From Oil Changes to Global Revenue Enablement leadership: how grit, tenacity, and self determination builds endless possibilities

The CRO Spotlight Podcast, Powered by the Growth Firm Production. Hi, I'm Warren Zenna, founder and CEO of the CRO Collective, and welcome to the CRO Spotlight Podcast. This show is focused exclusively on the success of Chief Revenue Officers. Each week we have an open, frank and freeform conversation with top experts in the revenue space about the CRO role and its critical impact on B2B businesses. This podcast is the place to be for CROs, sales and marketing leaders who aspire to become CROs and founders who are looking to appoint a CRO or want to support their CRO to succeed. Thanks for listening. Now let's go mix it up. Welcome to this episode of the CRO Spotlight Podcast. I'm Warren Zenna, the CEO and founder of the CRO Collective, and it's been a whirlwind week. I was just spent some time in San Francisco and in Vegas speaking with a couple of conferences. I'm. I've developed a partnership with CRO Summits, the Chief Revenue Officer. Summits has been really, really fun and I'm meeting amazing people, really great people who want to go to these events, you know, which is great. The event circuit is kind of back up again because I like it. I like going and being around people and talking to people. I just, I'm like that, kind of more of an extrovert and you know, I always meet great people. And I just met someone who's amazing and her name is Terry Long and we have this amazing conversation. She's a great speaker and just really surprising me with her background. It was amazing stories. So I asked her to be on the show. So she's. She's here today, so I'm introducer. So Terry is the VP of Sales and Revenue Enablement at MindTickle and a MindTickle is a Revenue enablement company. We're going to talk a bit about that, what that means, but I'm going to let Terry kind of do her own intro and we talk about this. But basically, you know, she comes from amazing background in sales, moved away up to a lot of different companies. But you know her, how she started and how she got herself off the ground is really incredible. I'll let her tell the story, but welcome to the show, Terry. So great to have you here.

Thank you, Warren. It's wonderful to be here. I'm excited to see you again.

The first thing I'd like to ask you is what's revenue enablement? What is that?

Great question. I wish there was one consistent definition of revenue enablement, but there is not okay. Every company has a different view on what it means to enable. What I will tell you from my perspective is anything as it relates to knowledge, to skills, to process, to product, to tools, anything within that wheelhouse belongs to revenue enablement. And it's our job as the partner with the sellers, the partner with all the key stakeholders to figure out how to optimize all of that. How to increase, you know, effectiveness and efficiency are the two buzzwords that constantly go out. And that's the truth. It's about effectiveness and efficiency. But as I mentioned, some organizations still look at it as content enablement is just content. Are you curating content? Is your field consuming content that is legacy, that is not revenue enablement. From any, any view that I have and what I've seen in the marketplace over the last five years, it's evolved into this big, hairy, complex, ambiguous opportunity for somebody who has, number one, been in the space for a very long time. It's allowed us to really extend and push the limit a little bit and show up differently, which is changing ultimately the direction of where enablement is going. And that is, as I mentioned, around more optimizing the entire experience that a seller has.

So I get it. It makes perfect sense to me. I guess one of the questions I get from people is how is that differentiated from sales enablement? Like, what is there connected, Are they different, are they cousins? Or what's the relationship between those two things?

Sure, we could call them cousins. Sales enablement historically just was enablement for sales. It's the seller, your frontline sellers, your BDRs, your AES. Revenue enablement came into play when people started to realize that it's no longer about the seller journey, it's about the customer journey. And the customer journey starts at prospecting and extends from prospecting all the way through deal close professional services. So in order for us to effectively enable, we need to enable across the entire revenue stack, and that is revenue enablement. So you're looking at it from the lens of a customer journey, touching every single intersection versus just the seller journey, the front end.

Yeah. So, I mean, look, obviously, you know, you and I have spoken, so we're aligned on this whole idea.

Sure.

Which is why we're talking. But it's good to hear you articulate it. And of course I agree with that idea in general, but I think something that's interesting to me is like, so then, you know, again, I'm looking at it from like the outsider's perspective, which is just like this. The world has become really Crowded, you know. So would you say then that a revenue enablement initiative competes with a sales enablement compet? Like could you have both of those organizations in one company and if so, how do they like work together?

No, I haven't seen them the same. Because, because they are, I mean they're within the same family. Revenue enablement. You're either revenue enablement or your sales enablement. When, when it started, when the transition started, I think it started more from a buzzword. Hey, we're going to, we're going to call it revenue enablement. It isn't until recently, I think within the last 18, 12, 18 months that people really started to identify no revenue enablement really means that your customer journey focus. So you would not have both, you would have one or the other. Either your enablement function really focuses on BBRs, AES, however, whatever you, you call your team or they focus on the full scope of the revenue stack.

So it's like a, it's almost like a philosophical distinction, right? Like some companies are more sales focused and some companies are more revenue, are more customer focused and maybe, I don't know, but you're likely out there in the marketplace looking for companies that have more of a customer centric profile because they'd be more likely to utilize what you do as opposed to companies that are more of a sales profile. They may say, yeah, we really just want to enable our salesforce. Is that what you say? That's right.

I would say that is accurate. And there's a shift. And we saw this at the conference, we were just at. The shift is seller journey does not hold precedent anymore. It really is about customer journey. So what are you doing within your organization to set yourself up for success? Because not only that, but the role of the seller has changed. It's no longer necessarily a hunter and a farmer model. So they're changing roles, responsibilities, which also means fundamentally enablement needs to shift. And that opened the door as well for this new revenue enablement name nomenclature to exist. I think.

Yeah, I agree. Here's the thing, and you probably are feeling the pain too around this one, is people have a lot more money and a lot more calories that they can dispel in their sales departments for many reasons. Right. Which is why sales gets a on, you know, kind of unparalleled amount of attention and focus and development because, you know, there's an understandable perception that that's where results occur and you know, that's a place where investors and other constituents, the surrounding business can look at to make determinations about a company's health.

Right?

But it's no different than saying, you know, and I, we've talked about this, you and I, just using that through like a personal health model, you know, like just because you have one metric that shows that you have a good, let's say, you know, you have good blood work, it doesn't mean you're healthy, it just means you have good blood work, you know, so if I use my blood work as an indicator of health, you know, it's maybe a false positive for me. And I think that the sales or organizations have a tendency to create a lot of white noise and obfuscate a lot of lack of health in other areas of the business. Because look at our pipeline and look at the close rates we have. But how long do you keep customers? Are they happy? Are they getting what they want? You know, and I find, I, I recently there was a post on LinkedIn, this one CEO who's frequently posting about his company's growth and gives a lot of metrics and you know, a lot of, like this sort of like, you know, rah, rah, rah about, you know, we hit 20 million ARR last month and all this stuff that he did. And my question to him in the comments was, are your customers happy? And like he didn't have an answer, you know, and to me that, like, that to me is a more important distinction. However, however, why did he post that? And the reason he did is because that's what people want to hear. They want to hear how much money you're making and how your sales organization's working. So it goes right to the problem that we both have, which is getting companies to think more about the health of the company from a customer perspective. How do you deal with that? Like, how do you get companies to sort of, you know, make that shift from sales focus to a revenue.

That is. Great question, Warren. So a couple of things. One, I would say, well, first of all, is it sustainable? That's great, you landed it. But is it sustainable when you say, you know, a customer being happy is just one data point. Just because somebody says they're happy doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to stay. It doesn't mean that they're going to renew. That doesn't mean they're going to expand. And so I think at an organizational level, you got to get really honest with yourself. This comes back to just looking in the mirror, sitting down with your leadership team and saying, one, are we truly focused on the customer journey? And if so what does that journey actually look like? And how have we set our customers up to be successful? What does that look like? So a couple examples of that. When one of the companies I was at, which this is a problem I think every organization faces. You get the deal, customer goes through onboarding, and then the next thing you know they're not leveraging the product, or if they are leveraging your product, your decision maker has somewhat exited the experience. Your economic buyer doesn't necessarily know what's going on. And pretty soon the engagement starts to get lackluster and you're wondering why your customer's not calling you back. They're not getting on calls, Terry. I can't get them to pick up the phone. I can't provide value. And so taking a step back in those situations and actually digging into the root cause of what is like, what's happening here, where did we miss the mark in that situation? When we went through the exercise, we found a couple of things. Number one, when we close that deal, we presumed to understand why somebody was actually purchasing the product. We presumed to assume that our onboarding team understood how to effectively onboard based on why they bought the product. We presumed that the customer really understood how to leverage the product in such a way that it would drive the business outcomes that they believed they signed up for. The problem with all of that presuming was the fact that the customers really didn't quite understand what they purchased because what they thought they purchased was different than what they actually purchased. And so there was a massive translation issue because things were being sold. And you know what, I came from a sales background too, so I'm not throwing anybody under the bus. I'm being honest. Sure. Do we try to sell something and maybe we're not always giving the full picture and. Absolutely. It's the way that it works. The problem with that model, though, is the more that that happens, the more quickly our customers become frustrated with us because they didn't get what they thought they were supposed to get. So now you have a customer service organization that's getting beat up left and right and can't understand why somebody won't get on the phone. Well, they're not getting what they wanted. So we had a solution for that and that was our success proposal. And this vehicle that we created was allowed. True. Really, it was an authentic way of providing visibility into not only what was being purchased, but skin in the game was with the buyer. So before the deal even closed, they were curating this proposal together. That was then moved all the way through that process. So during onboarding, we were revisiting, we were confirming and validating. This is what you purchased, this is what we, we're doing with the product. This is what we're solutioning for. And so it wasn't just a land plan, it was a land expand plan. And you had the buy in and you had the engagement and then you were really showing up with insights and value that people cared about because you were helping them solve for something. Not just in three months, but it was the six month, the 12 month, 18 month. And there was a curation. It was really, it was a different mindset and it took a lot. I'm not going to. It was a, it was, it was definitely changing from fixed mindset to growth mindset and really encouraging a discipline that the field had not experienced in the past.

Yeah, it would seem that would be disruptive, particularly if the process that you're doing, which clearly logically makes sense, if it's going to land a better outcome for the customer, is going to slow down the sales process, which nobody wants. Right. I mean, it's like, what are you talking about? We got to get this deal closed. I mean, why are we adding all these dumb questions? They're ready to buy, just give it to them, you know?

Right.

And I get it. And it's got to be tough to say, well, hold on a second, you know, because I like you. I mean, I, I'm, you know, look, when, when you own your own business, I care incredibly that the person's going to get the value out of what they got from me, because it's me they're getting it from. If I'm a frontline salesperson, I care about my commission, you know, or whatever else I'm getting rewarded for or with the incentivizations are. And I think this is sort of where I want to go with this is. I think that this is where incentives play such a role in all these things. And I do think that the incentives and commission plans and compensation plans that sales organization structured these days is designed understandably, they try and get as much deal flow as possible.

Correct.

But if, if the, if the incentives were changed to be like customer satisfaction or you know, customer life cycle, the salesperson would have a much different investment in the process than they would this way. And you know, it's. Trying to change the culture to make that happen would be difficult. But I do think that that would be a really smart way for companies to start thinking about themselves. And again, like you said, it sort of Depends upon I think two things. There certainly is a mindset like certain companies are just sales orient oriented but some of them are that way because that's the way the business is like. It could be like a SaaS or a subscription based business where getting as many customers as possible is sort of the reason the business is in existence. Whereas if you're selling something that has more of a longer term complex value then you really have to do wor about the steps that happened, you know, three or four months after the close. And I, I think this is where I think my, my opinion. You tell me if I'm wrong or not. But the revenue enablement function or philosophy is well suited for certain types of businesses that, where that issue is more prevalent and where it's a threat to the business.

I would agree, I would, would agree 100% because you really, I mean th. Those are the question. What's the cost to the business every time we lose those customers?

Yeah.

When we're churning, what is the true cost of the business? How much does it cost us to go get a new logo versus keeping an existing logo, expanding that. And again, we're not talking about anything. Nobody, everybody knows this. Anybody that's been in business knows this. It's just harder said. It's harder done than said. And back to your point, the slowing down to speed up is so critical. And enablement, I believe can come in, especially the revenue enablement scope can come in and help tell a different story. Especially when you partner with the CRO. Because at the end of the day, I don't know that everybody looks at it this way. A CRO and an enablement leader have very similar goals. We both want predictability in business. Why? Because if I'm doing my job well, I should be able to help establish that predictability in the business. You as a CRO want predictability in the business because that's what your board wants. And you want to be able to put up the right number and demonstrate success over time. So do I. That's what I want to. So I think we're just, we're at a point in time where we have to be asking different questions. You went back, you made a comment about incentives. If you incent somebody to not only land a deal but, but have skin in the game to keep that customer, to own that renewal, that's different. That not only feels different, but that means that I need to do my job differently. And now we're going to go down a whole different path. Which means you need to enable Those people differently because the competencies that make up a seller who is transactional, who just needs to go in and close a deal, that's one type of seller, somebody who needs to do both sides. Those are different sets of competencies. That's a different behavior, and that requires a different type of enablement. And the same thing on the CS side we were starting to see. Again, you know, your CRO session talked a ton about this, but your customer success teams traditionally have been your nurturers. You want to nurture the customer and now there's a change in the, in the environment and it's, hey, I want you to nurture, but I need you to sell too. Again, you are changing fundamentally how these people are wired and how they're set, how they've been set up for success in the past. And so we have to transition. Enablement has to look at that different, flip it on its head and figure out how to change those behaviors based on the programming that's put into place.

Yeah, and I agree the CRO would be, in the manner which I define it, the CRO would be the perfect partner to a revenue enablement initiative, for the obvious reasons, but.

Right.

You know, I'm curious what your thoughts are then on like, if you sort of like make a distinction between revenue enablement and rev ops, how do they, you know, I mean, I, I probably assume. I'm curious to see what your thoughts are on that rev OPS person being, in my view, a critical team member for a CRO. What's the way in which a RevOps function. How would a CRO manage a RevOps function in relation to a revenue enablement initiative?

Managing the function as part of an initiative. So one, OPS and enablement are critical partners. They have to be an interlock all of the time. Any company that has enablement and ops working together, but not speaking, not partnering, there is failure written all over that. And for various reasons. But as a CRO, who has enablement and who has OPS reporting in, you know, the, the functions are doing complementary things. One, in this instance, ops is really the, the engine behind the enablement team to help identify from a data perspective. I mean, we're, we're looking at data, we're looking at process, but the OPS team is really getting into the, the true nucleus, the like, the nuances, the details, helping to analyze, doing segmentation, doing modeling that enablement doesn't do. It doesn't mean enablement couldn't play a role in that. And there's places where there's a natural overlay for enablement. But as a CRO, you're going to your, typically you're going to your ops team to say, this is what I need to do. It doesn't matter what the initiative is, I need to do X. The ops team is really working to help build the framework for what needs to be done. Splicing the necessary data, helping to identify the right roadmap. That roadmap then is going to enablement. Enablement is layering on what they need to know and what they need to do. What do I need the sellers to know? What do I need them to do differently? And, and how do I need to make that an integrated process throughout the entire journey of that seller and that customer? And that's kind of the interlock between all of them. And it's, it's honestly a feedback loop because once that happens, there's an iteration process that goes on over and over and over again to understand what's working, what's not working, identifying key themes, identifying gaps, et cetera.

Yeah, I totally got it. I'm with you. In fact, I would see so how a revenue enablement organization would be perceived as a threat to sales enablement organizations at this stage in the game, you know, because I just think there's some bigger thinking system thinking or collaborative alignment related thinking is a much more compelling, you know, longer term strategy for a company. Even though, oh, people are, you know, like, you know, when you're, when you're injured, you know, you, you're like, okay, I gotta go get, I gotta go get that looked at. But you know, it's probably related to a lot of other things. But this is what you go to the doctor for. And I think sales tends to be the squeakiest wheel and you know, there's probably a good business opportunity for something like that. But I do think ultimately it's just a symptomatic fix. It's not really solving the bigger problem that companies have. You know exactly squarely what it is I'm talking about when it comes to why chief revenue officers shouldn't be running sales. Because it's just, it's the, it's putting the emphasis on a place that's ultimately not going to be sufficient enough to build the company and drive the right business model in the way that a CROs should be. So I just want, I just want to switch gears a bit because there's a lot of stuff I want to talk to you about. So I would love to hear a little bit, you know, because in like get this awesome background you know, you, you're. You're a motorcycle instructor, you know, you're a fitness, you know, competitor, you're a musician, and you've had some really cool past, and you talk about all this stuff, and it's just really interesting. And there's, there's so much going on in your past and, and your. The way you've got where you are today, that's really fascinating. I want you to talk about that a little bit more. So how did you start out? How did you get into this? You know, how does Terry Long end up being in revenue enablement? Like, what's the journey that you took to get this place? Now?

It was an unexpected journey, but as we talked about, you know, it started in an oil change. So I was a single mom, was 20 years old. I needed a really good job that could pay me enough money so I could work during the day, go to college at night and take care of my son. And I've told many stories, and I think some of this we talked about before, but I learned so much in that job. Not only because I was the first female that they had ever hired, but I had to fight for that job. I had to convince the owner that I could do that job. They didn't want to hire a female. They never hired a female. It was dirty. It's disgusting job. You come out of it with burns. You just. It's a. It's a tough job. But I think that job taught me so much about myself in terms of resilience and grit, and it helped me understand customer service and customer success at a level that I hadn't in the past. And it also gave me enough motivation to realize what I didn't want to be doing for the rest of my life. And I wanted to become something more. And so after two years, I kept going to school. But that's when I really took my professional job. And I was doing inside sales. And that inside sales journey turned into working for various companies, moving into office max, moving into their management program, moving my way through that program, and then getting back into sales. And once I got back into sales, I moved. You know, it was 10 years at Deluxe, where I was doing everything from the old school. We joked about this, the Rolodex, the door to door, pick up the phone. It was old school. Selling it was driving without a cell phone, stopping at a pay phone to make the phone call, looking through the phone book. And I know it's so hard for people to understand, but that's. That's the world that's what it was like.

Well, I'm with you. I am with you.

It was the way that there's nothing wrong with what sellers are doing today. But I will tell you, the amount of tenacity, the amount of persistence, your dedication and your drive, it is. You have to have something different. You have to have something different to be successful, because that is. That's a different experience. Having a door shut on you is definitely different than having the phone hung up on you. Being outside the comfort of your home, having to drive, having just anybody that's done that understands everything I'm talking about. It's a different level of grit. So fast forward, I'm doing that. I'm in the BDR type role. I'm doing customer success. Because we owned all of that back then. You didn't own just selling, you owned renewing. So we owned that entire customer experience. And during that period of my life, I started teaching motorcycle safety. I went got certified with the state. I loved motorcycles. I'd been riding. My dad was a motorcycle instructor. It was his second job. And we. Everybody in my family has always worked two jobs. Not because we needed to. It just. I think we're a little bit of workaholics. We have passion for things and then we go do it. But I did that. And while I was doing that, our SVP of sales at the time came up to me one day and said, this is about nine years into my sales gig, and I'd already moved up. I'd been a strategic account manager and was helping to run a team. And he said, terry, why are you. Why are you not in enablement? Now? Enablement at that time was technically training and competency. And I said, I don't know. He said, you should be. I'm like, why? He said, because you're really good at it. He said, it's no different than what you're doing with motorcycle safety. And at that moment, I didn't quite understand what he meant. Like, it's totally different. This is not the same thing. But what I found was I trusted him. Number one, he was a sales leader that I definitely trusted. And I said, you know what? I'll give it a shot. And as quickly as I said yes, I found I found myself being so passionate about solving problems, helping sellers, taking all of the things that I knew weren't working and finding ways to make them work better, making that experience as a seller more effective. And so that really is when everything started opening up for me. Training and competency turned into enablement. I continued to move up in the organization. I got my first job in a SaaS company who said, hey, you're doing great. Come about enablement for us. And I will tell you, I was scared to death. You want me to build out enablement? You don't know what enablement is? Nope, we have no idea. But come build it. Come build a team. And I would say that that role, you fail a lot. You fail a lot and that's when you learn. And so that failure, I think, is what really drove me to be even more successful because I learned and I kept applying and I would try something else and then we would learn again. And from that point on, it just continued to evolve. And I've been so fortunate that I've been able to move across various organizations across the U.S. most of which have been global, some enterprise, some startup. And I have a great, I have a great network of leaders who continue to tap me on the shoulder and say, come here, come over here. Help us. And each time it's a new experience, it's a new challenge, but at the end of the day, it really has come back to it's a problem solving, it's helping make people successful. And I get so excited about that. I get very excited about that. You can stand back and I can look up on stage and see everybody up there who made President's club and know that we had our hand in the game. Or you watching a company go from, you know, you watch somebody go public and you realize that some of the programs that you have curated have influenced the success of that organization. It can be as small or as big as you want it to be, but overall, it's just being able to be part of, of driving that success.

That's great. It's a cool story. I love it.

Thanks.

So now. Yeah, so. So it's crazy. So you worked in a. You, you did oil changes?

I did, I did.

And like, can you still, like, fix cars and stuff? Just like a skill that you carried on? Are you, are you the one that goes out and fixes the vehicles in the house? You probably re. Fix all the motorcycles too, I would imagine, right.

Now, let's, let's be clear on the scope of my, my skill set here. I don't fix the vehicles. Okay. Yes. Can I change oil in a car? In a truck? Yeah, that, that's still not an issue. Do I want to do it? That's another question. I mean, I don't really like to crawl under a car anymore and get that dirty, but I will Say, it's so cool being able. Like, I've taught my girls, they know how. It's like, let's open up the hood. Let me show you everything you need to know under the hood. Let me make sure you understand where things are at, that, that part of it is really fun. That's cool. But no, I leave, I leave most of that now to the people that.

I understand that do it for a living. Yep, I get it. Of course. So what's, what would your dream motorcycle be? If you could get one motorcycle, what would be the bike that you want?

I already have it. Which is Harley Fatboy. It's actually a Fat Boy Low. It's all black. If anybody that knows me, I'm, I like black toys. So I've got black snowmobile, I've got a black truck, I got a black motorcycle. Right now I'm looking for my most favorite black muscle car. And if you ask me what my favorite muscle car is, I'm not going to be able to tell you.

Okay.

That will just ruin the surprise. Once I get it and I can show you, I'll be like texting you, Warren, look what I just picked up.

But I can tell you what mine is.

What is yours?

68 Camaro.

Oh, that's a nice. What color on it?

No, I was thinking like, more like I've seen them because I go to car shows a lot and.

Okay.

And the one that I find my most attracted to is, is that that year they made this really nice blue. It was like this sort of like, it wasn't like a navy blue. It was sort of like a cobalt blue. Sometimes they had the white stripe across the hood and over the top, you know.

Okay.

But that car is, I stick to the Camaro. That's the one that just, I love it. So that's my, that's my muscle car.

When are you gonna get it?

No, it's a good, good question. A lot of other things I gotta, I gotta deal with right now, deal with first before I can get that. But that's, that's a car I really like. My dad was a big car guy. He knows everything about cars and we go to still go to car shows together. It's, it's amazing.

So, yeah, there's something nostalgic about all of that. And yeah, I, I, I probably, I, I know there's not a ton of people that feel the same way I do. But I'm, my husband loves the fact that I'm like, we need a bigger garage and a bigger pole shed. Because I have. I have a lot of toys that I want to buy someday. So for them, good.

It's good ambition. It was funny you were talking before about, you know, old school sales. I just did another podcast episode with a friend of mine whom I've known for over 30 years, and he actually hired me my. My first job and taught me how to sell. And, you know, he and I traveled all over the country, just like you said, you know, going door to door to offices. We'd have like seven meetings in a day, right? We'd stack the day, and we'd walk into the office, we'd sit in the guy's office, and we'd hammer down the whole thing. And, you know, like you said, sometimes we just walk in the building, we'd look at the lobby, and we'd see other companies that were in there. We'd go in there and say, hey, Bob, we're in the building. We thought we'd come by, you know, and sometimes we. We got deals. But, you know, like, I, I just. The. The idea today of having the Internet available to you and all these, you know, scraping tools and, you know, zoom info and Apollo and Navigator and all the other stuff. Some of these, I mean, look, not to take away, you know, the amazing talent that some of these people have, but there is something about even, frankly, dating apps, which I've never used because, you know, I got married way before they were around, right? But I see my son, you know, using them. And I think, I mean, we had. We had. We had to walk up to a girl and we had to ask her out and just say no right to your face. You know, it was like, go away and do it over and over again. You know, I didn't have the. I couldn't swipe while I was in my bedroom. I had to go do the work. And I do think that there is this. I think there's like a lost skill in relating to people and interacting with people in a very personal way, in a very confronting way. And I say confronting that negatively, but just, you know, when you're in that milieu with two people kind of having a conversation, you have to work it out together. And, you know, you want something or you want to persuade them about something, no matter what it is, you have to do it in person. You know, it. It creates a certain type of character that, you know, I know I. When I meet all the old salts and look at the two of us, you're like, well, these, like two, you know, kind of old bogeys Here. And I know we're not. But, you know, it's funny, it just seems like a unfortunate thing that while technology has enabled us to do so many things, it's taken away so much of our ability or the skills that we need to survive in very difficult, confronting situations that make us better people. I do believe that, and I believe it as well.

One, I would say I did use a dating app, whatever, seven years ago. It's, it's horrible. It's really horrible, Warren. Like, it didn't last very long.

I've never even looked at one. I never even, like, you're not missing anything.

It's, it's, it's. Believe me, it was, it was miserable. My girlfriend at the time, she's like, you're divorced. You should try it. And I did. And I was like, this is not for me. Probably because I'm more old school. But back to your point, there's, there is a lost art to communication, to relating to people, to demonstrating empathy, active listening. Those elements have been lost because of technology. And again, I agree with you. Technology is not to blame. But even we as practitioners have talked about what do we need to do differently. Because, you know, we all have. We've got conversational intelligence, right? A lot of these companies, we have something in our platform that helps us record and listen to our calls. It is not the same having a conversation with you via Zoom than it was whatever two weeks ago when you and I sat and had dinner. It's not the same.

Yep.

There's a different level of connectedness now. Back that up even further. And I think any of us that have had conversations with generationally, I can tell you, with my kids, it's a lot harder because the phone, because there's always a safety net. This is my opinion. I feel like we have taught them that there's a safety net and you don't have to expose yourself. You don't have to be vulnerable, you don't have to be authentic because you've always got something to hide behind. That didn't exist before, it didn't exist now. There's going to be 18 different angles, people that are listening to this, that can take directionally, take this argument the place. When I look at it from a revenue enablement perspective, I really think there's an opportunity for us as leaders to start teaching the other, the younger generations how to engage more effectively. I also recognize that digital body language is going to be the way to go, and we're going to have to teach them how to relate even Digitally, it's a different experience. Think about text messaging. People are texting now with, you know, sales calls and prospecting. You don't interpret a text message the same way. Everybody looks at three words and can interpret them any different way. How you present yourself digitally, what you have in your background, how close I am to the camera, how far away I am from the camera, how I use my hands, what I know about you, how I inject that in the conversation, how I actively listen to the empathy that I'm showing you, the look on my face. I mean, these are all things that seem so fundamentally simple, but they are truly a lost art. And learning to coach, learning to recognize that in your sellers and be able to coach that in the moment and help them recognize it and get better and better and better is huge. We're doing that right now. I'm doing a big pitch competition with my sellers. And so our top three, three sellers right now who submitted their pitches, that, that did what I consider the best out of the group. I'm doing one off sessions with each of them and we are dissecting every single thing about their pitch. Not what they're saying, how are you saying it, when are you saying it. It's not just about your upfront contract. It's about everything in between. It's all of the elements of your Persona non verbal and verbal. And those are the things I think that are missing. We, I can tell you, I, the highest percent of calls that I listen to, I hear the same thing happening over and over again. I'm asking customer question, question, question. You answer a question. I don't even acknowledge that you answered that question. I just keep asking more questions and more questions and more questions because we've, we've been that. I think there's a generational in sales, at least, I think there's a group of sellers that have just been primed to say, just keep asking questions. And you couldn't do that before. You couldn't be in a room when you're sitting next to somebody. You can't just keep peppering questions. They'll get up and walk away. So things have changed. And I think with that revenue enablement leaders, all leaders, have to really think about how to change their approach because we need to meet them where they are and we need to really elevate what they're doing to, to try to bridge that gap.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting you say these things. I, I agree. How much of this is sort of because of a cross generational thing? We're experiencing. We're, we're like, look at you and I, right? So we come from this different sort of era, you know, where. And it's probably one of the reasons why we connect, right? We just like kind of speak in the same language and we kind of, you know, and, and, and it's a good thing, you know. But, but so if you're a younger person, let's say you're in your 20s and you're working at a company and the buyers are our age, that gap is going to be a problem for that younger person because I'm kind of accustomed to being spoken to a different way than somebody who's their age. Now as this stuff starts to even out and the buyers and the sellers are more like from the same era, I don't know. I think that the entire conversations are going to be different. I think to your point, it's going to be continually become more and more of a digital or a text based or an email based discussion. I see some people have interactions for entire sales and they never talk. It's all through Slack or text and they close the deal. Because to your point, I just don't think that a lot of younger people are sort of conversed in having dialogue. You know, they just, they, they use their tools. And frankly, I'm a bit concerned about that for a lot of reasons. I mean, I think that the whole sales training and the sales disciplines are going to completely change. Like the ways that I train people to sell may be antiquated to the point where like, get out of here you old fogy. I don't want to hear this crap. And the other thing could be that, you know, you don't really sort of sell anymore. You sort of have this like sort of weird digital dialogues. I mean even, you know, my, my, my kids, like when they text me, it's all, you know, like little, what are they? Acronyms?

Acronyms.

Yes, I know, I've learned how to learn them and I'm pretty good at it now. But you know, it's you know, shortening up the sentences to its minimum to the point where there's no real emotion. It's just like, just the data, you know. As a matter of fact, one of my, my daughter sent this me this funny meme she got on on Instagram, which is a kid making fun of the fact that when he texts his father, his father sounds like he is like the CEO of a company. Yes, we will be at dinner later and I will see you down there at 12. You know, and that's like just they're laughing about how this, how much nonsense we put into the communication. So my point I'm making is I think I maybe hope I'm not right headed in a direction where, I don't know. I think salesmanship as a discipline is going to become for very few, very small segment of the population that sells things where that's required. But the rest, I think people are going to sort of just. I sort of hope not, but I don't know. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not really sure, but I don't. I more and more feel like sort of like an old fogy in a lot of these conversations. And I'm hopeful that maybe it, the pendulum swings the other way because ultimately, you know, we do need to talk to each other and I'd like to keep it going. That's why I'm having, that's why I do this and have conversations with people, you know, for like an hour. We can talk about something.

You know, I don't think it'll, I don't think it's going to go away fully. I do agree. And we're seeing it. It's changing. It's changed. It has. How sellers want to learn has changed. You know, they don't, they don't want to go through a week long boot camp in person. They want more just in time, on demand. Micro learnings that are very engaging, you know, are their, their level, their attention span is so much different. I'm not saying the way we did it before was right, but it, that part has changed. The entire buyer journey has changed as far as how often they want to interact with. But I mean, when it comes down to it, people are people. We as humans, we need interaction.

I think so.

We need it to survive.

Look, I think so. I don't know.

I'm not going to get into a whole debate around Covid, but I will tell you, my experience with COVID both work and personal, not having that interaction, human to human interaction, was debilitating. And I truly believe that that side of sales, that side of business isn't going to go away. It's going to evolve, it's going to change. And we're going to have to start getting creative about how we inject different types or other elements of, you know, this, this stylistically, some of these learning styles, we're going to have to think creatively about how to do that. But that won't go away. People buy for the same reasons. People are always going to Buy for the same reasons that. When has that ever changed? There's a financial reason.

Look, I agree. I tell my people all the time, people don't make business decisions, they make personal decisions. They're just shrouded in business decisions. But it's a personal decision.

Right. So I think to your point, there. Yes. Are there places in the market where transactional sales with little to no human interaction are going to happen? They will forever. There's always going to be that. But there's also going to be a space for this. And I think the one thing that we're going to do that will limit us is not evolving as leaders, enablement leaders, any leader. We need to ensure that we don't keep ourselves stuck in where we were and what we think. And we have to be open to new approaches, new ideas, new ways of learning, new. You know, I make it a habit, number one, I. People on my team, little bit of a sidebar. People that are on my team have to have sales experience. You have to be relatable. You need to understand what it felt like to be a seller. You can't be on my team, just bottom line. But number two, I love bringing in various perspectives, and it tends to be various ages because, one, it keeps what we're doing fresh. I am seeing generationally, from various levels, what works, what doesn't work. There's different. There's different sides to all of this. So I think we've got a lot of work to do, but it's. It's still exciting. And besides the fact that, you know, I'm learning, I have fun. I learn things every day.

Damn right. And I'm using a lot of these things. I mean, I'm. I'm a wonky tech nerd. So, you know, as much as I sound like an old fogey, I'm really not.

But except for dating apps, you're not using those. Clear. Okay, good.

Good. No. So anyway, I mean, I want. How do people get a hold of you? What are you up to? What's next for you? What's going on for you? What are some things to look out for? I know you're out there in the circuit right now doing a lot of speaking, and you're great at it, by the way. So tell everybody a little bit about, like, just some things that are going on or maybe how they can get a hold of you or what to look for. Anything you want to share about what's going on for the next, next year, before the end of the year.

So I'm a Massive goal setter. I think you know this about me. I love setting goals. So personally, I have my Next Fitness competition October 21st, so let's make that happen.

What is that now, if you don't mind me asking. They say fitness is like, are you weightlifting? Like what are you doing? Exactly.

So npc. So fitness competition, they'll do bikini class, they'll do wellness class, they'll do fitness class. I end up doing the bikini class. And basically it's, it's spending 12 to 16 weeks in prep where you're doing very physical activity. You have a very strict regimen of meal prep, or lack thereof as I call it right now, since I'm three and a half weeks out. You work with your coach, you work with your posing coach, you work, you know, the days are long. I'll be honest with you, Warren, it's like you get brain fog pretty quick because you're so limited in one. You're putting out so much physical energy with all of the weight training and then you're limiting your intake. But people, I will say this, I've been asked, well, why would you do that? Is it like a vanity thing for you? It's like, that's like the opposite of what it is for me. When I decided to do it last year for the first time, I did it to prove to myself that I could do something so outside of my wheelhouse that was going to challenge me physically and mentally. I work out all the time, but not to that level. Not to a level where I was going to put myself up on stage and physically challenge my body and mentally challenge myself, myself to be able to, to do all of that, still work my full time job, still travel and do my speaking circuit, still take care of my kids. I was like, I need to prove to myself that I can do that and I can still win, I can place. And I did. And, and so for me it was just this personal accomplishment. The best part of it is my kids watched. And coming out of that, my kids were, they're like, mom, we didn't even know you had that side to you. It had nothing to do about wearing a bikini. It had to do with the discipline of we saw you get up every single day at five in the morning and still manage to get everything done and still like you functioned. Like how do you do that? And I was, you know what? I, I learned a level of discipline for myself that I didn't even know I had and it was great. So I have, that I just finished working with actually it's right here with Baker Communication. So this book came out. I participated in writing this book. I'm working with another gentleman right now on my own book. So that is just starting. We're in the very, very early stages of that. So that's something I have on my goal for next year. My son gets married next year. A lot of speaking engagements, like you said, through the end of the year and I don't know, we'll see what's next.

That's a pretty packed, that's a pretty packed calendar. So I'm really exciting. I'm really amazing. It's so great. Like you're, it's really amazing all the things that you're doing. And thank you. It's infectious. So, so thanks so much for, I know, taking all the time away from all those crazy things you're up to and talking to me.

No, you're welcome. Yeah. To your point, I'm, I'm always, I love connecting with people. I really do. So you, you know, my email people can call me, you can text me, you can email me. I'm happy to sit down and talk to anybody. I love any conversation. I'll talk about pretty much. Especially if you want to talk about motorcycles or snowmobiles or cars. I really get into that. But we can talk about work stuff, too.

Okay, that's good to know. So, and where is it, like LinkedIn the best place for people to find you?

Oh, sure. LinkedIn would be great. You can email me at Terry Long at Mindtickle. Personal email address Terry Lynn 474 Gmail cell phone 651-829-5507 just find me.

All right. Well, great. You're an open book. I love it.

I am.

As I expected. I love this conversation. Thank you again for coming and I'm sure we'll see each other soon. I know we have a couple of things that we're going to be kind of co connecting on, so I'm looking forward to that.

Yes, Mel, thank you. I appreciate you asking me. It was a really fun conversation.