Sales Enablement Innovation

From call center worker, to coach & trainer, to channel enabler - and now heading up the sales enablement team at Invicti, Spenser says his current role is the best he's ever had. His team motto is ‘we build roads to success', and that extends beyond the sales function. Spenser says: “I very intentionally try to call the department that I run the enablement department rather than sales enablement, because we're here to help the entire revenue organisation and anyone that interacts with customers.” Hear more about this  - and his predictions for enablement over the coming year, and more - in this episode of Sales Enablement Innovation.

Engaging customers virtually has been a challenge for many organizations over the past year, and Jaclyn D'Arcy, Director of Revenue Enablement at SaaS healthcare company GHX, tells us how she's been focused on hybrid relationship building with both internal and external customers. She also shares how she fell in love with sales enablement, creating a source of truth for content and trainings, and breaking silos to help align best practices across the organization. In particular, as enablement is immersed in understanding both technical and soft skillsets, Jaclyn says widening its scope across the business makes for better hiring decisions: “You start building better connections to your talent acquisition team, so as they are trying to fill these roles, enablement can really guide the hiring decision, so that we're bringing team members into the organization that fit our culture - that's what makes us successful at the end of the day.” Hear Jaclyn tell her story in the full podcast.

“Sales operations is just one piece of the puzzle; revenue ops gives you the full picture.” Syte's Head of Revenue Operations, Leore Spira, sees organizations shifting their focus from just the traditional ‘sales' function, to recognize every customer-facing role as a generator of revenue. And that means enablement needs to support every team that influences the customer journey, from pre-sales, to retention and renewal.  In this Sales Enablement Innovation podcast, she talks to us about this, how the pandemic has provided an opportunity for rev ops to shine - and how she almost became a lawyer and a marketer before arriving at her current role.

Five years ago, if you'd asked Andela's Head of Revenue Enablement, Carly Lehner, what her ideal job would be, she'd have said one that involves training, strategy and working with sales and process design. And, lo and behold, that is that is pretty much what enablement is. So she absolutely loves it. Carly talked to me about why planning and executing sales kickoffs (SKOs) is where she's in her element, being prepared to share her opinion (even if it goes against the consensus), and how revenue enablement is the next natural step in the evolution of sales enablement.

Developing your leadership skills isn't just about what they teach you in business school. Brandon Jones' top tip is to immerse yourself in biographies of effective leaders (think George Washington, Steve Jobs and Winston Churchill) to dig into how they've motivated their teams and navigated their way to success. As VP of Revenue at PAAY, success means breaking down barriers between sales, marketing, account management and customer success to create a smooth customer journey. Find out how he goes about taking full-funnel responsibility - and why it's so important for him to replicate those organic, 'water-cooler' conversations at the start of Zoom calls.

As Director of Global Sales Enablement at UserZoom, Kunal is responsible for the enablement of the global revenue team, including a full spectrum of roles: SDRs, account executives, account managers, and strategic account executives. He talked to us about maintaining a culture of engagement and collaboration, how onboarding himself created a roadmap for onboarding new hires, and his commitment to unlocking the potential in every individual to be the best that they can possibly be. 

Sales enablement can mean so many different things to different people. For IBM's sales enablement specialist, Georgia Watson, it boils down to helping sellers to be their best in the market, so they can deliver value to their clients. In this episode of Sales Enablement Innovation, she talks to us about how the pandemic has created a blank canvas for innovation, and how you need to have the right culture to bring those ideas to fruition aligned with core business strategy. Find out what sales enablement looks like at IBM - and steal some of Georgia's tips.

How do you get the most value from your content? For Litmus' Head of Sales Enablement, Bill Peterson, it's all about creating consistent, evergreen learning content that's kept fresh with regular product and competitor updates. He's shifted to weekly, just-in-time learning paths that everyone can plan ahead for, which has improved completion rates and allows sales reps and leaders to make suggestions about what they'd like to be included in future sessions. Learn more about this and Bill's take on all things enablement (including his DJ sets at Litmus' latest SKO event).

For PandaDoc's Senior Manager of Sales Enablement, Gail Behun, high performance sales enablement means working in tandem with marketing (who craft the message) and product (who provide the detail). Aligning objectives and expectations is key - 'level-setting', as Gail puts it. She's also passionate about helping sellers to grow, and develop their career paths - for her, enablement goes beyond reps simply hitting quota and excelling in the short-term. In this Sales Enablement Innovation podcast, Gail shares her philosophy for nurturing sustainable success, and how she encourages all enablers - and aspiring enablers - to reach out to others in the community to forge connections, share knowledge and immerse themselves in the discussions happening online.

Is the enablement function shifting to encompass every team member who steps into the buyer cycle? Christi Wall, Revenue Director at Chainalysis, certainly thinks so. Another big change, now we're online-only, means a greater focus on developing intangible interpersonal skills like empathy, building trust, active listening, and how to read a virtual room. In this episode, Christi also navigates us through her career trajectory, sharing how she's flipped her opportunities during the pandemic, as well as giving us her take on making training fun (hint: it involves a lobster costume).

“There are a lot of ways to scale a mountain. Some people have a jet to take them up, some people have a helicopter. Some people have access to tools that you may not have. But we need to recognize when people are throwing down ropes for us.” Hang Black, VP of Revenue Enablement at Juniper Networks, discusses how women and immigrants can break into the leadership ranks by sharing her own journey: learning to identify limiting beliefs and behaviors, getting used to operating in chaos, her strategies for excelling under adversity - and why being ‘busy and bored' during Covid gave her the impetus to write a book that had been in her head for 15 years.

With so many tools in our tech stacks, most of us know the feeling of having 101 tabs open at the same time. Can sales enablement really make sales processes seamless and friction-free for their reps through digital adoption? Steffaney Zohrabyhan, Digital Adoption Leader at Sprinklr, thinks so and talks us through how she does it, why you can't feed your reps a whole elephant at once - and how the philosophy of Clippy the ‘helpful' Microsoft paperclip lives on.

Everybody has their own superpower, says Rachel Ha'o, Global Sales Enablement at Iterable, and your job as a sales enabler is to help execs discover and amplify it - not simply copy what's worked for yourself in the past. In this podcast, Rachel talks about how she moved into sales enablement by ‘moonlighting', the importance of humility as a sales enabler - and shares her number one early morning tip for keeping on top of priorities in a pandemic.

Can the principle of 'less is more' be applied to sales enablement? According to Claire Scull, Director of EMEA Sales Enablement at Veritas Technologies, it's the tenet to live by as enablement moves forward in the new normal. Her view: offer more to sellers by focusing on the critical few elements that are relevant and crucial for their success. In our final episode of 2020, Claire shares how she's kept her sellers' wellbeing front of mind in a remote environment, her success in bringing fun and gamification into an inaugural virtual SKO, and how no two days are ever the same on the job.

Got a sales training programme? Check. Sales reps have a high course completion rate? Check. Job done, right? Not quite - and Jaren Krchnavi, Head of Sales Enablement for Siemens Digital Grid Software, is here to tell you why. Moving away from the 'checkbox' mentality and towards a business-oriented performance measuring system can be tricky, but the payoff is substantial. From understanding customer needs & pain points to deploying a global non-technical training programme, Jaren shares the unique trappings of leading enablement within one of the largest industrial conglomerates in the world.

How do you build and maintain engagement, excitement, and a sense of community for your sellers when it's impossible to be in a room together? Danny De Los Santos, Curriculum , Strategy & Training Team Manager at Atlassian, may have the answer: podcasting. Diving into the daily realities of supporting the sales team at an organization that is continuously growing and scaling, Danny shares some of the programmes he's recently developed to keep reps educated and entertained.

How many of us have come to appreciate the importance of flexibility and adaptability in recent months? For Adriana Romero, GTM Enablement Manager at Clearbanc, being able to think on her feet and problem solve on the fly comes as second nature. In this episode of Sales Enablement Innovation, Adriana shares her leadership journey and how she's come to embrace the startup mindset - as well as how to navigate cultural differences and turn them into strengths.

What is it like leading sales enablement at a hyper-growth company spread across several continents? Tom Cheriyan, who heads up the function at OwnBackup, is somewhat of an expert - he's successfully de-siloed function-specific knowledge and expertise with a centralized LMS and established processes to streamline onboarding and training, from account executives all the way to sales leadership. His ultimate goal? To have 100% of his sales force hit their targets.

You may not need a psychology degree to succeed in sales enablement - but according to Tanya Jeffers-McAllister, Director of Sales Practice Effectiveness at RBC Insurance, it can certainly help! Navigating stakeholders' key priorities and juggling different personality types are all in a day's work, and driving cultural change - while overseeing the integration of two different companies - takes a certain skillset and some creative thinking.

Building a sales enablement structure from the ground up at a global organization is no mean feat. Aaron Evans, Director of Sales Enablement at GlobalData, is well-versed in the ups and downs of this marathon; from being the central link between leadership and the rest of the business and getting buy-in from internal stakeholders to achieving company-wide cultural change, he's ready to share what he's learned along the way.