Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up-to-date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs.
According to the State of Sales Enablement Report 2024, 20% of organizations see sales process as a key strategic priority. So how can you streamline your sales process and equip reps to win more and win faster? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win podcast. I am your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Scott McNabb, the chief sales officer at Verisk Marketing Solutions. Thank you for joining us, Scott. I'd love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Scott McNabb: Yeah, I'm thrilled to death to be here. Thank you so much. As mentioned, I'm the Chief Sales Officer for Verisk Marketing Solutions. I have been in and around the world, solving problems for major brands, major carriers, major tech companies, et cetera, for the better part of the last 20 years, so since I was nine years old, that's a joke, and have been leading sales teams, both in the data world and also in the SaaS software world over the course of my career. SS: Amazing. Well, Scott, we are honored to have you here. Given your extensive experience as a sales leader, you have seen the landscape evolve. I'm sure throughout that journey, but especially in recent years. What are some of the top challenges that you would say sales teams face today? SM: You know, I would say as relates to my use of different tools in the sales cycle, what I continue to evolve and learn from is the notion that sellers may not understand analytically where a Buyer stands in their buyer's journey. And it's evidenced by the fact that, again, going back to the conversational topic, they don't know the right material to provide to the right buyer at the right time that might resonate with them at the proper deal stage, more importantly, at the proper. Sort of category of ICP, right? The ideal customer profile. So sending the wrong material to the wrong buyer at the wrong time in the stage, and before you know it, you get lost in the deal cycle. And it is the number one challenge that sellers face, both in my current role and in previous companies that I've worked with is understanding where they are from a situational awareness perspective in the deal sort of cycle. I've got a military aviation background, and one of the things that we teach in fighter pilot school is helping the aviator understand where they are in the fight at any given moment, right? Where's the nearest, you know, fuel stop? Where's the enemy line versus the friendly line? You know, where do you stand three-dimensionally in relation to the buyer? In this particular example, but in relation to the enemy, you know, am I positioned properly to either fight and win or escape and save myself for another day? So to use the vernacular, that situational awareness is something that we teach in, you know, in our aviation community. And it's a construct situational awareness is a construct that we try. To guide, teach, coach, and sort of replicate for the sellers so that when they're in the deal cycle, that they understand where they are in relation to the challenge that the buyer faces. Does that make sense? SS: Absolutely. And I have to say, Scott, also very cool that you are in the aviation space. That is amazing. SM: It's 15 years of my life, lots and lots of time doing it, and it's amazing the corollaries between that situational awareness, the thing that you have to teach, and oftentimes young up-and-coming aviators, they get that they're flying the plane, and they get that it's moving in a forward direction, and they get what they have to do to get from here to there, do the thing you have to do, and return safely. But, you know, sort of advanced instruction is understanding three dimensionally where you fit in the fight. SS: I can see how that is a great analogy to sales. Now, from your perspective, how can enablement help sales teams overcome some of these challenges to achieve more success? SM: Well, let's be clear. So there's training and there's enablement. I think we get these two things confused. Training is what you do when you're trying to show somebody how to lift in the gym, right? Enablement is when they're thinking from a, again, three-dimensional perspective when we're guiding them to have critical thinking skills and understand if I'm here, then my next move is there, and we call it in our world, next best action. We built our entire sales enablement model around MBAs and the most often reasons why sales reps won't put deals and commit is because of the fear that if I asked you to commit, or if you're willing to stick your neck out and commit to a deal, Then somebody is going to ask you to have a plan for how you're going to execute on the mission. Right? And so it is the number one challenge. They say that I learned this from an amazing sales leader. Light is the world's best disinfectant, right? So enablement is about bringing deals into the light and via example, leading from the front, guiding, coaching. Enablement is not something that lives exclusively in an enablement department. It is something that is truly something that is to be led by the leaders. They have to exhibit and exemplify these skill sets so that the seller will feel as though we're all in the same set of airplanes after the same mission. And so enablement. Is that guidance tool, but again, it's not the enablement department exclusively. It is the seller, the sales leaders function. This is what, uh, I've got a sales leadership summit next week in Chicago with all my leaders and a big part of what I'm coaching on is how do you coach and enable your sellers? You can't just depend upon the enablement department to solve for the challenge. SS: I love that. You've essentially made enablement a cultural priority across your organization. And I know that you're passionate about developing high performance cultures. What are some of your best practices for building that culture within a sales team? SM: They say that culture eats strategy for breakfast. It's an old school book that's been around for 30 years and it's still never more true. And so culturally we have to guide the sellers from a culture perspective. Around the notion of franchise ownership, right? They have to own, understand the mission, be clear on the goals, be clear on the steps, and then accountability comes with culture. So again, a big part of what we're teaching next week is really just sort of an agreement between the sales leader and the sales rep on what is accountability and what does that mean, and then finally, Culture, whereby our one on ones are designed around four key concepts. Revenue first, right? Where you stand in the revenue picture, people, right? What people are you struggling with process? What processes are kicking your butt? And then finally innovation, right? Where we make it the responsibility of everybody culturally in the sales team to constantly be looking for ways to improve and innovate our process, right? So it's just not do it because I say that you do it. They have to be bought into that concept. And more importantly, they have to be challengers who look at the process and go, all right, well, look, that's kicking my butt. That's stupid. Why are we doing it that way? I got an idea. Why don't we do it this way, because we can shave three days off of the opposing cycle, or we can accelerate our deals because finally, culturally, it's all about velocity of deals. Culture has to be sort of digging in on the notion of increasing the velocity at which we move deals through the cycle. Because, you know, they say an army travels on its stomach, a sales team travels on velocity. SS: I could not agree more. So we talked in the intro and you mentioned it just now about the importance of a solid sales process. How can the sales process influence a high-performance culture? And what have you done to streamline the sales process to help kind of boost sales performance? SM: I love the question. Look, I think first and foremost, there's a massive change around this notion of servant leadership. So it's important that we start backwards from the challenge, which is a high-performing sales organization. It's funny. 10 years ago, servant leadership was not in vogue and as our sales teams have grown up, and we have Gen Z and we have Gen X and, and et cetera, all of a sudden they come from worlds where maybe they were not guided and coached the proper way. So weirdly enough, serving our teams, serving to the people that we were responsible for is back in vogue all of a sudden. So I think that step one is let's make sure that we start with the servant leadership methodology. Two, I think it's remarkably important that we pivot our sales model from a sales-led model to a customer-driven model, right? Our sales processes historically have been, where do you think you are in the deal? I'm at stage three, which means that I'm going to push them to do a thing. And then stage four, I'm going to hand them, these are the things that we do to manage our process. Whereas switching to a buyer-centric methodology, which is if I call the customer and ask them questions about where they are in their buying cycle, stage four, stage three, stage five, would the customer say that's where I am in my process for acquiring the thing that you sell, right? So switching to a customer centric model away from a sales centric model, this still exists and pervades. All over the industry, when it comes to sales organizations, we're tracking where you think you are in the deal. I want to know, where do you think the customer thinks they are in the buying cycle? If that resonates with you. SS: Oh, it absolutely does. And from your perspective, what would you then say is the strategic advantage that an enablement platform provides for improving the sales process? SM: All right, I'm going to go back to situational awareness. Sorry. At the end of the day, it helps the seller know more about where the customer is in their buyer's journey. Whereas in the old days, we would just, you know, enablement wise, we'd send out stuff and, you know, I wouldn't even know necessarily what they're looking at or what they're engaging with or what of my content resonates with them. But with an enablement platform, and I've used your platform in. Now, this is my third company and purchased it in two previous companies. You know, I find that it's a game changer because you're competing in a world whereby many don't have this thing and therefore the seller is blind. Again, going back to the military flying example, there's a notion called no joy, which means when I'm looking for the enemy and I can't find them. On the radio, you click off no joy, which means I don't have sight of where this guy is. This human that is my adversary. These kinds of tools provide the seller with that no joy moment where they go. All right. I do know exactly where they are. They're 300 feet below me. They're there at this speed and this course. And the enablement tool is a, for lack of a better term, it's a game changer for knowing where The customer is and where I as a seller can make better decisions about where they are in their buyer's journey down to the point of this materials not resonating. I sent the wrong stuff at the right time. In my current company, we use our enablement tool for both sales and CSMs and our solutions consultants and our marketing team, obviously to replace SharePoint so that we not only I can see as a leader. What's working? What's not? Where are they using? What pieces of content and what stage of the buyers journey? Wrong time, wrong content, wrong message, et cetera. So now I've got analytical knowledge on why is the deal stalling in stage, right? So I can run analytics out of salesforce that goes, all right, you're in stage four. We've shipped over a raft of content, but why is the deal, why is it not resonating with the buyer at this stage in the journey? Let's go backwards a step and figure out what did we miss and let the data then tell us and analytically help us understand where are we stalling in deals. And what's causing a velocity change? You get what I'm saying? SS: I do. I love that data-driven approach. How do you leverage data? If you have a few examples to refine and optimize the sales process? SM: Well, look, I think it comes down to and sorry, I'm going to go off track just two seconds, but know that I feel like that present company excepted. I have led sales leadership teams before where they were managing using analytics as a crutch. Instead of trying to understand what's going on, we're managing to the metrics. Activity wise, instead of managing to the metrics again around velocity around understanding what pieces of content resonates best, we're using analytics the wrong way. In my opinion, accountability. Yes, but activity for activity sake. No, right? Can't work that way anymore. So the less mature sales leaders are the ones that are basically sitting behind the steering wheel, looking at analytics to give them a false sense of security. Right. We got to take the analytical information and help us understand and make better decisions about what's working in the deal cycle. Why are things not progressing? Where are things stalling? Let's get a better picture about the deal cycle and not just lean on old school metrics. You know, email open rates and click through rates - they don't tell me anything. It's a vanity metric, right? Understanding how many sales meetings that they had this week, while that is a core metric for activity, it doesn't really tell me the quality of the meetings that you're having, right? That's what I care about. Yes, I certainly want you making the dials and I want you making the connections, but what I care most about is that Those amazing interactions with the buyers are turning into a valuable velocity change in the deal cycle. SS: I love that. And I know that all of that data is helping to inform a lot of the innovation that's coming out of AI. And I know that AI sales tactics are an area of interest to you. I'd love to hear directly from you. How do you plan to leverage innovation like AI to improve the sales process and the performance of your teams? SM: Again, great question. Timely topic. Obviously, at the beginning of that journey is where I would say that we are, but just getting sellers to use AI to even sort of have it guide them on what conversation would resonate with the buyer at this stage. With this problem, it's really not about AI. If you think about it, it's about building a library of AI prompts, because I find that the reason why sellers don't use AI is not because they can't figure out how to ask a question they're asking the wrong. Questions of the AI engine, and then they're surprised when they get a really, you know, stupid or flat line answer from the AI tool. It's not the AI tool's fault. It's we're asking the wrong question. So what I've asked my enablement team to do is build and load into my enablement platform a library of AI prompts that will provide the proper response. SS: I love that. I think that's phenomenal. Scott, last question for you. If you could give other sales leaders who are looking to improve their sales process one piece of advice for the year ahead, what would it be? SM: You know, I think it's impossible for me to give one piece of advice, but I think the predominant one is be a servant leader first, right? Have the team that you support. Accountability comes with servitude, right? So if we're serving the teams that we're supporting, then they will feel supported and guided and coached. If you've ever worked for a company that does not espouse the notion of servant leadership and is the opposite of that, which is often known as top-down leadership, then you don't feel very supported and you're not pulled Up, right? Servant leadership, I think, is back in vogue because people weren't feeling guided and coached and pulled, right? It's, I'm going to stand on you for what you're not doing, but not guide you on what you could be, what's possible to be done. And so that's, if anybody asked me, that's my number one thought is start backwards from servant leadership and Okay. Get really amazing at guiding, coaching, teaching, leading from the front. You know, it's the old-school model. I never am going to ask anybody to do something that I wouldn't do myself. That's an old school military term, but at the end of the day, it still works. Still works like a dream. SS: Absolutely. Scott, thank you so much for sharing your advice with our listeners today. I greatly appreciate the time. SM: It's my pleasure. Good luck, everybody. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Debbi Varela, the author of Put Me In, Coach, here with us today. Debbi, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Debbi Varela: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. My name is Debbi Varela. I have over 15 years of experience now in the sales enablement and transformation space before it was even really like what it is today. I have been lucky enough to have worked with some of the world’s smallest startups to some of the world’s largest tech companies. After working in these businesses of all sizes throughout my career, I have honestly met some of the coolest and most interesting people. I’ve learned so much about what works, what doesn’t work, why it didn’t work, and what to do next time. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Debbi. Now, going back to your book, you actually discuss how coaching can create a culture of success for businesses. In your opinion, what are the key components of a successful sales culture? DV: That is a great question. Funny enough, I actually had just published a blog on my website on this exact topic a few weeks ago. I believe the recipe to create a winning sales culture is really around five key things. The first one for me is really just having a defined vision so everyone understands what their position is on the field or where they fit into the bigger picture of the organization. I just feel this is incredibly important because it gives a sense of belonging and purpose to individuals. The second one I think it’s a key element that I’m passionate about, which is really around skill, or sometimes I call it action mapping and motivation. What I mean by this is truly knowing your team member’s strengths and their areas of improvement and how to motivate each person. Where will they naturally excel? Where will they need a little bit more encouragement? What’s the best way to encourage them? Are they extrinsically motivated or intrinsically motivated? That makes a huge difference. The third one I think is super important, which I see time and time again in organizations, is accountability and continuous feedback. That would honestly come in as one of the most important ingredients for a thriving sales culture. Interestingly enough, with many of the companies I’ve worked with, this is oftentimes their biggest weakness. When I say accountability, I’m talking about like, do you manage behavior? Do you as a leader take responsibility or do you blame other people? Do you manage your pipeline and then do you spend enough time on pipeline reviews? Do you have a cadence that you’re holding yourself and your team accountable to? That’s what I think of when I think about accountability. The next one is really around team building and trust to ensure that your team operates as a single unit. You can see this really play out on the sports team when teammates trust each other and they really know each other. Things just look effortless for them and they just flow together. Finally, for me, it’s the last one on my list, but it’s honestly just as important, which is celebrating successes and learning from failures. You should celebrate every win, no matter how small it is, because it’s still a win. I feel that setbacks should be reviewed with positive intent, not to blame, but to learn any ball from those. SS: I love that approach. Especially today in the current environment, why is coaching critical in today’s sales environment and how does it help nurture a healthy sales culture? DV: I think coaching is absolutely critical and honestly it’s interesting because I think that most people would agree with that statement, but then when you dig into that with the sellers or managers, they have a different response. They don’t feel like they’re getting enough coaching from their managers and managers don’t necessarily feel like they have enough time or even the skills to do said coaching. Typically what I see happen is the managers try, but ultimately find it difficult to get on a regular and consistent coaching cadence with their teams. In lieu of that, they tend to jump in and rescue the seller during a sales call to show them how it’s done, but that is not coaching. Ultimately that leads to an unhealthy sales culture because that decreases accountability and responsibility on both sides. It also erodes trust and it undermines the confidence of both sides. For me, if a more consistent coaching cadence was in place and managers were given the skills to coach effectively, then a positive and supportive culture would help to motivate and engage teams, which would then attract and retain their top talent. It would drive performance and deliver better results for customers. Coaching is just a critical factor in creating and developing high-performing sales teams in my personal and humble opinion. SS: I love that opinion. I’d also love to get your opinion, Debbi, on what a good coaching program looks like. DV: Absolutely. I believe that a good coaching program has to have a well-defined structure and it needs to provide some type of system, whatever it is, for managers to enhance the skills and performance for the overall effectiveness of just the individuals within their team. For example, it should have clear objectives that are measurable and aligned to the specific skills or the behaviors or outcomes that they want to improve. One thing I just want to mention is that coaching programs really can’t take a peanut butter spread approach. You have to develop them with the individual needs in mind and there should be some kind of feedback or performance management framework in place to help provide individuals with specific things in a timely manner and also focus on the behavior that can be observed in positive reinforcement as well as constructive criticism. I mean, in coaching, really, the key is continuous improvement. Goals or milestones are established and then also be adaptable to the needs of that individual. Your coaching begins to evolve over time. SS: Absolutely. Those are great key principles to structure your coaching program. What would you say some common challenges are when it comes to coaching and how can enablement help mitigate those challenges? DV: I think the most common challenges that I see and hear are focused around three things, which is time, skill, and consistency. With time constraints, managers, just don’t have it. There are just way too many competing priorities. Enablement can help by providing some time management training for coaches, as well as even just like some type of structured coaching schedule. The next one is about the lack of skills or training, I hear this all the time that managers really want to coach, but they just don’t really know how to do it. I think enablement can offer some type of coaching skills training program or provide them with some kind of organized workshop resources and just offer some ongoing support. The third one I see a lot is that they will start coaching, but then it just falls off. Just a lack of consistency and inconsistency in coaching across teams always leads to some kind of uneven result. Enablement can help by implementing some kind of standardized coaching framework with cadences and guidelines. They can provide templates, resources, and checklists that will help managers keep that consistency and have that structure that can anchor them to keep it going over time. SS: I think those are some great suggestions. Oftentimes in sales teams, I think front-line managers really serve as the key coaches for their teams. How can enablement help prepare those front-line managers to be more effective coaches? DV: I think enablement teams can respond to some of the things we just talked about about the common challenges. For example, if enablement can provide comprehensive coaching skill training for frontline managers, where they focus on things like active listening, effective communication, and giving feedback, that’s often actually very hard for people to do in a way that’s effective for the person they’re giving the feedback to. Goal setting and all the other essential coaching competencies. Developing a repository of coaching resources, as I mentioned, including guides, templates, and best practices, just so that these frontline managers have easy access to materials that can aid in their coaching efforts, make it a little bit easier for them, because remember, they have so much going on and so many competing priorities. Offer training on goal setting and action planning. Use things like the SMART goal framework with their teams to create actionable plans to help the plans that they’re actually setting. Then establishing a system for ongoing monitoring and support. If enablement can do some kind of regular check-in with frontline managers, then they can offer them some additional training where they’re feeling maybe not as strong in certain areas of coaching and even just provide them with some type of support network that can help them work through some of the challenges that the managers had as they’re trying to build this coaching muscle in their own skills. SS: That’s fantastic advice for frontline managers and enablement professionals. Last question for you, Debbi. How do you measure the impact of coaching on the business? DV: This is a great question of when that comes up all the time, measurement, and metrics. Let’s assume for a second that we’ve established the specific and measurable objectives for the coaching program so that if you do that, then you can measure impact in a few ways, in my opinion. You can conduct some kind of baseline assessment before the coaching program begins, like gathering any kind of data on the metrics that you’re planning on using, such as individual or team performance. Whether it’s employee engagement, satisfaction, or any of the KPIs that are tied to the coaching. Once you do that, then you can identify and track those that align with the objectives of the coaching program. These could be things like sales metrics, customer retention rates, employee turnover, productivity, and anything that your company can track and actually use to hold managers and their teams accountable to these coaching programs. Another way is gathering feedback from participants through surveys and phone interviews. Measuring changes in their point of view, their attitudes, and any self-reported improvements in skills or behaviors. I think that’s really, really helpful. This qualitative data can give you all kinds of really great insights into the impact of what you’re doing from a coaching perspective. I said to conduct a baseline assessment, that will give you a kind of like where everyone starts, but also then follow that up with an assessment after the coaching program. That way you can compare against that baseline data and see any type of growth that happened across KPIs or any of the other things that you’re tracking. The two other ones are just around measuring employee engagement satisfaction, like are they enjoying the coaching program? Do they feel like it’s contributing positively to themselves, the organization, and their goals? Then just look at the organization’s performance metrics with industry benchmarks. That can be really helpful too. You can see maybe where the excellence benchmark is, then where maybe organizations that are similar to yours where they fall, and then where you fall. We can kind of see how you’re performing against those industry standards. SS: Fantastic advice for our audience. Debbi, thank you so much for joining us today. DV: You are very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Andy Springer, the chief client officer at RAIN Group, join us. Andy, I would love for you to introduce yourself, and your role in your organization to our audience. Andy Springer: Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for having me. I am Andy Springer, the Chief Client Officer at the RAIN Group. My role is one that each and every day I am a practitioner leading teams in terms of supporting large-scale sales transformations and also working with small, and medium-sized enterprises in terms of upscaling and developing sales skills that are going to shift the dial in terms of sales performance. SS: Wonderful. The reason that we wanted to pull you on to this podcast is because RAIN Group actually recently released a study that identified some key trends in the current sales landscape. In your opinion, what are the trends that have the greatest impact on businesses and their ability to succeed in the current environment? AS: Yeah, I would say that the trends that we saw through our research were a significant increase in terms of sales cycles. Opportunities are taking longer to close. There’s more complexity in terms of that. The amount of opportunities that are being led to a loss due to no decision. While there may be significant needs, significant problems to solve, and objectives to be supported to achieve, for whatever reason we’re seeing a lot of no decision being what they lost to instead of competitors. I think the third one is selling in an uncertain economy. If you look at the post-pandemic world and you look at the political challenges that have impacted the market, you look at the shift in terms of the financial impacts in terms of the post-pandemic inflationary world and then how that’s changed the dynamics of the economy, it’s made it really challenging particularly in the B2B space, but not exclusive to. That uncertainty cascades uncertainty in terms of sellers and how they approach the market and what they are dealing with. SS: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. From your perspective, Andy, how have these trends influenced or created top challenges that sales organizations are facing today? What would you say those top challenges are? AS: I think it was pretty clear from our research that in terms of when I look at it through the lens of a sales leader and sales enablement space, one of the most consistent challenges that keeps showing its face in the sales space is recruiting and hiring sales talent and the associated challenges with that. Also, the uncertain economy piece was represented very strongly, generating qualified sales leads continues to be a significant challenge for a lot of organizations. We dive into the skill areas where the key challenges in developing sales skills are relevant in the real-time selling environment. Also, the one which I found unsurprising, but I think some who I’ve spoken to in reflection on the report found surprising, which was the challenge of developing sales managers. Often in the sales enablement space, I see that sales managers are the ones who are most forgotten about. They’re also the ones that are often the loudest in asking, requesting, and demanding skills from their sellers. Often when it comes to developing skills for them to be better managers, it’s something that they’re either left out on, it’s not a focus or it may not be that there’s a budget to focus on developing them. SS: Absolutely. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. To that point, especially for our audience, what role can enablement play in helping businesses overcome these challenges? AS: I think there are three key areas that we’ve really isolated and focused on. The first one is improving sales productivity as a whole. One of the fortunate things that we get to be involved in is introducing productivity thinking tools and ultimately seeking to shift behavior in productivity. Why is that? Well, every organization you go into, whether it’s, you’re going into a sales organization or the sales area of an organization or other parts, everyone says the same thing. ‘I’ve always got way too many things to do and not enough time to do them in.' When we really focus on the sales organization, what we see is some of the greatest deficiency in skill is not necessarily around how to sell, it is how do I produce more? Everyone has the same amount of time in a week, and in our studies, what we seek to do is often define, well, what top performers in sales and sales management do that others don’t that makes them top performing. I think one of the things that cried out really clearly was top performers have an incessant focus in terms of the productivity of their sellers and sales leaders inside their organization. and they seek to improve the way in which they focus on productivity before selling skills. The next one I would say then leads to developing multi-skilled sellers. If you look at the journey that we’re just starting to build here we’ve identified ways to free up time for the sellers so they focus on what’s most important. Then, when we align that with the development of their selling skills in that multi-skill space, we start to see more time focused in the right areas, which means we’re going to start to see an impact on the win rate. Those two factors are critically important. The last thing I’ve kind of touched on is leveraging our sales managers. I understand that a lot of organizations do a really good job in developing broad-based management skills, and a lot of that links very much to sales managers. We often go into organizations and we see that the management skill and application in the sales area is fairly good. I mean, obviously, there are deficiencies in some areas and industries and types, but broadly we see a consistent level of management skill. What we see as a broad-based deficit in terms of skill is coaching. Sales managers not just focusing on the management aspects, you know, territory planning, pipeline management, those sorts of day-to-day or weekly, quarterly activities including planning and those sorts of things when I’m talking in the management context, but what about the coaching? What are the coaching elements? If we’ve got increased levels of productivity in our selling organization, we’re training our sellers in terms of the skills that are going to help enable them to perform better. When we combine that with a focus on the development of sales managers to not just manage but to be really good coaches of their selling team as well, and we develop coaching skills within that we see a transformative effect start to take place. Now the team is operating as a whole and everyone knows their role in a lot of cases, we’re talking critical mass here. I know there’s a lot of people that will be listening to this saying, well, we’re never going to achieve that. With 100 percent of our selling organization, you don’t need to in order to see significant sales performance improvement. You only need a critical mass that is developing the learning and applying this new dynamic in their selling organization to see a significant shift. Often the first measure that we start to see lift his win rate. SS: Absolutely. You just kind of got to thaw that frozen middle, right? What should enablement leaders be prioritizing in their strategies for the year ahead to help businesses address these challenges? AS: What I’m seeing get the greatest traction, as I said, is probably the gap in terms of sales manager focus. How do we make our managers better managers and better coaches in order to help drive sales performance improvement? Particularly I see a lot of organizations do one thing really well, right? Selling organizations invest in training their teams. Now, the one other thing about training is that sellers and sales managers get access to new information and knowledge. That knowledge can have an informative, motivational, and inspirational impact, but we all know that, outside of the virtual training room or the physical classroom, once they have obtained that knowledge, it means nothing without the application of that knowledge. I think one of the critical areas is if we’re going to invest in improving the productivity of our sales organization, we’re going to develop the skills of our sellers, we’re going to develop the skills of our managers. How are we going to support the application of that learning over the first 7, 30, 90 days and beyond, so that we get the true impact of what we’re seeing? When we see applied knowledge implemented, and then we see sellers and sales managers effectively held to account for the application of that learning, we start to see the rubber meet the road and ultimately the business outcomes that you’re seeking through developing your people start to show, as we say, the dial starts to shift in the direction that you want it to. That gap in terms of applied learning is a big one. There’s no point in working on those three areas that we’ve talked about without a significant focus on the enablement of that throughout the organization over a sustained period. SS: I love that. You’ve talked about the importance of frontline managers, as well as I think sales leaders. How can enablement leaders and sales leaders partner to better align their strategies to the top priorities of the business? AS: First of all, don’t fall into the delegation trap. The delegation trap is where we see sales leaders go, ‘we’ve done a training needs analysis, and here are all the skill gaps in terms of our team. I’m going to wheel in the sales enablement people and I’m going to say, here’s all the gaps that we have inside our organization. You go and figure out a plan and come back to us with how we’re going to fill those gaps and how we’re going to provide or bring some solution into the business.' Where we see that occur, it is almost just the beginning of failure because sales leaders need to take and be heavily invested in that journey, not to just close skill gaps, but to align themselves with the support top down in terms of how we’re going to keep that change that we’re seeking to see sustain itself within the business ongoing. Actually, if we don’t take a change management approach to any sort of meaningful development outcome that we’re seeking, we get a training event or series of training events occur, people walk away feeling good, they feel invested in, and not much happens. Where does that begin? It begins with senior executives, understanding that this is a transformation that involves change management. It also means having sales leaders and sales enablement glued to their hips because when we see they are operating as one team and sales enablement is in the selling organization, not separate to, not sitting in Learning and Development or sitting in an HR function, that they’re in the selling organization and we see a strong partnership between the importance of sales enablement and how it’s going to support the realization of the sales performance improvement. It is the recipe as a starting point for success. I would encourage anyone who’s sitting outside of the selling organization in their function right now to have a really good look at, whether is really serving us. I can tell you it’s day and night when we go into all different types of selling organizations and we see the dynamic between the sales leadership and the sales enablement function. We already know we have a fantastic springboard to partner with them to build from. When they’re separate, we already know that if we don’t make some attempt before we go on a transformation to bring those teams together and unify, we’re going to struggle to create meaningful change. SS: Absolutely. Last question for you, Andy. To close, what is one thing you’re surprised to learn from the survey and what would you recommend practitioners take as an action based on that learning? AS: I think there are a few. I wasn’t surprised by productivity and the need to develop multi-skilled sellers in terms of the solution focus areas. I am constantly surprised by how forgotten about sales managers are, because as I said, they are often the ones who are requesting the development of their sellers, but they’re not proactive or they’re not realizing the need for their own development. That is certainly not a criticism, it’s an observation. There could be various reasons for that. It screams to me how important sales manager development is, how often it’s an afterthought or it’s not included in terms of an overall sales development strategy, and the critical role that they play beyond just being a manager and how we have to develop sales coaching skill combined with really good sales management to create meaningful change in any development program, sales transformation, change management outcomes we’re seeking from change management program. I think that was probably one of the things in terms of a surprise that most resonates broadly in the market because people go, yeah, we don’t really focus on our managers. We focus constantly on our sellers. It’s an all-around focus that we need to take. SS: Could not agree more. Andy, thank you so much for joining us to talk about the findings from your recent research. We really appreciate the time. AS: Absolute pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jay Shephard at Bentley Systems join us. Jay, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jay Shephard: Thanks for the invite. I’m thrilled to meet you and spend some time with you. Where do you start? I have been doing this for a while. I started my career 25 years ago selling, and when you start your career in selling you start to pick up some things that seem to go well. All of a sudden I started being asked to do some coaching with new hires that were coming in by my boss. What I found out, Shawnna, is I loved it. It’s a lot of fun. I thought, is there a career around this? I love selling, but I also love the coaching element. That’s how I kind of, we’ll call it backdoored into this thing called enablement. Specific to enablement, it is an evolving picture, which I’m sure we’ll get a chance to talk a little bit more about. I’ve had an opportunity to work primarily in the enterprise software space in both sales effectiveness tools as well as software platforms. I started with Bentley in 2023 and really took on a very cool challenge and that was to redesign, revamp, and repurpose enablement to be more of a strategic aligned value add to our CRO. That’s where I am today. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Jay. Now, a key focus for you at Bentley Systems is really, as you’ve stated in your intro, reframing the way that your organization thinks about enablement. From your perspective, what are some of enablement’s core responsibilities and what is the value that it brings to the business? JS: I think enablement, the industry, the space, whether it’s in the United States, Europe, or Asia, doesn’t matter, it is in flux. In other words, if you ask 15 people what the definition of enablement is, you can get 25 answers. When it came to coming to Bentley, what we figured out early on was the fact that there is this talented group of people that make up the enablement team, but they were misunderstood. They were almost pushed into a corner and almost like enablement became the department of broken things, as I always call it. They were an afterthought. It was the last thought, like oh yeah, we better get enablement involved. Well, that’s really not the purpose of enablement, but it was created to be that way based on just general culture and a lack of definition of the value of what enablement brings. SS: Jay, I know that you created a sales enablement charter, which really kind of focuses on outlining the mission, the goals, the strategy, and the responsibilities of your enablement function. Tell our audience more about this. What are your best practices for creating an effective enablement charter? JS: I’ll start off by saying the reason I went to Bentley. It had everything to do with the CRO. He wanted to lead a transformation project, initiative if you would, company-wide to drive the strategic value of Bentley Solutions to their end customer. The CRO realized that there were some significant gaps in there, which of course was enablement. I took this position first and foremost because it was aligned with the CRO. I think that’s really important for your listeners to know. The CRO is critical to the direction, as well as the strategic value of what enablement brings. Knowing that, connecting with our CRO as I did through that interview process, I knew this was an opportunity I wanted to take advantage of. Knowing that we were going to start from scratch, we went out and essentially asked individuals who were key to the business all throughout the globe, 1, what is your definition of enablement? You would not believe how many different definitions I had. 2, what are the current challenges here? Why are we not winning business? Why are we winning business? For that matter, what are the opportunities? We then used that information to build a charter that was strategically aligned to not only Bentley’s business priorities but also the CRO's MBOs. We built it from that perspective and then worked backward. Here are the metrics that we knew that we needed to hit to drive the priorities and the MBOs of the business. How do you design enablement to make that happen? We literally created functions as well as areas of responsibility to help drive those initiatives, those metrics, if you would, and of course, that strategic alignment, which was so critical to the CRO and myself. SS: Absolutely. I love those. Tell us a little bit about your perspective on how an enablement charter helps to drive alignment with the broader organizational strategy and the objectives of your company. JS: Since I have been here I probably have had no less than 50 conversations with people asking me, what does enablement do within Bentley? These are Bentley employees. First and foremost, that charter that you’re talking about, the reason it is so important is to ensure everybody’s on the same page in regards to expectations and what the possibilities could be in working with enablement or us working with that particular function of the business. That to me sets in motion a transparent relationship of our capabilities and what it is that we can deliver. Anything you do when it comes to a charter has to be very clear in communicating what it is that you do, what you’re capable of doing, what your capacity is that you can be doing, and here’s how you are measured. SS: It’s amazing to achieve that level of alignment. Jay, how are you driving strategic buy-in of this charter with your key stakeholders and in particular, perhaps some of your executive leaders? JS: Well, first of all, executive leaders are measured just as well as enablement is measured. If we can align our agenda to their agenda, then we are in partnership. One of the first things that I did was I reached out to all of our global leaders and understood a little bit more about what their metrics were, what they were measured by, and really what the gaps were. Once we identified those gaps, we discovered ways that enablement could close those gaps. Let me tell you something, when you can help someone else achieve their objectives, you don’t have a problem getting a phone call returned. That’s where they knew that I was working towards helping them with their agenda. I can tell you this team immediately got the credibility and the opportunity to drive value far more than they’ve been able to up until that point. SS: The buy-in that you’ve been able to secure at Bentley is fantastic. Now, since Bentley is in a rapidly evolving business landscape, how do you ensure that your sales enablement strategy remains adaptive to emerging trends and industry changes? JS: Well, that’s such a great question. Asking it in a different way, it’s almost like the old belief that when you train someone, they’re automatically trained. You never need to touch it again. We know you and I both know, Shawnna, that’s not true. To ensure that your enablement strategy and alignment are real, you have to have a continuous conversation. You have to be able to ensure that it’s not a one-and-done type of relationship. For me, anyway, I have ongoing, anywhere from between two and four-week conversations with all of our respective leaders across the globe. I also have a similar relationship and frequency of meetings with the CRO. Here’s what we do that I think is uniquely different. I’ve taken my team and we have geographically dispersed ourselves from a coverage point of view. I have, for example, a European lead. I have a US lead. We’re going to be bringing on an Asia pack lead and so on and so on. Because of that coverage, we now are closer to our customers. We are consistently asking not only in our coaching work that we do with them or the training work that we’re doing with them, we’re constantly getting feedback in regards to what’s missing, what we need to do differently, and so on and so on. We’re not necessarily looking for negativity, what we are looking for are opportunities to improve. SS: Along with the adaptability of enablement, it’s also important to ensure reps are adaptable to change as well. I know a key way to do this is through coaching, which is an area that you have a lot of expertise in Jay. What role does coaching play in your enablement strategy? JS: Coaching is critical. In fact, I would even say I put more of an emphasis on coaching and implementation than I do the training itself. Think about this. It doesn’t matter what generation you are in. If you’re millennial, if you’re Gen X, Gen Z, I don’t care. I mean, what’s the newest one now, Shawnna? I think it’s Generation Alpha, but I don’t know if they’re even in the workforce yet. My point is they all learn differently. Some are attracted to badging, some people are attracted to microlearning, and some people want a dissertation with all the details. Then you got the audio and you got the visual and the kinesthetic elements that go into learning and transferring knowledge. That’s all well and good, and yes, you need to touch on some of those elements, but coaching is where it is applicable. You take that learning and you apply it. It’s so different from reading a book. I don’t know about you, but I love to read. I’m always reading, but I always have that challenge that everybody else has too, like you just read a chapter, what did I just read? Right? You have to come back and reinforce it, revisit it, and that’s what coaching does. I would say that probably makes up 70% of our actual work is applying the learning that they picked up, either through a white paper, through micro-learning, through some type of course, or maybe even an assignment that they needed to reach out to, or we’ll even use learning where we’re using both virtual and live training as well. Trying to tap into not only how we learn, but most importantly, how we retain and sustain. SS: Absolutely. To that point, to drill in, one of those areas where you coach is your sales methodology. You mentioned that having an integrated go-to-market sales methodology is a key focus for you next year. How does a methodology help drive alignment and consistency, and how are you bringing this to life at Bentley? JS: A couple of things. We’re actually going through that process right now. The first thing we did not want to do, despite levels of background experience and experience, was pick something out of a box or go into a padded room and say, this worked for me here, so therefore it’s going to work here. There’s a lot of great methodologies out there. In fact, just pick one. If you focus on whatever you pick and reinforce it properly, I’m going to tell you something, you’ll have success. It may be measured that success, lower or higher doesn’t matter, but the key point here is to pick one and then deliver on it and coach to it. You’ll have success. Now that all being said, we are going through the process right now of selecting a methodology, but we’re not doing it in a box. We involve people globally at all different levels of the sales process and role, and they have now made up a series of advisory teams. We created some decision criteria, collectively, and we are now going through a series of discussions with various methodology providers. Bottom line, though, Shawnna, it’s not a decision that Jay’s making. It’s not a decision even the CRO’s making. It’s a decision that is based on a group collaborative effort where we come to a consensus. That, to me, I think is critically important. Everybody that you and I have ever worked with in the world of sales has been through training and has also experienced that training of the month club. It works. We’re going to try something different. Now, we can’t afford to do that. Why not get the collaborative buy-in from the beginning, that’s exactly what we did through this process. SS: I love that you’ve built a committee around that. Last question for you, Jay. How do you envision your enablement strategy continuing to evolve in the next year and beyond? JS: That’s a fascinating question because I am not one that has patience and I would imagine, Shawnna, you in sales, and anybody else in sales, you totally get what I just said. We want to deliver now. Probably the greatest challenge that I have in my career is to actually take a deep breath and understand you’re not going to create everything and change everything within a period of time, three months, six months, even a year. Our strategy is built all the way out through 2027. Now, let’s be honest, are things going to change? Absolutely, they’re going to change, but at least we have a direction and a target in mind of where we want to be. Then you work backward to make that happen. That’s exactly how we will continue to evolve. You’ll do that as well through these advisory teams, through that give and take and the feedback that we get from our various regions all over the globe. The bottom line is, if you listen, everybody’s on the same page. We all define enablement the same way in what we’re trying to do. Buy-in, as well as moving towards that target, just isn’t the issue that it used to be. SS: Wonderful. Jay, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you sharing your insights. JS: You bet. Nice to see you again. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Rodney Umrah from Forcepoint join us. Rodney, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Rodney Umrah: Thank you so much, Shawnna. I am delighted to be here. My name is Rodney Umrah, and I’m the global head of enablement at our go-to-market organization here at Forcepoint. SS: I’m excited to have you here. Now, I know that you've shared that enablement found you rather than you finding it. Tell us a little bit about that career journey. Why and how did you transition into the enablement field? RU: I’ll take you back a little before I get to the transition because that will help to inform why that experience was so interesting to me. I was born on the lovely island of Jamaica, Shawnna. I’m not sure if you have been there before, but that’s where I was born. I went to the University of the West Indies and I studied computer science. I was fortunate to be hired right out of school by IBM. There's a gentleman who did that, and I don’t know how I can pay it forward to him, his name is Carl Foster. He’s still my mentor and friend today. He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. While being at IBM, there were 366,000 people in the organization. That was the largest IT company at the time, but it was like a university really, and I learned a lot. That’s where my true professionalism was honed. I migrated to Canada, that’s where I live now, and I was in technical roles between IBM Jamaica and IBM Canada, but I always wanted to be in sales. I transitioned from technical roles at IBM to sales, specifically software sales. Now, a little bit of context, Shawnna, is that my mother is actually a teacher and my brother is a professor. I used to do that part-time, I was a part-time professor myself, so, as a result of that experience, enjoying the IBM experience, and doing well, I said I wanted to transition to Microsoft. I spent about eight and a half years at IBM, then over to Microsoft. I was there for five and a half years and then moved over to NetSuite. This is where, now, your question comes in, Shawnna, which is a transition. I was doing well in sales at NetSuite, going to club every year and especially leveraging my manager at the time. He was very instrumental in my success. My GVP or Global Vice President of Sales, invited me into his office one day, and just asked me the question: are you interested in leading enablement? Now, the truth is I didn’t know what that term meant, enablement. I was like, enable what? I didn’t know because I was used to the term training. He asked me to speak to the leader of that organization because the GVP wanted me to lead enablement for his organization. As a result of that, the rest is history as they say, because here I am 10 years later and really, really enjoying it. I've been all over the globe, Shawnna. I was in Australia, the Philippines, Europe, across the US, Canada, you name it. I just have a great passion for the enablement vocation. SS: I love that career journey, and I’d love to understand more about how you think that your non-linear career path and your background in roles, spanning sales and academia, have helped you in your role as an enablement leader. RU: It certainly did, especially because I came from a sales background. It was, as I said, my group vice president who saw it in myself and also my manager. At the time, my manager asked me to do some best practices training with the team that we had at the time and it kind of grew and so they saw it and I didn’t. As a result of having the sales background and then being able to enable sellers, there is instant credibility there. The reason for it is not because I’m brilliant. The reason for it is that you’re coming from the same vocation that you’re enabling. You don’t only talk the talk, but you have walked the talk. People can see it. Whenever you present, they can understand for sure that you have been in the trenches before. This is not a theory. It’s not just words on a page. Coming from that background was really, really instrumental in my success. Now, the other area is academia as a result of being a part-time professor. Being able to stand and confidently deliver content, I took it for granted. Shawnna, you probably are aware, presenting in front of an audience is like one of the top three fears that people have. All of those pieces coming together and the experiences there really bode well for me in being in enablement and I’m absolutely enjoying the ride. SS: I love to hear that. That is fantastic. What would you say are some of the challenges that practitioners might face when they’re trying to make a career transition, and how did you overcome some of those challenges as you pivoted into the enablement career? RU: Wow, that’s, that’s a loaded question there, Shawnna, and we don’t have the time to go over the list, but the truth is, when you transition into enablement, just like any other new role, especially if it’s different from the one that you’re coming from, you will often feel less than, meaning it’s almost like you don’t feel like you are qualified to be there. That’s a feeling that one would need to overcome with time. So, I struggled with that, which is why I asked my GVP at the time. I was like, why are you asking me to do this? I don’t know how to do this. You know what he said to me, Shawnna? I’ll never forget it. It was in his office. He said, Rodney, all I need for you to do is to teach others what you do and what you do well when you’re in sales. That gave me the comfort level to say “Oh, what I’ll be doing is very similar to what I’m doing today. All I’m doing is really imparting my, or paying forward, my knowledge in this field.” That really helped feeling less than is one of the areas that you need to watch out for anyone transitioning into enablement. The other one is that there are very high expectations of individuals in enablement. Very high. In fact, we all know that in sales there is always high velocity, right? The expectations are high, and there’s an anticipation that you should make an impact now, and that can cause stress. It certainly can, but of course, as long as you are pacing yourself and ensuring that you’re doing the best you can, working with the resources that you have, ensuring that you’re aligned to the strategic priorities and you have ruthless prioritization, you will certainly overcome. The demands are high, Shawnna. They’re coming from all over. They’re probably coming from your CRO. They’re coming from the RevOps organization, legal product marketing, et cetera. Managing all of that can be really challenging, but of course, just like anything else, you will figure it out over time as you work with others and learn from others. SS: I love that advice. I want to drill into this a little bit. What are some of the key skills that have helped you succeed as an enablement leader? What skills do you think other enablement leaders should look for when they’re building out their teams? RU: I was fortunate, as I mentioned earlier, to have 10 years of experience in sales, software/cloud sales to be exact. As a result of that background, I wasn’t just enabling because it was on a slide. The content that I was delivering was coming from the heart and the brain at the same time because of my experience. I think people can see through that. People are looking for transparency so that decade of sales background really helped me. As I transitioned in, and even today, going into my eleventh year, I think I have also shown the leadership skills that I’ve gathered along the way, even when interacting with clients when I was in sales. I’ll give you an example: When I was at Oracle NetSuite, I had fifteen strategic accounts in the northeast of the U.S. Going through that process, we had lots of challenges, but we had to overcome those to be able to ensure that those organizations thrive. You had to exhibit, on a consistent basis, leadership skills and helping your customers. It’s the same when you are in an enablement, because, especially when you’re dealing with a global company, people are scattered all across the world. Being able to deal with so many different individuals with diverse backgrounds and thoughts is very important. I will also hasten to say that exhibiting empathy is key as well in our roles because the sales role is stressful. It really is, and I guess because I’ve been there, I know that. As a result, when dealing with that audience, and when I say sales here, it could be business development, it could be sales themselves or sales engineers, it could be renewals, it could be customer success, those are stressful roles. Executing your job in an empathetic way is very key. Always having an open mind to continuously learn, which is why we’re in this enablement role because we’re supposed to be life-learners. SS: I love that, and I love the life-learner approach. What benefit do you think organizations can gain from diversifying their sales enablement teams and bringing in people with different or maybe unconventional backgrounds? RU: It is absolutely powerful, Shawnna, and I’m saying it not because it’s the right thing to say, I’m indicating that clearly because I’ve experienced it. Let me tell you what I mean. I had the awesome privilege and opportunity to lead and develop an organization that had about 30 people located in 10 different countries around the globe—Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, France, Spain, the UK, the US, and Canada—and that experience, for me was absolutely breathtaking. The reason for that is that I was able to work with a totally global audience and be able to understand the differences in the region. Now, Shawnna, the truth is, sometimes we over here in North America think that we’re the world. We’re not the world, okay? What I mean is, there are so many different perspectives that you can learn from. What works in North America is not necessarily what will work in Australia, you see what I’m saying? The same thing in France and et cetera. Having that experience for me really taught me that listening is very important. Having that open mind, as we both spoke about just now, is very critical because I truly believe that whenever we get different thoughts or diverse ideas, and we put them in a pot and we mix it up, we will always get something richer and more and more impactful than the original idea. I have done it over and over again with my team. I tell my team all the time, please do not box yourself in. Just leave your mind open to creativity, because you never know what gems can emerge. SS: I absolutely love that as well. Last question for you, Rodney. What advice would you give people who want to transition into an enablement role from another department? How can they set themselves up for a successful career in enablement? RU: I do believe that talking to individuals who are successful in enablement is key. We spoke about earlier, Shawnna, the life-learner attitude. I’ve been in enablement now for 10 years. That is just formally, because even prior to that, as I mentioned, I was a part-time professor and was at IBM and other places. I was doing enablement in different spheres. The point is that I’m still learning. I still today challenge myself to think about things differently whenever I’m executing my role, even if it’s the same thing that I did in a previous organization. I’m challenging myself to ask if there is a better way to do onboarding. Is there a better way to do continuous learning? Is there a better way for manager enablement or partner enablement? The list goes on and I continuously do that. I would advise someone coming on board in an enablement role to have an open mind. I would also say, join Sales Enablement PRO and other enablement communities so that you can absolutely learn from others. What I’ve found that is interesting about enablement and those who are here is that we love to share ideas with each other, and I just love that. If someone is coming on board and you’re selfish, this is the wrong place, because in enablement we love to share our best practices with each other. We love to see others succeed. That is what gets us up in the morning: to see others actually win in their roles. If that is what you have in mind, if you have that attitude, if you have that passion, this is indeed the place, a neighborhood for you. SS: I could not agree more. That’s fantastic advice, Rodney. Thank you again so much for joining us today. RU: Thank you so much for having me, Shawnna. It was a blast. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Regan Barker from Grant Thornton, Australia join us. Regan, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Regan Barker: Absolutely, Shawnna. It’s great to be here. My name is Regan Barker and I am the head of sales and sales enablement here at Grant Thornton Australia. Part of my role is to work closely with the business on their sales activity and sales coaching. Grant Thornton is an accounting audit and consulting firm. We have six offices across our beautiful nation and seven service lines. We sell over a hundred products and services across 11 industry specializations with about 170 partners and 1,300 people. SS: Thank you for joining us. We’re excited to have a guest on the podcast from the Australia region. Now, one area of expertise for you is coaching. I’d love to start there and understand why sales coaching is so important. RB: Great question. I think for particularly working in professional services, slightly different from more product-based businesses, our partners are the owners of the business. They’re also the experts and they’re actually the product. For me, coaching and advising our 170-odd partners is pivotal. In Australia, we have an ever-changing landscape across the business, regulation, and market pressure. We need to ensure that our partners and our people have the confidence to cut through the noise and really provide essential insights around business operations, regulatory change, and emerging issues for those businesses and senior leaders to make sound business decisions. Helping our partners in their activity helps them be more efficient as well as to be able to make sure that they’re talking to the right people around the right insights as well. SS: Absolutely. From your perspective, what are some of the key components of an effective coaching program, especially in today’s sales landscape? RB: I think for effective coaching, it’s really about meeting people where they are. Most sales programs are based on supporting sales operators, our partners are the owners, and service providers, they’re the team leaders. They have to run the billing, run the client programs, absolutely everything. Our effective coaching has to be integrated as a part of their everyday life to make sure that it is effective and efficient. When I say meeting people where they are, really it’s about understanding their business, how it operates, what the sales cycles are, whether it’s heavily compliance-driven and you’ll be advising an organization and their CFO, for example, on a regular basis or cyclical basis versus some of our financial advisory experts that are heavily transactional. Meeting them where they are, both in how they operate, but also in terms of their own capability as well, some of which are extremely effective sales operators and others may be more introverted. It’s really about giving them confidence. One of the pieces that we try to focus on is just focusing on one skill or development area at a time. Fine-tune that, making sure we find our efficiencies, and then as they build that confidence and capability, then we move on to the next area to help fine-tune something else, another skill. SS: I think those are absolutely key components to effective coaching programs. In your experience, what does good coaching look like? In other words, what does it take to be an effective sales coach? RB: I think the most powerful tool you can have is to also be a practitioner. In professional services, obviously, I’m not going to be a tax expert, I’m not going to be an auditor, but what I am is an expert around sales. A key thing that I’ve adopted here is in the last financial year, I took over inbound sales and really developed that channel. Everything that I coach on, I test and I use as a part of our inbound sales program as well. That’s led to great success. It means that we frequently on a daily basis run alongside our partners in a framework that I like to call coach to close. We are working with the client, working with the partner, and ensuring that the tactics and communications, the cadence, and our tools are all adopted as a part of those sales opportunities. We can then give them to the partner and they can use it in other opportunities that they’re working on. What we’ve seen in terms of our adoption of inbound sales as well as sales enablement means that we’ve actually increased our revenue by that channel by over 93% in comparison to the previous year. We’ve actually qualified and won more opportunities from it as well. Our median opportunity fee has increased exponentially as well. With that, it means that we can give our partners practical tips to adopt within their sales programs rather than the more high-level traditional coaching that has occurred in the past within professional services. SS: That is fantastic advice in terms of what good looks like. On the flip side, a common challenge when it comes to sales coaching is ensuring that sellers and sales managers are able to make the time for it. It feels like productivity and staying on top of quite a few things are definitely a challenge for folks these days. How do you get buy-in from the sales team and sales leadership to lean into coaching? RB: I think that one of the challenges for us is, again, because we are in professional services, the partners are everything. There is a power behind what we call the billable hour. There has to be enough time in the day for partners to be able to bill and provide services to their clients as well as sell. I think there are a few pieces to this one. We’re not going to be able to influence every partner across the firm some of them are already great operators. Really it’s about working with the people that want to work with us as well. Really focusing on from their perspective, tapping into their growth mindset and their willingness to learn and more on the flip side for us is about integrating it into partners every day. We try to integrate our sales coaching into our pipeline meetings. Everything from our inbound sales, everything from our outbound prospecting, working across the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel with our marketing team. Then, making sure that we support them across as many interactions as possible, rather than only focusing on carving out time for that one-to-one coaching. SS: I think that is a great way to go ahead and get buy-in from the leadership organization. How can coaching help sellers better engage their clients and deepen those client relationships? RB: This is probably my favorite question. I think that any good sales tool or anything that you can have in your arsenal will help you be a better provider to your existing clients. Take questioning, for example. We try to create a framework to ensure that we cover not just current questions, but say future and past questions to ensure that we can get the most information and the most effective information to help support our prospective clients, but also our current clients. Even adopting those components will help be able to ensure that we get accurate scoping with our existing clients and make sure that we’re delivering on our promises as well. SS: I’d love to hear that. Last question for you, Regan. What are your best practices for measuring the impact of coaching? RB: We measure a few components around everything from the usability and adoption of our CRM. We obviously look at the bottom line, so from a partnership, it is individual partner revenue and service line revenue. Whether they’re in tax consulting or financial advisory, the average days to close opportunities obviously would be dependent on the service line and the products we’re offering. One of our key focuses, however, at the moment is around client mix. Making sure that when we are winning work, are we winning work with the right type of client that we want to work with? Given its services, there has to be a level of profitability as well. Also, we want to work with great clients that also want to work with us. Also, from earlier stage sales, it’s around outreach activity, the number of opportunities created, also that cross-collaboration between partners and service lines. Really looking to focus on introductions given, whether it’s across our firm, but then also our friends in other professional services like banking and law, for example. The overall engagement, particularly through say NPS scores, as well, because we want to make sure that while we’re growing as a firm, we really focus on delivering against the objectives of our clients as well. SS: I love that. Regan. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. RB: It was great to be here. I really appreciate it. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Marja Moore join us. I would love for you to introduce yourself to our audience. Marja Moore: Thank you, Shawnna. Hi, everyone, my name is Marja Moore, and I am in the Seattle area. I have most recently worked at companies like SAP, Concur, and Infoblox. Right now, I’m taking some time off to explore some new adventures, but I have worked in everything from marketing to business development to sales enablement and value methodology building. I have a diverse background in many industries and I use all of that to inform how I go forward with every new role, especially with enablement. SS: Wonderful. I’m excited to chat with you. There was something on your LinkedIn profile that caught my eye. You mentioned that you lean toward being a human-centric leader who is also focused on data-driven outcomes. I’d love to understand from you, why are both sides of this coin important as an enablement leader. MM: I would say it’s an important thing to have for any leader. First of all, we’re dealing with humans every day. You need to know what’s going to compel people. What’s going to get them to do what you need them to do, not only perform in their roles but also in the organization? How are they expanding their view? How are they becoming greater than what they were before? Understanding who you’re working with, whether that be people on your team or people that you’re trying to enable, you need to understand their values and what makes them tick is important. I think every enablement leader will say, you always have to give them what’s in it for me. I think this is true for literally any leader you need in order to compel somebody, you’re going to need to know who the human is behind it. That’s important to me, not only knowing the people that I help lead, but those that I help enable. What are their needs? What compels them? What gets them to do the things that we need them to do, and how does that make them feel? On the other side of the coin is the data, and that is really driven by the need to say, okay, we see a hurdle, what does the data tell us? I think all business data is important because it tells you a story. How you interpret that story may differ, and it may tell people different things. For me, it’s important for me to look at the data, not only to help lead in the right way but also to help innovate and grow in the right way. Whether that be growing people or growing the business, the data is important, but the human element of it is always there. You need to make sure that you’re looking at both in order to make the right decisions. Data is only part of the story. The humans that interact to create that data or make that data are also important. Going behind the data to see what that looks like from a human perspective is important. SS: I love that. I know on the human side, one of the ways that you focus on this is by developing a sales council to support your enablement strategy. Tell us about that program. What did it entail and how did it impact your enablement strategy? MM: This goes back to that human focus part of it. What we learned from interviewing a lot of our sales personnel was that we were hearing things like, we need more experts, more SMEs teaching us. We need a better way to actually understand what we’re supposed to be doing. To me, that human element of people coming to us saying what we need is a data point. You take that human element and that data point and you say how do we fix that for me? There were two things. One, you always know that people in your organization are trying to move up or trying to better themselves, and often It’s the ones that are excelling in their specific roles so if you look at your sales field and you say okay, I have this top 10% and they’re just kicking butt at everything they do. Why is the other 90% not performing as well? Well, we should be leveraging that knowledge those skills, and that experience to help teach the rest of the field. I think a lot of times we go outside or we use a sales coach. I’m not saying that we don’t need those things. I’m saying that you have a lot of knowledge in your salespeople today, how do you leverage that to give back to the rest of the field? How do you lift those salespeople? Who is that 10% to give them something to work towards? The program was really built around how we take the top salespeople who are interested in growing, who are interested in evolving, who are maybe one day interested in leadership, and how we build them up to help them achieve their goals while also achieving the business goals. That whole council kind of came together and there were a lot of different facets of it. Not only would the participants be nominated and have to keep a certain threshold of meeting their quota, but they would have the opportunity to take part in special different programs. Those things could be mentorship, mentoring someone who is new in their region, or being a part of our field studies. Once a quarter we would bring them together to talk about what the issues are and get their best practices every different quarter. Every quarter it would be a different kind of subject so that we could gather more information and skill building and then take it from there to put out to the rest of the teams. They would also be featured on the enablement webinars. They would get some special training as well. All of this bundled together is a way to lift up your people who may want to continue to grow, learn more about the business, and learn more about leading by example. Transferring that knowledge to the less experienced sales reps, or even to those that are just coming into the business, and so we built it as a one-year cycle. You have to be nominated and once you take part in it, you’re basically on the bench for leadership. Then if you want to become a sales manager or some other leadership role within sales, this is a great boost for those people to do so because they’re learning more about the business and about the ways that we need to really focus in different areas in order to be successful. Of course, one of those is enabling the field. It gives both sides of the coin. You’re getting some people who are really great at what they do to share their experiences and their best practices with your field, but you’re also giving them the opportunity to take on increased responsibility and participate more in the growth of the company as well. SS: I love that. The other thing that I love about your background is that you have a blended background that incorporates customer success. How has that customer-centric approach to enablement? MM: That’s a really good question. I would have to say that if you’re thinking about customer success, one of the most important things that’s happening in the industry, especially if you are a SaaS company, but this actually works for all kinds of companies who are providing a measurable service for their customers. The thing that you’re going to see is customer success is where all of those proof points for sales come out. If you’re looking at building a value methodology, which is what the industry is working towards, how do you show value to your customers? We’re not talking nerd knobs here. We’re talking outcomes and value to your customers. What is the bottom line that that CEO is going to say? Yes, I need that product or I need that service because it’s going to save me money, help my people, reduce my risk, and save me time. All of those things are important to getting to that economic buyer. If you don’t have a value methodology, the one place you can look is your customer success team. They’re the ones that are going to know the success of the customers using the products or services. They’re going to be the ones that are engaging with them on a regular basis. That’s where you can do most of your learning to see where that success is. For me, customer success is important because that really helps you understand the customers and then it helps you dive further down into those customers to really get that clear understanding to then build. On the front end of the customer life cycle, how do you go about approaching those kinds of customers in the future? When you think about enablement, you take all those learnings and you kind of transfer them into the value methodology to make sure that you’re starting with that at the beginning. What value are we providing our customers? How do we build that to help the sales teams actually understand the technology the service or the product? You have this ability to really empower your sales teams to have better discussions. They’ll get to the C-suite a lot faster. Your customer acquisition costs will go down. All of those things. Learning from customer success is extremely important. It’s extremely important to organizations because that’s where the customer is having success, and then you can leverage that in the sales cycle to make sure that you’re finding those customers that have those similar scenarios to kind of push that sales cycle through based on the knowledge that you’ve learned from customer success. SS: I love that. So you blend your understanding of your customer. You’re also leveraging feedback from sales, and then there’s also the data side, which we talked about earlier in the conversation. What are some of the ways that you leverage data to inform and optimize your sales enablement programs? MM: This is going to be a tricky one. We touched a lot of parts of the customer life cycle. We were enabling a lot of parts of operational and administrative things that sales need to do in order to keep the engine going. I think for me, it depends on where we are involved in enablement. What are we responsible for enabling? In that vein, if we’re looking at all of that data to say, are we being more proficient in our activities that we have to do when they’re engaging with the CRM, what does that look like? Your very first indicators of success, in my opinion, are how they’re doing in the prospecting and getting everybody through the pipeline. If you’re seeing that they’re holding on to prospects for too long, there’s something going on there. They’re not qualifying them out or disqualifying them, if you will. They’re holding on to them and that’s not really efficient. You need to look at all parts of the sales cycle and where you can influence. For example, if that was a problem that they’re not qualifying their customers and they’re sitting in there for months and months and months on end, what kind of qualifying framework do you have? Do you need to adjust that? Do you need to reinforce it? How many people are actually paying attention to it? That goes to how you are enabling and how you are graduating folks. We look at data all the time to say how we are performing in the business relative to what enablement is doing, but also what is enablement doing to qualify those people out to say, yep, they’re ready. Is it an individual looking at something? Often people do a pitchback practice and then they have the manager say yes or no on it. Well, the manager needs a butt in the seat. Is that really the right way to go about it, or do you really need to have a panel of people that are going to provide a more holistic view as to what that person pitched and say, no, you didn’t quite hit it, you need some more education here? That’s another way to look at data. Not just looking at strict numbers, but also the stuff you can’t quantify, the skills, the abilities of those salespeople. I think when you talk about data, there’s so much that could go into it. It’s hard to pick one specific data point that’s going to matter the most to you because it really depends on where you fit in and where you have influence or ownership. You might not own all the parts that you could influence, but along that customer life cycle is most important for you to focus, to be more productive, and to make sure that your enablement programs are functioning the way you need them to. SS: What are some of the key metrics that you look at to quantify enablement’s impact and value to the business? MM: This goes back to what do you enable on? A lot of companies have separate enablement groups for different activities. For example, some people will enable the operations, and then the enablement team will enable the skills the product, and the way that we do things. The companies that I’ve worked at, have owned all of it. It depends on what I have to look at as far as my span of influence or my span of ownership. If I’m looking from my perspective, I’m going to look again at how long it’s taking them to either qualify or disqualify a customer or prospect. I also like to look at the end. Once they’ve already purchased, they’re going to go through another sales cycle at some point. A good way to think about enablement is if you are enabling your customer success teams and you do have a value methodology. You’ll notice that once you sell to them and customer success is able to prove that value, the next sales cycle if they’re going to be buying another product or service from your company in CrossSell is going to go much quicker. You’re actually going to reduce that sales cycle for the next iteration of whatever they buy. That’s one way to tell that your value methodology is working, not just that they get through the sales cycle, but then their continuous sales cycle that you’re doing with them at the end. Is working and is moving faster. Those two things are really important because they are the bookends. You’ve got the prospecting, how quickly are they churning through their pipeline, making sure that the people that they are looking at are qualified? If I’m looking at that, I’m going to look a lot at things like the scores. Are they focusing on the right customers? Are they getting the right customers through? Are they disqualifying customers that they shouldn’t have been? Doing a review of their books of business sometimes will be helpful and that’s a really good metric to say okay, they disqualified out all of the D’s and C’s of their scores, they’re focusing only on their A’s, and B’s. Great. What happens when all those A’s and B’s are gone? Do you need to adjust that behavior? I think it’s a matter of really where you fit into the customer life cycle, picking the bookends and then pulling in from there. If you’re pulling from prospecting, then you’re going to go to how long it takes them overall in the sales cycle, I always like to look at how high are they getting in the organization. That’s a data point where we can take that through and say, okay, you’ve got your list of contacts, but you have no one from the C-suite that tells me that you’re not getting to, the real decision maker. Even if you’re getting to a VP, that’s great, but how are you going to evolve that into your sales enablement to make sure that they are getting higher up in the accounts that they are able to sell to that decision maker and that economic buyer? For me, it’s a matter of what you touch, what you influence, what you own, and then taking a deeper dive into all of those facets, from start to finish to say, where can I pull this through into my enablement and make sure that we’re doing the right things for the field to make the company successful. SS: I love that. Last question, Marja. This one I think is going to be of a lot of interest to our audience. AI has rapidly advanced and evolved in the last year. How do you envision AI impacting both the human and the data side of enablement programs in the future? MM: I love this question because I have been working with a lot of this AI since I think before it became the latest and greatest thing out there. It’s a funny transition for the world. I think we’re all experiencing a little bit of wow, and then some people are scared that it’s going to take away their jobs. I don’t think that’s the case. I think AI is going to help us both do things a lot faster. One of the things that I used it for is taking meeting notes or a meeting transcript and distilling it down into some of the points that were most important from that meeting. That helps sellers too, to even understand what those points were in meetings that they’re having that were good points, bad points. Were they stuttering? Were they saying the wrong words? I know a lot of AI is now integrated into a lot of the products that are being used by the fields. That’s the sales fields that are collecting information on their calls and analyzing it and telling them when they’re saying the right things and when they’re saying the wrong things. I think that can only really help us in the future because it’s going to make us more efficient. We’re going to be able to look at that data and say, okay, you said X 12 times during that call, and X every single time made the customer hesitant. What’s something else you can say in place of that to move the customer forward and not have them have that kind of visceral reaction to it where they make a face or they grunt little things like that? Then we can start to get into the nuances of how you actually treat that human on the other side of your sales call to be a more engaged and fruitful relationship. I think that AI is going to help us grow. It’s going to help us learn. It’s going to help us evolve. We need to use it carefully as well because you need to remember that if you’re going on to some of these different platforms, the information you put in is now in there. You have to be very cognizant of what you’re providing what you’re trying to get back and, where that information goes. You don’t want to put anything proprietary in there, of course, because then it’s in the system, but at the same time. You should be able to leverage it to get the things that you need. What are some of the best trends in certain industries used to help sellers and giving them education on what to look for is another way that enablement can be helpful in the whole sales cycle. What should they look for? How should they prompt the AI? If they need to understand more about their customer, what kind of questions should they be asking the AI? These are all opportunities for enablement to be a part of that journey and to help them maximize their interactions with AI if they are going to use it as a salesperson to do research. The one thing again I will say is to make sure that you’re talking to your legal department about using AI because you want to have some rules and regulations around it to say, hey, don’t put this kind of information in there, but you can use it for this kind of information. I think it’s a requirement going forward for every sales enablement team to learn how to use it, to leverage it, and to make sure that you are focusing on moving forward and evolving with technology. I also think you need to be careful and cognizant that it is basically sharing with the world. You need to work with your legal departments to make sure that you understand where those lines are of what you should share in those kinds of programs and what you shouldn’t. SS: Fantastic advice, Marja. Thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve enjoyed all of the insights that you’ve shared with our audience. MM: Thank you so much for having me, Shawnna. Much appreciated. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jonathan Kvarfordt from Simetrik and the founder of GTM AI Academy join us. Jonathan, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jonathan Kvarfordt: Shawnna, I’ve been looking forward to this. Thank you for having me on. As a big fan of the organization and podcast, I just want to say first off, thank you. I am currently the head of revenue enablement and product marketing at Simetrik. I do everything with revenue enablement teams, sporting partners, CS teams, sales, and business development. The other hat I wear is product marketing. I currently have a team of five content writers and designers all they do is your basic content creation from websites to one-pagers, white papers to all things content, which is a lot of fun. I’m loving the first month and a half of craziness. SS: Love that. On LinkedIn, I noticed that you mentioned you’re passionate about empowering leadership in the age of AI. What does that look like to empower leaders in this rapidly evolving era, especially as AI becomes more prevalent? JK: I think that a lot of people are either confused, afraid or just unsure or trying to figure out if it’s really even something they should focus on in the first place. For me, I want to make sure I can help educate and number one, give confidence that it is something they can not only focus on themselves but also help their team to do so they can do things better, faster and less expensive, or more efficiently. I also want to make sure that they’re able to hopefully have some confidence in where we’re going in the direction of technology. In my opinion, this is the next leap in what we’re going to be experiencing as humankind is all the automation and efficiency that will happen as a result of AI technology. SS: I couldn’t agree more. For our audience, specifically when it comes to enablement, Jonathan, why is AI an important topic for enablement practitioners to pay attention to? JK: Oh, I could go on for a while for this one because I’m actually really passionate about enablement specifically. On a side note, I am part of a core group of people who I have been working with over the past year and we are all business consultants from various industries. We have all been talking about how to use AI. We’ve been masterminding and collaborating on it. None of them are in the go-to-market or enablement space like I am. I have a little bit more unique views as opposed to them. One thing they keep bringing up is how they want to start consulting businesses on how to adopt what they’re calling AI training. I was like, okay, tell me what you would do in that scenario, and they just said, okay, well, we’d go in and teach them about tools and how to best use them and how to impact revenue. I’m like, wait a second, that’s what enablement does. In my opinion, I think that enablement specifically should be leading the charge on not only using it in their own workflows but also helping the entire org become AI-powered. One more note with that is that in this last year, I know a lot of enabling people specifically have had challenges with providing or at least showing their value. At least that’s something that people have told me about, they’re just not sure how to show the value of what enablement can do. One way I think they can help expedite that process, both subjectively and objectively to show the impact of what we can do is using AI as the mechanism to show what enablement does on a day-to-day basis, but also to help the rest of the team do what they do better. That’s, in my opinion, the essence of why enablement exists is to enable a positive impact on an organization. SS: Absolutely. On that note, what does AI-driven enablement look like? JK: That’s a good question. To me, it comes down to what are the outputs that we’re doing on a day-to-day basis. I’m going to back up a second and describe something to hopefully shift people’s mindsets around this. In the Industrial Revolution, the thing that drastically changed was instead of having a hundred humans doing an activity, you could have a machine complement those humans and then it ended up being five humans with big machines doing that same activity. I think the same thing is going to happen with all functions. Enablement specifically, the question I’d ask is what are your day-to-day tasks or workflows that you’re doing that could be automated or systematized using AI, because then you’ll be spending more time with your brain and strategy versus creating a deck or one-page or making a training outline or all the things that require kind of the menial stuff. I mean, I love to create those types of content pieces, but overall, my true value comes from my experience and my mind, not so much from the ‘I have to make this one page that might take me two hours to do out of my day.' To answer your question, it’s about identifying what you can automate and do better, faster with AI, so you have more time to do the more impactful activities or requirements of the job. SS: I love that. You gave us one example, but what are some of the key ways that you’ve leveraged AI in your enablement programs? JK: One in particular is I don’t like to overwhelm my teams with tools. I’d rather keep it simple. So because ChatGPT specifically is kind of one that my team who is international is all heard of, I took them through a process of researching an account and an ideal ICP. From that research be able to take that information and apply it to a messaging framework of talk tracks or emails or LinkedIn requests, that kind of stuff. It was funny because the two days before, we spent a lot of time doing the manual way of understanding where to go on their website and how to research the company and all the people on LinkedIn and how to understand them. In an hour of training, I gave them all a thread run in a group Slack together, and I sent them one by one a thread on how to research a specific company, how to research a specific role, and how to take all of that, combine it with my company’s unique value prop and put it together to where they would have four or five different emails or LinkedIn messages or talk tracks they could use to a specific person at that company, which would have taken us weeks before they get that kind of information and we did it in an hour. That’s one example of many examples that I do on a daily basis of just trying to leverage and help them learn how to fish faster if that makes any sense. SS: No, it absolutely does. I have to say though, AI capabilities seem like they’re constantly evolving, especially in the last year. What are your best practices for continuously optimizing your enablement strategy to keep up with this new innovation? JK: There’s a lot out there. I was reading that there are a thousand plus new tools or companies launching every week, so it’s easy to get inundated or overwhelmed. For one there’s some research time, there’s a lot of aggregators out there. I don’t know if you want me to name any specific tools, but there are several out there that will give you a good summary of all the thousands of tools out there you can research. It really comes down to the mindset of just going back to automation. What am I doing on a daily basis that could be automated? Is there a tool out there that can help me do that faster? I ask that question with everything we do from what a sales rep does on a day-to-day basis, or what the CS team is doing, or what am I doing, and is there a way I could use three or four tools to be able to get those things done. Then I’ll work through and I’ll take the time to make sure I can research it because sometimes it does take a little time to kind of experiment with ChatCPT or other tools to make sure that it’s working and has an output that you can actually use. When you figure it out, it’s really easy to scale that and to get the team where they can have the same type of results. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Last question, Jonathan. How do you think AI will continue to evolve in the next year and beyond? How do you think that evolution will impact enablement? JK: Well, I know it’s projected over the next seven years that the budgets for AI companies or products are going to be 10 times. Right now it’s in the billions, it’s going to be in the trillions within seven years, which just means this is not going anywhere. I think over the next year, just seeing where we have come since November when ChatGPT launched and all of the tools and technologies have come out over the past 10, 11 months. Over the next year, I would say things are going to be drastically different from the tools that you will use individually to the tools you could use as a team. How enablement should be thinking about how we can lead the charge instead of being behind? Again, there will come a time when a company, if they had a choice between getting a tool that could create really good-looking decks and just needed one person to edit it or a person whose all they did was create decks and that’s only value proposition as a role, they will probably be limited because more than likely the tool will be cheaper and faster and better overall. The question really is, do you understand your own value point as a mind and person, which I believe that people do have more value than an AI and how can you complement what you do with AI so that you become AI-powered? A really crucial piece to the puzzle of how to get companies to the next level, and then can you identify those things and hopefully make them part of what you’re doing now? If you wait till next year to change, it’s going to be too late. You’ve got to start now to be able to start looking at what can I do better, faster, and easier with AI and how can I help my team do the same. SS: Great advice, Jonathan. Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. JK: Thank you. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Jennifer Ryan at Blackline join us. Jennifer, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jennifer Ryan: Absolutely. My name is Jennifer Ryan. I’m the director of global sales enablement here at Blackline. I went the long way around to find my way to enablement. When I was a solutions consultant, I was a customer success manager. I’ve done IT support, I’ve done customer training. I’ve done all of these things, and my senior VP of sales came up to me and he says, you keep circling the barrel, but until you understand sales, you can’t understand business, so you have two choices. You can go into sales enablement, or you can go into sales. I chose sales enablement. SS: I love that. Now, you also describe yourself as someone who specializes in navigating fear and leaning into trying new things, as you just alluded to in your introduction with all of the various experiences that you’ve had throughout your career journey. How have you applied this mindset now to your role in enablement? JR: When we think about enablement, the whole goal, whether we’re selling widgets or we’re selling software, we are asking people to change. When we ask others to change, that means that there’s something in us that has to change. As human beings, we are emotionally driven. Change is very difficult for us. It’s always steeped in the fear of the unknown. I use this idea behind being experimental, being okay with trying something, and failing because the magic is in the quote-unquote failure. The idea that failure is negativity is horrible, it’s where all of the magic comes from. Think about science. How many things were discovered by accident because someone just tried something and what was a failure for one thing became something else? I apply this mindset to the folks in enablement that while you might be afraid to try something new, that while you might be resistant, there is absolutely nothing that you should be afraid of and just trying. SS: I love that mindset. Now, that all being said, the sales environment has undergone a lot of change in the last few years, and change can cause fear for some folks. What are some of the common challenges that can arise from giving into fear? JR: What I see most often that comes out of that fear mindset, and if we even think about all of the information that’s come out of Gartner and this idea behind buyer enablement, this idea that it’s not so much about us as the salespeople, but more about what the buyer knows about themselves. There’s a lot of fear of loss of control in the sales cycle. There’s this idea that historically we’ve gone in discovery and we’ve peppered questions and now it’s, how do we coach a buyer into answering those questions for themselves that we lead them instead of tell them? That’s scary because you don’t know what’s coming. You have to be agile and you have to use your active listening skills. Those are not muscles that we always flex. Some are very good at it, but others struggle. When we struggle and then there’s the looming quota, those are all very fear-inducing instances in sales. SS: I love that. What are some of your best practices to help sellers overcome fear though, through enablement efforts? JR: My favorite practice to alleviate fear is humor. When you’re laughing, our bodies release serotonin, and dopamine in our brains. It’s almost like we’re drug addicts if you will. I don’t mean to use that term loosely, but we are subject to that release in our brains, and when we associate that with something new, something that we’ve learned, we have a Pavlovian response to learning. With laughter, you release defenses. You get people to just relax. They lower their shoulders, their facial muscles release, and they’re with you. When people are with you and they feel like you are meeting them where they are, the fear goes away because you’re not lording over them. I use humor more than anything else in enablement and it has served me well for the many years I’ve been doing it. SS: I think you’re spot on. Humor does alleviate a lot of that held in tension. Beyond that, the learning process can play a big role, I think, as well in helping sellers navigate fear because then it is no longer the unknown. It also helps to build a lot of confidence amongst your sales teams. I know one of your areas of expertise is in multimedia learning. How can a multimedia approach to learning help sellers develop confidence? JR: I don’t know if you’ve ever read the books by Don Norman, and if you haven’t, do yourself a favor, they’re phenomenal, but Don talks about how cognitive learning by itself, that people only absorb so much information. If we couple new learning with an emotional response, if we associate emotion with it, then not only are people Viscerally responding to what’s happening, but they are also engaging a part of their brain that creates a reflective approach in the future. That means that they can recall that learning again in the future. When you think about multimedia learning, I always lean into it. I’m going to age myself now, but when I was a kid, we had Schoolhouse Rock. At my age, I can still recite the preamble to the Declaration of Independence because I know it in a song. If you think about when someone tells you something new, and then you also see a picture of it. These things combined create an environment for learning. We’re engaging people at different places instead of just a singular point of bringing learning to new people in whatever form that takes. My other favorite is storytelling. If I tell you a silly story with a point that makes a correlation between something that you don’t know, that correlation makes the learning. SS: I love how you’re able to draw that correlation for your learners. If we can double-click into this a little bit, what are some of the key components of an effective multimedia learning experience? JR: One of my favorite things to look at is called sensory motor synchronization. There’s been a lot of research done on it, but basically, the research started in babies. If we can do something that aligns with the beat of a baby’s heart, or the beat of the intake and outtake of their breath, then we align to the very basics of these babies as humans. It also works with folks who are further in the ending stages of their life. I spent the early part of my career studying music therapy. I used to work in an Alzheimer’s unit and that’s where I started to align with that idea of the power of music, the power of the beat, and how we can reach people that the brain has literally made them unreachable for us. One of the key components that I use is helping people align learning with that beat. Think about when you’re looking at a PowerPoint and someone has multiple lines and if you put a little music behind it and it comes out synchronized to that beat, that effect draws people’s attention, people’s attention and they’re like, oh, I loved that part. Look at how that exactly went with that beat. Things like that are my favorite things to do in training. I’ll put up a picture that elicits that awe factor, like a picture of a kitten, and I’ll ask them, how does this make you feel? People will respond, oh, it’s just so sweet, or oh, look at that kitten. Then behind it, I’ll play the Jaws theme. Now, all of a sudden, this sweet little kitten’s eyes look like it’s coming for me! That idea that we can change the feeling, we can change the scenario of something by combining pictures with stories, and with music, we can control how people come to the table and how they’re going to ingest what we have to offer for them. SS: That was quite the visualization, I have to say. Last question for you, Jennifer. What is one thing that you’re planning to try in your enablement programs this year? What is one thing that you’d recommend our audience try in their programs that maybe they haven’t tried before? JR: This year we are actually rolling out what we’re calling Blackline TV. What we found is that our learners were giving us a lot of feedback that, we get too much email, and our LMS sends out email notifications. Our learning development team from HR sends out emails. We send out email announcements. There are emails about new meetings that are coming. We had to find a different way to reach people in a way that they would again be open to learning something new. Blackline TV gives us this idea, think about the very best movie trailer you’ve ever seen. As soon as it’s done, you think, where’s my $20, I can’t wait to see that movie. Blackline TV is a snippet of different parts of the business. We didn’t just limit it to enablement functions, but we figured that this collaboration, this learning opportunity around the entire business would create not only collaboration between different teams but also reinforces that we are one company as a whole, not separate groups that happen to be part of the same quote unquote company family. That is our big one this year is BlacklineTV. I would really recommend finding something that is off the beaten path. Something that people haven’t seen before. The beautiful part about this experimental mindset is that just try it. What’s the worst that could happen? Did it fall apart? Okay, well then you try something else. Try quickly, fail quickly, and iterate quickly. SS: I love that advice. Thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining us today. I learned a lot. JR: Absolutely. My pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I'm excited to have Nicholas Gregory from Qlik join us. Nick, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Nicholas Gregory: Thank you so much, Shawnna, for the opportunity to speak to you and to speak to your audience here. My name is Nicholas Gregory. I started my career in sales after university. Specifically with a cybersecurity company called McAfee about 15 years ago, where I was given an opportunity to fulfill a very personal and professional goal of mine to work in Latin America, which is a different conversation for a different day. Nonetheless, the powers that be at the company, knowing my aspirations to work in Latin America, tap me on the shoulder to be a new member of a new global team of sales consultants placed regionally across the globe to deploy what we would call ‘enablement services today' in a globally consistent manner. I was brought on to that team to lead their Latin America efforts from a sales enablement services perspective and that’s where I found myself in enablement. Since that time I’ve led a regional, and most of my career now, global sales enablement teams for technology organizations such as Symantec, Veritas, Sabre, and Couchbase. Currently, I’m the global head of sales enablement and effectiveness at Qlik, and we’re a business intelligence, data analytics, and data integration company where we help organizations to better understand their data, whatever that might mean to them, to run their business and help turn their data into action. SS: Well, Nick, we’re excited to have you here joining us with your wealth of experience. One of the things that caught my eye about your background was the focus on improving sales productivity, which I think is the ultimate goal for most folks in enablement. In your opinion, what is enablement’s role in helping to drive productivity for the business? NG: Enablement’s role in improving sales productivity is very multifaceted. To answer, first, I’ll speak to what I feel is important to share with the audience, which is my opinion on what are the four key principle enablement services that enablement should provide to the organization itself. that we’re working for. This is from an end-to-end strategic discipline perspective. Those are four in this order. Technology services, so that is, we may not own the sales tech stack or most of the sales tech stack, but we train on those particular tools, let’s say, or in partnership with whoever might own those tools, whether it’s marketing or other parts of organization, and also in some cases, we own part of the tech stack as well, where we are from an admin perspective, but we’re here to train on those tools, no matter where they reside and who funds them on how to be more efficient and effective with those tools. Whether it’s a conversation intelligence tool, a prospecting tool, whatever the case may be, or your CRM whatever the case may be, we’re here to help support being more effective. Number two, training services. We can’t forget where we came from in enablement. We’re born out of training, but that is a key component to the four services, training services. That is your onboarding, methodology, product training, business acumen training, industry training, and everything in between. Number three is coaching services, which is a critical component and often doesn’t get funded as much as it should with organizations today, especially in this changing buyer-seller landscape. Any of the investments we make that are imperative for the organization, be the actual organization itself or the sales organization, we should be supporting the organization through coaching services to protect those investments we’re making, whether those are financial investments from an enablement perspective, or be it that it’s like time, a soft cost investment, whatever the case may be, what’s the most important to the organization, we should be coaching to the sustainment of those investments. Last but not least is content services. A lot of times we create content and if you look at the research, sales themselves create a lot of content that they use in front of the customer or send to customers. Also, we work with partners in marketing that create a lot of content as well. Wherever the content comes from, we need to make sure that it’s synthesized for sales so that they make the most of that content and they’re not reinventing the wheel or having to edit a lot of that content that is being dispersed. Whether that’s through the technology services that I talked about before, integrated into the CRM, or however they get their content at their organization. That’s just to provide a perspective of the four key principal enablement services that I feel are most important that we drive from a strategic perspective. Second, let’s agree on a high-level definition of sales productivity. If we can agree on that, it means how we measure how the organization leverages those enablement services I just spoke about to achieve organizational outcomes while reducing the time and costs to acquire new business. No service that I just talked about is more important than the other on its own, it’s how many of these services work in concert to drive the outcomes, to achieve those results that we’re looking for across the organization. From my team’s perspective, the net on all this is that either we implement these services ourselves or work in partnership cross functionally to improve the efficacy and efficiency when using our sales tech stack as a part of our technology services, or reduce ramp time for new hires as a part of our onboarding to full productivity, or implement and drive adoption of the sales methodology that we might purchase from a methodology provider, or concentrate on the opportunities that will yield the most likelihood of winning or developing our most strategic accounts. That will increase selling time by focusing on those opportunities or on those accounts that matter the most as a part of training services. What I mentioned about coaching services, keeping our sales skills sharp and reinforcing the most critical programs and initiatives so that leaders and reps know what to focus on. Lastly, content services, whether we create the content ourselves or work in partnership with product marketing as I mentioned before, it’s about providing the right content to the right people at the right time internally so that they can then turn that content into Action or into customer-facing content through customer engagements, and they’re wasting time to find that content that might be outdated, not relevant, or requires a lot of updates from the sales reps as I mentioned before. It’s often these services working in concert to drive maximum productivity gains as much as possible, and we should always be measuring everything, whether it’s leading or lagging indicators across all these services. Especially at the cornerstone of productivity, whatever productivity might mean for you and your organization. SS: I love that. I love how crisply you’ve defined what productivity means within your own organization. Now, one way that we’ve seen enablement help enhance productivity is by enabling reps with a sales methodology. Can you walk us through why a sales methodology is critical for success? NG: First and foremost, you have to read the headlines over the last many years now that buyer expectations have dramatically changed and really sales, I would say more on the, maybe the B2B selling side, that our profession has truly changed and that what those buyer expectations are and the sales skills to keep up with those buyer expectations. It’s truly creating a gap. You can look at research to help show what that really looks like out there in the world today. Sales reps are having a difficult time keeping up with the exponential change on the buying side, so, in my opinion, sales methodology is one of the best investments a sales organization can make to help close the gap between the buyer expectations and the selling skills to make sure that we’re driving those predictable and repeatable results across the organization at scale. It provides that center line where we can be consistent in how our sales reps prepare for customer engagements through call planning or how they strategize on their most important opportunities, or the region’s most important opportunities, or from a global account manager perspective of the world’s most important opportunities for our organization and how they manage their most important and strategic accounts. With selling time at a premium, we can all agree that we’re not seeing more and more selling time across a given week, month, or quarter. When you establish a common way to operate. Internally away from the customer, as well as from an external perspective with the customer, a common language that is spoken by the entire sales force by the way of a methodology. Having a common scorecard to evaluate in a very succinct way, the most critical opportunities on the likelihood that they’ll close those opportunities that are worth pursuing the priorities from the organization on the opportunities that we should pursue now or later. After we look at the higher and higher sales methodology adoption rates that have higher and higher adoption rates of the sales methodology they institute or implement within the organization. Typically high adoption rate is anything above 75% of the organization adopting the sales methodology. This is according to Korn Ferry Sales Performance Research. Organizations start to see double-digit improvement and win rates on forecasted deals or opportunities and a double-digit increase in sellers, achieving quota and an increase in revenue attainment all the while decreasing voluntary turnover. More people making money, more people hitting quota, less and less likely to leave that organization. This is a very critical investment by the company to drive results that are most important to the organization. Oftentimes it gets overlooked in the place of more product training, or specifically just skills training or onboarding. They are all important, but if we don’t know where to place that new knowledge on skills training in a strategic way, through methodology, then it’s really missing a part of the formula to drive improved productivity across the organization. SS: I think that is fantastic. You talked about some of the key elements of key services of bringing enablement to life in terms of improving productivity. A couple of those were things like training and coaching. What are your best practices for training reps to effectively leverage a sales methodology? NG: I talked a little bit about the methodology as a whole and what it means to the organization, but in order to really start down a sales methodology journey, first and foremost, we have to understand that at the highest level, at the executive level, there has to be a commitment to change. That is demonstrated not only from a communication perspective, what is written and shared across the organization from senior leadership, but it’s also from a say, show, do perspective and leading by example. At the cornerstone of all of this is that leadership commitment shown across the organization way in advance of, hey, we’re moving down the sales methodology path of deployment. Let’s say we’ve got that buy-in from a sales leadership perspective. We are going to invest with a true sales methodology provider that is very wide in nature from focusing on how we engage with customers, how we strategize in our most important opportunities, and how we manage our most important or strategic accounts, full end to end, not just deal scorecard or things of that nature. Then it’s about making sure that we have that commitment from the top shown through communication. What are we doing, why we’re doing it, and what KPIs we are looking to improve? Also, a part of this before we even get to deploying the sales methodology is if we’re fortunate to have the funding to invest in a sales coach or a sales coaching team, a practice within the enablement team to help with not only deployment from a facilitation perspective, but ongoing reinforcement and sustainment adoption through the sales leaders as well as working one on one or one to many with sales teams. That would be a key component of this as a part of the investment. Then, we’re looking at deploying the sales methodology and we’re providing that center line of skills and behaviors and a framework. First and foremost, I’m a big believer in beyond the communications that really provide that fertile ground for making sure that we have some semblance of pre-work, whether that’s provided by the sales methodology provider, or we develop it internally or a mixture hybrid of both. We need to make sure that everyone is on a common playing field, if you will, before we head into what would be the next portion of the deployment and best practice is having the actual formal workshop. We have a coaching team, we commit to leadership, and we’re deploying pre-work that’s required before showing up at a virtual workshop, or if possible, an in-person workshop or various workshops to make sure we take care of the entire globe where they’ll apply their newly acquired knowledge. They got a lot of that knowledge from pre-work and they got a lot of that knowledge from the leadership commitment from communications and calls and things of that nature before deployment. Now it’s applying that knowledge, not just with hypotheticals, but if we’re talking about opportunity strategy as a part of our methodology, applying that knowledge with real opportunities for the sales team as a part of this workshop. If we’re talking about preparing for our most critical engagements, it’s about preparing for real customer engagements that we’ll have the buying side, leveraging the new methodology. If it’s about managing our most important accounts, it’s about applying that knowledge by using our real accounts. It’s establishing those skills and behaviors through workshops by using what’s real to the sales team. Also, part of this next is to establish a bi-weekly or weekly deal review. Now, a lot of companies already have that or should have that as a part of their operating cadence, but that being said, establishing a methodology is about providing a new way of going to market. It’s about providing a new way to strategize and opportunities. We should embed the methodology into what already exists and their deal reviews. We’re evaluating those deals through the methodology framework or a new method by which we strategize on opportunities. We’ll have a lot of success stories over the next three, six, nine months. Let’s syndicate those success stories as a part of this process and best practices across the organization. Let’s not make them isolated within one territory or one region of the globe. If we’re a global company, let’s syndicate those across the entire globe of the success stories of how the methodology is adding value to be more productive, reducing the admin time, and improving and increasing the selling time that we might have to give it across a given week or month or quarter. The number one thing when we’re thinking about those best practices I just mentioned is we have to define who was a part of this methodology as well. That goes back to the very beginning in some cases and what we’re going to deploy across the organization. While we call it a sales methodology, it’s truly an organization-wide commitment in many regards. We need to ensure that we are onboarding all members of the account team to the methodology and all of what I just said before, as far as those best practices are concerned. Most, if not all the people I’m about to mention should be a part of this journey, whether that’s through the full end-to-end methodology deployment experience or a subset of the deployment, depending on an individual’s role. Let’s take B2B technology sales for a moment that might take the form of fully implementing the methodology across account executives, solution engineers, partners, account management, teams, professional services, and customer success. Also, of course, all levels of leadership across those teams. Those are the core teams that engage with an interface with prospects and customers. Then we take the perspective of who else supports the account team across the company and my interface with customers from time to time. We may be on board to a lesser extent, marketing teams such as digital or social teams, field marketing, legal, procurement, and others who often, like I said, interface with prospects and customers throughout the sales or customer buying cycles. Sometimes those teams contribute in a variety of ways to opportunity and account-level strategy. Implementing a sales methodology is truly a cross-functional deployment, not just specific to the sales team. Number two, the last thing I’ll mention, Shawnna, is about partnership with marketing. While they will be going along the journey with us in many regards, maybe to a lesser extent from a full onboarding experience, we have to make sure that we support the sales team by partnering with marketing that supports us and enablement services so much and engages with sales directly with content and other ways. Our ongoing partnership with them shall provide that center line as marketing to engage with prospects and customers strategizes on those opportunities. They help us manage some of those most strategic accounts in a globally consistent manner. As our internal language shifts, so should the language that marketing uses externally and internally to be more customer outcome-driven, less product feature function-oriented. Therefore any content they’re creating that is customer-facing or sent to the sales teams internally, or like I said, in some cases, externally should evolve as well. That partnership with marketing to ensure alignment on content, the new language that’s used the intent of the content has to change with it. Whether that’s sales play content, competitive battle cards, or ongoing support through the creation of discovery questions to be used throughout the entire, that sales cycle, no matter the asset, it should change and align to the methodology in that common language. SS: I love that. You also mentioned coaching earlier a few times, actually throughout that. What role does coaching play in helping reps to effectively leverage a sales methodology? NG: Coaching, or the lack thereof, is one of the most critical determining factors if an investment is worthwhile. It truly is an investment financially in most regards, unless you’re fortunate to build one internally. Coaching can and should come in many forms. Coaching can come in the form of practice from a coaching practice perspective. If we’re fortunate to have a coaching team, like I’m fortunate to have here at Qlik, this team is dedicated to sales to the sales professionals, their leaders, and their leaders leaders and their remit is to coach leaders in the sales teams on the key imperatives for the sales team, the organization, such as methodology in this case that you asked about. Sales professionals can provide coaching themselves. It can come from not only the first-line, second-line leaders, a coaching team if we’re fortunate to have one, but also sales reps that are, I mentioned those success stories before. Sales can coach sales. I’m a big believer that sales learn best from sales. This is a great opportunity when we’re having success, We call out those sales reps to bring them into a pseudo-coaching role where they’re actually helping coach their peers from within their own teams, within their own region, whatever the case may be. Also, we can look at successful leaders who can request that other leaders, let’s say, provide a community of coaches from across the leadership teams where those leaders are not only developing and coaching their teams, but they’re also helping develop and coach other teams around on an ad-hoc basis, or maybe even a more formal basis, as well across the region or across the globe. That ongoing and effective coaching drives sustainment, adoption, and reinforcement of the methodology investment that can be very expensive on top of the commitment to change. It can be very expensive from a financial and soft cost perspective. Coaching is critically important to longevity and the likelihood of success as I mentioned before. On top of my coaching team being certified, I’m going to mention this point. Their responsibility is to facilitate the methodology training workshops and provide their own reinforcement in a variety of ways. My coaches are laser-focused when deploying a methodology to help those first-line and second-line leaders become better coaches. Oftentimes you’ll hear so many sales consultancy firms talk about how they are the most underinvested people in the sales organization with some of the most difficult jobs. That upward pressure from their teams, and downward pressure from leadership, but we provide little to no investment in them to be better coaches. A lot of times they weren’t really trained to be sales leaders. They were an individual contributor on a Friday promoted from within, let’s say five, 10 years ago, and they’ve just been in this leadership role for quite some time. Maybe successful, maybe you know, plateauing a little bit here and there, but they’ve never been invested in. It’s my team’s job to help them be better first-line and second-line leaders underpinned by the methodology. Sales organizations that have a sales methodology coupled with an ongoing and multifaceted coaching presence that I mentioned before, can see upwards of 28% of higher quota attainment and 32% higher win rates versus organizations that might have a methodology that made that investment. Leave coaching up to the leader’s discretion as I mentioned before, where they weren’t invested in their sales leadership career to be better coaches. This is an opportunity to have a coaching team drive true coaching in a consistent way, underpinned by the methodology to drive those results I just mentioned before. SS: Wonderful. In both training and coaching on methodology, I love that there’s this leadership-first mentality. Can you tell our audience about this approach and the impact that it’s had on the effectiveness of your training and coaching programs? NG: There are a few aspects to this that are top of mind and top of my list when deploying a true sales methodology. Let’s say that the org, as I mentioned previously, and the senior leadership have stacked hands, that there is a commitment to change, and that there are results that we’re looking to change and move the needle in a variety of different areas. From that commitment, we’re going to partner with a true sales methodology. Now, in order for that leadership-first mentality, you spoke of to really take hold. Number one, we need to bring leaders along with the pre-deployment journey. It can’t be something, hey, this isolated vacuum, we decided as a part of a senior leadership team that we’re going to be investing in a sales methodology and then all of a sudden it’s about to happen and they don’t get much of an advanced warning or awareness on from a change management perspective itself. We got to bring them along that pre-deployment journey to help with the change management side of the house because this is a huge change management initiative, a transformation. I think we agree that implementing a sales methodology is a big change management and transformational exercise. We need to work with those first-line leaders across all of the sales segments and across the cross-functional partners that I mentioned previously to help set expectations. What is their role during the actual implementation from a training perspective? What is the post-deployment? What are the expectations on how the leaders will reinforce, drive adoption, and sustainment? Sharing what the plan is, end to end, early and often prior to deployment, and what KPIs we’ll be measuring so that there are no surprises there. Gaining their commitment, now that’s not a hundred percent always going to happen there are going to be detractors. I think we can all agree that nothing that we do from an enablement services perspective or program or strategic comparative gets a hundred percent commitment, but that being said, let’s take the majority and get that commitment where possible. What changes should they expect there will definitely be changes moving forward. Also, what communications in some cases we would like these first-line second leaders to send out to their teams, to the region? A lot of those communications could be ghostwritten by us or others in the organization, but nonetheless, we need to make sure they put their voice behind the change that’s about to take place. In this regard, over-communication and constant engagement is key. With leaders, just as much as the individual contributors that report to them. The second is through the deployment from a training perspective. I’m a big believer, especially when it comes to methodology deployment or any large imperative for that matter, that leaders go first. What I mean by that is that leaders go through the same mandatory pre-work that their individual contributors or teams will go through. I typically have leadership-only training workshops. They go through pre-work first, then they have what we have. Leadership-only workshops where the leaders are trained ahead of their teams. They go through the training as their team is about to go through throughout the deployment. They go from learner now going through these leadership-only workshops to a second time going through the training because they’ll now be going through the training workshops with their team. They turn from learner to coach the second time around. As a quick recap, they take the pre-work, they go through leadership-only workshops, and they go through the workshop again with their teams when we deploy to the field at large, going from learner to coach. From that point, the individual contributors or field workshops become those coaches and start to reinforce and drive that adoption. That’s so critical during the workshop in real time, sitting next to their teams or at the same tables, if you will, or in a virtual setting with their team. This approach is where it’s front-loaded per se from a training perspective, but the large focus of leaders is critically important because they truly are the force multipliers when deploying a methodology or again, any large investment, because they’re the ones within the organization. That decides if typically a large investment like this, whether financially or soft cost-wise, is going to be successful or not. It really falls on their shoulders. We have to take that extra work, that front-loaded work during the rollout, prior to the rollout, and then of course, through any deployment or any sustainment or adoption reinforcement activities and exercises moving forward. Last but not least, this is for a very special group of leaders. In some cases, there are a handful of leaders who accept and go on a specific methodology deployment journey in a unique way by way of getting certified on the methodology themselves. While I’m a big believer in the enablement team, if we’re fortunate enough to have a coaching team or others across the needle, be certified to become facilitators. If we partner with an external methodology provider, sometimes these leaders also invest in themselves, their team, and the organization. by going through a very similar path that many of us go through an enablement to get certified in the methodology themselves. I may not be up to a facilitation grade certification if you will, but that being said, they go on some assemblage of that journey by being trained on the methodology in a unique way beyond the workshop by partnering with the methodology provider. Then going on this journey for this very special group shows commitment. In some cases, we can lean on those leaders because they’ve been on this certain journey up to a certain point to support other efforts within their region or globally based on their subject matter expertise and dedication to knowing the methodology at a deeper level than let’s say a traditional leader going through a leadership workshop only, as well as the workshop with their teams to drive that coaching. This is a special breed, if you will, of leadership that ops in and we partner with to help them on going through that unique journey to drive a different level of results. SS: I love that leader’s first mentality, Nick. Thank you so much for joining us. I enjoyed this conversation and I think it’s fantastic the work that you guys have been doing to increase productivity at Qlik. NG: Thank you so much Shawnna for the time and look forward to a conversation in the future. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Rachael McCormick from Vonage join us. Rachael, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Rachael McCormick: Thanks, Shawnna, and thanks for having me here today on Sales Enablement PRO. As mentioned, my name is Rachael McCormick and I’m one of the managers for Vonage’s Global Sales Enablement Team. My journey actually started with a marketing degree. When I graduated, many of the marketing positions I was looking into required years and years of experience, which I think many recent grads tend to find, and instead, I got into sales. I had success in that role and learned a lot of skills that I still utilize today and incorporate that perspective for enablement. Ultimately, when Vonage acquired the first company I was working with, there were a handful of us who were promoted into an operations role. From there, I found my love and passion for enablement. As for our team, we focus on selling skills, systems training, and content creation for tenured reps as well as new hires. That being said, we’re also responsible for sales new hire ramp just overall in general. Being that there are only so many of us on the selling skills, systems training, and content creation team, our team tends to work closely with the product and technical enablement team as well. As one solid team together, we support all of our global sales route sales to markets. I’ve been with Vonage for about eight years now. SS: Rachael, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. I’m excited to talk to you. You mentioned you’re responsible for a lot of the new hire processes, including optimizing the ramp process for new hires on the global sales team. Now, in today’s sales environment where productivity is a top priority, why is effective onboarding so critical? RM: Great question. In general, an effective sales new hire program is critical because it helps acclimate, engage, and retain good employees. If we focus specifically on the impact it can have on sales productivity, the knowledge shared during onboarding, whether it’s product, process, sales skills, or system knowledge, can really boost an individual’s confidence during a time that can be quite uncomfortable for some and simultaneously set them up for success to become a productive team member right off the gates. SS: I love that. Now if we drill a little bit to understand onboarding, in your opinion, what are some of the key components of an effective onboarding program? RM: I love this question. I’m going to focus on four components specifically. First, it’s important to integrate employees into the company’s culture and get them really excited about their career choices. A program should really embody the shared values, attitudes, and behaviors that your company aligns with. This specifically gives new joiners resources to also make professional connections. For example, make them aware of the employee resource groups that your company may offer. We work closely with the organizational effectiveness team to actually do this. Second, keep it engaging by utilizing different delivery methods or formats, which appease different learning styles throughout their entire ramp time. Before COVID, we had all-day in-person training and it was information overload. Our new hire survey scores actually increased by approximately 30% when we moved to a more flexible training because we were able to utilize different delivery methods I mentioned, like live webinars, microlearning, and gamification. We started to present information long-term to help with that information retention. Third, identify objectives that a sales new hire will need to achieve for effective job performance. You can identify the learning behaviors or techniques that a sales hire will need to execute that support the specific objective. Based on that, you can determine the enablement delivery method that supports the technique. I have an example of that. One objective could be that a sales rep needs to understand how to use a CRM. The behavior they need to execute might be to effectively use the CRM on their own to input leads or create a quote. Then you’d decide the delivery method to help them achieve that, which could be utilizing a test environment or even a gamified quiz. Lastly, number four, keep it modernized and continuously listen to feedback. Our team likes to joke that sales enablement is like changing tires on a moving car or an 18-wheeler during busy times. We have to keep what is currently running and continuously evolve our programs and content to be up to date while simultaneously keeping into account, feedback from our audience and department leaders for improvement. SS: Thank you. I think that is a great definition of the key components. What would you say are some of the common obstacles that sellers might experience as they are trying to ramp, and what would you say are some of your best practices to help mitigate those through onboarding? RM: I’ll start with identifying those three common obstacles that we tend to see. Information retention, which I did mention in the previous response, and then lack of confidence as well, and third is lack of feeling connected in a virtual or hybrid work environment. In terms of information retention, we’ve adopted a model for just-in-time learning so that resources are short, targeted, and at our audience’s fingertips whenever they need it. To support this, we’ve enhanced our resource repository tools and have standardized this by working closely cross-functionally with different departments, and we utilize the same tools altogether and align on the same messaging. This has been really impactful because, again, we have such a large audience across different time zones. Second, to mitigate a lack of confidence, it’s important to incorporate opportunities for simulated activities to practice. Whether it’s in a system test environment or role-playing sales skills, we really believe that repetition is key and we have a layered approach to that as well. Lastly, to help new joiners feel more connected in a virtual or hybrid environment, we’ve implemented a buddy program where another sales team member works closely with the new hire to further welcome them, address questions, and help them navigate a new organizational culture. SS: I have to say I love the buddy approach. It is like an instant friend whenever you enter a new organization. I think the other role that plays a key component in onboarding new hires is often the frontline sales manager. How do you collaborate with sales managers to reinforce the knowledge and skills learned in onboarding for these sellers? RM: Another excellent question. We collaborate with sales leaders in two ways. First, we have regular communication with them, whether it’s during live calls or written out via collaboration software and weekly sales update newsletters, where we tend to provide updates on existing enablement initiatives, taking in feedback for enhancements, as well as making sure that they’re aware of some of the improvements from an onboarding perspective. This really gives us the opportunity to continuously collaborate. Second being we’ve launched an enablement program for our sales leaders, where we’ve coached and collaborated on methods and tools that we also use during onboarding so they can continue to reinforce that message. For example, one focus for the sales leader training was data hygiene. We focused on that specifically on the ‘why' it’s important so that managers can continue that message. We’ve had really great feedback from sales leaders on those resources and the release of these collaborative workshops to help them and their reps be more productive. SS: I think those are fantastic approaches. I’d love to understand a little bit in terms of metrics or definitions. How do you define what it means for a rep to be fully ramped? What are some of those key metrics or maybe even milestones that you track throughout their ramp-up journey? RM: We support all routes to markets with various ramp lengths, but on average, I’d say about 90 days. We ultimately break milestones up into buckets, whether it’s product, process, sales skills, or systems. For product, the rep might need to obtain all of their product badges that are specific to their role. For sales skills, the rep might need to submit a mock sales pitch that their manager approves and passes. For processes and systems, the rep might need to attend a training and then execute that process in a test environment to pass. In each one of those buckets, there are different milestones that need to be achieved over the course of those first 90 days or so. SS: Amazing. Last question for you, Rachael. How do you assess and evolve the impact of your own onboarding programs to continually optimize the ramp time? RM: Great question. We currently assess by evaluating NPS, so Net Promoter Score. We collaborate with sales leaders on the enhancements by utilizing internal cross-functional focus groups that our wonderful transformation manager actually does lead. As mentioned earlier, we’re really passionate about listening to feedback and hearing from our internal customers on what’s going well and where areas of improvement potentially sit. With recently launching our new enablement system less than a year ago, the next phase is to implement and utilize their integrated data analytics to further optimize ramp time in general, as well as further build out role-specific material for each route to market. SS: I love that, Rachael. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today. RM: Thank you, Shawnna. This has been great. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today we are having Ankita Tiwari join us. Ankita, I would love for you to introduce yourself and your background to our audience. Ankita Tiwari: Thank you for having me today, Shawnna. I’m Ankita, originally from India. About five years ago, I found myself starting my enablement journey in France. It’s funny because of how I stumbled into enablement, just like many others in the field, back then it wasn’t a very clearly defined role, and I sort of ended up in it by chance. It’s been a fun journey so far, and I never looked back. So far I’ve had the pleasure of working with scale-ups, super multicultural, and international companies. The growth that I have experienced in these organizations has been rapid, exciting, and challenging. That’s just roughly who I am and my experience so far. SS: Wonderful. Well, we are excited to have you on our podcast today. Thank you so much for taking the time. I want to talk about the current economic climate. I think a lot of organizations are trying to do more with less and enablement teams are really needing to prove their value now more than ever. In your opinion, why is enablement mission-critical for businesses today? AT: It’s funny because like you just said, we are in this economic climate trying to do more, but with less, and isn’t that an enablement person’s job? It’s basically our job to do more than less. If you see the ratio of enablement to the salespeople that we have in organizations is roughly between 1 to 230, 1 to 250. Overall, that’s more important right now than before I feel, because there are so many companies that are finding themselves with 50 fewer salespeople, maybe 25 fewer salespeople because of the entire situation right now in the market. This is like the time when enablement can actually prove its value most because now is the time when the leaders and C-suite of the organizations will need to figure it out. How do we actually work with 50 sales instead of a hundred? That’s when enablement will come into the picture. That’s our main job. Of course, I think all practitioners would agree with the fact that it’s something that’s been defined. I mean the enablement role has been defined like what recently maybe four to five years ago. That’s when I started my enablement journey. That’s also why it has been like an ongoing effort to prove our value, and because of this economic climate, I feel like we’ll probably be able to do it well now as compared to before. The solution right now is basically our job. SS: Absolutely. Why would you say, from your experience, is it important for organizations to have at least a dedicated enablement person or function available for their teams? AT: If I have to put it in one word, definitely yes. If I have to put it in a couple of points just to explain myself, I would say this. Firstly, I like to put it in a way that we are here as enablers to convert strategies into things that can be executed. It’s a very important bridge between strategy and execution in an organization. If anything you do in life, if the execution has not done well, any great idea will never be appreciated. First, I think the alignment between these two things, is super important, and you need a dedicated person or a team to do that. Secondly, your main role as an organization is to generate revenue. That’s what the main goal is, and where does that stand? Like, who’s exactly doing that? It’s your sales team. If you don’t have that entire sales force empowered enough, it just doesn’t make sense. Having someone who’s able to empower the sales force, and especially with the rapid pace of technological advancements that’s been happening, you have to have someone that’s super dedicated to that part. Lastly, I feel like each project, and everything that we do in an organization, whether it’s a learning program, whether it’s just like introducing a tool, are all related to a change. A lot of adaptation is needed there. A lot of change has to be welcomed there. You need an enablement person or a team to actually be the catalyst for organizational change and adaptation, in my opinion. Three things, in my opinion, are super important being the alignment between strategy and execution. Secondly, having a dedicated team to empower your sales team. Lastly, having someone dedicated to driving these changes and being a very good catalyst for all the organizational changes and adaptation that takes place, that’s dedicated to the enablement team, basically. SS: Absolutely. Now what advice would you give to organizations that are looking to build out an enablement team or function? Where should they start? AT: I would say overall you need to build that function and to be able to scale it later the foundation needs to be really strong. Having the right talent and the right ratio is really important. Nowadays, I feel that, as I said before, the ratio is usually like 1 to 60, and it ends up being too intense, especially in the beginning. If you’re starting off, you need to have a couple of people who are skilled in specific pillars of enablement. When I say pillars, let’s say some like content, someone who’s really good with content. Second, someone who’s really good with onboarding. Lastly, somebody who’s had the experience of sales before and can’t coach well. I would say having skilled people for different functions is really important if you’re starting off. Of course, there are zillions of other things to do, but in my opinion, this is the key in the beginning. SS: I think that is great advice. Now, you were recently included in our recognition of women making an impact in enablement. As a leader in the field, what are some of the key traits that make for a good enablement leader? AT: I think the list can be endless, especially if you have an opinion about how and what a leader should be like. For me, the top three worked out really well, which of course came with experience, which came with a lot of mistakes. So first, I would say that there are three that I can actually shortlist. One is the knowledge and the experience that you have bringing that to the table. Now, when I say knowledge and experience, how will you get that? Knowledge, I would say, inside the company, what is your company doing? What is your product doing? What are the people inside of the company wanting to sell? How do they want to sell it? Being in your sales team’s shoes is the key. Get all the knowledge you can from that perspective, because your customer is your sales team at the end of the day. When you’re selling a product, how you see it is that, okay, I’m trying to solve a problem for my customer. It’s the same thing internally. I’m here to solve a problem for the sales team. Knowledge about everything that’s related to a sales role and the product they’re selling internally. Now, knowledge for the outside world, use the knowledge of the experience of the experts that’s out there and are happy to share. I think that’s one thing that really changed the game for me because when I started, there were hardly any certification courses or anyone speaking explicitly about enablement or an enablement session. It was just starting to take shape. For me, each time I would go on the internet nothing would properly explain what I need as a beginner. These days, slowly, we’ve been lucky to have communities who are so happy to share. Each time I have actually gone on my LinkedIn and tried to see that, okay I’m a little confused about how do I measure this initiative of mine, I’ve just looked up on my network and asked people who I think would know. I don’t think there’s ever been a point when I’ve not received an answer. I’ve been receiving and giving help so much that in my opinion, you always learn by teaching after a certain point. That is the key. One is the knowledge that is inside of your company outside and the second is the experience overall. I like to take it from outside when people are ready to give it. That’s the first thing you should be open to knowledge and experience. Now the second is what you think and how you plan, like strategic thinking and planning. Now, you are literally a pivot between the sales team and so many other departments. If I have to give you an example, if I want to choose a learning platform, I have to think about so many things. It is not just that this is good for my sales or not, but that is something the sales and the others will experience when they enter the company in the beginning. How will HR deal with this? How will the marketing team make use of this? After a certain point, can this become a really good part of our tech stack? It’s basically thinking and trying to have a helicopter view. I think in the beginning, I struggled quite a bit and had the helicopter view and at the same time doing everything hands being the first enabler in most of the companies I’ve joined. It was very hard to switch between these two, but then eventually I got used to it. It’s a really good skill to have. Being able to think strategically and plan according to all your future plans, making sure it aligns with the business objectives, and making sure it aligns with what other departments are doing. That’s the second one, strategic thinking and planning overall. Then lastly, I would say communication and collaboration. That is gold in enablement. I cannot emphasize enough how important that is for you because when you’re communicating as an enabler, one hour you’ll be speaking to maybe the CEO if you’re in a scale the very next hour, you’ll be speaking to your sales. In the next hour, you’ll be speaking to a marketing team who’s doing a case study or something. Your audience is literally changing every hour with every meeting. You should be able to understand how and when to speak about certain things and when not. Do you need to mention very small details? Do you have to only talk about all your initiatives, like strategically being able to communicate? There’s a very good difference between communicating and talking. Don’t just talk, you have to communicate. Learning about the difference between these two. I would say it’s very important. Then collaborating. If you are able to communicate and understand what your role is, you should be able to collaborate well. That’s also where change management comes into the picture because you’re speaking to a different department every single hour like I said before, and it’s really crucial. For me, I like these three things, your knowledge and experience, strategic thinking, and lastly, improving your communication and collaboration. These three, I would say, are the big ones for me. SS: Those are fantastic skills to look for in an enablement leader. What about skills that someone looking to enter into the enablement field? What should they focus on potentially trying to advance from a skill set perspective? AT: I wish that we had these kinds of things like four to five years ago because I used to think about this all the time. I would think, okay, I need to communicate and I know what tasks need to be done, but it’s so hard to do it in an organized manner. When I say organized, you have to be so organized when you are an enabler because you’re doing tasks that are from this radar to that radar. It’s just everywhere. Then slowly I started to come across articles and stuff that started to articulate things that were in my mind, but in a really nice way that’s where I started to pick these things up and understand that, okay, these are the skills that are needed as an enabler. It will be like, basically, I think there are a couple of organizations or certifications that exist today, but I don’t think there’s anything that exists that gives everything all together at once. For me, those will be like maybe four to five main things. One, your content and learning strategy. Understand what content is. How do you manage content? Are you okay with creating content? Everything related to content and adult learning strategies. Second, as I mentioned as a leader, it’s a very interesting role. Communication and influence are very important because you might have to convince somebody in your sales team that everyone’s doing it in one way. You’re not doing it the same way and how do you do that? It’s very risky and you should be able to influence and communicate. Third, as I mentioned in the leadership skills, sales, and industry knowledge. Just be on it. Things are changing. It’s related to tech most of the time. Things are changing rapidly. If you stay on top of the news and everything, speak to all the experts outside of your company. It’s going to do the job. It’s really, it’s gold for me. That’s very important. Then the other thing is project management. Go out, do a course on project management. Yes, it doesn’t say explicitly that an enabler needs a project management skill when you see a job description, but it’s really essential. Each time you’re trying to change something, whether it’s a learning program, you’re trying to introduce a tool. Each time you’re trying to make a change, whether it’s small or big and that’s where change management comes into the picture. That’s also something never written in a job description or will never be demanded, but it’s so crucial when it comes to enablement. If you know it, it’s going to be super helpful. Then lastly, I would say, how do you do numbers with data? Is something that seems a little scary to a lot of people. Like I said, speak to a lot of experts and try to understand that, okay, not all data needs to be used, but some, yes, because at some point or the other, you need to show that enablement is important and it is definitely changing the revenue game as well as the analysis and the measurement part. Be comfortable with numbers and just learn how to use them. I would say these five to six things just do, like different courses out there, and try to get more comfortable with it. SS: Fantastic advice. Absolutely love that. Last question for you. How can enablement practitioners hone some of these skills? Are there professional development resources that you might recommend? AT: Like I said before, there are very few platforms that are giving a complete, proper course on enablement. When I say that, like there are a lot of videos on YouTube or maybe 10 minutes about what enablement is, but actually giving modules, like Sales Enablement PRO, for example, they are doing a very good job with this part. There are a couple of certifications that you can do, but if you’re not able to pay for courses or if you don’t feel like investing, I would say actively look for the skills that I’ve mentioned, do individual courses on them, and then you just get that skill to your job the next day. Just do it, execute it and you’ll know that it’s working. In my opinion, I would say get all these skills separately. There’s LinkedIn learning. There are a lot of other platforms that are going to give you this for free. If you feel like no, I’m very serious about this, there may be one or two certification programs that people have actually put together. You can use them as well, and of course, there are zillions of articles you can read. SS: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciated the conversation. AT: Thank you so much for having me. I hope that my comments were insightful and at least they’ll be valuable to somebody. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Bana Kawar from AWS join us. Bana, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Bana Kawar: Thank you very much, Shawnna. Hello, everyone who’s listening to this podcast, and a shout out to all enablement professionals all over the world. My name is Bana, and oftentimes people think of a banana without an A to remember my name here in the UK. I look after the UK public sector enablement here at Amazon Web Services. I have been with the company for seven and a half years now in different functions and different countries. I currently spearhead the enablement function here in the public sector and help the organization grow to what it is today and reach our organizational outcomes. Apart from work, I have a huge passion for ID&E. I try to call it IDEA where possible, where A stands for action. It’s inclusion, diversity, equity, and action. I’ve co-founded the EMEA chapter, along with two other Amazonians to reach where we are today. I love to mentor and empower different leaders on different topics. I’m a career coach as well. That’s a bit about me, Shawnna. I look forward to our discussion today. SS: Absolutely. Likewise. I look forward to digging into that with you as well. Now to get started, for our audience and sales enablement, which I’m sure they can all relate to, you are extremely passionate about driving excellence in sales performance. I’d love to start there. From your perspective, how does enablement strategically influence sales performance? BK: A lot of organizations, including ours, are focused on growth. I truly believe as an enablement function, we have key responsibility, and also a pleasure to be part of that journey as well. If I look at my current role for the UK, we’re trying to hit 1 billion business this year, and enablement is helping to drive insights that would help sellers in different orgs and different roles from ISRs, account managers, business developers, partner teams, etc, to drive those valuable conversations with their customers and help them on their key missions. I really think when enablement is aligned to the business and also aligned to revenue ops or business ops, depending on how organizations define it, you can influence strategically as well. The last piece that comes to mind is how enablement can play a role in reducing time to market. When you’re enabling teams to be more adaptive versus reactive, you are already helping in reducing that time to launch and ramp up faster. Finally, the downstream impact of this is having more time and more focused resources to drive high-velocity decisions and build better products from there. In a nutshell, that’s three different ways, how I see enablement playing a role in the business strategy. SS: I couldn’t agree more. One of your areas of expertise is really around building everboarding programs that continue to align with those organizational goals. I’d love to hear more about your everboarding programs. What are some of your best practices for building everboarding programs that drive sales performance? In other words, what does good everboarding look like? BK: I really believe in the power of everboarding because it also shows that you’re a learn it all organization versus a know it all organization. I truly believe in any function, learning does not stop when you hit that 90-day mark that oftentimes is the industry standard for onboarding. That continuous learning journey is ongoing in so many different ways and functions. To build a good everboarding program I think you could look at it and dissect it into different ways. The first one is the discovery piece. Truly understanding what are some of the problem statements that you’re solving for. In today’s world, we have a tsunami of information, and people are overwhelmed with how much they should get up to speed on. An everboarding program should sometimes also be a refresher. We have recharge programs here and I really think some of those key skills that a lot of people learn in their early selling journey are needed very much in everboarding programs. Examples that come to mind include prospecting, objection handling, mission understanding, and negotiation skills. Those are key to any seller in any role, and sometimes those refreshers can be absolutely valuable to drive those customer conversations and reduce time to ramp. The second piece that comes to mind is making sure you’re always up to date with what’s happening in the market. That brings me to the second point product knowledge and market understanding. A lot of SaaS companies have so many solutions and products that they’re trying to bring to market and one way to really do that is certifying reps and making sure that they’re actually going through the knowledge check and getting certified on a specific use case. I’m a firm believer in having certifications on any new product releases and also on new market trend understanding because that also shows your customer that you are meeting them where they need you to be as well. Last but not least, an everboarding program, or as a matter of fact, any enablement program, should align with business objectives. That includes successful OKRs to measure their success and iterate from there. If I zoom out, those are the three key things I would look at from an everboarding perspective and build from there. SS: Yeah, absolutely. Bana, what would you say the importance is of having everboarding programs rather than just onboarding programs? BK: One of the things that are important in any organization is staying agile and moving to a learning journey continuously. As I mentioned before, the learn it versus know it all, because of the pace and the agility that the market is moving towards. I think having everboarding programs is not nice to have, it is an absolute must-have, in my humble opinion, to be successful and have your position in the market lead and truly help to solve one customer problem at a time. A beautiful way to do that is to help grow the business and grow your own knowledge as well, whether you’re a seller, a partner, or even someone in enablement because I believe that you should enable the enablement org as well. You do that through creating everboarding programs to maintain that high performance, and retention, and also hit your OKRs at the end of the day. SS: Absolutely. Everboarding is increasingly important, especially as you try to make sure that you’re maximizing the productivity of your in-sync sales team. Now your everboarding programs have reached upwards of 400 employees globally. What tips do you have maybe for our audience who are also trying to create enablement programs on a global scale? BK: I really believe that scale happens a bit easier than what we expect when we’re solving the right problem. What I’ve noticed at Amazon, as an example, is that the problem statement is often shared across different functions and across different geographies versus only the actual customers that you’re looking after. That brings me to the first part of problem-solving, which is ensuring that the discovery phase is done really well. What I mean by that is what problem to solve first, and from there, you move into the solution. Enablement could and should, in my opinion, spend a bit of time on the discovery phase understanding first, is that problem statement shared across? Is that a global or regional problem only? You do that by asking the same set of questions as an example across the board to understand who’s the customer at this point. What are some of the key missions that they’re solving for? Who are the customer profiles that they look at at the moment? What is their impact on the industry? What vertical do they sit in? What are some of the KPIs that they’re assessed against? More often than not, sellers have similar metrics, but different numbers that they need to hit. That’s one way how to approach it when you’re trying to scale as well before you move into build mode. The second part that brings me to the ID&E is any perspective because I’m a huge believer in getting different perspectives and getting content reviews and content even being created by different people across the company and having that cross-functional and cross-pollination happening to build the best products you have so they get that impact that they need. The third piece, if I’m thinking of the power of scaling, is what happens afterward. How do you make sure that you tie in your input with your output through what we call a mechanism? That’s when you build through iterations and have a phased approach and a very clear feedback process built in and weaved done and you hold yourself and your stakeholders accountable to make sure that whatever you’re building is insisting on the highest standards and also really impacting the end customer and helping them move faster towards their mission. If you put those 3 things together, that’s when a beautiful Venn diagram is shaped and you see the impact of what we think of as the power of scaling. SS: I think that is amazing. You have done a phenomenal job building these programs at scale. Now, as you mentioned in your introduction, you are also a co-founder of the EMEA inclusion, diversity, and equity chapter. I think you also had action at the end of that at AWS. How do you incorporate ID&E best practices into your enablement programs, and what would you say is the impact of doing so? BK: I love that question, Shawnna. Thank you for addressing it, especially in today’s world where ID&E is really helping a lot of customers understand what is important and how to create that diverse product line, and best programs, and build better. To achieve this, in my opinion, the first thing you could also look at is how you could address some of the biases we all have. Everyone has biases, including myself, and those are just the mental shortcuts you have in your programs and the content you produce. The first thing that I try to address when I have a new program is to build an advisory board and have different people with different experiences and backgrounds to help build this up. You can cover it from different angles. If we focus on and double click on the enablement programs, you could also have people from different functions that you look after, like sales ops or biz ops, who should be part of that. The other pieces, having different and equal representation from your customers, for example, different geographies that you cover, different countries, different verticals, different personas, et cetera, bring that experience that you actually need to build that best product. If anyone wants a practitioner tip, one of the things that really helped me uncover some of those biases and understand them better is the Harvard Project Implicit Test to uncover some of those biases and address them. The second piece you could do is also have diverse speakers when you build those programs. Building the content and having the content reviews and the advisory board is one thing and then you move into the build phase. That’s where diverse speakers can help refine their program, and bring that message to different folks. That can already embed representation within having different levels of seniority and creating opportunities for underrepresented groups throughout the process versus just calling it global and having speakers from one country, as an example. The last topic, which is a dear topic to my heart and something that I’m trying now to learn more about is neurodivergence. A lot of products that we create sometimes have technical jargon and not the simplest visual aids that people should understand. We can take a step back and think from different perspectives and throughout that advisory board that you build, you can understand the different needs. For example, how do you build for people with visual impairment? How do you build for people with dyslexia? Understanding your neurodivergent customers in different sectors can be overwhelming at the beginning, but it is an absolute must to have that inclusive and best product. Those are the three key ingredients that come into play for enablement. The key ingredient from all of that is woven in through communication. When you have communication flowing, bottom-up, top-down, and sideways, you make sure that you’re also using that inclusive language and embodying inclusion throughout to make adjustments where you need and stay humble. As I mentioned at the beginning, the A part comes into play. It’s not enough to say we care about ID&E, but not embed ID&E throughout the content and the programs that we build. Every seller deserves an equal chance to have the best impact they could have on their customer, and it starts with the enablement team to do that. That’s my two cents on ID&E and enablement, Shawnna. SS: I love that. The last question for you, recently I saw a post from you on LinkedIn about how generative AI is really transforming businesses, including some of the ways that it influences the ID&E space. How do you think I will influence how you create and deliver enablement programs in the next year and maybe even beyond? BK: I really believe that in today’s world, we have far more accessibility on the topic of AI than ever before, thanks to generative AI. AI has been around for a while now, and whether we thought about it or not, it has shaped how we learn in different ways. Whether we think of it in person-wise self-learning and customized versions of learning, into chatbots, which is quite prominent in today’s world, having virtual assistance, simulated learning has been around for quite some time in today’s world. What I believe is important is how we’re using it and the ethical framework around it because it’s here to stay. I really think those tools can help us if used right, and if it’s a stress test and the accuracy is measured that it can help us be more productive. It also can help us reduce our time to impact our time to market. When we have that embedded in our processes, for example in our text summarizing that we could leverage, for example, generative AI for it can already have an impact on our sellers, and that will have the dominant effect on the end customer that we are already helping them on their mission. I do believe that AI and generative AI can absolutely personalize learning experiences and provide real-time performance insights, let alone automate content delivery. I really think it’s important to develop those mechanisms and I would also stress the ethical framework around it to build for impact and build for performance. I’d like to tie that with what I mentioned in one of my answers earlier today about having a more agile and adaptive selling team. You do that when you use the resources that are available to you to help your learners grow in their own journey and remain obsessed with the right technology at the right time and the right way. SS: I think that is phenomenal. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your insight. BK: Thank you for having me, really enjoyed listening and having that discussion with you, Shawnna. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Grieman: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Grieman. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Sales is a career where mindset really can make all the difference. From understanding customer behaviors to developing a sound process to crafting an effective strategy and to closing with confidence, success in sales is very much rooted in psychology. I’m so excited to have Alison Edgar, MBE, here to tell us a little bit more about this concept that she details in her book Secrets of Successful Sales. So with that, Allison, I’d love to pass it to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background. Alison Edgar: Hi Olivia. Thank you so much for having me. I am Allison Edgar, MBE. Now, I’ll probably explain that before the book. In the UK, twice a year the then queen, now to be king, chooses a thousand people to be honored for specific things, and you can get them for charity, for sport, education, for pretty much anything. Mine is for being a member of the British Empire for Entrepreneurship and Business. In the US it gets confused a little bit because people think it’s an MBA, but it’s not. It’s an MBE. I am also the author of two books. The first one is called Secrets of Successful Sales, which we will be talking about today because it’s obviously about sales enablement. The other book is called SMASH IT!: The Art of Getting What YOU Want. I think it is interesting when people ask which order you should read the book in. I think actually Smash It is the prequel. It should have been written in the order of Secrets of Successful Sales, but yes, I’ve written two books. I think fundamentally, one of the things that I think will resonate with the audience is I actually love sales. I think that sales does evolve and there’s obviously new technology and there are things that can help us, but fundamentally, people buy people and they buy people like them. Hopefully, some of those things will come out today and just different ways that people can stay focused to improve their sales results. OG: Fantastic. Thank you for being here. Also, thank you for explaining what MBE means. I did not know that, and what an honor to be recognized for all of your amazing work. I do want to dig into the Secrets of Successful Sales book that you mentioned. What I really loved about the book is that it brings together psychology and sales to walk through a methodology to help others really achieve success in sales. I’d love to hear, from your perspective, what are some of the key principles from psychology that really do have a massive impact on success when applied to a sales strategy. AE: I pretty much think a lot of it is always the psychology behind it because you can have the best processes in the world, but if you’re not building strong relationships with different types of people, you’re alienating some of your customers and that affects your performance. I think that’s where when we look at what I use DISC, which is based on Carol Young’s psychology, and it’s based on colors. I think any of the psychology profiling tools, they get a bad reputation. Oh, you’re pigeonholing people. Oh, you’re putting them in boxes. You’re not. It’s really about self-awareness and adoption. It’s not about pigeonholing. Oh, task-focused introverts shouldn’t be in sales or introverts shouldn’t be in sales. It’s not, because actually some of those attributes are the best things, but I think it’s really building those strong relationships, and that does come from psychology. The other huge thing comes from your mindset and how you stay focused and stay positive, and how you become resilient. Ultimately sales are wrapped in rejection, and this is quite controversial, I don’t think that everybody has got the inner strength to make it in sales. It’s those skill sets, which again come back to how you become resilient, how you continue to focus when you have a bad day. That to me is all the psychology, and those are really high priorities when it comes to motivating yourself and actually getting sales results. OG: Absolutely. You talked about this a little bit as well, that there are a lot of different personalities that a salesperson can have, but not all people are cut out for sales. It’s a tough career. You mentioned that the most successful salespeople are what you call Stars, which is a set of attributes. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what it means to be a star and what it is about them that sets them apart from other types of sellers. AE: I believe that when you come into sales, again, I said not everybody’s cut out for sales, but if you’re in sales, I believe that everybody has the potential to become a star because it’s about learning new things. The S of the stars is to stay focused. So again, a lot of salespeople are quite easily distracted. I think that at the start of my career, I was quite easily distracted, but I learned those good habits. The T is tenacious. I think that if you look, a lot of that tenacity comes from rejection and how you handle that rejection. The other thing you’ve got is staying positive. Again, if you look at how you stay positive in situations a lot of time when it comes to negative thoughts, I believe a lot of negative thoughts come from fear, but also when things aren’t going according to plan, you’ll always have a group leader that’s trying to distract everybody and take their negativity with them, whereas actually, the stars can always stay positive. They switch off from the office gossip, they switch off from everything else. Then, that Resilience, so that really welcoming things, not going according to plan. Then, literally, I call it the chumba womba moment. There’s a song that was big in the US called Top Thumping. It’s from the nineties and it goes, “I get knocked down, but I get up again. Nothing’s ever gonna get me down.” I think a lot of people can sing that song and then go, oh yeah, but I can’t get back up again. The stars can. That’s what equals success. It’s not just one thing, it’s the combination of all of those thoughts. To me, a lot of those things are learned behaviors, and that’s why I believe that people can achieve that. It’s just about wanting to become a star as well. When we look at the mindset behind it, which comes back to psychology, Carol Dweck talks so much about this fixed and growth mindset. People say to me, Alison, if you could give a gift to everybody in the world, what would that gift be? Well, I would love to get a little box with a little ribbon. I can see it’s a bit like a Pandora jewelry box, and I’d love to put a growth mindset into that box, and I’d love to give it to everyone and go, look, you know what, you’ve got this. Growth mindset. It’s okay. You can pull yourself back up. It’s okay. You can overcome difficult situations. It’s okay. You can overcome rejection. I can’t give that to anyone. They have to want to receive that gift, and if they don’t want to receive that, then their mindset will always stay in a fixed state, which will always affect their performance, whether they’re in sales or any other department, because that affects how you live your life. OG: Absolutely. I am so glad that you brought up the growth mindset in Carol Dweck as well. I love that concept and I also love the song that you mentioned too, so that’s gonna be stuck in my head the rest of the day. Thank you for sharing that. AE: You’re gonna be chumba womba all day! OG: Exactly. The sales methodology that you walk through in your book has four key pillars, and I want to dig into each of them a little bit more with you. The first pillar is really understanding customer behaviors. I’d love to hear your advice on what sales professionals can do to get ahead of their competition by really understanding their customers better. AE: I think preparation and planning when it comes to understanding your customers. In the book I talk about the cross, and I think that that really is one of those fundamentals to life, not just sales or sales enablement or growth or performance. It’s understanding that some people are task-focused, other people are relationship focused, some people are introverted, and other people are extroverts. The DISC methodology puts colors behind that red, green, blue, and yellow. It’s not about pigeonholing and you’re more than one behavior, but really that deep understanding of yourself. For example, if you’re doing the planning and the research, tools like LinkedIn are amazing for that. Sometimes I feel that’s not particularly accurate, but we teach people using the methodology in the book to look at somebody’s profile picture, look at their bio, and look at their posting, and that will give you some idea. For example, unless it’s a set photo that your company’s made you use, a bit like the school day where the photographer comes in and everyone’s got the same photo, but usually, you’ve got free reign on selecting your photo on LinkedIn. You’ll find if it’s an extrovert’s photo, usually, they’re looking down the barrel of the lens, whereas if it’s an introvert, they’ll be way further back or they might be with somebody else, like their dog, or child. Even from that side of things, you know how to tailor your approach rather than just going in with the one size fits all message. Also, looking at their bio, is it written in the first, or is it written in the third? Look at how much of their profile on LinkedIn is filled in. If somebody’s relationship-focused, for example, a relationship-focused extrovert, we call that the yellow behavior type, it’ll be all about them and their achievements. If it’s an introverted person, they don’t really like to brag and they really don’t even like a humble brag. You’ll notice that it’s maybe written in the third, or it’s quite sparse on any achievements they’ve done. Again, it’s how you tailor that message and I think that’s where when we look at that cross, we tend to gravitate on the axis of the behaviors. All extroverts, all tasks, all relationships, all introverts, but a lot of the time the best sales performers, you don’t really know because ultimately they are the chameleon. They are the behavior of the person that they are with so that they build that strength. When I did the analysis on the top performers, that was one of the things that really came so highly to the forefront of what the top performers did. That’s what the research came up with. OG: That’s fantastic. I love your advice around just even those little things that can make the difference in how you’re able to tailor a conversation and some of those clues as well into their personality type with just their activity on social media and on LinkedIn. The second pillar that you mentioned in your book is the sales process, and I’d love to hear your perspective on what a good sales process looks like. AE: It’s interesting because if you look at the sales process, people talk about the evolution of sales and how it’s contemporary. I do think a lot of the CRMs now do quite a lot of the research for you to save time. Ultimately time is the biggest commodity, but I don’t really think the process has changed that much over the last maybe 20, 30, 40 years, if not longer. As soon as people start to sell, if we look, the process that I use, which I cover in the book, is things like doing your research. Really knowing the person that you’re talking to, be organized and not just even organized in your approach to sales, but things like, we are really passionate about having an empty inbox and having a really clean CRM. The amount of people I’ve seen with messy inboxes, the CRM is filthy dirty, like they wouldn’t even know if they’d had a cancellation pop-up because they’re not in control of that. These are things that, not just on a daily basis, but in general it’s good sales hygiene to have a clean workspace and a clean mind. That’s what helps you to stay focused again, like the stars. Then you’ve got what I call the reduction, but it’s really starting to engage that person in something that’s of interest to them. That’s where I talk about the Titanic. We’re on the Titanic, and we’re all about to sink, who’s the first person you want to save? Well, it’s yourself, isn’t it? Ultimately, we do the fight, flight, or freeze, but so many salespeople, when they have that initial conversation, we talk about how amazing the product is. Ultimately the customer doesn’t care. They only care about what’s in it for them. That’s where I think that engagement and knowing them more matters. Starting to build relationships and then moving things across into that business relationship. Now I know that, again, time is limited. If that’s a cold call or a lead, that conversation with a task-focused person is going to ruin the relationship. That’s why it’s so important to know those behaviors because if you pitch that initially wrong, you’ve blown it already. A lot of the decision-makers are task-focused. That’s a good example of what not to do with a task-focused person, but a great example of what to do with a relationship-focused person. So many people don’t tailor their approach. That one reduction really starts to get people engaged with you because you’re talking about what’s in it for them. Then the next thing, and I think, oh, this should be the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not. The reason I talk about this is I get sales calls from people who are trying to pitch to me, and it’s hopeless. A lot of them just don’t have the process and they talk and they talk and they talk. I know this sounds really bad, but sometimes I time them. If I get a sales call coming in, I start my timer to see how long they talk at me before they even engage with me. The main thing is really great open questions. It is basic questions like who, what, why, where, when, and how. Then, listen to the answer, and then again, who, what, why, where, when, and how. It’s just following that. Another thing though, I do see people doing incorrectly in sales, and I talk about this in the book, is setting the table. If somebody doesn’t know why you’re asking those questions, and especially if they’re around finance, numbers, or existing suppliers, sometimes people can be a wee bit loath to give you that information. Whereas if you said, ‘Look, you know what, I’ve got this product, I think it’d be really a benefit. We work with a lot of people in your area and we’ve really helped them to be more efficient or get better results. This may or may not be relevant, but to be able to sort of qualify this for you and see if we can help, I just have to ask some questions. It’ll take about 20 minutes and again. We’ll touch on things like existing suppliers, how does that sound to you?' This really gets them to talk and engage. The next part is listening and then going for the close if you can at this stage. This is where a lot of people I see doing it wrong, that they’re not maybe doing a two-step process. If it’s, say a SAS product and you’re trying to sell the demo, that’s all you’re selling. Saying something like, ‘Well, what we can do is have a look. You’ve already got something. You’ve said that you’re not a hundred percent satisfied. What we can do is do the demo and see how that compares and how that would be of benefit to you. When are you available for that, Tuesday or Wednesday?' It’s breaking that sale down, whereas what I see a lot is just people just, they’re not following any process. They’re just literally shooting for a target and hoping it hits. That’s the difference. It’s not teaching people to sell. The book helps people to be top performers. What do the top performers do? What do the stars do? That’s where it’s following that process. OG: Absolutely. I love how you explained not only what does a good sales process look like, but what it does not look like? What are some of those mistakes that salespeople often make? Thank you for walking through that, that was very actionable for our audience as well. The third pillar is around strategy. Also of our audience, many of them are sales enablement practitioners, I’d love to hear your advice on how can enablement really support sales leaders in creating an effective sales strategy. AE: I think a lot of it is networking. I don’t mean, oh, you pitch up in a room and you meet people, it’s really starting to become connected to the right people. In the book, I talk about the Emma Jones strategy. She was the key leader in this space and like literally I would go out of my way to be able to help. I would run events for her and again, non-paid, but it really grew my profile. Do you know Dan Disney? OG: Yes, he has spoken at one of our events. AE: He’s amazing, and I think he really is a role model as far as the sales space goes because he created his own profile. What he did was he was working in a sales role, but he created the daily sales, which again grew his profile. He then became connected to other people that might want to hear what he said. He then extended his knowledge to LinkedIn, and he’s now an influencer in that space. I think going back in the day, it was just dial-outs. Your KPI was around how many calls you would make. Now, I think social selling is really impactful. It’s the balance between having conversations on social media and commenting on people’s posts on social media, but also genuinely not being afraid to pick up the phone either or have zoomed. Coming back to the stars, that’s what they would do. So many people hide behind social media, hide behind emails, and don’t pick up the phone. It’s the balance of those things that really help you to achieve your strategy. OG: Just to close the conversation here, I want to go back to something that we talked about at the start and throughout, but it was one of the first things that you mentioned. With the final pillar being confidence, you mentioned the importance of mindset and the role that mindset plays in successful sales strategies. I’d love to hear a little bit more about specifically how mindset helps to build confidence, and then how confidence on the inverse of that helps to influence sales success. AE: I can’t even emphasize how important it is. Our mind is the most powerful thing in sales. I believe that that comes back to the cross because if you’re more introverted, you would rather hide behind emails because you’ll start to worry, oh, what happens if they shout at me? What happens if it’s an inconvenient time? You’re catastrophizing in your head of all the things that can go wrong and that’s where I think the top performers really believe that people do want to hear from them. They genuinely believe that their product or service is actually the best out there in the market. I think it’s really the importance of that self-belief in your product. If you don’t believe in the product that you’re selling and you don’t have that ultimate belief, you’re working for the wrong company. I look at my transition from working for an organization into setting up my own business. I was in a room and the CEO of the company said that the Google thing will never catch on. When you have that disbelief in the product that you sell, you’re just lying to yourself. I’m now working with some of the biggest brands in the world. I work with Adobe, Amazon, Moe, Hennessy, and the Champagne brand. EasyJet, the airline. I’m working with those and I’m selling every day. People might sit and go, oh yeah, she’s not really in sales anymore, but I started a business with no customers and I have to literally follow everything that I teach and ultimately have to believe that I am the best speaker for their events. I have to believe that my books are going to change people’s lives, and that’s what gives me confidence. Yet we get imposter syndrome at times. When I landed some of these big brands, I’m like, o, why do they want me? They probably want somebody that’s got more experience. Even at the peak of your game, you still have these thoughts, so you have to change those thoughts. You have that conversation in your head, you’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, you’re not going to want to hear from me. They’ve got somebody else. They’ve got something. You’ve got to literally say to the voice in your head, stop. Like, stop now. You are good enough. You are worthy enough, you have got this. Your product can change lives. It changes how you actually feel like your physiological self changes because if it’s negative, you start to feel deflated and down and worried and anxious, and that comes across in your tone, in your voice. If you really have that belief and that self-belief, you feel quite excited. You’re like, I’m ready. I’m gonna smash this, I’m gonna do this. This is the difference between those positive behaviors and negative behaviors. They are actually influenced by your brain rather than external factors. I talk about in the book, I look in the mirror and I see the supermodel of sales, and because I see the supermodel of sales, that’s what other people see. It’s about that belief in yourself and really looking in the mirror and going, do you know what? I’m really great at what I do. I think there’s a thin line between confidence and cockiness, but confidence is what people can sense in you and really will believe in you because if you don’t believe in yourself, other people won’t believe in you either. OG: That is wonderful advice. I’m gonna start giving myself pep talks in the mirror as well. Oh, Alison, thank you so much for this conversation. I loved learning from you. I’m so excited for our audience to hear this. AE: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. OG: To our audience, we absolutely recommend checking out Alison’s books. We will include links to both of them in the transcript and thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro, and if there’s something you’d like to share or a topic that you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Chiara DiFede from Birdeye join us. Chiara, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Chiara DiFede: Hello, and thank you for having me. I am a sales enablement manager with a focus on partner sales at Birdeye. Birdeye is an all-in-one reputation management platform, and I currently support and focus on enabling our internal sales reps how to effectively sell to our channel partners. Sales ultimately found me like it does most people, and when I found success, I wanted everyone around me to find similar success. I had an opportunity to dive into the enablement world, and I haven’t looked back since. I’m so happy I took that chance. I constantly seek to expand my own education and I have a multitude of certifications in product management, instructional design, customer success, and leadership development. I really crave to learn and I put myself in situations to learn new things as I find it important to understand what it feels like starting from the beginning and being in a new situation so I can bring that understanding to the programs I create. SS: We’re excited to have you here. Now, one of the things that I loved about your profile and your background is that you refer to yourself as a behavior and process-focused sales leader. How do you balance both behavior and process in your approach to your enablement programs? CD: Yeah, good catch. Personally, I find this is where the balance of equality and equity is important to achieve this approach. I recognize that individuals have different learning styles and needs when learning and retaining information in training programs, even if it is aimed at one unified common goal. With the training sessions and content I deliver, I always aim to tailor enablement programs to accommodate these diverse learning preferences by providing a variety of resources such as interactive workshops, eLearning modules, job aids, coaching sessions, and more. I find when you offer a multitude of different platforms to learn in your programs, you get to see the reps retain their individuality which helps them sell, while still inciting the behaviors needed to succeed in their role. They can still follow that process roadmap needed for them to graduate and prosper at the company. SS: Now, in your current role, you focus on enabling sales reps to sell to channel partners. What are some of the unique considerations for selling to channel partners? CD: That is a great question, as it is a very unique role. In short, channel enablement is sales enablement, both for account executives and also for our partner sales teams. When I focus on our internal sales reps, and those account executives, it’s important to enable our AEs to understand the dynamics of the partner, their current operations, where products fit, and align our onboarding team with that structure. This ensures smooth implementation, partner training, and end-client adoption. Ultimately, what makes it unique is having to go through that extra layer of teaching the AE how to sell and aiming to control the controllable. Not only are we ensuring our internal AEs understand our platform and best practices, but we also have to make sure they’re sharing the best practices with the partner just as we share and train our direct sales reps. SS: From your perspective, what does good channel sales enablement look like? In other words, what are some of your best practices for enabling reps to sell the channel partners? CD: To answer that simply, it comes from having a good solid framework and roadmap on what the AEs need to learn. As an enablement manager that comes from ensuring you have constant communication and cross-collaboration internally to set our sales teams up for success, especially when it comes to creating those training programs so that you don’t replicate our process from a direct selling. Partner sales are selling the idea of incorporating your company structure into their agency, not just the idea of products. The more that understanding can be fortified, the more successful AEs will be. SS: That’s fantastic. Now on LinkedIn, another thing that I had seen that was really cool is that your ultimate goal as an enablement practitioner is to create a sales environment that values learning. How do you motivate reps to engage in learning programs focused on channel sales? CD: That’s a great question. One thing I found in my career is that everyone I’ve come across is eager to learn, but it’s one thing to teach and provide resources and it’s another thing to have the attention and buy-in from the sales reps themselves. Most importantly, for reps selling into channel sales, the value prop of the training programs needs to be specifically tied to that target audience. When the rep feels and understands the programs have value and impact on their role, specifically towards partners, and helps them sell to partners, the more engaged they will be. Plus, when reps find success in these calls with these training programs, it gives them a success story to speak to in further calls as well as enablement to utilize in trainings. That way we continue to gain that buy-in, that motivation, and participation from reps. SS: I think that’s fantastic. What are some of your best practices for creating effective learning programs for sales reps so that they can also maximize their effectiveness with channel sales? CD: Great question, and I’ll continue to reinforce how important it is for our sales reps to understand the partners they sell to and their business model. Throughout the sales cycle, it is important to encourage reps to get to know the partners, the size of their business, and the unique challenges they face. Understanding the characteristics and personas of the end customer is so crucial to ensure you have the proper information and are therefore offering the right solutions. An effective way to encourage this, beyond regular scheduled trainings and resources, is by reinforcing this directly by providing feedback on the calls AEs will have with partners throughout the sales cycle. It is made even more helpful to use a call analytics tool that will allow it to be linked to the call directly for the AE to easily refer back to the feedback and that prospect that is exactly tied to it. This allows doors to open up for the AE and the company because, in addition to the coaching provided by enablement, these tools allow sales leaders and managers access to feedback, allowing AEs to have different avenues and perspectives for approaching certain calls. Furthermore, when calls have feedback attached to them, especially those good calls, those could be used as examples for new AEs entering the company to have an idea of how to apply the knowledge from trainings on an actual call. SS: Fantastic. Last question for you. What business impact have you seen from effective channel sales enablement? CD: You will see reps establish more credibility in the sales process and ultimately more closed deals for the company. This really gives them success stories to speak on and use as examples in tandem with the training programs. Not only will you be able to continually add to training programs that you create, but you’ll be able to see the ultimate success, which is an increase in retention, upsell, and overall satisfaction from partners. SS: Fantastic. Well, Chiara, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. CD: Thank you so much for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I am excited to have Anna Duong from Cisco join us. Anna, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Anna Duong: Thank you, Shawnna. It’s a pleasure being here and I consider it an honor to be part of this podcast. I lead product, solution marketing, and sales enablement at Cisco for two multi-billion dollar data center portfolios. I am a marketer by training who aspired to be more. When I first started out, I started my career in product management, then product marketing, then I ventured into demand gen, and now into sales enablement. In between these experiences, I practice and hone my trade in a variety of business environments from startup to mid-size, and now I’m multinational. My company, Cisco, is a global industry leader in networking which is the connection of people, devices, and things. I’m sure a lot of you have heard of Cisco. We are also known as the company that offers networking security and collaboration hardware and software solutions. SS: Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Anna, for joining us. Now, Cisco was actually one of the award winners for our Sales Enablement PRO member awards around the business impact on sales proficiency, and it was a well-deserved recognition. In your opinion, what does good look like when it comes to optimizing sales proficiency through enablement programs? AD: Well, first of all, thank you for the recognition and we feel very privileged to be recognized along with industry peers. With respect to your questions, the way we think about proficiency is all about competency. I’m sure many of my industry peers would say that the optimization of that is when people, processes, and technology work together in unison. However, there’s one aspect of proficiency I want to spotlight is competency and that is the ability to understand complex problems and solutions and then effectively communicate that to your customers, and then build relationships along the way. The latter two are often addressed by sales mastery training or even technical training on how to sell, how to be a good salesman, et cetera, but the first, the ability to understand complex problems and solutions is often undermined because all sales teams have one finite resource, and that is time. This means time to research and learn, it is time not to sell. To us, what good looks like is when product and marketing intelligence, which includes market, industry, competitive, intelligent, et cetera, and the insights are provided to our sales team at the right place, at the right time, in an easily digestible and memorable format. Some of the KPIs that we can use, which we also use at Cisco to measure good and how optimal we are improving sales proficiency, our high seller engagement that sustains over time, we call this sentiment. Also, high utilization of sales enablement content and program, as well as high converter sales opportunity from the usage of those sales enablement content and programs. SS: I love that. I think that’s a great definition of what good looks like. Now, in today’s sales environment, what are some of the challenges, Anna, that teams can face in optimizing proficiency and how can enablement teams help overcome these? AD: Oh gosh. I think this list will probably be really long, but for the sake of time, I’ll just highlight the top two. The most prevailing ones are informational overload, and two, the nature of the landscape, whether in the industry, in the business, or even in the market itself. I’ll start with information overload, which is the constant inundation of information coming to our sales team from products or new products to product details and features and nuances within those customers’ needs and challenges and how their business changes over time. The market trends, the industry trends, et cetera, and even the competitors. Oftentimes for multinationals, we don’t just have one or two competitors, we have a variety of them in different ways and in different markets. A lot of that is inundating and very challenging for our sales team to not only digest, and connect the dots, but also effectively formalize them in a way that can help them be effective in their day-to-day selling. The second part of that, which also compounded the first is the rapidly evolving landscapes. Even if you get a hold of it, you spend a lot of time building the information, and the insight that you need, and then you start using it and become successful at using it, guess what? It’s going to change again next week, next month, or even next year. That constant change makes it even harder to digest the information overload and to really have a good grasp on it, especially for sales teams who are selling more than one product. We call those the generalists, not the specialists where they master the product in the portfolio that they’re selling. Obviously, if I state the challenge I’d like to also share some of the ways we can address these challenges. With the two I mentioned, really it all boils down to the ability to simplify complex information. Simplification means more than just creating concise, easy-to-understand content or product presentations or enablement collateral, et cetera. It’s all about connecting the obvious for our sales team. How does this particular feature or capability connect back to the value, or the business outcome our customer wants, and as a result of that, what kind of tangible or even intangible benefit they can expect from it? That’s where the simplification comes in. With that, it also helps with a particular selling strategy where our sales team is customer-centric, so that as their needs evolve, their pain points evolve or get even more complex, we’re able to understand and lack of a better word, propose a solution that would address that specific challenge showcasing the breadth and depth of our value. SS: I love that, and I think that that is a fantastic recap of some of the challenges, but also how enablement has helped to overcome them. As a leader of a team of marketers, what role does product marketing play in driving sales proficiency? AD: You’re hitting on a sweet spot here because as I shared, I started my career in product marketing and I think it plays a pivotal role. The top three areas where I see product marketing can really contribute to sales proficiency are product and market understanding. As product marketers, we are the experts on the company, product, and services, and then the market that we operate in as well as the customer persona that our product and services serve. With all of that, we are able to simplify that and also tailor it to the different selling journeys or the selling plays for sales to be proficient at. Two is competitive intelligence. We continuously monitor our competitors, the landscape, their strategy, or even the positioning of their offering against ours, and where we’re good at, but also where we are not so good at. With this intelligence, we can extrapolate insight and then we can help when a sales team is engaging, let’s say a competitive deal against some of our prominent players, and how do we go down the path of differentiating our solution? It isn’t always who is the cheapest product out there. Last but not least, is the customer insight and persona. I think this is the key foundation when it comes to competency in sales proficiency because like I said, the efficiency can be tackled by processes and better utilization of resources, sales mastery on the sales skills and training, but without really understanding who your customer is, what is their care about, their pain point, their motivation, and how do we already engage with them or haven’t engaged with them is really the missing foundation in all sales proficiency program. As product marketers, again, we understand our customers, and all the research and intelligence we have can be shared and even can be customized into training that can enable our sellers to be more informed. SS: I love that. As a marketing professional myself, I couldn’t agree more. Now on the flip side, given your expertise in enablement as well, what role do you think enablement plays in driving proficiency and how can you bring marketing enablement and other teams across the company together to collaborate on optimizing proficiency? AD: Certainly an equally pivotal role, just like product marketing. It’s all about providing assets due to the right tool, resources, and support that are needed in a timely manner. I will talk about two areas. It all started with aligned goals and objectives. By having shared objectives, for example, revenue targets or customer acquisitions, or market penetration, all teams can work together toward this common purpose. Therefore they are aligning their resources and program in the same direction, and also share learnings across their teams and programs to fine-tune it further going forward. As a result of these aligned goals and objectives, the collaboration will become a multiplier effect. For example, in cross-functional collaboration when marketing bill selling guides to help improve opportunity qualifications, if that guide is built based on a methodology that our sales team is being trained on in sales mastery, let’s say Mapic as an example, that is one way that it can become a multiplier effect. Now you have theory and framework combined with real data and real selling strategy, but we can also provide timely product updates and market insight, and we can also build collateral that helps you deliver those to your customer based on where you are in the selling journey. On the other hand, enablement teams can share feedback from their experience and suggest improvements in messaging or even training material for product marketing. Then based on the customer engagement and wanting to share insight, again, this is one of the marketing intelligence that product marketing teams can inform the business development teams about specific segments of the customer where we are leaving money on the table. Perhaps there are certain common characteristics and a corresponding sales motion that we can drive through a program to grow total deal size to grow to attach rate or even incremental market share. SS: Fantastic. I’d love to dig in a little bit. Could you share with us a story about a key initiative that your team has implemented recently to help drive proficiency and tell us a little bit about some of the core components of that initiative? AD: Absolutely. As part of a recent tier-one announcement, we shared a vision and a strategy with our customer within our sales force and channel team, and then we followed up with a particular piece of training that was the first of its kind. With this vision and strategy, it’s very important that our sales force is educated on the fundamentals of who the customer we’re going after with this new vision and strategy, why is it a fit, how is it going to be future proof with respect to the market and the industry trend, and more importantly, what is the solution pitch or the message we are can enable our sales team to deliver. We did exactly that. We shared the fundamentals, we taught our sales force who are the different customer persona that will be interested in this vision and very appreciate the strategy. What are the decision criteria? What are their pain points? How is that mapping back to where the industry is going, and particularly where the business challenges of our customers are going? Then we build a go pitch deck for them to use as a starting point, but that isn’t enough. We next follow up with a level 200 learning map where we put all of the above into action. Again, the simplification of complex information comes into play here. It’s a two to three-minute portfolio-specific video that we did that helps put together the product solution pitch that highlights not only the product and market fit but also the customer fit with proven use cases, customer success stories, et cetera. With this training, we rolled it out to the team. That was the first part of our enablement strategy on this. With this key initiative, we got really broad support from all levels of our sales organization all the way to the geography, to the last mile of field enablement. We got lots and lots of feedback. As I shared earlier, one of the ways we measure how optimal or optimized we are is by enabling proficiency with seller sentiment. Not only do we have anecdotes, but we also have commentary and ratings on how effective the training was. We also have sales teams that actually reach out and want to be part of the next training module to share their story, their experiences, and even sales strategy and tactics. SS: I love that. Anna, last question for you. How do you measure the impact of your programs on sales proficiency and what are some of the key results that you’ve been able to achieve? AD: Thank you. This is probably part of the scope of one of our awards. As I mentioned earlier, there are three key areas we measure, and this is only a sample of a few. The first is our seller’s engagement. Engagement is very important to first get sellers on board to be able to share information. Secondly, to be able to gauge whether a seller is learning and retaining the information being shared. The second part is, are they using the information and how are they using it, and last but not least, are they effective at using them? For example, in the sales play or the sales campaign we provided, we actually worked with the business development teams or the sales ops team, and even the sales enablement team that put together the program to insert it in a strategic part of the sales journey, that in parallel with sales programs, a sales incentive and any other sales resources and tool. Then we gauge whether that content is being used for and how they are being used from which personnel for the sales force are using them. For example, are the technical team using them more or are the generalist team or the very early sales qualification reps? Last but not least, are they effective? We observe, for lack of a better word, data on how the sales pipeline is and a particular sales individual’s productivity before, and then we observe the aftermath of that. Then we also asked for anecdotal or real-life validations of whether it helped and it helped in what way. Those are some of the measurements. The last part is, of course, anytime there is an announcement, there is an awareness activity to make sure we are hitting the right audience. First of all, are we reaching the sales audience that we want to, and to what extent we’re reaching them? Second, are they consuming the materials, et cetera? SS: Fantastic. Anna, thank you so much for joining us and sharing with us your expertise. AD: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there's something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Kate Munday from Google join us. Kate, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Kate Munday: Thank you so much for having me. A bit about what I do, I help transform people and brands by educating them on how to communicate their stories effectively. I’m a communications coach, I’ve got my own company, Out The Box Speakers, and I’m also a creative business partner for Google. I’ll just elaborate on that cause I think it’s really funny and ironic really that I am in communications and storytelling. I’ve always really loved storytelling, but communication has been something that I used to really struggle with. To tell you a little bit more about that, speaking particularly was my number one fear. I always talk about how it’s funny, I’ve turned my fear into my career. It has basically been a long journey from being very much an introverted individual born into this big family of extroverts who didn’t understand me. I am also dyslexic, and like I said, just shied away from communication a lot growing up. It was only then really getting into the working world that I started to really understand the importance of it and how much it could do for me if I was able to master this skill of communication. It’s really been a bit of a whirlwind, a bit of a journey, but it was nine years ago that I joined Google and that’s when I joined our sales organization and since then they’ve really given me a platform to educate myself and now to help educate others in storytelling and speaking. I mostly coach and I work with our brands, but in terms of individuals, it tends to fall within three buckets. It’s like people who want to speak for themselves, so that’s either getting up on stage or radio, or even podcasts, or they want to perhaps climb the corporate ladder, so they can get a promotion at work and they understand that communication is going to be a really important factor to that, or perhaps they want to, like we’re talking about now, become better sellers, communicate their products or services more effectively as well. SS: From one introvert to another, I am excited to have you here on the podcast. Now, you talked a lot about storytelling in your introduction, and it is one of your key areas of expertise. To start, I’d love to understand from your perspective, why is storytelling so critical in sales. KM: I guess to give you an idea, I started with Google nine years ago in our sales team, and of course, Google is known for our masses of data. That’s how I started selling. It’s like this actually makes sense for somebody then surely they should buy the product or service that we’re offering, but that’s not quite the case. Throughout those nine years, I have come to recognize that actually, of course, we are emotive beings when we make decisions, we feel something first, like how does that make me feel, and that’s why advertising works. We play into love and fear, these two big emotions, and then we rationalize something. When we are telling somebody facts and figures, it only ignites two different parts of a person’s brain, whereas if you start to tell a story and you play into those emotions, you start to ignite seven different parts of their brains. There’s proof in the pudding there, that’s why storytelling is so important. It helps us relate and connect to other people, to products, and to brands. That’s really what we want. We want that connection. We want to feel like somebody understands us and our needs and they’re going to deliver an effective solution for us. In selling, a key part of that is relationships, isn’t it? Storytelling and relationships where we know these all go hand in hand. Even if we are out with our friends, with storytelling, with our partners, we’re at work, we’re constantly telling stories. It’s a critical part of sales. SS: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Kate, what would you say are some common mistakes that sellers might make when they’re trying to convey value to buyers and how can better storytelling help them overcome these challenges? KM: I think, first of all, not hooking your audience in the first place, so it really is when we speak, people really only care about what’s in it for them, to be honest. They just want to know how to be better or they say tell me what I need to know to not make the mistakes you’ve made or to actually be successful, or whatever it is. It’s how we add value to someone’s life. I think that’s the very first thing that we need to do, is to call that out, like this is what I can improve your life and make it look however you want it to look. That initial hook and I talk about there are multiple different hooks in the first stages. Even the title of your email is also a hook. The title of your speech, the very first words that exit your lips, because it actually takes five seconds, and that’s why the skip button on YouTube is after that five seconds because that’s the amount of time it takes somebody to decide whether they’re going to actually listen to you or not. I think that is one of the most common mistakes, people get excited, don’t we? We just get away with ourselves and start speaking, but it’s not about you as a seller or a speaker, it’s about your audience and it’s about how you can help them. I think delivering value first is really important. That’d be my first one. Then I’d say that we get into this trap of highlighting features rather than benefits, and again, it comes back to that added value, doesn’t it? We’re really good at listing off, oh, you know, it does this, it’s shiny, it’s cool, it has all these fun things, but look, what does that mean? What’s the reason behind that? Yes, okay. It might be shiny, but what does that mean to someone’s life? How can that make it better? The next one I’d say, and it’s going back to that relationship, it’s that relatability and that connection really throughout my sales career, I don’t really see it as selling. I’m just connecting with people and helping them and building relationships, and actually, somebody said this to me at a networking event the other day, and they said that the difference between contracts and contacts is the letter R, which stands for relationships. I really do think that you can’t get those contracts without having good contacts, which you have great relationships with. The way that we can build better relationships with our clients is through storytelling. It’s about opening up, letting them in, showing them that you are a real human person just like them and that you perhaps have things in common and you can start to build those relationships and those connections and then the selling comes later. People do business with people and they’ll invest in you as a person before the product or service or future that you are about to tell them. They’re my three things. The hook at the start, highlighting the benefits again and delivering value, and then it’s about relationships. SS: I think those things are absolutely critical in good storytelling. On that note, I would also love your advice because we are looking into understanding what good looks like. What does good storytelling look like in sales? In other words, what are some key best practices that sellers should leverage in their conversations with buyers? KM: What does good storytelling look like in sales? So I guess there are all these common patterns. It depends on what that selling looks like and what platform you’re using. Is it a presentation or a podcast or a video? Whatever that looks like, of course, you’re going to tweak the way that you actually tell that story and be intentional about what part of that story you are telling, but I think again, to reiterate, to start off with, it’s really about why they should care on the very first instance, and that being upfront and center. If we think about a normal pitch and how that goes, the first thing is hooking them in. Why should you listen? Then we kind of pre-frame them, so we talk about that’s why we set agendas, we are using the adult learning theory. This is what I’m gonna tell you, so perhaps again, if we think about it, that’s why you introduce characters. You set the scene, don’t you? You’re preparing people for what they’re about to receive. If this is a presentation, it’s like different from a video perhaps, but if it’s a presentation, then you might go into explain why you are the best person to deliver that information to them and that you are an expert and you do really care and you’re there to help them, and that’s the problem that you’re going to solve for them today. Then you get into obviously the crux of the story. That’s when you actually can start to uncover things and we call that a Google the messy middle. In the end, you’ll come to some quiet kind of resolution or conclusion toward the end, but really, I think there are many different ways in which you can tell that story, it’s just really understanding what is the objective, I think first and foremost, or what is the story that you want to tell to them. How do you want them to feel, think, and do out the back of you telling that story? Is it that you want them to make a purchase or is it just that you want them to actually give them some information so they’re a bit more knowledgeable on something? Of course, that story might look slightly different depending on what the objective is and then, what’s the right format as well to tell that story, so is it perhaps quite a bit longer educational piece or is it actually just something that’s quite quick that you might be able to deliver in a video or a quick explanation, so it’s really understanding, again, the use case for it. Going back to that objective, how you deliver that in the most impactful way, then it really is about bringing them on the journey with you again. Don’t go after the money necessarily. I think that’s really important. I think if you are doing the right thing for the customer, that’s the most important thing. That’s number one. You have to be passionate about what you are selling I chose to work for Google because I think it’s a fantastic organization. I believe in the product, so it was easy to sell for me because it just came naturally and that’s it. When you are passionate, like passion’s, infectious, people love it when you’re passionate, they just want to hear more from you. I think if you go after your passion and you are true to yourself, then money will flow. If you’re doing the right thing and you’re being passionate, then bring them on that journey with you. Be really open and honest with them. Be human, be relatable, and I think the sales will speak for themselves. SS: I love that. I think that’s a fantastic description of what good storytelling looks like. What role does sales enablement specifically play in helping sellers improve their storytelling? KM: It really is about educating people through this sales process and I think we are natural storytellers. Storytelling and sales come hand in hand. We are natural storytellers. This is nothing new. Whether we were carving into caves back in the day or drawing with all forms of storytelling. However, of course, we can all be better at these things as well. I think I’m living proof that it’s not something that came naturally to me speaking. I did enjoy storytelling. Was I good at it? I think it’s definitely been a working progress. I’ve currently got nine coaches the moment, and some of the biggest businessmen and women have many different coaches there’s a good reason for that modeling behaviors, learning from people who have been through that and have been successful in something and are then passing on their knowledge is important. That’s something that I implore you to do if you haven’t already got a coach, go and get one. Set out your objectives, and what you want to learn, and achieve with them and make sure you see that through. I think that the first thing is taking accountability and saying, yes, you know, I want to be better at this. Second of all, then actually taking action on that and doing it is always the first time that you do something is the hardest, then when you keep doing it, it becomes easier and easier, and it’s that repetition. The more stories that you tell, the more that you speak, the more that you sell, the easier it becomes. Obviously, then you start to perfect it. You start to become better and better at it, and it becomes more natural. It’s like riding a bike. The first time you get on it, you might fall off, and then it becomes something that is just automatic. You get on, you don’t even think about it because you’re just a natural. I do implore not just organizations to lean into storytelling and understand the importance of that in selling and communication, but also the individual. As you, yourself, take ownership of your own career, of your own life, and, and get a coach, enable yourself. SS: I love that advice. You have a lot of experience helping brands with their video storytelling strategies. Based on your expertise here, how can sales teams leverage video and other content formats to essentially help them tell a more compelling story to their buyers? KM: I know that video can be a great tool. It’s a booming platform for pre-recorded content, of course, which could be great too, if you do need to sell it, send over materials perhaps that’s showing them what good looks like or guiding your buyer through a process perhaps that’s an amazing way to engage them and it gives them a nice resource that they can house on their internal sites so they can look back at the content as well. I think in terms of selling, for me personally, real-time selling and if you do have to do that on video, there really are some key ways to do that. I think the thing that we all probably can relate to is when people turn off their cameras on that video call and then you become this little faceless screen that number one you are presenting to, and then also receiving information. It just becomes very inhumane and that’s what we want to try and get away from. One of the things I do is in every meeting I really do try and build in a good five to 10 minutes at the start to break down those walls of communication and get that flowing. It’s all really about leading with vulnerability for me and letting people in to show them that I am a human and how can I get somebody to connect and resonate with me as quickly as possible. I do lots of things around the setup at home and what’s in my background, so I think that the setup around you is a great opportunity to show people different facets of you. I’ll put objects on the shelf behind me that have great stories or that show a reflection of my personality and often people say, oh, what, yeah, what is that behind you? And then it starts a really great good opportunity to tell the story. People do comment on that actually and then you get to tell them the story and then once you get them laughing and then their barriers are broken down and that’s when you can leave them with something memorable that they’ll remember you by, but also perhaps they’ll say, oh the same thing happened to me, or actually I’ve got a similar story, and then you create that resonance, that connection and that’s where you can get to start to build those relationships. I’m going back to this time again, but really is about relationship building. That is what sales for me is about. That it can be a little bit more challenging over video sometimes when we’re selling, but actually there are some key differences that we can lean into, like you don’t get that kind of opportunity at work, you have a blank canvas behind you. You don’t get to dictate that, but actually, when you’re at home and you are presenting and selling over a video call, that’s a really unique opportunity that we can utilize. SS: I think so as well. Last question for you, Kate. I have loved this topic, by the way. This has been extremely informative for me. Your favorite motto is ‘everyone is your teacher', meaning you can learn something from anyone. To conclude, how do you think this mindset influences how you approach storytelling, and how can sellers apply that mindset to their interaction with buyers? KM: I think mindset and attitude are everything. To be specific, a positive mindset, and that’s what I really do in all the work that I do, and try to integrate that into everything. The coaching, for example, like I go in there already, having visualized that coaching session being successful. I know it’s going to be transformational for my client. I see them at the end of that coaching session with a big smile on their face, having loved the session, telling me how much they’ve learned and grown through the experience and that’s it. I think it’s going in with that mindset that it’s already going to be a success. I think going and reframing my clients, I’m their number one fan. I just want to help them succeed and that’s it. It’s about delivering that value, how we help others, and going back to my motto, ‘everyone is my teacher'. It’s because I learn also in these processes, so I’m grateful for these opportunities. Every time I go into storytelling or a selling situation, not only am I able to give back, but I’m learning and growing and developing myself, and it’s a part of my journey. We are living in one big narrative. It’s your narrative. You are the author. This is your book, and you get to make it a really good book that’s worth reading, so why not make it a really fun, positive book and have that attitude? SS: I love that approach. Kate, thank you so much for joining us today. KM: Thank you so much. I’m very grateful. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Olivia Greiman: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Greiman. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In sales, it’s easy to get so focused on the end goal of one deal that you ignore the details and then lead to an aftermath of the sale that is crucial to long-term success. Setting a solid foundation and maintaining a strong relationship after the sale can be just as important as closing the deal. In her upcoming book, Sales Essentials, Rana Salman details a start-to-finish guide to lead you to sales success. I’m so excited to have her here to tell us a little bit more about her book today, so with that, Rana, I’d love to hear a little bit more about yourself and your background. Rana Salman: Thank you for having me and really thank you Sales Enablement PRO for all that you do for our community. My name is Rana Salman. I am the CEO of Salman Consulting. I’ve been in sales and sales enablement for a long time, and before it had the fancy name, which I know some of your listeners, Olivia, would relate to. I work with hyper-growth to large organizations to help strategically elevate the performance of their sales team through strategic content and through training and coaching. I’m a seller at heart. I’ve been selling for a long time, and I still actively sell to this day. Olivia, some of your listeners, I may have called on them, and in fact, I’m hoping that they got me later on in my career rather than earlier because as many of you know early on in our careers we’re a little bumpy in sales. OG: I’m so excited to have you here and to hear more about your upcoming book Sales Essentials. Tell us a little bit about what the book’s about. RS: I’m excited to share it with you. Sales Essential is created with the salesperson at heart. I created that book with the sales rep in mind and wanted to create it as a guide for them. Wherever they are in their deal, they can get to that place where they need that information and that can enable them to exit that action effectively. For example, Olivia, in the book, the bulk of the book is called Applied Essentials, and it’s divided into three areas: before the sale, during the sale, and after the sale. A very simple way to categorize how we navigate our sales process and what I wanted to do is in each of these categories, there are specific chapters that are aligned to these categories, and they’re written in a way that is very simple to understand and navigate, so that way there are no gimmicks, there’s no jargons. It’s easy to understand. For example, if I am a sales rep and I am getting ready to do my discovery call, what I wanted the rep to do is to go to that chapter and to look at these nuggets of information, to look at these best practices, to remind themselves of that, go get the tools about discovery, and then to put it away and go do that call. The idea here is that if you are selling and if you’ve sold for a living, you know that time is invaluable. It’s finite, and time is money. When I was creating the book, I wanted to keep that in mind and provide them with what they need when they need it. Also, another thing that I wanted to make sure of is that we provide the sales enablement leaders with case studies and provide sales leaders with the sales tools that they need to coach their reps as well, for the sales reps to have the tools that they need. It’s about 300 pages that are divided and created in a way as a guide and as a reference. Before I forget Olivia, I want to give a big shout-out to my publishers, McGraw Hill, who have helped me bring this to life. They are one of the top three publishers in the world, and I really learned a lot from them. They took my book to the next level and I wanted to make sure I say thank you. OG: I cannot wait to read the entire book, but I was lucky enough to get a little bit of a preview that you shared with me, and something that I loved that you wrote in that snippet that you shared was that the focus of sales always seems to be on the ultimate goal of closing deals, which makes it easy to overlook the crucial steps that come before, during, and after the sale. I’d love to hear a little bit more from your perspective. What are some of the challenges that can arise from overlooking those other steps before the closed deal, and how can these be overcome? RS: At the end of the day, I’ve been selling for a long time. Of course, our ultimate goal is to close those deals. Our ultimate goal is to crush our quota, but the reality of it, there are things that we need to do before, during, and after the sales. Those strategies, those tactics, those actions that we need to take, if we don’t do that, we will put our deals at risk and we’ll put our whole quota at risk. Let me share with you an example. If I think about before the sale, there are several topics and chapters we talk about in the book related to some things that you need to be able to be doing before the sale. One of them is preparation. You and I know that if you don’t prepare for your sales call, what we end up doing as sales reps, and I’ve been guilty of that, is reverting back to what we’re comfortable with. What we’re comfortable with is our product, our tools, and our solutions, so we lead with that. When you lead with that and you’re not prepared to take an outside end perspective, to focus on the buyer, to focus on the customer you end up being a commodity. You end up really focusing on your features and your functions, and you become just a tool. However, when you prepare for these conversations and when you do your homework, do your research, and lead with the buyers, then you are aligning yourself as a partner, as a credible source, as someone that can add value, and as someone that is relevant. Another thing that I talk about in my book, Olivia, related to before the sale, is prospecting and building pipelines. As salespeople, we need to make sure that we are consistently prospecting and building a pipeline because at the end of the day, no matter how great your this quarter is or how great your second quarter is, if you’re not consistently building that pipeline, it’s going to dry out and it’s going to impact your success. Then another thing that I also talk about in my book is the ability to leverage social selling to help us drive revenues. What that means is that we have to own our brand as sellers. We have to be able to build that digital presence because guess what, Olivia, anytime I send you an email, anytime I’m trying to get in front of you, the first thing the buyers are doing, they’re checking us out and they’re trying to determine are you worthy of my time? So how are we developing our digital presence? How are we prospecting leveraging social selling, how are we nurturing existing relationships, leveraging this channel, and how are we integrating it with other channels to prospect effectively? That’s before the sale. Of course, there are a lot of other chapters, but, because of the time, I’ll go into now during the sale. During the sale, what are some things we talk about? I’m very passionate and I talk about that because of a lot of the lessons that I’ve learned in my career as I sold for a living and also as I coached other salespeople around the world, one of the things that we talk about during the sale component is the importance of making that first impression. How are you making that first impression? Because guess what, it’s very hard to try to get over this bad first impression. We talk about the importance of showing up, the importance of taking an outside perspective, the importance of qualifying that opportunity properly, and specifically what I also talk about the importance of understanding the internal decision-making process of an organization. The importance of unpacking the root cause of their problems and helping them share with them some insights into how we can help them. The best reps are those that qualify in really quickly and also that qualify out really quickly. You need to be able to make sure that you are conducting and qualifying that opportunity properly. Another thing that I also talk about, enduring the sale, there’s also the actual, for example, designing the solution. How are we designing a solution that actually meets the needs of our buyers? Are we actively listening? Are we collaborating with them? How are we delivering that demo and how are we aligning it to business outcomes? Also, how are we designing the proposal and what are the best practices for delivering that proposal? I take you through each one of them and each topic, of course, is aligned to a chapter in a succinct, straightforward way to help us in exiting that activity successfully. Now, after the sale, what happens? Well, after the sale, if I go back to my twenties, I get so excited, I’m getting my commission check, and off I go. The reality of it is what happens after the sale is critical for expansion. The best career successes I’ve made were when I really paid attention to what happened after the sale. So what does that mean? Well, one of the things that we need to enable our team to be successful. We were successful in closing that deal, but our job is not done. How are we doing that seamless handoff experience? How are we helping our team be successful and deliver on the promise that we made to our customers? How are we debriefing these deals? I remember when I would win a deal, I’m done. I did an amazing job, but hey, step backward and even look at your wins as lessons because what you can learn from even your wins are things that you can scale, but also things that could have put your deals at risk and of course doing debrief for the losses. Also, how do we expand, right? The most money is made when I’m expanding within this existing account when I’m deepening those relationships. How am I working with the CSM team? How am I working with the renewal team? How am I staying engaged as part of that strategic team? OG: Fantastic. You covered so many great pieces of wisdom and advice there. One theme that stands out and something that you also wrote about in the preview of your book is really the importance of the human element of sales. You wrote specifically that the quickest way to fail is to take the human element out of the sales equation. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What does it mean to really have a human-centered approach to sales across the entirety of the sales process? RS: Think about it. When we’re selling to the enterprise, people are at the heart of every decision that is being made. When you think about enterprise selling in B2B, it is critical for us to remember. I’m going to emphasize that people buy from people. People build relationships with people. People build trust with people. They don’t build it with faceless entities. Even our third-party research shows us and our buyers are telling us this. There was a study done by Salesforce, I think the State of the Connected Customer, and a high percentage of B2B buyers noted that to do business with you, they want you to treat them like a person, not a number on a spreadsheet. The reality of it, is and we all know that our buyers don’t care about your quota, our buyers don’t care about your product, what they care about is how can you help me, Rana? How can you help me drive my initiatives? In fact, if we look at a recent survey from McKinsey, what they found is that B2B buyers noted that they’re more likely to buy our solution if the rep demonstrates an understanding of their business needs and if they personalize that communication. When we adopt a human-centered approach, we put that human being at the center of everything we do, and that’s where those soft skills of active listening, that I truly am actively listening to what you’re saying to me, Olivia, that I’m listening to your initiatives, to your challenges, to your KPIs, that I’m also listening to your career aspirations and that I’m working with you to help design solution that will help drive your initiatives. Also, when you think about a human-centered approach, it’s also about sharing insights with the customers and with your buyers that they may not have thought of challenging their thoughts because at the end of the day, what our job is to do is to help our buyers reach that objective that we promise, and to do that, sometimes it does take us challenging their thoughts. Another thing that I also want to highlight is when you think about putting the person, the human, at the center of everything we do, it’s also about embracing collaboration and really taking time to truly understand and collaborate with your buyers. Help them and involve them to be part of their process, to help them participate in these discussions, and to really participate in these conversations because what you notice is when people start believing and feeling, truly feeling that they are part of this process, they start owning it. When there is collaboration, what ends up happening, is you have trust and you have a human connection. Now, on the flip side, if I start looking at you as just a company or numbers, what ends up happening is we lose that human touch and that empathy fades, that connection weakens and in B2B strategic deals, when it’s a longer sales cycle, you can’t afford to look at this as a transaction, but rather as a strategic long-term partnership. I can tell I’m passionate about that. OG: Absolutely. I love that advice around really having empathy and building that relationship with the person on the other side of the deal. That’s fantastic advice there. Something else that you mentioned that’s really important when it comes to the human side of sales is not just externally with the relationship with the customer, but also focusing internally on the wellbeing of the seller themselves. Why is this not only important to talk about in today’s sales landscape, but really an imperative for sales success long-term? RS: Let’s look at the data. In the summer of 2022, Gartner noted that 89% of reps experienced feeling burnout. We also looked at research by Uncrushed and its partners, and what they found when they surveyed their reps is that 63% of reps noted that they’re struggling with their mental health. What they saw is that a decline in mental health correlated with a decline in performance. Now, I came across these data points when I was writing my book, and honestly, this topic was not part of the book before. Why? Because these conversations don’t happen, or at least they didn’t happen in my career. As someone that is not an expert in talking about well-being and integration of work-life balance, it didn’t even occur to me, but I also wanted to make sure as I looked at the data that in the name of authenticity and also in creating a book that is talking about all the facets of sales that we talk about this topic. Look, if you think about sales, sales have often been associated with a culture of hustle, a culture of competition, a culture of relentless work until the deal is closed. It’s not just organizations putting pressure on us, we put pressure on ourselves as sellers and I know that because I live this day in and day out and I’ve been doing this for a while. However, the truth is that this approach, if we’re not careful, can impact people. It can impact individuals’ performance and their well-being. It can also impact companies and it can also impact industry. When you think about a human-centered approach, it doesn’t only affect the bottom line, but there is an impact on humans and to their families, and to their lives. We see that, and we hear that. As an enablement person, while I can’t stand there and tell you I figured it out because I haven’t, as I was writing this book and I was thinking as an enablement leader, as a sales leader, how can we enable our reps to deal with rejection, to be trained on mindfulness, to develop that grit, and how can we make it okay to have these conversations. When sales reps are mentally and emotionally supported, they can perform at their best, they can build stronger relationships, can perform at a level, and drive sustainable business, business growth. If you think about it, it’s a win-win for both. It’s a win-win for the company, and it’s a win-win for the individuals. As enablement leaders, I think we have some influence on how we can enable our reps to find that level of mental strength. OG: Absolutely. I think it’s such a critical and important topic, so I’m so glad that you’re bringing that to light in your book. We talked a little bit about this at the beginning about how, for sales enablement leaders specifically, there’s so much that they can take away as a guide for putting into practice in their own organizations. I’m curious, from your perspective, what do you most want sales enablement leaders to take away as key learning from your book? RS: In today’s world of AI and advanced sales tools, we have access to powerful tools that can help us be more effective and efficient in our sales, but what the tools can’t do, or at least yet, is replicate that humans connection, that human touch, which is the essentials. What I want sales enablement leaders to take away as key learning from my book is the importance of going back to the fundamentals, the importance of going back to the essentials of human connection influencing that behavior. I want to be very clear, don’t confuse that with fluff. There’s a methodical approach to building strategic relationships, influencing behavior, positioning yourself as a credible source, and selling value, and it does require us to integrate both the art and the science, the science of sales to help us develop these strategic relationships to help us in selling that value. OG: Oh absolutely. Well, I’m so excited for our listeners to be able to read your book. Where can our listeners find your book? RS: The book is going to be released on June 20, 2023, however you can pre-order it at Amazon, it is called Sales Essentials. Olivia, before we wrap up, I do want to thank the folks that have already pre-ordered the book. I announced it on LinkedIn and a week later it was the number one new release on Amazon in the business sales category. I’m very grateful for folks that have supported me throughout that journey, that have already bought this book, and I cannot wait to come back and talk with your listeners about what they think and get their input and perspective. OG: Absolutely. Well, we can’t wait to hear from you all listeners about what you think about the book, and again, we highly recommend pre-ordering or finding that book once it is out on June 20th. Rana, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your expertise with our audience today. I enjoyed this conversation. RS: Thank you so much for having me, and I’m looking forward to getting some input from your listeners as well. OG: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro, and if there’s something you’d like to share or a topic that you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Christian Palmer from Riskified join us. Christian, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Christian Palmer: Thanks so much, Shawnna. Happy to be here. In my role at Riskified, I’m the global revenue enablement manager. I sit on a global enablement team that focuses primarily on the sales org that handles both inbound and outbound selling as well as our customer success function as well. Riskified is a fraud and abuse platform that aids and assists e-commerce companies to make sure that only the good customers are the ones who are buying and performing acts on their websites. SS: We are excited to have you here, Christian. Thank you so much for joining us. Now, as an enablement leader, I’d love to hear from you. Why is it so critical to establish credibility with reps? CP: This is a great question and I feel like it does not get spoken up enough about as we go through all the different enablement functions that we take on on a daily basis. When you think about enablement itself, your audience is your sales reps, your clients are your reps essentially. They can be your biggest advocates internally, not only to your enablement department and your manager but also to sales leadership and cross-functionally. What I think is really important here in establishing that credibility is to have strategic communication and more specifically within that over-communication. I hold this to a pretty high standard when you enter an organization. You want to be able to shape the behaviors of the reps to help impact the future of that function and also get ahead of any future change that’s going to come and make it a little bit less of a blow to the sales function, especially for reps that have been there for quite a while. If you have great credibility coming in and you can establish that off the bat, your voice will matter that much more. You are destined to be able to make an impact very quickly, and like anything else, similar to sales, enablement is in the business of influencing. It is an influential role and because of that, having that credibility with reps is going to be so powerful for you down the line. SS: Absolutely. I think that’s important to establish, especially for long-term relationships. What do you think enablement teams are commonly missing when it comes to this and how can some teams avoid these mistakes? CP: Sales enablement itself is still relatively new. I think you guys, as well as myself and other people in the community, are still defining what sales enablement is. It’s funny because, in past roles and any other places that I worked probably prior to a couple of years ago, it felt like I was doing an enablement role, even though I was titled trainer, or learning and development and what have you. I think now as the role becomes a little bit more mature, there are probably some best practices that you can be thinking about that don’t generally come top of mind to people when they enter an org. I think the biggest one is when it comes to reps, not being able to understand their perspective, and this is not dependent on you being in a previous sales role, it could still happen even if you’re in a sales role, but obviously will happen a little bit more if you’re coming from a non-sales background. It is important to align with what the reps are really going to care about. What at the end of the day are they there to do, and whatever it is that you’re asking them or working on with them, how is it going to benefit them? That should be at the forefront of every initiative that you’re trying to push. Start with why I think is a good way to kind of emphasize that. Very Simon Sinek of me, but essentially always starting with like, Hey, why are we here? What are we trying to get out of this? What’s the point really? I think that oftentimes people come into the role, they just kind of dig in and jump right in, and they don’t necessarily take the time to see what it is that reps really care about. In addition to that, I think another area, and this is probably going to apply a little bit more towards folks that are on larger enablement teams, but staying siloed to just your enablement department and not branching out cross-functionally. In roles past that, I’ve been in a lot of the times where there would be teams that don’t necessarily interact with enablement that often but, could benefit from having an enablement voice in the room. At the very least, be a liaison to the sales team about any messaging or things that need to be communicated if there is any particular confusion around what it is that they’re trying to get across and how I can deliver that to the sales team, I think is important. The last one, I think it’s commonly missed is something that I think in any role, you’re entering an org you really should take the time to do. This is a very traditional piece that I think is probably a part of everybody’s 30, 60, and 90-day plan, but more specifically the 30-day piece, but not building real relationships with reps is a problem. I always tend to start off personally with folks, and this could be applicable to sales org that only have 10 to 15 reps, or similar to the org that I’m in now, which has north of a hundred. Taking the time to learn more about them, I’m not just saying like where they live so you can ask them what the weather’s like, but also what interests them, who’s in their life that’s important, why did they choose this role in the first place? All those things show that you really do care about them, and I think in order to avoid all of these different mistakes, you really do want to take a concerted approach with who you’re working with. Again, whether or not you were in a sales role previously, kind of putting yourself in the shoes of a sales rep is really important here. If I was a sales rep and an enablement person was coming into the organization, how would I want them to exhibit themselves? How would I want them to work with me? What’s the best way of learning? Can they pivot and be flexible and necessary? Those are all the things that I would be caring about as an individual contributor who’s going to work with a support function like this, but it often is amiss and I tend to see it a lot more with organizations that have leadership that’s not echoing positive messaging about enablement. What I mean by that is your senior leaders, your C-suite, really should be the ones who are helping advocate why having the role is going to be important for the organization that’s not happening. It can be difficult to make sure that you are setting yourself up for success. SS: Now, you touched on a few tips and tricks on how to begin to build relationships with sales reps, but do you have advice for our audience on how to do so and how to start gaining their trust? CP: As I had mentioned before, getting to know them personally, I think is a really important piece. Not only in a group setting but more importantly individually. If you want to insert yourself into projects, initiatives, and conversations, you are positioning yourself to kind of become an agent of change in that case, and if you’re involving yourself more often, the more agency you’re going to have when it comes to change management in the future. A lot of the times how I generally start, and this has kind of been like the de facto starting point for me in any org, whether or not I was joining in an enablement capacity, is to be vulnerable. Recognize that you don’t have all the answers and that you’re here to learn just as much as they are. Emphasize the journey of learning and how impactful one nugget of knowledge can be to a rep and how that can change their entire perspective on their role and what it is that they can impact. I always will come in straight up acknowledge the fact that I don’t have knowledge around specific topics or enablement is still ongoing, you know, function that’s being developed and I’m here for the ride, but I by no means, know more than you guys do, and I’ll be wanting to learn just as much from you, especially upfront as you will be wanting to learn from me. That’s definitely number one. I think the second piece, and this is kind of an assumed one, but one thing it’s lost in the sauce, especially when you have a lot of priorities and projects you’re walking into, but deliver on what you say you’re going to. What I mean by that is if you say you’re going to do something for somebody, whether it’s following up with a Slack message or helping out with another person, or facilitating something, whether it’s a session or a project, or let’s say document that they’re going to walk away with, do what it is that you say you’re going to do. I think this is a special piece to add to it. Ideally do it ahead of the time that you suggest. Anytime I’ve been a part of a project with a group, let’s say it’s like writing up different emails and how they could be structured, I would give some type of date that I was gonna be circling back to them on. Let’s say it’s the following call that we’re going to be meeting up on a recurring basis maybe like a week later, and then I would have the work done like the next day or the day after so then those reps know like, hey, I’m way ahead of schedule. Christian already sent this over to me, so we’re moving right now. The few other ones are to be okay with citing specific examples from conversations with reps individually, and then inserting those into larger group conversations. I don’t mean this just on a work front, like, hey, this rep had a great deal that was similar to this, do you want to discuss that? But also on a personal level too. At the beginning of conversations or the beginning of a meeting, let’s say where all the small talk happening, like, oh, hey, you’re working from home today, the weather’s really nice here, bring up things that maybe another person had revealed to you, like one rep maybe went to the spa or something and they had an unbelievable experience there getting a great Thai massage, let’s say, and then say, hey, you know, I heard Zach really got a nice Thai massage, do you wanna share with the group how awesome that was? Those small things really do indirectly help you build relationships with the larger group and ideally with that person that you’re calling out to. The fact that you remember those specific details and then you bring them up again shows that you really were listening to the person. I think the last piece is to help build the relationships with reps is again, a little indirect, like the previous point, but gets incredible buy-in from sales leadership. You’re bearing a weight that they likely have had to hold up until this point, so you’re truly helping them do their job more effectively. A lot of the time you’ll have a sales leader who’s one of the people that’s interviewing you, and those are the people that generally are going to be the ones you’re probably going to be working quite closely with. If you nail the interview, you score a home run or you have a slam dunk type of interview, that sales leader is gonna be advocating for you from day one, even though you have no knowledge about the company, its product, or what it is that they do. The more you have that buy-in, the better it’s going to extend to their reps. If the reps really love that manager, they’re going to take what that manager says as a band and we’re all playing on the same team here. If the manager is not as big of a fan for you, nor are they echoing sentiments that you mentioned, that can be a little bit debilitating to your credibility in the role. SS: I can absolutely see that. How can you also go about showing reps that you have their best interest in mind, and that you’re not really just trying to make more work for them? In other words, how do you show them what’s in it for them as, as you mentioned at the onset? CP: This is a great question that somewhat for me has a simple answer, which is to help them with the work. I mean, an example of this is, I had mentioned it before, but I like creating an email sequence and the content of each email. How is it positioned? How are we starting it? How are we ending it? What’s the messaging? What’s the subject line? How can we make it as punchy as possible so that we’re getting a little bit more than just a good open rate, but instead we’re getting a reply rate that’s stellar? An example of this was when a rep had found a great article around a topic and we decided to base a sequence around that article weaving in the story of the article throughout the four to five emails. By the time the prospect gets to the fifth email, they know now who Riskified is, let’s say. I purposely don’t commit to doctoring up a rough draft of that, or another similar type of project. If somebody obviously asks me to help out with it or whatnot, I will jump in, but I purposely don’t commit or say it out loud and then I actually do it in the next day or two and help them jumpstart whatever further brainstorming there may be or edits that need to be had. I think that surprise shock element is refreshing for a rep. Those reps maybe we’re not expecting me to have come up with the four or five emails within a day or two, but hey, it’s there and ready for them to go. That’s very much appreciated. I think another piece of this kind touches on the EQ portion, which is that professionals need to have empathy and understand the life of a sales rep and wherever possible look to reduce their cognitive load. Reps are thinking about a lot of different things and fluctuating between this deal that deals with what’s going on internally, processes, infrastructure, and all of those different role responsibilities. The job’s hard enough as it is, so you want to position yourself to look more like a teammate, not as much as like an authoritative figure up top, similar to how their leader is viewed. Another way that you can kind of help them see that, hey, you know, I’m here to really help you and what’s going to be in for you is over-communicate, follow up, even when you don’t have anything legit to come back to them with. This is something that great sellers do. I’ve had a lot of success with it in my time selling. I used to tell a client, hey, I don’t have an answer yet for you, but I’m working on it and I’ll circle back with you on this date. It goes an incredibly long way, and I think more often than not, we see the flip side of that, which is, hey, you never followed up with me, or, hey, we don’t really know where this is going. Always take that time to respond to somebody. Don’t leave a person hanging. Always let them know like, hey, I am working on this. I just wanted to make sure we touched base. That really does help show them that what’s in it for them is that they’re going to have somebody who’s going to help them out with the work, be empathetic to their situation and help them and point them in the right direction, and also somebody who’s reliable and will follow up with them as much as possible. SS: I love that. Now on that point, we’ve talked about it a few times, what’s in it for them. For enablement practitioners who don’t have a sales background or may be further removed from individual contributors or IC roles, I think trying to figure out how to position what’s in it for them might feel a little daunting. How can leaders build credibility with sales reps in a way that’s both relatable and authentic? CP: I used to think that not having a sales background would be a detriment to somebody coming into a sales enablement type role, but it’s really actually the opposite because I think you can offer perspectives that maybe sales reps are not thinking about. I think if you look at it the same way that you would actually conduct best practice sales behaviors in the past, it’s very similar. Ask thought-provoking questions. This helps you show that, hey, I’m listening to what you’re saying. I want to build off of that, and it also allows you to help show your authenticity about the way you’re thinking. The types of questions you want to kind of start off with, it’s again, going back to like getting to know that rep upfront. Start with personal-type questions, not anything that you could just find out from their LinkedIn. Go a little bit deeper than that. From there, you can ask more opinion-styled questions like, why do you think you’re feeling this way or where do you think this deal could fall short? Then the last level is a little bit more developed, which is like observational. How many of these deals have not worked out as a result of this issue in maybe the last six months or so? You can follow up the personal questions with some anecdotes of your own past experience and honestly, if you can align non-sales experience, I think that’s even better because it’s going to show that you can relate on a non-sales level and then follow up opinion and observational questions with that empathy and the like. Sellers really don’t want to be told what to do, but they will answer great questions all day, especially if it is things about them. People love talking about themselves. I think if we think a little bit less about like how to position ourselves with the things that we tell them to do and more so how can we learn more about them and show them that we’re eager to understand what they have going on, who they are, what do they care about that really will help people propel themselves to the next level. SS: I think that is phenomenal advice. Last question for you, Christian. You now work with, I believe, over 150 reps across sales and customer success departments. What are some of your best practices for building credibility at scale? CP: I think especially when you’re in a global type of enablement function, sellers differ across different cultures. It can be difficult to see the same way I would establish credibility upfront in the US may be different in a different region. Understanding the nuances between what’s culturally acceptable as a sales rep in different regions can be really effective. Also, the way that they learn a lot of the time, and the way that you build credibility at scale will depend a lot on how developed the infrastructure is within the sales organization. If we start with like, maybe more smaller startup leaner type teams, you can focus on the simplicity of it, which is people, process, and platforms. For people it’s like what teams are successful, which are struggling, do those teams interact with each other, is there any plan to develop those roles further and or change them down the road depending on how well they’re doing. For process, what priorities do they have? Go down all the way down to activity metrics, like how many emails are they sending, or the flow of the sales process. What are the bottlenecks within that? What potential solutions are there that we can take action near term and then long term? And then lastly, for the platform, it’s going to be both from a proprietary platform, if that’s what your business is promoting, or for any tools that the sales teams use. Can we consolidate those? What is working well? What needs to go? Is the platform where it needs to be from a selling standpoint versus what are we actually selling? In the case of maybe some businesses promoting on the website, hey, we have a certain proprietary platform it solves for this and does this, that, and the third, what is actually going on in the day-to-day. That will help you kind of understand and be able to bridge the gap in conversations with folks that are across all those different departments because you’ll show like, hey, I understand the inner workings of the teams, I understand the processes that we have in place, or lack thereof, and platform wise, are we aligned or are we not aligned? Where are we? For larger teams, it is going to be a little bit more ambiguous. One thing I really do like to do is I tend to get myself out there immediately and early. One thing I’ve done to help differentiate myself, this is a practice that I’ve learned from one of my favorite directors in my past role is I send a Slack video introducing myself, talking through what I’m there to do, what I’m not so great at. That’s where the vulnerability aspect comes in, where reps could help me, and how I’m going to help them. I usually tie in some type of sales tip or talk track that they can walk away with, and that’s proven very popular in the past and people ended up yearning to get to Sales Juice Fridays, as I’d like to call it where I’d do something funny. I would make a joke or something like that and especially in organizations where you don’t tend to see as much, rah-rah, not to say that rah rah-ing is the end all and be-all of an enablement function, it definitely is not, but it is helps. I think if you’re going to kind of promote yourself, you really need to be visible. Sending a video to a group of 200 reps, let’s say, will really get right in their face with who you are. This is going back to a previous point but get in good with the sales leadership. Their voice is going to go a lot further than yours, especially in the beginning, so if they’re shouting about you from the rooftops to their higher-ups and other reps, their reps on larger calls, that helps build your presence in the org. Always make it a best practice to ask a sales leader to echo your same sentiments with their teams, with or without you there so there is alignment. When they hear reps hear me speak about something that their manager had then echoed, it’s going to make a lot more sense. They’re gonna be like, yeah, you know, I’d heard that already and my manager also said the same thing, so it’s got to be right. Some people would say that this is like playing mind games with people, but I like to call it accelerated rapport building. SS: I love that. Thank you for taking us through that, Christian, and thank you for joining us on this podcast today. CP: Absolutely, Shawnna. It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there’s something you’d like to share or a topic you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jennifer Rizzi from Squarespace join us. Jennifer, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jennifer Rizzi: Thank you so much for having me, Shawnna. My name is Jennifer Rizzi and I am the sales enablement manager for the enterprise team at Squarespace. My background is actually in journalism, believe it or not, and my career took several interesting turns to end up in my current role supporting technology sales, but I love it and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I started off in TV reporting and I worked as an on-air reporter in two state capitals, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Charleston, West Virginia. After that, I relocated to New York City and I became the first iPhone-only video reporter for the New York Daily News, and I used a storytelling app called Videolicious, which was very revolutionary for the time. Not many people were using iPhones to report, and my content there really helped the sales process for that company. Videolicious was acquired by Squarespace in 2019, and that’s where I moved into my current role, which really blends my passion for content creation with my experience selling. I support the sales of our B2B enterprise product, which is a version of our website builder that’s made to serve complex organizations. Now, you might be familiar with Squarespace as a leader in website design for individuals and small businesses, but we also do support major companies with enterprise-grade security and team collaboration features. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Jennifer, and what an interesting story about how you’ve ended up in the enablement space. I love learning more about your background. Now, I’d love to also understand from your perspective, at a high level, how would you say that enterprise-level sales enablement differs from sales enablement focused on other market segments. JR: That’s a great question. I would say that I think enterprise companies have different needs and expectations throughout the sales process and rarely do enterprise buyers make decisions alone. They’re usually part of a decision-making team, or they’re an influencer at their organization who can persuade supervisors or colleagues to adopt their recommendations. The content that you equip your sales teams with should be very shareable. It should be succinct and pithy, and it really should convey your value prop instantly to anyone who comes across it. Even if they don’t know your product and they weren’t part of previous sales conversations, it should be able to stand alone and convince audiences of your product’s value at first glance, even if they have no background. SS: I love that. I also have some experience with enterprise deals and they are notorious for having long sales cycles. How can enablement help reps to accelerate those sales cycles? JR: I think it’s really about qualifying prospects as much as possible before they have that discovery call or before they meet with an AE for the first time. Ideally, you want your prospects to self-select based on the content you publish online. You want them to get really excited after reading a blog or a white paper that speaks to their needs and then raise their hand for a meeting. In a perfect world, of course, it doesn’t always work that way, but you want to strive for that. Then throughout the sales funnel, you want to keep providing prospects with relevant content that’s tailored to their particular needs and concerns, and that preemptively addresses them. That way you’ll have educated prospects who join your sales meetings and you’ll save really valuable time going over ideas that a piece of content could have communicated to them beforehand. SS: Absolutely. You talked about the interesting dynamic within enterprise deals around having multiple people as part of the buying decision. With a lot of enterprise buyers, relationship building is absolutely key between the rep and not only the key buyer but actually multiple buyers within the organization. How do you equip reps to effectively engage buyers in a multi-threaded way throughout the sales process? JR: As I touched on just a little bit earlier, you really want your reps to be skilled at adding value to buyers’ professional workflows, and you want them to essentially perform a consultative role in their sales discussions showing that you understand the issues they face and the goals that your prospects need to meet and that you have the right knowledge to help them navigate those. That’s what’s going to build those relationship bridges. You want to position yourself as a resource they can count on to be in their corner who has their best interest in mind. That way you’re going to stay top of mind when they need that solution and they’re going to feel really comfortable coming to you. SS: I love that. Now I do want to shift gears a little bit because you mentioned on LinkedIn that one of your areas of expertise is creating content to help reps guide their buyers, kind of like you just mentioned through the sales funnel. In your opinion, what are some of the key components of an effective sales content strategy? JR: I think listening to your sales team and gathering their input is so important for producing content that really resonates with prospects. They’re the ones in the trenches having those conversations every day, whether it’s over email or over sales calls, they’re seeing what prospects respond to and where they get stuck in the funnel. Lean on their perspective to really diagnose what content will help prospects get unstuck, and what common questions can be answered more efficiently with content saving time on those sales calls. I really believe that reps should view sales enablement as a partner working with them in strategy, and they should always feel comfortable bringing ideas to you with the confidence that they’re going to be heard and validated. It’s really important that they feel that validation. Even if you can’t deliver exactly what they’re asking for at a given time, maybe you don’t have the bandwidth or the resources, you can still use your content expertise to suggest an alternative path that may be a more efficient way to get their message across and accomplish the same goal. SS: Now you also mentioned the importance of using customer-centric language, especially when you’re positioning enterprise products. Why is customer centricity so important, especially in times of economic uncertainty like we’re experiencing today? JR: I really love this question and I think as Donald Miller put it so eloquently in his book, Building a Brand Story, your customers need to feel like they’re the hero in the sales journey. Too often sales reps make the mistake, I think, of trying to swoop in unsolicited to just be a customer’s white knight with the solution to all of their problems, when in reality that customer might not feel that they need to be rescued and they might even be resistant to that idea out of pride or for other reasons. When you flip the script and you position them as the hero and you put yourself in the role of the mentor or guide, or the knowledgeable one that helps them achieve their full potential, that’s when they’re going to be open to building a relationship and partnering with you. SS: I love that. How do you infuse that same notion of customer centricity into your sales content strategy? JR: I think being mindful of your customer’s time is key. In enterprise sales your prospects are all busy professionals with a lot on their plate, so you can’t really expect them to devote a ton of time to consuming your content in the way you want them to necessarily, or also to engaging in quirky, novel experiences the way the general public might respond to. Sometimes simple formats, just like a one-sheet, slide decks, and landing pages are the most effective at getting your message out, and you really want to be direct with your message and elegant. Speak to customers like the educated professionals they are. Avoid being overly casual and using slang unless your brand voice is known for that and just keep your content short and easily digestible. I’m a big fan of using video whenever possible because it’s a really visual, engaging medium and links are very shareable. Video is something that viewers can possibly consume without much effort, so you really want to try and lower that effort bar as much as possible to consume your content. SS: I love that advice. Last question for you, Jennifer. What advice would you give to other enablement practitioners to help get their reps to better engage buyers through content? JR: I would say just try different types of content. Keep iterating based on learnings. Be open to ideas from your team and be really prolific with your content creation. Try to be agile in supporting sales rep needs. We know they can always change based on your product offerings and just larger economic patterns, so be reactive to that, be mindful of that, and just really try to adapt your tone to your audience and learn what they care about. Then deliver what they need before they even ask for it. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice. Jennifer, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time and your insights. JR: Absolutely. Thank you again for having me. Really enjoyed it. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In any career, there’s a big difference between being good at your job and being one of the best. In sales, this difference can have profound effects on the success of the company and your own career trajectory, but especially for demographics that are more underrepresented in the sales profession, such as women, bridging the gap to go from good to great can seem daunting. That’s why I’m so excited to have Cynthia Barnes, author of Reach the Top 1% here to tell us some of her advice to become a top-performing salesperson and how enablement can help. With that, Cynthia, I’d love for you to just tell our audience a little bit more about yourself, your background, and your book. Cynthia Barnes: Thank you. As you stated, I am Cynthia Barnes, a sales trailblazer and founder of the National Association of Women’s Sales Professionals and Inclusive Selling. As a keynote speaker and advisor, I help sales professionals understand, respect, and cater to the diverse needs, preferences, and backgrounds of potential customers foster stronger connections, and promote a more equitable and inclusive business environment. You might have seen me as the first black woman to keynote a national sales conference, a LinkedIn Top Voice, or featured in the Salesforce Plus series beyond the quota. I’m here to reshape your perspective on sales, inclusivity, and success with my unique blend of humor, wisdom, and charisma. OF: I love it. Well, we are so honored to have you here with us and so excited to dive in and just talk a little bit more about your book, because I loved it. One piece that really stood out to me was you wrote that sales are simply the best career on the planet, especially for women because it lets you call the shots. That resonated with me. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about this perspective. Why is sales such an empowering career path for women? CB: You hit the nail right on the head, Olivia, and it is the best career for women because we get to say how much money we make based upon the amount of effort put in. Rarely do you find a career that allows you to say, I want to make X amount of dollars, and if I’m willing to make the sacrifice and put in the hard work, then I’m able to do it. Another thing that we want to think about with sales for women, there are so many women out there who are part of a sandwich generation. On one side you have kids going to college, and on the other side, you’ve got aging parents. Imagine if you had $250,000 in the bank throughout your sales career that you’ve been able to sock away. You could get to help your kids graduate from college with no debt, and you get to choose whether or not your parents go into a home or they stay home with you. I don’t know any woman who is of childbearing age who doesn’t want to dictate herself when she goes back to work from maternity leave, rather than her job saying, well, you get eight weeks and you need to come back. Having that money provides you with options, and options mean freedom. OF: I love that financial freedom aspect. Sales is a primarily male-dominated industry, and so I’m curious to also hear your advice for women to keep moving up the corporate ladder and overcome some of the barriers we often face, not just in the corporate world, but sales in particular, what are some of those challenges that you see women come up against and what is your advice for how they can overcome some of those challenges? CB: It is that we kick our own ass quite simply. We kick our own butt. I don’t know if I can cuss or not, but we kick our own butt. What I mean by that is, sure, there’s the imposter syndrome. Sure, there’s the inner critic, but nine times out of 10, you can overcome those with the right mindset, the right attitude, and the right tools. When I talk about kicking your own butt, I’m referring to not dreaming big enough. I was interviewing a swimmer one time and I said, so how is it that you’re able to accomplish all these great things? She said I stopped comparing myself to the person in the next lane. And I said, what do you mean by that? She said, if I only compare myself to getting ahead of them or to beat them, then I’ve only beaten them, but what if I could take away the competition factor and I could see what I was able to accomplish? So, for women out there, yes, I acknowledge there’s the inner critic. I acknowledge there’s imposter syndrome. Let’s control the controllable. Let’s call it like it is. Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop limiting your achievements based on what the leaderboard says and compete against yourself and you’ll be able to accomplish amazing things. Amazing things that you never even thought possible. Stop dreaming so small. OF: I love that. You mentioned this a little bit there in that response, but something that I also loved in your book was that you talk a lot about the power of mindset, and I’m curious to learn a little bit more about that. How can mindset help salespeople overcome adversity or eliminate some of that self-doubt that you were mentioning to really excel in their careers? CB: Mindset is crucial. It is the number one thing that you get out of bed in the morning. You need to get your mindset right, so whether it’s avoiding the news, which is full of negativity, or setting yourself up by journaling in the morning, whatever it is that you need to do to set yourself up for success here, then the rest of you will follow. When it comes to mindset, a lot of us fall prey to the ‘why me', and what I’d like for the listeners to do is to ask themselves and change that around to Why not me? When there’s that goal, when there is that seemingly insurmountable mountain, I want you to look in the mirror and say, why not me? Why can’t it be me who overcomes that challenge? Why can’t it be me who gets to be in the President’s Club? There’s nothing holding you back except you. After you do that, you ask yourself, why not me? Your mind is going to give you a whole bunch of reasons. Why not? You counteract that by saying, how can I? Let’s say you want to get to the President’s Club. The moment you say, why not me, and then go into how can I fill in the blank, and in this case it would be, how can I get to President’s Club? Your mind automatically goes into solution mode and starts thinking about, well, if I did this, if I did this, if I did this, so that’s the formula. Why not me? And then how can I? OF: That is wonderful advice. I love that it’s just a little bit of reframing in your brain and that can help make all the difference. Your book is titled Reach the Top 1%, and I’d love to hear your advice for women that want to go from maybe being a good or a great salesperson to be in that top 1%. What really makes the difference there? CB: First, we need to define what is the top 1%. Is it top of the leaderboard? Is it the President’s Club? Is it the VP of Sales? Whatever your top 1% is at that time, because it can change year to month, you’ve got to clearly define it with granularity and specificity. What are you going after? If you don’t have a solid target, then you really can’t hit anything. You’ve got to be, number one, crystal clear on what it is that you want to accomplish. Then you’ve got to reverse engineer the goal and say, what is it on a daily basis that I can do to get to that top 1%, i.e. that goal? Then you have to reframe your mindset and say, what are the controllable? You can’t control whether or not prospects pick up the phone. You can’t control whether or not they respond to email. You can’t control whether or not they buy. You can control your activity. Find out what those daily activities are and master them. OF: Fantastic advice. I love that advice about controlling your controllable. That’s so actionable. A lot of our listeners are sales enablement professionals and their job is really to make sales reps more successful to help them get the resources and the tools that they need to be more effective in their jobs. I’m curious, from your perspective, what are some ways that enablement practitioners can help replicate the behaviors of those top performers across the sales organization to help elevate sales reps? CB: I know this is probably going to sound cliche, but it starts with mindset. Be curious. If I’m a sales enablement professional, there are a multitude of ways that I can formulate any type of sales approach. What if I went into it or approached it with an attitude of curiosity to ask what makes a good sales rep in this area? Not everything works the same for everybody. People are as unique as the fingerprints on their hands. When we paint sales approaches with a broad brush, we miss out on the ability for someone to think critically and to create their own process. I’m a firm believer that as long as it’s legal, moral, and ethical, it doesn’t matter how you get the deal closed as long as you do. Too many leaders will tell a sales rep, you’re doing it wrong just because they’re doing it differently than everybody else. When did the difference become wrong? As long as it’s legal, moral, and ethical, why can’t it be different? To those sales enablement professionals, I would love for you to go to some of your high-performing sales professionals and shadow them for a day. Ask them open-ended questions. Why did you do it this way? Tell me about your process for doing it this way. If you had it to do all over again, what would you do differently? Develop an attitude of curiosity. OF: You’re so right, there are unique qualities in each individual and not every technique will work for the same person because part of sales is building meaningful relationships with your clients and your buyers, and being able to do that is also about being authentic to yourself. So I love that advice. That’s fantastic. I’m curious how enablement can help support salespeople from underrepresented groups. Maybe not just the sales team as a whole, but maybe those reps that need a little bit of extra support to overcome some of that adversity that they might be facing? CB: I would ask them, what is it that you need to overcome the unique challenges you are facing so that you can thrive in your role? It’s a simple question, but yet it’s so loaded. Most people haven’t been asked, what do you need? When you ask that question, you may be hit with some resistance because they may have never thought about it because they’ve never been asked. Keep asking because the message may change from Tuesday to Thursday to next month to next year, but keep asking, ‘What is it that you need to thrive in your role?' They need more training, they may need more support, they may need coaching, but you gotta ask. OF: That’s great advice. Asking and listening and being open to those new ideas and maybe new ways that you haven’t even thought of supporting your reps. You’ve really spent the past two decades studying what it takes for women to rise through the ranks in the sales industry. Along with your book, I’d love to hear what other resources you’d recommend women looking into to excel in their sales careers. What are some places that our listeners might be able to go to learn more? CB: Oh my gosh. There are so many resources that I can recommend, and they all start with, what is my biggest challenge at that moment? When I first started out in sales, I had no idea what I was doing, so I got every single book I could, every audio program I could, every course that I could take, every single bit of knowledge I could find and I dove in because I thought of it like this. If I were to be charged with a crime and my life was on the line, would I go to a lawyer who didn’t study legal theory, who didn’t know what the current laws were, or who didn’t know creative ways to get me out of a jam? If I’m sick, I’m not going to go to a doctor who doesn’t read the New England Journal of Medicine, who doesn’t go for continuing education credits. I want the best of the best. If I want to be seen in my buyer’s eyes as a credible resource, one who’s qualified to help them with their greatest needs, one who they pay to help them solve problems they can’t Google, then I need to become an expert at sales, that’s what I would do. I would help with prospecting, lead generation, closing conversations, and inclusive selling, and I would dive into as many books and programs as I could, and then I would find someone who has exactly what I want, who has the accolades, who has the network, and I would say, how can I be like you? How can I get into your space? I would emulate what they do because success leaves clues. Why reinvent the wheel when there’s somebody else that already has what you want? That’s what I would do. OF: I love that. You mentioned a multitude of resources there from just diving in and learning more, reading more, and listening more. I love that advice around personal connection and networking though, too. That’s fantastic, Cynthia. Thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your wisdom with our audience. I learned so much from this conversation, so I’m so excited for our listeners to hear it. CB: Thank you so much for having me, Olivia. If someone wants to connect with me, I am all over LinkedIn, so please don’t hesitate to reach out. Let me know if you heard me on the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast so I know how to make the connection. OF: Fantastic. To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit SalesEnablement.PRO, and if there’s something you’d like to share or a topic that you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Marina Jeanbart at Ankorstore join us. Marina, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Marina Jeanbart: Thank you very much for having me. My name is Marina Jeanbart, as you said, perfectly. I am based in Paris, France. I studied hospitality management back then and worked in a couple of hotels before moving to business operations five years ago, and this is where I got close to sales and account managers and started to understand their pain points. I then got the chance to join Ankorstore as a sales enable manager two years ago and this is when the company actually grew massively and we had to hire 200 sales reps across six different markets. We had a big need to develop the sales enablement function there. SS: I love that. One thing that caught my eye, Marina, on LinkedIn is that you shared that you design sustainable learning frameworks for sales reps to succeed. What does this look like at your company and how do you make learning programs sustainable? MJ: In order to create sustainable training programs, we need to identify training needs. We do it in two different ways, top-down to share business changes and bottom-up to respond to the team’s needs. For the bottom-up, every month we meet with the team leads individually to address their needs and either we scale training sessions to the rest of the markets if it makes sense, or we arrange a bespoke training session with the appropriate stakeholders. Basically, we grasp their pain points and needs and translate that into training topics. For top-down, what we do for any change in the organization, we work beforehand with the right teams like product marketing and logistics to address new topics in the best possible way. What’s really important is that we bring expertise by speaking to the right people and enabling them to create impactful content. This is very important because they have the knowledge whereas we are more enablers and we make sure that they have all the keys to develop some interesting content and impactful content for the sales reps. We also involve the team leads at this point to make sure that they raise awareness with their team before we roll out any training session. In both cases, so for bottom-up or top-down, we add all the topics to our enablement calendar, which basically serves as our training roadmap and we make that available and visible to everyone. Back then, when I first joined Ankorstore, we used to create training for any topic that seemed interesting for the reps, but we have now understood that creating just-in-time training is what’s best for our teams who are already swamped with work, and they cannot all handle any nice to have a training session. They still exist and we share some interesting content with them, but we rather focus on creating training that has a direct impact on their performance and that can help them solve their issues and anticipate change in the best possible way. We have identified their needs, now we need to define the training format. We like to use our learning management system to deliver training for us. It’s the best way to scale training and capture results. We also do live sessions, of course, but we do that a bit less than online sessions. For the online programs, we create one training path every quarter, so we have one source of truth when it comes to training, which is much easier for the learners. What we do is we use the training calendar that I was mentioning to populate the path every week or two weeks, and we make sure to address the topics that were either escalated as needs or that are related to business changes. At the end of each week, we report the training results to the managers and to the reps to ensure that they have some perspective on their level of knowledge. At the end of the quarter, this is really the important part, we create a recap quiz to assess everyone’s knowledge across the teams and when it’s over, we share the results and the leaderboard to engage the teams even more into taking that quiz very seriously. We provide a cheat sheet for them to have a summary of all the key topics and changes before closing the period. This definitely helps them be set up for success before they jump into that new quarter. The quiz also aims at helping team leads identify coaching opportunities and set objectives for the next period for their reps. The report is, of course, open, it’s shared with the general manager so that everyone can have a good understanding of the team’s behavior when it comes to training and quiz results. SS: I love that. I think that that is a very thorough end-to-end sustainable program. Now, you also partner with a lot of other teams around the organization. How, in particular, do you partner with your L&D, or learning and development, teams to create impactful training programs? MJ: That’s an interesting one. We did not create programs together yet, but this is definitely something that we want to do in the future. To me, the first step will be to scale the learning methodology at Ankorstore and make sure that we’re going in the right direction and that everyone does it in a way that fits the company culture. Today we haven’t really discussed this, but I think we should definitely. One thing that we’re doing with the L&D department is we’re reviewing the HR performance review process. Basically at the end of the quarter, everyone chats with their manager to review their target achievement or objectives, we’re changing that to include training and coaching results there. Today, we’re not targeting the sales reps on training because we think that otherwise they will be attending training for the wrong reasons, and their compensation plan is already very complex, but we think that if we include that in the performance review check-ins in collaboration with HR and L&D, we will make sure that the team leads have coaching opportunities and can help the reps set some objectives for themselves in the next period. We think that that would be very relevant and we’re working on that currently. SS: I love that partnership. Now, just to shift gears a little bit, what metrics do you track to understand what good looks like when it comes to training? MJ: Mainly we would be looking at participation rates, completion rates to see who commits to the full training, average score on the assessment quiz that I was mentioning earlier, and lastly, satisfaction rate or NPS for qualitative insight. We rely mostly on the average score on the assessment quiz because we think that’s the easiest way to identify what might have been unclear or if we need to coach reps on certain topics in more depth in the next period. The main goal is for managers to check our reports systematically to have a deep understanding of their team’s behavior, but this is still something that we need to educate them on because it’s not really something that they’re doing intuitively yet. The challenge that we’re facing is actually that the teams are not taking the quizzes seriously. At least not all teams are doing that, which means that it’s hard for us to identify whether the quality of the training is good or not, and if the teams are knowledgeable enough or not. This is still something that we need to improve to make sure that they’re consistently not only attending training, but also doing the quiz thoroughly so that we can then make a statement that the teams are knowledgeable enough or not, and then take action based on that statement. It is a work in progress, but we’re getting there. SS: I think that’s phenomenal. Now, how do you leverage these insights to potentially even uncover levers that lead to improved performance and, that also helped to scale some of the best practices across your sales teams? MJ: To me, it’s quite sensitive to say that training has a direct impact on performance. There are many factors that can lead to performance variability, however, we can try to map sales performance with training performance and observe some trends. If we see that, let’s say, the reps that do the most training see their sales performance increase over time, we can assume that knowledgeable reps are more likely to perform. Also, if we observe that top performers are the ones to score the highest in training, we can assume that the quality of the training is high enough to drive performance. Sharing the quiz leaderboard can increase competitiveness and make the reps want to score higher on their quiz, which is a good way also for us to boost training attendance and eventually, hopefully, sales performance. When we build training, we like to select champions, so ambassadors or champions based on their behavior and their willingness to take on side projects as well as their performance in a certain field. For example, we recently launched the product champions, as we called them, so we looked at performance in terms of product adoption on certain features, et cetera, but also training attendance when it came to product training. That helped us designate product champions across all markets and they’re now responsible to help us in the creation of training, as well as answering some questions in-house to help their peers succeed even more. It’s pretty clear that reps, at least at Ankorstore, are much more receptive when training comes from their peers than purely from the sales enablement team. They’re also more willing to participate and interact during the sessions when we bring team expertise to the table. So, to us, the sales reps are very, very important when it comes to sharing best practices as they have much more trust in each other, rather than in the sales enablement team, which is a bit more theoretical for them. We also leverage team leads to scale those best practices, so we make sure that they have some governance meetings, or at least that they see each other at least every two weeks, so that they can discuss a certain topic, exchange on the methodologies that they use in their markets, or that one rep in their team is using and is showing results, and then, we meet with them as an enablement support function to help them scale these practices if we realize that’s something that could be very impactful. Either we standardize that process or we include that in the training session, but we make sure to include the people that were at the origin of it at all costs to make sure we have an impact. SS: I love that. Now, scaling the behaviors of high performers across the organization requires change management, which is another area in which you have a lot of expertise. What are some ways that you help reps anticipate and seamlessly adapt to change? MJ: When we create training with a champion, so like a rep that we’ve identified as our best ambassador for this training, we make sure that they share the outcome, they share the why, and give as many numbers and examples as possible so that the other reps can include this in a concrete situation and they can really adopt it as it’s real and it’s not just a theory. I would make sure that the experts are the ones speaking, are the ones delivering the training or the coaching session, so that it has much more impact. I would also say that we need to coach sales managers to engage their teams, make them collaborate, and exchange best practices. My recommendation would be for a team to leave the mic to one rep per week during the team meeting so that they can share their best practice, their methodologies, and then the team can discuss altogether to see how we could include this new method in the routine, and how we can make the most out of it. To me, this helps them challenge each other and open their minds to new methodologies or new practices. Using call listening tools to me is also great as it can show them in real-time how applying their peers’ practices can convert a deal or remove blockers in a conversation. SS: I think that’s phenomenal. Now, change can oftentimes be overwhelming for reps. Last question for you, Marina, in developing training programs that drive change, how do you help reps maintain resilience? MJ: That’s a good one. I would say there are a few things. Show them impact regularly enough. For example, since we’ve changed their pitch, how many deals have they managed to sign, or since we introduced a new process, how has their velocity increased, etcetera? Show them the impact so that they remind them why they’re doing this and why they’re constantly adapting to change. Make team leads, coach them, and shadow their calls to ensure that they don’t forget anything. As we know, feedback is a gift, and I think it’s real support for the sales team to make sure that they’re going in the right direction. Celebrate the wins, so that teams to discuss during the team meetings, and team huddles, to make sure that they have some things to discuss and again, be reminded of why they’re doing this and why they’re constantly adapting. Lastly, always put context around training, so we in the enablement team, but also them when they’re coaching each other. Let’s never forget to talk about the outcome and why we’re making this change so that they know that in the long run, they can improve their targeted achievement by working like that. For example, we had a big shift of strategy at the beginning of the year, which involved many stakeholders such as marketing, and product marketing, and for that big change, we had to create a boot camp because one session was not enough. We made sure that we not only included the new pitch, the new content, and the new processes but also a very clear way for them to reach their targets. This is what’s most important for them, so to me, driving change management, we need to make sure that we create a real framework around what are the steps to nail, their targets. The last tool that we use for change management is that we send a weekly enablement newsletter in which we add all key changes of the business that they should be aware of. Basically, we aggregate all info coming from different departments so that it’s very easy to digest for the sales reps and they have everything in one very brief email so that they can start their week with all the info in mind. SS: I think that’s phenomenal. Thank you so much, Marina, for sharing your best practices today. I learned a lot from you. MJ: Thank you. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi, and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement Pro podcast. I’m Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. In the post-pandemic business landscape with volatile economies, meeting customer expectations is increasingly complex and difficult for businesses to get right. This means that it’s more important than ever for business leaders to collaborate and operate with a growth mindset across the entire customer journey to achieve sustainable success. In her book Marketing For Dummies, Jeanette McMurtry talks about the critical role that marketing strategy plays in ensuring long-term success and how marketing, sales, and enablement can partner together to move businesses forward. I’m so excited to have Jeanette here to tell us a little bit more about her book. With that, Jeanette, I’d love for you to introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit more about your back. Jeanette McMurtry: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here and I’m quite honored for the invitation. A little bit about me, I’ve been a marketing consultant and a staff CMO on and off for many years, and I’ve really focused on helping brands create what I call psychological relevance. For years, I was able to travel the world and talk about the power of personalization. What I mean by personalization is seeing your name in the graphics, the copy of the direct mail letter is all about you, it’s not about some generic event. It’s all about your transactions and history with the given brand. Well, at some point, that became a commodity. I clearly decided I need to find a way to take personalization to a higher level so I started studying psychology to learn how to take personalization to the level of the human psyche and I really pondered and studied the psychology of choice. Why do we do what we do and why do we not do what we don’t do? Why do we choose one brand over another? It was the most fascinating thing I ever could have done for my career and for my approach to marketing, which has been very successful, by adding those elements. I studied Young, Freud, and Kahneman, all the psychologists from back then to the current day to really learn about what makes us think the way we think and then behave and purchase the way we do. I started applying these concepts to marketing campaigns for brands across different industries and I saw the results of the campaigns with psychological relevance beat those that did not have psychological relevance by 500 to 600% for revenue generated and response. That’s unheard of, so as a result, I have developed what I call psychology-based marketing, and I am very fortunate that I’ve had the opportunity to write books about this whole new concept in my discoveries along the way of how to apply psychology and how to create brands around psychological relevance. OF: That is fantastic and I’m so glad that you brought that up. Your approach is backed by psychology and backed by science. That’s something that really stood out to me even just from the introduction. In your book, you said that marketing is part science, part art, and part technology. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. You mentioned the psychological aspect, but can you share a little bit more about the role that each of those parts plays in marketing, especially in the modern business world? JM: We’ll start with science. Science covers a lot of different things. It covers not just psychology, which I’ve just mentioned, but the psychology of science is really critical if you want to tap into consumer behavior and you really want to make a difference in building relationships and relevance for your brand. It’s also about the data. If you don’t have good data about your customers, about your market, about their behavior, about their transactions, about their personas, all the different things that data models help marketers understand so they can be extremely relevant with their marketing, you can’t succeed. You have to have a good data program. You have to have a good CRM system. You have to have commitment, and this is where sales and marketing, and sales enablement have to work together. There has to be a commitment to update those data fields. I have worked with so many brands that have Salesforce and HubSpot and other programs and they aren’t even coming close to optimizing the power of that science because nobody fills out the customer data fields. You have to monitor your conversations. You have to document their needs, their transactions, their disconnects, and their connections so that you can segment them accordingly and model your data and your marketing program. Art, art I would say is the most fun and exciting part of business, and why I love being in the marketing side of business because art is your creativity. It’s your imagination. It’s coming up with the iconology that’s relevant to the personas that you’re marketing to every generation, every customer segment, every person has a different way of looking at the world. Apple has an incredible job with their iconology and the way they’ve created impressions to simply just graphics. For a long time, their ads were simply just graphics, a silhouette of someone with an iPod, which iPod doesn’t even exist anymore, but you have seen a transition in their marketing that really is simply based on graphics and art and a lot of imagination. When brands can come up with the kind of art, they create a persona that creates an immediate pill, we tend to go towards people that are just like us. That’s where art comes in technology. We are so blessed to work at a time when marketing technology is so powerful. Technology is the fuel and the vehicle that gets us to the means that we need to get to. Technology changes every 10 minutes, if even faster. When I wrote Marketing for Dummies in 2017, the 5th Edition, there was a certain set of technologies that I focused on. When I wrote Marketing for Dummies 2022, much of the technology that I was writing about was not even invented for the 2017 version. In fact, a lot of the technology wasn’t even thought of, and this book has been out since December. It’s not really that long ago and there’s still new technology that we’re talking about in marketing circles that wasn’t even thought of when I wrote that book. That’s how fast technology changes. Marketing and sales teams, and anyone responsible for sales enablement especially, have got to understand the technology and which technology exists for what outcomes in order to drive those communications and relationships and experiences are so critical to success today. OF: That is fantastic. Technology evolves so quickly, I would love to just compare even what you talk about in the different editions of this book because I mean in five years it will change so drastically. Even companies that have a hallmark piece of technology, you mentioned, for example, an iPod that could be obsolete in another five years. It is so crazy to think about how that does really impact everything that marketers have to think about and also how sales enablement has to work very closely with marketing to keep the sales field on its toes. That’s fantastic. JM: I want to build on something you just said to keep the sales team on their toes. One thing that brands have to be really careful of, just because the technology exists doesn’t necessarily mean you should use it because it’s extremely expensive. The marketing stack is not cheap and a lot of CMOs are saying now, wow, I wasted so much money by trying to integrate everything as it came out. We don’t have time to keep up with it. As anyone is building their marketing technology, it’s important to focus on what you know. You can use what you know, you can discover how to master, and your team will execute regularly and consistently so you can get ROI. Just wanted to throw that in there. OF: Absolutely. Not just adopting technology for the sake of the technology, but really being thoughtful about the stack and what will actually unlock that productivity. In the book you cover both the fundamental marketing and sales strategies that can work in any economy, and also some things to consider in the post-pandemic world, which again, is something that has changed since 2017 and what we were all thinking about to 2022 and 2023. What are some of those foundational elements that are important for an effective marketing strategy regardless of the economy? JM: It’s actually one major element that you have to focus on, and that is a growth mindset. I don’t know how many people are familiar with Carol Dwyer. A few years ago she wrote a book called The Mindset, the Psychology to Success, and there she talks about a growth mindset and how important that is to succeed in any economy across any industry and for any brand. A few years after this, Harvard Business did a research study to discover how companies with growth mindsets come out of recessions or bad economic times versus those that don’t. It’s human nature when you see the storm coming to batter up the windows and hunker down. When you do that, you’re really setting your company up to fail. In an economy, you can’t hunker down. You have to brave the storm, eyes wide open, and go after it. You have to decide right now and do this before this storm arises. Of the companies that weathered these last few recessions that Harvard Business studied, only 9% came out ahead of their revenue status after the recessions were over. They compared three different recessions and only 9% did succeed, 17% failed altogether, and 80% of those companies they studied either came out of the recession below their revenue status or right at break even. They lost quite a bit of money and opportunity. What was the difference in that 9% that came out? They did lay staff off. Now, this is a really important thing to think about because we are watching more and more companies lay people off at record speeds that I’ve never seen before in my lifetime, and a lot of it’s the marketing team. They’re not laying staff off, which means they’re keeping morale. Employees that are not living in fear of being next. They’re producing, they’re innovating, they’re using their imagination. They’re confident, they’re excited to move forward. The other thing they did is they stayed committed to marketing. It’s amazing to me when companies get scared, the first thing they do is cut the marketing staff. Really now think about, okay, so while your competition continues to do marketing programs and build brand awareness and build relationships, you’re becoming invisible. What’s the sense in that? Those are the 80% of the companies that either came out of the recession less profitable than they were before, or they failed 17% of companies failing in bad economic times. That’s a pretty big number. Nobody wants to be of that mindset, yet you see the majority of companies today following the hunker-down mindset versus the growth mindset. It’s a fascinating study, and the case study that Harvard puts together is Office Depot versus Staples. I don’t know about your market, but Office Depot has closed every business, every building within a 60-mile radius of me. Staples is thriving because it took the growth mindset during the really hard times and invested in people, invested in marketing, and created customer experiences that created loyalty for good times and bad times. OF: That is some fantastic research and, really great points there. I love what you said about the difference between the hunker-down mindset and the growth mindset and in particular, maybe where some choices can be made in business that really do set the leaders and the people that are able to achieve that sustainable long-term success to the businesses that maybe won’t be able to weather the storm. Thank you for sharing that. I’m curious to learn, today in particular, what are some of the biggest changes that sales and marketing teams are experiencing in the current economic landscape, and what’s your advice for how companies can overcome some of those challenges? JM: Same thing. Focus on the growth mindset, but there’s another element of the growth mindset. It’s really important for marketers to think about, and that is moving from a USP to an ESP. You are not going to grow your business if you continue to promote a unique selling proposition because guess what? Nothing really is unique. If you do come up with something unique, It’s pretty much repetitive or duplicative within a minute by a bigger company you might compete with. Technology allows companies to narrow those gaps really quickly and copy anybody’s really good idea, so that is not going to make you sustainably competitive for very long, yet people are always trying to say there’s something unique about it. Well, first of all, nothing is unique about customer service because anybody can improve their customer service within a minute. You know, just, hey, tell your staff, give customers whatever they want, no questions asked. That doesn’t take a lot of time to make that change. That’s nothing, and everybody I know thinks that’s what sets them apart. First of all, let the customer decide if that’s what sets you apart, and if you ask them, you get into market research, which is covered in depth in chapter five of my book is a lot of different research technologies to find out what customers really think about you and your category. When companies do customer research, they often find out that they’re not really as good at that customer service advantage as they think they are, so they can’t focus on that. What you can focus on to weathering any storm, and even if it’s not about economic time, this should be your primary focus, and that is to move from a USP to an ESP. I don’t mean extrasensory, psychic voodoo kind of stuff, I mean emotional selling proposition. Everything we do is emotional. Going back to Harvard Research, there’s a former professor named Gerald Zaltman, and he did a lot of research on how consumers think, and that’s actually the name of this most popular book. In there he talks about his research that shows 90% of what we do is driven by our unconscious mind. That means we are driven by our emotions more than we are rational research that we might do about the best price, the best deal of the best quality. Those factors are thrown out by the unconscious mind, and we go towards brands and people and organizations that make us feel really good. They make us feel like we are invincible. We get those dopamine rushes that make us feel like we can conquer the world, or we get oxytocin that makes us feel like we’re belonging, we’re loved, connected, or valued. When those things happen, price, service, and convenience don’t matter. Brands need to look at the emotional fulfillment that they provide. Do you provide security? Do you help people relieve their fear of making a bad decision or help them get beyond FOMO, the fear of missing out? Do you help them create a sense of belonging through social proof? What are the emotions that you’re creating consciously and unconsciously? Once you create an emotional bond through ESP marketing, that bond is really hard for a competitor to break, and they’re most likely, if you keep it up through sales enablement and account-based marketing kinds of strategies and execution, if you keep those emotions strong and those bonds growing, no one’s gonna take that customer away from you for price or even convenience and that’s proven. A lot of research shows that. OF: That is so interesting. I love what you said also you can’t differentiate on customer service because it’s really about if your customers view your service as exceptional as well. Kind of along those lines in making sure that you’re staying on top of those preferences and the needs of your buyers, I’m curious what your advice is for how marketing leaders can stay on top of those changes, or at the very least, just understand what the preferences of their buyers are? JM: Going back to what I was mentioning about customer research, a lot of people think, oh, research is really expensive and no one is going to fill out my surveys anymore. Well, guess what? Going back to technology, there are a lot of ways to stay on top of your consumer’s attitudes and their thoughts about your brand, and there are a lot of affordable ways to do this. There’s really no excuse for not keeping in touch with your consumer’s attitudes and perceptions of your brand. If you don’t, then you’re gonna be in that bucket that I mentioned earlier of the brands that think they have great customer service, but their customers don’t agree with that. There’s a lot of research that shows that what brands think about their role in customers’ lives is very different from what customers think. If you’re one of those, it’s going to be really hard to succeed. So what are some of the customer research tools we can do? Well there’s no excuse for not asking the big famous NPS question, and that is the question for the net promoter score; how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? That is a loaded question because it really is telling a brand if they’d be loyal to you because if you’re not gonna be loyal to a brand, you’re not going to recommend it to a friend because if you’re embarrassed by the quality of the experience your friend has, it makes you look bad. You’re putting skin in the game when you recommend anything to someone you care about. If you set someone up to lose money or have a bad experience, you will feel responsible for setting someone up for a bad experience at some level, and nobody wants to be in that situation. That helps really define loyalty at a very deeply emotional level. There are a lot of programs you can go on. SAT Metrics is the one who created that survey. You can download the survey platform, put it in an email, or you can put it on your website and you can collect data and you can see the different categories within that question that help you realize how committed your customers are to you and how and how likely they are to be loyal. There are also social listening tools. You can go out there and find programs, you can purchase them like a SaaS model to help you listen to the collective voice of consumers that you’re targeting. What are some of the things that persona or that generation or that customer segment, what are saying on social media? What kind of comments are being made on Instagram or TikTok or any of the platforms they use socially about a brand or category? If you use the right SaaS platform, you can even get down to hearing what individuals are saying about you on their social media pages and you can pinpoint one unhappy customer and you can mitigate that risk by reaching out to your sales enablement teams to solve the problem and give them what they’re looking for and what they need so they don’t continue to say bad things about your brand, but also so they’re more loyal. There are a lot of things you can do. You can do a one-minute quiz or a one-question survey on your website. You can do longer surveys with SurveyMonkey. It’s still a very good tool to use, but there are endless opportunities for survey tools and if you want to get even more current local community data, you can tag a survey onto a radio station in your community or a newspaper. You can pay a little bit of money and they’ll throw your question into a survey that they’re already doing and they’ll ask people that you would not normally be able to reach. They are also platforms that you can tap into that aren’t just like your local radio and TV stations or newspaper, but they’re huge platforms. They have a database of thousands of people willing to answer surveys in a given category, and you just send them your questions, ask their panels and get you back the data. There are so many ways to find out, but not doing any kind of research is setting yourself up to really be challenged to keep up with competition and keep up with trends, and as we’ve already discussed, things are changing very quickly in consumer markets and attitudes because of technology their expectations of brands are changing too. If you’re not talking to consumers and learning on a regular basis constantly, you’re going to fall behind once you’re behind. It’s really hard to catch up. OF: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing also those no-cost, low-cost models as well that you can use for customer research that’s very tangible and actionable for our audience. From your perspective, what role can enablement teams play in helping marketing teams effectively navigate changes in the market? JM: Sales and marketing need to work together hand in hand. They need to be really one unified team. The traditional business model is you have a VP of sales and a VP of marketing, and so you have these different silos that sometimes don’t like to work together because they like their independence, but if that’s how they operate you cannot succeed. They have to work together because you have to have a unified strategy for customer experience. One of the things that I discussed in great detail in the 6th edition of Marketing for Dummies is a customer touchpoint journey. Both marketing and sales enablement needs to understand the decision criteria, the decision processes, and the decision journeys that your target customers are taking to get to yes. This happens in retail. It happens in B2B. This is especially important in B2B because those complex decisions have a lot of repercussions for the people making those decisions. There’s usually a lot more at stake than buying a $5 widget at a store. What are the criteria that they are looking for to help them make wise, informed, and confident decisions that will help them further their career path and not look bad to their superiors if something goes wrong with the software system they’ve got? You need to understand that. Marketing needs to understand that and create messaging appeals to make them feel comfortable in engaging with your brand to learn more because again, you have that emotional relevance and the psychological relevance that you can fulfill the outcomes that they’re looking to fulfill physically, tangibly, and emotionally. Sales enablement needs to know how to carry those leads that marketing generates through the touchpoint journey by providing content that’s relevant for each step of their decision process checklist to help them know they’re making wise, informed decisions, and tell them objectively what they should be looking for in products. You can’t be a commercial appeal. These need to be touchpoint journeys with educational value and create a sense of partnership. Then, of course, what are the touchpoints for conversations and for meetings? What does a sales meeting look like? How is that first sales conversation built upon the promises that marketing is making? How is that pitch deck? How is that proposal? They all have to be built upon the same premises and promises that are being made at the beginning of a brand relationship because if you’re making promises in marketing or creating a sense of emotion that has not executed every level of that journey from introduction to the closing pattern to conversion, you become an inauthentic brand that nobody can trust and they don’t believe your marketing, so next time you have a great offer or a great promotion to get out there to the public, they’re going to move on to the next competitor because you burned that bridge. It’s really important that those departments work together on that journey from promises to deliverables. OF: Absolutely. I love that you described that as a journey. Something that you wrote in your book is that building a marketing strategy is really a journey with a specific destination in mind. I’m curious to learn maybe a little bit more about the advice that you would give to marketers and enablers to first identify that destination that aligns with core business objectives, and then measure progress toward that destination. JM: The destination of every single marketing event that you execute, whether it be a campaign or an event, your customer experiences, or your sales journeys needs to have one destination in mind. I don’t care what industry you’re in, and that destination needs to be a lifetime value. No company can afford to start over every three or six months, or even every year in building a profitable revenue stream through new customers. If that’s how you operate, you are not going to be in business very long. The only businesses that can succeed across any industry, B2B or B2C, are those that are able to retain their customers through the things we’ve been talking about and capture their loyalty. Loyalty is in different forms. Loyalty is always going to buy my product when you’re going to need it so I can count on those repeat purchases, but I also need to recount on referrals from you. If you have three referrals from every customer you have, think about your business growth. That’s a free sales team. You’re not paying commission and you’re not paying payroll, you’re not paying benefits to your customers that are bringing you three to five customers. That goes back to the MPS score. Ask that question, find out how likely they are to recommend, and then give them reasons and incentives to recommend other purchasers. Lifetime value is probably one of the most important things that somebody can learn how to calculate, so you need to take the time to calculate it for your industry, and for your business. What’s the life cycle of your clients? If you’re in a business where you’re likely to keep someone for 10 years or five years, figure that one out, and then you have to figure out how to take the elements and characteristics of your most loyal customers. Append that to your data models, by going back to the science we talked about earlier, and make sure you’re going after new customers that look a lot like your loyal customers. That cycle becomes a very successful approach, but again, if you’re looking at a destination for a short sales quota or just to meet the quarter’s revenue that you’re under pressure to meet, that’s not sustainable. You’re not going to be able to do that for very long and your competition that’s focusing on loyalty, they’re going to take ahead. There’s another thing to think about too. A lot of companies have contracts and when you get a client signed in the contract, I spent a lot of time in the SaaS and software world, so that’s how I think, you get those clients lined up in contracts for three to five years. That’s really something to think about because if you’re letting your competition get those customers or getting those prospects, they’re going to have the market locked up for three to five years. That’s why the customer experience is so important. When you set your destination for lifetime value, you have to understand the customer experience and the ESP that you’re going to deliver from every aspect of the marketing campaigns to the sales enablement execution, to closing and account management through ABM. If all those elements don’t come together, you’re never gonna get to that destination. OF: That is fantastic advice. Well, Jeanette, thank you so much for sharing all of this expertise with our audience. I learned so much from this conversation and I’m so excited for our listeners to hear this. So thank you again for taking the time. JM: Thank you. It’s an absolute honor to be here today and talk about my books. I feel very honored to have a voice and to be able to share some of my experiences throughout my career to help people be successful no matter what business they’re in. So thank you, Olivia. I really enjoyed our conversation today. OF: To our audience, we absolutely recommend picking up a copy of Marketing for Dummies. We will include a link to that in the transcript. Thank you so much for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro, and if there’s something you’d like to share or a topic that you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jess Rodriguez from Beyond join us. Jess, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jess Rodriguez: Thanks so much. My name is Jess Rodriguez. I am the senior sales enablement manager at Beyond, and what we do is we work in the short-term vacation rental space and we help property managers and hosts grow and keep their revenue. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Jess. Now, in addition to your sales enablement experience, one of the things that I thought was really cool about your background is that you’re also a professionally trained actor and have coined yourself as The Improv Girl. How does your experience in improv influence your approach to sales enablement? JR: This is a great question and there’s a lot of ways that I can answer it, but really both improv and enablement are about creativity and the willingness and the ability to adapt and learn to really see and feel and embody whatever project or program that you’re working on. Anyone that has done improv gets into it for a different reason. Some really like the opportunity to create something, some people want to make people laugh, others do it to build their confidence, and I think mine was a combination of the three. Regardless of why you do it, what you get out of improv are these magical moments of experiencing what it’s like to take an idea or a concept, and not only bring it to life but to see how far you can go with it. In improv, you go from, let’s say, talking about taking a trip to the beach. That’s maybe the scene that you’re provided with, and you are then tasked with acting out this trip to the beach. If you want it to be good and you want the scene to really resonate with your audience, you have to make yourself believe and act like you are at the beach. Maybe you’re thinking through the details about packing, you are holding your figurative beach hat when the wind blows, and you’re feeling your toes in the sand, but it’s just like a real trip to the beach where you could experience a tidal wave mid-scene and you have to roll with it. Having the familiarity and taking things from an idea and putting them into an action to really just embrace every part of that idea and learning to pivot has made a major impact on how I actually approach sales enablement and the programs that I work with. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now, what are some improv skills that could help sales reps improve their performance? JR: I love this question. It’s one that I get a lot and I think people hear improv and sales and they automatically assume we’re going to use improv to teach people how to be better at a specific sales skill, like negotiating or objection handling or demoing a product. You can absolutely do that, but I think we have to look at what it takes now for someone to be a great seller. I actually read in the Sales Enablement PRO report on enabling the future of selling, it stated that some of the top priorities for salespeople would be learning to collaborate and how to create very personalized journeys for their prospects and customers. What we know is that it actually takes something quite different today for sellers to be really great and it’s gone beyond these very standard sales skills. It’s really about having the ability to connect with that prospect or that customer to understand their story, their motivations, their pain points, and their goals, and then be able to communicate how their product or service not only fits into that story but actually makes it better. What better way to improve that ability to learn that story, and tell that story than with improv? I think about the skills that improv has taught me and what I’ve applied in my career, and I think what really comes to mind first would be listening, which sounds very basic, but is so essential. I think about something called characterization, and as I mentioned, I think about storytelling as well. SS: I love those elements. What are some of your improv techniques for training salespeople to be more effective at listening and responding to customers? JR: Great question. Let’s start with listening. There is one technique that I use consistently during every workshop and keynote presentation that I’ve done that starts with explaining and demonstrating something called ‘yes, and'. One of the first things that you’re taught at improv is this concept of ‘yes, and', and it represents the mindset that no matter what someone says or does in a scene, you have to accept it with a literal or figurative ‘yes' and then you add to it. The reason it’s so important is during improv, it prohibits you from going into a scene with this premeditated agenda of how the scene is going to go because you can’t control what your scene partner will do or say. That’s like the fun in improv. That means you go into this scene with zero expectations. When I think about why sales reps struggle with something like listening, I think it’s because they go into this “scene” or their conversations with an agenda and with an expectation of what’s going to happen. They’ve done this before, maybe it's their eighth demo of the week, and they feel like they know what Susan from Company A is going to express as pain points or obstacles, so they’re anticipating how this will go and they’re unintentionally closing themselves off to something that could be a really great conversation. When you go into a scene with zero expectations, it forces you to be what I call powerfully present in that scene. You will naturally start to pay attention not only to what is being said, but the body language, those nonverbal cues that you’re getting, and when you think about listening, that’s what you have to do. Listening means you are really just powerfully present in what is happening in that scene. Now for the second part of your question, responding to customers’ needs, what I didn’t tell you about ‘yes, and' is the, ‘and' part of that means that there has to be this logical connection for what you add to the scene. Let’s say, for example, you start out the scene in the kitchen and you decide that the kitchen has caught on fire. That’s logical, quite unfortunate, but it’s logical. If you start in the kitchen and then you decide you’re on the moon, that’s not a logical connection, so at that point, you’re doing what we call going for the laugh, and you’re not actually thinking about the common good of the scene. Let me kind of bring it all back together here. As a seller, I think about how to respond to a customer’s needs in a way that is for the common good of that scene, and the common good of their goals, their objectives, not my own objectives as a seller, and that can be really hard because we want to feel prepared. We want to be viewed as the expert, the consultant, the one with all the answers, so we think about maybe how you do this. How do I go into this conversation with no agenda or expectations, but still be able to act as that expert or consultant? My response to you would be that you prepare. In improv, they tell you to expose yourself to as many cultures, references, characters, news articles, and happenings in the world as you can because it makes you well-rounded. It will set you up for success when you’re in a scene, someone throws something out there at you because you have to accept it and you have to know what to say and do next to effectively respond in that scene. In sales, I think about all the resources that we have out there for us, like talk tracks, playbooks, competitor news, or information. Lean on the resources that your marketing or your enablement teams have given you to prepare for those conversations, but overall, when you’re going in, don’t go in with that expectation or that agenda and that will make you a better listener, and make you more equipped to respond in a way that really makes an impact for the person you’re speaking to. SS: I think that is phenomenal advice. I can’t tell you how many times I feel like that’s exactly what reps struggle with because they’re more concerned about what they’re going to say next than actually listening to the customer and expanding upon their needs. I think that’s fantastic advice, and I love the analogy that you drew there. Now for sales enablement, one of the tools that we use is that manager/rep role play. This is a relatively common tool to use in the sales training world. I would love to understand from you how improv can be used in those scenarios to help managers better coach their teams. JR: Yeah, that’s a great question. Let’s talk about roleplaying. First of all, it really breaks my heart for roleplaying because it just seems to have a very bad reputation and people don’t seem to like it. I have a theory, but I’m curious, like, as a sales enablement person, why do you think that is? SS: Well, for me personally, I think I get a little bit of stage fright, but for others, maybe it feels a little scripted. It feels unnatural because it’s something that we’re not used to doing. JR: Yes. I completely agree. The stage fright element is very valid for many individuals. I remember the first time I did role-playing in sales training as a salesperson. It was my very first, real onboarding with an organization. It was classroom style. There were probably 30 people in the class, and when the instructor said we’d be doing role-playing, my actor self was thrilled. I was so excited. I was like, this is my moment, I’m so great at this. Give me the scenario and a minute, and I’ll be ready. Then about 30 seconds in, I was like, wait a minute. This doesn’t feel right. This is uncomfortable. I don’t understand what’s happening right now. When we finished, the instructor threw all this feedback at us. I think you hit the nail on the head, Shawnna, when you said that it feels so scripted because when I think about why that experience is really bad, there are two things that took place. One is that it wasn’t a real-life scenario, right? We’re told that it’s supposed to be this creative exercise designed to help you practice, but it’s not uncommon for the person on the other side to be either silly or not fully invested or say things that a prospect or customer would never say. We’ve all experienced that, and/or your instructor has very specific things they’re looking for as far as responses, which doesn’t make sense either because every prospect and customer is different, so how can someone say with confidence, this is absolutely how you should have responded? Are you with me for those two reasons? SS: Absolutely. JR: I agree that oftentimes roleplaying is a challenge because it feels like a waste of time and what I would tell a manager or any sales enablement person is that your reps will only get out of roleplaying as much as the sales leader is willing to put into it. There are a few techniques on improv that come to mind. I actually have a whole guide about this on my website for anyone that would like to dig in further (JessRod.com), but the three things that I would look at first are to lean into that character. That means that the person acting like the prospect or customer needs to embody the prospect or the customer. If you don’t have buyer personas to work from as a sales manager, I would encourage you to go create your own. In one of my previous roles, there was an activity where we had our reps create their own buyer personas they had this whole backstory and they named their prospect and we let them google a photo and pick a random photo of a person, we let them identify their pain points. We really let them create this persona. Then we used those personas throughout the onboarding kind of as a round robin, so everyone had experience with different personas, but it gave the person playing that character some strong roots and foundations in who they were embodying. The second thing I would tell a sales manager is to be self-aware. One of the first things I always do after any performance, even after training, is I go back and I watch the recording. Let me tell you, Shawnna, it is painful and it is not fun, but you make notes about how you can improve. I look at my delivery, my demeanor, my facial expressions, and then of course specifics of what I said and then I know what to work on because I’m seeing it for myself. I’m not just being told by someone else like, hey, your training would’ve been a lot better if you would’ve done X, Y, Z. What I would recommend for a sales manager is to have your seller listen to a call or watch a recent demo, and then come to the session for role-playing with notes on where and how they would like to improve, and then use that time, that role-playing session time to practice those areas. This not only will help them really take ownership, because they’ve spent time prepping, but it also just gives them some control of what they want to work on versus being told by someone else where they’re struggling. Then the last thing I would say is really embrace this idea that there are no mistakes in roleplaying, there are only opportunities. I think we have to remember that roleplaying really should not be about assessing or looking for required outcomes. We’re not looking for the reps to say specific things or ask specific questions. It should be about providing this very positive, safe, and supportive space for them to practice this skill. I always tell people to think of their favorite person to hang out with. They’re probably the ones that make you feel smart and funny and interesting and important, so make your seller feel like that, and role-playing won’t be as daunting. SS: I love that and I think you’re absolutely right. A psychologically safe environment also I think would produce tremendously better outcomes in that role-playing scenario. Now you have experienced designing improv-based team-building activities. I would love to learn more about how that type of team building drives collaboration and communication between team members and whether there’s actually anything I can, you know, maybe try at my next team meeting. JR: I love working with teams. It’s a lot of fun. There is a lot of that scary part of being in front of people sometimes for attendees. When I think about the workshops, have you ever attended a training or a workshop where, let’s say the focus was communication, and they put together a deck and you’re talking through what it means to communicate different styles of communication, how to apply in the workplace, but it’s, it’s mostly like a presentation? Does that sound familiar at all? SS: Yes. JR: Yeah. When you’re trying to drive something like collaboration or communication, a slide deck is not the way to do it, and that’s because collaboration and communication can be, I think, very vulnerable things to acknowledge a team is struggling with. If you give them this slide deck that explains five things they need to do to collaborate or the top four communication styles in the workplace, that’s not going to break down that barrier of what got them there in the first place. That barrier that’s causing them to not communicate or collaborate. They need to experience it. What’s really magical about using improv for team building is that you start off by breaking down those walls. In my workshops, the first thing we do is play an improv game. Before we’ve pulled up any slides, any presentation within the first five minutes of the start without even being told how to do it or that they have to do it people are laughing together, they’re working together, they’re being creative together. They’re starting to experience what it actually feels like when they do communicate and they work together. By the end, they’ve had 45 minutes of that experience and again, have felt and seen what happens and what it looks like when they are working effectively, and because of how the games are structured and the content is structured, they’ll also experience what it feels like and the impact it has on everyone when they don’t actually work together and communicate. It’s really about getting them to experience it for themselves, put themselves in that seat, and not just tell them how to do it. SS: I love that. Jess, last question to close for you. In your own career, how has this improv training helped you advance your career in enablement? JR: Thank you for that question. I owe a lot to my improv training and the directors I’ve had, the teams I’ve worked with. I mentioned earlier in our conversation that regardless of why you do improv, what you get out of doing improv are these magical moments of experience. In my keynote, I speak about having what I call an improv mindset and how I’ve used these foundations like ‘yes, and' to really be a driver throughout my life. Improv has given me the confidence to take on new challenges and new opportunities because through those magical moments and through those experiences, I’ve been able to see how incredible something can be when I say yes to it. SS: I love that and I love that say-yes approach. Well, Jess, thank you so much for saying yes to being on this podcast. I greatly appreciate the insights that you share today. JR: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement Pro Podcast. I'm Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Kristin Klinkner from Zumper join us. Kristin, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Kristin Klinkner: Hi Shawnna. I am the sales enablement manager at Zumper, which is a platform you can use to find your next rental property, whether long-term, short-term, or vacation rentals, we have them all in one place. We’ve got a fantastic user experience and because of that, we attract our audience organically, and then we’re able to provide our clients with high-quality leads for renters to their properties. I’ve been at Zumper for a bit over two years. I’m a team of one, and this is the first job I’ve had with the official sales enablement title. I took a really non-traditional path to a formal sales enablement position as I spent the first 18 years of my career in the non-profit sector. The last 15 of those were for the American Cancer Society, where I started as a local staffer working on raising funds through events and sponsorships in a local community. I moved into a manager role and then into a national role coordinating corporate engagement strategy for some of the world’s largest fundraising events. I didn’t realize it at the time, but all of that work in the early part of my career was sales. Fundraising is sales. My national role was really sales enablement. I built the strategy, infrastructure, marketing, resources, support, and training for thousands of employees and tens of thousands of volunteers to attract corporate financial support, essentially B2B sales. We were hugely successful raising around 80 million per year for cancer research and support through just my B2B programs, but when Covid hit, our in-person fundraising event method for the American Cancer Society had to change as our strategy for bringing in revenue. My department was eliminated, as I’m sure many people can relate to back during the pandemic, but I really saw that as a great opportunity to find a role that encompassed all of what I truly love doing and it boiled down to the positive impact, the changes in programming, infrastructure, and strategy for gaining corporate partners through others providing the resources necessary for others to be successful in landing those partners, not doing it myself. That’s what I really loved about the last role I had there. We also had just gone through a transition to Salesforce as our CRM and I liked learning the technology and figuring out how I could use that technology to help our fundraisers achieve goals. I started looking at the SaaS world and tech companies and startups, and I discovered some podcasts, probably sales enablement PRO, that mentioned sales enablement. As I dug in and joined webinars and online career fairs like I know you all hosted, I heard leaders in enablement talk about their roles and strategies to be effective, and I knew this was the right place for me, but I needed to figure out how to translate my career in nonprofits to sales, and that’s where a huge network of sales enablement professionals were really sold me on it and helped me find my way. It was really scary at first, but I started being vulnerable and just asking to connect with some of those speakers in those webinars and asking them just to connect or give guidance. So many of them were willing to chat and give coaching advice and connect me to other leaders. That’s really where I started to take off, and one of the best pieces of advice I got was to do a better job of clearly translating fundraising to sales. That piece of coaching that I received. When I figured out how to do that, I very quickly secured a few offers and accepted my first enablement position. That’s a really long-winded way to say that the coaching I received allowed me to see a clear path to achieve what I wanted to do with my career shift. I immediately started finding ways when I got into that sales enablement role to build the type of into the company where I work now. SS: I love that. One of the things that stood out to me about you on LinkedIn was that you really focus on building a sales culture that values coaching, as you mentioned, and celebrates success, which I can’t stress how important that is these days. I’d love to learn more about some of the ways that you’ve built this into your company’s culture. KK: I really do value a strong culture of coaching and celebrating wins in a sales team. Coaching is not something that came naturally to me, but I’ve seen that as more and more people in an organization embrace it, we can achieve greater things. Taking a step back for a second, about me, I’m a doer, a problem solver. When I was younger, I felt if I could just figure out a way to do something and then share it with other people, they could just copy what I did and we’d all be fantastic top performers, right? That didn’t go over super well, especially when I became a people manager, so I did a lot of introspection and work on emotional intelligence, and that helped me see that I didn’t need to, nor should I, solve everything for everyone because when I tried to do that, nobody was bought in and they really didn’t adopt my solution long term even if they gave it a shot. Learning about and improving my EQ helped me figure out how to be a coach instead of a fixer, and that really gave better results for the whole team. There’s a quote in an episode of Ted Lasso that has really stuck with me, and it’s something to the effect of all people being different people, and that’s what I think building a culture of coaching can do. Explaining to our sales leaders or coaching them to see that all of the sellers on their team are different and need different approaches and methods of feedback delivery and have different learning styles is a good way to introduce some initial changes to our onboarding and ongoing development opportunities. The way I did that was by adding role plays to our formal onboarding and training cadence. I know people hate role plays, because I kind of hate them too, but the vulnerability you need to show and the trust that you need to give that everybody there on that call or who’s giving you feedback is there to help you. All of that helps build engagement and really solidifies every person on a team or, hopefully, solidifies for everybody on the team who’s involved with this, that they are a valuable part of that team or that company and the shared success. When you’re open to receiving that help, many times it results in growth or a tangible win that then we can call attention to. It's sort of a cycle, right? Then as we start seeing those wins, based on a result of something we learned in a role play, it gains acceptance as a development strategy and garners buy-in for continuing that type of exercise. Even when I ask really directly after a role play, like, how’d you feel about that, I usually start by sharing where I messed up and saying like, ooh, I felt really awkward at this part. Then people also feel like it’s okay to say like, yeah, I didn’t love that either. In the end, they always talk about what they did learn and how it really did help them feel more comfortable with whatever skill they’re working on. It’s kind of those shared awkward experiences that propel a team to build stronger bonds, have more engagement, greater success, and then eventually enjoy helping others and celebrating those successes as a team. SS: I love that. One of the ways that you’ve improved coaching at your organization is through sales management training to help them also become better coaches for their reps. Why are the role of the manager and their effectiveness as a coach so important, especially amid changing times? KK: I think we can all agree that coaching is better in the long run. For somebody coaching them to find a result is better than me just fixing it. I think we can also agree and I can get a team of leaders to agree that if I’m the only person providing that coaching that’s not very effective either. Having several people in an organization who are strong coaches out in the field with our sellers can really amplify my work in enablement. I can’t be in every sales meeting and my particular industry is very face-to-face for our sales, so I can’t even listen to recorded calls to give coaching. That’s not a function of our company for me in enablement that I know a lot of other companies have. Instead, it all has to be done either as a group on a call or face-to-face when out in the field and really making those presentations. When I know that a manager who is going to be in some of those meetings is capable of providing the coaching a seller needs to improve, or even just to keep doing the things they’re already really good at, that’s easier for me to focus then on correcting skills and knowledge gaps that can be detrimental to our sales. It’s amplified even further when our sellers feel comfortable coaching each other. So we incorporate that a lot at Zumper too. For example, as I said, our industry is multifamily real estate. I didn’t know anything about that when I started here. I know how to sell and I know how to do enablement and coaching, all that kind of stuff, but multifamily, I’m not the expert there. Luckily we have a lot of those, like Patty, one of our VPs. She provides a lot of the coaching right alongside me for our sellers and where I can point out a different strategy or execution or something like that, Patty has actually had these conversations with clients so many times. The coaching that she provides is a whole other level of credibility and expertise, and when she takes the time to coach, it really encourages our sellers to grow because they see that somebody else, a teammate is investing her time in them and they can also see that these things work because of the massive success that she’s had in her career doing the same thing that they’re doing. SS: I love that. What does that sales manager training program look like though? What do you think about measuring the success of that program? KK: A lot of our sales leaders are competitive and they want to be the best. On that road, it’s maybe easy to default to ‘I’ll just fix it myself now and I’ll try to remember to talk to you more about this later'. The way we build our manager training is that it’s a lot of practice and it is, again, those live role plays and exercises and really learning and ingraining it in your day-to-day work how to take that pause and maybe rewire those managers for the tendency to immediately fix for somebody else, and instead shifting to ask questions and coaching a seller to see the fixes that they need to make for themselves. That’s often a big change for a manager. I often start by explaining the benefits in the terms of what’s in it for me. The manager may have more time to do other things or focus on other team members, build strategies, and even maybe take some time off that they don’t seem to find enough time to do during the year. When we flip it in the terms of like, what’s in it for me, it might be a little uncomfortable at first for me to not just fix this and to see if they can work through it, but in the long run, it is going to pay off. Then, we teach how to coach instead of fixing and hardwiring that defaults to coaching. We practice coaching over a substantial period of time, so it’s not just a one-and-done type of learning. This is a really ingrained long-term program that we work on all the time. Practicing with other leaders, with me, applying what they learn to sellers and receiving feedback and coaching on their own coaching, and then we repeat it over and over again, and that’s what helps it to stick. When they start using it and seeing the growth in their teammates, the bigger or more frequent wins that they get, they really become invested in coaching as a strategy for leadership and it helps the culture of coaching really take hold at our company. Some of the ways that we measure this, yes, you can see more frequent wins or bigger wins or things for each of the sellers you’ve been working with. There are some of those sorts of lagging indicators that you can see movement, but there are other ways that we measure this at our company, and that is through engagement surveys. What we’ve seen as we’ve started to build the culture of coaching where we’re all supporting each other and working together to get better and improve, we see that people are really connecting with each other and that has improved our engagement scores tremendously. It’s really helped build a lot of teamwork when we are mostly remote and don’t actually get to see each other face-to-face very often. SS: I love that. I have one last question for you. You have mentioned on LinkedIn too that you’ve seen some exceptional business outcomes from this approach to building a healthy sales culture. What do you think about tying the impact of sales culture back to things that the business cares a lot about? KK: I think one of the things our company focuses on a lot is our core values. We’ve got five core values and we like everybody to feel part of the team. We call each other roomiez with a Z at the end. It’s funny, we add Zs to everything, so roomiez with a Z. When I started during the height of Covid, a lot of that engagement and people were shifting to a remote environment and they really started feeling disengaged, not just with each other, but I think even with the company. As we, in the sales team, started to build that culture where we’re all going to work together on this thing, we’re going to help each other out and we’re going to celebrate those wins, we really have seen an improvement in commitment to our company, commitment to the key performance indicators and the objectives of our organization, and just a real general enthusiasm to achieve it together and to do whatever you need to do, help wherever you need to help build the relationship within the company internally even, or eternally with clients in order to build that culture that we’re looking for in our company, which is just very inclusive and celebratory. Did that answer your question? SS: That did. It’s important I think, to your point, to ground it back into the core principles of the company, so that makes a ton of sense. KK: Obviously we have hard dollar goals and numbers to hit, but a lot of times what I’ve seen is sometimes it is just like a feel and those can be just as important to hit those number goals as well. SS: Absolutely, because, well, there’s number goals behind some of the fields too, like retention of your top employees and all that fantastic stuff. Also, mental health keeps you from having to take massive amounts of sick days. Totally. KK: 100%, yes. SS: Thank you so much for joining us. KK: Thank you for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. If you’ve ever worked in B2C industries, you’ve likely heard some variation of the mantra that the customer is always right, and really the core meaning behind this phrase is that the needs of the customer should be the top priority for the employee. Really setting that expectation that the customer is at the center of the business model. In today’s economic landscape, these expectations continue to trickle even more so into the B2B world. Having this customer-centric mentality is a place where sales enablement can really play a crucial role in helping revenue teams understand the importance of customer-centricity to drive loyalty. I’m so excited to have Jim Tincher, the author of Do B2B Better, here to tell us a little bit more about this concept that he outlines in his book. Jim, I’d love it if you could just take a second to introduce yourself, your background, and a little bit about your book to our audience. Jim Tincher: Thanks, I’ve always been a customer-focused kind of guy. My first job out of college, I remember that first summer going to my boss and saying, Hey, I’m visiting my girlfriend, my now wife, in Connecticut. I asked my boss if I could visit a customer while I’m there. He gave me this look like, why would you wanna do that? In fact, he asked me, why don’t you just go on vacation? I thought that’s what people did. Just go and visit customers, find out what they want, how they use your products, and how you can serve them better. I have since learned that’s not what most people do, but that’s what I want to do from the very beginning. Since then, I’ve been with lead customer trade programs at Best Buy, and UnitedHealth Group, and nine years ago I started the company Heart of the Customer, where we really help, especially B2B and B2C firms understand more about their customers and how to create an outcome where customers want to spend more, stay longer, and interact in ways less expensive to serve clearly from your group. Spending more is probably the one area of most concern, but all three are important. About three years ago now, my team and I were sitting around and we noticed something that nearly every company we work with says. They’re customer focused, but some are much more customer-focused than others, and some organizations are able to really build everything they do around the customer, but most can. Everybody has customers as a top priority on the wall or some variation of that, but in some organizations, they actually make decisions around understanding what customers want and need, whereas most don’t, they operate internally, and we wanted to understand what separated those two types of customers. We ended up identifying what we call change makers versus hopefuls. The hopefuls might be doing good work and they hope it helps their customers to want to buy more, stay longer, and interact in ways less expensive to serve. The changemakers could prove it. They could show they were growing through the customer experience. We did over 200 hours of interviews, surveyed hundreds more to get to the bottom of what it is that great companies are doing, and that’s all in the book, the four actions of a change maker. It’s called Do B2B Better and it’s the four actions that change-makers take to ensure that they really are solving customer needs. OF: That’s fantastic. Thanks so much for that background and context too. That’s so helpful to hear about how the book came to fruition. Something that I love that you talked about in your book is really how customer loyalty is the key to a thriving business. I think that is so critical, especially today with the economic climate that we’re in. I’d love to hear your perspective about why this is so important, especially for B2B organizations, and especially given the times that we’re in today with the economic landscape. JT: Both of those are critical and customer loyalty is the foundation of organic acquired growth and is important for many company strategies. I’m not knocking that, but every organization wants organic growth as well, and that comes from building your decisions around what customers need. Customer loyalty isn’t about programs to reward customers. It isn’t about throwing money there. It’s not about customers being happy. Well, that’s part of it, but it’s about understanding what is it that motivates your customers to want to work with you more. Why should they call your company first when they have a need? That’s what the great companies do, is they build it around. They understand what customer values most and so that’s what it takes to build a thriving company in any economy, but even more so now. Now is the time when it does seem like we are in a down economy, or at least entering one, that’s when customers are likely to bolt. It’s even more important now to understand what motivates your customers so you can build programs to get them to want to stay with you. OF: Absolutely. I love that perspective. You mentioned how B2B companies can often lag behind B2C companies in terms of prioritizing and really providing exceptional customer experiences. You mentioned that a little bit in your intro as well. I’m curious to learn about why that is and maybe what some of the unique challenges that B2B organizations face are. JT: You bet. Now a part of it certainly is, but it’s a lot more than that. If we go back to my time at Best Buy, if you wanted to go visit customers at a store, it was easy. I did it all the time. It drove my wife crazy, by the way, but I’d always go to the store when we were visiting a new town. I’d go check out Best Buy. It’s easy to see the customer experience at a B2C company. It is not so easy in B2B. I led the nation’s largest line of health savings, and that was fun. I came in as a product manager and the first thing I realized is that nobody in our marketing or product development group had ever met a client because it’s a lot harder. You can’t just knock on your client’s HR group and come in and say, can I watch you for a day? That’s kind of creepy, and so it’s not so easy to exceed the experience firsthand in B2B. It takes deliberate effort, and I put together a program called Hug Your Customers to take our employees out, to hear from customers firsthand. Olivia, two big learnings about why you don’t want to call it that. So first of all, one of the sales reps used ‘hug your customers' while talking to a customer, and that was just weird, and second of all, Minnesotans, we don’t hug. It was just a bad name. We changed it to collecting best practices, which was not as memorable but didn’t get us to those weird problems. We went out there and I took people out to hear from customers. One of the things we learned was fascinating and painful. We looked at our clients that were the most successful with our product, that when people were eligible for a health savings account, they opened it, they had bigger balances versus those that were less successful. What we have found out is that really successful companies were the ones who ignored all of our advice and who didn’t use our marketing materials. That’s a hard lesson to learn, but the reason was that we were building the materials and the advice that we wanted, but we knew too much, and that’s the problem, especially in B2B organizations, is that you know too much about your products and your processes. One of the things we learned was that the number one thing that was frustrating customers was, how do I log into the website? We didn’t have that problem. We logged into the website every day. We didn’t forget our password. Our clients logged in twice a year, and if they forgot their password, they had to enter the 14-digit number that we sent them when they first got their health savings account. Because we weren’t spending time with our customers, we didn’t understand what they really needed. I see the same thing with software companies, for example, that they know too much about their software and they’re really good at it. In one of our clients, if you forgot your password, you had to send an email and they responded with an automated message saying, we’ll get back to you within 24 to 48. Well, you can’t be locked out of your operational software for one to two days, but they never had that problem, so it wasn’t a priority. It’s a lot harder in B2B to really understand what it is that your customers do and how they really use your software. OF: Absolutely. With some of those in mind that you mentioned in the customer experience, specific to B2B companies, I’m curious if you can maybe walk us through just a couple of those that you recommend on how B2B organizations can really overcome some of those common challenges to customers. JT: It starts with clearly getting a better feel for your customers. This is going to surprise your B2B listeners, which is probably all of them, we found that one of the most important things to understand is your customer’s emotions. Now, you try asking somebody to understand the emotions of the procurement manager, hey, that’s hard, but you know what? Procurement managers have emotions too. It might be hard to understand that because we get in this habit of thinking it’s only about dollars and cents and what rate you give them and those matter, no question about it. What we find is that if you can understand the emotions driving their decision, you might be able to gain a few points. You can increase your order velocity. For example, UKG is one of the case studies in my book. They are a provider of payroll and other HR benefits-type software. They’ve learned that their emotional North Star is confidence. If they can create confidence in their clients, and again, they’re a software company, then those clients will stay longer. They’re more likely to purchase additional modules. They also have a reduced cost to serve. Now, they also measure frustration and six other emotions as well. As you would have guessed, if a client is frustrated, well then they’re far more likely to be and have a high cost to serve because what we followed is a frustrated customer will call your support center, get an answer, and then they’ll call a second time to make sure they got the right answer the first time. Well, that’s, that’s horrible. I mean, it’s annoying for the client, but it’s also expensive for you. And then what happens? They get a different answer the second time. Oh, confidence is shot and they are angry. So by measuring their emotions and designing for the right emotions, UKG was able to drive loyalty because they were designing it with the emotions customers want. Gartner just came out with some research about a year ago that showed when they looked at, if you want to create a high-value B2B deal, what you need to do. One of the challenges in most B2B purchasing processes is that there’s not a lot of great data. There’s lots of data, but it contradicts each other. If you want to buy a widget manufacturing or software management platform, you can find all kinds of information from all the providers who are all trying to spin it their way, and it’s hard to figure out who’s the best. What they found are the two factors that best predicted a high-quality deal from both the vendor and the customer side was, first of all, confidence in the information of that client. If the client was not confident in the information they were given, then they offered to do a lower-value deal and they wouldn’t give all the resources necessary to make it successful. The second factor was trust in the person giving the information, so you need to have great information from your client’s perspective. You need to be presenting that with somebody who they can trust a high-quality sales rep, for example. Again, it’s coming back to those emotions clients feel, which is weird in the B2B space. My favorite example here would be Dow, the chemical manufacturing company. We were with them on understanding the complaints journey and how to. Now, when I first met their Chief Commercial Officer, and he wrote the forward to my book, he told me, Jim, my goal is to create a complaints journey that’s enjoyable. So wait a minute, let me see if I have that right. It’s not easy, not effective. Enjoyable. He said, yeah, that is exactly my goal. Now, Dow doesn’t use the net promoter score. They don’t use customer satisfaction. They measure three things, how easy is it to work with Dow? How effective is it to work with Dow, and how enjoyable is it to work with Dow? Their research shows pretty clearly that if you say it’s effective to work with Dow, you don’t really change your ordering behavior, even if you say it’s easy there’s a lot of focus on creating effortless experiences. It doesn’t change the client’s behavior, but if a client says that it’s enjoyable to work with you, then their behavior changes, they order more often, order velocity increases, they order more products, and they’re far more likely to hit the home run, which is they work with Dow to create new to the world products. They do joint innovation, so understanding the client’s emotions is one of the big opportunities in B2B, and I’m starting to hear more and more from it starting with B2C. Fidelity is measuring if you have a transaction with them, they ask you about eight emotions. Delta is asking how comfortable you are on your flight. We’re starting to see B2C change and if you want to get ahead of the curve, it’s time to start measuring your client’s emotions. OF: I love that advice, and that focus on emotion, as you mentioned, is maybe something that’s a little bit unnatural for B2B business leaders. I’m curious, how do you coach leaders to start to take that customer-centric approach to their business strategies, especially in focusing maybe a little bit more on emotion? JT: The first thing is you can’t come to your finance team and say, we want to create enjoyable experiences for our clients because they will look at you cross-eyed. What you have to say is that when we’ve done the analysis, we see that when clients say it’s enjoyable, their order velocity improves by 5%, or they are ordering 1 to 2 more products per quarter than those who say it’s not enjoyable of similar size. You can’t just decide this is the emotion you want to create. You actually have to measure those emotions and tie them into financials. Now I know it might seem weird to say, how do we turn enjoyability into a financial metric? It’s doable. Dow does it. We do it with clients, but you have to do that or when you try to engage a broader organization, they’re not going to buy them. You have to show why it helps your team accomplish its goals. To create an enjoyable experience, and that ties from one of the other findings from the book, which is that great programs use deliberate change management. They help engage the entire organization around emotions. We’re about to understand, again, confidence. In the case of Hagerty, a B2C company, theirs was happiness. Dow's was enjoyment. I was at a conference last week and I was talking to somebody from manufacturing and she said, I’m still trying to get my head around emotions in the B2B experience. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I told her, in your personal life, let’s say it’s time to buy a cell phone and you choose a bad one, it’s always breaking down, okay, you’re annoyed, but if you’re buying, let’s say software or you’re selecting a provider of mission-critical product, and you make the wrong choice, you could be fired. Emotions are a big deal to B2B experiences. We just don’t think of it that way, but those same people who are deciding to get the extra big ice cream at home are also deciding on how to, whether your soccer is the right one. They don’t shut off their emotions. They come to work. It’s more complex. Emotions are just a part of it, but there are parts of it your competitors aren’t considering. To me, the big marketplace in B2B is getting ahead of your competitors, understanding your customer’s emotions, and deliberately designing programs to help create the right emotional outcomes. OF: I love that advice on the deliberate design of your programs. For our listeners, many of them are sales enablement leaders and sales enablement practitioners, that is really, where their role can come into play here in helping to design those programs and helping to also guide that change. I’d love to hear your perspective. What do you envision as sales enablement’s role that they can really play in helping to improve customer loyalty and also how they can help reinforce a customer-centric mindset among revenue teams? JT: What we do with our clients is we take them out to interview clients to start collecting what they are saying now. They don’t say, I felt confident. I enjoyed working with Dow. They don’t use that language, but they do talk about their emotions indirectly. Start with that information as you talk to your clients. Record that and use that as a way of training showing how this outcome over here is that this is one of our better clients. Notice how they describe it. Notice how they describe working with their sales rep. Get that as sales enablement. Get that content so you can coach your teams around this is what it looks like, this is the emotion we create. Similarly, interview clients that are not having a great experience so you can hear their emotions and what’s driving them. For example, I’m working with a company right now that got their job 98% done and did give me the last few pieces of information a month and a half ago. I now have to follow up with them on a weekly basis trying to get them done. That’s frustrating. I’m never going to use them again. I’m going to give them negative recommendations and they don’t know it because they’ve never asked me. Make sure you are asking your best and your worst clients. Worst clients is a bad term, but your best and your not-so-best clients about what it’s like working with you. Use surveys, but also use interviews and then get that information in. It’s raw, unedited, well cut short, but show those emotions your clients are feeling about you and use that to get your teams to really understand that yes, that VP of Procurement actually does have emotions and that you as the rep can create either positive, negative, or neutral emotions. What’s it going to be? OF: That is fantastic advice. I love that. To close, Jim, I’d really love to hear about your predictions for the future of the B2B business landscape and the next year or even beyond. How do you think sales enablement professionals can help organizations keep pace as things are changing in the next year and beyond? JT: Well, the XM Institute has shown the maturity of organizations in understanding the customers acting against those results and it’s starting to improve. Two years ago, about 65% of companies were at the lowest level. Now that’s down to 40 percent as most companies have moved up to the second level of maturity. What that means to your listeners is that your competitors are getting better at understanding customer needs and acting against them, but I guarantee they haven’t figured out the emotions yet, and that’s your opportunity to leapfrog. Start to work with your customer experience team, your customer success teams with customer excellence teams, and your customer something teams who are measuring your client experience and get them to think about the emotions and how we measure that and then distribute that results to all of your sales teams. They understand that when we create confidence in our clients, that’s when they buy more from us. That’s when they stay longer, and as well as they actually interact with the way it’s less expensive to serve because they don’t feel annoyed and frustrated, which drives those outcomes. By getting ahead and helping your whole organization think about the emotions your customers feel, you can leapfrog the competitors, drive up sales, and drive up that organic growth that we’re all looking for. OF: Fantastic. Jim, thank you so much for sharing all of this insight with our audience. I know I learned so much from this conversation and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear it and check out your book as well. So thank you again for joining us. JT: Thanks, Olivia. I’ve been glad to be here. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit sales enablement.pro. And if there’s something you’d like to share or a topic that you’d like to learn more about, please let us know. We’d love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement Pro Podcast. I’m Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space, and we’re here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Denise Hannon from Tray.io join us. Denise, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Denyse Hannon: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here and hello to everyone out there. My name is Denyse Hannon and I work at Tray.io. Tray.io is really driven by the hope to create a world where really anyone can solve business problems without the constraint of technology, but in doing so through automation. We essentially help companies transform fragmented processes into very powerful business outcomes. For example, our customers are able to automate business processes or even help accelerate a company’s integration roadmap by empowering product service developers to rapidly build integrations for their customers. My role at Tray.io is very focused on enablement. I am the senior sales enablement manager for the company, so I oversee their enablement strategy. SS: Well, we’re excited to have you join us, Denyse. Now, one of the things that I love about your background is that you have a wide range of experience coming from enablement and marketing. How has that blended background really helped impact your approach to sales enablement? DH: I’m so grateful to have that mixed background. It’s given me such an insight into just the different realms of enablement. I feel like we often think of sales enablement as one aspect of a business, but enablement really captures so many different elements from project managing, and operational processes, to collaborating with cross-functional teams in marketing, product, and even HR, with sales enablement onboarding. Having that background has really given me just the knowledge of how important it is to work cross-functionally and get to know those members because those cross-functional departments become an enabler’s true force to be able to create efficient content lessons, and honestly, that ongoing loop of communication that’s necessary for sales enablement. SS: Absolutely. Oftentimes, within a lot of organizations, a common challenge that I hear about is just this misalignment between sales and marketing teams. In your experience, what would you say may be some of the root causes of this misalignment? DH: I think the first thing that comes to my mind is communication. I think sometimes, and I see this through enablement, quite often teams are working in silos, unfortunately. Every team has its strategy and the goals they’re trying to hit. I think that the real root cause is miscommunication and not branching out to work cross-functionally and understand those strategies and create a consistent sales enablement strategy based on all the other strategies. I think that sales enablement has a really unique position in that sense and ability to look at an organization’s strategic angle in each department and intertwine those strategies to tell a consistent and effective story to the sales. SS: I love that. Do you have any tips or things that you’ve done to prevent the silos between the two teams? DH: Definitely. I think at the end of the day, the biggest tip I can say is we’re all human. Similar to what I teach from the sales enablement perspective, what is really important is trust, connection, and being authentic and genuine. These are all big aspects and tips that we overlook when it comes to breaking down these silos and working together as a team. I mentioned that because I think a lot of the time, especially now more than ever in a digital world, we get into zoom and immediately we start kind of hitting on those key points we need to get at for the meeting. We have 30 minutes or whatever it might be, let’s get to it. I think sometimes we just need to have that human touch and really take a few minutes to get to know each other, get to understand what’s going on in your day, how are you feeling, and that really starts to create trust. I think that’s really a key element to breaking down those silos because what I’ve noticed is people are more inclined, more willing, and they want to work with you. They want to loop you in on projects. I’ve even noticed even in situations where enablement wouldn’t come into play, people will come to you and say, hey, I need to talk this through. What sparks from that is other ideas, other projects where enablement can come and help. I don’t know if that’s a good tip there, but I think sometimes we overlook just the human touch and the power of truly connecting with other people. SS: I love that advice. For our audience listening today, how can enablement help break down some of those sales and marketing silos and really start to drive really strong alignment across the teams? DH: When I think of the sales side of things, obviously they are customer-facing, and they can provide such great feedback back into the company, like what they are hearing from prospects and from customers. From a marketing perspective, they’re the ones driving that message and approaching conversations. We really can’t have those silos. We need to have that ongoing feedback loop of what I’m hearing and marketing saying, hey, here’s how we’re tailoring that message. It’s going to be constantly evolving just with the trends that we notice in industry and the changing economy. That’s a constant form of communication that is necessary, and I think where enablement comes in and helps there is really to drive that communication. They’re kind of that liaison between, hey, here’s what I’m hearing from my sales team, and from a marketing standpoint, providing the marketing team that message and then vice versa marketing might be saying, hey, here’s how we’re approaching this conversation now, or here’s how we’d like to frame the message here based on what we’re hearing, and then bringing that back to the sales team and working with them on how we can pitch this the right way. I think that’s a great way that enablement can really come in and play, and being that liaison between the two teams. SS: I love that. Given enablement’s unique position as a core partner both to sales and marketing teams, do you have any advice for how to build strategic partnerships with the executive leaders, maybe the CMO or the head of sales within the organization? DH: When it comes to working with executive leaders and to be quite frank, this is a somewhat newer area for myself and I’d love to continue my career down this path, but really looking at a higher-level strategy there. We touched on this a little bit before, but I think enablement has that unique ability to look at a micro strategy within, for example, the marketing department or a sales department and to first and foremost kind of flag to the executives, hey, we may not have alignment here, we need to create an efficient, streamlined process. Also, vice versa, they can say hey, this is a gray area where we can all collaborate and grow together. I think from an executive leadership point, it’s almost kind of stepping outside of a sales enablement role, and it almost, in my opinion, it’s very much an operational, in some ways project management ability there to help executive leaders align on enablement needs to grow the business. SS: Last question for you, Denyse, and I appreciate all of the insights that you’ve shared today. How, how do you correlate the impact of enablement’s effort to both sales and marketing priorities? DH: It goes back to that ongoing loop of communication that’s necessary. Enablement is such a broad word. That is one thing I’ve learned in my career as an enabler. You can wear so many different faces as an enabler, and it’s one of the things that I love absolutely the most about the job. Not only can you see the impact in one area, but in so many different areas. I think that when you think about the impact enablement has on the priorities of a business, not even just marketing and sales, I mean, what’s really unique is that going back to communication, the information we’re pulling from sales and marketing should get communicated out to the rest of the organization. This communication can help drive product strategy, and so I think there’s a much larger impact there, even from branching out to HR even saying hey this is what we’re noticing and this might be a future need for the company to hire. I kind of would expand that question to the impact enablement has on, on the entire company’s efforts. If you can think outside of the box that way and if you really want to have that company-wide impact, I think that sales enablement role really has that opportunity to do so and to branch much deeper than to personally a lot of different roles that I’ve been part of. SS: Well, Denyse, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights. I really appreciate it. DH: Thank you so much for having me on and letting me tell my story. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Rick Kickert from Zscaler join us. Rick, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Rick Kickert: Thanks, Shawnna. I am the global vice president of what we call REV, which is revenue enablement and velocity. Zscaler is a cloud security company, and I’ve had the opportunity to be here for almost four years now. I have also been in the pre-IPO space, mostly with tech, doing a similar rollover at Rubrik and then over AppDynamics doing enablement, sales emerging technologies, and also had the opportunity of working on the business value consulting team there. Before that, I actually spent about 10 years over at Blue Cross Blue Shield and I always give the same story during boot camps and training sessions and that I used to actually live on the other side of the fence. I would be what salespeople would call their economic buyer champion, and in my office, you’d walk in and to the right. I always have a whiteboard that would have our top 5 or 6 projects for the company. A sales rep would walk into my office and we would exchange pleasantries for the first five or 10 minutes and get to know each other. Then, I’d ask, how do we align with some of the projects there on my whiteboard? If we couldn’t, that’s fine, we’ll talk later, otherwise, let’s talk about how you can help me be more valuable in my business. I use that story all the time because I spent a lot of time talking about the buying journey and understanding how the buyer makes investments. I’m a true believer that within enablement if we can help enable our sellers, partners, and customer success teams on what the buyer has to go through with the buying journey looks like, we’ll just be more successful on the other side of the fence from a selling perspective. SS: Absolutely. In your role, you are uniquely positioned to focus on go-to-market, partner, and customer enablement, which you shared with us that you call the global revenue enablement service center. Can you walk us through this process and how it impacts your view on enablement? RK: If you think about an automotive center for a moment, Shawnna, I am assuming you’ve probably taken your car to some type of automotive center before, right? SS: Absolutely. RK: All right. When you pulled up to that service center, there could be multiple service areas behind all those bay doors. There’s usually not just one bay door that you go to get your car serviced, there are multiple. Even though you might need different tools and services from multiple areas, you just go in the front door and go to the front desk. The front desk takes the requirements, they do the paperwork, and hopefully, something very efficiently and effectively happens in the back end and they drive your automobile back out and it’s all revved up and ready to go. That’s the perfect scenario, right? In this REV Center, which is revenue enablement and velocity, the same analogy holds true. Our marketing teams, our product, and our engineering growth teams, all come to the front door of the REV center and we want to understand what they’re launching. We collect the paperwork, we make sure it follows a value framework that we’ve built out, playbooks, LMS and then we go enable the proper teams, whether it’s sales specialists, partners, customers, customer success, renewal’s professional services, all of that. Anything inside of go-to-market and external. You think about most things you launch and for enablement within a company, and it shouldn’t just only go to sales, we make sure that maybe there’s a play there for customer success, maybe there’s a play there for partners. Maybe there’s something we can do to highlight the customer training partner portal that also helps enable that launch. Maybe we’ve created a demo that can be leveraged for not just sales but also for partners. Getting everyone in the same boat and rowing in the same direction with full momentum’s goal. Just make sure everyone is enabled at the same time efficiently with some of the same tools and then using the same common measurements. That’s the vision that we built for this revenue enablement service center and why we’ve kind of married everybody together in that same model. SS: I love that, but I imagine there are some unique challenges to building an enablement strategy that can fit all of the needs that are part of your role. How do you overcome these challenges as you design enablement programs? RK: There is. It’s a lot of different bay doors if we’re sticking with that analogy, to try and make sure we get everybody enabled at the same time, but luckily I’m a pretty big fan of enabling the buyer, the partner, the customer success rep the same way we’ve been able to the seller. Putting the most enablement available out there in the market I think really helps engage people, help them learn about your product, your solution, and your use cases, and understand what they can solve for it. The challenge there is just making sure that you’re getting the right content to the right consumer at the right time. We always make sure we’ve got a pretty large bill of materials in place. We’ve built that consistency in place with the marketing teams and the product teams. Everyone’s prepared when they’re coming to that front door of the REV center what things need to look like and make sure that we’re able to launch all at the same time. SS: What are some ways that you go about ensuring that you’re tracking the right metrics across the entire enablement program, today? RK: Metrics are probably one of the most critical elements of a successful enablement program. Just rarely will you see me or hear me talk about the amount of training that is specifically consumed. How many people completed the training inside of our LMS or courses or webinar that we might have hosted? I’m a lot more around the measurable outputs of it. Now that is a leading indicator and in a lot of cases training is consumed, but at the end of the day, if everyone consumed their training, but if it still didn’t create more visible opportunities or drive more new business meetings or create more pipeline generation or we’re not improving our win rate, we’re not selling more specific products, then who cares about the training consumed. I try to align all of our metrics with what business partners care about. What’s the most important to the CRO? What’s the most important to the CMO? Whatever their indicators are that are important to them, we want to make sure that we’re measuring the same metrics in the same type of success. SS: I think that’s fantastic. You talked about the auto body shop analogy, how does enablement prevent and fix potential roadblocks that may happen within your organization? RK: If you didn’t have that service center analogy, which we experienced initially also and I’ve seen this a lot of other companies, you might have a lot of training going over into specifically your sellers, but maybe the SEs didn’t get that same training or maybe your partners are not getting enabled with the same content at the same time for a new product launch or solution that might be coming out. Those are the roadblocks that you could potentially come across or some of the bottlenecks. Again, it’s making sure that you do all the prep ahead of time, understand that launches have an impact, what you want each team to be able to articulate from an enablement perspective, and build those business partners to make sure that we’re not having delays in making those teams each being very effective. SS: I want to shift gears a little bit because you also focus a bit on partners and have a partner enablement background. You shared an article on LinkedIn about developing a robust partner enablement strategy and how that’s really a key to driving revenue. Why is partner enablement important to the business, especially in the current economic climate? RK: Well, for one, it’s how you scale. I truly believe that you have to have a partner motion and the easiest way to be able to do that is by making sure that you’re enabling them. You think about it, you brought up the economic times of today and there are not a lot of companies that are still accelerating at the same headcount they had in the past, so you’ve got to look for other ways how to continue to grow your revenue year over year by 40 or 50%, or whatever the number is, you’ve got to continue that growth rate and partners are truly a great way to be able to do that. It’s hard for partners to be able to help you drive that kind of growth and be able to position your solutions if they’re not enabled and if they don’t understand how you integrate together with things that they might sell today. They’ve got a book of business, they’ve got customers, they’re working with other solutions, they might be competitive, so helping them understand how that entire architecture goes together, how do they offer the best value to their customers, to their buyers with the solutions that we sell today? If you don’t put them in that position, it makes it really difficult just like it would your internal sellers if they don’t know how to position the value position, the right use cases, and be able to find the right buying personas, it makes things more difficult. I think partners have a unique advantage where they have trusted advisors to these customers. I think about when I was over at Blue Cross Blue Shield, we leverage a lot of partners to be able to give us insight into if I want to be able to roll out new products if I want to be able to fix some of the problems inside of my company, what’re the best tools to be able to use? Partners are kind of that extension for a lot of business. I think today, in the current economic times, partners are a great way and a great extension of anyone’s business to be able to help, but you need to be able to enable them and teach them what your products do. I’ll even say; give them the same tools, the same demos, the same labs, all of that, open the door of enablement to them as much as you would internally. SS: I think that is great advice. In closing, do you have any additional advice you’d give to organizations wanting to incorporate an enablement strategy with this model and their business? RK: I think it’s about alignment. It took us a while to be able to make this journey and be able to get to this type of model. I truly believe that for efficiency it’s definitely a much better model to go through. If you can align and build business partners inside each area and show your metrics of success. Whether you think about customer success, I care about churn and enablement as much as you do, how do we help improve those things? I care about renewal and up, sell as much as you do, how do we measure and build playbooks to be able to support that from a partner perspective? We care about deal reg as I want to make sure that we’re doing everything in enablement to help drive that. Obviously, for sales and SEs, we care about success and demos, we care about success and POVs and again, your measurements and your areas of success are the same as enablement. If you can get to that type of relationship and kind of be kind of the same fabric together, that to me is the power behind being able to build a model like this that works and has everybody essentially rowing their boat in the same direction. If you’re doing that, you’re going faster and you’re going to beat the competition. SS: I love it. Thank you so much, Rick. I appreciate the time. RK: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you. Take our survey: Are enablement teams supporting their sellers effectively to ensure they're motivated to reach their goals? Help us find out by taking the State of Sales Enablement 2023 survey, and get exclusive early access to the insights that will help you enhance the satisfaction and performance of your revenue teams.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Eric Lindroos from Culture Amp join us. Eric, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Eric Lindroos: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me, I am so excited to be on the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. My name is Eric Lindroos, and a little bit about me is that I love traveling, I am a proud uncle, I am a wine enthusiast, and I just moved to Portland, Oregon after living in Ireland for the last year. I am also on an active surrogacy journey to fatherhood, so fingers crossed, I should also be a new papa by the end of the year. I love all things enablement, of course. Recently, I joined Culture Amp as their revenue enablement partner with a focus on building out our go-to-market outbound sales motion. If you’re not familiar with Culture Amp, we are the leading employee experience platform driving engagement, development, performance, and retention for over 6,000 organizations. Prior to Culture Amp, I was the 24th employee at Gong, I spent almost 4.5 years with the company and held roles that ranged from sales to recruiting from the SDR enablement manager to the go-to-market global enablement onboarding manager as well, so that’s a little bit about me and again, I’m so excited to be spending my time with you. SS: Eric, we’re so excited to have you on the podcast today, so thank you so much for joining us and bringing this energy. I want to start by talking about maximizing sales productivity because that’s top of mind for a lot of companies, especially given the current economic climate. With your experience building global learning programs that scale onboarding, training, and coaching, how can enablement help to drive productivity? EL: Great question. Right now, onboarding and training are definitely top of mind for everyone given the current economic environment, especially if your employees are still remote, or I think if you’re one of the lucky companies that are still hiring. I think having a strong onboarding program is crucial when facilitating an impactful new hire experience. I think a strong onboarding program ensures that new hires feel connected, have cross-functional exposure, have access to leaders, mentors, and buddies, and are given the resources and content that they need to hit the ground running. I also firmly believe that a strong program is key when driving a new higher engagement and productivity. Sorry to say this, but if you’re bored, your new hires are also bored and that’s a ton of time, information, and enablement resources that are just going in one ear and out the other. I think that when properly engaged and when there are a variety of learning styles incorporated into the programs that you’re running, you’re going to see that engagement and the adoption results that you’re looking for. Those desired results, of course, are going to lead to a decrease in your ramp time of new hires and just employee retention long term. When it comes to new hire onboarding specifically, I see onboarding really as the initial foundation that training programs and reinforcement programs should be built on to ensure a deep understanding and skill set of one’s new role. SS: That is fantastic advice. Now, because you have that global experience, what are some of the unique challenges that come along with designing global programs that really kind of address regional markets? EL: Oh my gosh, that question is a trigger. The first thing that comes to mind is time zones. Definitely, time zones are going to be a challenge, but I think how you overcome that challenge to the best of your ability is to try to overlap as many live sessions as you can. If I have US and EMEA onboarding or training, I know that I have an EMEA until like 6 PM their time, which means I’m going to get as much out by 8 to 10 a.m. PST as I can because I want to ensure that teams feel really connected and not siloed from a global perspective and because I want to drive engagement and performance. I also want to guarantee a space for global mindshare and just bonding. When it comes to sessions and trainings that might fall outside of those overlapped hours, I am going to make sure that I record every single one of those sessions and then I’m going to build global library folders of that content to ensure that I drive foundational consistency across the teams. Also, I want to make sure I’m tracking against the completion of any of those self-led programs and trainings to ensure and measure the adoption as well from a global lens. Now that I’m thinking about it, I also think tech is definitely something that can be a challenge if you don’t have the right tech resources in place. In my opinion, if you’re not recording and analyzing the impact of your global sessions, you’re never going to scale or have the organizational and go-to-market consistency in the way that you want. I also think that it’s really important for you to utilize your learning management system, have a knowledge-based platform for collaboration, and invest in an e-learning solution. I think with all of that, you’re also going to help drive reinforcement and development across your teams. Over here at Culture Amp, I am lucky enough to have all of those resources, and from a global lens, I do not know what I would do without them, specifically because we have teams over in APAC, EMEA, and over here in North America. SS: I’d love to actually drill into that because it sounds like you have teams all around the world and obviously there are a lot of differences in background and cultures if you’re scaling global programs. How do you build a program that makes sense for different geography? EL: I think first you have to seek to understand. Be slow to build and fast to listen is my mantra, which is why we have two ears and one mouth. From a foundational level, I think that there should be a program baseline that reflects the company first. When we’re thinking about this, your company values, your value proposition, your buyer personas, your customer use cases, and your leadership should all be accessible and the same regardless of geography. Build that foundation and then scale it because that’s how employees feel engaged and brought into a mission. For example, our mission at Culture Amp is to improve the lives of 100 million people with our platform and I guarantee you that even in the short amount of time I’ve been here, you can feel that that is our mission that everybody is fighting for every single day, regardless of location because it was a part of our global onboarding experience. I say, double down on that baseline and then build programs that reflect the nuances of diverse teams and regions. My grandmother always taught us growing up, never to be the smartest one in the room. She said, if you’re the smartest one in the room, get out of that room because you’re not learning, you’re not growing, you’re not being challenged. Do not try to be the smartest one in the room if it’s not your culture. Don’t build your programs around your own preconceived ideas of what should work. I highly encourage you to seek out employees or consultants in those regions and let them be the smartest ones in the room. I think a huge challenge that I’ve also experienced while building out global programs is not understanding that there are global market differences and thinking that what worked for you in one place is going to guarantee success in another. I have seen this time and time again, leaders saying ‘well that’s what we do in the US so that’s what we’re doing in EMEA. Let’s cut and copy that for other regions.' I think that this approach is literally the deathbed for so many organizations trying to expand globally or scale programs and training efforts. Every single region is different and taking a very thorough and intentional approach to understanding those differences is imperative to see success. When it comes to global programs, talk tracks are received differently, the competitive landscape is different, and company brand awareness is never apples to apples, in my experience. Marketing and lead gen efforts need to be adjusted accordingly and global programs have to reflect those incongruences in order to be successful as well. Let’s also make note that work-life balance looks very different across continents. That has to be factored into global programs and just the conversation. The live-to-work mentality in North America is alive and well compared to the work-to-live mindset that you see with a lot of organizations in Europe. I think that’s a huge challenge that one should be aware of when building out these global programs. Just have that sort of top of mind to have a conversation around with your leadership team and your enablement team as well. SS: Your grandmother sounds like a very smart woman, I have to say. I love that advice. Now, in addition to your experience with the global programs, you’re also really passionate about DE&I, in the workplace. What are some of your best practices for creating an open and inclusive environment for learning? EL: What a question, I feel like I could talk about this for hours. I say first be your authentic self and be unapologetic about it. This obviously looks different for everyone and that’s completely okay, as long as you always feel comfortable. When it comes to feeling comfortable bring up your partners, children, or your weekend activities in your work conversations. Obviously, as long as it’s professional, don’t make a career-limiting move, that is not what I’m proposing here, but show up as your authentic self. Join an employee resource group or otherwise known as an ERG and if there isn’t one, start one. At Gong, I created Proud Gongsters with the help of my CMO, which was an LGBTQ+ Gongster community. The workplace here at Culture Amp already had incredible resources and ERGs in place, so on my first day I was added to camp out and was immediately a part of a community where I felt accepted and supported. I’m also a huge fan of building a DEI or ERG session into your onboarding so that new hires understand the DNA of your company and are encouraged to show up as their true and authentic self from week one or day one. At Culture Amp, we are very heavy on using our pronouns in our Slack and Zoom profiles, which creates a safe space for others to just show up. It also tells them that we support them for whoever they are. I would also say to be intentional about training on unconscious biases so that you can educate your talent teams, you’re hiring managers, and your employees. Fight to have a diverse workplace and diversity in your leadership team so that people see themselves in all aspects of the organization. As you can tell, I think there’s a lot that you can do, but I do guarantee if you do any of the things I just mentioned, you are going to create a space that promotes open and inclusive environments and people are just going to learn organically because they feel comfortable. Last but not least, if your company doesn’t want to support what I mentioned to you or you feel like you have to hide, find a company and a leader that does support you for you. SS: I couldn’t agree more with that statement, Eric. You just touched on this just a second ago, but I’d love to drill into this a little bit more and that’s around leadership’s role in this. What advice do you have for leaders of global teams to help them create a more inclusive team culture? EL: My first piece of advice is to listen to this podcast and follow Sales Enablement PRO. No plug intended, and I know you don’t make me say that, but jokes aside, educate yourself about DEI Initiatives and other cultural norms so that you can be a leader who educates others. Create a space where diversity is not just tolerated, but it’s absolutely celebrated. Demand for an atmosphere that promotes psychological safety for absolutely everyone on your team. Just be curious about others and ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that you might not know the answer to. I feel like a lot of times we are so scared to look silly or stupid or ask the wrong thing when it comes to something that we don’t know, but in my experience, I promise you that your teams are going to welcome this dialogue because it shows that you care and that you want to grow and become more aware of something that maybe you don’t understand. I’d say provide anonymous feedback surveys as well and be open, not defensive about the results and data. If you’re not collecting employee engagement data around these conversations, I firmly believe that you should be, especially if you have global teams because everybody is different and everybody needs something different. No plug intended, but I do know a platform, Culture Amp, that can help you if you want to talk to me about that further. Those are just a few things that a leader can do to really drive a more inclusive culture within their teams. SS: Well, absolutely, and I will outright plug it because I have used Culture Amp before at past companies and I have to say, I absolutely love it. It does exactly what it is intended to do, particularly around DEI&B, which is near and dear to me. I’m all about the plug for this one. EL: I love that, thank you. SS: Thank you, Eric, closing question for you. This goes back to the environment that we’re in today, at least particularly in the tech sector. How can teams balance a healthy culture with what a lot of companies are feeling about the need to maximize productivity? EL: Oh my gosh, trigger again, for me as somebody who has experienced burnout professionally, this one definitely hits home. I think it’s really important to find a healthy balance of people first and I think that once you do that, productivity and business will seamlessly overlap. There’s actually just a quote I recently heard from Brad Bird who’s an academy award-winning director and he said ‘If you have low morale, for every dollar you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every dollar you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay more attention to morale.” I totally agree. Find what that people’s first balance looks like and everything else I think is going to come to place. I also think it’s really important right now more than ever in a remote environment if you do have remote teams or global teams to have really clear expectations around KPIs. What does that look like for you and for your team? I have now been a part of two different companies where we’ve had company-wide recharge days, and I think that that’s an incredible way to create a healthy culture of balance as well. It also shows your employees that you value them and you care and when you demonstrate that to your team, and to your employees and that’s a part of your DNA, again to that quote I mentioned, you’re going to see the return because people are going to want to work harder for you and for your mission. Also, I actually encourage people to take time off to recharge. This is something I haven’t always been good at myself, especially over the last few years, and now in this remote environment where we a lot have found ourselves, the burnout is so real. I’ve worked for companies in the past where there’s unlimited PTO, but no one actually takes it because it’s a bait and switch. Every tech company says unlimited PTO, but really that means nothing. I’ve also worked for companies where there were 20 paid business days that were on a use-it or loose-type model. Do you think I took my 20 days off? Yes, I took my 20 days and I was actually able to disconnect. Every company is different, every team is different. You have to find what works for you to establish that healthy culture with balance while also maximizing productivity. Those are some of the things that I’ve seen work for myself and the teams that I’ve been a part of. SS: I love that. Eric, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been an energizing discussion, so thank you so much. EL: Thank you. The pleasure’s all mine. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you. Are enablement teams supporting their sellers effectively to ensure they're motivated to reach their goals? Help us find out by taking the State of Sales Enablement 2023 survey, and get exclusive early access to the insights that will help you enhance the satisfaction and performance of your revenue teams.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Sales can be a tough job and it’s not one that everyone is naturally inclined to do. With uncertain economic conditions like we’re experiencing today, this job can be even more difficult. The Snowball System is designed to help people sell effectively in a way that they’re comfortable with without feeling like a sleazy salesperson. I’m so excited to have the author of “The Snowball System”, Mo Bunnell, here to tell us a little bit more about this concept and his book. With that, Mo, I'd love it if you could tell our audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and your book. Mo Bunnell: Yes, let me say this out of the gate. All of you listeners and watchers out there, I am so much a fan of sales enablement professionals and Olivia and her team at Sales Enablement PRO have great resources on the website, certifications, classes, courses, assets, and resources. It’s better than I’ve ever seen anywhere, so when Olivia reached out and thought we should do this podcast, I was excited because the work you do matters, and the things that we’re doing to evolve the profession are important. So, Olivia, I just had to say that out of the gate then I can talk about me. OF: I love that. Thank you so much. MB: It’s such an emerging profession and it’s going to continue to grow in importance over time, so you’re all in the right place. A little bit about me, I think a lot of times entrepreneurs start a business without trying to start business. I've been at it for about 20 years, and my moment of starting Bunnell Idea Group was a moment of complete panic, almost an anxiety attack. I had gone from a deep technical expert. I had taken all the exams to become an actuary, which if you don’t know what an actuary is, are long-term financial forecaster. We make the accountants look like party animals. I had taken all these years to pass these exams to be an actuary and in one weekend I turned into a salesperson. Now, we didn’t call it that, I was at a high-end professional consulting firm, so we called it a managing consultant. The fact is in one weekend I went from being rewarded on service delivery, billable hours, client satisfaction, and things like that to retention and growth activities. The moment of panic occurred when I went to my new boss that Monday morning with all of the new floors, business card titles, and all that stuff and I asked him for the manual on business development, sales retention, and growth. I wasn’t expecting him to respond by laughing at me, but he did and it was probably a chuckle, but I heard it like the villain in Scooby Doo. It was not a good thing. That was the beginning. I thought I would get a playbook, but I didn’t get a playbook and I had to build the playbook I can tell you much more about the story if you want, but after years later it turned into an experience, a training class, and now we’ve trained 30,000 people at over 500 organizations all around the globe. OF: I love that. I have a friend who’s becoming an actuary right now and I have a lot of respect for that journey. It is definitely a tough one. As you mentioned, sales is a very tough job and it’s not one that everyone can be naturally inclined to do, especially with the turbulent economy that we’re all experiencing right now, it can be even harder. You talked about how The Snowball System is really designed to help people sell effectively, but the part that I loved is that it’s in a way that they’re comfortable with. I’d love it if you could tell us just a little bit more about that approach and how it can really help sellers be more comfortable, and confident, and ultimately how that translates into effectiveness. MB: This is such an interesting topic. When we first started Bunnell Idea Group or BIG for short, I really tried to redefine what sales meant in people’s minds and I thought for some reason I could do that with the billions of people on the planet. You can’t. Unfortunately, sales have a bad name to a lot of people and we’ve got to reframe that. One of the things that we talked about a lot in our workshops, you see it in the book, is people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy. In our live workshops, we actually list it out, we have people ask buyers they were purchasing something and it did not go well and you’ll hear the buyer say things like the person was pushy, they talk too much, they didn’t listen to my needs, they suggested something that didn’t make sense, they didn’t want to talk about the pricing or the money of the investment easy, they didn’t make it easy to buy and things like that. Then, we say, hey, tell us the time when you purchased something and it went great. They say it was easy, it was frictionless, I liked the person, I was learning, they gave me options, they suggested something less expensive that was better for me, they built trust, and it was fun. The whole mantra of, we hate to be sold to, but we’ll have to buy, if we can start with the frame of salespeople saying I’m not going to fall in love with my solution, I’m going to fall in love with their problem and build trust and have fun with this over time if we can just have a campaign of helpfulness to the other person that changes the whole frame from selling to helping and that’s where we see if people have that right mindset, they are off to the races. OF: I love that approach. The system that you cover in the book really walks through a series of steps. I want to cover each of those just to dig a little bit deeper and the first one that you talk about is targeting your ideal clients. I’d love to hear, from your perspective, what are some of the common challenges that can arise from effectively targeting prospective clients, and then how do you recommend overcoming those challenges? MB: Oh, I could go on for hours, we don’t have enough time. Let’s dive in. I was just training some high-end consultants in Malaysia last night. I’m in Atlanta, Georgia in the US, so it went to like midnight my time and we had a really big unlock. I mean these are some of the smartest business people in the world, tier-one consultants. One of the things that we did that’s different is we broke through a mental heuristic called status quo bias. Now, the audience may not know what that means, but if you can google it if you just go to Wikipedia, it’s not the end all and be off research, but it can give you a good head start. Just google status quo bias and you will get this litany of research that basically says, we tend to do the same things over and over again. When it comes to little things like what app you open on your screen when you open up your phone in the morning, we tend to do the same things over and over. That’s easy. We understand that, but it’s particularly dangerous. I’m being provocative here with the word dangerous. It is particularly dangerous in sales because what status quo bias will make us do if we don’t get out of the trap is keep hanging out and reaching out to the people we already know and like. The reason for that is that we tend to do what we’ve already done, status quo bias, but our egos are at stake to reach out to somebody that we don’t know. We fear rejection, we fear they won’t reach back, and we fear we only have one shot so we have to be perfect with this first outreach. We will make the bar so high that we won’t act and will delay and that’s harmful to the sales rep. What you can do to get over this, and what we did with the group in Malaysia last night, as we said, hey, let’s start with the people we want to work with and the things that we think we could be most helpful to them. What are the game-changing programs that we can take to the people that should purchase from us? By flipping things in their minds from here’s who we usually stay in contact with. They had a contact list of 100 people in a small team. We flipped that from, put that aside for a second, let’s focus on who should buy what from us and where we can have the biggest meaningful impact. We started with that, and then we said, who are the decision makers for those things? It was a completely different list and they left that session so energized to go out and build relationships with those people. It was awesome. We finished the session at midnight, Olivia, I don’t think I went to bed until 3 AM because I was so excited for their future success. I couldn’t sleep. OF: Oh my gosh, I love that story. That goes to show just how when you flip the way that you think about something, you can completely change your approach and ultimately increase the value that you bring. You mentioned that thinking starts with where we could have the biggest impact, and that goes into the next step in the book, which is around positioning your unique value. I’d love to hear some of your best practices around how sellers can actually identify what makes them unique and what that unique value is. MB: I love this and to speak to all the sales enablement people out there, this is frequently done incorrectly, so I want to give you the right way. A lot of times it’s frequently done to come up with some kind of value story or positioning elements like it goes on the website and we definitely need to do that. That’s a universal version of positioning that may or may not be true for one individual or for a certain client prospect to the customer. We definitely have to do that, keep doing that sales enablement folks to get that message tight, get it short, get it sharp. Do all the stuff that you’re used to doing. At the same time, I want you to work with your sales reps, your account managers, and your account execs to also be able to tweak that and shape it for a specific pursuit. We talk about a value pyramid that you saw in the book, Olivia, which is the lowest level or the least that your clients or prospects care about is your universal positioning for your organization. They are a little bit more about the specific offering in the middle of the pyramid. The apex of the pyramid is ‘I am thinking of hiring somebody for X, how are you positioned for me exactly for that?' That makes it real. We need to blend the universal positioning, the kind of stuff that goes on the website that anybody could log into, we need that, but we need to also focus deal by deal, especially for the important ones. That’s thing one. Thing two is, there’s a bunch of research by Dr. Suzanne Shu, and she tested value props from saying you’re good at one thing to 2 to 3 to 4, all the way to 10. And you saw this in the book, Dr. Shu found that people that say they’re good at three things are magical. It’s the most believable. It’s a thing saying you’re good at three things is more believable than 1,2,4,5, or 6, all the way to the 10. There’s a peak and a curve that says that two is better than 1, 3 is better than 2, 4 is worse than 3, 5 is worse than 4, and so on. What we see a lot of sales reps do is because they have fear of being focused, they sort of have this David Letterman top 10 list. These are the top 10 reasons you should hire us for this deal. What happens in Dr. Shu's research is that having more than three creates so much cognitive load for somebody trying to figure out what are you really for. You've got these 10 things here, is there a theme? I don’t know, I can’t understand this. It becomes negative and they give up and having 10 reasons to hire you is basically worse than zero. We want to get really crisp on a specific opportunity. What are the three reasons that we are totally unique to serve this organization? Make it really short, really sharp, and communicate that over and over in our RFP response in the formal finalist meeting and everything else, and that’s what can win the day, Olivia. OF: Absolutely and something that we haven’t talked about a ton quite yet, but I think it’s really important to understand from the book and how the approach is all laid out is that it’s really rooted in science. You mentioned some of those research pieces that fueled how you’re approaching each of these steps. Another one that really resonated with me that I liked in the book was around the step of building connection and the concept was around the science behind likability. I'd love to learn from you, what are some of the ways that sellers can really build impactful connections with their prospects and turn those into long-term client relationships really by being rooted in that science of likability? MB: Thank you for bringing this up because there’s a mantra that some people are sharing in the marketplace that relationships don’t matter, they’re dead. That’s completely untrue. All the research shows that we say yes to people we like, we spend more time with those that we like, doctors spend more time with patients they like, and have better outcomes with those that they like. Likability matters in so many aspects of human nature. You can’t even count the studies that back this up. I will give the audience 3 levers of likability. One I really like is Dr. Jerry Burgers out of Santa Clara University. He was the first person to scientifically prove that we hire people we like more often than those we don’t. In a follow-up study was like, hey what correlates the likability, and the number one level he found is commonality. It's up to us as sales reps, account managers, and account executives to find ways that we have things in common with other people. In general, uncommon commonalities are more powerful than common commonalities. Olivia, when we were chatting right before we started recording, we were talking about how we both have dogs, they love snow, and they do silly things. You and I were bonding on that, so it’s up to us as salespeople to find out what we have in common. The science shows it can be things like we both like Dan Pink's business books. It can be that we both have dogs that are rescue dogs that are huskies or shepherds. It can be that we both like ultimate frisbee or the Kansas City Chiefs or Big Red Bordeaux’s. It can be things in business and in non-business, but we’ve got to find those things that we have in common and then reinforce them over time. That’s lever one. Lever two that we love to talk about is the mere exposure effect. It’s all about frequency. It was first studied in Germany in 1876. Science has seen three centuries and what it says irrefutably the more often we see a person or a thing, the higher the chance it is that we like them. As reps, we’ve got to have a system for reaching out, being helpful, and staying top of mind. It’s why the flip of the mere exposure effect is why we say ‘out of sight out of mind.' We’ve got to have a mechanism to add value routinely. Then, the last one we talked a lot about is mutual benefit. This is our third big lever. Those deepest relationships are not one-sided. They’re not, ‘I serve you because I’m a sales rep or an account manager,' it’s that we are working together to build a better future. Science shows not only do we help people we like, but emerging science is saying we like people who help. Simple things like having a relationship with somebody and saying, hey, we’re doing work in this part of the organization, we think we can have an impact in this other business unit that is in your organization, what would you do if you were me. Making a statement of something that would be helpful and saying ‘what would you do if you’re me’ is a wonderful way to ask for help and what people find is the enrollment they get from the other side gives them greater ideas, the person co-creates the next step, they enroll in their success and likability follows. There’s more in the book, but those three big things, finding and reinforcing commonality, having the mere exposure effect, frequency and staying top of mind, and having a mutually beneficial enjoyable relationship. Those are three big ones. OF: Fantastic. Thank you so much for walking us through that. It is very interesting. To take that a step further, the final step in the process that you talk about is really nurturing to turn your clients into what you call ‘raving fans.' I love that phrase, and especially in the economic climate that we’re in, this is really becoming more and more essential for businesses to focus on so that they’re maintaining and ultimately setting themselves up to grow their business. Given this current economic environment, I’d love to hear from you. What are some of the key considerations that sellers should really be keeping in mind to nurture those long-term relationships with their clients? MB: I’ll actually share some things that aren’t in the book. The core research says that soft skills do turn into hard results. That’s some of that science of likability and things that we talked about. One thing that’s not in the book that I think is really compelling is McGraw Hill, the publishing arm also has a research arm. They did some research in the 1980s, and there was this big economic collapse and economic headwinds in the early 1980s. What they found is that B2B companies that advertised in the economic downturn that happened in the early 1980s not only outperformed during that recession but outperformed to a huge extent for three years afterward. What we can learn from that is that when we think about human relationships, I think that’s even more important than even B2B advertising. With human relationships, we’re advertising when we’re out there talking to clients, talking to prospects, and adding value. That is sort of an advertisement for us humans and the nut of all is that when there’s an economic downturn, we shouldn’t judge ourselves on what we did the year before. That’s an unfair metric because we’ve got economic headwinds against us. What we should judge ourselves on is whether are we beating the competition because they’re on the same playing field we are. What the McGraw Hill research shows is that if you’re out there adding value, being helpful even before it’s time for somebody to buy from you, deepening those relationships with likability as we talked about before, economic downturns are when you go out and win market share because you’re out there doing it more in your competition, hopefully, is dying it in and not working as hard because they’re like, oh, I can’t do as good as I did last year, so I’m not gonna work as hard. No, I want you to double down when there are economic headwinds and help people before they can even hire you and they will remember that forever. OF: Absolutely. Those are fantastic insights, so critical to the environment that we have right now, and very relevant to our audience of enablement practitioners and I want to dig into that a little bit more. You mentioned this right at the start of the conversation. Enablement leaders today are not only responsible for equipping their sellers with the tools and the resources that they need to be successful, but they also have a job to do today that’s really about gaining buy-in and support for their initiatives. Working with executive leaders and cross-functional partners to get that support can be a hard job to do, especially in these times we’re in. I’d really love to hear from you. How can the principles of The Snowball System be applied to that concept of selling internally to your stakeholders the value of the programs that you have, especially for sales enablement practitioners? MB: Olivia, it’s such a great question. We have helped so many functional leaders help them grow their influence within the organization. CHROs, CIOs, CTOs, CFOs, and sales enablement leaders and I’ll give you our steps to gain approval. This is all in The Snowball System, so I highly recommend folks to read the book and then apply it to their influence because if you’re a sales enablement leader, the regional head of sales, the global head of sales, whoever you’re helping, they don’t pay you in money necessarily, but they’re paying you in their budgets. They’re paying you with their time. They’re paying you with their attention. Really you’re just a consultant inside the company, so here are the four steps. One of the fastest ways to get a yes is to slow down to speed up. A lot of times people will go in sort of machine gun nelly and suggest what they want the decision maker to approve. That’s almost like skipping straight to step four. Here’s a faster way: when you do that, you’re using your words, and your priorities and it can come across this jargon to the other side, especially in a deeply technical world, like sales enablement. Instead of jumping to the end, here’s another way to do it. Step one, listen and learn. Schedule a call with the people you support and just say, hey, I just want to make sure we’re lined up for our work this year together. I’d love to hear from you, what do you think are the top priorities this year as we think about enabling the Salesforce and account management teams? You want to go to that with some ideas for sure and you want to help shape the agenda, but you’re also listening to their priorities and their words. Research shows it’s easier to get a yes when you use somebody’s own words with them than if you use your words, so we want to listen and learn first. Step two is to create curiosity. It turns out that their curiosity is an intrinsic motivator. We love experiencing curiosity. It’s why we hear a cliffhanger at the end of a Ted Lasso episode, and we can’t wait to watch the next one. Cliffhangers are a curiosity that gets us to do the next step. What you can do to create curiosity is say, ‘hey Mr or Ms sales leader, would it be helpful if I shared some stories about how I’ve heard other organizations have tackled that problem? I can help you with that.' In this step, we’re conceptually getting buy-in to how we might be able to help them solve the issues that they shared in step one, so listen and learn when we hear their issues. In step two, we are conceptually talking about storytelling, mostly about how we can solve those. Step three is mind blowing-ly effective. We call this, build everything together. The science here is called the IKEA effect named after the Swedish retailer. Dr. Michael Lord at Harvard's All-Star Team of researchers proved this. They found two things. Once we buy into what we helped create, and two, we view our own work product as on par with worldwide experts, even if we’re not an expert. We love our stuff and we think our stuff is awesome. The best way to get approval is if you’ve already heard their priorities and their words. They felt some curiosity about how you might be able to solve the issues that they’ve got on their agenda. So, step three: come up with a 60% rough draft that you can float in from in front of them and you say these exact words, ‘hey sales leader, I’ve thought a lot about what we talked about and I’ve got some solutions that I think we could deploy.' Here’s what you say. ‘I really think it’s only about 60% right because you see some things I don’t see, I see some things you don’t see given our roles, so I need your help to make it great.' The reason you say 60% instead of a lot of it’s mostly right is you want them to see what the gap is. You want them to think that at 40% they can roll up their sleeves and help this out as they co-created from that point. That’s when the IKEA effect kicks in and you get buy-in. If they change something great, that’s buy-in. If they like it great, that’s buy-in. As you move closer to 100%, you’ll see them get so excited about their ideas because they become their ideas. The fourth step is to gain approval. If you’ve done the first 3, the 4th is usually easy peasy because they already love it before they get all the formalities of it. Listen and learn, create curiosity, build everything together, and gain approval. Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 work like a charm. OF: I love that approach and you’re so right, so often we skip just to that last step and then wonder why we haven’t gotten the support that we think we have. I love that approach, that’s fantastic. Well, Mo you’ve shared some really awesome insights with our audience today, and again, to our audience, we absolutely recommend that you pick up The Snowball System and read through that book. Mo, you have some other resources that I want to make sure that our listeners know about. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those where our listeners can go to learn more about some of what we’ve discussed today? MB: I would love to. Probably the number one thing I’d recommend that takes 30 seconds is I spent about three hours a week writing an article on a very specific topic, much like we talked about today, but we just scratched the surface. We did five things out of 1000. I write these articles that take several hours and my goal is that somebody can read them in three minutes. It’s sort of sad that it takes three hours to write something that someone can read in three minutes, but it’s hard to write short and that’s what we try to do. We try to pick a very specific topic that’s really sharp so that somebody can read that in a couple of minutes and think this is amazing and the reader wants to forward this to a ton of people because they got so much value out of it. If people want that little weekly newsletter that just drops in their inbox every week, they can go to growbigplaybook.com, and they can sign up right there. It has tons of value. This Saturday's newsletter is about how to have really great pipeline meetings. That’s something for whatever reason a lot of people are struggling with. We’ve had other articles on likeability, and others on how you scale specific learning across the team. It keeps the learning alive and there’s no charge to it. So growbigplaybook.com is where people get that. OF: Awesome, thank you so much. To our listeners, we will include a link to that in the transcript and episode description. Thanks again Mo for sharing all of your insights with our audience. I certainly learned a ton from this conversation and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear what we talked about. MB: It’s been a blast. I just can’t say it enough, what you are doing is so powerful and so important. We are in the early days. It is going to grow in importance over time. Folks, keep going back to the Sales Enablement PRO's website, keep getting more learning certifications, and do everything you can to build your skills because I’m convinced this is one of the areas that is going to just 10x over the next couple of years. If you’re at the forefront of learning and leading you’re going to be in a really great spot. Thanks, Olivia. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro, and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Brooke Eklund from Vonage join us. Brooke, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Brooke Eklund: Hi Shawnna, thank you so much for having me. I’m Brooke Eklund and I’m a sales enablement manager at Vonage. I’ve been with the organization for just over a year now. I was previously with IBM for 13 years in many different roles, so my background is in sales actually. I’ve held roles as a seller, and a front-line sales manager leading early career sales professionals, as well as then moving into global sales transformation and this has really led me on my sales enablement journey. I’m also a member of a community called Women in Sales Enablement, WiSE, and it is such a wonderful community of professionals that get together and share best practices, ask each other questions, and open communication and this has really helped to shape the way I operate within sales enablement. SS: Brooke, we’re excited to have you and I absolutely echo the sentiment around WiSE. We recently partnered with them as well around a compensation career pathing and DE&I enablement report. So, to our audience, if you haven’t seen that yet go to salesenablement.pro to our report section and check that out. It’s a worthwhile read. Brooke, we’re excited to have you join us here on our podcast today and one of the reasons why we wanted to bring you on is to talk about one of your specialties which is around finding inefficiencies in the sales process and creating ways to solve them. I’d love for you to help our audience understand how you go about identifying these inefficiencies. BE: Absolutely. The biggest part for me is being hands-on. When I start to learn a new process, I want to know everything about it. I tend to use my personal sales experience as I’m going through this would this make sense to me as a seller? Would this be beneficial to me as a sales manager? I try to put that hat on as well. Another theme you’ll hear me use throughout the entire podcast is communication. Constantly communicating with sellers and other stakeholders in the organization. I can give you one example of a particular project I worked on a certain tool adoption where my role was to design a superior user experience for sellers. In doing that, I probably interviewed 60 sellers, looked at the different fields within the tool, and saw what tied into other tools and what would be beneficial. That’s just one of the ways of being hands-on and communicating to help find those inefficiencies. SS: Really interesting. How do you differentiate inefficiencies in the actual sales process and inefficiencies in an individual sales rep skill set? BE: That’s a great question. I would say that I look at it as if is it affecting all sellers or just a subset of sellers. Again, I’ll go back to communication and feedback. I lead a team called SEAT which is a seller experience advisory team' which is made up of a core group of sellers from across the business and different go-to-market functions. We meet on a structured basis two times a quarter but we have a very open and ongoing dialogue through different communication channels. We’re always listening to their needs. They’re very open with us. The feedback and engagement we get is very high quality in terms of helping us understand what’s working and what’s not, and where we can make refinements and advancements. SS: Once gaps have been identified in the process, what are the next steps that sales enablement practitioners should take to resolve them? BE: I would say that it takes constant optimization. Keeping up with new technologies, staying with the headwind, of course, being proactive in assessing inefficiencies, and being ahead of those conversations. Connecting with our audience on an ongoing basis across different parts of the business is just crucial. SS: Absolutely, many companies are currently changing their priorities to really reflect the current economic climate. When changes need to happen at scale, what do you do to drive the adoption of those new processes? BE: I try to use change management methodologies, particularly the ADKAR model: awareness for the seller's desire, or the what’s in it for me, do they have the knowledge and the ability and then that constant reinforcement with them. Individuals in sales roles have variable skill sets and differences in the timing of their enablement needs. One of the things that I think is really helpful is for sellers to self-assess their skills than have the managers validate them. We can then identify gaps, provide just-in-time learning, and then do knowledge checks. At that point, we’ll be able to see the relevance of learning to their daily activities. SS: Interesting, and what are some of the key metrics that you tracked to ensure the success of the change management effort? BE: Some of the metrics that I tend to use are particularly around engagement. Are they engaged in the process and being advocates or champions for what we’re trying to do in the business? Then, of course, we use NPS surveys to get additional feedback and data points from our audience. SS: Especially right now, everything’s changing at a rapid pace, but we know buyers’ needs in particular are changing. What advice would you have for other enablement practitioners on how to effectively keep up with the changes in the market? BE: Well you are definitely on track with things constantly changing. I would say the first thing would be the ability to pivot and be agile. Oftentimes I’ve been in situations where working on something specific suddenly takes a back burner and I have to be able to pivot. The other thing I would say is to stay up to date with trends in the industry and then also ensure that there’s alignment with ever-evolving customer journeys. Assuring that the buyer’s needs are aligned with what the sellers are doing. Those would be my recommendations. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice. Brooke, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your insights. BE: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Jessica Hoffman from AlertMedia join us. Jessica, I’d love you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jessica Hoffman: Thank you so much for having me. As you mentioned, my name is Jessica Hoffman, I go by Jess, and I am the sales enablement manager at AlertMedia. I support our enterprise and mid-market amazing alert-es which are our sales reps. AlertMedia is an amazing company that helps organizations respond to critical events faster with emergency communication software. In short, we help people save lives which is pretty cool. I very much enjoy working for AlertMedia. I like to say my background is a beautiful winding road that led me to enablement. I always like to say that sales find you, but you don’t really find sales. I started back in the day when you could actually rent movies in a store. I don’t know if you guys remember that, but back in the day that’s what I did and I didn’t know it was sales but that’s what I was doing. Then, I went into banking, and financial services, and then I kind of stumbled into software sales and I was selling audit and accounting software, which was super exciting and I became really good at it in my first year. My passion has always been to help people. Fun fact, I have a medical assistant degree in my back pocket that I don’t use because I wanted to help people but realized blood isn’t my thing and a better way to help people is by enabling them to do what they do best just better. I helped train on the audit and accounting software and then I did onboarding and fell in love with enablement and I’ve been continuing to do some sort of that for the past five years in different organizations. SS: I love that. Thank you Jessica for joining us. Now, on the point of onboarding, which you just kind of closed out on, can you tell us a little bit about your perspective on the key components of an effective onboarding program? JH: Oh absolutely, I mean there’s so many, but to kind of break it down, I have like the key four components to think about. First and foremost, I’m super passionate about making it welcoming. We all know starting a new job and a new experience is super scary, so when you have new hires you may have somebody that has been experienced in the industry and some that might just have zero experience. This may be their first job out of college or this might be their job to retirement, so you have to kind of be that person to make them feel welcome and make them feel comfortable, which kind of leads into my second component here, which is when you make them feel comfortable, you have to give them a clear roadmap and expectations. What kind of skills, behaviors, industry knowledge, and tools are they expected to achieve in 30, 60, 90 days and then beyond and then not only what, but how is enablement going to help them get there? Giving them the kind of support that they need. Again, a new job is super scary and they need a person to go to, to ask the questions, and to be vulnerable with to truly succeed. I really focus on building those kinds of relationships and when you build those relationships, it actually allows you to seek their opinions after onboarding to evaluate the success and maybe where things need to evolve, which I’m going to get to in a moment. Then, thirdly, leadership support. Leadership support is crucial to any sort of effective onboarding program. You need to work closely with the managers, supporting them and the new hires, identifying and agreeing on clear expectations and roles. What will enable my own, what will leadership own and what will we own together? We have a clear understanding that allows the program to run smoothly and allows the reps to understand those sorts of expectations and have the support to be able to do so. Then, lastly, which I kind of touched on in my second key point onboarding is ever-evolving. Onboarding should have key criteria metrics and frameworks, but things change, and platforms change. Right now we are seeing a huge economic change. So you need to be and yes, I am going to insert the buzzword here of agile, you need to make sure that things are relevant up to date, and that your information and the information that your reps are getting, that they’re getting to be successful. Those wrap up my four components of an effective program. SS: Absolutely. You touched on this a little bit about how important it is to make onboarding fun and engaging. How does learning engagement help drive knowledge and skill retention? JH: Shawnna, this is my favorite part. I love fun, I love being able to see what it does to keep knowledge and skill retention. When we get new hires, we’re all adults, we learn in so many different ways, but at some point, we all bring some sort of amazing experience and that’s how we learn. I really believe in teaching a concept rather than practicing that concept with peers to learn and grow with each other. I always say this to my new hires, but if you’re uncomfortable, good news, you’re growing and you’re learning I think the retention piece comes from the practice, but it can also be taught through the concept of a story. Concepts of stories are so powerful because it helps you relate and actually practice that in real life and I believe that that’s where it all comes from. For instance, my daughter is working really hard at soccer. She came up with short-term and long-term goals. That’s kind of the curse of having an enablement mom, right? Then she talked to her coach and her coach shortly to do it, and practice them here. Practice it here and then get really good at them and use them in the games, don’t be afraid to fail and I think that’s so powerful and applies to onboarding because that’s what we’re teaching our new hires and being able to relax them and with stories, they’re able to enjoy their own and then they have more knowledge, share better ways to bring it around and bring it around to that skill that they can practically apply to their job role. SS: I love that. I think that that is fantastic. What are some best practices that you’ve learned along the way around maximizing engagement during the onboarding process? JH: Yeah, absolutely. I touched on it a little bit by sharing my own story, but it’s getting in the trenches. It’s understanding the language, the business, the process, the sales cycle, and maybe you’re sharing a time that you messed up, you did something wrong and just being human. Then sometimes you share things that you did really, really well. Let them know and understand that you’ve been there. A lot of times when we think about sales and prospecting and calling and closing deals, we talk about personalization and customization for our prospects and our clients and this just rolls right into onboarding. It’s human nature to want to feel heard. Everyone has a life outside of the role that they are hired for. So what is their, why, why, sales, why this job, if you could figure that out, relate to it and if they can relate to it, you have better success with engagement. Last but not least, as I’m sure you guys can tell, I love to have fun, so having fun and I know this is another surprise, but typically salespeople are a smidge competitive, so making it fun by throwing in some Gamification, this will help that retention and that doesn’t stop at 30, 60, 90 days, that’s continuous. This is always a great way to throw in some fun as they navigate all the tools and resources that they have at their disposal and they continue to learn. SS: I think that’s fantastic, especially in today’s business landscape, I think it’s increasingly important for business leaders to know how their investments in talent development and hiring are translating to performance, especially. What are some of the ways that you measure the success of onboarding and how do you go about tying that to performance metrics that your leadership cares about? JH: When you’re measuring success, you look at the main KPIs, right? So from the first time to deal, demo, how many meetings are booked, what’s the annual sales price, pipeline book, these are all really big things that leadership is looking for and to make sure that you have an effective onboarding and also the time it takes to get them to that. As we measure this through the 30, 60, and 90 days and beyond, we also need to take a deeper look into why they are driving those big behaviors. Take a look at skills and behaviors and things like, are they bringing in multiple people, are they doing the correct exit criteria for moving a deal along if they’re not, are they getting stuck somewhere? Are they able to customize their talk track and demo to different stakeholders? Are they speaking the language? All of those things are taking the big first time to demo meetings booked and all of that and taking the skills and behaviors and making sure that was hitting on them in the onboarding to make them successful and make sure that they get from point A to point B quicker, faster and more efficiently. This is where I am so very thankful for our tech stack is to be able to listen in to those calls to see those behaviors and tie them back and have more consistent success with that by being able to also bring this back to, as I mentioned before and the key components, onboarding is ever evolving. I mentioned our economy is a little bit different, which means that prospects buy a little bit differently. We have to make sure to continuously have those things, skills, and behaviors and our onboarding to make sure they’re successful so when leadership looks at the time it’s taking that it means what they’re looking for in their expectations as well and we can do that with just storytelling through data. When I talk about stories telling through data, it’s pulling all of these things of what’s the why being it, is there a skill gap? Are there a few reps that need extra attention or is it an overarching gap that we need to be able to fill and address onboarding? Is at the top of the funnel, where are we getting stuck? Is it at the bottom of the funnel? All of these things that you can find in data and your story tell it to leadership, you fix it, you evolve, you’re agile and you move in and to be able to continue to measure the success of your onboarding. SS: I love that. Now you alluded to this a little bit but I would love to drill in. How can enablement, help accelerate ramp time to help reps become more productive more quickly within their organization? JH: Enablement can help accelerate ramp time by helping them truly understand. I always like to think about it and I know I’m going to put a really technical term on the table, but when I put my butt in the seat what do I need to know? What is the need to know? I need to put myself in their shoes, right, I’ve been a rep, I’ve been there before and so when you’re a new hire you’re inundated with all this information. I like to think of it kind of like the mind-blown emoji that kind of comes up. We don’t want to do that to them, so what do I need to know during week one, what’s important in week two, week three, and beyond? We don’t want to cripple them. Enablement can help with this productivity by working extremely close to leadership and as amazing as enablement is we need support from leadership to accomplish this kind of success. Again, it goes back to what’s enablement role, what’s a leadership role, and what’s the rep’s role. As you continue to do that and not intimidate them, just make sure that they get what they need, the support they need. It’s kind of like coaching week one, this is the information, let’s get really good at it. Now, week two and that takes everybody. SS: Absolutely. Last question for you, Jessica. With the current economic climate, retaining high-performing reps is obviously top of mind for a lot of organizations. What advice do you have for ensuring reps can continue performing and achieving success post-onboarding? JH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it’s kind of this weird setting that we’re in nowadays, but continuing to look at the data and any gaps where there’s maybe there’s something about a skill or behavior or product knowledge gap, and let’s do it before it’s a fire drill. If possible, get a training calendar out there so they know what trainings are coming up and make it relevant to them. When they are invested in the training, growing, and company, they will stay. Continuing to open that welcome environment. I continuously have scheduled office hours or role plays. Yes. I said role plays. I know how everybody can feel about those and even as much as people dread them, I always say it’s a great way to be prepared for the clients and learn. That’s where it goes back to having fun and welcoming mistakes and room for growth. so when they can make that call, do the demo, and or maybe have that pricing call, they’re prepared. Also, following the same idea when they were onboarded. Teach and then practice. I think that when we think about success post onboarding, it’s having a clear path forward. Where do I want to be? As I said before you have new hires that might be their first job out of college or some that are looking for retirement, you also have people that want to move up in the company, so let’s give them a path and let give them the tools, the resources, and enablement they need to be able to get there. When I kind of think about all of this in a really big hole is that if there’s just kind of like this key takeaway, it’s that it takes a village. It takes a strategic village. Learning never stops, there are always ways to improve and it’s our job in enablement to identify that work with leadership, and work with our reps new and seasoned to deliver the most effective programs. SS: Jessica. I think this is phenomenal. Thank you so much for talking to us about how you approach onboarding at your organization. I appreciate the time. JH: Absolutely thank you so much, Shawnna. It was a pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Dianne Kleber from Paradox join us. Dianne, I would love for you to introduce yourself, and your role in your organization to our audience. Dianne Kleber: Thank you for having me here today. As you said, I’m Dianne Kleber and I am the VP of sales enablement at Paradox. If you’re not familiar with Paradox, we help companies with their talent acquisition. We do this through our text and conversational ai chat tool and we have so much fun doing this. I’m having so much fun in this role in sales enablement. It’s actually my first official sales enablement role, but I say it all the time, and this is part of my background. I have been a seller, a sales leader, and passionate about sales enablement for my entire career. I started in high school selling shoes at a shoe store and from the moment I sold that first pair of shoes, I’m like oh I’m sold. This is what I want to be doing and have really throughout my entire career been focused on helping sellers be the best they can be through training, coaching, and leadership. SS: I’m excited to have you here. Based on your experience surrounding enablement and as you mentioned, your experience as a sales leader as well, what is the value of enablement for sales leaders? DK: It’s so interesting because sales leaders, prior to sales enablement being its own thing, sales leaders had to do it all. They had to absolutely lead teams through all efforts and help them to be the best that they can be. They were even doing training and whatnot. Now, what’s super exciting is this is a team effort. I love the fact that I get to work with the other sales leaders at Paradox and we put our heads together and really try to figure out exactly what our team needs quarter over the quarter so that we can achieve our goals. The value of enablement for sales leaders is, I think number one, that they’re not doing it alone. I know that when I was leading sales teams, even though I was one of many leaders within the company, I felt like I was alone many times. The enablement teams that are now out there, we’re partnering up with those sales leaders and really making a difference. The value of those sales leaders is that they can focus on exactly what they need to do related to deals, deals strategy, and those types of things, and allow folks like myself who can really work on elevating the sales team to the next level. SS: I think that’s absolutely true that there is a ton of value delivered to sales leaders from enablement. One area where I often see enablement partner really closely with sales leaders is around coaching. I noticed that LinkedIn coaching is one of your areas of expertise. How has your background as a sales leader influenced how you create coaching programs? DK: Coaching is my passion in both sales leadership and the enablement side. I think the time that I spent as a sales leader has greatly influenced how I’m developing programs now because I was in the weeds and I had the experience of sellers of different levels. There were folks that this was their first job and then there were some that had been doing it for years and years and each of those reps had different needs and skills. The thing that’s beautiful about coaching is that it meets those folks where they are. That’s the goal. Training, on one hand, says, okay, we have this track and we know these folks need this knowledge, whereas coaching is like I want to meet you where you are and help you get to the next place you want to be. By being that sales leader and understanding like I would at one point I was managing 17 individual contributors, which is way too many, everybody knows that, but 17 individual contributors are direct managers. That’s 17, 1 on 1 meeting in a week and every single one was different. Now, as I work on coaching programs, it’s focused on how we allow each of the reps to be their individual selves to meet them where they are, and the other side of it too is I feel very strongly that everybody shows up really trying to do their best every day. We don’t want to make anybody wrong, we want to help them find the best way for them to be right on that given day. Really, a lot of thought goes into how we create a coaching program that allows that to happen, but at the same time has a container or a space that really allows you to measure the growth and the change of a rep. There are a number of components that absolutely go into that. SS: As you mentioned there, there are a lot of different types of coaching, You’ve mentioned one on one coaching. Can you share with our audience the difference between one on one and group coaching and your perspective on either the value of both, but in particular one-on-one coaching? DK: I think they both really have great value. Group coaching, I find, is generally centered around a topic or an event and it relies on peer involvement and sharing of wisdom. I think those are fantastic coaching sessions and an example of that would be, I’ve had some coaching programs where we asked reps to bring a call recording to a session, and maybe it’s around a given topic or it might be a snippet of that recording, and they play that recording and then we all put our heads together on what we heard and how that rep could make it better and just offering suggestions. We do that too with a deal strategy session. Group coaching is really great for that pure brainstorming and shared wisdom. On the other hand, one thing that I particularly love about the one-on-one coaching is it allows that rep to be the unique seller, a unique person that they are. It also allows them to be vulnerable and authentic. When I’m coaching, I establish this is a safe space and everything that we talk about remains confidential. In a really great one-on-one coaching session that rep can get to the place where they’re like, okay, I do want to get better, these are the challenges I have and they can be honest with themselves, honest with me if they’re coaching with their manager just having that really open conversation. That allows a level of accountability with that. In one-on-one coaching, I just want to call out two different areas. Number one is skill coaching, that’s things like, hey, I’m struggling with X and I need to know how to do it better. There are things like call reviews, we can evaluate calls and meetings with a rubric and we can have specific skills that we’re seeking. Skill coaching is fantastic and that tends to be a little bit more of a conversation around what I should do is the timing and the pace, you know, those types of conversations. Number two, there’s another layer of coaching that is around growth and this is where a rep is saying, I think I’m doing an okay job, but I know I want to be better, get better, but it’s not a specific skill, it’s more around, well, I’ll be honest, it’s really up to that particular individual, what’s important to them, where they want to go, what they want to work on. For example, I’ve been in coaching sessions where someone just wants to work on just attitude and showing up day after day because sales are hard. We all know this and it takes a lot out of you and you have to really have an amazing attitude day after day how do you do that? Sometimes that’s what we’re talking about is how we bring the right energy to a day, whereas another rep can come in and say I’m absolutely struggling with getting my workouts in and that’s so important to me in my professional life as well as my personal life and so sometimes a coaching session is around how they are going to find a way to get their workout in. Growth coaching is really fun stuff, but skills coaching, at the same time, those little tactical things help make that person better day after day. I love the one-on-one. SS: I love that as well. How would you say mindset plays a role in the effectiveness of one on one coaching and what mindset would you recommend leaders have when they go into a one-on-one session with a rep? DK: Mindset is huge on both sides. Let me start with the rep themselves. I think everybody could probably relate to this. You can’t be coached if you don’t want to be coached. The rep needs to show up saying yes I’m here, I’m going to do the work, and I’m going to allow myself to be coached. The flip side of that is the leader. One of the things I know, when I prepare myself for a coaching session, is it’s almost like a little mantra that I say before I even get on a call, I have to give myself the space to let go of everything I was doing prior to that session, providing focus, turn the phone off, step away from everything, but then actually saying to myself, my role here is to help this rep discover all the possibilities for themselves. It’s funny that coaching is a lot like doing a really great discovery in the sales process and that you don’t have to know the answers to the questions, you just have to know the right questions to ask. The mindset of curiosity I think is the most important thing a sales leader needs to have. I know that there have been times where there’s maybe a day where I’m just not 100% focused and we’ve all done this thing to where it’s like, oh I think I know what they’re going to say next, and make that assumption. If you can have the mindset of curiosity, and openness and I am here to ask the right questions so this person really figures out on their own where they need to go, those are the best coaching sessions. Mindset is huge in this and there’s actually, I would say, for anyone who is listening and thinking about starting a coaching program or bringing more coaching into your leadership role, I would even suggest if you have a day where you’re like, I just don’t feel like I’m ready or I don’t know that I’m in the right mindset, I would say don’t do the session. It’s actually better to say that and say, I think we need to come back to this another day, another time when I’m in the right space to work with you. My mindset is huge. SS: That’s absolutely fantastic. Do you have some recommendations or advice for the next steps post-coaching call? Is there a process that you use for ensuring that the behaviors that were discussed in the coaching were actually implemented? DK: I think there are a couple of ways to do this and I’ve done it a few different ways. My favorite is having the rep hold themselves accountable, so creating an accountability plan that we co-create. I could certainly set up a number of accountability structures, but really if the rep wants to have change and really grow, they are the ones that need to create the accountability plan. I like the method of let’s co-create, what’s the plan that you need to or want to follow, and then even going as far as seeking an accountability partner. It’s one thing to say to your sales leader or coach if you’re working separately with either a leader or a coach or both, something to say to them, but then it’s another thing to say it to appear as a friend. An accountability plan can look a lot of different ways and a lot of times requires some visual triggers or cues. Some folks like post-its, some like notepads, and some like images that they have to put up, like what is the cue that you need to put in place to remember the habit that you’re trying to create here. The flip side of this is that in an actual structured coaching program, there could be an actual document. Just like I’m a huge fan of sales one on one meetings which are different from sales, one on one coaching sessions but having some kind of a document where everybody’s keeping track of what we talked about and it’s a shared document that both the sales leader and the rep can access and reference. Same with the coaching, having that accountability plan but also having a document where you’re keeping track of what are the behaviors, specifically when we’re talking about skills coaching because skills coaching, as I mentioned before, I’m a fan of a rubric, especially if we’re evaluating calls or a manager sitting in on an actual meeting, let’s have that rubric, let’s document that and actually document what that rep wants to work on so that you can go back the next time and say, okay, how’s it going and really see if there are other tactics and other things that we need to talk through. SS: I love that. Last question for you Dianne, how can coaching impact sales productivity? DK: It’s funny that you ask this because I just had this conversation with our CRO last week. I have certainly in my career seen a lot of different methods for increasing or impacting sales productivity. Training is obviously huge. There are certain things that everybody needs to know to become more productive. Tools and technology are such a huge part of sales productivity and making sure that every team member knows how to use those tools is so important. I think, especially with newer reps, and what I mean by newer, it could be someone early in their career or someone new to the organization, which we’ve had this huge growth at Paradox, so we have a lot of folks who’ve joined the team in the last 6-9 months, and one on one coaching, I think actually has the greatest impact on those newer sellers. Really working with them on both the skills as well as the growth and taking the time to meet with them is important. It’s like the 1% rule. If you can get 1% better every day then by the end of the year you’re going to be an amazing space. Coaching can impact not just productivity but actually can impact the end results and revenue. I think any organization if you have those new sellers or reps who are going along in their career and get a little stagnant, coaching can take them to the next level where they learn some new tricks. You can teach old-selling dogs new tricks and become more productive. I really think it has a huge impact and if I could say what would be the best thing you can do for your sales team, it would be to work in a coaching program if you don’t already have one. SS: I love that. Dianne, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your insights on coaching. It’s been a fantastic conversation. DK: Thank you. It has been such a pleasure as you can probably tell, I love it, I’m passionate about it and it makes me want to go and coach someone. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I am excited to have Lisa Contini from Redis join us. Lisa, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Lisa Contini: Thank you so much for inviting me to share my experience. I am the Vice President of sales enablement and go-to-market strategy for Redis. I started my career in sales many years ago out of college and I would say in the nineties I found a niche as an independent contractor and then built a business with my sisters where we worked with very large technology companies like HP, Oracle, and Cisco, helping them drive adoption around their sales methodology because many companies had methodologies that just sat in a binder on a bookshelf. What I did not realize at the time was that I was pioneering this concept of sales enablement. I’ve been in the field for probably 20 years or so. I have a lot of practical experience in sales and it’s my passion. SS: Well, I’m excited to have you here with us today, Lisa. I’d love to jump right in based on your extensive experience in enablement, particularly around helping sales. In this current economic climate predicting trends is vital. Can you explain how you use data and analytics to identify early signs of potential decline in your seller’s productivity? LC: Absolutely. Taking a look at leading indicators is really where the magic is. For years, many people would use lagging indicators. Many companies use lagging indicators such as the percentage of sellers to reach quota or even looking at quarterly or half yearly or yearly revenue goals. The problem, of course, is that looking at those numbers is that they’re lagging indicators and it doesn’t give you any time to fix anything. We take a fairly detailed look at all sorts of leading productivity indicators. That is everything from the number of new contacts that are added to our customer database. The number of contacts that are put into different sorts of sequences for the purpose of outreach through the number of meetings that an individual has. Then, we also look at things like deal age and conversion rates, etcetera. There’s really a whole plethora of numbers that we look at and we look at them constantly in order to find those trends that will signal sometimes it can be a different product that is across a particular region, particular sales segment, or the whole company. SS: I think that’s fantastic. What are some of the key metrics that you track when it comes to sales productivity and how do you gather the right analytics? LC: We actually, in the last two years have really focused on operationalizing how we use data to identify trends and sales productivity. One of the things that we did is we put together a scorecard that allows us to look all the way down to the rep level. Let me start there. With the individual sellers, we have about four different categories that we track for productivity. We look at data in the pipeline build and account planning, opportunity management, and close deals. Those are the different areas that we know provide us with these leading indicators. For account planning, it can be things like the number of account plans, and the activity on account plans, it’s not just about having the plan but it’s actually having the activity, and some of those activities will be like new opportunities created as a result of that plan. That’s a little bit of a longer-term view that we look at because account planning tends to be half-yearly and yearly. The next category is what we call the top of the funnel and that’s where we look at pipeline generation. We look at pipeline generation, and certainly, as a company as a whole, we take a look at what marketing produces. We take a look at what is delivered through our sales development organization, but also reps. It’s very important for reps to own the building of their pipeline. We take a look at not just the pipeline ad, but also conversion rates and the age of that pipeline. When it comes to opportunity management we have a program that was developed by somebody on my team called Deal Health. We have a sales methodology that we piece together based on all the best things that are out in the market. Then, a gentleman on my team worked with sales operations to actually build this methodology into our CRM by sales stage. Now, what that allows us to do then is to gather data and analyze data that shows us not just where the deal is in terms of the sale stages but at each sales stage there are different elements for health. That may have to do with who we’ve met, whether have we identified a business problem that the customer agrees needs to be fixed, etcetera. There are these different subcategories of data at each sales stage that we’re monitoring and that has a weight and a score against them. Now, as a seller or as a sales manager, I can take a look at the deals in a dashboard for any period of time, for this month, for this quarter based on the pipeline or sale stage. I can look and see what’s the health of these deals and where there may be a subscore. Then, it gives the salesperson and the manager an indication of where they need to be digging into that deal. That’s an example of these are a couple of examples of things that we do at the rep level. Also at the rep level, one of the things that we’ve just started implementing that we do for each of our sellers is we created a scorecard for them that looks at their individual pipeline build, their own conversion rates, their average sales price, their average discount, their attainment, and we can look and based on that information we can tell somebody based on their productivity and activity, it looks like the number of meetings they are having per week needs to be stepped up a little bit because if they continue down the path based on their past performance they are going to end up short. Does that make sense, conceptually at least? SS: It does and I love that. In fact, I’d like to drill in a little bit more on that, Lisa, because to the point that you’re making around seeing trends in some of the analytics that you’re looking at. Can you explain your process for determining how you then go about doing course correction? LC: Yes, absolutely. We do look at the individual level, as I mentioned, but we also look at the sales organization by the market like whether it’s our mid-market or enterprise or strategic and we look at the aggregate numbers which are important to look at in order to find where there are within that sales role cross-functional dips in the attainment of these different metrics. Now, one of the things that I absolutely recommend to anybody that chooses to do this is that you look at medians because averages can hide lapses across a team. What I mean by that is you can look at a sales manager and say, wow, they’ve hit their quota every quarter over the past two years, but then if you look at the median attainment of each person on their team you can see often times that there’s a huge exposure to risk because they’re making that number based on one or two people. What we do is we have different metrics that we look at across each segment or part of a sales engagement cycle. We have those metrics that we talked about. We look at that for example, that is the top of the funnel, we look at conversion rates at the top of the funnel. Then we take a look at what’s going on mid-funnel and we’ll look at how we are doing with regard to the length of time that a deal is in a stage of qualifier scope versus onto the to the next place where it should go. We take a look at these metrics and the next thing we do is look at those metrics against different cuts of the sales organization, meaning attainment. We look at those that are under 25% attainment, which we understand many times can have people that are ramping. We look up to 25% then we look at 25 to 70% and then 70% to 100 100% and over. The reason why we do that is that there’s nothing worse than investing time and money with sellers who are already doing just fine. We find that segmenting our sellers by attainment and then mapping these different leading indicators of data against that it helps us be able to narrow in on a group of people that are all struggling with likely a particular area of skill, tactics, or knowledge. Then, what we do is we have coursework that we have set up across all of those stages. What we do going into a new quarter, we go to the managers and we’ll say based on the scorecard, it looks like this person and this person are doing a really great job when it comes to getting their pipe built, but they’re lagging and they’re not getting stuff closed. You can see there’s this huge drop off after 60 days, it goes into nowhere as land. We’d like to have those folks join our workshop on accelerating deals through the late stages. SS: Absolutely. I like your approach to that now. I noticed on LinkedIn that you have implemented a plan that significantly contributed to a 32% improvement in sales productivity. Right now improving sales productivity is definitely something that is top of mind for a lot of organizations. Can you share more about how you went about doing that? LC: One of the ways that we did it, I don’t wanna say it’s counterintuitive but not what you would expect, which is we made a concerted effort to clean all garbage out of our pipeline. Our data will tell us after a certain date there’s a cliff. The chances of a deal closing after, let’s just say 90 days, it drops down to like .2%. One of the ways that we increased productivity was by removing those opportunities that reps should not be even focusing on and removing them from the pipeline. I’d love to say that it was our skills, although we did skills training, part of what we did is we helped reset a salesperson’s mind to less is more. It’s not about having 30 or 60 or 80 open opportunities that you haven’t touched in whatever period of time, but rather it’s about prioritizing your opportunities in any given quarter using data, both data that we have and external market data that are now available that will tell you things like this customer appears to be in a buying mood et cetera. We teach our reps how to focus and amazingly when you remove opportunities and deals and busy work and you force the reps to work on only a certain number of opportunities, the productivity in three quarters completely turned. It was amazing. SS: Those are some very impressive results. I think you’re spot on when it comes to folks being a really important thing to drive for your sales reps, particularly in the year ahead. I’d love to understand how you take the work that you’re doing, the enablement initiatives, and what are some of your best practices for correlating those initiatives to the improvement that’s being seen in sales productivity. LC: Good question. I’ve mentioned a lot so far about these different dashboards and data points that we look at. When we put together a dashboard we first work with sales leadership to gain agreement and this can be not just sales leadership, I should say this includes leadership from finance and from operations etcetera, and we’ll say, okay, do we agree that these four or five metrics are the best ones for us to be looking at with regard to, let’s say it’s pipeline development is a place where we’ve been having problems. Last year, as many people did, especially as this year has gone on, we started to see some big slips in pipeline generation. We looked at the analytics, and the data that we were using, and we gained agreement across all businesses that was okay. We agree that if we can move these leading indicators then we’ll be successful. The next thing we did then is we said, here’s our proposal, leadership team, these are the different workshops, coaching sessions, sales tools, these are the different requirements that we recommend that sales managers hold their salespeople to for this next quarter. We get their agreement, and then the most important thing that we do is we report that out weekly, to at least two front-line management. Each week the SDR manager knows these are all of their SDRs here, here’s how they all are against their quota. These three people had a lagging indicator with the completing sequences or something and here’s how they’ve improved. By sharing the data at that level at the appropriate level of depth for the sales role and keeping in constant contact with the sales manager while we’re working with their reps, they can reinforce it and they’re always seeing those numbers. As a sales manager, I think that’s probably the hardest job in sales these days because there are many different competing priorities that are sort of begging for your attention. I actually see it in my team, we see it as our job to be watching those dials and surfacing these data indicators to the managers so that they know this is what we’re working on with their salespeople so that they can reinforce it. SS: I love it. I think that’s phenomenal. Last question for you, Lisa, and I really appreciate the time I’ve learned so much already. We’ve talked a lot about how times are changing significantly right now and many enablement teams are really needing to prove their value. How do you leverage data and analytics to communicate enablement value to some of your stakeholders? LC: Let me give you an example. We rolled out a new onboarding program last year and in the development of that onboarding program, we did some of the things that we do for all different parts of the business, which was, we looked at the last few years of data that we had around the performance of our ramping reps and we created targets. We looked at the last three years, the sellers that ramped the most quickly and the most successfully, here is what their activity looked like. Those were the metrics that we used in order to report back to leadership on how effective our onboarding was because our arm boarding program then, all of the different content pieces and segments were directly aligned with moving the needle in those different areas. For example, in order to drive pipeline, a seller needs to understand the market that we’re in, the competitive landscape, and the differentiators of our product and they need to be able to articulate that. We would take metrics around pipeline ad and persona engagement and we would use that as a measure of okay, this is we’re going to say that we’re doing well with the content that we’re teaching around market and persona because we’re seeing a successful ramp against building a pipeline with that persona. One of the ways that we can communicate our value to stakeholders is through data and numbers. The other thing is by being actively involved with our sellers and with our manager’s side by side using our own personal sales skills and experience. I’m kind of picky with my team, I require anybody that’s on the sales enablement team to have recent meaning within the last 3 to 4 years, and recent relevant sales experience, it’s a really difficult thing to try to earn credibility with sellers and sales leaders if you’ve never been out there doing it yourself. Not only are we able to communicate or show our value by things like here’s the numbers. Look, we have this program, and isn’t it getting better, but also by our participation in go-to-market strategy meetings, how we partner with our alliances and partner organization and with our marketing organization and we see our function as the glue between these different parts of the business that need to work together in concert in order to deliver results. I think it’s a combination of the numbers that we have to back up the assertions that we make and then the ability to have really credible conversations around sales and selling and strategy with our leaders. SS: I think that is phenomenal. Thank you so much, Lisa, for sharing some of your best practices and tips and tricks around how to leverage analytics to help reinforce enablement value. Really appreciate the time. LC: You bet. It’s my pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Shawn Fowler from RevenueReady join us. Shawn, I would love it if you would introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Shawn Fowler: Thank you for having me today. My name is Shawn Fowler and last year started a company called RevenueReady with a couple of partners. Before that, I really had three careers. My undergrad degree is in philosophy which got me a great job waiting tables, so I went back and got a degree in computer programming and did IT and programming for a while and then ended up doing academic research before I went to grad school. After that, I ended up doing training at a startup and it was mostly the technical training part of the startup. People kept telling me ‘you should be a sales engineer' and I kept thinking I definitely don’t want to be in sales, I think they’re bad people, and I definitely think I’m not that kind of person. Then I found out how much more sales engineers made than me and decided that I did want to be a sales engineer. My first foray into sales was sales engineering at a company called Silverpop. We sold email marketing software and I loved it. Being a sales engineer was awesome. It took me a while to figure out how to be a sales engineer instead of a trainer because I think I initially was really training more than anything else and I had a few sales leaders and sales reps who essentially taught me how to sell instead of train. I did that for a while and ended up going into services sales and then went into sales enablement. I didn’t even know what it was but basically, I was told that I would be good at it when they were hiring their first sales enablement person at Silverpop. After that IBM acquired Silverpop and I ended up being responsible for taking the Silverpop brand to market in Latin America, Japan, and China. For 2.5 or 3 years I was basically doing international sales and go-to-market. That got kind of old and I got tired of traveling so much and I had a young family. After that, I ended up going back into enablement there at IBM for our business unit before joining Salesloft, which was a wonderful place to work. I essentially got to build the sales enablement program there and got to teach salespeople to sell sales software to other salespeople which mean you get to study sales a lot. Then, a couple of years ago I joined a company called Attentive which was fantastic because Attentive has a sales-assisted PLF sales motion, so I got to learn more about that. That’s my background in a nutshell. SS: I love it. You definitely have a diverse background. I want to dig in because you said you have a Ph.D. in educational psychology with a focus on motivation. How does this expertise give you a unique perspective as an enablement leader? SF: It's interesting. I didn’t even know enablement was a thing in 2012 and it actually sits at the intersection of what I really love. Sales, really when you get down to it, is applied psychology. It’s basically taking principles of persuasion, and principles of education and applying them in a real-world setting and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. My approach to enablement is a combination of what I’ve learned through actually selling and being in sales management and then what I learned through my education in graduate school studying educational psychology. I think a lot about motivation and learning and how to create situations in which people come to the conclusions that I have come to because ultimately selling and teaching is kind of the same thing. You’re trying to get someone to see things the way that you see them and come to the conclusions that you’ve come to and a lot of people in teaching and a lot of people in sales try to push. They try to get someone to accept their opinions, they try to get someone to accept their approaches and this almost never works. In fact, it often creates resistance. A much better way to approach selling and a much better way to approach teaching is to create an environment in which people can see what you’re seeing and come to the conclusions that you’ve come to. I think a lot about that when I tried to create enablement programs, I think a lot about that when I’m actually leading a classroom and I think a lot about that whenever I’m selling, SS: That’s fantastic. Now, what would you say though are potentially some common barriers to motivation that you’ve seen in sales learning programs, and what do you think is the root cause of some of those challenges? SF: There are as many barriers to the success of enablement programs as there are stars in the sky, to be honest with you. One of my favorite quotes is the opening line of Anna Karenina by Tolstoy it says ‘all happy families are the same, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way' and I think that’s probably true of most dysfunctional things, including enablement programs. The biggest obstacle to motivation and success and enablement programs is frankly that the reps don’t want to do it. They think it’s a waste of time, and there’s a variety of reasons they could think that. One is they just want to spend their time selling. Two, they might think that the thing that you want them to learn is not important or not something they need to work on. Three, a lot of times there’s a lack of buy-in from leadership, and a lot of times you have all three of those things going on at once and that’s not a very easy situation to approach. The way around that a lot of times is actually getting buy-in from the start from leadership. Like, as collaborating with leadership on what specifically they would like to focus on in order to improve the performance of their reps. This is best done at the front-line manager level because you can sit down and have conversations about where the gaps are in performance and when you’re doing that you need to start with data like having very specific team and individual level data that you can use to say, hey, it looks like you’ve got a problem with creating opportunities for instance on your team. If you can increase your opportunity volume and get them up to speed with some of these other teams, it looks like you’re going to have much better outcomes as a result, you’re more likely to hit your number. These specific reps seem to be the ones who have the biggest problem with opportunity creation. Could be discovery, could be demoing, could be progressing deals that are late stage and closing whatever, but having the data that helps you identify where those gaps are is really the starting point because that allows you to prioritize. If you’re not having a data-focused conversation, you end up in this weird situation as an enablement leader where you’re waiting to be told what to do by someone who is having ideas, but those ideas might not always be the ones that are the most important and you end up kind of being a junk drawer as a result of that. Starting with the data, working with leadership is the first thing. The second one is actually getting the reps to see what you see as well, and for that, it’s really useful to use tools like Gong or Chorus, or Salesloft where people can go in and see their own calls. I’m a big fan of self-scoring. Getting people to actually score their own calls and to score the calls of others with a guided scorecard, is really important actually, you have to give them a good focus scorecard because if you don’t, people don’t always pay attention to the most important things. But getting people to self-score is really important because it allows them to begin to understand where their actual gaps are and to think critically about how they’re conducting deals versus how someone else might be conducting a deal. Then, the final thing is recognition, and praise, like actually giving people the opportunity to be recognized for good work and praising people who are doing things well that you want other people to do. If you look at the research, money is necessary but not sufficient. People in sales typically like money, but a lot of times they like money because it’s an indicator of the fact that they are performing well. It is a form of recognition. Top salespeople typically like recognition from their peers and their superiors even more than money. Using that as an avenue to motivate people can be very effective as well. SS: Absolutely. One of your specific areas of focus in your Ph.D. research that we’ve spoken about this was around motivating in online educational environments. How does motivation differ based on the environment that the learner is in and maybe what are some of the unique considerations for virtual programs? SF: I spent seven years thinking about this when I was doing my research. It is something I’ve thought about a lot. If you look at a traditional learning environment, like a classroom-based learning environment versus a virtual learning environment, obviously the context is the biggest difference and the thing that I drilled in specifically on was the difference in social engagement. That can be engaged with your professor or your teacher as well as engagement with your fellow students mostly in informal ways. I think we’ve all had experiences in college, for instance, where you didn’t really like a class, you weren’t into it, but there was somebody who you would go grab coffee with after class or talk to on the way to the next class or you had this study group that likes kept you going at it. These are kind of these informal social interactions that really do a lot to motivate and reinforce people because identity plays such a key part in motivation. My research is based on self-determination theory, which clauses there are three factors that are necessary for motivation. One is autonomy, so do I have the ability to control how I spend my time, how I spend my energy, and things like that? Obviously, that’s within some level of constraint, nobody has absolute autonomy either in a classroom or a work setting. The second one is competence, so do I feel like I’m good at what I’m doing? The third one is relatedness, do I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself? How much have I incorporated that thing into my own personal identity? The first two things, autonomy, and competence are pretty well researched, the relatedness one isn’t as well researched and that’s what I focused a lot on and that really is the fundamental difference between a traditional and a virtual classroom setting. Figuring out how to create opportunities for informal engagement is really important in motivating students in a virtual classroom because they don’t have those informal opportunities. They don’t feel necessary like they’re part of a classroom, part of this larger thing that is really important when it comes to motivation. What’s interesting is I finished my Ph.D. research in 2018 and 2 years later, the pandemic hit and suddenly everybody’s experiencing a lot of these same things from a work perspective, because we had this situation where pretty much everybody in software at least went remote and it’s not going back. I think we’re seeing a lot of those issues begin to arise associated with remote work. There’s a lot of depression, there are a lot of people who don’t feel like they’re part of this bigger culture for their team or this bigger culture for their company and that’s a real problem because when you don’t feel like you’re part of it, then you don’t end up putting the same level of effort in and you create these kinds of fragile or brittle teams who don’t have the resilience to get through hard times because they don’t feel that same sense of connecting this. So it’s really interesting because that’s something that we as a society are going to have to figure out over the next few years as we begin to move more and more to a remote environment. SS: Absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. I’ve had conversations around just the social disconnect that the new way of working has seemed to have created in the workplace, to be honest. Do you have some best practices may be around motivating reps in this virtual, slightly more siloed environment? SF: There are a few things. One is creating opportunities for informal interaction. I mean I started doing this when I was at IBM, I had 80-something people on my team at IBM and they were spread literally all over the world across five different continents. People had never met in person, and likely never would meet in person, and I wanted them to feel like they were part of something. A lot of times in my meetings, like it’s 50% work, really kind of 50% hanging out now. I was never explicit about the 50% hanging out piece because then it feels weird because you’re being forced to hang out, but that’s really kind of what was happening. I, as the leader, tried to be as vulnerable as possible and as transparent as possible. If you are a leader, it’s on you to kind of set the tone for what the rest of the team can do, you’re kind of establishing what is okay in your team from a cultural perspective and so I would share parts about my personal life, I would ask people how their weekend was. I would have a lot of those conversations that you would normally have and I would have those in a virtual setting instead of in a break room or around the water cooler or wherever you would have had them in a physical setting. It takes a minute because people aren’t used to it, but after a while, people begin to open up and start to share some of those things and I began to see it kind of trickle down a little bit in some of the conversations they would have with each other as well, which I found very valuable made me very happy. Another thing that I pretty much always do is a daily stand up and again with the daily stand-up, it’s only part work. I mean there is a focus on like, hey what are you gonna knock out today, what are some of your blockers, what did you not get done yesterday? There’s also a lot of like, hey how’s it going, like that cup of coffee conversation you have in the morning because I think that makes people feel like they’re part of something else. Another thing that I focus on a lot is spotlighting people. If you have a sales all-hands on a weekly or biweekly basis, like identify reps who are doing a really good job and spend 10 minutes interviewing them. Interview them with someone on how they perform well, but also give people an opportunity just to get to know that rep. Like where are they from? Where did they go to school? What do they do for fun? When you don’t have the opportunity to get to know people like that informally, you have to start to formally incorporate that into what you do. SS: Absolutely Shawn, this has been phenomenal. Last question for you. In today’s world it feels like we want to be able to track everything, so how do you track rep motivation? Do you maybe have any tips on understanding how to correlate the impact of motivation on the effectiveness of enablement programs? SF: It’s a tricky thing to track, there’s not like a good direct way to track it. I rely a lot on working with HR teams on engagement surveys. I think most companies now do at least a yearly engagement survey. I think many of them are also doing quarterly pulse surveys as well, and that’s really valuable because it helps me figure out how engaged are people, how motivated are people, and how much they feel like they’re part of their team in their organization. That’s one big factor. Another one is activity. People who are motivated do the activities that will get the outcomes. When you find people who are consistently engaging in those activities, you’ve got a motivated team. Those are the two biggest ways that I typically track that stuff. SS: I love it, Shawn. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the insights that you’ve shared with us. SF: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Chuck Marcouiller from Freightwaves join us. Chuck, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Chuck Marcouiller: My name is Chuck Marcouiller and I’m the Vice President of revenue enablement for Freightwaves. Freightwaves is an interesting space. We are sort of like the Bloomberg of the supply chain in that we’re a media company as well as a technology company, software as a service company, that supports the shippers, carriers, and brokers on anything that moves by ship, road, and rail. We’re sort of like the database that says what it cost to move anything, where you go for business, and the analytics on anything within the supply chain. I’ve been with them for just about a year, but as far as enablement, I’ve been in pre-IPO SaaS and sales and sales enablement for about 27 years plus. That’s a little bit about my background and where I’m working right now. SS: You and I have known each other for a while and I know that you have focused on building enablement programs broadly across sales, marketing, and customer success teams. I’d love to understand, what are some of your best practices for tailoring your programs to meet the needs of each of those roles. CM: That’s a really interesting question. I’ve really built a career in pre-IPO SaaS companies over the past 10 years and as I’ve been doing revenue enablement programs, meaning working with everything from marketing to demand generation to new logo acquisition and then into CS, I’ve learned that as I’ve gone from company to company no size fits all and what I have to do when I come into a company is really sit down with senior leadership and figure out how we are making the cake here. I need to understand what is the program and what is the process we’re doing in order to be able to deliver the revenue and the buying experience for the customer. It always comes down to the buying experience. How are we trying to bring in the customers and what is the experience we’re trying to give to the customers in the product and the process that we’re trying to do and then back engineer into the sales process and make sure that we’re getting a scalable repeatable process that our sales teams can deliver to. That’s what we’re really trying to do with enablement is how do we put in a program and a process that we can train our people to and then we can measure against to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our teams and ensure the overall success of the program and the people and the company as a whole. My best practices really sitting down and first analyzing, then sitting with my leadership and then putting together sort of a hypothesis of how we can take it to the next level and really understanding what’s there first and then bringing in best practices of how do we take that to the next level and what should we be measuring and what are the outcomes that we’re trying to deliver to and understanding that each role has a different piece to play, but every role is interlinked in order to bring that success for the customer. The customer really doesn’t care what each role is, as long as they’re getting the end outcome that they’re looking for and as long as we’re staying focused on what the customer is trying to achieve along that whole lifecycle from first look to full impact, it’s how do we sit there and engineer together to make sure that that’s achieved for what the customers are coming to us for. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now you mentioned briefly that when you’re starting the creation of a new program, you really sit and analyze the current situation at the onset and try to understand maybe what are some of the gaps between the current capabilities and the desired capabilities. How can enablement practitioners identify some of these gaps? What are some tips or tricks that you have about how to approach doing that? CM: Well, it’s two parts. First, I come in and I say do we have a defined process? It’s funny when I come into a lot of different companies, I find that they really have a very loosely defined process. First of all, is there a documented process at all as far as the sales process, and then are they actually adhering to the sales process? This means oftentimes there’s something in a playbook or something that’s written down for a sales process and then I like to sit down and what I like to say is my listening tour is I’ll sit down with reps and with leaders and I say, so, how do we do this here? You know, what do you do on a day-to-day basis? What is the experience that we take a customer through? Show that to me. I love tools to listen to the sales calls themselves to see what is actually happening in the street. Then I take my notes and I say, okay, so now that we’ve seen this thing, what’s actually happening and then we go and say, alright, now that we see what’s happening, I go back to sales ops and say show me the stats, how are things going along this process and what’s the conversion rates from the steps that we’re seeing within Salesforce? It may sit there and say that, oh, you know, on paper, we’ve got a seven-step sales process from the first look from SQL to close won or close loss, but when you look at it in the actual feed on the street, they’re actually doing three steps. We do a first meeting, we do this long demo, we throw out a bid and then we start negotiating whether they’re actually going to go forward and go through some sort of legal process before we try to close them. That’s not what we’re trying to do and so we have this abysmal conversion rate and they wonder why the business is working or it’s not working, and we go, okay, well this is what the numbers we’re seeing from Salesforce and this are what people are saying is really happening in the street and well here’s what the paper process said that we were going to try to do, so how do we sort of get this all working together? Then we sit down and we sort of back engineer and say, alright, salespeople, why are we doing this deviating from what the standard we said we wanted to do, and then we pull it apart and then start building best practices back together. This is what I’ve been doing from, from one team to the next, and we say, okay, so here’s what we needed to do, and then here’s what’s really happening and we start pulling the skills and processes together. One of the things that I found as we re-engineer the sales process to the buying experience that the customer is really expecting so that we can have success in what we’re trying to sell is looking for that domino rep. So, Shawnna, are you familiar with the term domino rep, what that concept is? SS: No, love for you to tell me more. CM: So one of the mistakes that I made early on in my enablement career is looking for a process and then saying, okay with leaders, here’s a process, let’s roll it out, and let’s see if the field adapts to it. You can train a process and then say, okay, here’s the slide deck, here’s the training, go forth and do great things. Then it goes out, and the sales reps try it, but it really doesn’t stick. What I found is that in any team, there are one or two reps who really are sort of the heart of that team, who everybody else looks at and says is she or he doing it? If they’re doing it then, are they having any success with it and if they’re having success with it, well then I got to try to. Those are your domino reps, those are the ones who everybody else looks to say, is it going to work or is it not going to work? If they can do it and if they’re doing it then it really does work. I found that with my programs, one of the things that I’m going to try to do is I’m going to try to get that one or two reps that everybody else looks to and I’m going to co-op them early on in my process to have them look at my process and be part of the design process, have them try it and help me get the rough edges off it before I train and roll it out to anyone else. I find that when I train and put the process together and have that domino rep as part of the initial rollout, then it goes so much smoother. I get better feedback from the field and a lot better field adoption when we roll out the new process. SS: I love that approach to getting reps on board with your programs. How do you go about partnering with other senior leaders, maybe in sales, marketing, customer success, and maybe even operations to align enablement programs with their priorities? CM: I think you can’t please everybody with your enablement programs and I think one of the things right off the bat, you’ve got to figure out which master you’re going to serve and what you’re going to try to achieve right off the bat. You have to tackle a few programs and tackle them well and then make sure that you’re building the right partners along the way in order to achieve those. On a quarter-by-quarter basis, I sit down with my CRO and say, all right, what are the things that you want to move the needle on and why is this important for us to move the needle on? We can’t do everything, but what is the big bet that we have to have? We announced that together and built a consensus committee with the others and made sure that it was aligned with the same big bet that they were trying to make with my marketing partner or my partnership partner or the other senior leaders. Then, we are aligned on our QBRs as to what the big bet is, and we sit down and we say, okay, we know what the CRO wants us to do, or the CFO wants us to do, and then we can say, okay, so this is my project, here’s where we overlap, can I get your support and partnership on this and what do you need from me? We do a little horse trading. If I work on these things for you, will you help me with these things here? That goes a long way because everybody understands what each other is trying to do and what support is going to be needed, what resources are going to need in order to make sure that all of us are successful and it’s not done in a vacuum. I know what my marketing partner is trying to achieve and they know what I’m trying to achieve so that I can make sure that she’s successful and she can make sure that I’m successful, but we’re all hearing it at the same time from our boss as to what they’re trying to move the needle on and we’re all working towards that same goal. It’s that goal alignment, when the goal alignment is done together, then we stand a chance to achieve it, but when we are each trying to do these things in a vacuum and we reach popcorn in each other going, hey, I need your help here or hey I need your help there and no one knows what each other are doing, that’s when we sort of get into conflict with each other. SS: I really do like that approach of bringing all of those teams together. Now to ask a slightly different question, since you are building a lot of these learning programs for many of the revenue-facing teams from onboarding to ongoing training and coaching, how do you design the programs to maximize real role effectiveness across the different teams you support? CM: Role effectiveness is one of those ongoing things that you are always trying to chase. I think it’s one of those things where you’ve got to sit down with your leaders and say, okay, what are we trying to tune, and why are we trying to tune that thing? One of the processes that I’ve adapted from my partners at winning by design, I brought an outside group in and I like what we call REKS. What are the results, efforts, knowledge, and skills? We sit down and we say, all right, instead of the lagging metrics of achieving quota, we say what is a leading metric, what is a leading result that we’re trying to do? Say for example, I’ve been working with my demand generation group and we want to increase the SQL to SAL, meaning the qualified leads to the accepted leads conversions and we say in order to be able to do that, that’s the result that we want to get, so what are the efforts that we have to do in order to do that? We list a bunch of efforts to do that and then we say, all right, what’s the knowledge that they have to have in order to be able to do that well, and then what are the skills that they have to do in order to be able to do that. One is the knowledge and then the other is the skill to be able to do it. We break that down on a couple of things that we want to measure and we want to move forward in their overall ability and we pick one to two per roll and we try to work on that on a quarter-by-quarter basis with each of my leaders, them identifying and having, again, the domino reps help us identify how to do that. That kind of program of documentation and working on that as a whole has helped us get into a better routine of figuring out, not trying to boil the ocean, what are a couple of things that we can work on and build programs around to help everybody improve and feel like they’ve got a say in it, but also have things that we can achieve and have tangible metrics that we can go back to our senior leadership and say, hey, the investment that you’re making enablement in the investment that you’re making in skills and tools is having tangible results on the ultimate outcome that you want to have, which is sales. SS: Absolutely. Now, speaking of tangible benefits, I’ve seen something that you shared on, LinkedIn about applying “sales-as-a-science” principles to designing enablement metrics. Can you walk us through that approach? CM: Sales, by its very nature, you know, both art and science, the individual art of the delivery, but there’s always the measurements of each stage within your process to say, okay, as I go from stage to stage, what are my conversion rates as a whole within the team and then as an individual. How far off is the individual deviating from each stage within the steps of the process? We can measure those within the tools that we have, whether it’s conversations to appointments booked, from appointments to discovery calls, discovery calls to whatever stage is with the process, and we look at those and we say, okay, so what’s as a whole, within the team over time, is the team getting better, is the team getting better because the skill is getting better, is the economy getting better? What are the factors that are going into it? Then, what are we making as a leadership team, a bet on our investment within tools or programs to help our reps be more successful and who are we applying it to? Then we’re listening and coaching within tools such as Gong or Chorus to say, all right, what are we hearing, is that improving overall, and are we seeing within numbers? There’s the balance between designing a program, rolling it out, coaching to that, and then measuring the overall effectiveness of that within the systems that we have to say, are we seeing an outcome to it, and then what does that mean? Sometimes we’re successful, sometimes we’re not successful and we have to go back to the drawing board and use the science of the data to say, what is this telling us, and then what are we going to do about it? Then we adjust. The whole art and science is adjusting to the reality of the numbers and making sure that we’re not waiting too long to make an adjustment. SS: I love that. Last question for you, Chuck. What are some of the core metrics you track to determine success and how do those maybe vary by the different various teams that you work with? CM: We have a tendency where we want to sit there and look at the metrics of quota because, in every role that we have within the sales team, we have some sort of end quota goal, which is the lagging metric. The key metrics on the front side are a few key activity metrics and I found success in making sure that we’re looking at quick key weekly metrics, such as when we look at the SDRs, what are the activity metrics, and are we seeing enough of the input metrics to give them a chance to hit the output metrics or the lagging metrics that we measure on a monthly basis and is there a decent, are they adhering to the conversion rates that we expect to see? This is an early indicator of if there is a chance for them to be successful or if we see some gaps in their skills. When we look at the AEs, when we’re looking at the new logo sellers, we sit there and analyze if there are enough conversations and enough meetings that they’re having in order to have enough deals within the funnel, and if are they converting at the pace that we expect to see within the team in order for them to have a chance to be able to hit the quota on a month by month, quarter by quarter basis. On an individual basis, what are their numbers telling us? Then diving into their calls to say, are they delivering what we expect to hear skill-wise, or do we need to work with this individual person on a coaching basis to deliver their skill back up into the areas that we expect them to be in in order for them to be successful? On the CS side, we sit there and we look at, are seeing them having success, bringing them in, and then are they having the kind of conversations that we expect in order to be able to get ahead of churn and be able to delight and deliver the impact that our customers expect? Are they touching base? What is the sentiment of the conversations when they do have conversations with our customers? Are they able to retain the current renewals and dollars that we expect and is that allowing us to, again, look at the metrics with the individual reps to say, is there a skill gap there or are there opportunities for us to put better processes in place in order to expand the revenue with their existing customers? SS: I love that, Chuck. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your insights. CM: My pleasure. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. While enablement has recently emerged as a formal business function over the last several years, the idea of enabling sellers to succeed has existed in businesses for a long time. As the function of enablement has become more solidified in recent years, selling as a profession has also undergone a lot of change. Inevitably this means that enablement will continue to evolve alongside those changes. Pam Didner, the author of Effective Sales Enablement is here to talk to us a little bit about some of those core concepts from her book about where enablement has historically been and how organizations can lean on enablement to overcome some of those challenges that they may face in the future. So with that, Pam, I’d love to hear a little bit about yourself and tell us a little bit more about your book. Pam Didner: Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be part of your podcast. My name is Pam Didner and I am a B2B marketer, writer, and podcaster. I love anything and everything related to B2B marketing. I worked in the corporate setting for almost 20 years doing many things actually from finance, accounting, product management, even operations, and content marketing all the way down to global marketing where I created a strategy for a lot of geographies for the content marketing teams. I worked on the global strategy so they can create their go-to-market plan. I wrote a book about effective sales enablement and it’s really about what a B2B marketer should do to better support their sales team. OF: Fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for being here. What I really loved about your book is you spent some time walking through the history of sales enablement and you talk in the book about how acts of enabling sellers, whether or not that’s been called sales enablement, have actually existed for a long before the term was actually coined and the formal discipline was formed. I’d love to hear your perspective on what some of those ways were that enablement initiatives have historically existed in organizations. PD: Yeah, I’d love to share that. I wrote a whole chapter about that. For a long time selling goods and services was not complicated because our lives were not complicated. You know, we buy food, we farm and we go to sleep. It’s not complicated, but then things changed dramatically after the Industrial Revolution, especially the invention of the steam engine. That literally changed everything because now we can use steam engines to power almost everything. People started building complicated machines using steam engines to automate things and make our lives a whole lot more efficient. For example, we started using steam engines to build trains, right? Think about it. Steam engines are pretty complicated machines then trains are also pretty complicated, so we are building a complicated device on top of a complicated device. Now all of a sudden you have to explain those complicated devices in a way that the buyers can understand. For the longest time, we used horses to transport us. Then the train was invented, but nobody has ever seen a train before. You have to explain what the train will do. Then all of a sudden the people who are selling the train need to be educated in terms of what the train will do and then be able to explain how the train will function. That by itself or in essence, it’s a sales enablement, even though the term was not created or coined back in the 1900s. So really, if you think about it, for the longest time ever since the early 1900s, we were building more and more complicated devices on top of complicated devices. Now, the salespeople’s job is actually trying to sell those complicated devices. They need to be educated. They need to be trained. They need to know their products well. Things changed dramatically in the 1980s. The reason is we invented the computer. Computers actually existed way before that, but the personal computer started to become very popular. Way back then it was like ‘what is a computer, what can a computer do?' The computer was at that time really doing a very complex calculation on behalf of humans. We never ever imagine that the computer can do whatever they are doing now almost like 30 years later. We cannot imagine that, so way back then when people invented computers, especially IBM, they were like okay what does a computer do? I mean it’s literally the machine that is being enclosed inside and then people walk around and see what these things do? The IBM sales professional needed to actually understand what the computer will do and then educate the buyers about its benefit and its features of it. They coined the term sales enablement according to Wikipedia, and I’m not surprised they actually coined that term. It’s really about training sales so they can understand the complicated products they are selling and how to explain that in a way the buyers can understand. So initially sales enablement was really about sales training and sales onboarding. I think the term has been expanded. It’s almost like everything that sales are doing and that needs to be supported can be cold sales enablement. OF: I think that’s very true and just how much enablement has expanded in its definition and organizations over the last few years. I love what you also talked about around the innovation and the business landscape and even all the way back to the industrial revolution, but really how these sales trends have been impacting selling as a profession over even just the last few decades. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of the ways that sales organizations have evolved in recent years? PD: Great question. Remember I mentioned earlier that salespeople need to be trained when they sell complicated products? In a way, the evolution of sales has a lot to do with technological evolutions and also technological advancement. The complexity of a product actually does have a huge impact in terms of the evolution of sales and also how people conduct the selling process and engagement, but there’s another important element which is the buyer’s purchasing behavior. How buyers purchase any products, especially B2B products, will impact how salespeople sell. For example, the internet, digital media, and even the pandemic have impacted how buyers purchase or behave, therefore massively impacting how salespeople or sales organizations evolve. For example, for the longest time, salespeople have visited their clients several times to close the deals and they had to be present. With the virtual meetings and the pandemic in the past couple of years, sales engagement with clients has evolved even sales hiring. Do we need to hire people on the ground that should be near our client base? I don’t know, maybe that has changed. From my perspective, as I said, the complexity of a product can impact the evolution of sales and the other one is the buyer’s behavior. Another important factor I mentioned in my book is millennials they are joining the sales force and are digital natives. The way they need to be supported, trained, and communicate with will be very, very different from the previous generation of a sales force. If you are supporting both generations, how should you support them? The evolution of a sales engagement will be dramatically different depending on the age of the sales team as well. OF: Yeah, I think that’s such an important point around the generations in the workforce and how their expectations and how they are wired to interact with customers is different. I think that’s so important to take that into consideration. PD: I totally agree. For example, a lot of millennials prefer texting, so the way they communicate with the buyers is actually through texting, but the older generation prefers email and they prefer talking to them, picking up the phone, and having a conversation. Because the communication mechanism is so different, the way that you need to train those people needs to be different as well. OF: I couldn’t agree more on that point. Looking ahead to the next few years, what are some of your predictions for how selling will continue to evolve? PD: You know, I hate making predictions. Selling, especially technology selling, is going to get even more complicated and that just affects. The biggest challenge from my perspective, moving forward is to find a way to explain complex ideas or the product in simple terms that your buyers will understand. That sounds like this age-old challenge, but I’m telling you many companies have not solved that. The messaging, such as what to say and how to say about your product, will continue to challenge the sales product and marketing team. I don’t think that will ever stop. The other one is that the buyer’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I am the guilty one as well. So we need to think about the types of content and outreach communication to get their heads turning. So what can we do so that it’s not creepy? The buyer knows that you are virtually stalking them, but how can you communicate and reach out to them? It’s not like you know that I’m following you every step. That, in terms of how to understand them and communicate with them yet not be creepy, will be also a knowledge challenge that from my perspective that those people will face in the next couple of years. Another thing is technology will continue to play a critical role in helping sales and unraveling buyers' intent. There are a lot of tools out there to actually help you understand if the buyer is ready to buy, what is their intention, and whether are they apprehensive to buy. Sales professionals, along with the marketing team will continue to evaluate different kinds of tools they need and incorporate that into their sales stages. The key thing is the more tools that you incorporate into the sales stages, the more tools that salespeople need to learn and they hate that. So how you get your sales team motivated to learn more about the new tools can also be challenging. Did I depress everybody now? OF: No, those are very, very great points and they’re very real. I mean those are challenges that I absolutely think are prevalent today in a lot of organizations. I think it will continue to persist, especially as there’s so much change happening in the business landscape and economic uncertainty right now. I think every point that you just mentioned is absolutely spot on. With that in mind, one of the things that you do mention in the book is that one of the core purposes of enablement, from your perspective, is really to increase sales velocity. With all of this change that organizations and that sellers are experiencing right now, how can enablement really help organizations not only maintain but improve sales velocity? PD: That’s a great question. The key thing is you need to set up sales enablement success metrics. Let's assume increasing sales velocity is very important for the sales team. Then you need to define what sales velocity is and you need to incorporate that as a part of your success metrics. So that’s number one. Now, let's assume that the sales velocity is an increased conversion rate, and let's assume that’s your definition of yours. Now, you need to think through what the sales enablement team is doing as a part of your job to actually increase that conversion rate. Are you training your sales team faster when a new product is launched, literally two weeks before the product is launched, you have training ready and everybody is educated and onboarded. That can increase sales conversion through training and arming them with the data they need. Maybe the other one is to give them enough content at different sales stages so they know what kind of content they should use at the different sales stages. That’s also another way to showcase that you are increasing sales conversion. You need to determine what you are doing as part of your success metrics and you need to define what sales velocity means to you and also to the sales team and then make a decision to quantify. A lot of things can be very abstract. It’s very hard to directly say that is the sales enablement contribution, but you can basically make a percentage and make sure that the salespeople agree with that or you can determine your deliverables in a way that the sales team agrees with that and use that to quantify your contribution to increase the sales velocity. OF: Absolutely. I think defining what that means for your organization as the first step is a fantastic point. That was great advice. In thinking ahead as well, I know you said you don’t like to make predictions, but alongside some of those predictions that you did lay out with some of the challenges that sales organizations will continue to experience over the next couple of years, I’d love to hear your take on where you think enablement is going as a function. How do you think enablement will continue to mature and evolve alongside some of those larger-scale changes in the business landscape over the next few years? PD: Let me answer that a little bit differently as well. I think the maturity of an organization in terms of setting up the sales enablement function is going to be different from company to company. I just want to make that very clear and there’s no best practice that will apply to all companies. I think it’s very, very important that each company looks inward to evaluate its own processes and tools. There are things that salespeople always complain about, especially when they are not getting the support they need. For example, the number one reason that salespeople complain the most that I’m aware of is, ‘I don’t know where the content is, I cannot find the content when I need it'. Okay, well can you at least make sure that all the sales-centric content and training information are properly tagged with the right keywords, detailed descriptions, product names, product family, content owners, even expiration dates, etcetera so salespeople can just find them when they need them. Do you see where I’m coming from? So the majority of your organization, in terms of what you need to do, is to address the salespeople’s most common challenges head-on. The maturity of a sales enablement function will come naturally when you start addressing salespeople’s challenges one by one. That’s how I see that you can evolve the maturity of a sales enablement function. OF: Yeah, absolutely. especially alongside challenges, I think that’s fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for joining the podcast today. I love this conversation and loved hearing more about your book. Thank you again. PD: Thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it. Take care! OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Kelley Jarrett from Gainsight join us. Kelley, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Kelley Jarrett: Hi Shawnna, it's nice to be here. My name is Kelley Jarrett. I head up kind of a three-part team here at Gainsight. It’s sales strategy, enablement, and operations. I have been with Gainsight for just under two years now and was actually brought in to build the enablement function here at Gainsight. We had one individual who was leading that effort and as Gainsight was heading into a growth period and fast growth and scale it was important to the company to bring in a leader to build this team so that we could help the sales organization at Gainsight really scale our sales function. I’ve been with Gainsight for just under two years. If you’re not familiar with what Gainsight does, essentially we help companies build deep and lasting relationships with their customers through customer success and product adoption and community solution platform. It’s been a great couple of years. SS: We’re really excited to have you here Kelley. As you said in your intro, you recently added sales ops to your team. Can you share how this has changed the way that you think about enablement as a function within Gainsight? KJ: It really has been an interesting evolution of this function since I joined. A lot of people think of enablement as enabling or training sellers on what they need to know to sell but I think of it a little bit differently. I think our job is to ensure that all of our team’s time, energy, effort, and resources really go to four key objectives. One is to give sellers the tools, skills, and knowledge they need. Two is to sell more to increase selling time. Three is to keep them happy and engaged in the territory and then finally to future-proof the sales organization for consistency and scale the last one is really important to be able to leverage metrics and data in order to find the right areas of focus for the sales team. SS: What are some of the key points of intersection between enablement and sales ops? How would you say the two complement each other and how can they best collaborate for shared success? KJ: Yeah, it’s a great question because I know not all enablement functions really have these two teams aligned super closely. I truly believe that when these groups are aligned it is a game changer for Gainsight and could be a game changer for other companies. It really kind of completes the full circle in my opinion. You have a strategy that is really all about sales methodology and sales processes and combining that with the data and tools component, which is, you know, everything from account scoring to run-of-business data tracking, to optimizing the tech stack. Then finally sort of the last piece of this circle is enablement and that’s getting the right message at the right time to the field. I feel like these three components really can function together so that we can ensure that our time and resources are ruthless, and prioritized and make sure that we are getting the right message to the right sellers that are also going to move the needle for the key business objectives for the company. It’s important to kind of have all of those working together and in tandem on common objectives and goals. If they’re separate, it makes it a little bit harder to ensure that we are all working towards the same objectives and the same goals. There are a couple of key points of intersection. I can give a couple of examples if it would be useful to kind of explain how we leverage the operations group alongside the enablement team. SS: Yes, I’d love for you to dig more into that. KJ: One of those is we can look at our operations group and ask for some metrics that we know are meaningful to our business. We, of course, are part of the vista family at Gainsight and there are some core metrics that we need to track and watch to make sure that we are not only performing in accordance with what they hope and expect from our company but also to ensure that we’re set up for the future of what Gainsight really needs to grow into. One example of this is, you know, we run a prospecting program within our enablement team. Essentially that prospecting program allows us to focus on what’s important to be prospecting into at any certain time within the business. In Q3, SAAS companies everywhere started to see a slowdown in buyers. We started to see that deal progression was a little bit slower than normal and that was in large part due to uncertainty and fear in the market. With the prospecting program that we had, we knew that cold outreach might not be the best place to start, so we shifted our enablement focus using the data that was telling us that we were starting to see a slowdown and deals and opportunities and we shift that program to focus on deal progression rather than cold outreach to new prospects. What that did for us that we saw in the data was that it actually ended up giving us a better mix of late-stage opportunities heading into Q4 than we thought was going to be there. It was pretty exciting for us to be able to take a look at the data, see some things that were happening within the business and then use our great enablement engine to really get after the areas of greatest need for the company and help those buyers overcome some of those market fears that they were seeing. SS: I love the synergy there. You touched on it a little bit but I’d love it if you could drill in a little further. How do you then take that data-driven approach to your enablement strategy? KJ: There are a lot of ways that you can incorporate data into an enablement strategy and it always comes back to me to where do we need to focus right now? Different sales teams have different needs at any given time and so your resources can really be strapped. What we’ve learned to do is leverage the data to understand where there are common needs across all of the sales teams and that really allows us to use our resources most effectively where we can move the needle most. So that’s super important. One of the other collaborations, in addition to simple data, is how we’ve incorporated optimizing tools. I know this is something that a lot of enablement teams struggle with how do we make sure that our sales team is leveraging tools most effectively? Now that we have that operations group within our team, we’re able to leverage these tools more effectively. For example, we use the sales methodology that incorporates MEDDIC, and what we’ve done in our conversation analytics tool is we’ve set up trackers so that we can see when the MEDDIC concepts are being used in conversations and how that affects the progression of those deals and even the win rates for those teams. Even just a little tweak like that, using some of the technology a little more effectively that we weren’t necessarily doing prior to having these teams together has really allowed us to see where there are some opportunities for improvement and give real examples to sales and how they can just do a better job and what they’re already doing well. SS: I think that’s fantastic. For sales enablement teams that may be less first in leveraging data, what advice do you have for them to embrace a data-driven mindset, and what is the importance of having that type of mindset? KJ: I think with data you can make the data basically say what you wanted to say at any given time, which is a common mistake and or a common issue that a lot of operations teams face. For those that are new to leveraging data in the enablement team, I would suggest starting small. There’s so much out there, don’t try to do too much at the outset. Start with the basics and there’s an acronym that we use at Gainsight to really try to get tight on what we’re trying to accomplish from a data perspective that allows us to orient our programs according to where the areas of greatest needs are. That acronym is AIR: activities, indicators, and results. The way we look at it and if you’re just getting started with leveraging data and your enablement programs, one way you can look at it is what are the key activities or behaviors that you need your sellers to perform to ensure you hit your goals. For us, these are things like outbound activities and meetings. Like I said before, we are doing some conversation tracking to make sure the behaviors are there, but that’s a little more advanced. You can simply look at the number of emails or outbound calls as an example. For indicators, indicators are typically pieces of data that are indicating whether or not you’re going to hit your results, so the pipeline is a great one. If you’re new to checking data to enable your efforts, you can look at pipeline coverage and pipeline products and that will help you understand if you’re on the right track for hitting your numbers. Then, of course, results can be as simple as bookings, but it can also incorporate other results that you should track, like win rate, average sales price, and those types of metrics. One key kind of underlying principle that we follow within this AIR concept is we track trending data which actually gives us a better understanding, not necessarily of actuals because sometimes those are less meaningful, but rather what’s happening over time and is your sales organization as a whole and teams getting better or getting worse or staying the same. If you can sort of keep the AIR concept in mind and look at it from a trend perspective, it will give you a pretty good understanding of where your sales enablement team needs to focus their efforts to build skills and knowledge within your team. SS: Fantastic. To drill into this a little bit more, what are some of the core metrics that you and your team track to measure enablement impact? KJ: For us, we typically use the AIR concept as well, but we’re just taking it a little bit further than what I mentioned before with getting started with AIR. We’re looking at emails, calls, and the percentage of our sales team that is driving the pipeline for different products that we think should be in a higher growth category for our company. We’re just keeping an eye on slightly more detailed metrics that follow the same AIR concepts that I mentioned before. SS: That’s phenomenal. The last question for you is, how does this data help you better influence business priorities? KJ: It comes full circle to why we brought these teams together in the first place, which was we’re all SaaS professionals trying to be better at ruthless prioritization, especially in today’s economy. We have to do more with the same amount of people and we really need to focus our efforts on what are those critical skills and critical knowledge that our sales team needs to know and needs to have in order to optimize their days and data really help us ruthless prioritize. It helps us to give sales managers access and an understanding of where they’re spending their time and where they may need to shift their priorities to ensure they’re supporting their teammates in the way that’s going to get the best results and support them in a way that they need to be supported in today’s environment. It also puts information in the hands of sellers who really want to own their territory. We have a really great sales team at Gainsight. They care about their customers, they care about what we do for our customers, and at the end of the day, while they’re in sales and they want to sell, they also want to help customers become successful. Our job as an operations team is really to give them the right resources and the right understanding of their own personal data so that they know that not only are they hitting their metrics to sell but that we’re also providing them with an understanding of how that will impact the results of the customers that they’re serving, which is a huge part of why I think we’re different here at Gainsight. We have a methodology at Gainsight called the human-first selling methodology and the difference between a typical sales process that is very inward-focused and a checklist focused by the sellers, we are really oriented around the needs of the buyer and the way that we can help be the front line to that that change in the market is by providing our sellers with the right information they need to know if their job is actually moving the needle for their customer’s success. We talked a lot about some of the selling resources that we have and some of the data that we use in our day-to-day operations, but at the end of the day, it’s all about business outcomes for our customers. We expose those to our sellers, we provide access to information that helps them understand what their work is and what their job is actually doing for the customers that they’re serving. At the end of the day, when we think about our business priorities, it is to serve that market more effectively. We want our sellers to sing from that same sheet of music as well. SS: Fantastic. I loved this conversation, Kelley. Thank you so much for joining us today. KJ: No problem. It was a pleasure, Shawnna. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Elena Beletsioti from Yokoy join us. Elena, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Jonah, thank you very much for having me today. Elena Beletsioti: Hi Shawnna, thank you very much for having me today. As you said I am Elena Beletsioti and I’m responsible for sales enablement at Yokoy. Yokoy is a spend management solution for midsize and enterprise companies. What we do is bring together expense management, invoice processing, and smart corporate cards in one platform and we really aim to transform the way companies do spending from the ground up. If you look at my background it is somewhat atypical for a sales leader or sales enablement specialist as I was in consulting before and supported startups on their founding and scaling journeys before I joined Yokoy in April. SS: I’m excited to have you here. You have a ton of experience helping companies grow and scale, particularly startups. I’d love to start the conversation understanding from your experience, what is the enablement role in helping teams really scale effectively. EB: If you think about scaling, one of the most important factors that impact that is a sales function. I mean think of a company that is growing and is hiring more and more salespeople in order to scale the business across different countries. Now if each and every member of the team has its own approach to selling, replicating success and scaling the company can be very difficult. In contrast, if all members of the sales team can follow a proven sales process, it is so much easier to scale the business more quickly, more efficiently, and much more successfully. Thinking about when we implemented one of the predictable kinds of processes within Yokoy, we were able to also predict and forecast so much better. I think sales enablement can really help with that. We can create a strong sales process, set up playbooks, constantly train and coach the team on each and every step along the customer journey and bring the relevant content at the right time to the team. SS: Absolutely, I think enablement can play such a big role in those areas. What are some of the challenges that you’ve encountered that companies can face as they scale and how can enablement really help to overcome some of those challenges? EB: That’s a great question. I mean when you’re small and you’re growing fast, you’re under a lot of pressure. Sales managers are especially under a lot of pressure to hit numbers. This can hinder skills coaching not an intention, but usually, it gets in the way. For example, they see sometimes when a crucial deal is at stake, then the sales manager will very often kind of take over the call instead of providing the background sales coaching that he intended to do right. In other words, you’re very tempted to give your team just the fish for the day instead of teaching them how to fish by themselves. What I see as the biggest challenge when you’re growing very fast is that you think you don’t have time to worry about right now, about soft skills, about coaching, about exactly those things are the things that enable us to scale so much faster. As a sales enablement person within Yokoy, I do care about revenue and hitting quotas, however, I do have the luxury to step out of the deal and I know that my focus is clearly on teaching the reps how to fish. I have tried a little bit around and I found different ways to support that says leadership here, I think it touched on this a little bit before, but supporting with a playbook with a very clear understanding on what are the essential steps along the customer journey, but also things like training and storytelling, the most common objections, how you would anticipate those, that is also very helpful for everybody. Once you have laid out these, the second step would be kind of a framework over a scoring model on what good looks like, for example, for a discovery call or for a demo. This helps the sales managers and myself in my role in enablement to know what to look for, to benchmark, and to coach against this. Another point maybe is to really pick and focus on one skill at a time, I am sure you have seen that kind of manager who tries to find all the flaws and all the mistakes in one call and addresses all of them at once. Yeah, that usually doesn’t work, that’s too much. If a sales rep needs to know how to ask strategic questions to better understand the prospect then the coaching effort should be really focused on this one specific skill. Only when that specific skill is kind of built up only then we can move on to the next one. SS: I love that. I think that there are really three key areas. Now, I have a bit of experience in startups as well and I can say that when you are running lean, oftentimes collaboration and partnerships are absolutely keys to success. I’d love to understand from you who are some of the key teams that you collaborate with across the business to really ensure that you can deliver effective enablement programs at scale. EB: I absolutely agree with you. Sales enablement is not the responsibility of one person, it’s a collaboration across different departments and actually, they cover the whole customer journey. I think there is one important area where sales enablement in the marketing team comes together and that’s content. Whenever there is content created for the sales team, we really need to put it in the sales language, make it digestible, but also ensure that there is consistent messaging, which is aligned then with the marketing team. I do have various touchpoints with the product marketing team when it comes to product knowledge, to new product launches. I also talk a lot with the sales operations team, especially when it comes to sales processes, and technology commissions, all of that sit within the sales operations team with Yokoy, so we have some touch points there. I think one of the departments that are very often overlooked but super important for me is learning and development. Top of mind, I would also say I align a lot with the customer success team to make sure that we have a smooth handover but also to gather feedback from customer success on what a successful customer looks like and how we can leverage that kind of knowledge, SS: I love all of those areas now. The one that you hit on, that I would love to elaborate on a little bit more, is a partnership when it comes to scaling around learning and development. Why would you say that partnership is so important in startups? EB: Great question is enablement, as we all know, about skills reinforcement, onboarding, training, field observations, and coaching. All of these are what L&D is doing with the broader organization and therefore there is a lot we can leverage from that partnership. Let’s say how to define learning goals, I didn’t know how to do that in the beginning, how to facilitate an effective training session with 50-plus people, how to measure the effectiveness of a training program after this has happened and then to give kind of numbers and crunch it down for the leadership team or even evaluate, let’s say the stickiness of it. One specific thing I learned from learning and development that helped me a lot personally is to focus on the challenges that the sales reps currently have to understand the revenue pressure they’re constantly having and use a more empathetic approach so you can create a safe space for them to learn. Only when you have created this safe space, the reps can bring real-life questions into the training or role-play their worst client scenario. I would really like to think of myself or my role to be considered kind of neutral. I don’t judge them if there are knowledge gaps for the product or if somebody is feeling very uncomfortable doing something. I just want to push them and challenge them to practice and learn a little bit more, or at least help them work through their challenges. SS: I love that. I think that is such a key value that enablement helps to drive. Do you have some best practices for our audience around collaborating really effectively with some of these cross-functional teams to maybe build out shared programs to help the company overall scale? EB: I wish there was a silver bullet there. I think my personal advice would be communication, communication, and communication. At Yokoy, we try very hard to keep each other informed and aligned, especially when it comes to relying on the learning goals, and the content and we really try to get everyone on board quite early in the process. However, regardless there are still things that kind of will slip through the cracks and it could have been better to have aligned with somebody else, with another team before we rolled out to the whole organization. I mean this will happen with a startup, we’re scaling up, it will happen, but it is very good and this is what I learned personally. After we have kind of a shared program altogether, we just regroup together, do a debriefing and discuss what went well, and what could have been better, and put all of these learnings in a kind of blueprint for the next program so we can learn from that. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now, Elena, last question for you, for companies that might have a lot of silos between departments, what advice would you give practitioners to break down these barriers and begin to establish stronger cross-functional relationships? EB: That’s a very interesting question, I believe the very first step is to sit all at the same table and the line on the goals of the business and then jointly break down the business goals into the department goals. If you openly share and discuss those kinds of goals, usually you will very, very quickly see how they intersect, sometimes how they even complement each other, or how many dependencies there are between those different departments. I believe sales enablement plays a role in making sure that we have that kind of visibility, that we’re aligned, that we really thinking about it from a customer perspective, and that we are communicating along the way. As I speak one last piece of advice that comes to my mind, I would say when you ask for something, try to offer something as well. Usually, that helps to build kind of trust and establish a relationship with your key stakeholders in the organization. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice to close us out. Thank you so much. Elena, I really appreciate your time today. EB: Thank you for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Julie Cecilio from Collibra join us. Julie, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Julie Cecilio: Great, thank you so much, Shawnna. Thanks for having me. As you said, my name is Julie Cecilio and I am the vice president of go-to-market revenue enablement here at Collibra. I am coming up for two years, and have been in high-tech for quite some time. I was previously at VMware and before that at Cisco all in various roles supporting the sales organization’s effectiveness. SS: I’m excited to chat with you because, in addition to organizational effectiveness, one of your areas of expertise for you is also around change management. So I’d love to hear from you and your perspective. Why is change management an important area of focus for enablement leaders? JC: Yeah, it’s an interesting inflection point, isn’t it? I actually started out my career in marketing and have a graduate degree in marketing and found out that I didn’t want to be quite that removed from the people that I was trying to engage with, but the principles are very much the same. You’re trying to change buying behavior, right? You’re trying to build a brand, and you want somebody to buy more of your products and services, so it’s a very similar formula to sales enablement. I worked my way from marketing into a change management role at Cisco where we were trying to support our services sales organization in how we were selling services with customers and partners, and we rolled out a lot of change, whether it was the pricing and packaging or the systems that they had to work with, and so I was able to apply a lot of what I did on the marketing side to change buying behavior to that change management approach with customers and partners at Cisco. That was my first foray into change management and what I really learned from that was you have to take a very good look at what is the delta of the behavior that you’re trying to change and how much effort is it going to take to get that change to stick. When I morphed over into the sales enablement side, it’s really again the same principles. You are trying to drive transformation within a sales organization, most likely. I’ve been in high tech as I mentioned for a number of years and we’re always evolving and changing quickly and trying to keep up with or ahead of the market. The pandemic is a great example of this. Sellers had to learn how to do things virtually, much as these podcasts have just mushroomed into something really important for people to be able to connect with others and do things like thought leadership. It’s like, okay, well how do we reach our customer base in a different way? Virtual selling skills are an example of how we had to adjust and so then you have to look at well what are the things that are changing, what are the tools, the technologies, the skills, knowledge, behavior and then figure out where people are now and where you want them to be. Based on that you put an enablement plan together also known as a change plan to get them from here to there and then track your progress along the way and look at the business results. It’s kind of a nice through line between changing customer buying behavior to changing seller behavior all about driving transformation for the company. SS: Absolutely. I think it absolutely is a critical thing that enablement and leaders need to be able to impact, but change can be hard. I’d love to get some advice from you. What are some of your best practices for effective change management? JC: Great question. We’re actually working on this right now at Collibra. One of the big things is sponsorship. Making sure that you are aligned with your strategic initiative or strategic plan for the company for the year for the three-year plan, whatever it is that you’re rooted in and then make sure that you’ve got that sponsorship upfront for the initiatives that you’re driving and then create those early successes in those wins. The best way to create that sponsorship is to be clear on where we are and where we want to be and make sure that’s aligned and then clear on what it’s gonna take to get from here to there and maybe even some of the risks and obstacles that you’re facing and get that help. Then work with the leaders to establish some of those quick wins and those success stories that you can highlight as proof points, because sales and sellers, even our partners, often are motivated by the shortest route to closing, closing the sale, but oftentimes that doesn’t drive the right behavior, which is, let’s say we want to drive and NPS with the customer or we want to drive an expansion behavior with our customers and so we want to make sure that we are thinking long term and we’re not thinking short term as an example. How would you get people through that knothole of like well sort of the bird in the hand versus having the whole flock with you is kind of the way to think about that. SS: I’d love to drill in a little bit more on that because you hit on a really key point and that is the long-term adoption of behavior change. What are some strategies that practitioners might be able to use to motivate behavior change amongst reps to get that long-term adoption? JC: Having those early successes really helps. Making it tangible to people so they can see that they’re getting better, win rates, bigger deal sizes, shorter sales cycles, so understanding what your KPIs are and then reporting back on those on a regular basis. We do some things around dashboards that allow managers and senior leaders to be able to see the impact of the change programs that we’re running otherwise known as sales enablement training every quarter and so they can see that, okay, we said we wanted to shift to this new sales methodology let’s say and why? Well because we’re seeing those who are applying the knowledge and the skills are seeing the impact to their deals. They’re seeing their quota attainment come sooner, they’re seeing their customers having a higher sat rate etcetera. So connecting the two dots for people so they can see that it’s going to benefit them and the company right and our customers ultimately because we want them to be happy and using our products and services as well and making that really tangible for folks and keeping it front and center about these are the KPIs this is how it’s going to make our customers happier you more successful and the company is going to be able to reach strategic objectives. SS: I love that. I want to shift gears because I noticed too that on LinkedIn you mentioned that authentic leadership plays a key role in enablement's ability to inspire teams to achieve high performance. Now I love that because I feel like we all need an extra dose of inspiration nowadays, but can you tell our audience about what authentic leadership means to you? JC: I just led a breakout session on this last week because I also lead our women of Collibra employee resource group here and back to being virtual again, we don’t have a lot of time with each other. We’re always running from one meeting to the next. We don’t have the opportunity to get to know people on a more casual basis to identify commonalities and I think we just have to create space for that. Allowing people to bring their whole selves to their job every day is really important for a couple of different reasons. We know that diverse workforces on whole are more productive and more impactful, and so we want to encourage that diversity. We don’t want people to mask that we’re all looking the same, doing the work the same, and approaching the work the same, and part of that includes encouraging people to bring their whole selves to their job every day. Again, I think back to the pandemic a little bit, it sort of forced this. We all saw each other’s animals, children, spouses, and whatever was happening in the background because we were all trying to figure out how to adjust. So we were sort of pushed into it a little bit. We don't want to walk away from that in my opinion. We want to continue to encourage people to bring their whole selves to work and that’s when I can understand that somebody is having a great day and they’re getting a lot done and we can really give them some shout-outs for that. Then there are times when they’re struggling a little bit and then maybe need a little more air cover or support or leadership there. I think it’s really important to do that yourself and that’s what authentic leadership is to really lead by example. So making sure that I’m clear with my team and my coworkers because one of the things I love about enablement is we work probably one of the more cross-functional teams in the entire company. Whether I was at VMware or here at Collibra, I found that pretty consistently and leading by example is important. I’ve had several people reach out to me offline to ask for guidance or support asking how did you do this. You just do it, you just do it, and don’t be apologetic and be clear that this is coming from your heart and in a good place and people will build trust with you, and then you also create that opportunity for really diverse viewpoints and approaches to things and in that way you build more trust. It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle. That’s my experience. SS: Yeah. Now, to tie it back though, how does an authentic leadership style help you effectively drive change as an enablement leader? JC: Yeah, great question. At the end of the day, in both cases, I think trust is the big word and on the change management side, you build trust by understanding that change, communicating it, identifying the successes, and then tying it back to outcomes. Oftentimes you’re asking people to take a little bit of a leap of faith with you. It’s like, yeah, I’ve got a plan and I know what I expect to get out of it and I want you to get in the boat and go with me, but I’m gonna point out all the sights along the way so you can see that we’re working our way towards that end goal of that end journey, but there’s trust there and the same thing with leadership, in general, is creating that that space of trust and allowing people to feel safe. There’s a new newish more common topic that gets talked about a lot, which is around, you know, safety, emotional safety in the, in the workplace and I think people feel like they need that connective tissue to kind of go with you on that change journey in order to really do their best work every day. SS: I couldn’t agree more. Now, last question for you Julie. As a broader business landscape changes we’ve seen with the recent economic environment, customers are often experiencing change right alongside our reps. How can enablement help go-to-market teams support customers as they navigate these changes themselves? JC: So I think some of it is a continuation of the previous topic, is really extending your authentic self into those customer conversations, helping the customers understand what the success could look like with your product and service and how that’s going to help them and their company achieve their goals and objectives because at the end of the day, that’s really what we’re trying to do in most cases, is to help other organizations achieve what their stated goals are. We all have a piece of skin in that game, whether we are on the buying side or the selling side. So I think that’s one thing, is just to sort of encourage those mindsets and those behaviors. The second is to have a closed-loop idea of what the customer buying journey looks like. Enablement should be able to connect the dots all the way from a lead generation where our marketing organization drives a lot of that digital interface and we know more and more customers are preferring a rep-free or a seller-free quote-unquote buying environment. So that connection between the customer’s digital experience and then their live experience, whether it’s in person or virtual, needs to be seamless. What we can do is help connect those dots to make sure that the programs, the messaging, the tone, the tenor, the knowledge, everything that’s up, you know, on our websites and through our emails and the way we engage with customers digitally feel continuous when the customer comes into buying engagement with a live person, whether that’s an SDR BDR or it’s a strategic major enterprise sales rep or your SCs or your professional services team when we come through the implementation. So making sure that we’re helping to connect the dots all the way through and staying really focused on those core values that are important to our company and that we extend those all the way through to our customer engagement. SS: I love that approach. Julie, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I appreciate your insights. JC: Thank you very much for taking the time. I appreciate it SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. Creating predictable and scalable revenue is any business leader’s dream, but how can that dream actually become reality? Well, as it turns out, there’s a formula for building and sustaining a winning sales team and I’m so excited to have Mark Roberge, who is the author of the Sales Acceleration Formula here to walk us through what that looks like. With that, Mark, I’d love it if you could take a second and introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little bit more about your background and your book. Mark Roberge: Thanks for having me. I am an engineer by training, I started my career coding and I did an MBA at MIT. I have close to a decade to start my career in more of a data science-like quant background. At MIT I was classmates with the two co-founders at Hubspot and was recruited to be the fourth employee and first salesperson with the aspiration to build a unicorn. This is in the early part of the century, like 15 years ago, and looking back I’m pretty lucky that I had the background that I had and ended up in that company at that time because little did I know that sales were going through a pretty substantial revolution. We were moving out of this sort of pre-internet age where everything was sold via an outside team and no one used their CRM, sales enablement barely existed and we were moving into an era where CRM adoption was necessary for salespeople to do their job. These tech stacks were becoming pretty advanced, we had a lot of data, and we had internet-empowered buyers who just changed the way that sales had to interact with them. It was sort of like the perfect time for a quant with no sales background to build a sales team from scratch. I was blessed to fall into that role and blessed to be surrounded by the right executive sponsorship and mentorship and investor advice to be successful in it. That’s my background and I did that for like 10 years. We took an IPO In 2015 or 16. I then rested and joined the faculty at Harvard Business School where I still teach. I joined full-time and helped build out the sales curriculum. I do teach a couple of classes in sales and growth. More recently, after a couple of years of investing and advising and sitting on boards and that kind of stuff, I was approached by a former Bessemer investor to start a venture capital firm called Stage 2 Capital, which I’m happy to speak about at the end. It’s the first VC firm that’s run and backed exclusively by CRO, CMO, and CCOs from a lot of the software unicorns that are out there. We’re back about 400 CROs and CMOs from Snowflake, Salesforce, Zoom, and those types of companies. OF: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I’m really excited to have a chance to learn a little bit more about your book. You mentioned that your background is really unique in the sense that you do have such a quantitative lens that you take and your book really walks through that framework of driving predictable and scalable revenue growth from that lens of being really data-driven. You also talked about how sales have evolved a lot since you started that journey of creating that framework and even since you did write the book. I’d love to hear a little bit more about what are some of the challenges that you’ve seen emerge in the last few years that can make that mission of achieving predictable and scalable revenue a little bit more difficult to achieve in today’s landscape. MR: When I wrote the book at the end of my Hubspot journey, it was really triggered by the fact that I started to get pretty well known and I would get calls from different sales leaders and entrepreneurs starting out with the same questions like ‘What do you look for in your first sales hire? How do you set up your first sales com plan? How do you enable your sales team?' I just told them how we’re doing a Hubspot and they wrote back like a month later, saying wow, we did that and it worked really well, thank you so much. I just thought this is working, let me just put it down on paper for people. I give all the proceeds to a nonprofit, so I was just helping out the ecosystem and even to this day it sells almost just as much every year as it did the first year. I’m very humbled that people still pick it up and still find amazing implementation from it. My own models of it have not changed but evolved a bit because at that time I was like 80 hours a week deep on just Hubspot and wrote about that. Now I’ve applied it to 1000 different data points between my teaching, investing, and consulting. A lot of the principles still apply. As far as the challenges of implementing, I guess I’ll answer it this way and this is something that the book itself didn’t address, but you can read the book, and then you can read some of my more recent work. The book just talks about the model as it was at that point. It doesn’t talk about the order in which you should implement things. That’s been my most recent work. While the book gives you an aspiration of where you want to go, how you hire, how you enable, and how you coach your sales team, there’s a pretty precise order in which you build that system and in fact the optimal answers for each of the system components. Let’s take hiring for example. That changes as you progress from a five-person company that is mostly a product team, to a 20-person company that is really in sales mode, to a 2000-person company that is a very complex organization with alignment requirements. Your hires obviously change even on just the same frontline account executive role. That’s probably the difficulty in understanding the order in which you build the components of the system and how the individual component’s optimal design changes as you evolve. OF: That’s very interesting and I think definitely something that goes beyond the scope of the book too, which is fantastic. I would love to dig into the data component of the framework. Tell me a little bit about just the role that you see data really playing today in helping business leaders be able to gather the insights that they need to overcome some of these challenges that they’re facing today. MR: It’s kind of funny and this is right in the heart of things like sales enablement, rev ops, and just sales leaders in general, which is hopefully a lot of the folks that are out there listening. I always kind of joke and observe that sales are a function, something extraordinarily unique relative to things like product engineering, HR, finance, and marketing, is that success and failure in the role are so quantifiable. It’s really hard to walk into a company and here are our engineers and this is Olivia our number one engineer by 7%. Like it’s really hard to claim that right? But I can definitely walk into a sales floor and say here are our salespeople and this is Olivia and she’s our number one salesperson by 7%. That’s like a feasible statement. You’ve got this function where success and mediocrity and failure are quantifiable and that opens up tremendous opportunities in the way we run the team. It opens up tremendous opportunities to draw correlations between hiring attributes that we’re looking for and how strongly they correlate to success in the role. It presents opportunities for us to use data in our sales playbooks to understand which approaches to the market lead to the most successful and best outcomes. It presents opportunities for us to measure the effectiveness of our frontline managers and how effective they are in coaching and developing our people. To be able to literally say like Olivia is a rock star, but I really think that she can develop in the area of a sense of urgency development with her prospects. In fact, I can quantify it, like I know what she looks like relative to our best-in-class people where her stage 4 demo stage opportunities are converting to customers at a rate of 27% and I know with the right amount of coaching she should be able to get that the 35% and that’s going to translate into an additional $120,000 of quota attainment on her part and a rise in our productivity. That’s the level of discussion we can be at and that’s difficult to enable in other functions. That gives you a little bit of an overview of the application and usage of data in our world. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to that first tactic that you talked about and you mentioned it and a couple of examples here around sales hiring and really the importance of standardizing what those characteristics are that you’re looking for in your company and making sure that you have a consistent approach to hiring for those criteria. I’d love to hear a little bit more about some of your best practices for really getting buy-in on those characteristics as being the right characteristics to look at and really reinforcing that consistency in the hiring process in particular how can data really help in that aspect? MR: What I’m going to talk about is not necessarily like the absolute world-class, but I think it's a step up that’s easy to conceptualize and rarely followed. When it is followed, it translates into a dramatic acceleration in the performance of the team. World-class hiring is studying at the psychological level, psycho graphics and there are some great tools out there like predictive index etcetera. I’ve spoken to world experts on it and sometimes some of them will admit that it might not be worth it to like take, take it to that level, but what we see in the industry is not a very good approach and it comes out in the aggregate numbers. Depending on which study you read, a lot of them tend to center around an average turnover rate and sales annually of 40%. That’s really bad. Every year 40% of salespeople change jobs either because they fail, they’re fired or they fail and they quit or they’re just not happy with their company. It’s really hard to build a business when you’re turning over 40% of your team every year. We’ve got tremendous quantifiable ROI. There are some trainers out there that claim that the cost of a miss hiring sales is over a million dollars and it’s not that hard to justify that calculation. What I hope we can do is try to move away from the like I’m busy in my day and I’m running all over the place and I have this interview with Olivia and two minutes before I walk in the room I read your resume, I sit down and I’m like hey Olivia, tell me about your career, and then after thinking I liked Olivia let’s hire or I didn’t really like her, let’s not hire. That’s where we’re at. That’s where most people are hiring and all I work on people with and it changes their game is actually just sitting back and thinking about the attributes that we see in our best people and the attributes that we see in the people that don’t work out. At least, can we translate that into just a quantifiable scorecard, can we identify the 7, 8, 9, or 10 attributes that we’ve seen, correlate with success and failure? Can we take the time to define in two or three sentences what each one means so that we’re very clear about what consultative selling means, what work ethic means, what intelligence means, and what coach ability means? Can we take the time to quantify what a high score of 8 to 10 would be like, what a medium score of 4 to 7 would be like, and what a low score of one of three would be like so that a new sales manager going into their first interview can actually know what the heck they’re doing, like what they’re asking and how they’re scoring this person? Over time we can actually see correlations between our scorecard and success and failure. That’s where we need to get to. It’s not a hard leap. It takes an hour to put together and a little bit of discipline to execute, but that allows you to get closer to a 10-20% annual turnover as opposed to the average of 40%. OF: Yeah, absolutely. I love that approach and I think you’re so right, it’s about just really defining what success and failure do look like in particular companies and I think a lot of that also nurtures that success a little bit longer terms after a salesperson is hired and is in their career with a company. A lot of that comes down to sales training and that’s an area where enablement can really help. I’d love to hear your thoughts on maybe what some of the common pitfalls are that you’ve seen and how programs are designed and delivered, that may actually prevent that scalability and predictability, and then what are some of the ways that enablement can help to overcome some of those pitfalls? MR: Yeah, I would say the number 1 thing is we know today something that we’ve talked about anecdotally through the work of Gong.IO and some of these new ai tools that the salespeople that listen more than they talk in the first call or the top performers in the industry and the sales people that talk more than they listen in the first call are performing in the least way. Part of the driver of why certain salespeople decide to speak more than and then lesson on the first call is due to the approach by enablement to training. Some enablement teams look at a new feature product that’s being released, whatever, and take what I’d call an inside-out approach of like, okay, what does this product do, what are its features and benefits, let’s put together a sales deck and then let’s show the sales deck to the sales team. Sounds pretty logical. That’s teaching the sales team to pitch, that’s teaching the sales team to talk a lot, that’s teaching the sales team just like go find 50 prospects in a month and just show the sales presentation and that’s my job and that’s completely wrong. The job is to start off and build trust and develop open-ended questions with the buyer to understand their perspective, and to see what they perceive as their problems. To see if their problems are something we can help with and if they are to tailor our pitch to those problems so they really resonate with their context. That’s what true selling is and that’s what our job and enablement are. It's like helping a 25-year-old figure out how to do that. It starts not with what is our product and what are the features and benefits, and let’s build a pitch deck, but it’s more like who is the buyer and what’s the narrative going through their head before they even know what our product is. What are the common problems they have? What are the ones that were good at solving? How do I ask the questions to uncover that? Once I understand their perspective, how do I customize and tailor the description of our product so it resonates with that buyer so they understand how we solve those problems? A couple of tactics that I’ll throw out there are number one, how much of your enablement and training for new hires is about your product versus your buyer. Most people I talk to are like shoot, you know what now I think about it 90% of our training is how our product works. You are teaching your salespeople how to be bad salespeople. Can you spend more time in your training getting your salespeople to walk in the day in the life of the people they sell to? At Hubspot, for example, most of our sales training was just having our salespeople write blogs and do social media and create landing pages and create automation sequences. Like we turned them into markers so that when they got on the phone with their first marketer or business owner that was trying to do this new-age way of marketing, they could empathize with what that scariness was like and talk them through as a peer. So like can we do that, whether we’re doing network infrastructure or selling lab equipment there are always ways for us to like get our salespeople to understand our buyers. The second tactic I’ll say is, instead of making the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook the pitch deck, make the cornerstone of your sales enablement playbook, the buyer’s journey. Like, what’s going through their head at the awareness stage when they’re trying to define the problem. Once they’ve defined their problem, what are the different options they’re looking at to solve it, once they know which option they want to choose, how will they make that decision? Let’s teach our salespeople about that and define it and after every single first call, our managers can ask one question which is like where are they in the buying journey? That will force your salespeople to be top performers be discovery, consultative-oriented sellers that first and foremost, understand the context of the buyer. OF: That’s fantastic. It goes right into what my next question was going to be, which was about creating that culture of coaching. You mentioned a little bit of the role that sales management can play in helping to reinforce some of those behaviors with reps, but I’d love to dig into that aspect a little bit more and really hear how sales managers can leverage data to really have more effective coaching conversations. MR: Like most managers, I think do fall into a pitfall, which is the month or quarter is going along, we’re not quite at our goal, we’ve got a couple of reps that are struggling and they’ll say, here’s what we’re going to do Olivia. Invite me to your next five meetings and I’ll do the demos for you. I’ll run the meetings and they become super reps. A lot of things are wrong with that. Number one, you’re not holding your reps accountable for their job. Number two, they get lazy. Number three, they lose confidence because you can do it better than them. A lot of bad things happen and really that’s not our job as a manager. I understand why they do it because that’s how they got successful as a rep, but as a manager, our job is to hire and coach, that’s what it is and it’s up to the rep to succeed. The thing with coaching is that you can’t coach a rep on like 20 things at the time, it’s just not humanly possible to like absorb that coaching. You can do one, maybe two things at a time, and that’s really what the best coaches do. They get a new rep out of training, and usually, there’s like a pretty sizable list of like improvement areas and a good coach will say, I can’t work on all that at once, but here’s the one thing I’m going to work on and they’ll use the data to diagnose that. Usually, if we have basic data of like how many leads are we creating every month, how many become an opportunity, how many become stage three opportunities, and how many become close, we can get some visibility of what the blueprint is for our top performers in the average and where we’re off and that will help understand where we can at least look to diagnose things and figure out what the issue is. What I like to do as a leader is I like to review on the first day of the month all of my manager’s coaching plans with the reps. When I do that review, it forces the managers to have one on ones before our meeting, like in the morning or the day of the first day of the month to have that one-on-one coaching plan creation and schedule the coaching into the upcoming month. So Olivia, if you and I were talking and after reviewing your data together and talking qualitatively about your past month, we do determine that sense of urgency development is the thing we want to work on. Then I’d say great, like why don’t we get together on Friday at three, next Tuesday at nine, and the following Wednesday at noon and you show up to that meeting with a recorded first meeting, and we’ll listen to it together and look at it through the lens of sense of urgency development. That’s a beautiful start to the month, where I’m like, I have confidence that my managers have had that discussion with their reps and we have an entire set of coaching calls set based on data that are attacking the skills that represent the biggest improvement for our team. OF: Absolutely. That’s a fantastic approach as well. I have just one last question for you and it’s really about the last tactic in the formula, which is demand generation. I think a key piece that stood out to me in the formula here was really around the importance of accountability between sales and marketing teams. I’m curious about this in particular because sales enablement can often really be a function that’s kind of in the middle of those two teams, liaison between them, or helping to kind of bridge that gap. I’d love to hear your advice on how enablement leaders can really be that bridge and help sales and marketing teams develop and have that mutual accountability. MR: There needs to be a service level agreement between the two groups and it’s going take a combination of the CEO plus enablement to create that. We just really need the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to agree on their deliverables to each other. We need them to both agree on what is an MQL and how many we need from marketing and we need the sales team to agree to, like if we do get an MQL, how will we act on it, how quickly we call it, how frequently call it, and what kind of conversion rate do we expect out of that. That’s our goal. All of that leads to revenue, so that’s really the role of sales enablement is to work with the CEO and the sales and marketing leader to create that quantitative agreement. One area that you can start with, there’s a lot of different pieces to this, but usually when we’re putting together annual plans, and this is pretty relevant to today here in Q4, we’re pretty good at like saying all right, we want to go from 20 million to 30 million, which means we need to add 10 million top lines and last year our reps averaged half a million in productivity each. So I do the math and I have 10 of them, well that adds up to $5 million. I need to hire another 10 more and that will give me my 10 million. We’re pretty good at that like bottoms-up analysis from the rep capacity standpoint. Rarely do we do the marketing piece. So it’s like, yeah I get that my reps are producing 500,000, but how are they getting there? Well, if you look back on the year you can be like, oh my gosh, well half of our revenue came from marketing, and marketing had a budget of $1 million. They generated 1000 leads and the cost per lead was $1,000. If I had my math right, 20% of those leads became SQLs and 40% became opportunities, and 40% closed, so just using those numbers, I can figure out if we’re going to have another year where half of our new revenue comes from marketing, I can calculate precisely how many MQLs I need. Then, similarly, if half of our leads came from our cold calling team, the SDRs, then on average each one set 210 appointments last year the conversion to opportunity was 30% while the conversion of clothes was 20%, so immediately I can figure out like how many SDRs I need each quarter and what those conversion rates need to be. We don’t do that math, it’s simple math and that’s where sales enablement can play a big role. It’s just like let’s go back to the leadership team, the head of sales, the head of marketing, and just say here’s the plan, this is the blueprint to get there from the demand gen side and that helps both sales and marketing to have a quantitative route in what that service level agreement between the two groups can be. OF: Absolutely. In addition to that, it also helps enablement prove their impact to those executive leaders and be able to get a seat at the table in those conversations as really that strategic liaison between those leaders. So that’s fantastic advice. MR: It’s such an important seat because everybody else naturally has a little bit of political bias in the equation and sales enablement can be that sort of like an unbiased judge and jury that’s just trying to educate everybody on the truth. They just know that these are semi-scientists that are like helping us understand our business and hit our goals for next year. OF: Mark, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. I certainly learned a lot from this conversation so thanks again and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear this. MR: You bet Olivia. Thanks for having me. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Devi Madhavan, a sales enablement expert join us. Devi, I would love for you to introduce yourself and your background to our audience. Devi Madhavan: Thank you, Shawnna. It’s a real pleasure to be here with you. A little bit about myself, I’ve spent the last 20 years in business development, sales leader, and enablement roles at both enterprise and startup companies, with my last role being Vice President of Oracle Sales and Partner Academy. I also spent time as an advisor to a handful of startups, focusing on how companies can increase sales productivity. It’s very key to have a solid enablement strategy in alignment with the stage of company growth, which is largely dependent on product fit and customer demand. I’ve had the privilege of seeing enablement at sub 100 million in revenue and then at a larger scale. It’s my pleasure today to share some of those insights back with you. SS: Tell us about your experience, transitioning from sales leadership to enablement leadership. How would you say that that background helped to inform your approach to enablement? DM: Absolutely. Sales leadership is really focused on execution versus enablement is really focused on learning and having the opportunity to practice in a mock environment. When I was running a sales team, I was very focused on the day-to-day deals and pipe and closing them along with coaching my team members. There wasn’t enough time to be proactive and think about how to close the skill gaps ahead of actually being in that customer conversation. As I transitioned from sales leadership into running enablement, the biggest luxury was being able to translate what reps lacked into a curriculum and being able to identify where reinforcement training and coaching are actually needed. I’ve also learned that being proactive in investing in the rep's toolbox saves a lot of time instead of having them learn 100% on the job by trial and error because you don’t want to ruin your credibility in front of a customer. Time to productivity is much longer and at scale this chips away at revenue opportunities for your company. Finally, I’d say invest in your first-line managers and build training for them side by side along with anything that you do for your sales team that way you’re coaching them on the same vernacular. SS: I think that’s fantastic. It’s so interesting to hear you talk about how your sales leadership background helped you to understand what were some of those areas where enablement could really step up and play a fantastic role. For enablement practitioners who maybe don’t have sales leadership experience prior to moving into enablement, what are some key things that maybe they should know about how to effectively partner with sales leaders? DM: First of all, I’d say sales leaders don’t waste time at all. They’re very focused and they always prioritize their customers. They’re definitely not going to be spending time with enablement if they don’t see their agenda or enough of their footprint or the customer’s footprint, bringing value to add. When you’re having those conversations with your sales leaders, you really want to go in with a simple plan and avoid as much complexity as possible. Listen to them because good sales leaders know what challenges they’re facing and you actually can be really prescriptive with enablement to help solve those challenges specifically. Finally, I’d say you really want to make sure enablement is not a policing function or something that is seen as busy work or training that the team has to do. The goal really is to spread out training so it becomes a part of a lifestyle and it also suits their calendar needs with enough flexibility. Some key things to keep in mind are don’t offer training a quarter end, and also structure your onboarding programs and sales kickoff as macro-events. Don’t allow those to be serving a training purpose. It should really be around launching what’s new at sales kickoff and onboarding should be about reducing your ramp time in your role. What you really want to do is take microlearning to reinforce after these macro events and turn those into learning opportunities with reinforcement. Leaders are very invested in ongoing development, so selling the value of that is really key. SS: I think that’s a phenomenal way to think about it in some fantastic tips and tricks there. Now, with sales, and especially with your background in sales, I think that there’s a lot of deep empathy for understanding the importance of the sales process framework. With that background, how has that helped you to effectively build sales process frameworks on the enablement side of the house? DM: I love that question. Something very dear and close to my heart is the sales process framework I really think of the sales process framework as something that’s living and you can change it and tweak it based on how your landscape changes. First of all, I think it’s key that it’s not built just based on your internal needs. It’s actually a customer-buying journey. It’s about their activities in the process and how you’re aligning with that, so not just about your company. This is the number one mistake I’ve seen companies make. Second of all, I think a sales process framework is not as linear as we all like to think. There can be back and forth, so we make sure that there is fluidity and that we’re addressing what the customer’s needs are. You can structure phase gates but that’ll allow you to really come back and revisit areas to close the loop. Third, I’d say your CRM really needs to be in sync with that sales process so your team can record data and track their engagements in their own workflow. That synergy between your sales process and your CRM is necessary, so you’re minimizing ad hoc engagement and you’re able to use data-driven insights as you navigate the customer better. I would also say make sure that you have a champion for your sales process of the company and that there’s buy-in across your go-to-market functions since the sales process is not just about the seller’s role, it’s also about the support roles in the post-sales roles so that your handoffs really need to be well defined. Most companies end up taking some existing sales process frameworks and customizing them for their own needs and for a customer buying journey. SS: I think that those are fantastic tips. Can you walk us through some actionable steps for implementing an effective sales framework? DM: I would say outside of the cross-functional buy-in it’s really key that you’re looking at your sales motion. For example, if you’re selling in cloud or SAAS products, you know ongoing consumption and usage are key. Different types of customer engagement really need to be factored in as you’re implementing it in the CRM. Then I would say pilot any kind of process that you’re launching for gaps so you can keep iterating. As I said, it’s a living process that should be revisited every 6 to 12 months. Awareness to ensure that the proper checks and balances are there is key. SS: I think that is fantastic. Now I want to take a slight pivot on this because I think given the current economic climate, a lot of companies are focused on trying to retain and maybe even expand within established customer accounts. How can enablement help reps that are focused on those existing customers to execute the sales process to move customers forward in their journey throughout their lifecycle? DM: That is a great question and I would say very timely for what we’re facing as an economy. In general, what we’re seeing is that buying cycles are much longer because more internal approvals are needed from the customer and budgets are rapidly changing. The key is to really hone in on sales velocity and the way I like to measure sales velocity is you look at the number of your opportunities, multiply that by the average deal size and your win rate and then you divide that by the length of the sales cycle time. So that’s probably changing and as you understand each of those components, you have an opportunity to tweak and figure out where you need to actually isolate and pay attention to close the gaps. I think that’s key, really measuring your sales velocity and the impact of the extended cycle time in the sale. Second, I’d say you still want to understand the budget, authority, need, and timing, BANT is the industry-known acronym for that, to really understand how the customers are thinking about those things. What are the internal processes that have actually changed in their own internal roadmap? It's unlikely that you’re going to change any of their internal decisions, but you can understand what the challenges are earlier in the process and you can think through creative strategies as to how you’re going to keep the customer engaged. As always, finding triggers that can help them solve the challenges that they’re facing today is really key. SS: I love that. Devi, I have one last question for you because we’ve been talking about a lot of things, particularly with regard to sales process frameworks. In order to do that, obviously you have to be almost like a change agent within your organization. I’d love to close with a question to you about how enablement helps sales teams adapt as they execute and as companies scale or are going through a lot of these change motions. What role can enablement play in helping the sales teams adapt? DM: I think enablement can really be that change agent that you just described during a transformation. I think enablement has the opportunity to take a leadership role in that because the function is looking at multiple roles across the go-to-market. Bringing all that together with a succinct strategy and change management, I think it’s key that leadership buys into the role that enablement is going to play. Socializing that upfront and having that understanding is great. They can also actually train on the change and as they train on the change, they’re creating awareness, and change management is really key in that along with the communication plan. You can raise the level of awareness and empathy internally that’s needed for the organization as they go through this change by socializing the why and the how and helping everyone really get on the same page realizing what the outcome is going to be of the change. SS: I love that. Devi, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time and insights. DM: Thank you, Shawnna. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Amy DeBartolo from ACA group join us. Amy, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role and your organization to our audience. Amy DeBartolo: Hi, I’m Amy DeBartolo, I work with ACA group. My job is manager of sales enablement and I’ve been working in sales enablement now for 3.5 years. I’m excited to be here today. SS: Thank you so much for joining us. Now, one of the things I wanted to make sure we got to chat about on this podcast was around driving adoption of new initiatives and it really starts with getting the right teams involved at the right time. I’d love to learn a little bit more about your experience. How have you been able to do that in your enablement career journey? AD: Obviously the hardest thing about sales enablement is getting people involved and especially in larger companies when we’re rolling out new initiatives, what seems like, every day. One of the things that I like to do is introduce things to my team as things that are going to be helpful. Teams are often a little bit leery each time that you bring in something new, so one thing that I like to do with my team that I feel like is something that motivates them the most is I bring in a lot of contest work. I like to motivate my teams with contests, whether their silly little contests or bigger contests with bigger prizes, I always like to motivate the teams with a little bit of friendly competition. By adding a contest, we can motivate the team to compete against each other and to learn the new product at the same time. Whether it’s a prize as simple as a t-shirt or a cash prize, we seem to get the team to motivate each other by competing against each other to learn the new products. SS: I think that’s a really great approach. What are some of the challenges that enablement can face when it comes to driving adoption? AD: The challenges are definitely with all the different programs that are out there. There are so many new sales enablement programs and platforms that are coming out. We roll out so many that the team is a bit hesitant to learn so many new programs, especially when we roll them out all at once. What we try to do is to not roll out too many at the same time and give them a chance to learn each program and see how they integrate in with each other. By showing them that they integrate with each other, they see that they’re beneficial to how their sales performance is going to increase. We try to pick our programs carefully and pick our platforms with specific intent so that they can see how they’re going to integrate all in one platform. By picking out platforms that work together, we can show the team that each one is beneficial to one another and they work together. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now, what are some examples of unique ways that you’ve been able to get teams involved and interested in new initiatives? AD: I like to do weekly phone calls with my teams and instead of doing weekly phone calls that are serious and just training sessions, I like to give them fun titles. I’ve had calls before that I’ve called ‘it’s monday, don’t forget to be awesome.' Right now I have one that’s called Shane’s loft and we call it Shane’s world and we bring in special speakers. I try to pick out people who are doing exceptionally well on the platform so that we can highlight our top performers so that people can see, hey, this is really working for someone and this can work for you too. I like to highlight the team and I feel like by highlighting our strongest workers that other people can see, hey, this is working for someone and it can work for me too. SS: That’s fantastic. A lot of enablement practitioners really like to utilize intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators. How have you utilized these types of motivation to accelerate the adoption of new programs among reps? AD: As I just mentioned, by using the teams and by having team phone calls, we find that a lot of people join these calls to see how other people are working on these platforms. Another thing that we do are newsletters. We can highlight big wins from using the platforms, so if we have an exceptionally large win, we’ll highlight that win. I also try to get a quote from the rep saying, you know, hey, this win was because I sent out this email or because of this program, I was able to do this. This is something that I hadn’t been able to do in the past. By highlighting wins and by highlighting good performance or things that are coming up, we’re able to send out that newsletter in a positive way. I try to send out newsletters as often as possible, even though it’s hard on myself to send out a newsletter weekly, but I try to send them out as frequently as possible so that we can highlight those great win and highlight all these great programs that our company lets us buy into so that we can get the team motivated. SS: Now on the topic of buy-in, leadership buy-in is I think often a critical factor and driving adoption from the top down. What are some of your best practices for gaining leadership buy-in? AD: Obviously the motivation here is to make money. Anytime you can go to leadership and say, hey, you know, I can see a return on investment on this one as x amount of dollars. I’m lucky that I work for a company right now who is very adaptable. Our sales enablement program at the company right now is brand new, so they are very interested in anything that I’m going to roll out that’s going to help enable the team to make more money and to make life easier for our sales team. We have a very busy sales team right now with high quotas and anything that we can do to help enable our team to make life easier our team is very into right now. I’m lucky and fortunate that I work for a company that’s into it. For other people who have trouble with getting buy-in, something to do is to go to that leadership team and to say there’s only 12% return on emails is average and with some of these sales enablement programs right now you can see returns on your investment so much higher. It’s so important to stress that these programs are there to help and not to hinder and obviously what you’re doing right now is working, but with the help of sales enablement and the help of sales enablement teams and training and all the initiatives that we can roll out, it’s only going to improve the investment. I’m all for bringing in new products all the time. SS: I love that. Now, to close, what advice do you have for practitioners that maybe want to try new strategies when promoting their programs rather than just the conventional way that may have been used in the past? AD: Make it fun. I’m all about making things fun. My teams always know me as the person that doesn’t take things too seriously because I’m always on calls trying to make things fun. You can’t take a sales enablement program, especially some of the ones that are more complex and have serious training calls constantly. You’re not going to have a sales team that’s going to be involved if you’re always serious and this is how it’s going to be and you’ve got to do this this way and this this way and this way and that. That’s why I bring in contest work. Right now I’m running a contest with a $500 cash prize for whoever has the most emails returned to them because I want it to be fun for them. I want them to realize that if they see someone win $500 just by winning a contest and see that they get 600 emails sent out in a week, they’re going to go, I can do that too. If they won $500, imagine how much money I can make by actually getting out 600 emails and having that many clients return things. I always try to make things fun, keep things light, explain that we’re here to help them, we’re not here to make their lives more difficult. We’re here to actually make their lives easier. By having a sales enablement team and having a team that’s there to train them on things and make them feel more confident in what they’re doing is the best practice out there. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice. Amy, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. AD: Thank you. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. For many business leaders today, there’s often a huge disconnect between the experiences that they think they’re providing employees and customers and those employees and customers’ actual experiences. To bridge these gaps and deliver experiences that are truly employee and customer-centric, especially at scale, leaders need to make empathy a top priority. The book, “Empathy In Action” walks through how to do just that and I’m so excited to have one of the authors, Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, here to tell us a little bit more about the book. With that, Natalie, I’d love to hear a little bit more about you and tell us a little bit also about your book. Dr. Natalie Petouhoff: Thank you. It’s great to be here and this particular topic is really near and dear to my heart for a number of reasons. I think it’s one of the key business constructs that if adopted, and that’s shifting a lot of paradigms to say that, but if adopted, it could really radically change corporate America and sales as we know it. OF: Absolutely. One of the things that you mentioned in your book is this concept of how the book really came about because you noticed that while companies often say that the employee and customer experiences are important to them, there really hasn’t been that much actual improvement in the experiences that companies provide. I’d love to hear from you, why do you think that disconnect exists? NP: Back in the day I was a Forrester analyst and they did a study and they asked customers, what do you think about the customer experience, and 80% of the customers said it’s horrible, but when you talk to the companies they all felt that they were providing great experiences. Now flash forward 15 years, Bain & Company repeated the same study and they got the exact same results. That’s interesting because it’s the same question, and so what I noticed was how can two groups of people, and this was across lots of companies so it wasn’t company-specific and it wasn’t industry-specific, it was just across the board, what I noticed was when you asked the question from a different person’s point of view, you get a different answer. When you ask companies and executives how they think they’re doing, they think they’re doing great, but when you actually ask the people who are receiving the experience, either employees or customers, they have a completely different point of view. Really the concept in the book is if you’re an executive sit down and listen or shadow the people that you work with or do mystery shopping as a customer and understand that experience from that other person’s point of view and when you do that, what we’re finding when executives are willing to take that chance and to do it, they’re like, wow, this is horrible. Why do we do it like this? This makes absolutely no sense at all and especially if you’re a customer and you experience these things you’re thinking, what is the company thinking, I’m never going to buy from them, then you go to a cocktail party and you tell all your friends about the horrible experience. That spreads that bad word of mouth. I think since the pandemic, we’ve all had a moment, kind of a cause for pause, everybody kind of shifted their life priorities and so I think we’re in an interesting tipping point from both the employee and the customer point of view where people are just fed up and they’re really not going to take it anymore and so at some point, what we’re seeing is especially from the employee point of view, we have seen the great resignation which was followed by quiet quitting, so you may not have the employees you had or may not have the loyalty of those employees and their productivity or willingness to go the extra mile. For customers, it’s very easy for them to switch channels or go somewhere else, especially with the increase in online, so it does really impact the bottom line. This is not just a nice topic, this is a bottom line whether your company is going to make it or not, especially through this recession. OF: Absolutely, and actually, I’d love to dig in on that last point, a little bit more. Thinking about the year ahead and especially the economic times that we’re in right now, what are some of the potential consequences of that gap between the experience that companies think they’re providing and then the experience that customers and employees are actually having? NP: Think about it as yourself, you go online, you have a question, you want to return something, you want to buy something, you start interacting with a chatbot and the chatbot gives you canned answers. They’re clearly not understanding because they’re not really listening, they’re not seeing what you’ve done, they don’t have any context, they give you canned answers and you can’t get what you need. Then you contact them on another channel and this time you’re mad and frustrated because they wasted your time. Likely this could be calling a call center or customer experience center and then you’re frustrated with the agent. Now, the agent has no context of why you’re upset and has no idea what you’ve done if you’re using traditional means to set this all up. Now that a customer has to explain everything they’ve just done, making them even madder to think about the experience they just had and on the other end, that poor employee having to not only listen to how the company does things wrong but also oftentimes the customer’s anger is misplaced and ends up being placed on them. Think about it, if you’re a company and you’re providing bad experiences, how many times is that customer going to come back and buy from you? A lot of times companies have implemented self-service, like using chatbots, as a way to resolve issues, but if that issue cannot be resolved and then it has to go to another channel, you’re actually spending more money for the same issue. It’s costing you more money and it’s reducing the likelihood of a customer being a lifetime customer and buying from you again. The metrics that we want to measure don’t actually change, like average handle time or first contact resolution, but what happens is we’re now measuring them not from a cost-cutting point of view from the business, like we’ll just shove some sort of self-service technology at them and it may or may not work because they haven’t actually sat down and used it themselves, so they don’t know from that perspective, it doesn’t really accomplish what they wanted it to. Now you have a situation where if you started to measure the same metrics from the customer’s point of view, did I get what I needed, was it done quickly and easily, did it get resolved in one contact? This is about average handle time, the first time you get your resolution, so the resolution and the metrics haven’t changed, but what’s changed is whose perspective you are measuring it from. When you measure from the employee’s perspective, or you’re measuring from the customer’s perspective, and you actually do it really well, that requires new kinds of technology. Technology has only been out relatively shortly here in the 5th Industrial Revolution. That’s when you really start to change your business, but these are all new concepts. We’re on the cutting edge here, so a lot of people are going to say, but I’m doing that and I challenge them to look a little closer. OF: Definitely. On that point about thinking that you’re doing the right things, what does empathy then actually look like in practice for business leaders today? NP: If you’re being empathetic to the customer, you’re actually walking through that customer journey. Whether it’s contacting the company by SMS, chat, or email, what is that experience like? Is that experience something that you really get what you need quickly and easily without a lot of friction or is that experience really difficult? When you look at it from the employee’s point of view, how easy is it for the employees to do their job, can they really help customers or are there a lot of rules and policies and a lack of information? There are four principles in the Empathy In Action book. The first one is listening, which is looking at customer event data. The second one is taking what that customer is trying to do, augmenting it with AI so that it becomes intelligent, and then that gives either the bot or the agent enough information to be able to quickly and easily handle that interaction and then learning by using computational analysis to look at all the interactions in a day or a week or a month that a company is delivering and then saying, what did we do well from the customer and the employee’s point of view, and where can we make improvements and then actually taking that data that is very measurable and making those changes. OF: Absolutely. NP: Doesn't that seem like common sense? OF: It does, and it’s something that you talk about in your book is the difference between empathy and sympathy and I feel like that’s where a lot of business leaders might be getting tripped up thinking, oh just sympathizing with my customers or my employees is thinking about their experiences, but it’s really walking through actually how they are experiencing and interacting with your firm. I’d love to hear about that a little bit more from your perspective, what the difference is between sympathy and empathy in particular with how it’s being implemented in businesses today. NP: Sympathy, in our definition, is really coming from the perspective of how you see something, not how the other person sees it. Oftentimes it might be expressed as a feeling of compassion, maybe pity, you might hear someone say gee I’m really sorry that’s happening to you, and that’s really kind but it doesn’t really change anything. It’s only when you sit in the seat of someone else. This applies to all personal relationships, marriages, people that you’re dating, your boss, is pretty much any human interaction. When you sit in the seat of the other person and you see the world from their eyes and you start to really interact with them from their point of view, then you can start to really change what your behavior is. So sympathy is making a polite statement, while empathy is really seeing the world through their eyes and then changing what you’re doing to take into consideration what’s really happening to them. You’re right, I think a lot of people see the title and they’re like, oh yeah well we’re going to train all our people to be really kind, and I’m not saying don’t do that, that’s a good thing, but this is the next step. The reason it says ‘empathy in action is because now it’s about behavior changes now, it’s about policy changes, process changes, and changes in how technology can deliver an experience, and that’s really the difference. OF: I love that. I think we talked about this a little bit already around the next year and where businesses are right now, particularly with economic uncertainty, but also with a lot of the technological innovation that we’ve been experiencing, as you talk about in the book, the Fifth Industrial Revolution is what we’re all in the midst of. I’d love to hear a little bit more from you about really how businesses should be thinking about planning ahead, not just in this next year, but thinking about the evolution that will need to happen with being in this Fifth Industrial Revolution. How can businesses plan ahead and make sure that they are implementing empathy in action as they are evolving in the next year and beyond? NP: If we look at the short term, we see that we are heading into a recession, so it’s really important to be able to retain your employees. It’s really important, especially if you’re in the world of sales, to really have your salespeople sit in the seat of the customer and understand when you’re selling to someone, what are they going through. What are their priorities? Not what you have to sell them, but what they need and want right now in the long term. It’s really that transition. What’s happening in the Fifth Industrial Revolution, which just started in 2021, is the first time that we’ve had a meeting of humanity and technology and the ability to look at and change human behavior. The previous industrial revolutions were about efficiency and effectiveness from a corporate point of view and cutting costs, a lot of automation, so robotics and the internet gave us a lot of capabilities that we didn’t have before. Now, it’s really the first time, and that’s why this is such a new concept, is it’s the first time that people have really put this all together to really look at how we are using technology to change behaviors and how we enable our employees to be able to deliver the best experiences, especially as salespeople? How much information do they have on the customer, and what do they really need to know to be able to serve those people instead of just approaching it from just selling? It’s less about the product and more about the outcome for that business and really looking at how you’re going to improve that company’s business, reduce their costs, increase their revenue, secure their place in the marketplace. I think when you really come from the place of understanding your customer and you sell from that place of being in service to them, it completely changes the dynamic. I would love to hear from people when they do sit in the seat of their customers and they are selling and they change that dynamic from me, me, me and I think you ought to buy this and you know, we’re going to give you a great deal and our products better than the other guy’s product, you know, all those things that we can tend to kind of default on. When we really slow down and really sit in the seat of that person, it takes more time, takes more research, it takes more effort to have the conversation. It’s different. It’s not so much in the numbers, it’s in the understanding and changing behaviors, that’s where success comes from. OF: I love that. Yes, enabling behavior change, and I think that’s where our audience of sales enablement practitioners can add so much value to the business and really help leaders understand how they can implement this empathy and action. Natalie, thank you so much for joining the podcast today, it was such a pleasure to hear from you and learn more about your book and I can’t wait for our listeners to hear this and also pick up a copy of your book as well. NP: Thank you. I really appreciate it. OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you. To purchase a copy of “Empathy in Action”, visit Amazon here.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Lorenzo Hill from Vonage join us. Lorenzo, I’d love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Lorenzo Hill: Thank you, Shawnna. As you mentioned, my name is Lorenzo Hill and I am a sales enablement professional at Vonage. If you don’t know Vonage, we are a cloud-based communication platform provider recently acquired by Ericsson, the largest 5G provider in the galaxy. My sales career started back in 2006, many, many moons ago. I worked as a publishing rep selling textbooks to college professors. I did that for about 10 years and then the company I was with launched a program called the regional rep trainer, in which reps who were top performers, could also take on an additional role of onboarding or assisting with the onboarding of new hires, so I got my feet wet in training and enablement with that role. I did that for a few years and then officially became the full trainer for that organization and that was about 2017. I’ve been in training enablement since that time and that’s where I am today. SS: Well we’re excited to have you here. You talked a little bit about your background, particularly around sales and sales training programs. What are some of your best practices to ensure that you develop and deliver really engaging training content? LH: Sure. Speaking of content as far as the actual delivery of the content, I would say the number one best practice for me is to ensure that I am considering the attendees’ experience. As with adult learners, you may know, they come with a lot of experience and if you don’t leverage that experience or allow them to utilize and share that experience, there may be a little bit of resentment. There may be a little bit of closed-mindedness which can derail any sort of training. I always try to incorporate the learner’s experience by saying this is how we do it but tell me how you used to do it and I think that opens the door for a great engaging training session. As far as the actual development of the content, it’s really just a matter of finding out what the main purpose or the goal of the training is and what the content is supposed to do. Is it instructional training, or is it behavior change training? Those different types of goals can have an impact on the type of training or the type of content that we develop. SS: Absolutely. Oftentimes behavior change is one of those goals, I would imagine. Driving that behavior change, especially through training can take some time and some effort. What are some of the obstacles that you’ve encountered that can prevent behavior change? LH: Oh, there are no obstacles. Totally kidding, but wouldn’t that be wonderful? It goes back to the old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink. A lot of times you can deliver the most impactful, engaging training and everyone is high-fiving, they’re giving you high marks on the post-survey and then they go right back to the same exact behaviors without any changes. Really trying to instill the importance of the change, and why the change is necessary, I think sometimes it can open the eyes of the attendees and really help them to focus on why this change is needed. Another obstacle is just reinforcement after the training has taken place. That’s where we have to leverage our sales leaders a lot because once they leave the training room there in the hands of the managers and the leaders and so we have to really have them on board hand in hand with us to reinforce that training so that we can see that that behavior change. If that’s not in lockstep together, to put it bluntly, you’re spinning your wheels and wasting your time. One of the challenges I also want to touch on is that sometimes as sales enablement we have too many tools, and too many resources and the last thing that we want to do as sales enablement is to take the sales teams away from selling. Our job is to obviously make it easier, make it more efficient for the sellers to sell and so sometimes having all these tools can get in the way. One of the number one jobs a sales enablement team can do is to ensure that the tools and resources are easy to find. At Vonage, we have what we call a confluence page where it’s like a Wikipedia page. You can go to this site and enter whatever information you’re looking for and you’ll find a list of resources that you can use that relate to that topic. The other part of that is, as you probably know, information processes are constantly evolving and changing and so be sure that you are rotating the stock, I like to say. You have old documents, and old resources and you update them and get the old ones out of there so the reps aren’t trying to figure out which one is the most current and which one has the most accurate information. Just little things like that I think can add to the efficiency of what the reps are trying to do. SS: How have you gone about overcoming some of those challenges to ensure that the behavior change really takes hold post-training? LH: I love this question because this is something I’ve really tried to bring light to at Vonage. How can we ensure that the behavior change is taking place once training happens? The first thing is, as I mentioned before, to be in lockstep with the leaders. The leaders that I support have weekly team meetings, so I try to commit to at least two of those per month. That way it allows me to be in step with the team. What are some of the team’s concerns? What’s top of mind for them? I’m able to hear those concerns firsthand and then I’m also able to reinforce some of the initiatives and the training that we’ve offered or will soon be offering. Just to have that team together to be able to share that with them in that environment sometimes reinforces some of the changes that we’re trying to make. SS: Absolutely. Now, you’ve talked a little bit about partnering with leadership. I’d love some really practical advice for our audience. How do you partner with sales managers and leaders to reinforce behavior change? LH: As I mentioned, attending their meetings makes them feel as if I am a part of the team, a resource they can leverage if they need any sort of sales enablement from tools, and resources to coaching. I want to make myself available to that team. Additionally, I think having the managers or the leaders involved in the development of any sort of initiative or any strategies starts with understanding what the team needs. I think sometimes as sales enablement we can sort of put the cart before the horse and that we think we know what the team needs, we think we know when they need it and sometimes the manager or the leader has a little better understanding of that information. I think it’s really important to keep the leaders in the loop on any future or current initiatives that will be presented to their teams. SS: Absolutely. I think the other reason it’s important for frontline managers to be involved is the coaching element. From your perspective, what role does coaching play and driving behavior change, and what are some ways that you’ve designed coaching programs to optimize behavior change? LH: Well, you hit on something that’s a sensitive subject for me. Just because of bandwidth we aren’t able to get as involved in the coaching aspect as I would like. There are two of us that support the Americas and we have 700 or 800 reps. I may be understating that if we count some of the SDRs and BDRs. There’s just not enough of us to go around to provide that more intimate coaching. We do offer group call coaching, where we pull together teams and listen to recorded calls and have each of the reps provide feedback to each other. We get a lot of positive feedback from that exercise and activity. As far as being able to coach, we just are not able to do it in that capacity right now. With that being said, I am always open to ideas or strategies that can sort of duplicate or clone us as sales enablement so that we can be in more places to provide those services. To that fact, coaching for us really falls back on the leaders and so we’ve developed a coaching plan or coaching strategies for the leaders that they all went through that basically showed the principles of coaching, what’s the most effective coaching style or strategies and tactics, and so every manager went through that training. SS: I think that’s fantastic. That is absolutely the best place to start and a cloning machine would be nice these days. LH: For some of us. SS: Very true. Now, to close, can you share how you track if the behavior is changing and some of the key metrics that you’re measuring for this particular aspect? LH: The first step in measurement is what we call our NPS surveys. We distribute those after every session, workshop, and what have you. We take the feedback from those surveys very seriously. We’re always looking for ways to improve not only the sales team but to improve ourselves as well. We take that feedback, constructive or however, and we adjust accordingly. In addition to the surveys, again, I’m always in front of the managers and I’m asking what’s going on and what we need. Sometimes it’s something such as sales pipeline cleanup and so we’ll look at that for a few weeks and offer some content to kind of provide suggestions on how to maintain a healthy clean pipeline and then we’ll just look at that over the next few weeks, like I said, to see if it is improving. If not we’ll do some remediation. Usually, with the help of the managers and the leader, those types of things usually correct themselves after one or two interactions with the sales teams. Other than that it is kind of hard to measure some of the changes that you’re trying to instill or identify, but the surveys are the main resource that we use. SS: Fantastic. Well Lorenzo, thank you so much for joining us to talk about how you’re approaching behavior change advantage. I really appreciate your time. LH: I appreciate you having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Cristina Patranoiu, the partner enablement training specialist at RingCentral join us. Cristina would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Cristina Patranoiu: Absolutely. Hi everyone, I’m Cristina Patranoiu, a sales enablement professional activating within the cloud as we generically call it for an American company with an international expansion mindset. I am based in France and joining you all from here with my glass of wine that you cannot see, but there is no croissant this time, unfortunately. I joined RingCentral a little over 12 months ago to lead enablement for France, coming with about five years of sales enablement experience. If I was to go a little bit deeper here, I think my motivation for doing what I do began back about 12 years ago when I was starting my career as a junior financial analyst and I realized that I’m particularly interested in understanding how the things around me move and coming to place together and taking something complicated and making it simple for others to understand. It’s kind of been a roller coaster ever since. SS: Well, I’m excited that you are here as part of that roller coaster ride to join us today. One of your areas of expertise is adult learning. Why is adult learning so critical to understand as an enablement professional? CP: Yes, indeed it’s kind of what I specialize in. I often say during my training to the various audiences that this is not school and I won’t grade you and I won’t give you homework, but I am very set on making sure that everyone lives here having learned something from the time we spend together. Obviously, there are adults in front of me and they’re professionals and that really is my fuel for the programs I run and during the sessions I deliver. I believe we all learn differently today. Our attention span is so diminished since the internet and the cell phone took over and enablement nowadays is about giving your teams the information they need when they need it and is readily available. Very plug-and-play. At least the way I see enablement around me and the technology space if you want, it’s very plug-and-play. Adult learning really goes to the foundation of what we do because you have to really know what makes them tick, what they need, and give that to them the way they need. It needs to be very simple, very dumbed down if you want but extremely efficient like a cube that has all the nutrients but none of the fluff if that makes any sense. SS: It absolutely does. What are some essential adult learning techniques that you’ve learned that you embed in your training programs? CP: I do absolutely agree that adult learning is critically important to anyone aiming for added value in this type of role. A few tricks I’m using are actually modeling my sessions with a lot of storytelling inside. I think that would be the first tip that I would share with you. We generally recall stories six or seven times easier and for longer periods of time than we do stats or hard facts. It’s this native human connection that we have to stories that’s been inherited through our genes and every single time I try this it helps the audiences really pragmatically live with the messaging needed in their heads and it actually sticks with them longer, but it has the added benefit of leaving them enough space to make it their own. Storytelling absolutely every time I recommend it. If anything it is the secret ingredients that I put into all the training I deliver. Secondly, what I recommend for adult learning and what I’ve seen that works extremely efficiently nowadays, especially because we are in an industry that has been over-engineered and creativity has been at the foundation of everything we do but we’ve done it so many times that it doesn’t really feel like we can do it anymore. I would say secondly it’s coaching. There is a very large subject to unpack here, but adults come with experience and various degrees of awareness and generally, they already have the capacity to be a lot more creative and find extra motivation when given the chance. I’m a big advocate for professional coaching to enable people to take ownership of their success and we can probably expand on this based on the questions you guys have, but last and probably definitely not least practice. Now, there’s always time built into my sessions for sales to practice what I have just preached, so to say, be it the methodology we are using, certainly be it the new features we’re launching, Beit negotiating within a development program. Whatever it is that we’re doing, we always reserve time for them to practice what they’ve just learned. I always make it engaging so I interact a lot with the participants and I ensure that everyone is participating. You actually laugh if you saw me doing any sort of online training because I always have my agenda next to me and I keep a list of all the participants and I have like a little star for if they participate, like did this person say anything? Should I push them further? Did I ask a question of everyone? I always do my best to keep an eye on everybody participating and engaging in the session and with each other. I absolutely do that a lot and recommend it a lot. It is absolutely needed, especially in this digital world of video training and remote work. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now to build on that a little bit, as you just mentioned, participation is important. What career advice do you have to offer leaders to help them actually curate a more open environment where their sellers feel empowered maybe to ask questions or lean in and participate in the company culture, essentially? CP: It’s funny to me that you would ask that because I actually find the US is extremely good at doing it natively. Like I think culturally speaking the way I noticed our sellers and our teams in North America, I find you guys generally being extremely curious and never feeling like you cannot ask. If I were to think about the advice I would give leaders, I would say to try to make your cultures as inclusive as possible and encourage yourself as leaders. If I look around me at the people we look up to within my organization and the people that generally have been very approachable, we can tell that the happiness in their teams is at the highest level and people are generally thriving in that environment of let’s say the leaders that empower their teams, they’re the kind of leaders that are vulnerable and human. I think on advice I would have for leadership is to be vulnerable, and honest with the people in front of you. A lot of the time in the corporate world we portray ourselves as bigger-than-life, perfect professionals that have no flaws that know everything that knows the solution or the product, know the training, know the book, who read everything, and read all the news. It’s very hard to connect with that level of perfection so I think a culture that would let people be who they are is a culture that has leaders that are honest and vulnerable with the people in front of them, be their teams, be their clients, be any other stakeholders that they might have. People who can come to the table and say, hey, we’ve been struggling. It’s been a very tough two years because of COVID. We’ve lost money, we’ve lost people, but we’re still doing the best we can to innovate. We’re still doing the best we can to be there for our employees. We’re still doing the best we can to maybe offer that flexibility that our workforce needs. Whatever your situation might be, be open about it and that will get the people on your team to open up to you. It will get them to want to learn more, it will get them to want to be better for the product they sell for the company they represent. I think that would be my advice. I hope it’s not too cheesy. I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but it’s really not, there’s a lot of strength in asking for help when you need it. SS: No, absolutely, I couldn’t agree more. Now, you mentioned that you’re also passionate about enabling others to make sense of what more needs to look like for them. How do you help to also personalize some of the training programs that you create to meet these individual, unique needs of different sellers? CP: That exact phrase, what more needs to look like for them, is actually a phrase that came from my coaching. I am a certified professional coach as well for the past three years and that’s really truly my passion, practicing enablement and training in general, and is the foundation of what I consider a job well done in today’s sales environment and industry if you want. More really can mean slowing down so we can speed up as one of my favorite colleagues in my team often says, and more can mean better team cohesion between the different stakeholders inside the group and it can very well mean more revenue or better empowerment for the teams or better and more efficient alignment. What I personally did at the very start of my current role was to reach out to each of my stakeholders individually and find out what they needed to do a better job in their roles. After running through them one by one individually, we then gathered in groups by teams and decided on a few joint areas of improvement and focus that we wanted to build our relationship on, like the relationship enablement revenue if I were to consider sales revenue in general because depending on what kind of enablement you’re doing and what your industries, you’re going to have different levels of stakeholders so I called revenue everybody who touches revenue one directly or indirectly and with whom enablement needs to interact with. We basically got together to share expectations, create a shared plan and set up a schedule of how often we are going to meet to touch base on this and to see how things are evolving. That’s how I basically got to take this idea more, understand what it means for them individually, and then take it one step further. I can’t tell if this recipe would actually work the same everywhere. I don’t even really call it a recipe, but it’s my modus operandi, my M.O. because it looks like a complex system from both individual levels and as a total sum of its parts. SS: I love that. I think that’s phenomenal. Now I want to dig into a little bit more about what you are currently focused on. Your focus is around partner enablement and training, what are some of the unique needs that maybe partner sellers might have, and what are some ways that you’ve designed training programs to meet those needs? CP: As tough as training internal sales folk is because I was saying adult learning, they need everything super fast, they want to know the exact thing when they want to know when they need it and be done with it. With partners, the relationship is a lot more delicate. On one hand, you want to give them all the information you could possibly give them so that from an enablement standpoint, you feel you’ve done a good job and they’ve had everything they could possibly need to know in order to go out there and sell your solution, but on the other, you don’t want to overwhelm them. It’s really this fine line, this dance you need to constantly do of holding their hand, but also pushing them to do better and to ask for information that they need that might be very particular to what they do and how they understand the industry they’re an expert of. That’s why you have a go-to-market strategy that involves distribution and sellers. Generally what we do is we work very closely with the channel account managers, like we try to make sure that the people who onboard those partners and realistically the people who interact with them more come to us for feedback before we plan any sort of session or academy or enablement day with any of the partners we work with and we take their feedback into consideration while building the content. We always go back and forth to make sure that it matches their needs. It goes to be very personalized for some of them and at least for me, because again, I work in France and as you might or might not know France has to be very particular with the way partnerships work. We do a lot for our partners, so we do this exact dance of holding their hands but not giving them too much and trying to give them exactly what they need when they ask for it. The exact answer for me would be to have a channel account manager or whoever is taking care of those partners step in and carry the load because they already have the trust and the relationship built with the partner. Let them make it easy for you as enablement to bring in your message. Personalize as much as you can so the information you’re providing is the one they want to take out of the sessions and more than anything really listen. With partners, a lot of the times enablement I think has a tendency of pushing as much content as they can because we work so hard making it and we also work hard with marketing to have the pretty slides and the messaging and everything else we want to communicate, but we don’t spend enough time with partners so we get to really listen to them. My absolute advice and what we try to do mostly is listen to them when we have them for those sessions so we can improve it for future sessions or for the future partners or for whatever other programs are coming after. The same advice you would give your sellers in trying to make them better sellers apply to you as an enablement professional, sell yourself through those sessions the same way you want your sellers to sell your solution when they go in the field. SS: Cristina, thank you so much for your time. I want to ask one closing question. Sales enablement obviously takes many shapes, sizes, and colors in the real world, and in various industries, there’s really no one size fits all, but what would you say that your key takeaways are moving from training into enablement? CP: Oh, I love this one. Here’s how I would define enablement and kind of how I built it for myself. I’m trying the best I can to be the bridge between revenue and the rest of the business. I’m trying to be the catalyst for change or process change or any sort of thing that’s happening in the business, I try to be the first person bringing it to sales. I don’t want sales spending time doing anything else other than their job. I want to be the person bridging them to everything that’s happening, bringing that information to them, digested, explained with impacts, and with whatever they need to know distilled into the meaning of it to them. I think all in all be as much a bridge with the rest of the business for sales as you can. That’s my personal way of doing my business. Absolutely, everybody can do it differently. That’s not what works for them, but that’s how I perceive enablement. Generally, you need all that information for yourself anyway because you’re going to need to infuse it into your training and your programs and you need to know what’s happening around you. The more you do that and the more people you know so you can get the information the better and the more efficient you’re going to be. I think one thing that I’ve learned and probably the hard way and I’m very sure a lot of people are going to relate to this is enable don’t save. In enablement, we’re a bunch of empaths, like we are the kind of people that are into this job because they care for others. They see them struggle, they see how hard it is selling today, they see how much people have to juggle, they see how tough the different industries are and they want to be there to help. We don’t become doctors, we somehow chose enablement, and we’re here today. A lot of the time the business will push on us, the things that are not necessarily within the enablement job description, because it’s so easy because we’re there and we always want to help so we will take more upon ourselves and we’ll do that deck and we’ll do that training and we’ll do that at the training and we’ll do the training for HR and we’ll talk to marketing and maybe just take the deck, but do it ourselves. There’s a lot that ends up being done by enablement that’s really not enablement. My takeaway was how do I turn this into actually enabling these people and not saving them because saving them is literally giving someone a fish rather than teaching them how to fish. I will be honest, saying that I’m much, much better at saying no today, and switching this exact circumstance in my favor and getting people to fish for their fish and not get it from me, but it does require a lot of work and a lot of trusts built between the different stakeholders you’re gonna work for. Again, enable don’t save, It’s in your best interest, and it’s that’s exactly where the switch gets made where enablement is an investment, and it’s an actual part of the business that helps and not just this other department that we don’t really know what they do so let’s just get them to do this and that and the other thing, and let’s get them to do everything that doesn’t ever get done, because they will manage because they’re the training people. Don’t let them do that to you. It’s absolutely counterproductive. I think, last but not least, this might be just my case because in Europe we tend to be a little bit behind where the US is in enablement wise, you guys are just more advanced, you’ve always been, you are the pioneers in this and we’re just following in your footsteps. What I would say is whenever you start a new enablement mission, be it in a new company, be it in a different team, whatever your case might be, try to look around you and figure out what the gaps are and do your best to fill them in as fast as you can by priority and impact. There are always gaps that are really why enablement is here. If everything worked perfectly and sales knew exactly what to sell and where to sell it and how to get the information and not have anyone do it and give it to them, we wouldn’t be here. There are always gaps. That’s really the point, you can go in get your big wins in the beginning and start establishing that trust with your stakeholders and build on a strong foundation of I’m here to help and I know what I’m doing and I got this because look, I know maybe you’re not moving from opportunity to closing fast enough, maybe the lead doesn’t turn into an opportunity fast enough, I can help with all of that, I can keep people happy, I can help with metrics, I can show you why enablement is worth the investment you’re putting into it if that makes sense. SS: I think that is fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time. CP: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, I’m absolutely grateful to speak to anyone that would learn something from this because as I was saying, I need people to learn something from me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today I’m excited to have Kasey Stinson from Co-Op Solutions join us. Kasey, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Kasey Stinson: Thanks so much for having me. I am Kasey Stinson, Vice President of Sales Enablement and Product Marketing at Co-Op Solutions. For those of you unfamiliar with Co-Op Solutions, we are a financial technology organization that exists to help credit unions in particular grow and compete with other financial institutions. I have about 15 years of experience in sales, sales leadership, and now in sales enablement and product marketing which I have been doing at Co-Op Solutions for the past 3.5 years. SS: I’m excited to have you here, Kasey. As a leader for both sales and product marketing, what are some of the key points of intersection that you see between those two functions? KS: In my organization at Co-Op leading both sales enablement and product marketing really makes sense from a strategic perspective. It enables me to have oversight and control of product positioning throughout the entire product development process. From start to finish we have very close alignment on that positioning with our sales team and, of course, with our relationship teams as well. Once that is all established and the product is through the product development process, it’s then a really easy transition from that product marketing and positioning into messaging, which then informs our sales tools and our sales training. Just to note though, I do have two distinct teams. I have a product marketing team and a sales enablement team, but the product marketing team members are absolutely critical partners in helping to inform our sales enablement strategy and they have very strong relationships and understand the needs of the sales team through their work with them during the product development process when they’re constantly weighing in for their feedback on how we should be positioning the products and then what tools and training we need to support those. SS: Absolutely. You touched on this just a moment ago, but you talked a little bit about alignment. What are some of the challenges that organizations can face when they’re attempting to drive alignment between sales enablement and the greater organization? KS: When I started at Co-Op Solutions 3.5 years ago, the sales enablement function was in its relatively early stages. Co-Op started a sales enablement function in about 2016 of which I was along for the ride in 2016 when I was doing some consulting work, but even when I started in 2019, I often had to ask to have a seat at the table or be a part of a meeting or I would hear a sales team meeting was going on and we weren’t invited so I’d raise my hand and reach out to my sales leader counterparts and say, Hey, can I tag along to that? Then once I got that seat at the table, I had to prove the value that I brought through our sales enablement function and how we could enrich their meetings and enrich their tools in training. Fast forward 3.5 years, and now we’re absolutely missed when we’re not at the table and brought in right away. I would say they rely on us as true partners, but it’s required work, it’s required the building of trust and those challenges exist really early on when you’re not connected or collaborating as a team. Then, I would say once we really established ourselves with the sales organization, that expanded into different areas of the organization as well. We have tools and training that we make available for our executive-level management team, leaders across the organization, and other departments, like our client service organization and more, so we’ve been able to overcome some of those challenges and then expand our value and our impact on Co-Op solutions. SS: That is fantastic. If you could share some of your best practices for breaking down the silos between sales enablement and the greater organization. What were some of the things that you did? KS: I briefly alluded to this, but building relationships is really number one. My advice to others would be to find out who the influential and maybe outspoken partners in the organization are and I would say regardless of their role or position we all know that there are influential people throughout the layers of management of an organization and its key to understand their needs and build trust with those people. Once you’re able to forge those relationships, they’ll advocate on your behalf and tell their friends and tell their coworkers and speak to the value that you really bring to the organization. I would say even just taking that one step further, once you are able to earn that trust, you can start pushing and that’s where the magic begins. You can push the envelope to get the team outside of their comfort zone and suggest new ideas and you’ve built that trust so they’re more willing to be open and have a growth mindset for new ideas for sales tools, maybe some new strategies. We’ve been able to do this with our tools and training, expanding the topics that we train the team on, having maybe new and different sessions at our sales meeting, and really encouraging the growth of our organization along with the growth of the market and the industry as well. SS: That’s fantastic. As you said, relationship building, that’s absolutely number one. Can you share some advice on how you’ve built strategic partnerships with other leaders throughout your organization? KS: I think it comes as no surprise to anyone that investing time is critical and it does take all of that time to connect with people. Once you have that time established, listen. If you are a truly active listener and you’re able to understand their needs and typically these might be verbalized in the form of pain points they’re experiencing, maybe experiencing in front of their prospective clients or their clients, and you’re able to help them overcome some of those pain points and provide value in helping them overcome, then you’ve really begun to build your value as that strategic partner that they’re looking for. The other tip I have is to incorporate processes. We have needed to build processes around incorporating the voice of the sales team and that ensures that we have a very consistent and reliable set of touchpoints to allow for this feedback throughout our work in whatever it is that we’re doing, whether it be the sales team meeting or sales tools or sales training or that positioning of the products that I spoke about, we want to make sure that we have high performing rep voices or sales leadership voice is always at the table so that they become active participants and were able to build those relationships and prove that we always have their best interests in mind. SS: I love that, I think that’s fantastic. You have really been working to essentially drive a culture of collaboration, so what are some of the ways that enablement practitioners can help drive a similar culture throughout all levels of their organization? KS: It really goes back to what I just hit on which is listening and understanding needs and finding ways that you can partner to provide value to those teams. Usually, at the end of the day in organizations, everyone’s working to achieve common outcomes so if you’re at the table sharing out your plans and ideas and you’re asking for collaboration and input and you have your go-to people, you know what your team can bring to the table, and you’re listening and partnering, then it really helps to drive that culture. Two other things, one is we joke that we have something called the awareness carnival. It’s just our internal sales enablement term, but we want to make sure that we are sharing value and being strategic partners with other cross-functional departments. We’re continuously having this awareness carnival of what we bring to the table and how we can partner. That drives a culture of collaboration, we drive excellent conversations through some of those discussions, and we are constantly pressure testing our work to say how can we do this better, what input do you have? Secondly, I think it’s important to know what your team is known for, almost the brand or identity of your team, and lean into those to find points of collaboration. There are very few pieces of the work that we do that are really key points for collaboration for our organization. We lead the strategy and production of our sales enablement webinars and those are such great opportunities for collaboration because they drive participation from all facets of the organization. We might have a guest speaker from our pricing team, we might have someone leading a cross-functional presentation on sales strategy and internal and external strategy and how that comes together to be a consultative partner. We’re always looking for ways to drive engagement from different teams across the organization to present to our sales team. SS: I love those. Last question for you, how can cross-functional alignment and collaboration ultimately impact the key business priorities and really drive results against perhaps some of the organization’s more strategic goals? KS: The strategic goal that really comes to mind for me outside of we will say a revenue impact or renewal in and retention of existing clients would be a client impact. We are striving at Co-Op to always have happy clients and clients who want to do business with us. When you have more engaged teams across an organization, they are supported with more training, more knowledge, strong expertise, a high level of strategy, and really effective tools, they are able to provide our clients with a consistent experience and have a very high level of knowledge and are able to be strategic partners and also, of course, help navigate anything that may come to the client that we can provide support on. I would say more engaged teams even above and beyond, just sales, expanding into other departments, any client-facing teams, and we really are able to make a significant impact on our clients and their experience with our organization. SS: That is fantastic. Kasey, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. KS: Thanks for having me SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. The sales landscape is ever-changing and in many ways, that means that the knowledge and skills that salespeople need to be successful also change over time. While the specific tools or methodologies that salespeople use may evolve, the core behaviors and habits that lead to success remain timeless. Steven Schiffman is the author of over 70 books on sales best practices, including the 25 Sales Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople and Cold Calling Techniques That Really Work. I’m so excited to have Steven here to share with us so much of his knowledge and wisdom. With that, Steven, I’d love it if you could just take a second and introduce yourself to our audience. Stephan Schiffman: First, I want to thank you for inviting me. I appreciate that. I’ve been doing this for nearly 35 years now and I’ve met with and trained over 900,000 salespeople in 9,000 different corporations, in 43 different countries. It always thrills me when I get an opportunity to talk to people more directly. It’s not just a lecture, it really is a style and a feeling about how people can do a better job, be more empowered about their jobs and win because that’s what they talk about. I’m really glad to be here today. Thank you. OF: Fantastic. As you mentioned, you have a wealth of knowledge and you’ve been doing this for decades. SS: Forever. You can say that. It's been forever. OF: You really are one of the key thought leaders in the sales space and so, what I really wanted to start to talk to you about is a lot of your books mention how some of the old-school ways of thinking about sales and some of the old traditional sales tactics were no longer working. I think this is a theme that continuously you’ve talked about throughout your books and those old tactics continue to evolve. I just love to hear from you, what are some of the key challenges that you really think reps are facing today that they have been facing over your career, and how have you seen some of those challenges continue to persist over time? SS: The thing that kills salespeople when I say it to them, whether it’s in a lecture or written or in a training, is no one needs you. No one needs your product. I’ll tell you why I say that because nobody ever gets this at first. Let’s just pretend you’re selling pencils. You’re going to go to someone who uses pencils. I mean, you don’t go to someone who doesn’t you go to someone who does. If you think about it, they have to have a pencil already. They have to have the product you’re selling already or you wouldn’t go there. You’re not going to go to somebody who writes in chocolates, which is a ridiculous analogy, but you’re not going to go to someone who doesn’t use what you have. Therefore, if you follow this, they already have it. They’re already using it, so you as a salesperson are an agent of change. That is you have to get them to rethink what they’re doing and buy from you. Most salespeople don’t get that. They go, oh, they really need this, No, they don’t need you, they don’t need your product because they’re using it already, just not yours. That perhaps is the biggest single difference that I can tell you about sales, whether it was 30 years ago, 10 years ago, or today. Same thing. OF: Absolutely. I think what you mentioned there around they don’t need you, so what you need to do is then build trust. I think that’s something that you talk a lot about in your books as well is really how to build that trust. One of the things that you mentioned is the importance of communication skills. I’d love to dig into that a little bit. What is your advice really around how salespeople can improve their communication with buyers, and maybe what are some of the common pitfalls that you often see in how salespeople are communicating with buyers? SS: The easiest thing that a salesperson can do is to listen. Now having said that, everybody says that. There’s no one who says you don’t listen. Everybody says to listen. The problem is if you don’t ask the right question, the answer comes back, it’s wrong. You have to ask the right question. So what is the right question? Well, most salespeople go in and say, well, what do you need? They don’t need anything. We’ve already established that. Instead, it’s understanding what people do, how they do it when they do it, where they do it, who they’re doing it with, why they’ve chosen to do it that way, and then helping them do it better. It’s about helping people do what they do better. In other words, it’s an improvement on what they’re doing now. If you can’t find that, if you can’t say to someone, this particular product will help you do what you’re doing better, you don’t win, because why would they buy it? Would you buy something that’s less? No. You’ve got to buy something that’s more and in fact, every product is an improvement on the other product that was developed. If you just look at the simplest thing and let’s use the telephone. I remember telephones when you picked up the phone and asked the operator to get something. I remember the phones you dialed. I remember phones that all of a sudden became wireless and hello here we are. It’s all an improvement on what we did before. OF: I love that. I think something that you mentioned there is helping your buyers solve problems and I think that’s a term that also stood out to me in one of your books. I think you said that salespeople need to have the mindset of being professional problem solvers. SS: Agents for change. Helping somebody get to where they are, but you see the issue is if you’re only selling yourself that is in your mind you’re going to ask questions for you, that’s so wrong. You’ve got to ask questions about them, but most people don’t know how to create a conversation. The conversation is not that easy, so people start off and they go well, what do you need? I don’t need anything. Where do they go with that? You’ve got to have a question that really opens the exploration, opens the discussion that has some validity, and doesn’t sound frankly stupid. OF: What are some of your best practices for coaching salespeople to come up with those questions and what are some ways that you’ve helped salespeople overcome that hump? SS: Well, interesting enough, unlike most people who do this stuff, I really give it to you very specific, like I’ll tell you here’s what you say not hey think about it. Let’s all have a big group think. I’ve done that years ago, but I’ve learned. For example, what I teach people to do when they go into a sales meeting is to start out by saying, and literally, this is the scripting, ‘Before we get started would it just help if I tell you something about me and my company?' Now, you go ahead and do it. You say, well, we’ve been in business for so long, we do this, we do this. Now watch. You say, ‘I’m just curious, how did you end up here? How did you end up buying that product? How did that happen?' Now you understand the process that the person went through in buying what it is you have to sell. In other words, how did they get to that point? The phrase that I like to use is ‘I’m just curious, how did you do this? I’m just curious.' In fact, when you and I met, I asked you, Olivia, how did you end up here, how did this happen? Your story is a great story. That’s how you start. You don’t start with, let me tell you about our product. Who cares? OF: Absolutely. I love that. The curiosity aspect, that’s fantastic. I think something else that you’ve talked about in this is kind of along those lines is really personalization and personalizing the plans for each unique buyer. I think a lot of that comes from what we’ve been talking about around listening, but I’d love to maybe hear a little bit more about the impact that personalization can have on a sales process. So in the deal, what is the difference that personalization can make? SS: I’m so glad you asked that because it is not a written process. Now, you know certain things about people you’re gonna go sell to. I mean you have to know something but I’ll tell you something interesting about this is that everybody’s different. Everybody has their own reasons for doing things. Nobody just on a Tuesday morning calls you up with nothing to do. That doesn’t happen that way. So to me, the most important thing is understanding what questions we want to ask and what answers we need. Here’s the key and I think this is probably the most important thing I can tell you. I never submit a proposal. Ever. For anything and I never teach it. Don’t submit a proposal. What I do instead is submit a recommendation. This is what I’m thinking about. Here are the key elements, and here’s the price by the way, but here are the key elements. Tell me what you’re thinking about that recommendation. As soon as somebody hears about a proposal they go price, that’s all that matters. Price. I don’t want the price to be an issue. I want them to say, you know, I like this. This makes sense. There’s the keyword, this makes sense, and it makes sense because it’s a recommendation that we can work through together. It is so much different than a proposal that says slap it down here it is, buy it or not. OF: Absolutely, building that partnership with the buyer so that you’re guiding the buyer along in the process of thinking, you know, almost that your recommendations are also their ideas in a way. SS: It is. That is exactly right. If I come in with a recommendation and say to you, listen, I’ve thought this through, and here’s what I’m recommending we do. Now that allows the person to say yes, no, maybe gee, I like that, and all of a sudden I can take my little pen and say, you know what, let’s cross this out, let’s put this instead, let’s move this to here. Let’s change this pricing, let’s do this. All of a sudden there’s a discussion. It’s not a fight. It’s not winning. It’s a discussion where we both come away satisfied. OF: I think that can go a long way in building a longer-term relationship rather than just a short-term transactional relationship. I’d actually love to maybe here a little bit more about that. How can salespeople kind of overcome the challenge or find a better balance between having a long-term mindset versus just thinking about the short-term deal? SS: I was working with one of my coaching clients last night, interestingly enough, and I said to them, let’s look at this one account and they have a dollar value. I said, but isn’t there the potential for more business? They said yes, so I said why aren't we putting that in there? In fact, you have a 50% chance of getting more business from an existing account versus 20% of getting new business. You always have to look at the bigger picture. You have to say to yourself, I’m dealing with this one account, the potential is there. The reason that I say that is if you don’t think that way, you don’t go after it again. You just say, well I’ve got a sale. Look. Anybody can make a sale. The best example I can use is the New York City subways. You go on the subway and there was a man there years ago, probably still there, who simply stands there with a little wallet and he stands there and he says, wanna buy, wanna buy, wanna buy, wanna buy, wanna buy. That’s all he does. He shows us a little wallet and just says wanna buy, wanna buy, wanna buy. At the end of the day, somebody buys. Of course, somebody’s going to buy it. In fact, his chauffeured rose always picks him up and takes him home because he’s figured out that eventually 42 million people walk past him, and eventually someone’s going to buy. So anybody can make a sale. That’s not the issue. It’s getting the repeat sale. That’s the issue. OF: Oh, I love that example that really puts it into perspective. Building the relationship to get the long-term business and not just eventually someone will say yes if I’m persistent enough. So that’s fantastic advice. Something else that you talked about in your books is the need to really stay up to date on the industry trends and thinking kind of at a macro level perspective as well. What are some of your best practices for staying up to date on what’s happening in the industry and thinking about how that might impact a buyer and how their needs might change over time? SS: Again, you need to go back to the buyer and you’ve got to listen to what they’re saying. You got to listen to what the problem they’re having now. I can tell you all my problems, it’s irrelevant, what you really want to know is what they are doing and what they have changed. The issue, which is kind of interesting, I think that salespeople bring with them what’s going on in the industry. I think it’s a crime when people do not meet with salespeople and I’ll tell you why. Forget the sale, just leave the sale alone. The salesperson is going to 100, 200, 300, or 400 different accounts and they get information all the time because people talk to them. They can actually disseminate more information than almost anybody. Most people are in their offices all day, working their day without knowing what the other company is doing. So a salesperson really transmits that. The salesperson is great. They have tremendous information but people don’t use that properly. I refuse not to meet with anybody. I will meet with anybody because they’re going to give me information. They’re going to tell me something that I don’t know and that’s really key to the whole insemination, the whole beehive effect of a salesperson. OF: Fantastic. Well, Stephan, I just have one final question for you. We’ve talked so much about best practices for salespeople, but one person that really does play a massive role in sales success is the sales manager. I’d love to learn a little bit of your advice on how sales managers can be a great liaison between the field and sales leadership and partner with both to make sure that best practices are translated from strategy into action in the field. SS: It’s a great question. I mean really a great question. It is a deeper question that we have time to really go into. Let me give you just a thought though. This is going to sound terrible, just terrible what I’m going to say, but I find that most corporate sales managers are really enforcers, they’re not teachers. In other words, they don’t take the time to learn how the process works, how to make a call, how to talk to somebody, what really is a prospect, and because they don’t learn that they can’t teach it to the salespeople. Now, ultimately the salesperson is the one that we have to count on. They are the one that carries the ball, so to speak. One of the things that I see is that most sales managers, and I see with my own books. My books were not bought by sales managers. They were brought by salespeople, they were brought on by sales leaders, but the managers, and I've always said this to my publisher 100 times, I don’t write books for sales managers, it just doesn't get bought, which is true. Sales managers who are really the mainstream of this really have to become much more aware of what their representatives are doing, how they work, what it is they’re trying to accomplish, and how to speak to them, so they get the results that they need. Everybody after all is working on the same team, but sales is not a team sport, that’s a real contradiction for most people. We are told to build a good sales team, but it’s not a sales sport, it really is individual. OF: Absolutely. That’s fantastic advice for the sales manager. It is so critical, but that also requires being willing to learn and being open to partnering with both the sales leaders in the field. That is fantastic advice. Well, Stephan, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your wisdom with our audience. I learned so much in this conversation and I again, just can’t thank you enough for taking the time. SS: Olivia, I want to just thank you because what you’re doing is something that most people don’t do. You’re giving out really solid information. You’re helping people who I hate to say, but are in the trenches every day because they’ve got to do every day and they need that advice, they need that help, and you’re conveying that in a way, I think that they understand and that to me is admirable beyond belief. OF: Thank you so much, I appreciate that. To our audience, thank you so much for listening. We absolutely recommend checking out all of Stephan's books and we will include a link to a few of those here in the episode description. Thanks for listening for more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Explore books by Stephan Schiffman on Amazon here.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Annelie Girard from PlayPlay join us. Annelie, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Annelie Girard: Thank you for having me today. As you mentioned, my name is Annelie Girard and I work as the Sales Enablement Manager at PlayPlay. PlayPlay is the ultimate video creation platform that empowers teams to create engaging professional-quality videos with no technical skills. About my background, I’ve been in the sales space for six years and I spent the last four years in the tech industry helping companies and sales representatives grow. SS: Fantastic. Well, I’m so excited to have you join us today. Now, as you mentioned in your intro, you focus on providing sales reps with the resourcing that they need to essentially close more deals. At a high level, what does this entail? AG: That’s a great question. Providing sales reps with the resources they need implies making sure the sales team has the content, tools, processes, and knowledge necessary to perform their role most efficiently at the manager and the sales representative levels, but also the different stages of the sales role. From onboarding to ramp-up until they reach their senior level. SS: I think that’s fantastic. Now from your experience, can you share what types of resources are usually needed to help drive productivity? AG: Sales productivity has two components. The first one is sales efficiency, which is about optimizing reps’ use of time. You want to make sure the salesperson spends that time on high-impact activities as opposed to low-impact activities. Sales efficiency would evolve around tools for example, do you have a CRM, do you have automation tools? You just want them to spend time on only tasks that would make the most impact on your business. For example, can you maximize their time related to prospecting? Do you have tools where they can prospect easily? Do you have tools that can automate follow-up personalized outreach and track engagement? The other aspect of sales efficiency is do you have a routine they can rely on. Share a routine, and tell them when they should prospect versus when they should do their administrative tasks. The second component of productivity is sales effectiveness. The ability of a rep to drive revenue and in that category include things such as self-training, shadowing programs, and tutorials, but also have a routine where you can share the best practices. The last thing in the sales effectiveness will be about content. Provide them with frameworks such as how are you supposed to prepare a call. Do you have any frameworks on your qualification method, but also one-pagers on your bio personas as well as a library of email templates dedicated to each stage of your sales process? SS: Fantastic. And what would you say are the qualities that you see in maybe some of your top-performing sales reps? AG: Over the years, the top qualities that I’ve seen in top performers would be essentially business acumen, so the ability to understand how a business works, what are the goals, challenges, and the decision-making process. It’s crucial and necessary so sales reps can align the strategies with the customers’ pain points. Be genuine about your prospects and organization. A second quality that I’ve seen is active listening. When they pay full attention to the prospecting problem, pain points, or ideas, it really avoids assumptions and makes them more relevant to their prospect’s situation. Another quality would be relationship building. Those that are top performers are great at building trust with their customers. Another one would be the growth mindset. A growth mindset would mean having the ability to create a strategy to cope with setbacks and have that resilient skills, but also be willing to learn and acknowledge weaknesses and act on them. Then I would say there are two other qualities that I’ve noticed in top performers. One is product knowledge because ultimately the job of the sales rep is to help that customer solve the problem by implementing the product. The ability to do so relies heavily on that product knowledge but also on understanding what they’re selling and the value of the product that they are selling. The last quality that I see in top performance is data analysis. Being able to prioritize revenue-driving activities against low-impact tasks. SS: Absolutely. What are some best practices for identifying gaps between high and low-performing sales reps and how can different enablement resources help to close these gaps? AG: The way we’re doing at PlayPlay is that we actually use multiple data sources, both quantitative and qualitative. What we’re going to look at is for example KPIs. Do they reach quota, where is the sales velocity, what is the deal size, and what are the conversion rates? Then besides those quantitative aspects, what I’m also going to look at is for example employee and leadership interviews. I want to look at the customer interactions that we have across the phone, maybe rep conferencing or even emails but also dig into the CRM. What content are they sharing? How do they create quotes? Also having a defined competency framework really helps us to identify what are the gaps. I would say one of the best practices after that one would be to actually cross-validate all those results so you can consolidate all those data and really pinpoint those gaps between high and low performers. Different enablement resources can help to close those gaps, for example, if you think about content, creating sales plays is a good way to guide reps on what they have to say, show, or even what to do during a certain sales process. You can also create plays on how to create value at every touch point. Another solution that can be developed by enablement to close those gaps is designing programs to emphasize other right behavior to improve consistency and remove distractions from optimum productivity. One of the last resources that enablement can use is of course training and coaching. You want to be able to identify your top performers’ strengths and associate them with those who need training through, for example shadowing programs. SS: I think those are fantastic. Now you have experience as a sales success coach, how can coaching help reps maximize the impact of a lot of those resources that you mentioned earlier available to them? AG: Because sales coaching is individualized and inclusive when offered on that 1-to-1 basis, you can easily identify areas of improvement and ensure that no team members fall into the cracks. That is because self-discovery is not easy, so coaching will allow you to have a closer look at how every sales rep uses your resources. For example, how does the sales rep pitch your sales deck? How does he or she execute the process you designed on your CRM? You can then provide an individualized solution such as direct feedback and role play to reinforce the right behavior that leads to success. SS: Fantastic. Now, the last question for you. How can sales enablement partner with sales leaders to coach the reps to long-term success? AG: I believe that’s a very key question. In the same way, if you want to provide your sales team with the tools, processes, content, and knowledge they need to perform, you need to enable your leaders with the four elements as well. The first step is to design a sales leader program to show your leaders what you want them to be coaching on and how they’re supposed to do it. That should include training such as what a good manager routine looks like, developing communication skills, how to provide constructive feedback, and, at the same time, it is crucial to train sales either on processes and products their team is using or is using or pitching daily. Another way to enable your leaders is to coach them through a peer-to-peer mentoring program or an ask me anything session for those new leaders. The second aspect is to collaborate with them on materials they need to coach such as scorecards to track goals, key questions to guide a sales reps learning, tools to track their progress, and make sure they know how to use those tools. Enabling yourself I would say is an ongoing process where selling routines to hear what is happening on the floor, and what good or improvable behavior they identified is a key component of a successful partnership. I would say the last ingredient to a very successful partnership with your sales leader is to work very closely with them to be able to provide those individualized coaching plans when requested. SS: Fantastic, I love that. Well Annelie, thank you so much for joining us today. I enjoyed learning from you. AG: Thank you very much for having me. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Emily Drew from Salesforce join us. Emily, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Emily Drew: Hi Shawnna, I am absolutely thrilled to be here today first and foremost. My name is Emily. My role is senior director for the world’s largest job title coming at you, the Global Sales Leader Excellence Program which I can dive into a little bit later with you. I’m originally Irish as you can hopefully tell from the accent but based just outside London and have a pretty varied background. I started off doing a little bit of teaching abroad in Asia, transitioned into sales and marketing roles, and then I found my true calling in the world of enablement and coaching about seven years ago and that’s led me to my current role at Salesforce. For those that don’t know, Salesforce is a pretty profound CRM solution and I’ve been working there for the last number of years. SS: We’re very excited to have you on the podcast today, Emily. As you mentioned in your introduction, one of your areas of expertise is leadership enablement from your experience, working with different leaders across your organization, what are some of the qualities that make for a great leader? ED: That’s a brilliant question and I have two responses because I think some leadership qualities are role agnostic. Regardless of whether you’re a sales leader or a BDR manager or a supervisor in a supermarket, for example, that is a really important success. Those are things like being visionary, being a great listener, being a great coach, having the ability to have great empathy, and having the ability to engage with and build strong relationships with others. Those are some of the leadership-agnostic ones. For sales and solutions, more specifically, this is a question I spoke about a lot with my peers as we introduced the concept of leadership enablement for sales leaders at Salesforce and as a result, came up with this sales leader excellence model. This involved the creation of three key pillars that constitute greatness in a leader in the sales space and they are one, my personal favorite, being a great talent multiplier, so investing and understanding, developing your people, and establishing psychological safety. The next one is a business leader, so that’s all things, pipe gen, forecasting, execution, and being and knowing how to flex those in different ways as you move up the leadership ladder. Lastly, being a trusted partner. Being able to engage with influence, gained the trust of your customers. I think it is really important to have those broad leadership qualities as a leader, but when your sales or solutions leader you need those extra nuances and levels of expertise as well. SS: I think those are absolutely key components that make up a great leader. I love those. How can leadership enablement help leaders across the business really harness these characteristics to more effectively lead their teams? ED: I look back to 5 or 6 years ago when we didn’t have this in place and what the world was like, certainly at Salesforce, and it was very, very different. What I always think about is you can’t be what you can’t see. We were asking our account executives or people who are under leaders to do things and act in a certain way and be a certain way, but then they were kind of looking up and saying, well my leader doesn’t necessarily do things in that way or thinking that way or coach me to act that way. I think when you enable, I use this analogy of the life jacket when you’re on a flight and you’re a parent, you’re supposed to put your life jacket on first and you then are set up to be safe and take care of your children, for example. So in the case of the leader if you set them up for success and provide them the ability to become excellent at what they do and equipped to better coach and enable and encourage their teams that has just such a waterfall effect and enables everyone beneath them to see greatness in action to aspire towards that level of greatness and everyone’s on the same page and able to work towards being ever more productive. SS: I think that’s phenomenal. Now, what does leadership enablement actually look like in practice? What are some of the core components of leadership enablement programs that you’ve deployed? ED: Another great question. Shawnna, you’re on a roll. First of all, I mentioned it earlier, but you need to define what you’re aspiring towards. That sales leader excellence model that I spoke about, creating a robust framework to define what the great competencies the aspiring leaders to work is first and foremost because then you can develop all of the enablement programs around that and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing at salesforce. We defined what great looks like across those three pillars and within those three pillars, there are many, many different competencies and all the programs tie back to that. An example of a big program I’ve been involved in is overhauling or essentially we’ve been creating an onboarding journey for our leaders and some of the ways that are a little bit different maybe from enablement we might have done with ICs, is that it’s very, very interactive and engaging. When new leader joins the organization, they go through some of the more standard workshop activities and lots of online learning but that’s supplemented by them being given a coach to work with 1 to 1 on a biweekly basis to help see them through their entire onboarding journey. That culminates at the six-month mark in their journey where they present on a panel, sort of a capstone event, where they reflect on their six months in leadership, they relate it to that model and how they’re exhibiting greater excellence across all of those key pillars and it’s a really good opportunity for them to demonstrate all they’ve learned all they’ve gained, how far they’ve come. Another part of the onboarding journey that’s been important is the provision of mentors. Using another program, like the Leader Excellence Academy, we take our most talented top-performing leaders and have them act as mentors to our new starters so that their coach, their mentor, all the standard enablement, and they’re also brought together in coaching circles to discuss, debate, reflect on the most pertinent topics that arise when you’re a new leader. Stuff from how you drive pipe gen efforts as a leader, how you engage with your customers when you’re elevated from an IC to a leadership role, performance management, and having a safe space to explore that is great. I think with leader enablement you need to be a bit more hands-on in one way with the coaching element, but you also need to be a bit more hands-off in other ways, in less death by PowerPoint sessions for them and more allowing them to learn from their peers as well as from more talented leaders. I think the onboarding program has been a huge one and the coaching program of which I’m a part. We established a whole coaching practice for leadership whereby in every region there’s a coach assigned to work 1 to 1 with those new leaders, in need leaders, our leaders of leaders, and to help them not only heightened their self-awareness to become better leaders but also to guide them through and towards excellence on that model that I referenced earlier. That’s been a huge one. The one I’m most excited about because it’s my it’s become my full-time job is our Leader Excellence Academy and what that encompasses as I sort of touched earlier is we take our top 10% of leaders at various levels and we take them through this year-long program that is all designed to prep them for their next roles. If they’re in the first line, we prepare them to move to the second line. Lots of training, investment coaching, and in turn they help us and our mentors and enablers for the wider organization, and that’s been an absolute game changer because its peers teaching peers, there are levels of credibility there that could never have been possible before, and it’s allowed us to scale. We’re not a huge enablement team, so to have this wealth of people bought into helping and supporting has been amazing. There are some other great programs and experiential learning which I’m less involved with but are working well and it’s basically taking people out of the business away for a few days to somewhere we call the ranch and doing lots of really hands-on practical application of learning. It's working well but quite different from what I’ve done historically when I worked primarily with ICs. SS: Absolutely those programs do sound amazing. Now, leaders are often very busy when it comes to their schedules and I imagine it can be difficult to convince them to make time for their own development and learning. How have you gained buy-in with different leaders to make time for enablement programs like these? ED: I have to tell you if I rewound around three years ago, I was really struggling with this. When I didn’t have a role that was solely focused on leader enablement and I would run an ad hoc leader training event, no one would show up, or if they did they were very disengaged. That’s very different now. Now we’re in a place where we can’t keep up with the demand from leaders and that’s been achieved in a few key ways. I think the first one is building trust and the best way that I would recommend that people try and apply this if they’re enablers with the leadership team is by using a coaching approach. Building key relationships with leaders of all levels through coaching them through, getting to know them, listening, and deeply understanding what’s going on for them in their world. The other one is piloting. What I did with the program in the UK&I for coaching is we piloted there and there was another peer of mine doing the same in America, we were like, let’s try this out, let’s run a few programs, see what the feedback is and they proved really successful. Then to go forward to all the other leaders and be like, hey your peers in the UK&I I have done this and they’ve seen XY results, this is the quality of feedback for them, would you like this done for you and that’s exactly what’s happened. Word of mouth has meant that the reputation and the perception of leadership enablement have shifted. The things I hear a lot are you really understand us, you really understand our role, you understand our pain points and you provide us great levels of value also. I mentioned it already, but coaching is key. Just making that a central pillar of how you enable leaders and peer learning, peer mentorship, all of that is so vital and sponsorship from senior leaders, of course, to get bums on seats for certain sessions is always helpful. What I love about that is I’ve had to do that less and less now, people organically want to engage because they feel like they’re getting value SS: Absolutely. When organizations invest in leadership enablement in the way that they’ve done at Salesforce, what are some of the impacts that you’ve seen actually trickle down, maybe even into performance within your organization? ED: It’s pretty profound. When I first came into this role, my focus was on enabling first-line leaders and what was really interesting to see was the knock-on effect, the qualitative and quantitative results that demonstrated the success of that not only with their AEs, but often with their leader because they were taking learnings and their enablement and it was influencing leaders above them, their peers and different roles and all of that. I think the key thing, I have a slide that I often bring up, minus the numbers, but I’ll give you some of the headlines on it. Focusing on leadership enablement has had a huge increase in the pipeline of the leaders that have been actively involved in the leadership programs and enablement we’ve provided them. We’ve seen a stronger uplift in deal closures and deals closing more quickly, and more efficiently and that’s linked directly to deal coaching workshops we’ve led with leaders and had them run with their teams. We’ve seen the development of a coaching culture, which is a knock-on effect in creating this sense of psychological safety on teams, and that in turn has meant reduced attrition, both among leaders themselves and their AEs. We've also seen a reduction and performance management issues because one of the most prevailing issues I suppose that I walked into and saw time and time again with leaders dealing with underperformers and not knowing how to tackle that. Our offering this sort of well-rounded leadership enablement journey for them inclusive of how to have difficult conversations, and how to coach your team has resulted in retaining more people returning and improving the performance of those who were previously struggling a little bit. These are some of the best things. My personal favorite going back to that talent multiplier pillar is seeing survey results and people’s satisfaction and enjoyment at working for Salesforce in a sales role, increasing and increasing. SS: I think that is phenomenal. Last question for you, Emily. To close, how can leadership enablement help create a more people-centric culture in an organization? ED: I’m going to kind of tackle that in two ways. Firstly they have to want to create a more people-centric culture, so we have to aim to hire people for whom that talent multiplier element of leadership that I keep referring back to its importance. It is very hard if someone is not by their nature people-centric or talent multiplier to turn around to be that. Once they’re in there, the enablement provided to them has to marry up with rewarding them and encouraging them, providing them the skill set, and the mindset necessary to deliver on that. All of the enablement that I try to deliver, whether it’s on business leader, pipe gen, or forecasting, for that matter, will always try and weave in elements of how important as a leader it is to be authentic, to show vulnerability and adopt a growth mindset because that has such a waterfall effect on the wider leadership and sales organization. I think when we invest the time, invest the money, invest the people to enable and coach our leaders to become more coach-like, inspirational, to better listen and empathize, all those skills that I mentioned as being important to a leader in any sphere of influence has a profound impact on their teams the wider organization. When we have our culture, and our values displayed on our company website, I mean any company in the world, those need to be lived and breathed by our leaders. Otherwise, how can we expect our ICs or people joining the company to really feel that they’re true and lived and breathed by everyone? One message that I’m lucky enough in the role to be able to call on very senior execs to come and speak to some of the more junior leaders and one of them said recently that his ethos is leaving people better than you found them. That’s something that I am trying to have underpinned everything we do in terms of developing our leaders. They should be focused on leaving their teams, their peers, and their customers better than they found them and by virtue of that fact they’re very likely to have more successful teams, customers hit their quotas in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if they had a different approach. SS: I love that philosophy as well. Always leave it better than you found it. Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your insights. ED: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been wonderful. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. If there is something you'd like to share or a topic you'd like to learn more about, please let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I am Shawnna Sumaoang. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so that they can be more effective in their jobs. Today, I’m excited to have Emily Drew from Salesforce join us. Emily, I would love for you to introduce yourself, your role, and your organization to our audience. Emily Drew: Hi Shawnna, I am absolutely thrilled to be here today first and foremost. My name is Emily. My role is senior director for the world’s largest job title coming at you, the Global Sales Leader Excellence Program which I can dive into a little bit later with you. I’m originally Irish as you can hopefully tell from the accent but based just outside London and have a pretty varied background. I started off doing a little bit of teaching abroad in Asia, transitioned into sales and marketing roles, and then I found my true calling in the world of enablement and coaching about seven years ago and that’s led me to my current role at Salesforce. For those that don’t know, Salesforce is a pretty profound CRM solution and I’ve been working there for the last number of years. SS: We’re very excited to have you on the podcast today, Emily. As you mentioned in your introduction, one of your areas of expertise is leadership enablement from your experience, working with different leaders across your organization, what are some of the qualities that make for a great leader? ED: That’s a brilliant question and I have two responses because I think some leadership qualities are role agnostic. Regardless of whether you’re a sales leader or a BDR manager or a supervisor in a supermarket, for example, that is a really important success. Those are things like being visionary, being a great listener, being a great coach, having the ability to have great empathy, and having the ability to engage with and build strong relationships with others. Those are some of the leadership-agnostic ones. For sales and solutions, more specifically, this is a question I spoke about a lot with my peers as we introduced the concept of leadership enablement for sales leaders at Salesforce and as a result, came up with this sales leader excellence model. This involved the creation of three key pillars that constitute greatness in a leader in the sales space and they are one, my personal favorite, being a great talent multiplier, so investing and understanding, developing your people, and establishing psychological safety. The next one is a business leader, so that’s all things, pipe gen, forecasting, execution, and being and knowing how to flex those in different ways as you move up the leadership ladder. Lastly, being a trusted partner. Being able to engage with influence, gained the trust of your customers. I think it is really important to have those broad leadership qualities as a leader, but when your sales or solutions leader you need those extra nuances and levels of expertise as well. SS: I think those are absolutely key components that make up a great leader. I love those. How can leadership enablement help leaders across the business really harness these characteristics to more effectively lead their teams? ED: I look back to 5 or 6 years ago when we didn’t have this in place and what the world was like, certainly at Salesforce, and it was very, very different. What I always think about is you can’t be what you can’t see. We were asking our account executives or people who are under leaders to do things and act in a certain way and be a certain way, but then they were kind of looking up and saying, well my leader doesn’t necessarily do things in that way or thinking that way or coach me to act that way. I think when you enable, I use this analogy of the life jacket when you’re on a flight and you’re a parent, you’re supposed to put your life jacket on first and you then are set up to be safe and take care of your children, for example. So in the case of the leader if you set them up for success and provide them the ability to become excellent at what they do and equipped to better coach and enable and encourage their teams that has just such a waterfall effect and enables everyone beneath them to see greatness in action to aspire towards that level of greatness and everyone’s on the same page and able to work towards being ever more productive. SS: I think that’s phenomenal. Now, what does leadership enablement actually look like in practice? What are some of the core components of leadership enablement programs that you’ve deployed? ED: Another great question. Shawnna, you’re on a roll. First of all, I mentioned it earlier, but you need to define what you’re aspiring towards. That sales leader excellence model that I spoke about, creating a robust framework to define what the great competencies the aspiring leaders to work is first and foremost because then you can develop all of the enablement programs around that and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing at salesforce. We defined what great looks like across those three pillars and within those three pillars, there are many, many different competencies and all the programs tie back to that. An example of a big program I’ve been involved in is overhauling or essentially we’ve been creating an onboarding journey for our leaders and some of the ways that are a little bit different maybe from enablement we might have done with ICs, is that it’s very, very interactive and engaging. When new leader joins the organization, they go through some of the more standard workshop activities and lots of online learning but that’s supplemented by them being given a coach to work with 1 to 1 on a biweekly basis to help see them through their entire onboarding journey. That culminates at the six-month mark in their journey where they present on a panel, sort of a capstone event, where they reflect on their six months in leadership, they relate it to that model and how they’re exhibiting greater excellence across all of those key pillars and it’s a really good opportunity for them to demonstrate all they’ve learned all they’ve gained, how far they’ve come. Another part of the onboarding journey that’s been important is the provision of mentors. Using another program, like the Leader Excellence Academy, we take our most talented top-performing leaders and have them act as mentors to our new starters so that their coach, their mentor, all the standard enablement, and they’re also brought together in coaching circles to discuss, debate, reflect on the most pertinent topics that arise when you’re a new leader. Stuff from how you drive pipe gen efforts as a leader, how you engage with your customers when you’re elevated from an IC to a leadership role, performance management, and having a safe space to explore that is great. I think with leader enablement you need to be a bit more hands-on in one way with the coaching element, but you also need to be a bit more hands-off in other ways, in less death by PowerPoint sessions for them and more allowing them to learn from their peers as well as from more talented leaders. I think the onboarding program has been a huge one and the coaching program of which I’m a part. We established a whole coaching practice for leadership whereby in every region there’s a coach assigned to work 1 to 1 with those new leaders, in need leaders, our leaders of leaders, and to help them not only heightened their self-awareness to become better leaders but also to guide them through and towards excellence on that model that I referenced earlier. That’s been a huge one. The one I’m most excited about because it’s my it’s become my full-time job is our Leader Excellence Academy and what that encompasses as I sort of touched earlier is we take our top 10% of leaders at various levels and we take them through this year-long program that is all designed to prep them for their next roles. If they’re in the first line, we prepare them to move to the second line. Lots of training, investment coaching, and in turn they help us and our mentors and enablers for the wider organization, and that’s been an absolute game changer because its peers teaching peers, there are levels of credibility there that could never have been possible before, and it’s allowed us to scale. We’re not a huge enablement team, so to have this wealth of people bought into helping and supporting has been amazing. There are some other great programs and experiential learning which I’m less involved with but are working well and it’s basically taking people out of the business away for a few days to somewhere we call the ranch and doing lots of really hands-on practical application of learning. It's working well but quite different from what I’ve done historically when I worked primarily with ICs. SS: Absolutely those programs do sound amazing. Now, leaders are often very busy when it comes to their schedules and I imagine it can be difficult to convince them to make time for their own development and learning. How have you gained buy-in with different leaders to make time for enablement programs like these? ED: I have to tell you if I rewound around three years ago, I was really struggling with this. When I didn’t have a role that was solely focused on leader enablement and I would run an ad hoc leader training event, no one would show up, or if they did they were very disengaged. That’s very different now. Now we’re in a place where we can’t keep up with the demand from leaders and that’s been achieved in a few key ways. I think the first one is building trust and the best way that I would recommend that people try and apply this if they’re enablers with the leadership team is by using a coaching approach. Building key relationships with leaders of all levels through coaching them through, getting to know them, listening, and deeply understanding what’s going on for them in their world. The other one is piloting. What I did with the program in the UK&I for coaching is we piloted there and there was another peer of mine doing the same in America, we were like, let’s try this out, let’s run a few programs, see what the feedback is and they proved really successful. Then to go forward to all the other leaders and be like, hey your peers in the UK&I I have done this and they’ve seen XY results, this is the quality of feedback for them, would you like this done for you and that’s exactly what’s happened. Word of mouth has meant that the reputation and the perception of leadership enablement have shifted. The things I hear a lot are you really understand us, you really understand our role, you understand our pain points and you provide us great levels of value also. I mentioned it already, but coaching is key. Just making that a central pillar of how you enable leaders and peer learning, peer mentorship, all of that is so vital and sponsorship from senior leaders, of course, to get bums on seats for certain sessions is always helpful. What I love about that is I’ve had to do that less and less now, people organically want to engage because they feel like they’re getting value SS: Absolutely. When organizations invest in leadership enablement in the way that they’ve done at Salesforce, what are some of the impacts that you’ve seen actually trickle down, maybe even into performance within your organization? ED: It’s pretty profound. When I first came into this role, my focus was on enabling first-line leaders and what was really interesting to see was the knock-on effect, the qualitative and quantitative results that demonstrated the success of that not only with their AEs, but often with their leader because they were taking learnings and their enablement and it was influencing leaders above them, their peers and different roles and all of that. I think the key thing, I have a slide that I often bring up, minus the numbers, but I’ll give you some of the headlines on it. Focusing on leadership enablement has had a huge increase in the pipeline of the leaders that have been actively involved in the leadership programs and enablement we’ve provided them. We’ve seen a stronger uplift in deal closures and deals closing more quickly, and more efficiently and that’s linked directly to deal coaching workshops we’ve led with leaders and had them run with their teams. We’ve seen the development of a coaching culture, which is a knock-on effect in creating this sense of psychological safety on teams, and that in turn has meant reduced attrition, both among leaders themselves and their AEs. We've also seen a reduction and performance management issues because one of the most prevailing issues I suppose that I walked into and saw time and time again with leaders dealing with underperformers and not knowing how to tackle that. Our offering this sort of well-rounded leadership enablement journey for them inclusive of how to have difficult conversations, and how to coach your team has resulted in retaining more people returning and improving the performance of those who were previously struggling a little bit. These are some of the best things. My personal favorite going back to that talent multiplier pillar is seeing survey results and people’s satisfaction and enjoyment at working for Salesforce in a sales role, increasing and increasing. SS: I think that is phenomenal. Last question for you, Emily. To close, how can leadership enablement help create a more people-centric culture in an organization? ED: I’m going to kind of tackle that in two ways. Firstly they have to want to create a more people-centric culture, so we have to aim to hire people for whom that talent multiplier element of leadership that I keep referring back to its importance. It is very hard if someone is not by their nature people-centric or talent multiplier to turn around to be that. Once they’re in there, the enablement provided to them has to marry up with rewarding them and encouraging them, providing them the skill set, and the mindset necessary to deliver on that. All of the enablement that I try to deliver, whether it’s on business leader, pipe gen, or forecasting, for that matter, will always try and weave in elements of how important as a leader it is to be authentic, to show vulnerability and adopt a growth mindset because that has such a waterfall effect on the wider leadership and sales organization. I think when we invest the time, invest the money, invest the people to enable and coach our leaders to become more coach-like, inspirational, to better listen and empathize, all those skills that I mentioned as being important to a leader in any sphere of influence has a profound impact on their teams the wider organization. When we have our culture, and our values displayed on our company website, I mean any company in the world, those need to be lived and breathed by our leaders. Otherwise, how can we expect our ICs or people joining the company to really feel that they’re true and lived and breathed by everyone? One message that I’m lucky enough in the role to be able to call on very senior execs to come and speak to some of the more junior leaders and one of them said recently that his ethos is leaving people better than you found them. That’s something that I am trying to have underpinned everything we do in terms of developing our leaders. They should be focused on leaving their teams, their peers, and their customers better than they found them and by virtue of that fact they’re very likely to have more successful teams, customers hit their quotas in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if they had a different approach. SS: I love that philosophy as well. Always leave it better than you found it. Emily, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your insights. ED: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been wonderful. SS: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders, visit salesenablement.pro. 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