How to negotiate win-win deals with procurement professionals

Made with speech-to-text software, so a few words may be off.

0:00Welcome to another episode of Contract Heroes, the show where our guests, and sometimes us, provide best practice recommendations on all things related to contract management. Mike Lander is the CEO of Piscati, a London-based consulting firm specialized in procurement. He provides negotiating advice to founders, CEOs, and directors to improve their negotiation capabilities of their commercial teams and provide deep insights into the mind of procurement buyer. The procurements departments are always under pressure to take care of every cent of their budget. You need to always research your customers and look for data that can help you in the negotiations. If you don't do your research, the other side will have the upper hand. The market on procurement a- analytics has also grown a lot, producing huge insights.

1:04The ability to take finance data, procurement data, and third-party data easily accessible produces a huge advantage. This is also a big reason why procurement departments are investing on CLM softwares to bring all this information into a single place with their contracts, which includes all the details on every closed deal. This was our chat with Mike. Hi there, everyone. My name is Marc Doucette, and welcome back to another episode of Contract Heroes, where we're not the heroes, our guests are. Today on the show, I have with me, uh, Mike Lander. Uh, Mike is a, uh, expert when it comes to dealing with procurement. Uh, some of the topics we're gonna be covering today are, uh, what does procurement really do? Who is procurement, and what do they want and need? We're gonna be talking about the specific language that they use, the types of personas that they are, and some of their priorities. Uh, we'll also get into a couple more tactical tips on how to, uh, better work with procurement, uh, from both the buy and sell side.

2:03But, uh, for now I'm gonna go ahead and flip things over to Mike, allow him to introduce himself, and we're gonna get going. Hey, Marc. Great to talk to you. Thank you. Yeah, sure, Mike. Thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on. Yeah, pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Really, really pleased to be here. So, um, yeah, so my background, if anyone looks at my LinkedIn profile, uh, I've got a very unusual background. It's pretty non-linear, but there's a theme running through it which is, you know, I've been in, uh, mainstream consulting, uh, probably for 25 years, uh, heavily involved in procurement as a buyer, uh, and also as a procurement consultant for over 20 years now. Uh, and, um, yeah, I've now, what I do now is I basically, I work with, uh, sellers, suppliers, SMEs, entrepreneurs, on how do they negotiate better deals when they meet procurement people. So I've taken all of my knowledge of hundreds of deals and negotiation and all of my, you know, probably bought over 400 million pounds of stuff now for various clients.

2:58I now help smaller companies as they're growing, uh, and they're selling into bigger companies, understand how do procurement work, how do you work with them rather than against them, and how do you negotiate better deals and prepare for that. Awesome. No, thanks, Mike. That's, that's great. And, uh, you know, this is, this is a topic I think that a lot of, uh, folks, especially in, you know, me and, uh, in Pepe's shoes, uh, you know, we're at smaller organizations and, and the only time we really deal with procurement is when we get into opportunities that we're trying to close. Uh, you know, I've, I've never spent a, a day in their shoes and, uh, I thought that some of our, some of our guests would find it intriguing to really understand, you know, what are they out there doing. So why, why don't we kick things off with, uh, chatting about w- what does a day in the life of a procurement professional kinda look like? Yeah, sure. And so, um, first of all, in terms of who they report to, uh, it varies. So often a procurement person would report into finance, so to the CFO, occasionally into the chief exec, depending on the sector they're in.

3:55Um, but typically they're within the, like the finance, uh, function often. Um, you get procurement people, uh, of different types. So there's people called the CPO, so the chief procurement officer. Like you have, you'd have a CEO, you've got a CPO, chief procurement officer. Below that person there would be what they call category directors. And when we say categories, you know, these are categories of spend. So for example, facilities management, professional services, recruitment, marketing. So big categories that organizations spend big money on would be run by a category director. And that's important because you need to understand that the people that you're dealing with often are experts in your category, but not always. I can talk about, you know, why they're, why they might not be later on. Um, if you look at their typical day, so if you look at a category lead within a, uh, procurement function, you know, what would they be doing?

4:51Well, everyone thinks, "Well, they'll be negotiating deals with suppliers and making life hard for us." Well, yeah, they do part of that. But also they're doing, um, they build savings budgets, for example. So if they spend 100 million on marketing services, every year they'll have to submit a savings plan, which is, "We spent $100 million last year on stuff. This year we'd like to spend 90 million. So Mike, what's your savings plan for getting the extra 10 million out of the cost base without impacting on quality of service and service delivery?" So I build savings plans. I do lots of stakeholder management. I talk to all my internal stakeholders about what are their needs. What are they going to do this year? Do they need new suppliers? I manage my, what I call my preferred suppliers list. So I'm working out who's on, who should be off, uh, and how long is that, that tail of suppliers I'm dealing with.

5:47And something increasingly I do, which if you look back 20 years wouldn't have happened as much, but now definitely does is front and center, is lots of work on analytics. The market for procurement analytics has grown dramatically. The ability to take finance data and procurement based data and third party supplier data and bring those together into one data set is now readily available and produces huge insights to me as a procurement person. So a tip for your listeners is, again, if you take away two or three things from this session, one of them is when you negotiate with me, if I've taken the time to sit down with you and negotiate, it means that it's important to me for some reason. Well, that means I've prepared for it really well. So my preparation and my insights have come from all this data I've got.

6:43So if you walk into a negotiation and you've not prepared and researched your data before you walk in through the door, before you sit down physically or virtually, I have the upper hand. Mm-hmm. And so Mike, how, what, what types of systems are procurements folks using right now to, to pull this data out of? I mean, is this stuff that they just have out there in, in, um, you know, shared drives and Excel sheets, or are there some specific, uh, types of systems that, uh, folks are using currently to, to help run these reports and pull that data and make it easily accessible for them? Yeah, I mean, good question. So, um, I'm not a procurement systems expert. There's plenty of those people out there. Mm-hmm. But if you look at the, the data sources, so, well first of all look at the reporting. So, uh, things like Tableau now, you know, Tableau now owned by Salesforce, I believe, um, is, um, a, it was a bit of, a bit of a revolutionary tool for procurement people to be able to easily create visualizations of data and moving visualizations of data to show you what the trends were.

7:46And that was quite a breakthrough because it was the first time that we could actually connect other data sets together and have one common view of the truth. So the golden source. Mm-hmm. And the data sets I'm using are, yes, there are spreadsheets definitely, but there's my general ledger. So from my finance team, I've access to their general ledger with all of our, um, uh, data in it. I've got my spend management system with all the suppliers and what we spend. Uh, so I've got access to that system. I've got spreadsheets that I can also bolt in. I've got third party credit checking systems that I may also integrate. So anything within, with a kind of an API of some kind that I can bolt into these front end visualization systems, I can now start to manipulate data. And that's the kind of the breakthrough was take recruitment for example Marc, in recruitment procurement, which I used to do a lot of, um, you'd have two types of data. What do I spend with a recruitment agency? I, what fees do I pay them?

8:46And then what's their time to fill? Mm-hmm. What's their fill rate? Well, those are different systems. I need one way of looking at both of those pieces of data and those visualization systems give you that. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, that's great. You know, and it, and it's funny because like I said, you know, we, we sell into procurement, but a lot of times I, I'm still not too, too familiar exactly with what, you know, they're actually dealing with on a day-to-day basis. And, and this, you know, kind of helps to give, uh, I think us an overview and understanding of, you know, what's going through these folks' heads and, and what's important to them when they are looking at different software applications, uh, especially when it comes to, you know, contract management. Um- Absolutely. So, so, you know, touching on that contract management piece, let's, let's talk about the procurement language. I, I know that you had said that, um, you know, there was some specific verbiage out there that these folks use. Um- Yeah... can we, can we kind of drill into that a little bit more? Yeah, sure. So let me get, I'll give you, I'll give you an example. Um, so you've got a meeting coming up, so you know, you sell, um, CLM, correct Marc? Mm-hmm.

9:50So you're selling CLM, uh, and, um, you've got a meeting coming up with, uh, a client. You've been talking to them, talking to them for a few months. You're quite well down the track and you've been told you're gonna go meet procurement. And you go onto LinkedIn and you find the person's name and it's, you know, Jane Smith. When you look at Jane Smith's profile, you should be looking for some obvious clues in procurement. She'll either be in direct procurement or indirect procurement. Now contract lifecycle management would be what we would call an indirect procurement because it's indirect goods. And by that I mean direct goods. If you are Walmart and you are selling bananas, bananas are a direct good, there'd be a buyer that buys bananas, and that sits between revenue, sales, and, um, gross profit. Mm-hmm. Below gross profit down to net profit is what we call indirect spend. All of the indirect stuff that doesn't directly touch the product that we sell to our customers.

10:55So you'd be meeting someone who is in indirect procurement. Now the reason I say this is A, it's a language thing, useful to know, but B, when you look at their profile, if the person you're meeting who is now buying indirect services, contract lifecycle management, if Jane Smith's been doing it for a year, but 15 years before that she bought bananas for Walmart, you can expect a really, really tough negotiation, like brutally tough negotiation- ... because she bought the stuff that made the company money. Mm-hmm. And what you'll find is procurement people have careers like anyone else. And what organizations do is they'll take someone from direct procurement, stick them in indirect procurement on the route to becoming a chief procurement officer. 'Cause you have to understand both sides of the, um, the cost equation. Right. And so yeah, a tip for your listeners, again, if you find someone that's got a very strong direct procurement background and they're now, uh, buying indirect goods and services, I, I'd prepare really, really well. Okay. And, and let's let, all right, so let's touch on that some more.

12:04So as far as the personas go, I, would you say that- You know, a, a direct part, uh, direct management procurement and that, that part of the organization, do they have a little bit of a different type of persona than, than the indirect managers or, or does it, it really vary? Because it sounds like, you know, to, to take that next step in their career, they do have to play, um, you know, both sides of that equation. Yeah. So I would say that there's some common traits. If you look at anyone in procurement, um, then the traits typically are... And again, I don't y- I think making generalizations is dangerous, because then it creates assumptions in our head. But there are certainly themes that come through, and a theme for the persona of a procurement person is we tend to be very rational. You know, we tend to be very numerate. We tend to be very short on time, so we tend to be very decisive as individuals. And whether you're in direct or indirect goods, um, those traits are pretty common.

13:01If you're in direct goods, what you'll find is, is that they're probably more aggressive, and that's not because they're aggressive people, but, but, but because there's huge pressure on them. Every cent is meaningful to Walmart. And so th- they tend to be, by their nature, much more kind of in your face during the negotiation, whereas someone that's spent all their life buying facilities management maybe, but not always, less aggressive. Interesting. So it sounds on both sides of the coin there, though, I mean, you know, y- you need to, to make sure you have your ducks in a row when you're talking to these folks, because time is money at the end of the day. Absolutely. And, um, y- you know, you need to get straight to the point and really show them the value in what you're presenting to whatever department you're speaking with. Yep, and I think, you know, that preparation. Yeah.

13:51If I've got a meeting with you, then coming to the table pre-prepared, where you've got your own data packs, you've got your own insights, you know how you compare to the rest of the market, you know, you know who my organization is, you know who the stakeholders are, you know, you know where you are in the negotiation process. Um, understanding something else as well, terminology, savings. What you're likely to face is, so you're talking to me, Marc, and, you know, let's assume that I've already got some kind of contract lifecycle management system and I'm switching. These are dangerous times for you. So, because I've now got a baseline. Let's say I spend £300,000 a year, through that $300,000 a year- Mm-hmm... on this system, and it's out of date. The user interface is a bit out of date. User experience is poor. Uh, company hasn't updated their, uh, front end or their back end, so I'm going to switch. But now I've got a baseline, so now I'm going to be looking for... Well, I've got a baseline.

14:52I know how many users I've got. I know how many active users I've got. I know how many documents I've got. I know what the search types are. I know a lot about buying contract lifecycle management, because I've done my homework. Mm-hmm. So if you come in and your, uh, price is, you know, let's say it's 300, $330,000, I'd put my papers down. I'd say, "Look, Marc, it's very simple. I need something better for about $200,000. So if we're in the market for that, I'm kind of open for discussion. But if we're not, maybe we should move on." Mm-hmm. Because I've got a baseline, and I've got a savings target. Yeah. So you need to be prepared before you get to me with the value contribution versus the cost of what it's going to cost me to buy this system. Right. Right. Yeah, and, and that was the, kind of leading into my next question here. So, you know, when, when do you see procurement typically getting involved in the sales cycle?

15:52So I think there's two things to watch out for. Um, there's a value trigger, and there's a kind of like, there's a, a, a kind of time trigger as well. So value triggers, typically it used to be if anything's over about 100,000, $150,000, typically procurement would get involved in some way, shape, or form, because it's a meaningful sum of money. Mm-hmm. I think that threshold's gone down, Marc. I think it's probably closer to $50,000. And, and do you think that that's because of, um, you know, the h- what the, the last year kind of gave us to face with- Definitely... I mean, with, with COVID and everything? Definitely. Okay. Definitely, because if you look at who's in, who's in control now, I mean, not wholly in control, but certainly more powerful, procurement are now a very powerful lever to what I call recapitalize the corporate balance sheet. Mm. Because big companies have spent big cash reserves keeping their companies afloat. They need to put more cash back on their balance sheets. How do they do that?

16:52Well, two big levers are I reduce my input costs, I negotiate, therefore I get procurement involved, and secondly, I change my payment terms. If I was paying on an average of 45 days and I now pay on an average of 90 days, that's 45 days of working capital I've just got back on my balance sheet. Mm. That's a lot of money. Interesting. And so it's definitely, there's a value trigger. Definitely. Yeah, that's- That's all... that's interesting, is, is something that I, you know, we haven't really run into that much, but, um, you know, is negotiating those longer periods of terms. Um, a- and do you s- have you seen a lot of this o- over the past year, I mean, organizations trying to, trying to operate in this manner? Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I would say in the last 15 months, um, 12 months rather, given where we are now- Mm... 9 to 12 months, um, yeah. I, I, I mean, like every day. You know, one of my clients is saying to me, "We've just had a note from the CFO." You know, it's one of our clients, and it's a mandate. Payment terms have moved from 30 days to 90 days on, in, on month end. Okay.

17:57And, and how, how would you have a, a buyer deal with this, this type of information? Do you, do you suggest, you know, that they bring this up actually before the buyer even, um- Yeah. So as, as a seller, so if you're selling into, so Marc, if your organization's selling into, let's say it's, um-... Shell. You're selling Shell a contract management system. Um, before you walk in, when you're preparing your negotiation, I've actually built a negotiation, um, book that I'm selling, uh, a workbook. Mm-hmm. So it's not a textbook to read, it's a negotiation workbook to sit down and work through your negotiation with, which I'll be launching in quarter two. Um, and in there what I've done is before you walk in, you'll probably have six negotiation variables that you're thinking about. You've got price, you've got contract duration, you've got termination clauses, and you've got payment terms.

18:52So when you introduce, the, let's say your payment terms, y- you need, you know, you, you really need 30 days, you'd love 14 days on invoice, but you'd accept 45 days. I- if, if I'm as a buyer pushing 90 days on you, and that's completely unacceptable, if you can't cope with that, I may well be able to give you 45 days, but I expect something quite big in return. What people don't realize with procurement, when we say it's 90 days on month end, non-negotiable, well, it's not non-negotiable. That's just my starting point because I'm putting you on the back foot and you need to come back to me with, "But we need 45." And I'm like, "Can't do that." And then I might go, "Well, I, I can do that, but I need something quite big back for that, Marc. What have you got in mind?" Right. Right. And this is kind of where those other, other levers come into the conversation. So- Correct...

19:57you know, giving a- and taking from, from both sides so that, um, I mean, you know, hopefully everybody comes out a winner, but, but typically that's not the case. Yeah. Um, but, but yeah, being able to give and take at, on, on some of those different levers, you know, price, duration, payment terms, things like that, I think that that's where, uh, a lot of folks struggle when, when they're, um, just beginning to, to get into sales and they're really not sure how to negotiate with, with some of these larger organizations, especially when they're talking to procurement. I mean, there's a great, there's a couple of great examples. Um, so first of all, win-win. Everyone goes, "Oh, you know, I'm a win-win negotiator." Yeah. Well, first of all, I read a brilliant book recently. I think his name is Jim Camp. I think he's, uh, I think he's passed away, uh, years ago. Mm-hmm. Um, but he was a, a brilliant negotiator in the US and Jim Camp rightly said in his book, "There is no win-win." You know? I mean, yes, on bigger deals, on really big deals where you can create a bigger pie for both parties, yeah, there's a win-win.

20:58So if y- if I, i- if, if you can give me more value and I can give you more opportunity, yes, there's a win-win. But most negotiations are win-lose because you've got a benchmark price in your head of $300,000 a year. I want it at $200,000 a year for the same functionality and all the same services that you're offering. So when I get to 250K and we do a deal, is that win-win? Hmm. Doesn't sound like it to me. Mm-hmm. Interesting. The second thing is when you're in a negotiation, so let me give you a, again, a, a negotiation kind of tactic that I see used a lot. Let's say you've been negotiating with me, you know, with the stakeholder rather for a while, three months, uh, and you've now met me in procurement and, um, you've been negotiating with me for a month. You've had two meetings and I now, I, I'm at the final stage. I'm like, "Okay, I think we're going to do a deal." And what I do is it's the last meeting.

21:55You think we're done, you think it's all tied up, contract's been reviewed. So you've all agreed on your side what you think is the final deal, and this meeting's meant to be the kind of close meeting. Mm-hmm. And I say, "Marc, you know, it, it's really interesting. I was with the CFO yesterday and, um, yeah, uh, the, the, the, the, the deal's off." And you're like, "What?" And I'm like, "Well, it's not so much off as, um, you know that 250K we agreed a year for your license? CFO won't sign it off. So what the CFO's saying is, is that we need that for 200K- Okay... or the deal's off today. It's done." And then I, I'll say to you is, "I've got a meeting actually. Um, so, um, come back to me by close of business and, uh, and just let me know that you're c- you, you confirmed." Yeah. Now, before I walk out, before I walk out the door you have to say something to me. Uh-huh.

22:50And what I recommend is this, is you stop me in my tracks and say, "Mike, it's, that, that, that's shocking news. Um, do I understand that your budget has been cut from 250K to 200?" And I'll say, "Well, not sure. Why?" Well, it, it, it, it's either a big chip, Mike, you're trying to just chip me on price, or your budget's changed. Well, if your budget's changed, I can change the functionality. We can change the scope of services. We can get you to 200, but it won't be the same as the deal on the table right now. So now you're forcing me to either think, "Hmm, Marc's called my bluff. It is a chip, but he's given me an out, which is for 200,000 he's offering to reduce the scope, change the services, change the functionality." I'm likely to go, "All right, Marc, look, okay.

23:49We really want the functionality." Mm-hmm. "We, we kind of agreed. Um, I can't do 250. What can you do for me?" And then you might yield and say, "Well, it's 250, but I'll throw in the reporting for free- Mm-hmm... for six months." And, and- And I might go, "That'll work"... uh, do you think that pulling another one of those levers at, at that point in time, you know, maybe changing up the payment terms, uh, giving them a discount if they purchase more than one year up front, I mean, do you think that that's something that'll get them to- Definitely... to budge there? Yeah. On the negotiation worksheet, when you fill it in- The timing of when you release these things to the negotiator on the other side is critical. You need to hold one thing back that's of value to the buyer that you haven't released yet. Because when I come in with my last-minute chip, you've got to be able to give me something that I value that allows me to s- to feel like, yeah, I got a decent deal. Didn't get quite what I wanted, but I got quite far.

24:49So saving something back, and ideally something that costs you very little, but is meaningful to your client- Mm-hmm... is very important. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, yeah, and, and I think that we're, we're seeing something similar over here is, you know, you need to have some give and take and some wiggle room at the end of those opportunities, the larger ones- Yeah... to, to make sure that, um, both sides are going to be happy, especially if they are bringing in the procurement team, like we're talking about, uh, you know, right now. Yeah. Um, so yeah, something else that, you know, you and I were chatting about briefly in, in one of our previous conversations was the, uh, the success equation. Um- Ah, yes. A- and I wa- I was hoping that we, we might be able to touch on that a little bit more. Could, could you explain to some of the listeners what, um, what, what that is and, and how you use it? Yeah, sure. In fact, let me just pull up my, um, my notes. So, um, I built something called the procurement success equation, and it goes... I, I, I'm an engineer by training, Marc, so I kinda like, I think in equations.

25:47Um- Mm-hmm... and what I thought was this, was look, when you're talking to procurement, most people think it's all about price, and maybe payment terms. But there's more to it than that. So when I'm a buyer, a procurement buyer, I'm looking at six different things. So the savings, so I need some kind of savings, something off the price. I'm also looking for innovation because my organization's looking for, you know, long-term growth. It's looking to get into new opportunity areas. I need suppliers that are innovative. I'm looking for quality, so you have to be a quality supplier. Reliability. I have to know that if you're a new supplier to my organization, you're gonna be around in the next few years. Now, I can't guarantee that, neither can you, but I need to be able to do my diligence that says, yeah, I think you'll be a reliable supplier of services and you're gonna be around. And sustainability.

26:50You know, increasingly now I need to, I need to look into your supply chain and work out who are you dealing with. Who are your third-party suppliers? Because they'll become increasingly important to me to make sure that you're dealing with ethical companies. And the other thing I'm looking for, the sixth thing, is risk. So on the top line now, you've got savings, plus innovation, plus quality, plus reliability, plus sustainability. On the bottom line, you've got risk. My job is to manage risk for my organization. Mm-hmm. Operational risk, reputational risk, financial risk. Risk is a complex area. So that success equation is when you're negotiating with me, if you've thought through those six and you start to put those variables on the table as a negotiation, even if four of them for this negotiation aren't on top of my agenda, the fact that you know about them and you've raised them starts to make me think, "Okay, this is more sophisticated than usual. Here's a seller that's thought it through. They're bringing more to the table." So for example, innovation. If I'm buying software from you and you can start to show me your roadmap, and maybe you say to me, "You know, actually what we're looking for is we've got core stable product, been, you know, three, five years, very, very stable, you know, hundreds of users. Obviously in our roadmap what we're looking for is clients that can do beta testing.

28:30So, you know, would you like to be a beta test client?" Mm-hmm. "Would you like to be part of our, um, innovation forum where we bring together all sorts of different people to think about new ideas about life cycle management?" So you start to bring things into the equation which might be valuable to me. Mm-hmm. And it might stop me from chipping your price away. So that's what I deem the kind of, you know, there are five things on top of the equation and there's one thing on the bottom, and those are my six factors to think about. Yeah. That's, that's fantastic. That's, uh, you know, very interesting, especially when it comes to right, showing, showing the innovation, you know, sw- showing the quality, the reliability of the team that, that might need to troubleshoot something. Yeah. Um, a- and the sustainability, so, you know, understanding if they're a private or, or a publicly traded company. Yeah.

29:21Um, you know, this, uh, I, I think that this could be huge for, for anybody that's working in the enterprise space and, and being able to put together a slide deck to show, uh, you know, this top verse bottom line kind of comparison that you've put together here. Exactly. Uh, so we'll go, we'll go ahead and we'll actually include that in the, uh, in the show notes if anybody wants to take a look at that in further depth. Um- Yeah. Exactly... hey, Mike, I know we've been talking for a little while here, and I'm, I'm sure that you and I could go on forever. We could definitely go down into, uh - Yeah ... into these way, way deeper than we have, but we wanted to keep this one pretty high level. So why don't we leave it at this. What, what, what would be your top three takeaways for, uh, let's say an enterprise organization who's, who's, you know, selling to larger companies, um, a- and has to deal with procurement on a normal basis because their deal size is that large? What, what three takeaways would you, or suggestions would you have for somebody that's working, uh, with procurement, uh, regularly? So first thing is, um, do your homework. Absolutely prepare, do your homework.

30:20Before you enter into the negotiations with anyone, do your homework, prepare. Second thing, um, research that procurement person. Find out where have they been, how long have they been in procurement, what qualifications have they taken, you know, were they in direct goods, were they in indirect goods? And the third thing is be prepared in the negotiation for something at the end. Hold something back at the end ready for that last-minute chip, because human beings can't resist. We love a last-minute chip, and procurement are often no different. So those would be my three, I think. Oh, that's fantastic. I, I think those are definitely some great takeaways. Uh, so Mike, I, I wanna thank you for taking a couple minutes to chat with us. Um, uh, where can folks go to, to learn more about you and, um, and you know, that workbook that, uh, sounds like it's gonna be coming out in a couple of months here? Uh, yeah, so best thing probably is to go to our website, so piscari.com, P-I-S-C-A-R-I.com. Um, or they can email me, uh, mike@piscari.com. All right. Hey, fantastic. Well, thanks for joining us, everybody.

31:26I hope you, uh, you got something out of this. I know I did, and, uh, we look forward to having you listen to the next episode of Contract Heroes.