before they even had a project. 70% of the time, the number one company on that shortlist gets the order. Buyers are 80% of the way through their buying journey before they wanna talk to a seller. Only 14 or 16% of the time does the original spec ever change.
Companies have this idea, oh, we're gonna hear about a project. We've got such great technical features, and good salespeople will get involved and we'll convince them they need to buy us. And, and the data simply does not bear that out. So that means then that companies need to figure out how to build trust, how to build awareness, and how to prospect to create projects as opposed to identify them.And that requires a, a degree of skill and consultative selling, a degree of business acumen and a [00:16:00] sales process and culture that are very different than what exists in many places. But I think that that is where companies need to be at this time, quickly moving in that direction. Um, to respond to the way buyers are buying.
Matt Horine: Really well said. It. Maybe sit here and think as you were walking through that how many commercial processes or RFPs and, and other types of procurement systems that I've been through, where the best organizations I've seen are shaping that and changing the mentality of somebody to not only think that they need it and not trying to sell it, but also delivering some kind of value prior to it.Done that in a lot of past lives where you see people mostly just trying to respond to an RFP, you know, as quickly as possible, where they don't have their ducks in a row. They may not even be able to do it, but their window is so tight that they're just kind of responding to respond. And I think that going through the motions, uh, is something that's indicative of a lot of really bad organizations where they think it's either in the bag or, you know, they have some kind of insider track advantage, but they really don't because RFP [00:17:00] processes are getting longer.I'm sure that.
The tailwinds that we see out of regulatory change will obviously create, you know, some kind of qualification difference over the next coming months and years where, you know, just for example, I saw the other day there's a big program called Buy America, which a certain component of steel had to be made here before.That's gonna have a step level increase under the big beautiful bill over the next four to five years. That gets to 55, 60. Percent or greater of American based steel, which is, you know, it's great news for, um, steel and and metal, but something that people are really gonna have to get in front of.
Ed Marsh: But, uh, the fact is that most companies are dealing with 40 to 60% of deals ending in no decision.So in other words, they don't win or lose, they just kind of evaporate. The data varies from sources, but somewhere between 40 and 80% of sales reps are chronically missing quota, and companies tolerate this. You wouldn't tolerate an accountant who only sent 40% of the invoices that you're supposed to send out. You wouldn't tolerate a manufacturing supervisor that only had a 40% quality output rate, [00:18:00] but for some reason, we accept it in sales.
Matt Horine: It always gives the impression that things are a little bit more loose, but with the level of execution, actually putting some framework around it, the level of effectiveness, um, is something that should be measured, especially in an environment where I think it's gonna get a lot more competitive.I. One of the trends, uh, or some of the trends that we've talked about with buyers making their decisions, if we go backwards, you know, within an organization, because I talk to a lot of folks in supply chain right now who are looking at how their components are made working backwards into the supply chain.What does that mean for revenue teams and what kind of impact are you seeing?
So if I, if I'm making a product and I'm a commercial guy and I'm selling the product and I'm looking backwards in my organization at whatever the components come from, how are those. Kind of internal buyers back toward the supply chain, you know, working with their sales teams.What's, what are some of the consequences of things going on right now? Lead times, tariffs, all of those, um, big impact words that no one quite has a handle on yet.
Ed Marsh: I believe that where most salespeople fail to [00:19:00] focus. Need to is on the strategic initiatives. So why is the supply chain an emphasis? Is it because they simply can't get the parts to get stuff out the door?Is it because the company has decided strategically they're going to double down on a hundred percent made in America products? Is it because they sell based on having the fastest lead time and so they need the most resilient supply chain to help them do that? If a salesperson doesn't understand what animates the company, then they can't possibly sell toward the best solution.And instead, what most of 'em end up doing is responding.
Some mid-level person or a purchasing person calls up and says, oh, I need a price for such and such. Okay, well, how many, and, you know, when, without any understanding of, of what the driving business imperative is behind it. So you have to have salespeople that can have those business conversations. At the level of management that's making those decisions in order to then tie what you do and how you do it to supporting that rather than just responding to some inquiry.
Matt Horine: Great insight. I think that's one of the things that most people are looking [00:20:00] for right now is that practical kind of advice where people get a lot of theory, they think about things a lot, but converting it to action is really the tricky part for most people and most organizations.So whether that's manufacturing or not, but. Speaking of getting practical, what's the one thing a manufacturing leader can do this week to start moving towards an integrated revenue growth plan? What is something that they could do in the immediate, or what do they need to stop doing immediately if they need to change course fast?
Ed Marsh: So the answer may not be satisfying, but the answer is to see the world like their buyers see it. Companies obsess over what they make and what they do and how they do it, and the technical details, and nobody gives a darn about it except themselves. Buyers don't care. Buyers would rather not even have to deal with any of those details.They'd like the business outcome. Now, sales reps get confused because they often deal with technical buyers who are essentially doing a vendor selection and making sure that you know, the cabinet doors open the right way, that there's room for material flow, that the stuff coming in has consistent quality, whatever [00:21:00] the case may be.And those are important questions for the technical buyer to ask, but that's not how business decisions are made.
So companies have to immediately shift. To look at the world through their buyer's eyes and understand what's important to the buyer, how the buyer's consuming information, what information the buyer needs, that needs to be the essence of the way they look at everything they do.
Matt Horine: No, that's great perspective for anybody on a revenue team or a commercial team, and I think it's practical to the C-suite and practical to, you know, executives as well. Taking it a step back further, if you're a VP of sales or a VP of you know, commercial product or a CEO listening today, where's the best place to start beyond just that buyer lens?Because that's what sales teams need for sure, and I, I think there's probably a lot of CEOs who could probably, you know, listen to that as well. If you take it a little bit further back in there, what's the one thing in the best place to start?
Ed Marsh: The single biggest fulcrum for growth is quality of sales talent.You know, if we had to choose just marketing or sales, we have to pick sales. So if our [00:22:00] sales team represents a natural distribution of talent, then that means three quarters of them are, you know, probably not gonna be successful. Particularly in a world of ai, I believe that companies need to establish for themselves an objective of hiring only second standard deviation sales talent.And I believe that we. Identify and select those people, and that we can recruit them with a, a very appropriate and carefully engineered process. And then with good sales management, we can help them excel. So I would say that as a VP of sales, that means a, an immediate step to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each member of your team and the root causes, and understand who's trainable and who's not.And as a secondary step. Immediately begin to hire extraordinary talent to fill in gaps.
Matt Horine: That's great insight. Mostly because people, it may be relational based, especially in manufacturing where you know somebody, which is a great way to network and, and build for your, your job and your role, but it's also one that has to be a lot smarter in this new age of reindustrialization, [00:23:00] especially, you know, go to market teams.
Ed Marsh: And a lot of the companies that are coming up now, there's a lot of AI native companies, you know, they're, they're not even starting out thinking about salespeople. They're expecting. A lot of it's gonna happen now. I think they're wrong. I think you do need, at some point, you need superb salespeople, but a lot of these average salespeople are just gonna be obviated by ai.In fact, I, I had a conversation with John Barrows on my podcast a couple months ago in his argument is I. They already have. They just don't realize it yet. The top sales reps have standard prompts that they're using right now to research buyers and companies before a meeting. Well, the average sales rep doesn't even look at LinkedIn.I mean, the delta that's growing is enormous. It's something that's happening very fast.
Matt Horine: I think, you know, I saw something the other day that jumped from 2023 to 25 was pretty impressive, but that should be a, a warning for people who are not paying attention to it over the next. 12 months, 24 months, um, something that's changing very rapidly.Let's end with the vision of what's possible and where all this is heading. I think for what we could call the next era of industrial [00:24:00] growth, because you and I both have somewhat of the same outlook here, that it's pretty positive and that people are really tied into this reshoring movement, and it's moved beyond from message to now actual policy.The next three to five years, if manufacturers embrace this model and do things differently and kind of take up the opportunity with things coming back on shore with a favorable regulatory environment, what's your outlook for them over the next three to five years? Ed Marsh: So I think a superb sales team can make a difference within months, and I think that marketing, the way it needs to be done going forward will take a year or two to really build out.So I'll answer that two different ways. Upgrade your sales team and you can start to see an impact in very short order.
Begin now to upgrade your marketing because there's a long runway to make that work and we don't know exactly what it's gonna look like two years down the road. You know, there's certainly some uncertainty around investing now based on what we best understand now, knowing that it's gonna be different.But there's certain things that we can, I think, fairly confidently bank on, like trust will become more [00:25:00] important. So we need to begin to adapt marketing to accommodate that. The other thing is to understand who your competition is. And when I talk to most companies about their competition, they think of.The others that make or do the same thing. You know, if you're, if you are a prospect, the competition includes doing nothing. It often includes adding another shift. Or building another factory or outsourcing some product or whatever the case may be. And so salespeople have to be much more savvy about understanding what and who they're selling against rather than just assume that it's an analogous product or service to what they do.
Matt Horine: Yeah, absolutely. And that's certainly a changing dynamic where people, it's not just a rivalry like you think of some of these organizations are pitted against each other, like. Across town, high school football rivals or something like that. It's much more global. It's much more dynamic and a, a lot of change happening.I think, you know, one of the big and last questions about this next era of industrial growth and some of the things that you've highlighted in commercial process, do you think the next generation of [00:26:00] revenue leaders in manufacturing will come from different backgrounds that we're used to seeing? You talked about, you know, identifying the, that sales talent and that commercial talent and, and doing it in a way that.You're bringing in the second, second standard deviation into the organization and really executing. Where do you think that comes from? Because it doesn't sound like a traditional source for manufacturing commercial leaders.
Ed Marsh: So if the traditional source is somebody who's worked for three competitors in the field and every four years they change jobs, just as their non-performance catches up with them, then I agree that's we should not be looking at traditional source.I believe that you need a superb salesperson who can get to the C-suite and have a substantive business conversation. I believe that's vastly more important than. Technical background. Now, if you sell a very technical product, people need to be conversant, but you also have technical sales engineers that can help with that.So I think that the leading salespeople going forward will be extraordinary. Salespeople that have come from difficult and competitive, problably enterprise sales kinds of backgrounds. And, and that's the world that I live in. I'm not talking about [00:27:00] selling office products. I'm talking about, you know, large, big ticket, long sell cycle, high consideration, large buying team kinds of decisions.I think the salespeople that will excel there will have come from a variety of backgrounds, but they'll have those common attributes of being able to have a substantive conversation with the C-suite and being able to be conversant in the technology as it applies to business outcome.
Matt Horine: Fascinating advice, mostly because people are looking for that change. I think right now, uh, where they want to be competitive and really take advantage of this environment. Ed, it's been a fascinating conversation. I would love for our audience to get to know you and get to learn more about you. Where can they go, uh, online? To find out more about your, your platform and your model,
Ed Marsh: they can go to my website, edmarshconsulting.com. That's M-A-R-S-H, https://www.edmarshconsulting.com/. And on LinkedIn, I'm the Ed Marsh with the American Flag after my name.
Matt Horine: We'll link those resources in the comments on, uh, our posts on social media. And Ed, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a fascinating discussion. And also thank you for your service. Sincerely, appreciate that.
Ed Marsh: Well, thank you Matt. Same, same to [00:28:00] you. And I appreciate the invite and the chance to chat.
Matt Horine: We really appreciate you coming on a lot of insights, so thanks for joining the show today.Thanks for having me. It was fun. To stay ahead of the curve and to help plan your strategy, please check out our [00:26:00] website at www.veryableops.com and under the resources section titled Trump 2.0, where you can see the framework around upcoming policies and how it will impact you and your business. If you're on socials, give us a follow on LinkedIn, X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram. And if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and leave us a rating and don't forget to subscribe. Thank you again for joining us and learning more about how you can make your way.