#117 Why Your Forecast Is Inaccurate (+ How to Fix It)

Janis Zech: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the RevOps Lab podcast. Unfortunately, Philipp is not here today, but I'm here with Andy Smidmore. I hope I didn't butcher your name. Welcome, Andy. Great to have you.

Andy Smidmore: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me on. Super excited to be here with you.

Janis Zech: Yeah. Same here. So, I mean, I actually found you through LinkedIn, and you're writing these articles on RevOps, and I genuinely enjoy reading them. So for everyone listening, go check out Andy and his articles. I think they are great. Short reads on various different topics. But maybe before we dive into our topic today, I mean, who are you? What do you do? I mean, you've been at some really awesome companies, so maybe you can give some context, and then we dive in.

Andy Smidmore: Yeah. Sure. So I've been fortunate enough to have been in this RevOps slash what was SalesOps, I guess, like, ten years ago, fifteen years ago, for around about fifteen years. It was a funny one. I sort of stumbled in with an accounting bookkeeping background. You know, if you want a bit of a boring read, you can read down my resume and see some of the places that I've been in since I was, like, twenty years old. I wouldn't recommend. The past fifteen years are much more sort of relevant to today, at least. But, yeah, I've been lucky. I took my first RevOps role, or SalesOps role, sorry, about fifteen years ago, and I walked in not knowing anything. You know, I thought there was a playbook. I was like, there must be some type of manual, and it was a very sort of hard learn. But it was a fantastic learn at the same time because you sort of have to immerse yourself in what the business does, the way it connects, the way the business flows, and all of the good stuff that goes along with that with, you know, all the different characters and people that you come across. So it was a really good learning experience. And I think that from that very first role, I realized that that was something that I was actually quite passionate about. Like, was very interested, very inquisitive, and then that was it. That was like the launch pad, really. I sort of then went from growth tech company to growth tech company, mostly West Coast, early stage funded. You know, like ten years ago, it was like that super exciting period where these big names are coming out with these fantastic ideas and products and really disrupting areas of the different markets and industries. And I was fortunate enough to be involved in that. So, you know, to name drop, like, some of the companies that I've been at have been Confluent, Cloudera, Docker, and then most recently, Ditto. So, yeah, it's definitely my passion, this space. I think that it's changing rapidly now with AI coming onto the scene in the past eighteen months. It's made it super exciting again. I'm excited to see what comes in the coming years.

Janis Zech: Yeah. I mean, I'm actually thinking a lot about, you know, kind of the AI orchestrator, and I'll write a lot more about this in the coming weeks and months because I think it's a really awesome opportunity on the AI transformation and what we're able to do with agents and humans alike. Right? But today's topic is actually about a much more sober topic that I think everyone faces, which is forecasting. And you wrote a piece called Forecasting is a Trust Problem Before a Math Problem. And so, I mean, maybe let's dive into that topic today and dissect it. So, I mean, maybe to start with, what are the challenges to forecasting you've seen? And I know you've set this up in various different companies, so, yeah, I think you're the perfect person to talk to about this.

Andy Smidmore: I think what's interesting over the years, some of the companies that I've been at, it's always been done slightly different or built out slightly different, but with a lot of similarities to the previous company or the next company that I've ended up going to. And I think a lot of that comes down to, you know, the space they're operating in, the industries they're targeting, the type of customer, the product. There's obviously all these other factors that sort of drive the way that particular company's forecast framework gets built out. I think one of the things that you mentioned — the article series that I'd sort of been writing over the past fourteen weeks — I got to a stage back in January where I was like, I've got all of these nuggets up in my head. Like, you know, there's some great content on LinkedIn that for me makes sense of a lot of what I've seen and learned over the past fifteen years. I really wanted to get it down on paper, but I didn't want it to be an instruction manual of sorts. I wanted it to come across more like, oh, okay, this is what he's seen, or this is what they did wrong, or this is the improvements, the levers that they pulled to sort of drive efficiency and improvements in forecasting specifically in this case. So I wanted to just put it on paper and then just let people read and they either sort of connect with it or they can take something from it at least and say, yeah, I've seen that. I think from what I've seen in companies, I've seen some — and this is why I'm not gonna name drop — I've seen some really bad setups where there has not been a great improvement even coming together and trying to sort of strip it back and build it out again or pull these levers where you can sort of make some output changes. And then I've seen some fantastic setups as well that have fit the company perfectly but wouldn't necessarily fit the next company because it might be a slightly different way of operating. And so I think what's interesting over the past fifteen years, like, with the rise of some of the great intelligence tools that have come along, you know, the Claris and the Gongs and, you know, like, even what you guys do as well, it's made the forecasting or the job of forecasting easier. I think that it's probably taken the heat off of some of the areas of the business. Right? Like, the speed that you can actually get to certain data that comes up during those forecasting meetings. But what came to me when I was writing that particular piece was there always still needs to be this foundational framework behind it. Like, I think even with AI now — and I'm not too entrenched in this, I'm getting bits and I'm reading certain articles that pop up on LinkedIn — it's interesting the different opinions of some people in RevOps of what they think. And I'm like, I look at what they write, and I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. Like, that could definitely add value during the forecast call. Like, no one's gotta scratch around trying to find a CRM report or you're not relying on post-it notes, sort of like numbers you've jotted down. Like, you can get to the data and information quickly. But it still requires a lot of human intervention. It still requires a lot of questioning, you know, a lot of really sort of peeling back the layers to get the answers to find that trust level in the forecast. I think that's the sort of angle that I was coming from in that article — around it's not necessarily the math in the number. It's a lot of what I've seen in my experience, and a lot of what was proven to be true as well, is the inputs that take place before the output. Right? So, I mean, how many companies — like, have especially people in RevOps walked into — and you join the forecast meeting, your very first forecast meeting, and the VP of sales will say to the team, how much are you committing? They're looking for the magic number. Right? That's what they want. Like, you know, is it two hundred k? Is it a million? Is it, like, five million? Yeah. That's just at the surface level, and this has been true in all the companies that I've been at, and that's probably happened, like, you know, at least for the past ten years in companies that I've walked into and I've started on my first day and they're like, oh, you need to join the forecast meeting. I'm like, yeah, like, great. And I mean, it's essentially the output. Right? Like, it's the output of the process that you should be setting up.

Janis Zech: Right. And not so much — so that's basically the end of the process. But if the process is broken, that essentially isn't the solution. And so I think it's like we always say, like if you want to improve forecasting accuracy, there's multiple layers to improve that and you need to get these layers and these foundations right. And it's essentially a process that you need to run based on a specific cadence you establish within the rhythm of the business.

Andy Smidmore: Correct. Yeah.

Janis Zech: So I can relate to that very well. I mean, in your experience, right, like, what are the top two, three, four problems with forecast processes you've seen, you know, that always come up?

Andy Smidmore: I mean, I think, like, sticking to the theme of that particular article, and it was more around the trust and, like we just discussed, foundational pillars of what actually builds to that magic number and what you end up rolling up to the C suite, and then having confidence and trust behind that — that's always the surface level. Then everybody just assumes everything that builds into that number is all running correctly and it's fantastic. And, you know, like, we couldn't do a better job with the way the CRMs are structured and we couldn't do a better job with the way the forecast cadence runs week to week. But actually when you start sort of digging in — and I think I sort of put a couple of these bullets in that article that I wrote — you start to look at, you know, in my mind, it's almost like the pyramid up to the number that you would submit on a weekly basis, but you actually can start to dig into each of those components around, okay, so what does our sales stage setup actually look like? Like, how has that been built and designed? And it depends for companies. Like, you can go as deep as you want or you can give it a light touch. Like, it's a lever that you can address and adjust and improve, and all of these incremental changes will, up the chain, drive value in the forecast. But for the sales stages, for example — like, I wrote a completely separate article about this — too many companies set up their sales stages based on what they think their selling process needs to be versus what the customer buying process needs to look like. Right? So it's — I've always seen from my own experience — it's the closer you can align with the buyer journey, the more weight those sales stages carry and the selling part almost takes care of itself because, yes, like, you need to set it up in the context of how you want the business run, but each of those sales stages and as deals progress through those stages will actually mean something meaningful, which drives value in the forecast. I've seen too many times where, you know, you can get on the forecast call and you could ask — you could look at deals in a particular stage, but how many of those reps actually really know what their stage means and the type of activities that take place in those stages. Right? Like, how are they verifiable in terms of progressing deals? So, you know, I've sat on countless forecast calls over the years where the VP of sales or myself or, you know, the head of PS will ask a question around, okay, so you've got this opportunity in stage three, POC stage. Right? Like, has the POC been done? And the sales rep is like, yeah, it's just been done. Okay. So that's great. Like, it's been done, but, you know, what type of technical sign off was done? Like, what came out of the POC? You know, what burning questions have they got on their end that they wanna progress to the next stage? And how does that fit in with our sales stage four, which might be, you know, business alignment or negotiation? And, you know, I think that's like a key component that I've seen over the years where if that part of the CRM is not architected as tight as you possibly can, aligned to the buying stages, that's like a leaking bucket. Like, you know, and you get this going into a new quarter where you might run coverage ratio metrics and you're like, oh my, the top of that funnel is completely backed up. Like, how are we gonna make our number? And then you start to see bad behavior come off the back of it. Reps will just progress deals even though the deal doesn't need to be progressed. You know? And then it sort of gives false hope, and you're rolling up tough numbers. And so I think that's a real key component to answer your question. I think in terms of some of the other points around this whole forecasting is a trust problem — and, you know, that is, in my opinion, a trust problem.

Janis Zech: I mean, I think, right, like, what is a, you know, sales qualified opportunity? Right? Like, every region or every manager defines that differently. You're not comparing apples with apples. Right? And then if the stage exit criteria, entry criteria, definitions are unclear or lived differently — and I think we've seen this all the time — then, you know, basically you're in a reality that is just not aligned. Right? And so you cannot really trust performance. Right?

Andy Smidmore: It's performative. And it sticks out as well. You can see it, and then this is where you start to get a breakdown in trust in the team between leadership and the actual team. This is where — you know, I've seen this firsthand — you end up getting a super hostile environment, and nobody wants to go to the forecast calls because there's no trust. So they automatically feel they're gonna get, like, beaten with a stick on the call or, you know, called out and embarrassed. And that was one of the other points I was gonna make. Like, one of the things that I've tried to enforce over the years with the various sales leadership teams that I've worked with is really creating, like, an open, honest, friendly environment during those meetings. I mean, they're high stakes anyway. They're always, you know — I think you mentioned in your comment on my LinkedIn, like, you know, the air is thick. You can cut it with a knife, like, in a lot of, you know, especially heading towards end of quarter. Like, you got two weeks left. You've got, like, a couple of swing deals that are gonna make or break it. But what you don't want — you really don't, as a leadership team and a business in general — you really don't wanna get in a position where you've got your A players joining the call to talk about their deals, and they don't feel that they can be open, transparent, and honest about, you know, what is going on with the deals because all it does is give false hope to leadership. The trust goes. You kick the can down the road, you know, and it just creates this whole, like, monster of a problem, which is never gonna drive you to the revenue goals that you need to get to. It's never gonna create the right, you know, camaraderie in the team. And, you know, you'd want the guys to come into the meeting and just be, hey, listen, like, I know last week my stakeholder said that the paperwork was getting ready to be signed, but this has happened. Like, what you don't wanna see is the rep get on the call and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's still gonna happen, it's still gonna come in before the end of the quarter. And then you get to the last day and they're like, I better kick it out. And then it just causes so many problems. So I really sort of like to get in these meetings and these calls and really have, like, an open, honest conversation. Like, just be honest. Hold your hands up. Is the deal going in the wrong direction? Like, you know, has your stakeholder left the business? Like, you know, last week you said the deal was ready to be signed. Like, what's the latest this week? And you just want clear, honest communication from them. But not just that. You also — like, your sales team are your A players. You want them to be able to come prepped and sit there and say, okay, like, my stakeholder's just gone dark. Like, I don't know. Maybe it's a family emergency. I don't know. I can't give you the information, but I'm in touch with this person in the business. I'm trying to get to this person. Like, you know, I'm gonna do this. You know? And that will then sort of foster the type of environment where the reps feel comfortable. They know they're not gonna get called out in these calls, and the leadership team are actually getting straight, honest answers and then can course correct off the back of that. Right?

Janis Zech: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I think, like, you think of the history of forecasting — the reality was many times you sit in a deal review or in a forecast meeting and the deal hygiene was just poor. Right? There was a lot of data missing, no activities attached to the opportunities. You know, the buying committee wasn't mapped out properly. You know, you didn't really have good insights into potential risks through the conversations. I think that is fundamentally changing. You can automate a lot of those things without the reps having to do anything. And then it's really also the responsibility of the managers to go through the data and go from this gut-based, I need to trust you, to, hey, this is actually our exit criteria, this is what has already happened, this is what I see. And then you can have an honest conversation about, you know, strategizing how to win the deal or what to do better rather than having the interrogation. Right? We had John McMahon here on the show, you know, some episodes ago. Right? He wrote a fantastic book about that process and that culture — the Qualified Sales Leader — right, where I think, you know, it's exactly this, like, this setup where, like, nobody really enjoys being there, but because of hierarchy, the leadership team can behave differently. And I think all this is obviously stemming from this reality of the board putting a lot of pressure on the CROs and the CRO tenures often being very short, right, below two years. But I think the fundamental problem is actually data quality and process in itself and often the stage definitions not being, you know, clear or lived. Right? I think that's certainly another problem. You wrote down, you know, another topic, which is around, like, deal inspection and coaching. Right? Like, what do you mean with that as a fundamental pillar for the process?

Andy Smidmore: Yeah. So I wrote an article about this, like, quite a few years ago. I think it must have been coming up, like, five years. And this was off the back of something that I was sort of living in the company at that time. And I remember saying to the leadership team, like, I personally don't think we should mix the forecast call with deal reviews. Like, they need to be completely separate. Right? Like, there's a different criteria. There's a different type of conversation that needs to take place. And it didn't play out like that in the company and it just didn't really work, but that was the route that they wanted to do. And I respected that. And, you know, I'd given my opinion and the reasoning behind that. But I think with the whole deal inspection versus deal coaching, I think it's all very well to get onto a deal review call and you wanna, you know, really get granular and find out everything about the deal, whether that's some type of qualification framework, whether you wanna do the player mapping and, you know, try and get multi-threaded in the accounts or cover all bases, you know, depending on how big the deal is and if it's like a strategic win or a competitor to take out. One of the things that I've seen — I think maybe because I've been in a lot of real aggressive, fast-paced growth companies where everything was about growth. Right? Like, going back to your point around the pressure the C suite get put on them at the end of the quarter, and then it can make the forecast calls, like, super uncomfortable and people don't like turning up and they're like, oh, it's like, you know, I'm gonna get, like, battered if I get on this call and don't give the answers that I need. I think that I can understand it to a certain level in a business, like, you know, if you are going for growth, as long as it's done in a respectful way. But I don't feel that the whole forecasting cadence and the deal review cadence, whatever that looks like, should be mixed because I feel like they're two almost separate motions for whoever's in the room, like the AE versus the leader of sales. I think inspecting deals, you can do in a different way than actually coaching a rep around what they're doing, how they're doing it, and, you know, especially some of these sales leaders that have been in the game for, like, you know, twenty plus years. They've seen everything. They've done everything. They've, you know, worn the t-shirt and they've got, like, great stories and evidence to sort of back some of their coaching up. I think that as soon as you get into the whole inspecting deals and it comes across a bit like an inspection, that's a whole trust issue as well. Right? Going back to what I was saying about the forecast call. So it's almost like a mindset shift around allowing the rep to speak through the deal. And as a seasoned sales leader, they would be, you know, qualified enough to look at it from a coaching point of view to start. You know, I worked with a sales leader a couple of years ago at Cloudera, and he came out with something great at the time. And, you know, he said it in a meeting. It's always stuck with me. He said, I'm not questioning you. I'm asking questions. Right? And the subtle difference between the two when you lay it out, you're like, yeah, like, you know, because people can feel like they're being questioned and not trusted and, you know, second-guessed. But I think that if you get a great sales leader and they say, listen, like, I'm coming at this from a coaching standpoint, we need to get this deal over the line. We need to look at the close date. We need to look at the stage and, you know, what criteria needs to pass to get out of the stage and, you know, what the customer's doing. And we need to sort of build the player map and we need to look at this and whiteboard it and let's strategize together — versus the straightforward inspection from ops which is like, okay, look at the close date. Look at the stage. Okay. The close date is last week. Why is the close date last week? You know? That sort of inspection — deal coaching looks more like a strategy going forward to actually handhold the deal over the line to a signed contract. Yeah. I think they get jumbled. Like, I think they get a bit mixed up sometimes. Like I said, I've seen businesses where they will use the forecast call as a deal review and it just does not work.

Janis Zech: Yeah. It's horrible. It's horrible. I mean, I think especially in a scaled setup. Right? I think what you wanna have is a cadence of, okay, reps, it's very clear that you clean your pipeline until Thursday. On Friday, there's, like, a manager that is sitting down with the reps and going through the deals, right, that you basically strategize how do we win these deals. And then on Monday, have a forecast call. The reps often don't join that. There's the managers, RevOps, the CRO, the VPs, and you come prepared with your roll-up forecast. Everything is in place. Right? That's, like, typically how we see it. Right? So there's, like, different input factors that then, you know, help you call the numbers. And the numbers is not one number. It's, like, a corridor. But, like, I think with regards to the deal inspection, right, like, maybe it should be called deal coaching or how do we win together rather than this deal inspection because I think that's what it's fundamentally about. I think it's one process. So the forecast process, like I always say, it's an operating cadence that is not just bringing you the final number, but it also should help you get to the final number.

Andy Smidmore: Yes.

Janis Zech: And that's obviously a very important difference. And so it's not just a reporting purpose. It's a purpose of the manager sits down with their pod and it's like six people and they talk about the deals and they talk about, okay, what could you do here? And the reps chime in, the manager chimes in and everybody wants to win more deals. That's the culture you want. You don't want the culture of the reps coming into the forecast call that is really actually not meant to be a deal review. And then get asked by the CRO, oh, it's actually in the wrong stage. And then you have a conversation about it. It's just a waste of time. It's a very expensive meeting if you think about it. And that doesn't really help anyone. And I think the ripple effects of this often is then the reps basically weigh, should I lie and nobody finds out, or should I kind of not lie but get one over on the head. And it's like both are shit, both are super demotivating. Right.

Andy Smidmore: Yeah. And if you think about it, like, if the business does such a good job of deal reviewing, that almost takes care of the forecast anyway. Right? Like, you know, because you really sort of peel back the layers of a deal. So by the time you get into the forecast, the rep hasn't got to sit there and justify the deal or justify where the deal is or the value because you've already taken sort of care of that by doing the deal review with the deal coaching. So you can get on the forecast call, and the sales leader will have a good idea where the deal is. Unless something drastic has happened in those hours that have passed since the deal review, the rep is then gonna commit the number or it's gonna go into upside or, you know, and that's the sort of only real conversation that needs to take place, maybe with a couple of, you know, super quick updates around, yeah, I've just got off the phone with them and, you know, the paperwork is now being reviewed by procurement, which the leader might not have known about yesterday. So, you know, they sort of go hand in hand and you do a good job of the deal review side and it will take care of the forecast side. So I think that's like key, and the deal coaching sort of sits within that. I think if you do good deal coaching, it really sort of contributes to the output of the forecast.

Janis Zech: Yeah. A hundred percent. You wrote something about, like, clear forecasting methodology. Like, what do you mean with that?

Andy Smidmore: Yeah. So I mean, I guess, like, for a business, if they're gonna do category forecasting, which, you know, has been the sort of norm for, you know, many years, at least as long as I've been doing it. I think, like, this is like a key mistake that I've seen over the years as well. Not mistake, but, you know, there's not been much full process behind it. You know, what does pipeline mean? Like, you know, what does it actually mean? And does the rep actually understand what that means and how that loosely aligns to your funnel in terms of the stages that sort of would sit in that bucket? You know? What is — when a rep puts something into commit, like, what does that mean? Like, I've sat on countless calls where the rep has said, I'm committing this deal, or the leader has said, are you committing that deal? And the AE has said, yeah, I'm gonna put it in commit. Okay. Let's move on. It's like, woah. Woah. Woah. Hold on a minute. It's like, well, what do you mean you're committing the deal? Like, what constitutes a commit deal? Like, you know, like, where does that sit in those sales stages that you've built out? Because you've probably seen this as well. Like, you know, how many times have you got into a new quarter with a sales team and the leader has come to me and said, like, pull me all of the commits that got pushed from last quarter into this quarter, and we're gonna go through them with a fine-tooth comb. Right? And you actually start to, like, dig in, and you're like, that should have never been a commit. That should have never been pushed into commit. They should have never been forced to put that in commit. Right? But what this ends up turning out to be is it's more for the business to understand, to be, like, super clear around what those categories actually are. Like, when you would commit something, not just because you've stuck your finger in the air and it feels right. This is where the gut-feeling forecasting comes from. Right? Like, the rep might have a good relationship with the stakeholder. They're like, yeah, I'm committing it. And it's like, you know, that's really — you can't really sort of quantify that, you know, because just because you've got a good relationship with the EB or, you know, whoever's signing the check — what about all of the other pieces that make up that deal? The technical side, the legal side, the procurement side. Right? So I think you've got to be, like, crystal clear, and I'm not talking writing essays and essays. I've never done this for companies that I've been at in terms of when I built out enablement material. Like, you don't want a long read. You want, you know, maybe five bullet points for pipeline, five bullet points for commit if that's the way that your CRM is set up. You know? How are they aligned — which I like them to be loosely aligned. I don't like seeing a rep move a stage and it automatically flip to commit. I don't think that they should sit so tightly. But, you know, five or so —

Janis Zech: In your experience, I mean, what would you say is, like, some specifics on the commit side? I mean, like, is there — I mean, and I know it's different from business to business. Right? But, like, do you have any, like, specific examples that you've seen come up again and again for the definition? Of a commit deal.

Andy Smidmore: I mean, you're probably talking like — depending on how many stages — it's always gonna be the last, like, you know, the two stages maybe before closed won, whether that's like business alignment or and then the next stage be negotiate. There's always gonna be the paperwork discussion has started or procurement are involved or legal redlining. You know, it's gonna be that very end of process where there's technical sign off, there's buyer sign-in, there's stakeholder sign-in on the customer side. And we really sort of are at the sharper end of the funnel where, you know, I'm not taking away from the fact that just because it's gone into stage four, five, six, whatever that looks like, and into a commit, that the deal is done — because it's never done until it's done, right, until you've got like a fully executed document set. You know, there's obviously a lot that goes on around that, like, you know, in procurement and legal and still with redlining. That can take weeks and weeks and weeks if it's not been started at the right time. But typically like those actions and activities will be in full flow or coming to an end, or there will be, you know, an end date in sight, whether that's a customer go-live day or some other type of milestone that it needs to be done by — that's typically like, you know, what I would expect to see out of a commit. And I think that you need to be crystal clear on that, but not just clear on paper. You need to make sure that it's a conversation that always takes place, like, during the forecast calls. Like, if a rep says, I'm putting the deal into commit, it's probably on ops as well, and it's on sales leadership to — not go into a deal review — but to say, okay, well, where does the paper sit? You know? Are there legal redlines? Are they happy with the concessions that our legal team have given? You know? Where's the technical sign-off document? Until you've got, like, a fully verifiable, you know, checklist as source, then you can sort of have to trust and say, okay. Yeah. Like, that does look like a commit. The only thing that's gonna stop that from happening is something catastrophic. You know? Otherwise, we would expect to see that hit the board by the end of the quarter.

Janis Zech: Which is almost like you control the deal. You know everything is basically right. You have the verbal from various different stakeholders. You went through all of that. Yeah. And then, yeah, of course, there, you know, like, if the restructuring comes and the CFO just freezes every budget, like, you know, that might not be in your control because that's typically not publicly available information. Of course. Yeah. Often, your, you know, your stakeholders might not even know that. Right? Like so —

Andy Smidmore: And that's the worst feeling in the world for a rep as well. You can see the pain on their face and the pain in their heart that they've done such a good job of driving the deal and really sort of, you know, dotted the i's and crossed the t's, and it's like it's got an actual real live close date that a contract's gonna come in, especially if it's, like, significant value to your business as well. And then there's a mass fallout and you can see the pain. And I've worked with some great reps over the years where they've been like a dog with a bone. Even with something so bad on the customer side, like they've riffed people or, you know, the CRO has been let go, the rep is like, I'm not stopping. Like, I've been told this has been put on hold. I'm gonna do everything possible to try and get this through, and, you know, that just shows, like, the real grit of, like, why these guys do what they do.

Janis Zech: Yep. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. We're getting up on time. Like, anything else you would add? Any tips, tricks