Sales Intelligence Weekly
Go-to-Market Podcast
The Sales Intelligence Weekly podcast covers topics focused on helping sales and marketing leaders improve sales experience, increase win rates, and elevate sales enablement
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If you’re on a go-to-market team, you may already be using a specific framework to position your product. And if you aren’t you should be! Storytelling frameworks are powerful for improving positioning and creating an effective go-to-market strategy. But once you have a framework in place, how do you then use it to create alignment throughout your organization – and, alignment with your buyers and customers?
We’ve said it before on the show… The way buyers interact with sellers has changed. The way buyers research and learn about solutions has changed. The way we build trust, the time sellers have with buyers, the way we educate our buyers… it’s all changed. And I’m here to tell you that it will never stop changing and evolving. And as sellers and marketers, it can be hard to keep up. It can be difficult to understand what’s working and what’s truly going on within your buyer’s journey. The traditional marketing funnel may no longer apply to your buyers, which poses the question – Is the traditional marketing funnel dead?
Digital sales rooms. This is something we’ve heard talked about by analyst groups like Gartner, by marketing leaders, and by sales leaders all over. This new way to bring information to buyers is gaining a lot of traction in the B2B space. With the goal of simplifying the way buyers and sellers collaborate, digital sales rooms are something you may want to consider if you’re trying to create a better, unique and even bespoke buying experience.
Product marketing has become a crucial function for B2B revenue teams. Product marketers play a key role in understanding buyer needs and providing insights that help each sales rep improve their win rate and create better experiences for buyers. Product marketers are constantly researching, defining, and communicating the position of the product. But some organizations struggle to align product marketing and sales initiatives. The struggle to create a strong feedback loop is real! The struggle to inspire action or change is real! So, if you’re a product marketer, how do you take your learnings, your insights, your research, and use these things to create alignment with your sales and the rest of your organization?
Guest: Alynn Beyder, Head of Product Marketing, Bombora
Product marketing has become a crucial function for B2B revenue teams. Product marketers play a key role in understanding buyer needs and providing insights that help each sales rep improve their win rate and create better experiences for buyers. Product marketers are constantly researching, defining, and communicating the position of the product. But some organizations struggle to align product marketing and sales initiatives. The struggle to create a strong feedback loop is real! The struggle to inspire action or change is real! So, if you’re a product marketer, how do you take your learnings, your insights, your research, and use these things to create alignment with your sales and the rest of your organization?
Guest: Rish Bhandari, Founder and CEO of Content Beta
You don’t just win deals without first capturing the attention of your audience. A solid and effective outreach strategy when selling is key to helping you improve win rates. But it’s no easy feat… So how do you create an outreach strategy that is going to help you grow your revenue and have a positive impact on your win rates?
Guest: Rish Bhandari, Founder and CEO of Content Beta
There’s no better way to build trust than through the voice of your customers – we should know. We help our clients tap into the voice of their buyers and customers every day. But, as we say on this show, data without action is just data. One way to action on the data from the voice of your customer is through story telling. So how do you take the insights and experiences of your customers and turn them into stories that impact your go-to-market strategy?
Guest: Paula Pollock, Fractional CMO and Founder, Pollock Marketing Group
The buyer’s journey is changing, which means marketing and sales funnels are changing too. With buyer behavior shifting to self-education and solo research, go-to-market teams are having to rethink the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is not linear, and it can be difficult to understand all the touchpoints that influenced your buyers’ decisions. You may feel in the dark about what’s truly happening in your buyer’s journey. In fact, there’s a term for these “dark” touchpoints: The Dark Funnel. And today, we’re going to explore how you can conquer dark funnel marketing and use it to improve win rates and revenue.
Guest: Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner, High Tech Strategies
Launching a product is no easy feat. And aligning your marketing and sales initiatives when taking a new product to market can be even more challenging. When you launch a new product, you must consider the specifics of your market and build trust in the right places. In this episode, we’ll explore the framework for how to launch a product successfully with host, Ryan Cuellar, and Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner at High Tech Strategies.
Guest: Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner, High Tech Strategies
In any business, it can be tough to create awareness and accelerate market acceptance when launching a new product (or promoting an existing one). You have to build trust in the right places, with the right message, and with the right people. It’s an uphill battle. But never fear, in this show we give you the strategies and tactics to improve your go-to-market.
Explore the framework for how to accelerate market acceptance and shorten the sales cycle with host, Ryan Cuellar, and Warren Schirtzinger, Managing Partner at High Tech Strategies.
Guest: Sam Anderson, Director of Design Systems, Intuit
Sales and product must work together to ensure your customer’s needs are met. But in most B2B organizations, a strong, consistent feedback loop between sales and product is non-existent. Your sales reps are on the front line, and they have unique insight into how your product is perceived by your buyers, what features and benefits are most important to a buyer when making a purchase decision, and how your product is expected to solve for evolving client needs. Product leaders must also communicate with sales on things like product roadmap and product updates so that sales can speak confidently about your solution, better differentiate against competitors, and demonstrate product value. So how can you create a successful feedback loop that empowers both sales and product? How can you align sales and product in a way that helps you better serve your buyers?
Guest: Jonnie Anderson, Product Marketing Manager, Primary Intelligence
The insights you receive from your Win-Loss Analysis can be carried throughout the entire customer lifecycle. In this episode, we talk through the customer journey together to uncover how you can apply your Win-Loss Analysis throughout your customer journey and the impact your insights have in each phase. Learn how to optimize your customer journey through Win-Loss Analysis.
Guest: Nicole Andrews Peters, Report Consultant, Primary Intelligence
Win-Loss Analysis has a major impact on your front-line sales reps, but sharing win-loss insights with sales can be difficult. In this episode, we explore which insights are most relevant, how to create stories around the data, and best practices for sharing insights that matter with sales.
Guest: Jonnie Anderson, Product Marketing Manager, Primary Intelligence
Your buyer feedback from Win-Loss Analysis can uncover sales coaching opportunities for each individual sales rep on your team. By leveraging buyer feedback in sales coaching, you can personalize your sales coaching efforts, eliminate bias, and help your reps what they can change TODAY to win more. In this episode, we’ll discuss how you can use buyer feedback and Win-Loss Analysis to power your sales coaching efforts.
Guest: Jarod Greene, Vice President of Product and Customer Marketing, HighSpot
What causes biases in a win-loss program? In this episode, we’ll explore the reasons biases appear within win-loss analysis, what common biases to look for, and how to eliminate those biases in your win-loss program. We’ll also dive into how you can use marketing intelligence and sales intelligence to discover why your reps are really winning and losing.
Guest: James Gilbert, Chief Marketing Officer, Flip
Having a clear go-to-market strategy is crucial for B2B sellers. It creates alignment. It helps to optimize your buyers experience. But in today’s environment, you must find ways to make your go-to-market initiatives stand out because buyers are flooded, bombarded even, with mass amounts of information. It’s estimated that people are exposed to between six thousand to ten thousand ads every single day. So, in this sea of information and constant tug of war for attention, how can you capture your buyers’ attention and how can you continually nurture your buyers with go-to-market initiatives that stand out?
Guest: Jeff Winters, President at Sapper Consulting
As B2B sales and marketers, we understand that a multi-channel approach is crucial to nurturing and capturing your prospects. But today, we’re going to explore one, time-tested channel, that is key to winning more opportunities – Email. There’s a method to creating impactful email strategies in sales and marketing. You can’t just send random emails and expect your prospects to move through the funnel. So today, we’re going to explore how you can leverage email to win more opportunities.
Guest: Peyton Walbeck, Head of Marketing, Nectar
The way buyers interact with sellers is changing! We’ve mentioned this before on the show. Gartner estimates that only 5% of the buyer’s journey is spent with the sales rep – leaving about 95% of that buyer’s journey for nurturing and buyer exploration. Buyers WANT more and more to self-educate when evaluating a new solution. In fact, a survey from DemandGen Report reported that 77% of B2B buyers did not talk with a sales rep until after they had performed independent research. So how do we adjust our go-to-market initiatives to match this changing buyer behavior? How do we provide the right information to the right buyers at the right time? And how do we educate and empower our buyers throughout the entire customer journey?
Guest: Jamal Reimer, Founder, MegaDealSecrets.com
Enterprise selling. It’s a different beast. Enterprise sales reps face many challenges as they try to hit revenue goals. There are struggles around engaging with senior executives, crafting the right story, positioning your deal size, and building a relationship of trust so that you can expand your deals throughout the customer lifecycle. So how can enterprise sales reps combat these challenges? What strategies can be used to help enterprise sales reps close massive deals and grow those accounts?
Guest: Paul Bleier, Director of Sales Enablement, TELUS
When you think of sales enablement, you may think of assets, pitch decks, battlecards, and other tangible pieces that sales reps can use to win more. But sales enablement goes beyond! Sales enablement includes the interpersonal interactions and relationships between reps, leadership, and other departments in your organization. Your company culture and the culture you build within your sales team should enable or empower your reps to win more. What we will explore today is how does organizational culture impact sales enablement and vice versa?
Guest: Carolyn Klinger, Director of Market Intelligence, Affinity
B2B businesses often struggle to find the best ways to go-to-market. With evolving buyer preferences, new or emerging competitors, and changing economic climates, your go-to-market strategy must be more effective than ever! So how do you go about nailing your go-to-market strategy and gain a deep understanding of what your buyers truly care about? Well, your buyers will tell you how to go to market… you just have to know how to ask and how to listen! And Win-Loss Analysis can help you do just that!
We know strategic alignment throughout your organization is crucial to increasing win rates. In a previous episode we explored specifically how to create alignment and end the battle between sales and marketing – but when it comes to strategic revenue operations, alignment goes beyond that. In today’s episode, we’re going to explore strategic alignment in B2B organizations from the top down. Let’s talk about why the misalignment occurs, how you can identify it quickly, and how you can create strategic alignment within your organization between all customer-centric departments?
Guest: Joe Ferrero, Vice President Global Revenue and Sales Development, Seismic
It’s no mystery – sales is a tough profession to be in. As we’ve talked about before on the show, the time sellers have with buyers is shrinking as the buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience. Gartner predicts that sales reps only have 5-6% of the B2B buyer’s journey, and in this time they must understand how they can make the greatest impact on an opportunity outcome.
This is part of why we do what we do at Primary Intelligence – to uncover the unbiased reasons for wins and losses for each rep. To enable them with buyer feedback that helps them sell better.
But win-loss is one piece of the puzzle. So how can we enable our reps to build trust, differentiate, and – ultimately – increase wins?
Guest: Rob Fandrich, Senior Manager – Sales Engineering, SPS Commerce
Losses to competitors hurt. Understanding how to differentiate from your competitors is key to winning more competitive opportunities. But what happens if a deal is already lost? Can you use competitive intelligence to reverse a lost opportunity outcome? Tune in and listen to one of our customers tell the story of how they turned a lost opportunity to a win by tapping into the voice of their customers.
Guest: Brian Trautschold, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Ambition
It’s easy for sales reps to get discouraged or to lose motivation. When things get tough, prospects go silent, or deals are lost, your sales reps may feel discouraged, unmotivated, and negative – and that negativity is contagious! We see this in our win-loss research. The experience with your sales rep can make or break an opportunity outcome. And when a rep becomes unmotivated, the buyer’s experience with that sales rep is sure to suffer. And this is detrimental to win rates. So how to we prevent this? How do we as sales leaders keep our reps motivated and engaged?
Guest: Jason Bay, Chief Prospecting Officer, Blissful Prospecting
Cold calling – most reps dread it. And it makes sense! It’s uncomfortable talking to someone you don’t have a prior relationship with – especially when you’re ultimately trying to sell them something. And according to GONG, there’s a 1.48% chance of a positive outcome from a cold call. It feels like the odds
are stacked against sales reps when it comes to cold calling. But never fear. Cold calling doesn’t have to fill you with dread. Join us as we explore how each rep can improve those cold call outcomes with Jason Bay, Chief Prospecting Officer at Blissful Prospecting!
Guest: Sean Dowdle, Executive Vice President of Global Sales at Filevine
There has never been a better time to be a seller! There is more technology, information, and means of connecting with our prospects and customers than at any other point in history. At the same time, the complexity of selling is through the roof and the variety of pressures on salespeople, sales leaders and sales teams can be soul-crushing.
What can sales leaders do to inoculate themselves and their teams against these pressures and complexities? What is one thing they can do to give themselves a competitive advantage in this complex and pressurized sales environment? Well, it turns out that the highest performing sales teams are also the ones that purposefully build and maintain winning cultures.
Now, there’s almost nothing worse for a sales team than unchecked, rampant negativity. Negativity can be infectious, it causes innumerable problems for sales teams and it’s super easy for it to take root in your culture.
As sales leaders, we can directly impact and ultimately reverse the effects of negativity on our sales floors. We have the power to create and foster a winning sales culture within our team.
Guest: Kevin Dorsey, Practice Lead – Revenue Leadership at Winning By Design
A buyer’s experience with a sales rep can make or break a deal. In a recent study, we found that 36% of losing vendors could’ve won the deal by making a change during the evaluation process. Most often, buyers attributed the loss to something in the sales experience – even above price or product feature! But when you ask a sales rep, they’ll likely attribute most losses to something beyond their control – like price, missing product feature, or timing. The experience your sales rep creates with the buyer is crucial!
So how can you empower your reps to create the right experiences for your buyers? How can you help them build trust, differentiate from competitors, and really demonstrate value throughout the sales process?
Guest: Frank Maylett, Chief Revenue Officer, Sales and Marketing at Instructure
In today’s episode, we’re exploring a topic that seems to be on the minds of every B2B revenue leader right now – growth. Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it. But how do we create and implement successful growth strategies? Discussing how sales intelligence plays into growth strategies is Frank Maylett, Chief Revenue Officer at Instructure.
Guest: Arpit Choudhary, Head of Sales Development, Blend
B2B sales teams have experienced a shift in the past few years. We’ve all felt it. The pandemic has caused many sales teams to transition into a remote or hybrid work environment. As sales leaders, it can be tough to hire, onboard, and coach when you don’t have that daily in-person time with your new reps on the sales floor. So how can you identify top talent and skills quickly when building your team? And how can you empower your new reps to start winning as soon as possible?
Guest: Ben Zoldan, Co-Founder, Storyleaders
Personal connection – We all want it. We all need it. But as the buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, it can be tough to build personal connections with prospects during the sales cycle. Yes, sales reps MUST lean into data and analytics to understand how to win more – but layering in a personable approach to sales in crucial to building customer relationships. So how do we do this? How do we build those strong connections with prospects?
Guest: Paul Whited, Director of Sales Operations, Green Shield Canada
Sales confidence. Some reps have it. Some reps don’t. Some reps fake it. BUT all reps NEED it. As sales leaders, we must empower our reps to help them build confidence when selling. When a sales rep shows up ill-prepared for a meeting with a prospect, it shows. Reps must be able to confidently tell the right story, speak confidently to competitive claims, and build trust in order to win more. So how can we prepare our reps to show up to every meeting with confidence?
Guest: Sophie Pagalday, Director of Product Marketing, Locus Robotics
In most B2B organizations, the struggle to create alignment throughout your customer-centric departments is real. We see it all the time. Sales and marketing may get misaligned on process or messaging. Product may be developing features that don’t actually solve for a customer’s need. CX may be delivering something different than what a customer was sold. Executives may be creating strategies and goals without real insight into your competitive position. Misalignment can occur everywhere.
And when you don’t create alignment throughout your organization, you can struggle to hit revenue goals, fail to solve customer needs, and slow business growth.
Guest: Matt Dixon, Ph.D., Co-Author of The Challenger Sale and Founding Partner, DCM Insights
As salespeople, we must build trust with our customers. Whether we’re prospecting, conducting discovery calls, or deep into pitching to the buying committee, building trust is a vital piece to increasing win rates. But, building trust can be a struggle for sales reps and this directly impacts their pipeline and close rates. As the buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, sales reps are having to find new ways to build trust with prospects. So how can reps build those strong customer relationships throughout the sales process?
Guest: Jamie Shanks, Author of Social Selling Mastery and CEO of Pipeline Signals and Sales for Life
As salespeople, we must build trust with our customers. Whether we’re prospecting, conducting discovery calls, or deep into pitching to the buying committee, building trust is a vital piece to increasing win rates. But, building trust can be a struggle for sales reps and this directly impacts their pipeline and close rates. As the buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, sales reps are having to find new ways to build trust with prospects. So how can reps build those strong customer relationships throughout the sales process?
Guest: Steve Richard, Founder, ExecVision
As sales leaders, we’re always trying to empower our reps. When they win as individuals, you win as an organization! But for B2B businesses, the time your reps spend with buyers is shrinking. We’ve mentioned this on previous episodes – As the B2B buyer’s journey shifts to a digital experience, it’s estimated that your rep’s only get 5% of that buyer’s journey. And in that shortened window of time, they’re still expected to build trust, differentiate from competitors, and demonstrate value to close deals at the same rate. This puts an increased pressure and responsibility on sales leaders and coaches to understand where reps are struggling and where to focus coaching efforts to make an impact, build sales rep confidence, and increase win rates.
Guest: Denis Champagne, President at Lotus Communications
C-Level executives are key players in the buying committee for a B2B purchase decision. However, it can be hard to compete for an executive’s time and attention as a sales rep. But, it doesn’t have to be this way. Sales leaders can help their reps capture the attention of C-level executives, better demonstrate value, build trust, and differentiate from competitors – and ultimately, help your solution stand out in a sea of vendors. There’s an art and method to prospecting in the C-Suite.
Guest: Steve Frame, Founder, Strategic Revenue Partners
We’ve heard it time and time again – it’s more expensive to get a customer than to keep a customer! The struggle to decrease churn and grow account revenue is an uphill battle for most B2B organizations. A recent study shows that 30% of SaaS companies reported a rise in churn rates in the past year. But what’s the root cause of this? Why are customers not renewing? And how can sales and customer experience work together to decrease churn and grow account revenue?
Guest: Sam Anderson, Director of Design Systems, Intuit
Sales and product must work together to ensure your customer’s needs are met. But in most B2B organizations, a strong, consistent feedback loop between sales and product is non-existent. Your sales reps are on the front line, and they have unique insight into how your product is perceived by your buyers, what features and benefits are most important to a buyer when making a purchase decision, and how your product is expected to solve for evolving client needs. Product leaders must also communicate with sales on things like product roadmap and product updates so that sales can speak confidently about your solution, better differentiate against competitors, and demonstrate product value. So how can you create a successful feedback loop that empowers both sales and product? How can you align sales and product in a way that helps you better serve your buyers?
Guest: Patrick Leddin, Ph.D., Leddin Group
Since the beginning of 2020, we’ve seen the shift that sales teams have experienced as more companies implement a work-from-home environment. Sales teams have had to adjust and learn to function on a virtual sales floor. Sales leaders have had to find better ways to communicate, coach and receive coaching, and continually discover better ways to build trust and camaraderie between employees. Join us as we discuss the things you can do as a sales leader to create a successful virtual team environment.
Guest: Logan Mallory, VP of Marketing at Motivosity
In some organizations, sales and marketing teams don’t play nicely together. When the end of the month approaches and numbers are in danger of falling short, fingers start pointing and blame starts shifting. Sales is frustrated with lead volume or quality. Marketing is frustrated by sales process or outreach. Neither team wants to take responsibility for missed targets. But, sales and marketing are always working towards the same goal – so why the animosity between them? In this episode, we’ll dive into why the battle between sales and marketing occurs and how leaders can eliminate this battle to create better alignment between teams.
Guest: Mark Kosoglow, VP of North American Sales at Outreach
More than ever, sales reps must rely on data, analytics, and technology – rather than intuition and experience – to know how to win deals. This means that the way that sellers learn about and interact their prospects is changing. With about 80% of the buyer’s journey happening through digital channels – your sales reps only have a small percentage of time spent with your buyer to seal the deal. This means that your sellers must have the resources and information they need to create a buyer-centric sales experience. In this episode, we’ll dive into best practices for sales enablement that can help you empower your reps to win more.
Guest: Craig Daily, Chief Revenue Officer, Aktify
It’s no secret. The traditional sales process is changing. Leaders are having to help reps adapt and find better ways to reach their prospects through technology, automation, and data and adjust their sales playbooks to increase win rates. In a world where the buyer’s journey is shifting to a digital-first experience, how do you ensure the sales experience fits into that digital environment while still providing that genuine human experience for your buyers? Join us as we explore the digital transformation of the sales traditional sales process.
Guest: Chad Sanderson, Managing Partner, ValueSelling Associates
Sales coaching methods impact your win rates. In this episode, we’ll dive into coaching strategies that you can use to help your reps succeed, how coaching has evolved during the pandemic, and how you can determine what is and isn’t effective when it comes to your coaching methods.
Guest: Aurelia Solomon, Director of Product Marketing, Drift
The buyer journey is changing. Now, more than ever, it’s important to create a digital experience that prepares your buyer before an interaction with sales. In this episode, we’ll explore ideas around guiding the digital buyer through personalization, how you can use conversational intelligence to create better opportunities, and how this digital guidance impacts the sales experience.
Guest: Steven Bryerton, SVP & Head of Sales, ZoomInfo
Your contact database is full of insights that can help you win more deals. In this episode, we’ll explore how you can leverage your contact data to optimize your sales experience, create better opportunities for your reps, and increase win rates.
Guest: Kristine Davis, Director, Marketing Intelligence & Analyst Relations, Beeline
Your buyers will tell you what it takes to win their business. In this episode, we’ll dive into the ways that you can better leverage your buyer feedback as part of your marketing strategy. From competitive intelligence to sales enablement and beyond, we’ll explore the ways buyer feedback can help you make data-driven decisions for strategic direction.
Guest: Jarod Greene, VP of Product and Customer Marketing, Highspot
What causes biases in a win loss program? In this episode, we’ll explore the reasons biases appear within win loss analysis, what common biases to look for, and how to eliminate those biases in your win loss program to discover why your reps are really winning and losing.
Guest: Dan Dawson, Senior Partner – Chief Sales Officer, Force Management
Sales intelligence matters. In this episode, we discuss the current state of sales experience, how it’s evolved over the years, and what we foresee sales intelligence to look like in the future. We’ll explore why sales intelligence is so important to the success of your business and steps you can take to improve it.
Ready to learn more about increasing sales win rates?
Our Host
Ryan Cuellar, Chief Delivery Officer, drives all facets of data acquisition and insight creation that our customers love. Relying on his extensive leadership, consulting, and presenting experience spanning multiple markets and industries, Ryan helps to contextualize the data to answer peoples burning questions.
Prior to joining Primary Intelligence Ryan served as Sr. Consultant and Healthcare Client Partner for FranklinCovey, Ryan served as Sr Consultant and Client Partner for Red Tree Leadership, where he had the privilege of working with a variety of clients, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies.
Ryan has a rich history of notable accomplishments. In the years prior to Red Tree, he served as Partner at Visual Marketing Group, where he was responsible for the successful execution of key initiatives in product development, business development and workflow through-put . To add to his accomplishments, as CEO of U.S. National Finance Ryan grew the organization from a local to regional presence opening new markets in the mountain west and pacific north-west.
Ryan has consulted in a wide variety of industries from banking, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, government and the TV and film industry, and has helped numerous organizations get their employees engaged and aligned to their strategy, including organizations like the US Marines, GM, Microsoft, Agilent Technologies, HCA, Kawasaki, L3 and LinkedIn.
Our Writer & Producer
Jonnie Anderson started her career in content, researching and compiling live events in US metro areas to be displayed on online calendars for various publications. It’s here where she developed the personal mantra “experiences are greater than things”, which she applies throughout her life and work.
Her role shifted to customer success and sales where she performed live demos and supported customers to align solutions and business needs. She became the Director of Client Success at SpinGo in 2017 and oversaw all customer-centric initiatives for the company.
However, she always had an interest in marketing, so she left her position as Director of Client Success to pursue a marketing-focused path. From there, she became a marketing consultant and helped customers better utilize social listening within their marketing campaigns. She then moved on to a position in email marketing and marketing operations.
Jonnie now oversees the marketing initiatives at Primary Intelligence and has a special love for sales enablement because of her days in sales and customer success.
Jonnie was born and raised in Las Vegas, NV, but moved to Utah to attend Southern Utah University, majoring in dance and broadcast journalism. She is a roller coaster enthusiast, loves the outdoors, and enjoys living in Utah where she can longboard, snowboard, and paddleboard frequently with her husband and two little girls.