Always Be Solutioning: Why Discovery Is for Learning, Not Demoing | Julie Mall, CRO at Zoovu

And the CRO, yes, you know, pinnacle roll, whatever, whatever we want to call it. It's really just about solutioning on a bigger scale. My guest today is Julie Mall Chief Revenue Officer at Zuvu, the AI product discovery platform behind e-commerce experiences for brands like Microsoft, Bosch, Cannon, and Honeywell. So, it taught me that the technology isn't something that is leveraged for the sake of having cool technology. Even though it was the first.com boom and everybody was trying e-commerce, we were solving real challenges and real problems for these organizations. What's been the biggest challenge stepping into a chief revenue officer role that maybe you didn't anticipate? One of the bigger challenges is just right now like time management and end in helping enough but not helping too much, right? It wouldn't be a podcast in 2026 if I didn't ask how are you leveraging AI in your go-to-market function. So, we just have to hold ourselves accountable like AI to your role. It can't do our jobs. It can help us do our jobs, but it can't do it for us. Well, I think one thing I'll remember from this conversation is always be solutioning. Julie, take me back to the first.com boom. You were deploying B2B e-commerce for companies ordering tank cars of chlorine and the whole point was that the bottom 80% of their customers were the most expensive to serve. What did that teach you that you still use today? So, it taught me that the technology isn't something that is leveraged just for the sake of having cool technology. So, you know, I was working for companies implementing e-commerce for Occidental Chemical. Chevron Phillips Chemical. Pennsylvania Quaker State. And it's the classic, you know, triangle. The top 20% of their customers are responsible for 80% of their revenue. And for organizations like that, those orders went through EDI. Nobody touched them. They worked perfectly. But it was that bottom 80% of the customers that, again, only responsible for 20% of the revenue, but the most costly to serve that we were trying to optimize for. So, rather than, you know, having a big CSR team that was picking up the phone to, you know, answer basic questions like, "Where's my order?" "Can I get a replenishment order done?" We were laying the framework for optimizing for those customers' experiences whilst also creating meaningful value for our customer at the end of the day. And, you know, like, full circle story. I was sat with a customer yesterday. We did a big on-site workshop. The topic was, you know, the next generation of e-commerce and AI and how AI is going to transform it. And what was the main topic in terms of like why we're driving towards that? The customers that are the most costly to serve. How can we optimize for experiences for those customers? And, you know, started out with, you know, basic e-commerce. You know, in the early 2000s, now we're talking about AI, but we're fundamentally still solving the same challenge. So, one of the lines that I love you shared is, instead of always be selling, always be solutioning. And I think that feels like a really strong through line throughout your career. Where's the nuance there that you think is really important for the audience to hear? Coming to an opportunity with an open mind. I think often what happens with sellers is they come to a call wanting to sell something. And they have a thing and they want to sell it. You know, sometimes it's, you know, $30,000, you know, type of solution. Could be a $2 million solution, but it's a thing and they want to sell it. And what I've witnessed over a long, you know, career is that you can kind of still get done, deals done that way. They tend to have lower close rates. And the cycles are longer than they need to be. Because what ends up happening is you end up doing all the work at the end of the cycle, trying to write you, you talk to a buyer, you show them some cool stuff. They're like, oh yeah, this is really cool technology. But then they've got to go sell it into their business. And if you haven't done the groundwork for understanding what problem you're solving, what the business case is, how you're going to measure ROI and build a value proposition around that, getting the deal over the line is just so, so much harder. And, you know, today is the first day of Q4, right? So it's kind of a fun time to have this conversation. And, you know, I've seen it in our own business, where, you know, when we spend, like we just, we did a really great deal with the company. I'm not going to name them, but they do like fire detection systems and things like that. And we started with the business case and the ROI modeling. You know, they shared their metrics with us so that we could actually build the use case. And it was one of the quickest deals that we did. And it was a really high value deal, but we started with what is the solution you're trying to create and what needle are we moving for you in your business? Yeah, and I think that can be difficult to practice, especially when you're really passionate about the product that you have, you're passionate about the change you're driving in the market. And I think it's really easy. I found myself doing the same thing. I just know what this thing is is so good. I'm, like, anxious and excited to tell somebody about it. But I think taking that moment to hear their, what's happening in their world, framing it in their language and their problem is super important. I'm curious when you're training sales teams, are there certain methodologies you like to follow, certain frameworks that you bring in? How do you make sure that the salesperson on your team slows down and goes through that process? Yeah, I mean, I think we use a fairly standard type of framework. We leverage the band kind of methodology, generally speaking. But what I'm really trying to foster as we work with the sales team is to, it's not just about understanding if there's a project and it's funded and all of those types of things, who's the buyer and all of the information that you need as you're closing a sales deal. But, you know, what is the real metric that we're moving for the customer? Why is it important to them? And, you know, we kind of build the use case around that. And, you know, what I really try and kind of get the team to be able to communicate is, can you articulate that like you were the customer? You know, do you understand enough to say why this is important to them? How they're going to leverage it? You know, what success looks like for them? If we can't articulate that by the time we're putting a proposal in front of the customer, then we haven't done the right type of work in that particular sales cycle. And I think, I mean, it can be a fine line. We don't, right, because I've got targets that I've got to hit every quarter there, you know, trying to retire their quota, right? So we do want to move quickly. And it's a fine line. We can, we can do too much consulting sometimes and go too far down rabbit holes. And so that's something that we, you know, we carefully balance, especially when you're selling like a platform that has a lot of different use cases that you can solve for. You tend to sometimes want to solve all of them at once. And that can slow things down. It gets where people involved. And so it is, it is a balance to really, you know, focus on the problem that we're solving. Is it measurable? How do we measure it? And then build a, build a use case from there? I'm assuming and correct me if I'm wrong. But the solutioning mindset is probably prevalent throughout the entire sales process and post sales process as well for expansion. But I have to bet the moment where it shows up the most is probably going to be during that discovery. And if you have a proof of concept phase, is that where it feels like it's the most important to have that mindset? Discovery, absolutely. And in one of the, the things that I, you know, again, sort of bring up off, it less often now, right? We're always getting better. Is discovery is not about understanding like what we need to demo in the next meeting, right? I think discovery often leans in that direction. What do we need to show you? What would you like to see? And, you know, again, like with this, this opportunity that we just closed at the end of the quarter, we, we, I think we did one demonstration. It wasn't in the majority of it was actually just showing live customers. sites and so the discovery was really around what is the challenge that they're solving for, right? People struggle to figure out what type of fire detectors they need in their home, how many they need, do I need an O2 detector, and then how do you inject that experience where the customer is? So it's not, let's say, just on their web page, but you know, you shop at Home Depot and Lowe's, and so we were just going through the methodologies by which we could support that. And that's what discovery is. It's not about, okay, what do I need to show you? It's really what, again, is the overall solution and why is it important? Why is it important now? And so that's how it shows up in discovery for me. I really challenge the team not to think about discovery as a means by which to show something, but as a means by which to learn something so that we can partner better with our customers. When you're just, when you're creating a discovery process, what are some things that stand out? Are there certain questions you want to make sure your team's asking, do you have certain guidelines on how long the process should be, operationally, what are your best practices for running a discovery? So a couple things there. I mean, at the end of the day, discovery actually never ends, right? The first call till when you get the contract signed where you should always be approaching those meetings and calls with a discovery mindset. Early on, it's about the solution and what we're going to deliver. But even towards the end, you should still be learning about the organizational setup. How are we going to get this project kickoff? So as a general rule, I tell folks discovery is a process that doesn't end. But in terms of best practices, the way I really again think about discovery is understanding and being able to ask the questions about why are we even sitting here today? Along with an inquiring mind, listen more than you talk. It's one of the great advances in technology like with call recording and tools like gong and such, where you can actually see the flow of a meeting. And so I review those calls and when I do feedback sessions with the team, I'm like, you really didn't let the customer talk a lot in that call. So best practices, listen more than you talk, come prepared with an understanding of the customer. Do your research. If they're publicly traded, I really hope you read their annual report, quarterly reports, et cetera, to understand what their initiatives are. Do we line up with those initiatives? Why are they initiatives this year? So it's again, arming yourself with enough knowledge to ask good questions and then to listen to the answers actively. What's one of the best questions you've ever heard asked in discovery that just let you know the person inquiring is really, really getting into that solution mindset, not just trying to stack up what they need to demo in the next meeting. That's a thought provoking question. I think that the really good questions are, what is this pain that you're trying to solve for really mean to the business? And I always make the joke, like in software sales, you're not really saving lives day to day, like we're not in here to, that's just not what we do, but sometimes it kind of is. If we, and so this is like a question, one of the account executives, as we were working with this one particular customer, this company is really invested in ensuring customers homes are safe. And so like this concept of why is this project important? Well, we've seen friction in our buying cycles, right? Customers are really struggling to find the right things. And so it's not type of question, like what does it really mean? And it wasn't about what revenue needle are you trying to move? And so like asking the question in that way and like being really thoughtful about that question, it was, yes, it should lead to more revenue. But like customers have now safer homes if they can buy the right products at the right time and ensure that they're compatible with the systems that they have. That type of questioning and listening is I think what customers respond to. And we have to be able to articulate that back when we think of like how we deliver a solution. I think that makes a ton of sense. And also, I think if I'm reflecting on some of the discovery processes I've been part of or if I've been on the other side of being sold to or if I'm selling, I mean sometimes I think we forget that we're working with people and we just think like, oh, we're working with this entity over here. But it's like, is this person going to get promoted if this goes well? Is that going to be a completely game changer for their career if we help them do that? And I think sometimes like, hey, let's go. Let's peel back the onion and figure out what's in it for this person if this is a big success or what's at risk if this doesn't go well. And I agree wholeheartedly, I mean, and that's why I think this concept of solutioning and like being really thoughtful in your discovery is really important because really what you're talking about is like, is that person going to trust us enough to deliver what we said we're going to deliver? Because you're right. Oftentimes, you know, jobs, careers are on the line. And this kind of, again, solution-focused discovery process at the end of the day, I think it's actually really about building trust, right? If we take the time and understand your business, why we're doing this project now and what it means, then we're in a much better position to actually then deliver on that promise versus just, again, trying to approach it from a, you know, I've got this thing that I want to sell you perspective. It seems like you need it. So it's like any relationship, you know, you want to start from a basis of trust. And I do think that's probably one of the biggest values of the function of sales. I know there's a lot of talk. Oh, is AI going to take her for sales? I don't think so. Not in the near term because in order to have that trust equation, you need a human on the other end because an AI can't be accountable. A human can be accountable, but your AI can't. You're not going to yell at Sam Altman for something that went wrong. So you still need that in the equation for it to add up. It does. And it sets the stage for everything that comes after as well, right? In terms of implementation and long term, you know, value creation from like a customer success organization. So yeah, you know, getting started in that way is it just it sets the stage for, you know, long term customer relationships, which is really what we're in this business to do. Right? Absolutely. I really love your background. There's, there's a few CROs that I've, that I've interviewed that I've worked with that have come up through the sales engineering solution side of the business. And I, I think there's a unique perspective that you have and kind of an edge that you bring to the CRO role. From your perspective, coming up through that department and having that be the foundation before moving into owning the entire go-to-market side, what capabilities and edge do you think that gave you in this executive position? There's, there's a few things maybe that have really served me well. One, I think I can be a real asset to the selling teams, right? So as, as they're, you know, so yes, I lead the commercial organization and I can help them, you know, shape deals commercially, but also from a, you know, solutioning perspective, right? I want them to be comfortable, bouncing ideas off of, not just me, but like, but the whole team, but I think I can help them think of unique ways to position or, you know, we'll have you thought about, you know, kind of changing the, just anything solution wise, technology wise, I think I can help not all the time and it's not always appropriate. But I do think that I can just help the teams be more creative as they think about the types of opportunities that they want to, that they want to work on and how they put deals in front of, of customers. I think, you know, this workshop that I was at yesterday, you know, was with one of our biggest customers and again, we were talking about the future of AI, how it's going to shape commerce and experiences and, you know, going into that meeting, you know, there are a lot of technical people in that meeting, a lot of solution architects in that meeting. But there are also business people in that meeting who again are trying to shape outcomes, not just architect solutions, and I think that's where there's like a really nice connection that I can bring in this role where I understand the commercial levers they're trying to move, you know, be that bridge between a deep technical conversation and like, okay, this is how it translates to, you know, the actual outcome that we're here to pull together. So I think there just enables a connection with the customer in a different way. I understand. And deeply now, the commercial challenges that you likely have and we want to be in service to helping you achieve those targets. So what I, how shall I say, what I also try to catch myself from doing too often is being the solutioning person. I don't want to be the person that's like, oh no, no, this is how you should do it. But to be there to support the conversation and, again, bring maybe a different point of point of view. But yeah, it's, it's, for me, it's the part that I've always just loved about this business is walking into a company, yeah, I've spent, you know, two years working with Honeywell as an example. I know more about vows and actuators and, you know, thermostats and things than, then, certainly than I did two years ago, but it's just a, it's a, it's real privilege, I guess, that we, that we have in this space to, to work with customers, help them achieve their business goals and you get to learn so much about different, different industries. So that's, that's the part I've always just loved about being in solutioning and I'm really excited now. I get to kind of keep that element, but also lead the business. Yeah, and I think, I think that technical competence adds a lot to that trust equation too. Even if, even if you're not the one leading the full depth of it, every single, you know, detail of it, but showing that you have the level of competence technically, I think especially if it's a technical sale or there's some deep technical components to it, I think in bridge a lot of trust, I've seen quite a few sellers, even CROs where they can't really speak the language, run into a lot of trouble. Yes, and, you know, there's, you can, and I think we probably all have had that experience at some time or another and, you know, I think it's maybe not, for the industry that we're in and the solutions that we're selling, I think it is a real advantage, right? Because it does lean technical. We're talking about, you know, digital transformation and these types of topics, you know, there may be some types of solutions where it's less of an asset and not required. I think in the space that we're operating in at ZUVU, it is a real benefit. And, you know, I think thus far customers have appreciated that. You know, I think the, one of the, one of the bigger challenges is just right now, like time management and helping enough, but not helping too much, right? So I think, again, it's a tendency, you know, you're new in the role and I want to get involved in as many, you know, I want to have visibility to all the opportunities and, you know, like really help the team, but I also want them to help themselves as well. And I think that, you know, over the course of the past quarter has been one of the coming out of Q3 is one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that you can be too involved in some of the day-to-day stuff. And, you know, you give the team the tools, you, you know, set them up for success and you really, you know, like I don't need to be in every sales call. I don't need to be in every meeting and I think there is a tendency early on to try and be too involved. And now, I think we're moving beyond that and I, the team more thinks of me as a, like a, this is going to sound, but like a tool to use at the right time in their deal, right, versus, you know, coming to every meeting and sitting in and listening and like we're beyond that now. So that, to me, was one of the, just a lesson that I learned is to, to let go a little bit, the team knows what they're doing. And then, you know, just the, the whole kind of 360 degree view of, of the business. And, and trying to find enough time to, to be of service, like to me, I've always thought of being a leader as a service job, right, like I'm in service to the team. And ensuring that I have enough time to still provide that service, if you will, is important to me. So not just having conversations about deal progression, but, you know, how are you doing? You know, what do you want to accomplish next year? What are your long-term goals? How do I set you up for success in that way? Finding time to still do that is also really important to me. Have you had any big perspective changes on the value of any one of the go-to-market functions where maybe you had some assumptions about the value they bring, how they operate, and you had a new perspective once you took ownership of them? What I want to see is more solutioning from the account executive team, right? So, you know, before I took on the CR role, CR role, I was, you know, leading the customer success function and over, like, you know, the sort of year and a half that I was doing that, we've transformed that side of the business to be much more solution-forward. So I have more technical account managers in that team than I have, like, traditional customer success managers. You know, we still have commercial oversight, but the team leads very heavily solution-technical-forward. So I want to start to mirror that in the sales function, right, where the account executives, right, they should be leaning on the solutions, or, you know, the sales engineer, solutions engineers much later in the cycles that I think we currently are. And so that's a real focus, you know, kind of closing out this year, but certainly at the start of next year is they all have to be much more capable of not just that sort of solutions led discovery, but, you know, being able to walk through a demonstration in the context of a customer, right, not just a click path, but like, this is important to you because I just spent, you know, a discovery call learning about that. And I think that is, like, a real priority for me is to make the account executives sort of help them become more solution-y-esque, if you will, and use true sales engineers for, like, things like custom demonstrations, POCs, workshops, where we're going to, you know, do some deep solutioning. That's really where their value comes into play. So I think that's definitely your priority. Yeah, just think it's interesting, because the Sierra Road role just covers such a wide breadth of functions with aligned targets and aligned accountability, but really, really different functions. And I think, you know, personally, I came up through customer success, then revops, then in 2021, I started lean-scale, which meant I got to do all of my own sales and marketing and customer success and everything else that comes with it. And I just remember thinking, like, oh, I had a lot of assumptions about maybe marketing or sales. And now that I own them, like, I have deeper appreciation for some of the challenges that they have to go through. Yes. And I think that's another, you know, coming into this role and, like, really kind of peeling back the covers and understanding what, you know, like, much more deeply the functions of the marketing organization and how we bring that to bear into sales. You know, we, we spent, you know, really this past quarter kind of re-aligning marketing with this new sort of commercial organization, you know, so that we can operate more closely as a combined team versus separate entities. And so that actually, you know, kind of going back to, you know, a question you asked earlier about one of the challenges of being new in the role. That has also been, you know, a challenge like, how are we aligning an inbound strategy? How are they performing? And, you know, just all those metrics that go into understanding, which levers that, you know, next quarter, we might want to tweak a little bit to get a little bit more of a certain type of opportunity flow. And, right, so that's, that's still a learning curve and a learning process for me, for sure. But we've got great partners, yeah, in the organization. Absolutely. Is, is RevOps part of your remit? So dotted line. So yeah, RevOps reports into the CFO, but obviously we're super close partners. And I, I have an amazing RevOps manager, who really just keeps the wheels turning. So she's amazing. But yeah, she reports up through the CFO, but we're like, you know, dotted line, if you will. She's a super important part of the team. Is there anything in particular that you feel like she's been able to unlock to help you get the visibility or management across the entire go-to-market life cycle? For sure. You know, especially on the new business side, working with the account executives to keep Salesforce clean and up to date, but not, not in a, in a way that's just about, you know, update your Salesforce, but, you know, how it then drives into how we look at deal progression and linearity. And, you know, just, you know, keeping, keeping that part of the, of the organization moving. She's, you know, super, super important to, the team from from that respect. You know, so I think from a rev-ops perspective, because she has visibility to sort of much like I do, kind of all of the opportunities from net new business, you know, services, business, renewals, upsells, the whole thing, and so she's a really great partner, you know, as we start to see patterns in how deals move out of new business, and you know, they're coming up for the first renewal. What are we seeing? So, you know, a really, really important part of how we're trying to transform the business. It wouldn't be a podcast in 2026 if I didn't ask, how are you leveraging AI in your go-to-market function? Are there any novel ways you're leveraging AI or things that have surprised you unlocking any levels of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness? So, so yes, we're using AI in a variety of ways, and I, transparently, I think we, we need to utilize it a little bit more and automate some things. I think everybody feels that way. I don't know if anybody's sitting there thinking like, "Wow, I bet I'm the best user of AI in the market right now." No, I was just at lunch with our CEO, and he was walking me through his setup, and like, "What things he's automated?" I'm like, "Can you just like copy and paste that?" So, we all have our own ways in our day-to-day that we're using it to optimize for, you know, for efficiency and time and all of these things. But, you know, just from a, like, business management perspective, like leveraging the tools and what they have to offer is, is like the first step, right? So, you know, between, you know, gong and sales force, and, you know, being able to use, you know, like, gong does a really great job of giving you a perspective on where deals are stuck and why and what patterns can you see? And, you know, I want to, it was just a conversation I was having with my rev-ups manager. You know, I want to start unpacking like, you know, we see some deals that move very efficiently through the sales cycle, and some that seem to stall, stall, stall, stall. And they both close, but what are we, what are we doing well in the deals that are progressing quickly? And can we start to detect some patterns compared to the ones that aren't, right? So, that, that sort of mining of, like, all the call data and, you know, that type of information is really interesting, and we now need to operationalize that, right? So, you take the learnings and then you operationalize that. You know, I use it. We have a solution internally. It's called Langdok, which allows you to connect, right? So, it's your sort of private AI space within your company. It leverages all the LLMs, but you can connect GERA, sales force, gong. You can connect all your tools. So, you get a holistic view. So, when I'm preparing, you know, for board meetings and things like that, it becomes super useful to, to get that kind of first view. Before we used to just spend so much time preparing board decks, and now we spend time thinking about the narrative, because we have all the data, it's just so much more efficient. But what I also notice is you can, like, you know, rely on it too much. I've seen clot or, you know, tools create decks, and you're just like, that, you can't put that in front of a customer, right? Great, great to help you get started. So, we just have to hold ourselves accountable, like, AI to your role. And, you know, we have to pay attention to that. Yeah, I was a board deck man at all the companies I was at when I was running RevOps, and it was like pulling together all the data, putting everything. And we would spend one to two weeks getting ready for a board meeting. So, having AI powered, board decoration is a really, really nice thing now. On board meetings, I always felt like those were some of the most stressful things to prepare for. And I know there's always, like, so much going on to get ready for those for other executives listening, any tips or thoughts on how to have a really good board meeting. I mean, this is one of the values of AI, because it can pull together the content really quickly. And then you actually spend the time with the rest of the executive team preparing, right? And, you know, understanding exactly, you know, every number, what it means, how it ties in, right? So, I mean, there's no secret sauce other than just be overly prepared. Know what every number means on every slide and why it's there. And that's just time and prep, right? So, you know, on the one hand, AI really helps get all of that stood up. But then you just, you have to spend the time just, like, absorbing the information into your, into your, like, being. So that you just, you know, like, that's, that's what words want, right? They just, you know, they're going to find one number on the, on the slide. And they're going to be like, well, what does that one mean? And you have to know. You just have to know. Yeah. I think it's really, really good advice. One thing I was also hoping to pick your brain on, I know there's a lot of people who are in sales engineering, solution roles, they're very ambitious about their career. It seems like the path up is leading into that CROC. If you can use your career kind of as a roadmap, what are some things that somebody currently sitting in a sales engineering role or solutions engineering role can do to start marching towards an executive position? You know, it's kind of like reflecting that discovery process back on yourself. But like, be, be curious and, you know, inquisitive and ask people about, you know, what they're doing and how can you help? You know, I think there's, there's no better way to kind of grow your career than to, in some respects, that's what I did. Like I tried a lot of things over the course of my career and it teaches you the things that you really enjoy. Like, didn't love doing implementations. But what I did love was actually kind of solving the problems for customers as we were, as we were working together. That, you know, sort of springboards me into, you know, sales engineering where, you know, you can take that experience and apply it to, well, you know, hey, this is what I learned when we were implementing, you know, e-commerce at Chevron Philips and it kind of sounds like you have the same rate. So just trying things and looking for opportunities, find great mentors. You know, I think I've, I've had the privilege of having really great mentors along the way to bounce ideas off of. But I think, again, if you're in sales engineering and you want to grow, and this is, again, sort of advice I've given to people on my teams for a long time, right? There really are a few paths that, three or four paths that you can go on and it's up to you to discover which really resonates with you. I see people in sales engineering move into like a product organization. They want to do product management or even product engineering because they love that like deep technical, they like to build things, right? So you have to, you have to be a little bit self-aware and understand like what, what you enjoy. If you love the art of the deal, you're probably going to go up through a, you know, an account executive path. I've worked with some amazing solutions engineers who they don't want to manage people. They just want to go talk to customers and solution and they're like phenomenal at their job and they know that, right? They know like, I don't want to be a people manager. And so they have that self-awareness to know that this is the path that they want to go on. And there are growth paths just to stay in solutions engineering, right? If that's really what you love. So it's, you got to, you got to be a little bit self-aware and understand like if you tell yourself you like sales engineering, start asking yourself what specifically about what you're doing, do you really love? And that I think will guide you into the next step of the process. Yeah, because it is a very dynamic role. It's not only technical, it's not only selling, it's not only fundraising, there is some management involved too and pulling people in to, to get the solution ready to go. So I think knowing that, I agree. It's like, okay, of this very diverse set of responsibilities I have, what's really filling my tank on these? Exactly, exactly. And for me was, I just want to control everything. Well, you have to have some level of, yeah, no, you have to walk around and think, oh, things could be better and I think I have an idea of how that could be the case. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, certainly, you know, half the battle is, you know, taking advantage when the opportunity presents itself. So when people think about solutions, consulting, sales engineering, often they're thinking, oh, they're coming in during that new logo acquisition phase, they're helping frame up the POC perhaps and then helping close the deal. Do you see solutions engineers or sales engineers also working post-close on the customer success side? We do. And again, it's one of the, One of the sort of transitions that we have been working on for you know, for the past 18 months or so to sort of transition that post sales team into a more solutioning type of approach, right? So rather than just kind of focus on renewals type of organization where we're thinking about renewals, we're constantly thinking about solutions and solutioning. So we have essentially a team of, you know, we call them technical account managers, but they're really post sales solutions engineers and they have their book of business, you know, the six or eight accounts that they're really deeply embedded with. And that's what they do, you know, they're, they're talking to customers about what their initiatives are and coming up with solutions and doing projects, right? So this is, this is really the transformation we've seen in, in the business is when we're like focused on that solutioning in the, you know, with existing customers, it manifests itself as cool projects. They're like, oh, I didn't know you could do that, right? Like, which is the very essence of, of solutioning is applying, you know, maybe something that you didn't think of to a problem and they're like, oh, yeah, well, you know, it seems like a great thing that we should do. And so we see a real growth in like the number of projects that we're doing with customers. And so when you're actively working with customers that way and you're working on projects and delivering solutions, the commercial part of it actually becomes the less stressful part of the business, right? The renewals are much easier. We see a lot more long term type of renewals. And so yeah, we've, we've applied that concept of solutioning directly into the existing business. Yeah, we have dedicated technical teams that that's what they're doing, you know, with customers day in and day out. I think very few teams are that proactive about the post sale process. And I think it's a massive opportunity. If you can extend the LTV, if you can really manufacture some expansion and upsells, it takes so much, so much pressure off of the marketing side of the house to drive pipeline, the sales team to land new logos, this side of the house is so expensive, risky, difficult. And if you can continue to expand and retain your base, the results are incredible. Yes. And it is a, it is just a sort of a connective, you know, circle, right? If we're doing really good solutioning up front, we've teed up a pathway for that customer to continue to grow with us. It's not a, hey, you bought this thing, you throw it over the wall and, you know, the customer success team is going to pick it up, right? You've essentially created the blueprint for that expansion. And then we have the, you know, the technical post sales team come in and really focus on driving those, those results with customers. And, you know, customers, I think are overall quite appreciative of, of that, that they have a real partner, not just in, you know, the commercial side, but, you know, really getting value out of the technical solution that they bought. Well, I think that makes a ton of sense on that side of the house and applying that solutions mindset really seems like it can have a major impact across the entire go-to-market life cycle. And Julia, I really appreciate everything you shared. I think it's such a cool experience to come up through the solution engineering side of the house, end up in the technical role of go-to-market and then be in a position to oversee the whole thing. And I know there are lots of people who have the CRO position on their mindset. And I think it's very cool that you've carved out that path for them. So, Julia, appreciate everything you shared in the podcast. I know it's going to be very helpful for anybody who has listened in. And I can't wait to see how your role develops and what you do next. Yeah, I appreciate it. I've really enjoyed the conversation, Anthony. Thank you. And, you know, my closing, you know, thought is, you know, for all those solutions folks out there, you know, you have that ability. You know, we see solutions so uniquely. And the CRO, yes, you know, a pinnacle role, whatever, whatever we want to call it, it's really just about solutioning on a bigger scale, right? So, you just kind of keep that mindset going, I think. I would love, you know, next year, a couple of years from now to see quite a lot more people in a CRO role that look a lot more like me than a traditional quota carrot knot, nothing against them. But, you know, that have come up through the solutions ranks. I think we just, we bring a unique perspective. Exactly. Exactly. Well said. Thank you, Julie. Take care. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]