Why We'll Always Need Sales People | Salesman Podcast

Roland T. Rust is a distinguished University Professor, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and author of The Feelings Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy.

In this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Roland explains what the “feelings economy” is and why more artificial intelligence might be a good thing for sales professionals whilst it wrecks other industries.

You'll learn:

Sponsored by:

Featured on this episode:

Resources:

• Roland on LinkedIn
• Book: The Feeling Economy: How Artificial Intelligence Is Creating the Era of Empathy

Transcript

Will Barron:

Hi, my name is Will, and welcome to the Salesman Podcast. On today's episode, we'll be looking at selling with emotion in the feeling economy. Our guest, Roland Rust, is a distinguished university professor at the School of Business at the University of Maryland. He's the author of The Feeling Economy, which we're going to cover in this episode of the show. And with that, Roland, welcome to the Salesman Podcast.

 

Roland Rust:

Oh, thanks very much. Happy to be here.

 

What is the Feeling Economy? · [00:45] 

 

Will Barron:

You are welcome, sir. I'm glad to have you on. I try not to cover it too much before on our pre-call, pre-recording chat, but I think we're on the same wave length with a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So it'll be interesting if there are any points that we do diverge, but I think we're all on the same wavelength with a lot of this. To get us started, this is seemingly a lazy question for an interviewer to ask, Roland, but I'm going to ask you it because I want you to set the scene here. What the heck is the feeling economy?

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah. Okay, very good question. The feeling economy is maybe an unexpected consequence of artificial intelligence, because there have really been a couple of main shifts in technology in the last 150 years. The first was the move toward the thinking economy from the physical economy. So in other words, you had people in the physical economy who were doing things like farming and mining coal and doing physical exertion, and men really dominated at that time. And then around 1900, you really started to see an expansion of the thinking economy, and one of the things that you saw was a very much larger percentage of people became educated, because they had to, to compete in the thinking economy as thinkers. During that time, then women became much more equal. You see many more women in high positions than you did in the 1800s or 1700s.

 

“The shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking. And the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they can do better than AI. For the most part, that's things like feeling, interpersonal relationships, and to some extent, we're also going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time.” – Roland Rust · [02:05] 

 

Roland Rust:

So now the shift that's happening now is from the thinking economy to the feeling economy, and the reason for that is that artificial intelligence is getting good at thinking, and the more thinking artificial intelligence can do, the more humans are pushed into doing things that they're better than AI at. For the most part, that's things like feeling. Feeling, interpersonal relationships, to some extent, for a while, we're going to have an advantage on things like common sense and intuition, but even that will probably go away in a little bit of time. So what our research suggests is that no later than 15 years from now, most jobs will be more feeling jobs than thinking jobs, and that shift is already well underway.

 

Why Humans Struggle Having Emotional Conversations With AI · [03:10] 

 

Will Barron:

Immediately, I've lost all the questions I was going to ask, Roland. We'll drag it back for salespeople and business towards the end of the show. But a couple of things here. When you say salespeople are perhaps, people in general, salespeople in the context of this show, are perhaps better at emotional intelligence, feeling, empathy than AI right now, is that because AI literally can't do those things, or is it because when a human engages with an AI, they don't like that happening, they don't like that emotional kind of conversation happening? They prefer to do it with a human, and so it's a limitation of the person that's doing the engaging, or is it very literally that AI can't handle that from a technological standpoint at the moment?

 

Roland Rust:

Both of those things are true. Both of those things are true. One is people right now don't fully trust AI. They've seen the Terminator movies or whatever, and they just are a little bit concerned about AI and they don't really trust AI to really have our best interests in mind. So there is that problem, but the other problem is that AI really just isn't very good at it. AI is struggling. To do this right, what AI has to do is it has to understand people's emotional expressions and it has to then respond appropriately emotionally.

 

Roland Rust:

There is active research in both of these areas. So for example, one of the things that AI is getting a lot better at is trying to figure out people's emotional reactions from how they look, what their face looks like, what kind of expressions do they have on their face? AI is getting better at that, but it still isn't that good. It's not as good as a person doing this, and fortunately that'll be true for a little while.

 

AI and the Nuance of Emotional Expression · [05:06] 

 

Will Barron:

Sorry to interrupt, Roland, just I think this point's really important. How tangible is this, how objective is this? Because I know when my girlfriend comes home from work and she's in a mood about something, I know there's something up, but I can't quantify it like perhaps a computer programme would want to, and it's trying to weigh different things up. I'm just getting a gut feeling that I want to be polite to her as she walks through the door. How much of this is down to, if you were trying to score this and I was trying to compete me against an AI, it would be very difficult to say who is better at this, so what's the barrier to this? Is it people's ability to recognise some of this stuff, or is it the objectivity of AI achieving a certain standard, that it becomes human-like?

 

Roland Rust:

Well, right now people can pick up the nuance of emotional expression a lot better than machines can. I mean, machines are picking up, if I have a big smile, they can pick up that's a smile or a really bad frown, they can pick up that. But there are nuances. For example, I might be pretending to smile.

 

Will Barron:

Sure.

 

“I believe that salespeople are in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. They are working with interpersonal relationships and that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.” – Roland Rust · [06:50] 

 

Roland Rust:

I might be actually very upset. “Say, that was really nice of you to park in front of my driveway so I couldn't get in.” That little nuance would be picked up by my wife very, very easily, but machine is going to have a really lot harder time. Now, one thing I would say, I know that you're really talking to salespeople more than anybody else. I want to tell the salespeople that they're in absolutely the right job. They could not be in a better job. That they are working with interpersonal relationships, and especially that's not going to go away easily in B2B. It may be easier to get rid of that in B2C. A lot of B2C is done online now, but a lot of B2B is too big and too important to be done online, and so people in B2B sales are absolutely in the right place.

 

Roland Rust:

If I had to suggest a career path for a salesperson in B2B, I would say there are two possible career paths that would both be very good. One, stay a salesperson in B2B and be really good at it. That's one career path. And then the other career path is become a sales manager, because the sales managers are also going to be in demand, and that's a job that can't easily perform by a machine.

 

Will We Ever Get Rid of Salespeople in The B2B Selling Environment? · [07:50]

 

Will Barron:

Will this ever change? And this is more like a thought experiment than something that I can practically see in the real world, but I've talked about this before on the show, Roland, it seems like a lot of B2B deals could be done by, and you're the perfect person to ask this to, an AI like API and it plugs into the seller API and it plugs into the buyers API, and the AI looks at the data of the buyer and says, “Oh, well, perhaps we can help with this. We can bridge this, we can provide this,” and then they go, “Well, okay, here's a fair transaction,” the deal's done instantly and the salespeople are wiped off the face of the planet. Is that something that is plausible to happen, or is there so many moving parts in that, that it'd be too difficult?

 

“If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on an API system. So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see salespeople in those arenas going away anytime soon.” – Roland Rust · [08:45]

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah. I mean, we already have that. I mean, there are many, many companies that are connected that way, but typically it's for more routine things. If you're wanting to, for example, sell a bunch of jet fighters to the federal government, I guarantee you're not going to do that on that API system.

 

Will Barron:

Sure.

 

Roland Rust:

So the bigger and more complicated the deal is, or the more it's not routine, then the more people are going to be involved. I don't see that going away anytime soon. There are a lot of big, important deals being done.

 

How to Future-Proof Yourself Against the AI Takeover · [09:10] 

 

Will Barron:

What can salespeople do to future-proof themselves other than, just get a better at sales is quite generic, right? What can we learn, do, be, have that would be very difficult to replicate by the AI that inevitably is coming for all of us at some point, right?

 

“AI is coming for all of us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI. Because what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI because that's what the managers are looking for.” – Roland Rust · [09:34]

 

Roland Rust:

They are coming for all us, I'm sorry to say. It's really something that is going to get us eventually, but we can hold it off to some degree. So one way to hold it off is to get good at teaming up with AI, because for a long time, what's going to be happening is AI is going to be doing the thinking part of the work and the humans are going to be doing the feeling and interpersonal part of the work. Salespeople, they don't have to be machine learning experts, but the salespeople need to be good enough to be able to team up with AI, because that's what the managers are looking for.

 

Roland Rust:

They don't care who does the job. They don't care whether AI does the job or the human does the job. They could care less. What they care about is the job getting done. So what's happening now is that AI is getting better at certain parts of the job, and so humans need to not be threatened by that, need to just accept AI as a teammate. That's the way I like to think about it, as a teammate, and try to be a good teammate for AI, just like AI is trying to be a good teammate for the human.

 

How to Incorporate AI Into Your Daily Sales Activities · [10:50]

 

Will Barron:

And let's go back to basics, just for someone who perhaps isn't familiar when we talk about AI and the thinking side of business, and perhaps even life in a wider context, Roland. What is AI good at? What should we proactively be letting AI replace in our workday so that we can become more effective and leverage the tools that we have that will make the biggest difference?

 

Roland Rust:

Well, the thought for a long time was that really all AI could do was the very routine sorts of monotonous tasks that were done over and over and over again. And so the thinking was, “Well, as long as you have a good STEM job, you're okay.” But of course, that's not true anymore. Actually, the STEM job people are in much more risk than the salespeople, because the salespeople are in a feeling economy job, and a lot of those STEM jobs are going to be taken over by AI.

 

Will Barron:

So the regular audience will know, I forgive you for not knowing this, Roland, but I've got a degree chemistry. My dissertation was in computational chemistry, part published elsewhere in journals and that, but what we were doing was trying to take the lab work out of the lab and give such proactive and effective modelling in the chemical environment, and it was just computing power that was holding us back from going for larger proteins and interactions. We were stuck with hydrogen vibrating, bouncing off over hydrogens and doing analytics and simulations based on that. But at some point, we're going to have the computational power to not have to use a lab. At some point, you're going to be able to put a problem into a computer, my brother's an analytical chemist, and at some point you're going to be able to put these problems into a computer and go, “Hey, we need this outcome, run a billion different calculations and different simulations and work out something that we can then verify in experimental form.”

 

Will Barron:

And so I think it's actually really exciting and really empowering for the audience to hear you say, Roland, that all of these nerds, which is me in a prior life, who are on their high horses doing all this lab research, looking down on us knuckle-dragging salespeople, we're the ones with the potential career and the job security there. That's a weird dynamic that I know the audience haven't heard anywhere else.

 

The AI Takeover of STEM-Related Fields · [13:30]  

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah, that's true. And it's interesting what you were talking about, about modelling things with chemistry. In the broader sense, it's called a digital twin. You create a computer model of what it is you're trying to model, and of course the computer model that models the thing that you're trying to model has to be much bigger than the thing you're trying to model, but that's been done for computer systems for many years. They build these little computers inside these huge mainframes and treat them as a digital twin. But now the digital twin idea is going much further. We're modelling more complex systems using these techniques, and that gives us a lot more insight than we used to have. So some of the things that used to be impossible to work out are now being able to be worked out, which means that people had better concentrate on the feeling side of things and not try to I'll think that.

 

Will Barron:

So you mentioned right at the top of the show this progression through the centuries and there being limited real crux points where the industry as a whole changes dramatically and massively, and as you pointed out there, and I think you purposefully did this, because this be an interested talking point for us, women, females are becoming, via the industry changing and technology changing, are becoming more, via… I feel bad as I say this, right? I'm trying to be politically correct when we're having a scientific discussion here, so I don't know why I'm overthinking the words that I'm saying, Roland. Just to throw it out there for the audience, as they hear me stuttering as I try and say this.

 

Women, Emotional Intelligence and the Future of AI · [15:05] 

 

Will Barron:

I'll just be blunt about it. Are we going to move into a position where women typically, stereotypically, data led shows that they have perhaps a higher percentage chance of having more emotional intelligence, having more empathy, are women that fit these categories going to come into their own in this modern world of sales, where we're going to partner up with AI, where some of the thinking, more male aspect roles stereotypes… You can clear this up in a second as I finished this terrible question, but are we getting to a point where the traits that women typically have or lean into more are going to be beneficial, versus us grunting men who've dominated the sales industry over the decades and decades that have come prior?

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah, I think a lot of the fact that you still have men having an advantage in certain kinds of sales are really more a matter of inertia. That it's kind of a holdover from the 1950s and 60s world, where the men were the breadwinners and the women stayed at home and raised the kids. But the fact that the women traditionally over many, many millennia have been the ones that stayed home and took care of the kids actually give women a tremendous advantage in the feeling economy, because that nurturing and that empathy that's natural to them, even to a greater degree than men on average, will serve them really well. This is going to be a great time for women. Women should-

 

Why Women Will dominate the Feelings Economy · [16:47] 

 

Will Barron:

Is this change happening now, Roland, or is this something that is a iceberg, slow glacial moving? Because there's many pieces to this puzzle, of access to jobs, biases perhaps, maybe, maybe not biases in companies and employment and that kind of thing. Is this something that there's data on now, that the gap has changed, equaled, performance has changed within the marketplace? Or is this something that-

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah, we can really see this happening. We can measure it. We've done a lot of examination of US government data, for example, and based on that, we have current research that's basically showing the degree to which women gained an advantage from the feeling economy and what kinds of jobs they're getting a greater advantage in. But we see this all over society, not just in business, not just in sales. If you can just take a look at the number of countries that have women leaders, that's a much greater number than it used to be. It used to be unless you were a queen, and you were a queen because the king, your father had you, but now people are electing women leaders. I mean, certainly Angela Merkel was an extremely powerful woman, but there are many, many women leaders around the world, much more than before.

 

Roland Rust:

And in fact, if you take a look at the countries that have women leaders, their economic situation is better on average by far than the average country. I think that the reason for that is that the economies that tend to be the most advanced are also the ones that women can be the best at, because they're the ones, they're the economies that are closest to the feeling economy today.

 

How Women Can Make The Most of Their Innate Traits to Compete in the Current Sales Environment · [18:47] 

 

Will Barron:

What can the women now, forget us blokes for a second, what can they do to make the most of any innate traits that they have, whether it be emotional intelligence, empathy, whatever it is? What do they need to lean into, to not necessarily outcompete men, but outcompete the current marketplace?

 

Roland Rust:

I think that women have the ability now to stop trying to be men. That sounds weird, I think, but I mean women have tried in the past to emulate the people that they've seen that have been successful around them, and that's typically been men. And so you find women trying to be more masculine, trying to hide their feminine side. You saw that with Hillary Clinton running for President of the United States. I mean, from all indications, she's a very warm person to the people around her, but at the same time, when she was trying to be a politician, she really covered that up. Same thing with Margaret Thatcher in England. Margaret Thatcher really tried to change her voice. She made her voice deeper, so that she would sound more serious and more masculine. That's something that we're going to see for a while, but it's going to go away, because women really benefit from being more feminine in today's feeling economy.

 

Feminine Traits in the Feeling Economy · [20:20] 

 

Will Barron:

Is it that they benefit from being more feminine? I'm sure there's an element to that. How much of it is that they benefit from just being authentic and congruent as well on top of all this?

 

Roland Rust:

Well, when I'm saying that they're going to be better or they're going to be more feminine, I really mean that they're going to be more nurturing, they're going to be more empathetic. They're going to have more sensitivity toward the others that they're working with. These are feminine traits and they're very, very timely.

 

Roland Reveals the Things Men Can Do to Stay Relevant in the Feelings Economy · [21:03]

 

Will Barron:

I know, and we're talking in broad strokes here, what can men do? Say like, and this is not me, say like I was super masculine man, I've just got testosterone squirting out my eyeballs, I'm super assertive, and sometimes that can help the sales process when you know you can really help someone and they've got their own baggage or stress or issues, and you just need to nudge them over the finish line of a deal perhaps. Assertiveness can help in certain selling situations. But perhaps I'm overassertive, Roland, I'm verging on the point of being a bit of a pain in the ass with my customers, but I get the deal done. I'm an ex-athlete, yada, yada, all the stereotypes. What can I do as this hyper masculinized ridiculous man that doesn't exist to lean into the future of the feeling economy and to have success there?

 

Roland Rust:

I guess there are a couple of, I'll talk about a couple of extremes of what men can be like, and then talk about each one, because I think depending upon what kind of for person the man is, he would need to do different things. So for example, if somebody's just a hyper masculine sort of person, then I think the thing to recognise is that there's probably going to be some retraining needed, and the retraining would be to try to build up the empathetic ability, build up the people skills, build up the emotional IQ. Sometimes if somebody's not coming to that naturally, then they need retraining. One thing that the universities are going to have to get good at is bringing thinking economy people in, such as for example the hyper masculine people, and try to make them understand and appreciate the emotional intelligence part. So I think that it's a retraining for them.

 

Roland Rust:

Now, there's another set of people, and the other set of people are the men who are perhaps very sensitive to begin with. I feel as though I fit into that category. I've written poetry and done music and things like that, and I feel as though sometimes on the job, I need to kind of hide that, or have felt that in the past. Now, at this point, realising what's happening in the economy, I'm trying to let that part back out again, because I realise that's a very useful part in today's economy. That if I'm more sensitive and more empathetic, that makes me more effective. So I'm trying to stop hiding the feminine part, if you will, of my myself and allow that to come out, because that is going to be very helpful and make me more effective.

 

Is Emotional Intelligence a Learnable Skill? · [24:00]

 

Will Barron:

Sure. Are things like emotional intelligence, I don't know, it seems like they should be, but I don't know if there's any science data on this, are these learnable skills? Sure, there's maybe some genetic elements to this, maybe there's a nature-nurture argument to some of this as well, and as you're describing there, this idea of masculine traits, feminine traits is a massive sliding scale, and depending on multiple factors, we all end up one place or another. But are these traits that are going to be valuable in this feeling economy, such as emotional intelligence, be able to have an empathetic conversation with someone, are these learnable traits or are these innate and hardwired?

 

Roland Rust:

Well, I believe they are learnable traits. I mean, a lot of this stuff has been taught in management courses for years. So I think it is learnable, but I think we're not used to thinking about feeling skills as being something that's part of formal education, but maybe we need to change the way we think about that.

 

AI is Much Broader Than Machine Learning · [25:03] 

 

Will Barron:

Okay. Final question for you, Roland, before we wrap up, I'm going to ask you to share a little bit about the book in a second as well, and that is, and I always ask, because we talk about AI regularly on the show. Typically, within the context of this podcast, people say AI, what they mean is machine learning, right? They mean, we are going to jump in our CRM system, we're going to type in a potential customer's name, the company's name, and the AI/machine learning is going to say, “Oh, there's a trigger event. Someone just left this organisation, this just happened, that happened, and it says we should call them in three weeks from now, because statistically, that's a good time to get in touch.” So I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet with all these sales technology companies who say AI, when clearly we have different definitions of these things, but with that same point.

 

Roland Rust:

I think that it's important to recognise that AI is broader than just machine learning.

 

Will Barron:

Yep.

 

Roland Rust:

Machine learning is the thing that has made AI extremely popular today, because it's been shown that it can do very well with prediction. So you have that, but I mean, these CRM systems that you're talking about, they're AI. They're AI, they're just not machine learning in that sense.

 

The Difference Between AI and Machine Learning · [26:14]

 

Will Barron:

What's the difference? Just so I'm clear, so I can have more informed conversations on this. Is there a definition of what AI is in the context of machine learning? Even better in the context of a CRM or something, if you're familiar with Einstein from Salesforce, or Oracle's different AIs.

 

Roland Rust:

Yeah, and I've done CRM systems myself.

 

Will Barron:

Perfect.

 

“I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.” – Roland Rust · [26:41] 

 

Roland Rust:

So I know about that, and I think of AI as being anything that uses computing machinery to emulate or do better than what people are doing in their thinking. So, the CRM system would definitely be AI in that definition, and I don't see anything wrong with that. We don't need to limit ourselves to machine learning, and in fact I think that's a mistake. Machine learning, in the end, I think is going to be shown to be limited. I think that it's probably limited to predictive ability.

 

Will Barron:

Sure.

 

Roland Rust:

Aside from that, I think we need to have perhaps different approaches. For example, one approach I use is Bayesian learning models. That is a statistical approach really, it's not using the neural network approach at all, but that is just as much AI as anything else. It's just a different way of doing AI.

 

How Long Before We Start Living in an AI Dominated World? · [27:43] 

 

Will Barron:

Sure, okay. Well, we'll wrap up with this, Roland, my final question, and obviously no one knows the answer to this to the date, to the year, but how far are we away from there being an AI and maybe this gets replicated and scaled, that can do… I don't know, like for example, you can ask it to do admin tasks and it'll just go off and do them and you'll have your spread sheet back with your expenses and your mileage, and all this kind of stuff that everybody hates doing. It's a waste of time, but typically humans do it because, in my experience, some of the tools that are out there, they need double checking by humans anyway, so a lot of people will just go, “Well, I'll just get it done,” but it's a bad use of their time.

 

Will Barron:

How far away are we from that kind of AI, where we can verbally tell it something, perhaps it looks at us and reads a little bit of our emotions as whether we're demanding it's done right now or whether it can be done next week, or whatever it is, and then it goes and does perhaps an admin-esque task?

 

Roland Rust:

The answer to your question I think is it's going to be quicker than you think, because what you're really talking about here is common sense and general intelligence.

 

Will Barron:

Sure.

 

“According to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. And the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense and general intelligence to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human part of how we deal with other people. That's going to be our greatest advantage over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years ahead, I think AI would be better than us at everything.” – Roland Rust · [28:58] 

 

Roland Rust:

And it'll take decades I think for that to really come about, but according to our analysis, the feeling tasks will be more important than the thinking tasks by about 2035. That's on average. That is a huge difference, and the reason for that is that AI is going to be better and better at common sense, and better and better at general intelligence, to the point where really what's going to be left is the very human people part, of how do we deal with other people? That's going to be where our greatest advantage is over AI. Now, I think if you go out, let's say 30 years instead of 15, go out 30, 35 years, I think AI would be better than us at everything.

 

The AI Takeover is Coming. Brace Yourself · [29:45]

 

Will Barron:

Well, that was what I was going to ask you. Roland, when are we just obsolete? Surely this is something that you ponder on after a few pints or a few whiskeys on a Friday evening, and we're going totally off context here, and we'll wrap up with this, but when do we just become just pointless, we're just these meat sacks that are not needed for AI to do its thing?

 

Roland Rust:

I think 30 or 40 years.

 

Will Barron:

Wow.

 

Roland Rust:

And that's what Ray Kurzweil calls the singularity. It's where AI just becomes better than us at everything. My best guess would be 30 or 40 years for that, and those of you who are going to be alive 30, 40 years from now, good luck.

 

Parting Thoughts · [30:30] 

 

Will Barron:

Well, we'll wrap up with that bombshell, Roland. With that, mate, tell us where we can find out more about the book, The Feeling Economy, where we can buy it, and then where we can find out more about yourself as well, sir.

 

Roland Rust:

Yes, okay. The book, The Feeling Economy, which is coauthored by Ming-Hui Huang, who is my longtime collaborator and wife, that can be found on Amazon. Just type in The Feeling Economy on Amazon and you'll be able to find it easily. And if you want to contact me, I'm happy to be contacted. Just Google Roland Rust, and I will come up, I guarantee.

 

Will Barron:

Amazing stuff. Well, I'll link to the book, everything else that we talked about, and a few articles if people want to read close into this topic, because it's top of mind for me with all the sales technology and everything that's going on in our space at the moment. I'll link all that in the show notes to this episode, over at salesman.org. And with that, Roland, I want to thank you for your time, your expertise, putting up with some terrible questions from me, which you gave great answers to, which are valuable for the audience. I want to thank you again for joining us on the Salesman Podcast.

 

Roland Rust:

Thanks very much, Will.