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According to research by Salesforce, 86% of business buyers are more likely to buy if companies understand their goals, and nowhere is that statistic truer than in the nonprofit sector. So, how do you ensure that your sellers are ready to show up the right way for every buyer? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Carly Foerster, principal enablement manager, and Conner Smith, mid-market account executive at GoFundMe. Conner, Carly, thank you so much for joining us. We’re super excited to have you here today. As we’re kicking off, I’d love if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Carly Foerster: First and foremost, I just want to say thank you so much for having us on here. We are honored as always to work with Highspot and to be featured—how exciting for us. So, my name is Carly Foerster, as you just shared. I am on our revenue enablement team over here at GoFundMe. I’ve actually been here for almost 10 years now, so about a decade of experience with this team, and one fun fact is that I started on the actual sales frontline side at one point way back in the day, which meant that I was working directly with our nonprofit organizations. I share that because it’s really helped shape how I think about enablement today. I’ve been in that seat. I’ve been where Conner is. I’ve worked and navigated really complex and unique buying cycles here. And what’s really kept me with this team is our mission. It’s this incredible mission to help people help each other, and I also have this incredible opportunity to partner with purpose-driven individuals, just like Conner. You’ve brought the right person on the call here today. It’s been such a privilege to work with these incredible nonprofits and help drive real impact in this world. And one of my favorite parts is I’m still learning every single day, so I hope that I learn something through this podcast. And with that, the person I’m probably going to learn from is Conner, so I’ll toss it to you. Conner Smith: Yeah, Riley, thanks so much for having us on. I’m Conner. I’m a mid-market account executive here at GoFundMe, and I sell fundraising software for nonprofits called GoFundMe Pro, which is the artist formerly known as Classy. It’s the entire arm of GoFundMe that specializes in helping nonprofits just raise more for their missions. I got into sales about four years ago after being a pastor for four years, actually, so I navigated a pretty significant career shift when I went from leading a nonprofit to selling windows, then while I was selling windows, I learned about tech sales and had to go Google what SaaS was and what an SDR was and what an AE was and all those things. I learned and realized, “Okay, I think this is a pretty good path to success and the lifestyle that I’m looking to build.” So I entered as an SDR back in 2023 and quickly moved into an AE role that I then leveraged just a few months after that to ultimately land a spot here at GoFundMe. And it’s really been a great fit because I know the nonprofit world pretty well, and now I get to meld my nonprofit and sales experience together to really help amplify the impact of nonprofits by giving them the tools they need to, like I said, raise more money for their missions. The cherry on top? I get to work with and learn from pros like Carly. RR: You know, I was going to say that was a great introduction to have to follow, and you smashed it. You guys both—those were incredible introductions. I’m super excited to dig into all of this experience that you just kind of high-level skated across. I think there’s a lot to talk about, and I hope a lot to learn. One thing that you both touched on and that is very apparent throughout both of your career journeys is this shared love for continuous ongoing learning and self-development. Can you talk to me about where that mindset comes from for you, and then how it shows up in your work? Conner, I’ll toss it to you to start us off. CS: Yeah. I mean, going back, in my previous role in the nonprofit space, learning was a big part of that. You had to wear a whole lot of different hats, and so learning on the fly was a regular part of the job. I think that’s where it comes from for me. But then coming into sales from a different background, I didn’t really have a playbook either. I had to learn fast. I had to learn through trial and error, through feedback, and through a whole lot of mess-ups and failure. And I think that mindset really shows up now in really practical ways. For me, that looks like things like call recordings and listening to those on a regular basis, looking at engagement data, experimenting with different approaches, and not being afraid to fail. You need to be quick to fail. I had a manager tell me that early on, and I think that was some of the best advice I got. Just get out there and do it. Don’t be afraid of failure because it’s the quickest way to learn. RR: Yeah, and that’s fantastic advice. And I think you built the learning muscle because you had to, and now it’s stuck, and that’s just how you continually improve over time, so I love to hear that. Carly, what about you? CF: Yeah, absolutely. Love learning. We’re big learning fans over here, and Conner, I was going to say, I love that mindset. I think you and I have talked about this, this sentiment of fail fast, fail hard, learn quick, right? That’s a huge part of what we understand as the learning process here. For me in particular, I’m going to take this on a little bit of a personal journey. So one thing you should know about me is that I have very strong core values personally, one of which is to always be learning. So this is really at the heart and core of who I am as a person. I’ve always had this real natural curiosity in life. I yearn to do and see and experience everything that I can, and I think it’s that sort of innate drive that makes me want to keep growing, to really have that growth mindset. A couple things I wanted to share from a sales lens first. Back when I was a rep, one of my biggest learnings, since Conner shared a few, was that if I were to look around and see who was the most successful on the team, what I could tell you is that the most successful people were not always the ones that had the answers right away. It was often the people who were asking another question, better understanding what they were trying or being asked to do, and then adapting real quick. When I think about our role in enablement now, where that shows up is really how we build our programs. So we focus on the fact that we’re not creating static systems. We’re not creating one-and-done trainings. We’re trying to create systems that are constantly evolving. We try to. We’re not perfect at it, but that is the end game for us. We’re constantly looking at what’s working, what’s not, how we can iterate. Conner even called out a couple of things. We’re looking at recording data, information from Highspot through reporting and analytics to help inform what that looks like. RR: Learning doesn’t always have to be external. Sometimes it’s asking that question of yourself every single day, “How can I be that little bit better? What can I do a little bit differently to serve my customers, to serve my nonprofit partners that little bit better?” And I think that is such an important mindset shift to just be open to that question. On the topic of growth, Carly, you’ve mentioned a couple times that you started your journey at GoFundMe as a seller. So, having experienced the nonprofit space from both angles, both the sales and the enablement side, what obstacles do you find that your sellers most often encounter now that you are in this place to help them through it? CF: Great question, Riley, and it’s something we’re thinking about every day, right—how can we overcome barriers and friction in our sales process so that we can better support and serve our customers? I think one of the biggest challenges that I learned very early on as a rep and continue to hone in on as an enablement professional in our specific sector is that we’re a little bit off the beaten path from what it means to be in a traditional sales role. It’s because we’re not just selling a product, we’re actually partnering with organizations that are deeply mission-driven. They are incredibly thoughtful about every single cent, every single dollar that they invest, and that’s rightfully so, because so many of the nonprofits we work with are supporting critical solutions for some of the biggest problems in this world. So they have to think about every single dollar that they invest. And so for us, what this sometimes translates into is longer sales cycles, a higher bar for trust. So we are designing our enablement program around those realities. We’re helping reps to tell as clear of a story as possible, to help personalize our outreach at scale, and to use tools like Digital Rooms through Highspot to create this really thoughtful, almost through-line experience during that deal cycle. At the end of the day, I would almost position it as transitioning from selling to serving. We are here to support nonprofits through this decision to show how we can partner and then to prove ourselves as a partner when they become customers. RR: You know, I think something that comes through as the through line of all of this, just listening to you both speak about your work and the passion that you have for it, is just how important it is to work for a mission-driven organization. That can inspire you to ask those questions of yourself every day and to improve a little bit so you can be a better partner, and you can be a true partner that helps these incredible organizations deliver real, real impact in the world. CS: You’re absolutely right. The way Carly and I even first got connected was I was just a couple weeks into my job, and one of the first things she does is like, “Hey, we need somebody to volunteer for the Ronald McDonald House here in San Diego.” And my son stayed at a Ronald McDonald House, or we stayed there while my son was in the hospital shortly after he was born, so it’s a cause that’s near and dear to my heart. And so that’s how we got connected, was partnering together to raise money for the Ronald McDonald House. And there are so many people like that in this company. And so it makes it really fun to do work with people that just truly believe in helping people and working with organizations that are out there curing cancer, ending homelessness, making sure there’s no dogs left behind in the shelters. It’s just incredible work. It really is very, very life-giving. RR: Working with great people doing great work, that’s kind of the dream. So I love that you guys have it. We’re in such a positive place right now. And now I’m going to shuffle us back to a negative place. So sorry, we’re switching gears here. Conner, you mentioned that it’s been a little bit of a journey through sales, selling windows to now selling SaaS and so on and so forth. Knowing that you made that career shift relatively recently and have sold in that time for a handful of different organizations, when you think back to those roles where you didn’t have a platform like Highspot and you didn’t have the support of someone amazing like Carly, what was most difficult for you? CS: I think probably the hardest part is the disconnectedness, the fragmentation that it was. You don’t really necessarily know where to go to get all the information that you might need to help a customer. And so you’re pulling content from different places. You’re not always sure what’s up to date. You’re spending a lot of time doing admin work instead of actually engaging with the buyer, with the prospect, and that creates friction. I mean, time kills all deals, and we want to make sure we’re getting right back to them immediately. Their causes are important. They don’t have a lot of time to just be spending looking at software. They have an important mission that they’re trying to raise money for, and so we don’t want there to be that friction. And in other places I’ve worked, there always was kind of that friction, and not just for the rep, but for the buyer. And so you might send multiple emails, multiple attachments. There’s not really this one clear, concise location to go to get what you need. And what tools like Highspot solve, and I loved it, and I got it on day one starting here at the company, is it’s not just organization, it’s clarity and it’s consistency, and it lets you focus more on the conversation and less on the logistics. And so that’s made a huge difference in moving our deal cycles along. RR: So Conner, I know you’re in sales, but I don’t think you needed to sell us that well. That’s everything that we want to hear—that the vision that we’re hoping to deliver is actually showing up in your day-to-day, so that’s fantastic, and I want to dig more into that. But before we do, Carly, I’d love it if you could give us an overview of the environment that you’ve got going on and that you’ve been building for the last couple years at GoFundMe. So, today—and this is a crazy number—97% of your reps are using external shares and Digital Rooms in their workflows. I need to reiterate again, that is a crazy number. 97% is near unanimous. So how did you make that motion stick, and what has that changed when you look at how your sellers connect with your partners? CF: Yeah. Well, all credit goes to me, first and foremost. No, I’m just joking. I actually truly want to put the credit back on our reps. That is our sales team, our customer experience reps, everyone who is frontline working with customers. This is not success that is necessarily an enablement win. It is a win of us collectively, that we have found such an incredible product, and we’re using it in the right ways. How we got to that number, right? Our success was in how intentional we were in rolling this out. I would say this is one of our best use cases and how we implemented Digital Rooms with this team. We didn’t just position them as another tool for folks to use. We positioned it as a better way to serve our customers, and for Conner and his work on the sales team, serve our prospects who we are, of course, trying to convince to become customers of ours. I think practicality is one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in enablement. It’s not just being theoretical and conceptual. You actually have to make it practical for the team. So, what that looked like for us is we actually embedded it directly into our sales process. We built templates with key stakeholders on our team—Conner would be an example of one of those key stakeholders—we had other voices contribute to what these Digital Rooms would look like, how we would use them, and then we made it extremely easy to adopt. And once reps started to see that they could replace multiple follow-ups, those emails with 50 links in them that we’re hoping and expecting people to click on, right? You put it all in one single source that looks beautiful, it’s clean, it’s curated, it’s dynamic, and actually see how the buyers were engaging with that content. The light bulbs went on for everyone pretty quickly of how powerful this could be. And I want to spotlight Digital Rooms in particular for our handoff process, from when our sales team brings on a new customer, we’re all excited, we celebrate together, and then we try and create the most seamless handoff to their onboarding experience and on into their work with our customer experience teams. We actually created a series of Digital Rooms specifically for the onboarding pathways so that a rep like Conner would simply have to go in, find the right template, do a couple little customizations, but he already had the package to send to a customer, which we knew were the exact steps they need to take to be successful in those critical first three weeks, four weeks with us. It has been truly a joint partnership, a collaborative effort to get these up off the ground and to see results like 97%. RR: There’s kind of two components to it, which was make it easy, make it accessible, and then the second piece is kind of that classic enablement foundation of make it matter, make it meaningful. And back to the point of great people doing great work, you have a team of folks that just want to make life easier for their partners, and you’ve given them a tool to do so. Why wouldn’t they adopt it? That all makes perfect sense, and I mean, you can see it in the results that it’s working. CF: It’s working. I mean, even Conner spoke about the fact that we work with customers who just don’t simply have the time in their day to take minutes, even minutes, to go read through an email and try and find the right information. So if we can package that in the right way, it’s saving time for them to dedicate back towards their programs and mission, which is a win in our book. RR: Yeah, and that’s exactly how you show up as a trusted partner. You have exactly what you need. I’ve given it to you. Now go run, do what you need to do. Conner, I would love if you could walk us through how this shows up in your day-to-day. So how are you using Digital Rooms, external shares, and how is that helping you manage deals, manage conversations, take next steps? CS: I mean, first of all, I just use this literally every single day. I built a Digital Room today for a pretty high-value prospect. We had a first call. We scheduled a second call. There’s a great fit. We are going to meet quite a few different needs actually and help them move from having multiple platforms to having one platform. And so there’s a lot of different components to it, and so I wanted them to have a very singular place to go so they can get everything. So kind of the way my process works is the moment I get off a call, I’m getting my call readout, I’m starting to work on a follow-up email. And if it’s a larger, more complex deal like the one today looks like it’s probably going to be in the best possible way, I’m opening up that integration with Highspot right there from my email. I’m beginning to build or edit a Digital Room that I call an evaluation hub to my prospects. If it’s more of a simple deal, then I’m at least using the external share feature to highlight some of the items they specifically requested. Maybe that’s a one-pager, a quick case study, or something like that. And so that’s kind of how I’m using that in the day-to-day. And then on top of that, it’s also like what Carly just said, it is literally baked into our sales process. There’s no option to not send a Digital Room when it comes to the onboarding process. That is how we onboard our clients, with a Digital Room, and it has been tremendously helpful because they know where to go back to time and time again. And sometimes even months later, they know exactly where to go to get some of the resources they need to be successful with our product. Beyond that, though, I’m also using those metrics of especially those pre-sales evaluation hubs to look at the metrics as to whether they looked at those resources and how often they’ve looked at them in order to help inform where they’re at in the decision-making process of the deal, which really helps then with my forecasting and helps me look good to my managers. RR: Do you have an example of a deal where looking at that engagement data really helped you take the right next step? CS: I’m not thinking of a specific deal. I use it pretty consistently, though, just to see are they seriously looking at us? Because if they’re not in the room, then it’s pretty easy for me to tell my manager, “Hey, this might happen maybe. They haven’t poked around in here, or they looked at it once and that was it.” As opposed to another deal where I see that they’re looking at it, they’re sharing it internally. I’ve got five or six different individuals opening up this room. Well, now I know that multiple stakeholders are involved. When I go into that forecasting meeting, I have a lot more ammo to say, “There’s some real likelihood that this is moving forward. There’s some genuine interest in our platform.” RR: Yeah. That makes 100% sense. So it really does seem like from pre-sales evaluation hub all the way through to the onboarding process, you’ve found the recipe to success. Carly, one thing that you’ve shared in the past, I know you’ve spoken about this a number of times, is that your priority is to, A, help reps be successful but, B, help them be the best partner possible. So how do you ensure that that’s happening? How do you measure that, and what signals are you looking at to make sure that that’s the case? CF: I’d say for any enablement program, that is one of the strategic pillars you should be aiming for, is how do we ensure that the maximum amount of people on our team have a clear pathway to success? I want to start off by saying we are not perfect. In fact, we would never aim to be perfect. The goal is continuous improvement. And to your question of how we’re measuring that, broad strokes, I’d look at two things. It is rep confidence and business impact. So on the rep side, what we’re looking at, metrics we can track, adoption, like you said, 97%, really easy to get there if you’re baking it into the sales process. Like Conner said, not a single deal goes through without using a Digital Room, so that’s an easy way to get adoption up. We’re looking at ramp time for when a new hire comes on board to when they see their first bits of success, what that ramp looks like, productivity. On the business side, we’re looking at things like deal progression, so stage conversions, win rates. But what I would say is even more, personally, even more important than those quantitative stats is the qualitative signal. So we’re looking at things like, do our reps feel confident in what they’re doing? Let me talk to a couple reps and let’s just get a general sentiment because if reps aren’t confident, we are not going to move through stages the right way. And even beyond that, we’re looking at are they spending more time with customers, less time searching for content? That’s more specific to Highspot, right? So Conner called out, when he first started working here, just the speed at which he was able to get access to content compared to maybe his previous roles he had been in helps him to focus more time where it matters most, which is right in front of nonprofits. So when rep confidence is trending in the right direction, when we see those quantitative stats trending in the right direction, we know we’re on the right path. CS: One more little piece to that is, to give the comparison, I was so trained that if I had a question prior to my role at GoFundMe, what you do if you have a question is you go to Slack and you ping somebody, or you put it in a group channel. And then I cannot tell you the number of times Carly would pop in there and be like, “Have you checked Highspot?” Or, “Here’s the Highspot link.” And so it’s just over and over and over again. And so now I’ve been retrained. I still do it some. I’m still a little annoying in Slack, but I’ve been retrained now. CF: There is one of the greatest successes I always love, putting like a #self-enable, right? We love that. We want to build that muscle so folks know where to go and to find those answers quickly, Highspot being our main source for it. RR: I actually really like that, #self-enable. And like we talked about at the very start, learning, growth, these are the things that happen, and that’s okay. As we’re getting to the end of this, we’ve heard a little bit about the story, the levers you’re pulling, how it’s working out for you. I’d like to dig into the successes. So Carly, looking across this partnership so far, and I know it’s been kind of a long journey so far, but what are the most meaningful results you’ve seen with Highspot? Are there any key wins that you’re super proud of? CF: Yeah, so many. It’s been such a wonderful partnership, so really big thanks to you and your team. Of some of the most meaningful results, what I’ll call out is efficiency and consistency. And again, we are not perfect. We are constantly building and growing and making this better and better. But as Conner has noted a few times from that rep perspective, it’s the ability to quickly get to the content that he needs in order to better serve nonprofits. So when we first moved over to Highspot, one of the things we track and continue to track is that ratio of how long it takes for someone to find a piece of content to how long they actually spend on that piece of content, right? So things like searchability ratios, findability ratios. We’re constantly checking in on those to make sure that we are surfacing the right content in the right moment at the right time so that reps can immediately get access to what they need to. We’ve seen strong adoption. I have to give credit back to the reps again for being incredible partners with us, to let us know what they need so that we can better build programs that work for them. There’s still so much to do, but we are seeing really meaningful progress that is ultimately helping us better serve nonprofits. CS: From the field perspective, the biggest impact is just confidence and clarity. I know I’m sending the right content at the right time to the right person in the right way. It’s right. And so the engagement data, I mean, that gives me a huge advantage. It helps me prioritize deals, tailor my follow-ups. I’m ultimately able to just move opportunities forward more effectively. RR: Thinking about everything we’ve talked about, all of the benefits you guys are seeing, the way that you’re using Digital Rooms, the way that you’re engaging your buyers and delivering really strong experiences that communicate true partnership. If there’s one shift that other go-to-market teams could make this year to better serve their buyers, what would it be? And I’ll just toss that out. Whoever wants to start, feel free. CF: Well, first thing I’ll say is I’m not an expert, right? So this is just my own opinion, my own observations from the specific space that we work in. You could find, I’m sure, 100 different answers just by Googling this. What I would say is a really important shift, and this is something that I’m thankful we’ve been pretty well aware of since I started over 100 years ago at this organization, but we have to recognize that we need to design our sales process around how buyers actually want to buy. And I know that sounds so simple and, of course, so plain and easy, but it’s so surprising, and I think this is a long-standing sales mindset and journey, is we’ve always been the one to lead people through this evaluation process, and you need to fit into our sales process. And really what we’ve recognized, especially in the past decade, probably even longer than that, and especially with working with nonprofits, is that it is our job to make things as simple as possible for buyers to understand, to trust us, and to ultimately say yes and align to the way that they need to make that decision. We looked at tools like Highspot to help us create this frictionless process that aligns to how our buyers want to buy so that we both can find success together. And Conner, I’ll toss to you at that point. CS: No, I agree. Kind of going back to something you said earlier, Carly, I think it is a little bit different than your typical sales role in the fact that who we’re selling to, and I think this is the case in all sales roles, but definitely in this world, is don’t take shortcuts. I think if there’s one big shift go-to-market teams should make, you were talking about, I think that’s it. Don’t take shortcuts. People in general, all people, but I feel like people in the nonprofit space, they’re just a unique group of people. They’re in this particular line of work because they’re driven by something different. So they have different hardwiring. And so people in general, but especially that group, can feel the difference between a mass marketing campaign and genuine personalized outreach. So I heard recently this quote of, personalization at scale, it’s an oxymoron. It’s better to go deep on a handful of strategic accounts and get to know them and show them that you know them than it is to just spam someone with what you think they need. So get to know your prospects. Make sure that your outreach reflects that you know them. You know something about their organization, what they do, who they help. Nobody wants to feel like they’re getting sold to, and I think that’s especially true, again, in the nonprofit space. Many are in this line of work because they want to feel connected to the people that they’re serving, and the same goes with the people who are selling to them. RR: You each gave us two slants of kind of the same concept, which is at a broader level, you need to serve your buyers in the way that they want to be sold to, whether that’s process or whether that’s individual conversation level, speaking to a person like a person. So I think that’s both great advice, but I know we are kind of at the end of our time. So Carly, Conner, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been really wonderful to catch up and hear a little bit about your world. CF: Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. It is fun to join in on conversations like these, and hopefully you learned something. I already learned something from Conner, so here we go. CS: Yeah. It’s fun. Always be learning. ABL.RR: Perfect. 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 go-to-market success with Highspot.

According to research by Gartner, 84% of business leaders report their company's identity must significantly change to achieve strategic objectives. But how do you know when the time is right? And more importantly, how do you ensure that change goes smoothly? Riley Rogers: Welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. According to research by Gartner, 84% of business leaders report their company's identity must significantly change to achieve strategic objectives. But how do you know when the time is right? And more than that, how do you ensure that the change goes smoothly? Here to discuss this topic is Shelly Luciano, Vice President of Strategy at Leah. Thank you so much for joining us today, Shelly. I’d love if you could just kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Shelly Luciano: I’m Shelly Luciano. I’m Brazilian. I studied industrial engineering in Brazil and France. I started my career working in infrastructure and R&D, so that experience gave me a strong foundation in execution early on. Back in 2014, I moved to the UK to pursue my MBA at London Business School. I used business school to transition from a technical background into strategy on a global scale. After my MBA, I spent three and a half years in strategy consulting. That work helped me learn how companies compete in larger markets. What I realized is that although strategy consulting is intellectually fascinating, I was being more and more drawn to the business. So I transitioned into tech about five years ago. I joined what was then ContractPodAI, which is now Leah. Today, I’m Vice President of Strategy and Operations. My team focuses on aligning strategic priorities, supporting cross-functional execution, and ensuring our go-to-market approach reflects both where the company's headed and what our customers need. One of the most valuable parts of my role is staying close to our customer base. These conversations give me and the company a lot of valuable insight into how the market is evolving and how organizations are actually adopting AI. I then bring these insights back into the organization, back into Leah, to inform product direction, enable our customer success team, and ensure that our strategy remains grounded in real market needs. Ultimately, my role sits at the intersection of strategy, go-to-market execution, and customer insight. RR: I think you have a fascinating role, to be quite frank, and also a really wonderful story. To go from “I'm trained as an engineer,” to “now I've got my MBA, I'm in consulting, and today I work in tech and have for the last five years,” that's really an incredible journey that I imagine must have given you a real wealth of experience that serves you very well at Leah. SL: It’s funny because if you asked me when I graduated in Brazil what I'd be doing now, I wouldn't have guessed. The world has changed so much. My world has changed so much. So I feel very lucky and blessed to do the job that I do. I really like it. My company's fascinating. My role is fascinating. My company gives me room to change as long as I'm adding value and my team is adding value. So I'm really happy. RR: Yeah, and that's certainly evidenced by the fact that you spent five years in one tech company when the average tenure is just over two, so something really must be going right. I'd love to dig a little bit deeper into this exciting, challenging, and evolving role that's been keeping you at Leah for the last few years. You're there to keep an eye on what's happening in the market so your reps can tell a story and your engineering teams can build a product that the market both wants to hear and to see. More than that, you're also there to break down silos and operationalize your strategy so it really shows up in everyday workflows. In this work, what kind of things tend to crop up—challenges or obstacles that make it difficult to build the connections that bridge that gap between strategy and execution? SL: For me, there are two major challenges I see in equipping internal teams to drive growth. First, strategy and execution often evolve at different speeds. A leadership team can align relatively quickly on a strategic direction, but translating that direction into how hundreds or thousands of people operate day to day can take much longer. For me, strategy only really lands when it keeps showing up in customer conversations. What you portray needs to align with what your client base and the market are seeing. If the people talking to customers every day don't understand the problems that your company is solving and why, then your strategy hasn't really landed. It's just a deck. It's lovely to build these ideas, but you've got to be able to execute on them. As companies scale, the complexity increases much faster than people expect. You have more industries, more personas, a larger product portfolio, and if you don't have the right systems and alignment, that complexity can create a lot of confusion internally. And if your team is internally confused, then everyone else is too. RR: So your job is to keep an incredibly close pulse on the market and on technology as they both evolve. And it's a little bit of an endless task because the market will always shift and technology will always evolve. So you've got to be right there with it as the voice of reason for the organization, telling everyone, “Okay, here's what's happening, and here's how we're going to move with it.” As someone who, by job description, is very comfortable with change and evolution, can you share with us how you're thinking about how Leah, as an AI-first company, is keeping pace through major technology shifts, and then how other organizations should think about translating these shifts into their own organizational and operational processes? SL: Leah has been an AI-first company for years, way before LLMs. What changed with LLMs is the speed and scope at which we can execute our strategy much faster. We've been using machine learning in our platform for a long time, so the foundation was already there. We already had a really strong team. What LLMs did was introduce a step change, and our founder, Sarvarth, is a visionary. He saw straight away how that was going to change the game. All these changes in the past few years did not change our direction, but for the client base, what they can really see is that LLMs have expanded the use cases that we can deliver. And I think that's what matters to customers—how can we solve more of their problems? With Leah, we've moved from traditional automation into what we describe as an agentic operating system. That means our AI is not just supporting workflows. We can do much more than that. We can now reason across data, understand context, and orchestrate actions. That is so exciting, as you can imagine, for someone who works in strategy because it feels limitless. Going beyond static workflows, you now have systems that can adapt dynamically to the problems that we're solving. And that's where the speed and pace of innovation really comes in. Once you move into an agentic model, you're no longer limited to predefined use cases. You can continuously expand how AI is applied across not only our internal organization but also our client base. From a strategy and operations perspective, the challenge is not adopting the technology, because we've been able to do it and we continue to do it. The challenge is how do we operationalize it? Strategists love frameworks, so if I had to group it, I'd say there are three ways I think about this. The first part is strategic focus. The risk with AI, within all this opportunity, is diffusion. So we need to be deliberate about which use cases we prioritize. We need to define where we can deliver the most value, because being AI-first doesn't mean doing everything. It means scaling the right use cases. The second part is how do we translate that into go-to-market execution? As I mentioned before, strategy only really lands when your customers can speak about you. Organizations need to understand how to position AI. We need to be able to explain it clearly so we can apply it across different industries and contexts. That's where systems like Highspot can really help us translate this within our organization and externally. The third thing is continuous customer feedback loops, because customer proximity is the most valuable strategic signal we can have. To be a strategist in tech, your goal is not to define a static AI strategy. You're always on a feedback loop, and you need to be agile. The tools and teams that support you need to be comfortable with always learning and always putting our best foot forward. RR: So as you alluded to, you and the team actually recently went through a rebrand. From ContractPodAI, you became Leah, named after the organization's flagship AI offering. I'd be curious to hear how, with these challenges to strategy-aligned execution in mind, you and the team made sure that everyone was telling the same story and supporting the same strategy, even as the brand message and narrative shifted so drastically. SL: Leah was already a product of ours that had taken a bigger and bigger piece of our client base. So moving from ContractPodAI, which was very contract-focused, into Leah made sense because the Leah product had become a much bigger part of who we were and our identity. When we came into becoming the Leah brand, we were ready in many ways. You're never fully ready for a full rebrand. There's still a lot of work. But we had the tools and processes in place to help us in that transition. In 2021, we had just raised $150 million from SoftBank's Vision Fund. At that point, I knew we were going to grow exponentially, so I wanted to manage as many growing pains as possible. At that stage, we were evolving from having a relatively general pitch to a much more sophisticated message tailored by industry and persona, and our platform was expanding even back then. I realized that we needed a way to ensure that our entire organization stayed aligned on how we communicate value because, as companies scale, complexity increases. More products, more industries, more ways customers can use your platform. So when trying to solve that problem, that's when we looked into Highspot. We wanted Highspot to help us ensure the entire organization could work from the same narrative. Highspot is now used across our sales teams, SDR teams, CX teams, and actually it has expanded because once people hear about it, they want to know what the go-to-market teams are presenting. I'm really glad we implemented Highspot four or five years ago now because since then the customers that we serve have grown and the breadth of our platform has grown. Putting things in place before you come to that stage is actually really important. RR: Can you walk through where Highspot fit into the picture and how you and the team used it to trickle down that message so, to your earlier point, strategic vision didn't get lost in that wonderful game of telephone between C-suite strategy and individual contributor execution? SL: When I came in, we had a general pitch on how we went to market. One of the reasons I was hired is because I came in to do an industry strategy, and there was a lot of research involved—both internally, looking at how we were using the tool for certain industries, and externally, looking at market potential and product fit for each industry. Based on that, I prioritized a few industries to start developing content and enablement around. That's when I looked into Highspot because we had a SharePoint at the time, and it was already not fully updated. People pasted things on top of it or saved materials to their computers and never checked the right version again. I came to Highspot with a very clear use case. There were other features and capabilities that we wanted, but the core problem I wanted to solve was creating one single source of truth. It seems like a SharePoint should do that just fine, but it didn't because we needed something that would help us as we continued scaling product growth, use case growth, and overall organizational growth. It was going to become really hard to enable everyone and make sure people accessed the information they needed at the right time. That's what we got Highspot for, and that's what we continue using it for. RR: So once you defined the strategy of the rebrand, where did you see friction between what you were telling reps—“Here's our new message, here's our new strategy”—and what they were actually saying and doing in the field? Where was there misalignment, and how did you and the team tackle that? SL: Once the strategy and story are defined, the real challenge is behavioral change at scale. Organizations tend to align on a narrative relatively quickly at a conceptual level. But alignment alone is not the end goal. Execution is. Execution, particularly in customer conversations, can take time. The friction I've observed is not usually resistance. It's normally a knowledge gap or a confidence gap. Sometimes you have the knowledge, but you're not confident in that knowledge. As your platform evolves and you're no longer selling a single product for a very defined use case, you're helping customers on a journey. You need to understand a variety of challenges across different workflows, industries, and personas. In that environment, the challenge is not whether teams understand the narrative. The bigger challenge is whether they can apply it dynamically in real conversations. What we consistently see is that reps are comfortable with the core story, but uncertainty appears around the edges. When a customer asks something slightly outside the standard pitch or challenges how the solution applies to their specific context, that's where execution can break down. For reps to feel confident using the right language and positioning the platform correctly, they need to understand things at a deeper level. With all the advancement in AI, we can develop things so quickly, but that also creates challenges because emerging technologies move incredibly fast. There's something new every week. If your software can deliver so much, there are a lot of questions reps need to feel prepared for, and we need to give the organization the ability to operate with clarity and confidence in this complex environment. Highspot has helped us do part of that, particularly in making sure teams understand how we're positioning ourselves, but there's also a lot of technical enablement and training that we need to make sure they complete. Teams have to prepare for conversations in many different contexts, and that fundamentally changes how an organization executes. You can't just memorize anymore. You need to understand. Ultimately, scaling a company is not about having the best strategy on paper. It's about ensuring that all of your employees can bring that strategy to life and communicate it with passion. RR: Yeah. I love the way you landed that because you're 100% right that to a certain extent it can be a knowledge gap, and another layer can be that confidence gap. But then that third and final layer is the context gap. Can reps embody the strategist? Can they embody the strategy? Reps want to do well. It benefits them and it benefits you. So when things are going awry, it's not intentional. It's hard to get up to speed and start delivering in the field, especially when things are changing so rapidly. If you can slowly bridge all those gaps, your strategy starts to encompass the whole company. And again, it's such a cool role that you have, getting to bring that to life and then watch it trickle out into every customer conversation your teams are having. You mentioned 2021 and implementing Highspot, and it's been five years since then. In that time, what key results have you seen? Any wins that you're especially proud of, whether early on or today during this rebrand phase? SL: Highspot is now widely used across the organization. We have the sales team, SDR team, CX team, and leadership all using it. Initially, we bought licenses only for the sales team, and since then we've more than doubled, if not tripled, our licenses because people continue asking for access. I think that's one of the biggest indicators of value. What I continue to see, and why I continue investing in the platform, is consistency. You want to be consistently delivering and positioning yourself in the market. As our product offering expanded and we began serving multiple industries and personas across different regions, it became critical that teams could access the most relevant materials quickly. Highspot ensures that everyone across the organization is working from the same narrative and delivering a consistent experience to customers and prospective customers. That alignment becomes very important as the organization scales. One of the most impressive things after the rebrand was that from the very next day, everything had changed. Everything in Highspot was Leah. I knew the marketing team had been working incredibly hard, but from day one everything was available to us. That's what tools are for. When you buy a tool, you want to make sure it makes you look good. RR: I can imagine that's a monumental task—to take every single piece of collateral, every single deck you've ever built, and overnight update it so every rep has all the content, messaging, and everything they need to hit the ground running on day one of the rebrand, day one of Leah. To the point of bringing strategy to life, you really did it. Very early on, you said you're never ready for a rebrand. And yes, it's certainly a huge task, but it does seem like you've come through it successfully. That takes me to the last question I had for you, which is: for other leaders navigating a rebrand or shifting message while trying to position themselves in a constantly changing market, what advice would you share? SL: One of the most important lessons for me is that rebrands are not simply marketing exercises. They're full organizational transformations. The success of a rebrand depends on whether the entire organization is bought in and understands the narrative, and whether they feel confident communicating what you're doing to customers. Like I said before, the success of the rebrand is really only clear when you see that it has landed with your customer base. Another key element is staying very close to your customers during the process. Understand how they're going to perceive this, and once you've launched it, pay attention to their initial reactions so you can address anything quickly. That's your most valuable insight because customers really know how you're positioning yourself in the market and what you can actually deliver. You want to make sure what you've changed feels true to who you are. Luckily, with Leah, customers responded positively to the rebrand. They felt the narrative resonated. When your organization combines strong strategic direction with customer insight, you're much more likely to build a story that's authentic and compelling. That's what you want with your brand. It needs to make sense. People need to know it wasn't just done to look good. It needs to resonate with the company and what you're offering. RR: Yeah. You absolutely need to prove that this is something worthwhile and valuable to your customer base, and that it tells the story and provides the value they're looking for. Otherwise, to your point, it winds up feeling like a vanity exercise because someone didn't like the colors or didn't feel the name was quite right. It needs to be strategic and feel strategic. Shelly, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you and learning more about the work that you're doing at Leah. To our audience, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Win/Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insight on how you can maximize go-to-market success with Highspot.

According to Highspot’s Go-To-Market Gap Report, 98% of leaders say their GTM strategy is active, but only 10% see it driving results. The reason for that? Strategy abounds. Real meaningful execution, not so much. So how do you overcome the go-to-market performance gap and bridge that growing rift between strategy and execution? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Jacob Keith, senior revenue enablement specialist at HealthJoy. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jacob. I’m super excited to dive into your experience. So could you kick us off just by sharing a little bit about yourself, your background, and the role you’re in currently? Jacob Keeth: Yeah, absolutely. Also, Riley, thanks so much for having me on. I’m really grateful and excited that we get the chance to chat about something so consequential and oddly kind of fun. So I’m just looking forward to it. My name’s Jacob. Professionally speaking, I’ve been working in enablement for just shy of five years and worked in sales for a year prior to that doing SDR prospecting work. I’ve done all types of enablement, everything from onboarding-focused work to focusing on BDRs and prospecting. Now at my current company, HealthJoy, it’s been so much fun. We’re operating in primarily a channel sales method, so we’re working through individuals who then sell our product, which has been a really fun and complicated task from the enablement perspective. We’ll dive all into that today. RR: Awesome. So exciting that you’re in a role that’s challenging you and building on all of those skills that you were learning and picking up along the way. Before we jump in, I’d love if you could set the stage for those of us not familiar with HealthJoy—who you are, what you do, who you serve, and then maybe a little bit of that sales motion that you touched on. JK: HealthJoy is a benefits operating system, and really what we do is help make sure that companies’ benefits strategies and plans actually work as designed. What do I mean by that? Well, I’m sure, Riley, as you’ve experienced too, companies typically have a pretty fragmented benefits plan, right? There’s the medical plan, the dental plan, maybe individual solutions. Usually these companies all have different logins, different ways to access them, and there’s not necessarily a concrete place where you can go to get all that information inside of one environment. Also, the reality is, if I’m debating whether I need to go to the ER right now, I can tell you the last place I’m gonna go is logging into my company’s intranet to figure out which ER is best applicable to me and which one is likely gonna work with my insurance. We make healthcare decisions through the path of least resistance, and frankly, they’re usually made in situations where we don’t have the luxury of time. This is really where HealthJoy can come in. With HealthJoy, companies can unite that benefits ecosystem into one seamless platform. We use an AI assistant called Joy AI, as well as human concierges, to give our end members or employees personalized guidance and proactive support. That’s really where HealthJoy finds itself: being that benefits operating system that puts everything together and helps you, Riley, make the right decision at the right time. So that’s the big-picture view of what the company is and what we do. Now, how do we actually do it? The way HealthJoy operates is we work through what you’d call a benefits consultant. Your HR team at your business is probably working with an external benefits agency, consultant, or broker to help curate and strategize that benefits plan to maximize its effectiveness and cost for the business. We work through them, build really meaningful relationships with brokers all across the United States, and then from there, when there’s strategic alignment and the broker believes in us and our message, they’ll introduce us to clients where they think we can help that company advance its mission because they align with the kinds of things we’re offering. So that’s what we’d call a channel sales methodology. We’re working with people who then sell in tandem with us. From an enablement perspective, you’re not only trying to enable your selling team, but you’re also asking: how can I best train these folks to then go and enable the hundreds of brokers they’re all working with individually around the country? RR: I think your marketing and comms team is really gonna be thrilled because that was a great pitch. It almost seems like you have to, as an enabler, play a game of telephone. You have one message to share with folks internally that you then need them to get out the right way externally. It sounds like it’s quite the challenge, especially given that, like you shared, HealthJoy is in kind of a unique position at the intersection of tech and all of the wonderful complexity that comes with healthcare. So how does that industry challenge shape the way your go-to-market teams need to operate, and what kind of challenges does that create for you on the enablement side? JK: Yeah, that complexity gives me a lot of job security. So it is a real challenge. One thing HealthJoy has gotten really good at over the last year is defining who our ideal customer is. Is it the end-user employer? Is it the member who would experience it? Is it the broker we’re targeting? And it really is the broker. Those are the folks we’re working with, building meaningful relationships with, and who can open up so much opportunity for us as a business. When a broker believes in us, it pays huge dividends in both effectiveness and outcomes. At that intersection of tech and healthcare, another interesting element that often shows up in enablement is onboarding. You look at who we hire as our sales reps—we’re looking for people who typically have a strong background in healthcare and great existing relationships with brokers around the United States. Then they’re coming into an environment where maybe they weren’t in a tech environment at all. So how do we equip these individuals to feel really confident in a remote sales environment that’s very tech-forward? HealthJoy as a company is also heavily leaning into AI internally and externally. So convincing our sellers that the direction we’re taking as a company is one they can understand, intuit, and promote into the market is a real challenge. It’s multi-step. An adage I try to live by as an enabler—and this is really a hallmark of adult education—is the question: what’s in it for me? If it’s not relevant for that seller, they’re not going to retain it, even if they want to. Even if their boss is pleading with them, “You have to know this. This has to make sense for you.” If there’s not an immediate connection to why this matters for me and my paycheck at the end of the day, it’s not going to stick. That’s not selfishness. That’s just the reality of how adults learn and prioritize what’s important. So for us, we have to make sure the messages we’re positioning—whether they’re for the seller to use, for the seller to communicate to their broker, or for the end member—have a really clear through line. The rep needs to know what’s in it for them and who that message is for throughout. It can be complicated. It can be a real challenge to make sure we’re nailing that every single time. I get a negative shiver down my spine every time I hear a message about what HealthJoy is that doesn’t align with the message we’re putting out into the market. Because I know for every one rep who says that, there’s probably a dozen brokers who hear it too. And we’re working with brokers over the course of years. So if that broker got a demo of HealthJoy three years ago and thinks, “I know it. I’m good to move forward,” how do we keep our existing brokers who love us educated on what’s happening across the market and how we’re evolving as a company? RR: It’s kind of fascinating. I feel like sometimes you talk to folks and the challenge of bringing in sellers is getting them up to speed on the complex side of the industry. If I’m chatting with fintech customers, it’s understanding the financial environment. Or with health tech customers, it’s learning how to speak about healthcare. But you have the reverse challenge. You’re bringing in sales reps who maybe were in the field or in more traditional spaces, and now you need to get them up to speed on all of the innovation that comes with a tech company. So it’s a very unique challenge, and it sounds like it’s one you’re well-equipped to tackle. You described yourself as someone who really excels at turning ideas into repeatable, measurable processes. I’d love if you could tell us, from your perspective, how you’re connecting strategy to execution, because as that stat we opened with tells us, things tend to get lost in translation. JK: For me, when it comes to turning things into repeatable and measurable processes—especially as an enablement team of one—my thought is this: pick really carefully and be ready to pivot. Especially in a startup environment, odds are if you’re an enablement team of one, you’re in a company that’s still developing. There isn’t a strong adherence to “the way things have always been,” or a large team and lots of infrastructure supporting the organization. It’s you. You are the brand of enablement. Who you represent and how you show up is what enablement is perceived as by your organization every single time. So with that, be really careful about what you choose to make repeatable. I get so many asks every month: “Hey, I’d love to make a process on this,” or “Can we update XYZ?” But I have to be mindful of the opportunity cost of saying yes to developing more things, because all of those things have downstream maintenance and upkeep. It’s more to manage, which steals time I wasn’t intending to give six months from now. So when it comes to measurable processes, we basically say: let’s take the idea and find a couple key metrics. As a team of one, pick one or two that really matter to your executives, then ask yourself: is this worth keeping track of? Is this worth my bandwidth over the next year or two? There’s another line our CEO says frequently: “80% today is better than 100% two weeks from now.” Now, that doesn’t mean deliver lackluster work. But especially as an enablement person, I’m a perfectionist. I want things to look and feel really good. I want them to be intuitive and usable. But sometimes the pace of the organization demands that we move faster. If I can embody the reality that 80% today is better than 100% later, I can deliver work that really matters, drives impact, and still allows me to pivot and adapt quickly. Because the more perfect we make something, the more maintenance it often requires. That’s a profound hidden cost for enablement organizations: what does it cost to maintain the standards you’re presenting? That’s a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way. I’ve done it well and really poorly at different points in my career. And I think it can really make or break your own love of enablement—whether it’s something you can continue to grow in, or whether you end up stuck inside the castle you built yourself. RR: I think you just gave us a framework of two very practical questions you can ask yourself as you’re looking at a request from your sales team or something coming cross-functionally: Is it going to be valuable for me to invest in this? And what does timely execution look like? How can I get something out that is useful and delivers business value, even if it doesn’t meet every single standard I have? That’s really helpful for anybody who’s trying to ruthlessly prioritize, which I know is hard. JK: Because it’s all important, right? Everyone has great ideas, but if 30 things fall in your lap to manage and maintain, congrats—you just built yourself three jobs, none of which have much capacity to strategically grow in the future. It becomes about project and program maintenance, which is valuable and important, but as a team of one or a lean enablement team, it’s a non-starter. It can’t be part of the equation that often. And when it is, it’s gotta be really important to make it worthwhile. RR: 100%. I wonder if we can ground this thinking in an example. Recently, HealthJoy launched a new go-to-market message. So, when you’re talking about scaling ideas and execution—in this case, a new message and a new market perception—what do you find are the key ingredients to success in making that strategy become reality? JK: Yeah, absolutely. For 2026, our message is: “HealthJoy is the benefits operating system that makes your benefits strategy work as designed.” I think the way we get this to stick in the market with these very disparate audiences is the same story internally as well. We have to make sure everyone’s on the same page. A couple of things stand out for me from an adult education and enablement perspective. First, when you’re talking about large company-wide initiatives, you have to define the problem incredibly clearly. Why is what we’re doing right now not working? Again, getting at that adult education mentality of “what’s in it for me?” The reality is: what’s happening now isn’t working for you. If it’s not a compelling and inspiring vision, people won’t care. They’ll stick with what they’re doing today because the status quo is always easier than change. I need to understand that changing my behavior and changing how I’m presenting messaging in the market means every demo and sales pitch now has to adjust because of this. That’s no small lift. So be really clear about what’s not working now, where we’re going in the future, why it’s better, and why sellers should care. Second: repetition. I’m a really big fan of multimodal learning for reps. That means delivering content through stand-and-present sessions, team trainings, one-on-one conversations, learning management systems, videos—I've even recorded podcasts. You have to hit learners in different ways from where they are. One thing I can never let myself forget is that I cannot assume people are paying attention the first time. They’re distracted with XYZ—you fill in the blank. We owe double the responsibility to be repetitive with our content if we actually want it to stick. Saying, “Well, I trained on it once. I sent the deliverable. I gave the email recap. That should be enough,” isn’t enough. In enablement, we should be asking not whether we think we did enough, but whether it actually worked. And where we can, let’s let reps weigh in on the decisions. Obviously, a single seller probably isn’t going to reshape your whole go-to-market message. But in our case, we had reps test this out in their markets first and give us feedback on what was resonating. Reps felt like they were part of the process from day one because they were brought into those conversations to help steer the organization. When we do these things together, it creates a deep sense of confidence and a steady vision. RR: Yeah, and it sounds like these are all layers of that foundational piece of “what’s in it for you?” How can we message that, and then how can I make sure that everywhere you’re working and telling our story, you have what you need to tell it the right way? I love that it all ladders up to that primary objective. JK: Because it’s fundamentally behavior change, right? How do we actually drive real behavior change instead of just checking boxes that say, “Well, this should’ve changed the behavior”? And in a remote environment, working with sellers who may be coming from non-tech backgrounds, this has to be done with excellence or it’s going to fail. RR: Mm-hmm. And when we’re talking about behavior change, can you share where a tool like Highspot fits into the picture and how you’re using it to bring new programs, processes, and this messaging shift to life? JK: The way I’ve positioned Highspot in the organization—and I think it’s gotten a lot of traction—is that it’s a beautiful place that reps can trust. That’s kind of my tagline for it. Primarily, we use Highspot to organize our internal sales policies, external sales collateral, Digital Rooms, and a couple of AutoDocs. How our reps mostly understand the platform is this: it’s the centralized database where they can trust they’re getting the most up-to-date content. They can send it out through the platform, track it, and see how it’s performing with customers. When I was interviewing for this role, I talked with a couple other enablement leaders, and one thing someone said really stuck with me: “Beautiful things get used.” Highspot, when you put in a little work, can look so pleasing and inviting. It’s just a great UI. When I came into the organization, there were three different versions of content in Highspot. It wasn’t well maintained for a variety of reasons. But I knew that to maximize the effectiveness of the platform, we had to clean it up and create a compelling vision for why reps should use this instead of their own private Google Drive with five downloaded resources. How could I give them a compelling vision that centralization is better? We started by making it really appealing, really beautiful, and simple to navigate. So when we talk about driving behavior change, you need tools in a remote environment that categorize what great looks like, make it really clear, create centralized expectations, and stop reps from running off like lone cowboys and cowgirls across the country. We need a central standard for what great looks like and what good content is. Highspot serves that role well because reps trust it. It’s cleaned up, it’s beautiful, and it’s enjoyable to use. And then on top of that, they get the tracking, benefits, and analytics on the backend. RR: If you look at the data, it shows that what you’re doing is working and that these philosophies are really resonating with your teams because you’ve driven 93% recurring usage of the platform. Pretty much everybody is coming back time and time again. When you’ve made something people want to come back to and find real value in, that’s fantastic. JK: It was honestly one of my proudest moments in my first few months here. When I joined HealthJoy a little over a year ago, Highspot was one of the first projects I took on as an enabler. I thought, “I want to revamp this experience.” At that point, the main concern I was hearing—because I met with every rep individually—was: “I don’t know what content is up to date. It takes me forever to find what I’m looking for.” In my brain, because my previous company used Highspot, I immediately thought: ding, ding, ding. There’s an easy solution to this. We have it. We just need to make this the default behavior. So I did a couple things. One, I pitched and presented it. I met with reps one-on-one to understand their problems, then met with some of them again to say, “Hey, here’s the solution. This is kind of your idea because you said this was an issue.” They had buy-in. Then, I built a treasure hunt, which was basically a 30-question quiz where reps had to navigate through Highspot, find resources, create pages, and complete tasks. Naturally, reps didn’t love the idea of homework. Who would? But about two months into my role, we had an onsite in Chicago. At a team dinner, one of the managers said in front of everyone: “Jacob, we’ve been talking and we’ve all agreed—we’re gonna do your treasure hunt.” That was a key turning point for us. If you want Highspot—or any tool—to work, reps need to have buy-in. And especially on enablement teams of one or two, you’re the brand. If they’re not bought into you, they’re not going to buy into what you’re implementing. RR: On that topic of making life easier, you mentioned a few use cases where Highspot comes into play with both optimization and time savings, especially with Digital Rooms and AutoDocs. With these capabilities fueling external sharing and customization to brokers’ processes, what workflow improvements have you seen, and how has that reduced complexity for the sales team? JK: I’ll give one example. Alongside a formal price quote, we send out a proposal form. It’s the more beautiful, easy-to-read version of the formal quote. It gives the compelling narrative for why someone should use the platform and what’s included in their package. Previously, the process was basically a Google Drive template where reps manually adjusted text boxes. I would hear stories of reps spending two to three hours realigning boxes into a single vertical line. And they’re like, “This is so dumb.” I understood the frustration, but proposals still have to look excellent. There’s no excuse. So that was the first AutoDoc we took on. In some cases, building a proposal was taking reps two to three hours. On average, probably about an hour if everything went well. We streamlined that process dramatically. Every prospect got a proposal, but the process went from 45–60 minutes down to at most 15 minutes, and on average about five. It took me a lot of hours upfront to build, but the payoff was immediate. I think within the first year, something like 70 proposals had already been sent through that auto doc. When I calculated the time savings, I was thrilled. And I could’ve built that AutoDoc six months earlier, but because we didn’t yet have the platform engagement and trust, nobody would’ve trusted what came next. We had to solve the foundational issues first: engagement and trust. Once reps believed this was better than the alternatives, then we could deliver the “chef’s kiss” features. But we had to get them in the door first. Otherwise, we were dead on arrival. RR: I really like that framing of building the foundation first and spending time building trust. Now that you have adoption and users are bought in—sending proposals, sharing content, tracking engagement—what impact would you say this work has had on the business overall? JK: I think it was the first case under my stewardship of enablement at HealthJoy where I could say: “I hear you. This project was done in response to your needs. Trust me with the solution, and you’re going to see the positive outcome because of it.” It showed a really clear way that, as a solo enabler, I could offer real value and build a strong partnership with the sales team. Because I’m not their boss. I’m their peer who’s here to think strategically alongside them and help them win revenue more easily. I also think the Highspot rollout set us on a trajectory where we could repeat that process. The change in go-to-market messaging came on the heels of Highspot. Even though they weren’t the same project, that organizational muscle had already been exercised successfully. RR: You’re in a fast-moving startup environment, and now you have that central source of truth so that as things change, you can help your reps change with them. As we’re wrapping up, if there’s one crystallizing theme for enablement teams operating with limited capacity or as a team of one, what advice would you give on prioritization and focusing efforts to drive the most impact? JK: I’m learning this lesson a lot right now. As an enablement team of one—or even two—have really great partnerships and open conversations across the business: with your CEO, your C-suite, sales leaders, marketing, and product. You really do serve as connective tissue. One thing I can struggle with is getting so stuck in training, training, training that I forget to ask: what’s the highest-impact thing I can spend my time on to drive business outcomes? That may be training, but it may also mean joining tiger teams across the business, helping investigate new products or strategies, and bringing an enablement perspective into implementation planning. So keep an ear to the ground. Stay responsive to business needs. Be open to pivoting quickly. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into saying, “In enablement, I do onboarding and training, and that’s it.” Enablement is dynamic by design, and that’s why I love it so much. I’ve joked that any six-month snapshot of my enablement career would probably look like a completely different job description. That’s just the name of the game. So embrace change. Look for where the cheese is moving, and don’t get mad that your cheese got moved. Also, champion your successes. Especially in a small enablement team, people want to know what’s happening. But in a remote environment, if you’re not shouting from the rooftops about the cool things you’re doing, they won’t get seen. That’s just reality. So especially for newer enablement pros, don’t be afraid to champion your work because it’s super cool. And finally, going full circle to what we talked about at the beginning: only scale the things that aren’t going to steal your time. Scale the things you’re willing to continue investing in. That’s what keeps you dynamic, strategic, and able to adapt to new opportunities while still helping champion your reps across the organization. RR: I think it’s really powerful that every piece of advice you just shared ties directly back to examples from your own work. Even that last point—“scale what doesn’t steal your time”—showed up in your proposal example. Yes, it took time upfront, but it saved time down the line and was the right place to invest. Thank you for such practical and applicable advice for anyone trying to prioritize, manage competing asks, and figure out where to focus their efforts.Really wonderful insights throughout this conversation. We’re so grateful you took the time to share them with us. JK: Thanks so much, Riley. This has been a ton of fun. RR: 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 go-to-market success with Highspot.

According to research from Promotional Products Association International, the promotional products industry is digitizing, and it is digitizing fast. Last year, online sales represented 25% of total industry sales, which is a 19% increase year over year. As the industry shifts, promotional product organizations like Polyconcept North America are as well. So, how do you manage the change? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Nicole Zuniga, sales enablement manager, and Lanya Trypupenko, marketing lead acquisition specialist at PCNA. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’re really excited to have you here and to dig into all the wonderful work you’re doing at PCNA. Before we kick off, I’d love to learn a little bit about you both, your background, and your role. Nicole, would you like to start us off? Nicole Zuniga: Sure. So I am sales enablement manager. I run our Highspot platform. I do have sales background experience, and I often go out to customer events and dive back into my sales role when we’re doing those. But mainly when it comes to Highspot, I’m trying to create a lot of or limit a lot of that gray area between sales and marketing and make it really easy for not only our sales reps to be able to provide guidance and value to our customers, but then our customers take a lot of that same content and reuse it for working with their customers. RR: Wonderful. Well, we’re happy to have you here. Lanya, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Lanya Trypupenko: I am currently the marketing lead acquisition specialist, also known as the new account specialist. So I onboard the majority of our new accounts and just make sure they have all the information and everything they need to kinda get started and be successful with PCNA. And then my background, I’ve worked in marketing and account management for ten plus years, always with different types of products, such as jewelry, eyewear, telecommunications, and now promotional products. RR: Fantastic. Well, I am really looking forward to digging into all of that experience and how it shows up for you at PCNA. Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, Nicole, would you mind giving us a high-level overview of PCNA’s business, what you sell, who you sell it to, especially knowing that you guys have a little bit of a unique sales structure? I’d love if you could walk us through it and kind of set that foundation for our listeners. NZ: Absolutely. So anybody who has received a piece of swag or some sort of giveaway, that is what we do. So we are a promotional product supplier. We import, design, and decorate promotional items, a 50 cent pen all the way up to a $300, um, leather tote bag or leather, uh, duffel bag. So we have quite an array of products that we offer. And we work with a distributor network, so it’s a very unique way that we do business. Instead of us working directly with the public, our distributors will then market to, could be marketing firms, it could be directly very large corporations, it could be small businesses. And so we are promoting to the promoter of our products. RR: I think folks listening in will probably be a little bit astonished by the scale that you’re dealing with. There are, you know, potentially thousands of products. They change seasonally. They just change depending upon the type of buyer that you’re targeting, the budget that you have, all sorts of factors. When you’re working at a scale like this and you’re working to enable at a scale like this, what starts to break down? What cracks do you see as you’re helping your teams take all of these products to market? NZ: You’re looking at, especially when you look at seasonality or even upcoming national days, their buying events coming, and that kind of takes out, like, that first layer of, “I don’t know where to start.” The hardest question or the hardest thing to get is, um, “Give me, like, five or 10 ideas for this price range,” but not knowing what is the use case, what is the theme, who is the audience. So, that’s what a lot of our resources are for, to whittle out some of those questions to then get down to the nitty-gritty of what is going to hit with the customer. Let’s talk about breast cancer awareness. It’s not necessarily going to be a one-for-one. It depends on what our distributors are working on with their customers. It could be maybe they just want a simple sport pack to be able to give out to their customers. It could be a plastic cup. It could also be a really nice piece of apparel. So we’re trying to provide a lot of those ideas. Typically, we have flyers of product ideas for those buying moments, and that’s mainly what’s housed in Highspot, to make it easier to just have a collection of ideas to inspire more of those discussions with our distributors and then also distributors with their customers. The Sales Plays have been very, very important to us. It’s like a single source of truth now, that with our training, it helps keep everybody on the same page. It’s like how we position it, where we win, competitive insights, how to talk about it. When I was on the sales team, it was like, “What did they say? Who said that?” And it was a game of telephone. So, now we have a one-stop shop, one resource that has all of the things all weaved together—the what to know, what to do, what to say, what to show. When I developed our quarterly sales playbook, put it in the same exact format, so that way everybody’s used to that exact same format of all the resources that we provide, which is kind of like a big Sales Play for everyone for the quarter for messaging. RR: So it seems like the challenge is really less about navigating through an endless array of options, and more so about creating an efficient system for packaging and sharing out relevant materials that sellers can find and run with, depending upon the type of customer that they’re speaking with. So with that little bit of frame of reference for the business about how PCNA operates, as well as what’s difficult about how it operates, Lanya, I’d love to hear from you about how some of these challenges show up in your work. LT: Yeah. I would say my initial challenges are really in making sure that, like, the customer has the information that they need from the beginning, that they understand PCNA, and then getting to the place where they’re kind of comfortable placing the order, that they can kind of self-service, you know, go look for product themselves. Of course, as the accounts do grow, it’s also important for me to be able to assist them based on their specific business and industry needs. So, that’s kind of where the tools, like the Highspot tools that Nicole puts together, are super helpful because then I can go in and just grab something that’s maybe specific to, like, someone that has a healthcare client versus someone that has a corporate client. RR: So we’ve heard a few challenges here, I think ones that make a lot of sense for the environment you’re working in. One thing I’m curious about is that while some of these challenges sound familiar, one thing that might not be familiar to a lot of folks is that you work in a pretty unique environment. It’s still very hands-on. Nicole, as you mentioned, you’re often at trade shows. You’re supporting events. You’re boots on the ground with the sales teams handling in-person selling right alongside them. So, what led you to decide that it was time to take a more digital approach, and why did Highspot come into the picture? NZ: Going back to that gray area, we had resources. It was not easy to find. Our website is focused on finding and searching products, and even our own internal people have a hard time finding content on the website. And the thing we really loved about Highspot is it reduces that searching time. People are able to find things really quickly. We can put them into certain spots within Highspot. We can tag them. And the filters—I always say to anybody that I work on with hands-on training—filters are your friend, and it makes it really easy to quickly find the things that you’re looking for. And then when we send out things, like it could be our new summer lookbook, there are so many products in there, but the insights that someone gets of like, “They told me they were really interested in bags, but they spent five minutes over here on this golf,” that is a great way of a little lead generation to then set up and further those conversations and figure out that maybe that’s really what they were looking for. Of course, using the, “Did you get my email first?” because you don’t wanna necessarily, oh, sound the alarms that you were looking at every single thing they were looking at. But that really helps us narrow down those options to then provide more value and get quickly to what the customer wants. RR: I can definitely see that making a lot of sense as you look across a changing industry and realize, maybe there are some things that we could do differently, especially, you know, as you said, having been through the ringer as a seller yourself. I also love that use case of engagement insights shaping your next steps, because to your point, you know, sometimes your customers come in with an idea of what they want, and then you share all sorts of wonderful, shiny options with them, and they go, “Well, hold on a minute. There’s a lot more I could get there.” So that’s really clever, and I like that a lot. Lanya, I know that this kind of shows up a lot in your work. I’d love to hear how some of these digital-first tactics, things like Digital Rooms, impact the way you engage with or navigate accounts. LT: So the way I onboard new accounts is a variety of different engagement methods. One of them is a cadence that I’ll take on new accounts, and I’ll drop them into this cadence. It’s always an email first, then a phone touch call, and then, you know, a number of emails at the end there. And then, of course, customers can book calls with me whenever they want, whenever they’re available. But in that original introductory email, I always have Highspot links in there, so important information that they need from the beginning. One of them is our PCNA+ benefits program, which is, like, super important for them to know from the beginning that they have these specific benefits. They’re at a specific level, and they can use them anytime throughout the year. And then as they kind of go forward in the cadence, there is an email that also has a Digital Room. That’s actually one that Nicole creates monthly with, you know, all this great information. And then that, I will go in, and I’ll edit it and kind of cater it more towards the new accounts, so then they also will have their PCNA+ benefits in there, as well as some additional information that’s just for new accounts. So, they kind of have everything all in one space. RR: And you’re certainly not the only one with a compelling Digital Room use case. Nicole, on the marketing side, you’re using Digital Rooms to support trade shows and events. So, what does that look like for you, you know, when you’re building the Room, sharing it in an event, and then continuing to use it after the event? NZ: So I actually just came back from one, and I’ll be working on my follow-up today. It starts with, I take that same Digital Room that’s been created, like, kind of like our monthly newsletter. That’s how we position it to our sales team. It kind of is taking our website, which is, think about your entire syllabus for the quarter or, like, whatever session you’re in for school, and then the CliffsNotes is our Digital Room. So then I take that, and I will tailor it to that event: removing the content that maybe we didn’t talk about or that doesn’t necessarily make sense, and then I will link the things that we talked about with our agenda within that Digital Room. And I already know what we’re gonna talk about when we get to these events ’cause it’s like a speed dating thing, and we already kind of set up, like, what we’re gonna talk about, unless they have something that they want to address with us. So I take that, I make it a link share, and then I will put that link into a QR code. We then put it onto a flyer, and the flyer has, like, why PCNA, just some of, like, our high-level stuff, and then that flyer goes within a bag or something that we hand out to every single person. And it makes it really easy for my follow-up. I take that exact same Digital Room, and then I will tweak it. So we do a thing called Brand Book, where we can take our look books and put a customer’s logo on every single product throughout. So then I will put that in there, a special link. That’s where I customize it per customer, and then we will send it out as the follow-up. I copy their account rep on it, so that way they have their contact information. And once that’s sent over and I have the handoff and we have the follow-up for the sales team to take that lead and maybe there are some other tasks and items to help really dig into that account. I will then switch and transfer the Digital Room over to them so they get all the insights and they can see, and then their information is hanging at the bottom, and I’m not their, their backbone. Their rep is their backbone. RR: It sounds like you found a really tidy way of building an end-to-end event experience inside of that Digital Room. You know, at the event, it starts high level, aligned to the message and products you’re sharing at the event, so that anybody that happens to look at it would find value in it. But then after the event, it becomes a very hyper-personalized experience where they can go in, see the vision and the value of their logo on your offerings. And as they build interest from that very personalized experience, you, as enablement, can hand it off naturally to the right person so that they can bring that account through to a successful purchase or to successful growth. That’s a really great use case, and I’ve certainly heard folks using Digital Rooms for events, but I really like your approach here. Thinking broadly about how PCNA is using Digital Rooms and using Highspot, it really does sound like both of these strategies, you know, the onboarding Digital Rooms and the event-focused Digital Rooms, are really paying off for the organization. Just looking at the data, PCNA drives really significant external engagement on a regular basis: 14,000 external views, over 400 hours of buyer engagement last we checked. It’s a lot. So what would you say has changed as a result of adding Highspot and these new digital-first tactics into your workflow? Nicole, would you mind starting us off? NZ: I think, so we do two forms of measurement. One of them is I like to look and see what someone is engaging with. I’m curious, you know? I usually call engagement—and this is probably not the most professional way—but it’s professional creeping. So you can see exactly what someone is looking at, because that engagement insights, you know, it’s a way to see that you’re actually hitting the mark. And then we will also measure the sales of, or like how much more account growth we’ve seen from like six to 12 months after those events. So it’s really nice to see that engagement data is also aligning with the sales data afterwards, that we really are making those touchpoints with the customers, and also to see how long they look at those resources after the date. There have been times where they are still looking at it six to 12 months afterwards, because it’s like the page that we made for them, they think it’s kind of like a website we made for them. So that has been really, really impactful. And then seeing our sales reps with that adoption and the ease of a Digital Room, that really, really helps. And then, I mean, just I think being able to find what you’re looking for just in general, the sales reps love it. Anybody who’s new starts, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is so amazing. I love how I can find things really quickly.” And if I can’t find stuff, I go to Highspot. I think those are some of the big things that have really changed the way we work here. RR: Yeah. And those are certainly big things. I’d love to double-click into what you shared there about using engagement data from your Digital Rooms and taking post-event interest and mapping it to sales outcomes down the line. Can you walk us through how you’re making that connection between engaging with a content item or a specific product and then, you know, successful account growth? NZ: So we get a list of who’s going to be attending. We pre-run sales numbers, so that way we pull our data from Salesforce, who the account manager is, how much, I think there’s like five years of sales data in there. Having like a little bit of insight so before we go to that event, and then as we kind of take notes throughout, we also will track them just knowing that they are a part of like this cadence of reporting. And then I like to look at the engagement data, because I want to see if what we said during that meeting really matters. There was one lady who was really excited about one piece of content, and then she downloaded all the other pieces of content and really wasn’t as interested in it. So I also report that out to our leadership team to show what things are really making an impact, and that also helps the marketing team in general. Like, is this something that’s really impactful? Should we be doing it next year? And if they’re not downloading it or we’re not seeing sales off of the things that we’re pitching, then maybe that’s not the right direction for us RR: Amazing. Lanya, from your perspective, I’d love to hear what you feel has changed by introducing these digital tactics, things like Digital Rooms, into your workflow. LT: Yeah. I would say what’s different is that new accounts now can have access to, like, really important information that’s curated for them, and it’s all in one place, so they’re, like, able to be informed more easily. They, you know, I can just send links to them instead of having to go in and pull individual documents and attachments. And so it’s great for them. I actually get feedback from customers sometimes when they get the Digital Room from email that’s like, “This is so great. Thank you for all this information.” And then for me, I know Nicole touched on this before, it’s really a huge time-saver, ’cause I don’t have to go into, like, different places and, you know, pull different things to send to them. I don’t really have to go, like, on the website and pull different products, which is, you know, really an undertaking when you do have to do that. So those would be the biggest things. RR: It really sounds like it’s kind of a double-edged sword, you know? These Digital Rooms improve the experience for your buyers, your accounts, and then it also just makes life easier for you as a seller, which is, I think, always the goal, because it allows you to move faster, it allows you to move more efficiently, which means in turn you can help more accounts be more successful, which is a win for both you and the business. Nicole, as the steward of this strategy, what would you say is your proudest achievement with the platform? NZ: Well, for one, everybody wants to be part of Highspot. But I would say it is that way we’re more connected. We have a one-stop shop resource of where all the things are, and my goal was that it would be that go-to spot. And now when sales reps reach out to me, “Nicole, where is this?” “Nicole, can I find this?” Or, “How do I…” They said, “I’ve already checked Highspot.” That’s just a proud moment of showing that that has really been part of their daily routine. Our sales leadership is all in for Highspot, and every time we have something new, they wanna make sure it’s in there. So it is, like, our biggest go-to in our tech stack. RR: Amazing. I’m very happy to hear that the platform is performing and creating that really high-impact alignment that every organization is looking to drive. Okay. So I think through both the onboarding strategy and then the event strategy that we talked about, we’ve probably built a little bit of FOMO for folks interested in Digital Rooms, but still kind of on the cusp of actually scaling it out. I’d love to tap into some of the expertise that brought these strategies to life. Lanya, I’d love to start with you. For someone just getting started with Digital Rooms, what separates a good experience from a great one? LT: I would say, I know we both touched on this a little bit, but really being able to, like, curate to your audience. That’s what’s gonna make it a great experience for them instead of just something good and, like, maybe just some information that they might just browse through. So, you know, make sure that you know, like, what product they’re looking for, what industries they’re working with, and then being able to go in and curate that content in Highspot, which is what, you know, Nicole and her team does really great, and being able to pull that specifically for that business type. RR: Yeah, 100%, being intentional about your audience, what they need from you, and how you can support them is everything. That is so powerful in anything that you’re sending out to a prospect or a customer. Nicole, on your end, for listeners that are in the process of digitizing a very traditionally hands-on sales process, what would you tell them to get right from the very beginning? NZ: When you can align with what your go-to-market strategy is—I work on the marketing team. We have something called New HQ on our website. I take that outline, and I make it into the Digital Room for that month, and it really helps. That way, I’m not starting everything from scratch, and we are all uniform across the board. So if a customer isn’t reading an email—how dare they? Or if they’re not necessarily scouring our website, then if we provide this digital resource, they can get to exactly what they want really quickly. It makes it really easy for them to find those resources and have them and be ready to sell the items or position things to their customers. RR: Yeah. Also great advice. You know, we talked about how Highspot can help you drive alignment, but when you’re intentional about that alignment and you’re making sure that everything you’re building maps back to the business’s broader message and goals, that takes you one step closer to a really robust, seamless go-to-market engine. Lanya, Nicole, thank you so much for joining us today. It was absolutely wonderful speaking with you and learning a little bit more about the work happening at PCNA. NZ: Thank you for having us. RR: 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 go-to-market success with Highspot.

According to research by G2, organizations with a sales enablement strategy achieve, on average, a 49% higher win rate on forecasted deals. But to see these kinds of returns, you first need to get sellers, leaders, and the business itself bought into the value of enablement. So, how do you build confidence in the function's value across stakeholders at every level of the business? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Mateo Perretta, senior director of revenue enablement, and Bety Garcia, sales enablement program manager at Loopio. Thank you both so much for joining us. I’m really excited to have you here and to learn a little bit from your expertise. Before we kick off, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role? Betty, maybe can we start with you? Bety Garcia: Yeah, no, thank you for having us. I’m a sales enablement program manager here at Loopio. I’ve been in enablement for a little bit under a decade at this point.  I’ve always been part of pretty small teams, so I’ve had to be pretty creative when it comes to, you know, how do we get a whole bunch of different initiatives done across the board. RR: The story of scrappy teams and figuring it out is one that a lot of folks in enablement know well, so I’m sure there will be a lot of similarities in what you have to share. Matteo, would you mind telling us a little bit about your journey? Matteo Perretta: Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for having us today. You know, it’s interesting. I tell a story about, I  started my career in telemarketing. I was in sales support did sales myself. I became a sales leader. And then I stumbled into this thing called sales effectiveness, sales excellence, sales enablement. It’s changed over the years, but probably in 2010 when I stumbled across it. And what I’d like to say is I’ve moved from the game of quantity to quality. RR: From your perspective, having now stumbled into sales effectiveness, now sales enablement and led it at several different companies, how would you define what great enablement looks like, especially for growing GTM organizations like Loopio? MP: I’ve walked into sales organizations and the first feedback I get is, we’ve done way too much enablement. We really haven’t had any time to digest it. And that’s usually a symptom of teams being reactive. What I mean by that is sales leaders and salespeople will come to you and tell you they need all this enablement and you just keep filling that funnel and you almost become a catch-all for everyone versus being proactive and really looking at, you know, data and insights to kind of figure out what do we need to do and how does that actually align to the KPIs or the results and what the organization’s ultimately trying to do? And so for me, it’s really understanding: “What do we have, what are our assets, and how do we align them to our goals?” When you do that, you become a partner and you show them with insight what’s important versus just, you know, being this order taker and doing a lot of enablement that just isn’t resonating. RR: The other piece of the puzzle is giving enablement the agency to kind of direct course and build a strategy with sellers in mind, but also not built for every single thing that every single seller needs, because that is an endless hamster wheel that you will never escape. So I love that call out and I’m curious to hear how technology fits into that when it comes to building a great enablement strategy. Betty, you’ve been with Loopio through a couple of enablement tool changes, including when Loopio made the decision to step away from a previous tool and kind of run without one for six months. Can you walk us through what wasn’t working then and why for a little while maybe no tool was better than the wrong tool? BG: It wasn’t so much that we had issues with the tool itself, but more so what it had become at the time. Right? So like we have a ton of unorganized, outdated content in there. And the problem with something like this at the time is that users don’t tend to be loud about those issues. They tend to just find workarounds. On one hand, you might have, you know, top performers starting to create all of their own content that maybe they share with a few individuals and those individuals might share with others. On the other, you have the opposite of that, where you have a whole bunch of outdated content out there that’s just circulating. And so what this creates is a few different challenges for the team that doesn’t necessarily go noticed right away, which is that the messaging becomes completely random depending on, you know, who knows what, their experience level. That then translates to performance. So, now it’s not just an issue of, you know, do we have a good source of content for everybody to draw from? It’s, you know, how do we get everybody back to performing at the same level with the same level of knowledge and the same level of information? So that was sort of like, you know, stepping back. That was the real challenge that we were looking to solve. And part of what, having that time in between not having a tool and then looking for a new solution to bring into Loopio was having the time to plan for that, right? If we’re gonna do this, how are we gonna do it? There was a lot of planning involved in that and really trying to make that decision and, and started to tie it to the real business challenges that we had there, which was how do we get everybody working at the same level once again? RR: Yeah. And I’m really excited to dig into how you rebuilt that trust, because that’s not easy. So, we’ll touch on that in a minute. I want to start with the decision over that six-month period to strategize how we’re gonna rebuild and then who we’re gonna rebuild with, and eventually that decision led you here to Highspot. Bety, you mentioned that you’d launched Highspot at a previous company. What made you confident over this time as your planning, planning, planning, that this would be the right tool and you’d be able to build that trust in that confidence with your users with it? BG: I think it, I mean, I had a huge advantage, right? Because I had done it a few times, and I mean, had a great positive experience working with the team at Highspot, but also I knew that it was a really great tool, right? It sort of sells itself when it’s launched correctly, right? So instead of evaluating the tool itself, from that standpoint, it was like, great.How do we get strategic about doing a launch that’s gonna be really impactful. And that looked like doing cross-functional partnerships. So working with marketing and product, it wasn’t just an enablement initiative anymore. We really did spend a lot of time doing a ton of content review across the board and reevaluating what it was that we wanted to arm the team with. And then in fact, actually starting to anchor some of our own enablement initiatives into the launch of the tool itself. So when we did launch Highspot at, we actually also relaunched our onboarding program and we launched a whole new product to enablement program. Now, we were touching on the needs of marketing, the needs of product, the needs of our sales organization when it came to even just onboarding and starting to ramp up ours. And we could really start to show that impact very quickly across many different areas. RR: So from that moment, you’ve reached a pretty stable place with the platform and have built out a really robust environment that, just looking at the data, is well utilized by your teams. Matteo, from a leadership perspective, as someone who came in a little bit post-launch: When you joined Loopio and started looking at what you wanted the strategy to look like and the enablement approach to look like, how did Highspot start fitting into your vision as you were thinking about high priority initiatives, things like onboarding, things like, you know, Loopio's, monthly product launch cadence? MP: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting when people say enablement or to define enablement, it’s what’s the modality? And I think a lot of times. People see enablement with a classroom and an instructor up all the time. And one of the things, you know, I kept saying was, you know, it can’t be Bety and me in a classroom every time doing this. And so really Highspot allows us to give them different modalities and look at ways of giving people what they need when they need it. And so I think that was part of the strategy. The other thing was, you know, I’ve spent some time with a Highspot team, like, how are we gonna measure this? How are we gonna prove ROI to our leaders so that we can get them to buy in? I know in speaking to other sales enablement leaders, one of the biggest challenges is actually getting people to complete the courses, and so we’ve gotta make it easy for them. So with Highspot, we can quickly pull reports, help people understand who’s completing, who’s not, but then take it one level deeper. Some of the work that Bety’s done, we’re actually able to look at who are our top performers and how much time they are spending in Highspot versus those that aren’t top performers. There’s a correlation there. To me, that’s the most valuable thing, being able to go back to our leaders and saying: “This is working, this isn’t working. Here’s why we need to change and, and here’s the insight behind it.” RR: You mentioned something interesting there, which is the ability to, at a very granular individual level, see what users are doing, how they’re behaving, what they’re completing or what they’re not completing, and then kind of act on that. And that comes back to what I wanted to touch on, Bety, is driving that end-user adoption. So, how have you gotten reps to see Highspot as a value-add in their day to day, and maybe a little bit more depth on what Matteo touched on in terms of the impact you’ve seen on those high adopters, those high users.? BG: I think it becomes, uh, sort of self-explanatory when you can show what top performers are doing to the rest of the team. Because the minute that you can point to, you know, these people are doing all of these things as well, people get curious. And so it doesn’t have to be enablement asking them to do it. And you also have leaders asking them to do it. A really good example, early on what we did is we ran a Digital Room challenge. So yes, we had a few initiatives that were tied to the launch of Highspot, but I also knew from experience that the more they used Highspot, the more likely we would be able to get that adoption, which then gives us the analytics and gives us the feedback loop that we need to be able to get even better and make an even better experience for them. So we created this competition and had them start using Digital Rooms where, you know, now there was all of this buzz just in terms of like the engagement analytics that they were getting. Top performers shared what they were doing, reps were getting curious about, you know, what was being shared, what was resonating with prospects. And we didn’t have to do any of that. That was a pretty low effort initiative from our end. That was, I would say, more so on the side of how do we, again, build that credibility and get everybody changing the behavior of coming to Highspot all of the time for everything that they need with the understanding that they’re getting the right content at the right time. When we move into sort of ongoing enablement, now that we’ve established that. How do we then also make the same sort of correlations between the top performers who are completing all of the courses or reviewing all of the content that we’re launching in Highspot? People get excited about being able to do something a little bit better, and then that knowledge sharing starts to happen just organically across the board where people will start asking each other: “How do you do this?Can you share this with me? Where did you find this?” RR: I really like the approach where instead of, you know, it being a conventional top-down mandate that maybe doesn’t land with reps as well or feels like a forced addition to their workflow, it was instead more of like a grassroots initiative led through seller competition, which is gonna be there naturally. One piece that you did say is, you know, getting leaders to help you in that mission of getting reps to do the right things. Matteo, can you talk to us about what it’s like to get your leaders bought in? MP: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s interesting. I had a sales leader who once said to me: “Am I flying a plane or am I running a sales team?” And he was making reference to the fact that he had so many dashboards and he didn’t know what to start with. Highspot gives us the ability to pull reports and, and, and track success very quickly so that I can send it to a leader to be able to say, I need you to take action on this. They know exactly what they do, and they know exactly how to act on it. When they’ve got a team of ten and we’re showing that four people are spending more time in Highspot than everyone else, and those four people happen to be performing better than everyone else, you get the leader’s attention and now they know they have to action it because it affects their bottom line and it affects their team performance. Leaders are busy. Tools are supposed to make their lives easier, but if they’re inundated with it and they don’t know what to do with it, that’s where we as enablers need to empower them, give them the resources, give them the insights to be successful. And with the analytics and reporting that we can pull out of Highspot, the tool sells itself and, and they action it because they realize the value. RR: To the point of data. I think a lot of times when you talk about leadership engagement and earning sales, leadership buy-in, it’s really a conversation of like: “Can I convince them of the value?” And more often than not, what is going to convince them is hand them a number and say you can look at it and see that this is what you need to go run and do. So I love that. It’s really just I have a dashboard that tells you how to win. Are you gonna work with me on this or not? When did you feel that shift kind of happening and that accountability shifting from enablement-only to some of the onus going on to sales leaders? MP: One, we track monthly product enablement completion rates. When we made it important to them, they made it important to their AEs and CSMs. All of a sudden you see the completion rates going up. Not only that, we also track, you know, are they mentioning that product enablement from the previous month in their calls? We can start to track their calls and find out, hey, they actually are taking the information. And so for us, it’s not just a completion rate because, let’s face it, people can create a lot of click-through training and they’re just completing it to complete it. We’re actually going one step further or measuring that success or the validity of it, or whether or not they’re using it in their talk tracks. Again, all those numbers go back to the sales leaders, which makes it important to them, which means it’s important to the sales reps because the sales leaders are looking at it, and all of a sudden you’ve got better completions, better progress, and success in winning more because they’re using the assets and the training that you’ve shared with them on Highspot. RR: How are you kind of drawing that conclusion? What are you looking at when you are correlating that top users of Highspot are also our top performers? BG: I mean the, the most straightforward answer to that is that you look at, you know, our Salesforce data to take a look at win things like win rates, deal velocity, ARR, and then look at utilization metrics within Highspot. Beyond that, when you’re thinking about enablement as a whole, it’s almost like there’s a few different stages when I’m thinking about a program in terms of measurement, because the biggest shift that I think we’ve done from an enablement success metric standpoint is really thinking about outcomes, which is what Matteo was sort of alluding to, right? Like enablement always gets stuck in the measurement of completion rates and attendance rates, and that’s a really hard thing to then translate into impact to the business. And so when we’re thinking about outcomes, we’re leveraging a few different tools across the board to build that story. So how do we first deliver the learning? Then, how do we measure how they adopted the learning? And then do we have a way to measure that the behavior has actually become consistent? And so, looking at milestones, if you think about them from that perspective, to be able to measure how we’re doing every single step of the way. Yes, we can, you know, share that the team maybe hasn’t completed something for whatever reason. But when we start to show the outcome of these things, right, like these are the behaviors that are driving the right kinds of numbers that we wanna be able to see in terms of win rates, then it’s not really an issue. Right? It’s sort of like a self-serving argument at this point because it’s such an easy thing to sell to them. RR: It does often happen that I chat with enablement teams and measurement and real outcome and impact mapping is very much kind of a North Star still, and it seems like you guys have comfortably landed in a place where you can consistently point to: “Here is the initiative we’re running, the programs we’re driving, and here is exactly over the course of, you know, today, a month from now and then quarter over quarter, what that impact has had on our reps.” So I would be curious to hear from each of you in terms of the impact you’ve seen over the last, you know, year and change of running with Highspot, executing initiatives through the platform. What have you seen that do to your business outcomes? MP: There’s a lot of ways to measure that business outcome for us. And you know, I’ve heard other enablement teams struggle with how do they actually measure it? For us, every quarter we’re looking at what are our targets, what are we doing, what are the KPIs behind the targets, and how do we align to that? And so we closely manage and monitor our impact and what we’re doing to, what those KPIs are and what the business metrics are. And so when a request comes in, we actually look at it and say: “Hey, what’s the impact?” And if it doesn’t fit within that, rather than put it through Highspot and, and get people to do it, we kind of deprioritize that. I would say that’s probably one of the biggest impacts. The other one is one that I said earlier, which is that we have struggled with product enablement in the past and getting completion rates as most companies do. But I think now with this tool and the insights that we’re able to prove, and the validity and the ROI behind it, we’re seeing better completion rates. And those completion rates, again, are correlating in performance. And that’s really the piece that we continue to drive. RR: Bety from, from your end of things, anything you’d like to add to that in terms of. The impact or outcomes you’re seeing? BG: I mean, one I would say that I could point to is our onboarding program. I think that’s usually the easiest one to measure. The fact that, you know, we were able to launch a really structured, self-led onboarding program within Highspot meant that, you know, even though we have a really small team, I did have time to then focus on business as usual enablement, skills enablement. But you know, being able to rely on that also meant that our ramp became a lot easier to predict. And so even thinking back to, you know, a year ago or so before we had our onboarding program launched, we probably cut the time to get reps to the field by about 25%. Right? And so that’s huge. I, as an enabler, who’s doing all of these different things to be able to rely on things like that when we have a growing team if we’re gonna be successful at anything else that we’re doing. Otherwise you’re, you’re spread too thin and you’re not able to accomplish anything. It’s really great to be able to show from an organizational standpoint that what we are putting out from an enablement side is impacting other initiatives across departments. Right? So the biggest questions we sometimes get is like: “Great, we did all this training, but is the team actually selling that? Or we have new messaging, like how do we ensure that everybody is actually working on that? When you’ve been able to tie some of those behaviors to, well, we started here, right?” We were not just focused on whether or not they were looking at the content. We were actually focused on whether or not they actually learned something from it. That it's part of their overall deal management. RR: So it sounds like kind of the broad, overarching theme there is that you’ve been able to drive consistency. You have folks ramping at a standard time, you can reliably say, our program is working and it’s working faster on ongoing training. People are completing the work that they need to, to be ready for all of these product launches, and then all of that work is translating into better returns in the field down the line. So it’s kind of just a full end-to-end process that gets a rep ready to go and delivering better. Looking back at all of this work, Matteo, I would love to hear from you. What, if any, other signals are you looking at that tell you that this is, this is the right approach that you and the team have developed something that really sustainably works? MP: I think sometimes if you’re not getting people training or not getting people completed, it’s because it’s too hard. They couldn’t find it, they couldn’t locate it. You know, I wish we had everything in one central, you know, repository. With Highspot, we have that, and ultimately the experience for the AEs and the AMS and CSMs to complete training is much better because of a tool like Highspot. Ultimately, that’s the, I think, the best measurement, and that’s why we know it’s working well. RR: To go way back to the very beginning about what you were saying, Bety, with the earlier solution that maybe just had kind of broken down and folks were quietly unhappy, not saying anything to go to a point now where you have people coming to you and telling you: “This works. I like it. Please keep going.” I think you’re right to say that that is the best signal and that tells you that everything that you’re doing is delivering exactly what you would hope it would. So fantastic to hear, especially knowing that you both are running this from a relatively small team. So I’d love it if you could close us out with some advice for other folks, maybe working on small teams. What advice would you give them when it comes to developing a scaled program that they can run consistently and reliably? BG: I think I kind of said this at the very beginning, like, you do need to get creative. Anytime that you can do more with less, I guess is the best way to put it, you’re going to get so much more return for your effort. And what I mean by that is, you know, I mentioned, you know, having onboarding, product enablement, everything tied in into the launch of Highspot. That was very intentional. If I’m doing something to make a launch a success, but it’s also benefiting other initiatives that I’m also responsible for, then I’m multiplying the effort that I’m putting into that work. And the other piece is you, and you kind of touched on this, the positive feedback from the team is super important with any sort of implementation for a new tool. Your biggest, biggest challenge is first credibility, and the second is adoption. I would say like, celebrate your wins often and, and like in as many ways as you can. So, you know, the Digital Room, while that was, you know, just a fun challenge to put out there to the team, what it actually did is it created a ton of buzz, right? And so people were essentially showing the rest of the business, like leaders and others around them, that this was a tool worth looking at and worth implementing into their day to day. If you can get creative there, in terms of not just showing the numbers. But actually having people talk about how great something is, that’s huge. And so really always celebrate the wins in every single way that you can. RR: That’s such great advice because it recognizes the people who are doing what you want them to and gives them a little bit of a thank you for it. And then it also, to your point earlier, drives that competition for everybody who’s trying to achieve those exact same outcomes. Matteo, any advice from your time here now at Loopio that you, you’d like to share? MP: Yeah, I mean, I think with smaller teams, there’s two things that come to mind. One, if you can’t measure it, ask yourselves and your leaders, why are we doing it. The second one is you have to enable your managers and your leaders to be enablers. That’s the way you can scale, and we spent a lot of time, Bety and I, meeting with the managers, collaborating with them, coming up with agendas, coming up with ideas, but then also delivering workshops together in tandem. And so if you’re gonna have any tool or anything that you’re trying to drive, you’ve gotta get their buy-in, but then also help them be enablers and, and when you do that, you can scale. RR: Yeah, maybe your team isn’t huge, but if you have champions across the organization advocating for you, well, all of a sudden you’ve doubled your capacity somehow. Bety, Mateo, thank you so much for joining us today. MP: Thank you for having us. RR: 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 go-to-market success with Highspot.

Jim talks with Liv Boeree—science communicator, former professional poker player, and host of the Win-Win Podcast—about consciousness, egregores, multipolar traps, and the ethics of factory farming. They discuss the nature of personal identity across sleep, the teleportation machine thought experiment, consciousness as a self-aware story-threading entity, the "attention as cursor of consciousness" framing, Jim's memory-competition theory of attention, Gerald Edelman and Daniel Dennett as proponents of competitive models, the Telepathy Tapes podcast and nonverbal autistic children, Donald Hoffman's view that consciousness is foundational, panpsychism and the "radio tuner" model, Liv's poker premonition story and a £1,700,000 tournament win, two flavors of consciousness and psychedelics as a way of dialing into different frequencies, poker as spanning pure luck to pure skill, the data revolution in poker and the rise of game-theory robots, poker as an egregore and the idea that "the game is playing me," probability at micro vs. macro scales, egregores defined as beings in meme space, Moloch as the personification of multipolar traps, Instagram face filters as a micro Moloch example, the Moloch mechanism of individually rational but collectively destructive action, Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch," the breakfast cereal Moloch as a case study, the three interlocked layers of the AI multipolar trap, Marc Andreessen's techno-accelerationism and its blind spots, introducing "Norma" as the second negative attractor state representing centralization and authoritarianism, Moloch and Norma feeding into each other, psychopaths as first movers in Molochian races, the obligate psychopath concept, Elinor Ostrom's work on managing the commons, zero-knowledge proofs as a win-win third path, Descartes' philosophical origin of Western indifference to animal suffering, expanding the moral circle, the conditions of factory-farmed pigs and the economics of gestation crates, the health and environmental consequences of factory farming, cultivated meat as the win-win solution, and much more. Episode Transcript The Win-Win Podcast, with Liv Boeree "Meditations on Moloch," by Scott Alexander Currents 090 with BJ Campbell and Patrick Ryan "AI 2027," by Daniel Kokotajlo et al. Governing the Commons, by Elinor Ostrom Liv Boeree is one of the UK's most successful professional poker players, winning multiple titles during her professional career, including a European Poker Tour Championship and World Series of Poker bracelet. Originally trained in astrophysics, she has hosted various popular science TV shows, and now works as an artist and researcher specializing in the intersection of game theory, technology and risk. She is a co-founder of Raising for Effective Giving (REG), an advisory organization that fundraises for the most globally impactful causes, and an ambassador to Longview Philanthropy. Her most recent project is the Win-Win Podcast, which explores how people and society can develop a healthier relationship with the forces of competition.

Research shows that sales professionals at aligned companies are more than twice as likely to exceed their goals than those misaligned companies. So, how do you build an aligned company that prepares marketing and sales teams to work together and win together? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Holly Foxworth, vice President of Marketing and Communications at Axiom Medical. Thank you so much for joining us today, Holly. I’m super excited to dig into the work that you’re doing. Holly Foxworth: Thank you for having me, Riley. I’m really excited to be here. RR: For our audience, would you mind giving us a little bit of a line of sight into who you are, who Axiom is, your background, and the work you do today? HF: So as you had mentioned, my name is Holly Foxworth and I am the Vice President of Marketing and Communications here at Axiom. I’ve been at Axiom for 15 years now, which in marketing years, that probably sounds like eternity, but my background actually was in emergency and trauma medicine. That was what I did prior to marketing, but it’s been amazing how I’ve been able to bring those concepts from my nursing background into what it is that we do now. I take a lot of pride in saying that, you know, I used to treat injuries, but now I have the opportunity to really be able to prevent them before they ever occur. RR: I love that. And a very full circle moment, I can imagine. I spoke with a guest a while back who introduced me to the concept of a squiggly career, which is you start somewhere and then it kind of takes you into a place you might not have expected and then you wind up, you know, I spent a decade as a medical professional, and now I’m here as a marketing leader. So how did that journey lead to your current role, and then how does that clinical experience shape your work in marketing and communications as you’re, you know, working to prevent these injuries before they happen? HF: So it started obviously in the ER as I’ve mentioned, and then transferring into occupational health, and that’s what we do here at Axiom Medical. I always like to say that everything that I rely on in marketing all comes back to my foundation from the ER because nobody has time for fluff there. That’s an environment where you have to be very alert to what’s going on. You need to pay attention and you need to be able to. Communicate quickly, very quickly, very clearly. And so that is also one of the same concepts that we need to have in marketing as well. RR: One thing that I do imagine is probably pretty unique about the kind of marketing that you do is the environment that you’re working in. Axiom is there for people during very sensitive, complicated human moments in the workplace. So how does that complicate the kind of communication you’re trying to do and the way you’re trying to go to market? HF: It definitely is a different approach because most people are selling aspirations and we are selling intervention, and when I say intervention, I am referring to human lives that are being impacted there. The way our business works is that when an employee is injured, then they would contact us, they’d speak with one of our nurses, and then we would go from there to help them with some first aid measures and things like that. Those were really sensitive moments, so that may be when someone’s having a physical crisis. It could also be a mental health type of challenge as well. It’s not solely just physical, so you have to be really sensitive to the audience that you’re speaking to and make for sure that that tone of empathy comes through very, very clearly. From a business perspective, you have to learn how to speak to your buyers, which, you know, my buyer is not actually the employees that are injured. My buyers are my HR people, my safety managers, CFOs, risk managers, things like that. So you have to be able to translate that language into something that they can understand. RR: So it is really kind of a fine line to walk between how I communicate the business value of this and then how I communicate: “This will be valuable to you” to an end user. That’s really interesting and probably requires quite a bit of nuance. And more than that, the ability to communicate that nuance to your sales team so they can deliver that. And I know beyond industry, beyond company, a challenge that pretty much everyone tends to encounter is the challenge of aligning marketing and sales. So, how have you built that partnership at Axiom? HF: I love this question because you know, most organizations, whenever you look at sales and marketing, sometimes they talk about alignment, but very few actually make it to that place where you can align, and we’ve made some real progress in that area. At Axiom, we have a very close marketing and sales team, and part of that alignment came from technology, so it was technology-driven. Whenever you talk about alignment, everyone thinks that. It’s an issue that comes up between people or that it’s a problem with what your processes are now. This is an infrastructure issue. You need to all be on the same page and be able to access the same type of information so that we’re all speaking the same language. So, that’s really, really been helpful in terms of strategy, especially for go-to-market, to rely on that technology. RR: I think sometimes when you talk about alignment, it feels like this kind of abstract, spooky thing where you can say you’re doing it, but you’re not actually doing it. You know, we are aligned, but nobody really feels it. So, I’d love to double click a little bit more into that technology piece, how it’s helping you, and more than that, how you found the right tool for the job. HF: Like, I’m sure every other business, we’ve been through the stages, we’ve been through the mess where, you know, it’s like you don’t need a new file cabinet. The new file cabinet is not the solution here. So having that technology not only has helped with the alignment, but it’s also helped with our brand strategy. It helps that they can speak the same language that we are and whenever we went from that first step from just being in, in files that we kept, we went to a little bit of a smaller vendor and, and that worked for a while. As we matured as an organization, we knew that we needed a partner that was gonna be able to scale with us and scale their technology. That’s why we brought in Highspot. I wouldn’t say it just saves time for our sales individuals, but from a marketing standpoint, it’s gold because we can actually measure things. Now, I, for one, am excited to go, you know, next week I go in the boardroom and I’m excited to be able to go in and say that, you know, marketing contributed half a million dollars to, to pipeline for the quarter, you know, or whatever that may be. That’s the real difference in what we previously had and what we have now. RR: I, I would be very interested in kind of a high-level view of, you know, we’re hearing time savings for sellers, more visibility for marketers. What are some of the ways that the platform really comes into play in the day-to-day? Like what are those levers you’re pulling when you’re saying, you know, this is actually driving alignment? HF: So what we’ve relied on a lot, and I’ll get into Digital Rooms in just a bit, but one of the other things that’s been really helpful are the Sales Plays. Being able to go to market with one Sales Play that everyone has access to is gold. It means the difference between success and failure. And so we now have that opportunity not only on the new logo side, but also on the account management side, so that they know what to show at what stage in the customer life cycle. RR: I love that post-sales use case too. I think a lot of times when you talk about a Sales Play, it feels very pre-sales, but to have that supporting customer success is amazing as well. You mentioned the Digital Room piece. I would be curious, how are you using them today? HF: So, we were a Highspot customer right before they came out with additional rooms. So we had the pleasure of being, you know, some of the first to utilize those. And so at that point it was like: “Wait a minute, we’re doing this all wrong.” There’s no reason why we should be sending 95,000 emails with all these attachments and nobody’s keeping up with that and nobody’s viewing it, and we have no insight into whether it’s working or not. That was the biggest change for us. Now, whenever there’s an opportunity that’s created, we create a Digital Room, and that Digital Room follows that client throughout their entire lifecycle. So it goes from new logo sales where they’ll load in all the information they’ve spoken about. The customer has access to all of those resources. Everything from wallet cards to posters, you know, all of our collateral and how it is that their employees need to get in touch with us, to sending them over then to implementation. And having the Digital Room has made that so much easier because we can keep everything in one place. And that customer is already familiar with that Digital Room because they started it in the very beginning with our sales reps, so they continue that through with the implementation. They’re no longer sending out these long spreadsheets for people to fill out and send back to them. Everything’s in one centralized location, and then as that account is handed off to either client success or IT designated account representative, then they take the ownership of that account so it changes. In the, in the fact that we have visibility now into everything that has gone on in that account from acquisition all the way through expansion. And that’s a really big deal. And not just that, we’ve had actual clients write into us and tell us how impressed they were with our Digital Room concept. And we had one that had wrote us and said that it was the best presentation and transfer of information that they had ever seen. It was gold to us. And that’s why I say it was a game-changer, because it was. It changed everything from that point on. RR: When you hear that feedback from your buyers, you know you’re doing something right. And to the previous point of alignment, you know, we talked about how you’re using the tool to drive marketing and sales alignment, but. In this way, you’re also using it to drive pre-sales and post-sales alignment. So that entire process is smoothed out a little bit and very, to your point, challenging, we’ll say, process of implementation is a lot easier. You know, we heard a little bit about how buyers responded to the introduction of Digital Rooms. What about your sellers? How was that received when you first started using these and rolling them out? HF: We first rolled it out to new logo sales and marketing. That was where the main focus was, and then kind of expanded from that point, and then we’ve just continued on since then. It just changes everything that we do. RR: One thing too, that is kind of useful, from a marketing side when we’re thinking about Digital Rooms is the fact that as this Room lives throughout the entire cycle, you are getting so much engagement data flooding into your system. That’s great for sellers because they know what’s happening in their deal. It can shape their next steps, they know what to do, but it’s also great for you because it gives you that kind of directional vision as to what’s working and maybe what’s not working as well. As you mentioned, part of your goals are that measurement piece where you can go into the board meeting and say: “I feel confident in my impact.” So, how are you approaching measurement today and how does Highspot, some of that engagement data, some of that influence revenue data kind of fit into how you’re looking at your work? HF: It gives us complete visibility. It’s the difference between knowing that we’re just producing content and throwing it across the fence and hoping that it works to now being able to now say: “Okay, this that we created, we can now measure that, and this has impacted deals. A, B, C, and D.” We have individual Scorecards for if there’s initiative that we’re wanting to run, whether there’s a Play, whatever it may be. We can run individual Scorecards on teams, we can run it on individual sales reps. We can also associate that with our revenue cycles. So, it tells us not only what’s working, but it also tells us where the gaps are because we get reporting back, telling us what internal staff are searching for inside of Highspot, and if there’s something there that they’re looking for that we haven’t created collateral for, then that gives us an indication that gives us the green light to say: “Hey, maybe we need to take a look at this and this is something that we need to add to through our bank of collateral.” RR: That’s such a great use case too, because oftentimes, you know, you frame it as the: “I know it works. I know it’s not working.” But you can’t know what you don’t know. Right? And so when you don’t have that line of sight into the field of what they wish they had, there’s no way to provide it. Be super curious about an example where you found a gap and were like: “Oh, I can’t believe we didn’t know we needed this.” HF: It happened last week as a matter of fact. We had our report that came from Highspot that showed what terms they’re searching for and all that for the first time is said “clinic,” and I saw that and I thought: “Are you kidding me?” We have never put anything together about specifically about clinics, you know, and that’s such a key piece of what, what we do, because we vet very specific clinics to make for sure that they have the same philosophy as we do, and that they’re gonna treat these injured workers that we may have to refer to them in the same fashion that is our expectation. And so whenever I saw “clinic” on there, it made me think that is so important. And I don’t think that we’ve ever created anything that’s been client-facing specifically that’s been about what that vetting process looks like for a clinic. So yeah, we had a really, really recent use case for that one. RR: That’s such a funny story. So from day-to-day things like this where you’re like: “Oh, this would be a very useful asset” to we’re hearing great things from buyers about how Digital Rooms are easing the sales cycle, all of these things coming together, it sounds like there’s a lot of success going on. In all of this time, as you’ve been building and evolving your Highspot environment, when you look back, what improvements stand out the most? What wins are you proudest of? HF: The biggest wins that I’m proudest of are that we now have a strategy that sticks. We have a strategy that follows us throughout the entire organization. Everyone’s on the same page. Being able to have that platform, and I don’t know that I mentioned it before, but we not only rolled this out to our sales team, we also rolled that out to our operations team, our nurse client liaisons. So everybody in our organization has access to Highspot. So that I would say is our biggest win is to be able to get everybody on the same page and all moving in the same direction. RR: Yeah, absolutely. And then I would love to know also, as a marketing leader, we talked about some of that visibility. What has that been doing for you, as you’re thinking about impact? HF: When people think of marketing, sometimes they think of activities or they think of, we’re just producing things. No, we’re a revenue engine. We are a revenue engine. So now we have the information that supports that, and we can walk into a boardroom and confidently show that we’ve contributed in this specific way and this many deals. It takes us from that passive kind of involvement to really just driving the whole go-to-market strategy. RR: And it really helps you reaffirm that not only do we have a seat at the table, but we deserve it. Because to your point, we are moving a lot in, in the revenue cycle, quarter over quarter, and it’s sometimes hard to prove, but once you can, it’s really, really powerful. So, as we’re closing out. I’d like to kind of go a little bit back to the beginning. You built a career translating very deep industry expertise into marketing leadership. As other folks in specialized fields are looking to move into strategic roles, what advice would you share? HF: Don’t sand down your edges. Don’t try to conform to what a traditional marketer is. You have expertise, especially from, whether that’s from a technical background or it’s a clinical background, that is a huge asset in terms of marketing because you have the ability to bring something new to the table that other marketers may not already have. RR: I love that phrase: “Don’t sand down your edges.” I feel like we get a lot of advice on the Win/Win Podcast and all of it is wonderful, but that is one I have not heard before, and that is a very powerful perspective. I think all your accumulated experiences make you a stronger, impactful professional, and you can translate that kind of wherever you want it to go. Perfect place to close on. Holly, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been a really enlightening, interesting session to hear a little bit more about you and the work you’re doing at Axiom. HF: You bet. Well, thank you for having me on Riley. I appreciate all you do and, and all that the Highspot team does as well. RR: Amazing. To our audience, thank you for tuning into this episode of the Win/Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize go-to market success with Highspot.

According to research from the State of Sales Enablement Report 2025, businesses with well-integrated enablement tech stacks are 42% more likely to increase sales productivity. So, how do you go about building an effective, well integrated tech stack? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Nicole Cost, director of enablement and operations, and Becky Garcia, enablement operations manager, at Lantern. Thank you both so much for joining us; it’s so exciting to have you here. I think there’s probably a really wonderful conversation to be had, and I’m excited to jump into it. I’d love to start by learning a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Nicole, would you mind kicking us off? Nicole Cost: My name is Nicole Cost. I’m the Director of Commercial Enablement and Operations at Lantern. At Lantern, our department’s primarily responsible for supporting our commercial new hires with their onboarding experience, process strategy, collaboration, and communications, and then in-person meeting operations and logistics. I’m based in New York. I’ve been in this space for about four years, but prior to working at Lantern, I was at Carrot Fertility and I worked in a totally different industry in sport and entertainment; I was a teacher and worked on the business side in a very different world. RR: Becky, would you care to tell us a little bit about yourself? Becky Garcia: Yeah, definitely. So, I’ve been in the industry now, I’d say I'm going on my seventh year in the health services and health tech space. I’ve been kind of all over in terms of my background, but in the last seven years I’ve really been in an operations role. Part of what I love doing here at Lantern is helping companies grow and scale. That's really what I love to do. RR: It sounds like you guys have been here before. This isn’t your first rodeo. You’ve spent the time not only in the industry, but also specifically in healthcare spaces, both at Lantern and in previous roles. I’d be kind of curious to dive into those previous roles and how they kind of affect today before we jump into your work at Lantern. So, Nicole, what challenges have you noticed pop up that people in other industries might not expect? NC: What I loved about this question to kick us off was because I was actually, like I mentioned, one of those people in another industry for about 10 years before pivoting to healthcare, and I will never forget my first manager asking me: “How much do you know about healthcare?” And I responded—I remember it vividly—I responded with: “I know I have great benefits.” I quickly learned that great benefits were not a normal thing, and that is why so many companies either are being created or evolving to provide healthcare benefits that most people in the United States do not have access to. And usually these gaps are incredibly expensive. They’re very emotional, and they’re non-linear in their journeys if everything is just very complex. So one could say that selling in healthcare is more difficult than many other industries. But when we ask our new hires—we ask: “Why did you choose Lantern?” And I would say almost 100% of them say they wanted to be part of a mission-driven company because the work is meaningful. It might be more complex, longer cycles, everything’s a little bit more difficult and nuanced, but it is mission-driven and really meaningful. All of this to is say that our enablement approach at Lantern focuses on collaborating with our friends in learning and development and our cross-functional partners to arm our internal team with tools that they need to succeed. RR: I like what you said there about nuance. I feel like a lot of the time when we talk about difficult selling environments like healthcare, challenging, obstacles, difficulty—this is all kind of what pops up. Those are the words that we use, but I love that reframe of like, “It just is what it is. This is normal and we’re doing our best to help people.” It’s nuanced, it’s not challenging. I love that reframe. As we talk this through, from your perspective, Becky, I know you’re coming in with a background in operations, which likely gives you a bit of a different perspective. Can you walk us through what it means to drive operational excellence in the healthcare space and, again, maybe how that differs from other roles you've held? BG: Definitely. From an operations perspective, I think driving excellence in healthcare really means building reliability into a very complex system. So as Nicole mentioned, healthcare isn’t linear and there are many moving parts. There’s handoffs, regulations, nuance, and a lot of emotion for people that are going through it. So excellence really isn’t just about efficiency, it’s about making sure that the right thing happens consistently, even as you are scaling. Operational excellence is also what ensures that we can deliver on process, discipline, documentation, reporting. And if that’s not strong enough, that’s really where scale breaks down. That’s where enablement comes in. And tools like Highspot really help us turn our best practices into the standard of work, and they help us give our teams confidence that what they’re saying in the market really matches what the organization is expecting. At the end of the day, operational excellence is really how you make impact repeatable, and that’s gonna be for patients, it’s gonna be for customers, and it’s also going to be for our teams who are doing the work. RR: That’s a great answer and I like how you look across excellence to understand how you build the systems to support it. And for whatever environment you’re in, that’s the goal. How you get there maybe differs a little bit— and it probably differs a lot when you’re dealing with, like you said, highly emotional, highly impactful scenarios—but at the end of the day, you’re still driving toward the same things. I'm excited to hear how you’re driving towards those, especially knowing that just a little bit ago, Lantern hit a period of extremely rapid growth. What kind of challenges did that create for the team? NC: Growth is exciting. It’s a privilege. We’re excited to be part of that. And what was great is we already had the building blocks in place for our new hire onboarding experience. They were in place, and we were welcoming new hires on a weekly basis with custom 30, 60, 90 day plans. But we learned quickly that that just was not sustainable for our small team to maintain a level of excellence that we pride ourselves in Just. Wasn’t gonna work because our new hire numbers continued to grow and our team is still the same: It’s Becky and I. So the biggest challenges that we faced, I would break into probably three categories: process lag, quality control, and then updated content and assets. So, we continue to bring in the best talent and the industry, but it was incredibly important to us that we recognize these challenges as opportunities to redesign how the work gets done. So this is when we started to evaluate tools like Highspot. And even as recently, like our colleagues in marketing sing Highspot praises because it helps make their content more discoverable. RR: Becky, can you talk to us from an operations perspective, you know, hearing some of these challenges, how did they influence the decision to invest in a platform and, and why was Highspot kind of the right answer for you guys? BG: From my perspective, I think the biggest impact of rapid growth was really fragmentation. We were scaling headcount, products and processes all at once. Information started to live in too many places. There were decks here, documentation there, and there was really a lot of knowledge in people’s heads. The lack of consistency really created friction fast. It resulted in people not being confident about what the latest and greatest was. At the same time, like taking a step back, we were also going through a rebrand of the company, which actually made it a perfect inflection point. So we had an opportunity to really step back, refresh our message, and our resources all at the same time. And we really got to be intentional about how we showed up both internally and externally. So rather than just updating assets that were in place, we wanted to start with a fresh source of truth. And that’s ultimately what helped us drive the decision to invest in Highspot as we discussed. Like we’re growing so significantly, we’ve doubled in size from our commercial team, and so we needed to onboard a lot of people with very unique roles and then also operationalize best practices as we grew. RR: I knew a little bit about those early days. You’d mentioned hypergrowth and things like that, but knowing that you had doubled headcount, you were going through a rebrand, and you were implementing a new platform and evaluating a new platform at the same time, and it’s the two of you doing all of that. I think there’s probably a lot of people that will listen in and be like: “How?” Because that sounds like quite a lot. We’ve heard about all of the work that was being done, all of those initiatives that were kind of coming together to prioritize the need for a platform, the need to get reps up to speed quickly. So, what did onboarding look like before and why was it kind of time to make a change? NC: So as I mentioned from just the beginning, but our commercial onboarding experience has always had a formalized program, and we’ve always had our building blocks that work really well to create a consistent welcome for all of our new hires, no matter the job title or department. And our focus is who we are, what we do, and how we do it. And this gives all of our new hires an overview of our solution, external assets and collateral, and insights into many internal processes. But in the early days of our organization, when we were onboarding about maybe 10 to 15 people a quarter by 2025, this number doubled, and our old-fashioned Excel spreadsheet trackers and custom PowerPoint presentations that each individual got just was not cutting it. We’ve had two iterations in Highspot. The first pass we simply transferred all of the great content that we had from this PowerPoint deck into an onboarding spot and a spot overview. So we had that. That was like a main piece that we’d walk through with our new hires and we’d make sure we’d give them all this content. But we also had 30, 60, 90 day lesson plans, depending on the new hire’s role and department. We coupled this experience with a live welcome call that we still do. Our president works with our new hires, and we still do all of that and it covers a lot of basics around our company and the commercial culture, and would involve us sharing our screen of Highspot and like, here’s how you use it. It’s a really nice, like way to introduce everyone to the platform and where they’re gonna be living. But after about six months of these custom lessons, we needed something that we could copy and paste, essentially so we could scale. And I even spent time with Brooke Holland from your enablement team and she was lovely and she helped us bounce ideas off each other and just learn what worked really well for Highspot actually internally. And how she could look at our content was like: “This is great, let's translate that.” I think that was really helpful to now take us to our most recent iteration, which we’re in currently, and it took all of this quality content from our foundational onboarding spot. Into a course. So now we have a full course that’s all of this great content. We call it Bright Starts because we love a good light pun at Lantern. And all of our new hires are enrolled in this course and have three lessons. So it’s their first 30 days, the next 30 days, and then that final days to today, 61 through 90 for their first 90 days on our commercial team. I’m really excited because—as of this week—we have 100% new hire adherence to this course, and the average final score is more than 91%. It’s been such a hit, and Becky can attest to this. It’s just been a labor of love and it’s so cool to see it come to fruition and like. RR: Yeah. I liked hearing about the journey it's been. It makes me so happy to hear that. It sounds like you’ve built something really impactful. I mean, 100% adherence—those are impressive numbers and I hope that it feels like you’ve reached the point that you wanted to. NC: Yes. I think it has. I’m so happy. I think—I don’t wanna put words into Becky’s mouth—but I think she is proud of it too. And I also just think what’s nice is we can now like, let it settle and it’s taken about a year for us to, I feel like, really get to that point. So here we are. BG: Yeah, I think one point I just did wanna add on that is Nicole, earlier you mentioned how important our internal team satisfaction is and just like seeing the scores of the satisfaction that come out of this has allowed us to really tweak and where we need to and pivot and make changes. And so, I think when you look at our scores, not only are people adhering to the course, their final scores are really high, but also their satisfaction is extremely high. Highspot really allowed us to easily tailor and improve the process and our team’s feeling it. RR: Amazing. That’s the full picture you want, right? So, we chatted about onboarding being kind of one of the primary drivers of why you started doing this in the first place. And we have also heard that you’ve kind of blown past that early goal. You’ve set up something that you can consistently run with. Now, like you mentioned, it’s not just you in the platform. The content team is trying to do things, the marketing team is singing its praises. Can you talk to us about how other capabilities, things like AutoDocs help you improve the rep experience? And then maybe a little bit about what impact that’s had? BG: We use AutoDocs with our client success team to help automate the marketing pieces that they send out to all of their clients. And so really what our team is doing is they’re self-serving requests that were previously going through our creative and marketing teams. And so with AutoDocs, our client success teams can quickly generate client-ready, compliant assets using the approved templates that we’ve uploaded into the platform. And they can automatically pull in correct logos, they can update client language and also make it contract and plan design specific. And so this really has enabled them to self-serve, but also just really produce some high quality marketing materials to our clients. Today we have 41 marketing assets that live in AutoDocs as templates. Each asset on average generates about 20 documents. So what that means is that we have a variety of assets. Our team can come in here and pick and choose for their clients, which resources they want to customize, and then on average, they’re making 20 of those copies for the various clients that they support. So, that really is about 820 client-ready resources that no longer need to flow through our creative or our marketing teams. This has really helped us one, by giving autonomy to our client success teams, so now they can move faster and respond to clients in near-real time, especially during high volume periods. This is critical for keeping our clients happy, but also the team members who are doing the work, they don’t have to feel like they’re waiting around for marketing. When they can make these changes themselves. Also, this helps ensure that we have just continued to iterate on our brand. So we’ve got brand compliance consistently across the board, no more awkward logos or off-centered logos. That would generally be like the outcome if our team had to go in there and make these manual changes. Another big benefit I think is how we collect and act on feedback as a team. Generally, if we needed to handle like one-off conversations of like, we need to tweak this language on this one because of this specific scenario, that was done in a silo. It went directly to creative and marketing, and then they would have to make these changes. But now everything really lives in a collaborative space, and so this has created transparency and a single feedback loop between our field and our marketing teams so our reps can see what’s already been flagged because the changes are made directly in the template, what’s been updated and what’s already been addressed. So, there’s no need to have that conversation multiple times. Overall, our teams can self-serve confidently. Our creative team is really freed up to focus on the work that truly requires their expertise. I think all of our team is really happy with the product and when we’re looking at those numbers. It just speaks volumes to our ability to scale. RR: Yeah, I think when you’re saying hundreds—800—assets that you can customize, scale and get out the door quickly, I think that does speak volumes. That is fantastic to hear. And I can imagine that was probably a lot of friction that you were able to reduce for your customer success team and your creative team who didn’t have to be like: “Oh, another request in Slack for an improved logo or a changed color.” I’m sure everybody appreciates that. So we talked about onboarding and what you’ve done there. We’ve heard about the way you’re scaling at AutoDocs. Looking across the work that you guys have done, what are you most proud of when you look at the data? What improvements, achievements stand out the most to you? NC: So for me, there are two things that stand out and I’m incredibly proud of our patience as a small team to roll out and iterate our overall strategy using tools like Highspot to be nimble so you can have all the plans in the world. And then—boom—like change that you didn’t expect, or new solution or “we’re not gonna do this any longer.” It just happens in this healthcare world, and it’s not for the faint of heart, especially for those of us—I think you heard our titles—in operations. We thrive on routine and process and formality, like rule followers, right? So it’s really difficult to have the ability to stick to strategy without patience and the ability to pivot. So I’m really proud that we’ve been able to do this a lot. Since our functions started at Lantern almost two years ago, and we’ll continue to operate this way, but I’m also really proud of our colleagues’ willingness to keep learning. I think, Riley, you mentioned it just like so much change happened at once and then poof! Now you gotta learn a new tool and a new way to do things. It’s not easy to adopt new tools and processes, but also managing that ever-changing landscape of our industry. I’m really proud of the fact that not only as our team, like they have been so kind, honestly, and patient with us, but they’ve also just been great teammates. Our number one goal is always going to be to value add, not add more work. I believe a major reason that we have a high satisfaction rating as a team, as an internal team working with us is because of our colleagues’ partnership. BG: What I’m most proud of is that we’ve built some real trust with our teams. Highspot has genuinely become a place where people go first. We hear constantly, or at least I hear from managers and leaders say things like: “Did you check Highspot?” when their teams ask for help or for resources. Or even when team members have looked in Highspot, they’ll come to me and say: “Hey, I already looked here.” It’s moments like this that truly bring me joy because it reinforces that we’ve created something valuable, something that’s reliable, and that’s really embedded in how people work day to day. Also, I think what stands out to me from an operations perspective, I’m always gonna come back here with what data we’re using to guide our decisions. Whenever we receive feedback, we’re not guessing or reacting in isolation anymore. We can look at usage, we can look at engagement and patterns to really understand what’s working and what’s not. And then this also helps us drive, like where we can invest our time. So that really has allowed us to iterate thoughtfully, prioritize accordingly, and then also continuously improve. To look at a couple figures, I think we’ve had tens of thousands of views across our entire platform of the resources that are in there. And so from looking at Q1 2025, we had about 55% of our audiences who had viewed the content. And fast forward, now we’re about halfway through this quarter, but comparing we are now at 93%. RR: That’s amazing. And I’m sure just hearing the way that that was said, you guys are proud of that increase. You know, 55 to 93% recurring adoption proves that like you said, Nicole, your teams are patient with you, and to your point, Becky, you built the trust and you built the brand, so now you have that foundation that everybody reliably uses and can run with to do all of the things that you need to succeed. Hearing all this, it definitely tells me that you’re qualified—more than qualified—to answer this last question I had for you, which is for other teams looking to build high impact programs kind of from the ground up, what’s like one piece of advice you’d share about getting started and building efficiently? NC: Well, did I mention patience? My mom would be really proud of me that I’m mentioning patience and that I have been patient, since that’s just like a theme of my life—I don’t think I’ve ever been patient until I became a professional. My advice actually comes from an author that spoke to us at—we have a Lantern book club—and Max Yoder is the author who wrote the book Do Better Work. It’s an awesome read. Totally recommend. One of his pieces of advice was to share before ready. So honestly, it’s been such a great mindset because of all of the change and when implementing change. We, of course, have always ensured clarity around the problems we’re solving. So I don’t want you to think that we don’t like, that doesn’t mean ‘share because we don’t know what we’re solving for.' It’s more so we know what we need to do, but we’re taking the time to roll out programs and really being thoughtful about the tools that we’re selecting or what we’re adding on, or what we’re encouraging people to use. And when we’re rolling them out, we want it to be automatically useful and simple. We just want it to be like, here it is. Now you have it, bookmark it and use it. And this has allowed us to become efficient in practice over time, and I think that’s what helped us earn our peers trust. BG: I think my biggest piece of advice is to not start by trying to build everything at once. I think the best starting point is to become a trusted source for your teams, so that means solving real problems really well and making it easy for people to know where to go when they need help. When team members trust that the information that they have access to is current is accurate and is. Actually useful. I think adoption follows naturally. From there, I think you can use data and feedback to iterate intentionally instead of guessing or reacting to the loudest request. I think building efficiently isn’t necessarily about moving fast for the sake of speed. It’s about creating clarity early, listening closely, and then letting trust and insights guide what you’re building next. RR: In everything that you have shared today, I think you can see the threads of this advice. You’ve mentioned feedback and trying to understand the experience from your user’s perspective and partnering cross-functionally to understand what people need. So we’re seeing that, you know, share early and then we’re seeing that don’t boil the ocean when you’re facing doubling headcount and a rebrand at the same time as you're launching an entire platform. You guys have this approach that is so measured and calm, so bravo for all of the work there and thank you so much for sharing it with us. It’s been so wonderful to hear more about the world that you’re living in and the wonderful work that you’re doing in it. NC: Thanks for having us, Riley. This was great.RR: To our audience, thank you so much 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.

According to research on organizational alignment led by LSA Global highly aligned companies grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable than misaligned companies. So how can you cultivate an aligned culture ready to drive improved outcomes? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Julia Juliano, manager of sales enablement at Cencora. Thank you so much for joining us, Julia! I’d love it if you could kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Julia Juliano: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here today. My name is Julia Juliano. I live in the Philadelphia area with my husband, daughter, and two dogs. I’m actually coming up on my seventh year with Cencora. I'm now a sales enablement manager, and I started with the company in generic sales within the New York Metro Territory, where I was a top performing rep. That experience really ignited my passion for empowering sales teams to succeed, which ultimately led me to transition into sales enablement. I entered the enablement world as a specialist about four years ago, and worked my way into my current role as a manager. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of supporting both community retail pharmacies and more recently our specialty distribution business. These experiences have given me a comprehensive understanding of the challenges our teams face and the tools and strategies they need to excel in such a competitive and highly regulated environment. RR: Well, we’re super excited to have you here and to dig into a couple of those things you’ve mentioned—transitioning into that sales enablement role from your desire to help sales teams win, navigating competition. So excited to dig into all of that. I want to start with one of the first things you mentioned, which is that you’ve run the gamut from sales to sales enablement. So, can you take us back to your time as a pharmaceutical sales rep at Cencora? What challenges did you experience that shaped how you enable today? JJ: Yeah, you know, it’s a really unique experience to be able to go from sales to sales enablement. As a pharmaceutical sales rep, I experienced firsthand the challenges of accessing the right resources at the right time. Whether that was finding compliant marketing materials, navigating product specific information, or understanding how to position solutions for different customer needs, there was often a disconnect between the tools available and the realities of working in the field and the conversations that I was having with those customers. That experience really allows me to approach enablement from the rep perspective, knowing that every minute they spend searching for content or trying to interpret complex messaging is a minute that they’re not spending with their customers. My goal is to streamline their workflows, ensure they have what they need at their fingertips, and create alignment between the tools we provide and the outcomes that they’re driving in the field. RR: I think that’s such an important call out: Every minute that you’re distracted with non-essential tasks takes you away from the work that really matters both to you and to our business. I think bringing that kind of lived experience and empathy that comes with it to the table is so huge and helps you kind of build the programs and support arms that you’re like: “I wish I’d had that.” And I know it probably can’t be easy to build those programs because Cencora unites six distinct business units under a single brand. So, from an enablement perspective, what kind of complexity does that create for you? JJ: Yeah, so the complexity really lies in balancing the enterprise wide alignment with the unique needs of each of those six business units. So, the six business units are specialty, GPO, community, retail health systems, animal health, and corporate partnerships. They each serve distinct segments of the healthcare ecosystem; their customers, products, and sales strategies vary significantly, which means that their enablement needs are equally diverse. At the same time as one unified brand, we have to maintain consistency and messaging, compliance and governance across the organization. So from an enablement perspective, this requires a strategic and thoughtful approach to content structure, governance, and collaboration to ensure that we’re effectively addressing both the enterprise and each individual business unit’s priorities. RR: When you’re looking across these priorities and trying to stitch everything together into a clear strategy and message, it's obvious that alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It's a very intentional, thoughtful thing that you have to cultivate. So how do you use Highspot to break down those silos that could potentially appear, and then make sure that everybody’s running to the same drum beat at the same pace? JJ: We’ve accomplished this by building a centralized Spot architecture that balances enterprise-level consistency with business unit-specific relevance. So at the enterprise level, we house shared resources like compliance guides, org charts, corporate initiatives—things like that. At the business unit level, we provide more tailored content and tools designed to meet those unique needs of each team for their specific solutions. Highspot Analytics further enables us to identify content gaps and redundancies, which allows us to continuously refine and optimize our approach By centralizing any efforts on Highspot, we’ve established a single source of truth that fosters alignment while maintaining the flexibility needed to meet those diverse needs across our customer segments. RR: There’s so much in what you said that I really want to dig into in just a second. You know, about how you structured those Spots, how you determine what gets a Spot, what doesn’t, alongside the kind of specific, tailored tools that you’re building for solutions. But I want to start with the foundation, the baseline for all of this, which is that as part of your work, you led the creation of a formal structured governance plan. Why did you see governance as foundational for driving alignment and helping Cencora drive a shared strategy? JJ: Governance is truly the backbone of any successful enablement strategy, especially in a complex organization like Cencora. Without it, you risk content duplication, outdated materials, and a lack of visibility into what’s working and what isn’t. When I joined the team, we had a ton of great content, but it wasn’t always easy for reps to find or trust that they were using the most current and up-to-date version. By implementing a formal governance plan, we established a clear process for content creation, approval, and maintenance. And this not only improved findability and adoption, but also ensured that everything we provide to our teams is compliant, up to date, and aligned with our strategic goals, RR: So, you knew what it could achieve for you, and you’re starting to see those outcomes. Specifically you’re seeing that in the data. You know, as a result of this governance strategy, you’ve seen meaningful improvements in content views, downloads, findability, and even platform adoption. So, what actions or parts of this strategy do you think made the biggest difference in achieving the results that you’ve named? JJ: We implemented a consistent taxonomy or naming convention across all the different business units, which made it easier for reps to navigate and find what they need. We also introduced regular content audits on a quarterly basis to ensure that everything in Highspot is relevant and up to date. Another key action was also leveraging Highspot analytics to identify gaps in content or areas where reps were struggling to find resources. And by addressing those gaps and continuously refining our approach, we saw significant improvements in engagement metrics, like you mentioned, the content views, downloads, and overall adoption of the tool. RR: How did you identify those gaps in content that reps couldn’t find? JJ: So, we created sales surveys and worked with our marketing partners and our solution owners to identify which solutions were being most searched for by reps, what materials they needed to aid in the customer conversations that they were having. Then, you know, in the surveys we addressed: “What would you like to learn more about? What type of content are you unable to find that would be helpful in your day-to-day role?” And so we took those surveys, partnered with marketing and those solution owners, like I mentioned, and were able to create those resources to better drive, you know, adoption and findability within the platform. RR: Okay, amazing. I think that’s such an important approach where you’re building from the perspective of your users. It’s not just: “Here’s what we think works.” It’s: “Okay, what does this actually look like in your day to day and how can we make it better?” And actually that kind of leads me to that Spot architecture that you touched on, which includes enterprise-level and then business-unit specific spots. So, how did you create this structure and then how does it help you create consistency like we talked about, but also keep things relevant to reps' day to day? JJ: Yeah, so we started by clearly defining what belongs at the enterprise level versus the business unit level. Enterprise level Spots include resources that apply across the entire organization—this is our compliance guidelines, corporate initiatives, any distribution information, org charts, and training materials. The business unit specific Spots are tailored to the needs of each team—this is your product specific collateral solution, information, sales playbooks, and any sales execution materials that we have for the teams to ensure consistency. We developed a standardized template for all Spots so that reps know where to find what they need, no matter which business unit they’re in. The structure ensures that the reps have access to both the big picture, along with the details that matter most to their customers. Additionally, each business unit only has access to the enterprise level Spots, plus the materials that are relevant to their team. For example, a rep in health systems won’t be able to see community retail content if it isn’t applicable to their role. So the targeted access keeps search results cleaner and more accurate, reducing noise and helping reps to get to the right asset faster. It also supports a smart marketing model. We may have one enterprise solution, but the go to market strategy, messaging, and customer facing materials can vary by customer profile and their buying environment. So structuring the access this way allows marketing and enablement to maintain the consistent approach for enterprise positioning while still delivering the right version of the story and tailored assets for each individual audience. RR: It feels like there was so much intention and thought put into this. You’ve kind of checked the box for everybody in the org. You know, sales is getting specifically what they need. They don’t have to filter through the noise and the chaos of five other business units. Marketing ensures that their strategy is being executed to its fullest and that the materials they’re producing and investing in are seeing the usage they’d like. Then you as an enablement team have a much easier time governing and maintaining your strict policies because you don’t have that same sprawl, so I love to hear that; it’s a fantastic structure. Not to get too in the weeds, but I’ve heard that as part of this Spot structure, you’re also empowering reps to land the value of Cencora's different product lines by creating Richardson Methodology-inspired Plays for each solution. What do those Plays look like in practice and how are they supporting reps? JJ: Our Richardson-inspired Plays are thoughtfully designed to guide reps through the entire sales process, all the way from discovery to close in a way that’s tailored to each specific solution. Each Play for every individual solution that we offer is structured into three sections:Learn, prepare, and engage. The “Learn” section provides internal facing materials to educate the reps on the solution, ensuring that they have a deep understanding of its value and its applications. The “Prepare” section offers guidance on how to plan and strategize for customer conversations, so this includes tools like questioning frameworks and call planners. And then finally, the “Engage” section houses our customer facing materials. So these are typically created by marketing, and they support reps in effectively communicating the solutions value to customers to support them in those conversations. And these Plays really act as a clear and actionable roadmap, equipping reps with the knowledge, preparation, and resources they need to have more meaningful, productive, and impactful conversations with our customers. RR: So we’ve dug into the details. We talked about thoughtful governance, strategic Spot architecture, and solution-specific plays. When we look at all of this more broadly, how has this approach improved or changed how reps take Cencora solutions to market? JJ: This approach has really transformed how our reps take solutions to market by making it easier for them to find trust and use the resources that they need. With the governance in place, reps know that they’re always accessing the most current and compliant materials, and then the Spot architecture ensures they can quickly find content that’s relevant to their specific customers and sales strategies. The solution-specific Plays also provide a clear roadmap for engaging customers and addressing their individual needs. Together, all of these elements have really improved their efficiency, confidence, and effectiveness, which ultimately has led to better customer outcomes and stronger business results. RR: It really seems like you and the team have built an environment that you as a rep would’ve been like: “This is fantastic. I can go run and do my job and not spend time on the things that take me away from it.” I’d be curious to add onto that impact piece: What key results have you achieved beyond everything that we just covered off on (which was a lot!). What particular wins are you especially proud of? JJ: Yeah, so since we implemented Highspot in 2021—coming up on five years at this point—we’ve seen clear improvements in how our teams find, trust, and use the enablement resources that we’re able to provide for them. Like I’ve mentioned, the content is much easier to locate, adoption is stronger, and engagement is more consistent because reps know that they’re working from a single current source of truth. We’ve talked about most of them today, but the wins I’m especially proud of are the governance foundation we’ve put in place, the Spot architecture that balances the enterprise consistency with the business unit relevance, and then those solution-specific plays that help reps move from learning to preparing to engaging with their customers. Together, those changes have reduced friction for sellers, improved onboarding and readiness for new team members, and strengthened alignment across the organization. The most important thing with having Highspot as our sales enablement platform is that, before we adopted this tool, different versions of materials were just kind of floating around on people’s desktops and an old platform that we used to utilize in Teams channels and through inboxes. You never knew which one was the one that was most recently updated. “What should I be using? Has any of this messaging changed?” Now, there’s one place; I always pitch it to our reps as Cencora's Google. You just search in the search bar, whatever you’re looking for, and the first result that comes up is what you’re looking for. RR: I think it’s really important, that kind of domino effect that you touched on: “We did the work at the very beginning to make sure everything is accessible, to make sure it’s updated and to make sure it’s valuable to our reps and that they know it.” And now you’re seeing the entire progression from finding content to engaging buyers in a more meaningful, trusted way and creating more trusted relationships. So you’ve kind of built that flywheel. Now it’s just kind of spinning and maintaining, which is fantastic to hear. Last question for you: For leaders building similar enterprise-level enablement strategies in a similarly complex competitive environment, what hard-earned advice would you leave them with? JJ: My advice would be to start with the governance and the structure. Without a clear plan for how the content is created, organized, and maintained, it’s really easy for things to become chaotic, especially in a complex environment where multiple teams are involved. There’s lots of hands in the pot. Things get lost in translation. So governance and structure would be the starting point. Additionally, it is so important to always keep the end user in mind. Enablement is all about making the lives of your reps easier. Take the time to understand their needs and challenges so that you can create solutions for them. And finally, don’t underestimate the importance of analytics. Use the data to continuously refine your approach and demonstrate the impact of your efforts. Enablement is truly a journey. It’s not a destination, and the key is to stay agile and focused on delivering value both to the reps that you support and their customers. RR: That phrase there: Enablement is a journey is so important to hear because, to our audience who are all at different stages in the process, maybe you’re building, you’re just writing that enablement charter or maybe you’re just trying to run and optimize. Either way, I feel like you need to hear that because everything is constantly changing and you are constantly adapting. I think that’s a reassuring spot to end on, and I really appreciate you saying that. Beyond that, I really appreciate you joining us and sharing all of this wonderful experience. It’s been so amazing to step into the work that you’re doing and the impact that you’re driving for Cencora. JJ: Absolutely. I’m honored to be invited. I’m so grateful to be here. Thank you for the time and asking all these thoughtful questions. I hope that can help many other organizations out there.RR: To our listeners, 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.

Voor wie al van alles heeft geprobeerd en toch blijft vastlopen in angst, blokkades en onverklaarbare ziekte en pijn... exact daarover deze podcast. ` Je hoort het aangrijpende verhaal van Ruud Kortlever, regressietherapeut, en hoe teruggaan naar het verleden de toekomst weer volledig openbrak.   Vind je deze podcast inspirerend? Ontzettend leuk als je het deelt met je vrienden, familie en op je socials!   Sta jij achter dit werk en wil dat het voortzet?Via de knop doneren op de website www.jannekevandermeulen.nl/doneren kun je bijdragen.   Heel veel dank voor iedere donatie die je doet! Lees alles over het dieet waarover je anatomisch bent ontworpen in De Eiwitleugen. Te bestellen via: https://www.jannekevandermeulen.nl/product/de-eiwit-leugen/      Vrolijke groet en veel liefs, Janneke   DE WIN-WIN METHODE | VOOR WINNAARS | ZONDER VERLIEZERS   Medische disclaimer: De informatie op het Win-Win Dieet YouTube-kanaal, jannekevandermeulen.nl of één van de andere mediaplatformen is uitsluitend bedoeld voor informatieve en educatieve doeleinden en niet bedoeld om een gezondheidsprobleem mee te diagnosticeren, genezen of behandelen. Raadpleeg een arts of medisch specialist voordat je zelfstandig wijzigingen aanbrengt in je huidige dieet en levensstijl. Disclaimer: De meningen, opvattingen en uitdrukkingen van gasten in de Win-Win Podcast zijn niet per se representatief voor de opvattingen van Janneke van der Meulen, haar team, de Win-Win Methode en/of aangesloten bedrijven of de organisaties die zij vertegenwoordigen.

Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. According to the State of Sales Enablement 2025 Report, 20% of organizations see the sales process as a key strategic priority. So how can you optimize your sales process and drive higher win rates for your team? Here to discuss this topic is Aaliyah Patel, senior specialist, customer marketing at Ansell. Thank you so much for joining us. Aaliyah. I’d love if you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Aaliyah Patel: Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. My name is Aaliyah Patel. I’m a senior customer marketing specialist here at Ansell, where I’m a part of the customer marketing team. My role really centers on leading our sales enablement in digital MarTech operations, so ensuring that our systems, processes, and data flows that support our go-to market motion are aligned, connected, and easy for our teams to use. A large part of that includes overseeing the digital tools like Highspot in our tech stack, supporting content governance and building scalable frameworks that help reps access the right insights, messaging, and assets across the buyer journey. The goal is to ultimately empower sellers and partners with the clarity tools and visibility they need to drive growth and deliver consistent customer experiences. RR: Just from what you mentioned there, it sounds like we have quite a lot of ground cover in terms of your experience, your background, and then the work that you do with Highspot. Before we kind of jump too far into the deep end there, I always kinda like to start by getting a sense of the environment that you’re working in. So I know that Ansell manufactures and distributes a really wide range of products. What are some of the unique challenges that go-to-market teams face when selling in this environment? AP: Absolutely. So, Ansell serves an extremely diverse markets, so anything from industrial safety to scientific to healthcare. And each customer group has different expectations, buying cycles and safety requirements. Reps often need to shift between very different conversations throughout the day. And the challenge isn’t necessarily complexity, it’s clarity. Reps need to quickly position the right solution, especially when our portfolio is broad and customers span multiple industries with unique needs. There’s also the constant need to stay current on new product developments and differentiators across categories; our priority has been making sure that our teams have a unified way to access information, understand messaging, and communicate competently no matter what business they’re supporting. RR: I love the shift that you mentioned there: it’s not necessarily complex, instead the challenge is making things clear and easy to navigate because yes, there’s a lot going on. You can’t change that, but you can pull certain levers to make it a little bit easier for your teams. Knowing that’s kind of where you’re at, I’d like to turn towards some of the actions that you and the team are taking. So, what are some of the key go-to-market initiatives that you’re focused on? And then how are you enabling reps to find clarity in Ansell’s sales environment. AP: A major focus for us has been simplifying how our teams access and leverage content to drive more consistent, confident customer conversations. We’ve strengthened our content governance, we’ve centralized materials, and we’ve made it much easier to connect the right message to the right audience. We’re also aligning more closely with sales to ensure that our go-to market initiatives are really grounded in real customer challenges. Whether through targeted campaigns, sharper product positioning, or ongoing training and enablement, everything that we do is centered on helping our teams articulate our value across the diverse markets and products that we sell in. We’re seeing the impact of that work in real time: We’ve had over a hundred thousand content views with almost a 90% reoccurring usage rate, which tells us that the structure we’ve put into place is resonating and helping our teams move faster and stay aligned. RR: I love that you came in with the data to back it up—actually, not just the data to back it up but great data to back it up. That’s super impressive, especially knowing that you guys are a little bit early in your journey, that you’re already finding that significant success. One of the things that we’ve heard is that a key focus is the sales process. So in your experience, what are some of the essential building blocks for creating a sales process that’s driving these business results that you’re seeing? AP: For us, the foundation comes down to three things, so it’s simplicity, alignment, and insights. When you bring clarity, consistency, and real data together, you create a process that’s scalable, repeatable, and tied to business outcomes, and it allows teams to adapt their approach, depending on the customer segment that they’re working with that day. RR: I think you touched on some really compelling aspects there, and I think I’d be curious to double click into a little bit more of what you said and about how you’re bringing some of those building blocks to life, especially with a platform like Highspot. So, can you talk about the role that an enablement platform plays in helping you streamline that sales process? AP: So the value is truly structure and connection. An enablement platform brings content, people, and insights together, and it gives everyone one place to operate from. It reduces the time the seller spends searching for materials; it makes sure that our messaging is aligned across our campaigns and launches, and it also creates visibility into what resonates in the field. So, it’s truly become the backbone of how we support consistent execution across the buyer journey. RR: I always love to hear that consistency is kind of what’s coming out of your usage of an enablement platform. I think that’s really the goal, right, to help standardize your messaging and bring consistency to your teams. I would love to dig a little bit deeper into that and kind of the benefit that you see of partnering with Highspot. How does this partnership help you drive some of those core initiatives? You touched on this a little bit already. AP: Partnering with Highspot has been incredibly valuable because it gives us a partner who truly understands the complexity of a modern go-to market environment that helps us operationalize our strategy in a really scalable way. For us, the benefit is twofold. First, Highspot provides the structure we need to centralize our content, our launches, our campaigns, and our customer facing materials, so our field teams can execute with confidence. It creates alignment across marketing and sales, which is essential when you’re supporting multiple markets and product categories. Second, the partnership helps us accelerate our core initiatives. Whether we’re rolling out new product messaging or enabling our teams on evolving customer needs or programs, Highspot gives us the platform, analytics, and support to execute and quickly measure the impact. We’re not just using the platform, but we’re truly maximizing it, and the collaboration has helped us build stronger governance, improve adoption, and really tie our go-to market strategy back to real behavior and engagement. It allows us to deliver a more consistent story, support our reps with clarity, and really create a unified experience across every touchpoint. RR: That certainly makes me, and I think all of our teams happy to hear. One of the things that’s really interesting about what you said is that earlier you gave us the data to kind of back it up and say that yes, we’re seeing these things anecdotally, but we’re also seeing them empirically. Thinking of that data, I know that it kind of speaks for itself when it comes to the work that you and the team are doing, but we’ve heard that Digital Rooms have been a key driver in your enablement strategy and in your strategy with Highspot. In just 90 days you’ve generated like 3,000 views with your Rooms. How have you and your teams been leveraging Digital Rooms? Can you talk to us about what impact you’ve been seeing so far? AP: Digital Rooms have become a core part of how we help our teams go to market. We use them to create curated experiences that package our messaging assets and resources into a structured, easy-to-navigate format that aligns with the story we want to deliver so reps can use them to deliver a clear and consistent narrative and everything they need is in one place. This helps our teams guide customers and partners through a cohesive experience. That visibility supports stronger account planning, more intentional communication, and better alignment with customer needs. The engagement has been strong. We’ve created over 500 Digital Rooms with an average of 30 minutes of viewing time per Room. Some have accumulated between 20–60 total hours of engagement, and several have been shared externally more than 40 times, which shows us that our customers and partners are engaging with the content in meaningful ways. RR: I love to hear how you’re using that Digital Room scorecard to keep a pulse on how they’re performing out in the wild. When you are supplying go-to-market teams with these Digital Rooms, is it the marketing team that’s building them? And if so, what kind of use cases are you building for? AP: It’s in partnership with both marketing and sales, so we can help them create them if they’d like, but then they also have full autonomy to go and create them themselves for their specific customers. Use cases can include any specific interactions, follow-ups, trade shows, anytime that they’re meeting, any one-to-one interactions that they’re having, and any time that we want to consolidate a bunch of product brand information all into one curated microsite. RR: Okay, fantastic. I’m always a little bit curious about who owns those things, how you’re kind of building templates, and what you’re building for. I’d like to maybe switch gears from the digital rooms arena, knowing that you have the fun but kind of challenging job of being Highspot's solution owner for Ansell. In that role, your major job is to drive adoption and effective usage of the platform. Just a few months after launch, you’ve already reached a really astounding 85% adoption rate in Highspot, which—when you think about the breadth of behavior change that needs to be done—is super impressive. What are some of the best practices, if you have any that you could share, that helped you drive that adoption right off the bat? AP: I love change management and it makes it super fun. Our approach has been focusing on education consistency and advocacy, so we spent a lot of time with each of the different teams, showing them how to use the platform and how it connects to their daily workflows. We essentially made it the single source of truth for our campaigns, launches, and content. So it became more of a habit and not an extra step. Our marketing team members and super users have also played a pivotal role in reinforcing usage, sharing wins, and hosting their own one-to-one training sessions with different groups. Today we have an 85% recurring usage rate and strongly weekly recurring engagement from all of the different teams across the organization. RR: Well, that’s fantastic to hear. I mean, clearly you guys are doing all of the right things, and I know you're—like you’ve kind of alluded to here—keeping a really close pulse on those outcomes with weekly check-ins and things like that. I also know that each quarter you’re putting together a presentation highlighting major wins and how things are going. Since implementing Highspot, what key results have you achieved and are there any particular wins or achievements you’re particularly proud of that you could share with us? AP: We’ve seen strong engagement and alignment across the organization. We have over a hundred thousand content views and over 3000 external shares. 47% of our viewed content has been tied to opportunities. So truly, the materials that we’re producing fit into the real conversations that are happening. Our top 10 assets have also shown strong engagement, with some assets exceeding a hundred shares or downloads, and our Digital Rooms remain a major win with consistent interactions and hundreds of curated experiences that support our ongoing conversations. These results reflect the impact of a structured, aligned enablement approach that supports the way that our teams already work. RR: As a fellow marketer, I think hearing some of those numbers and some of the things that you’re thinking about, I am feeling the impact of that, and I’m like: “Oh, you guys are definitely doing the right things. I’m so glad that you’re seeing the impact and the usage of the content. I know that’s always so exciting and always makes the work feel a little bit more meaningful. Bravo, and thank you so much for sharing that with us. They’re, I think, again, really inspiring results, especially as I said so early in the journey. To close us out, one last wrap up question for you: If you could summarize one crucial lesson, one key point from your experience with Highspot and using it to improve your sales process, what would it be? AP: So the biggest lesson is that clarity fuels confidence. When our teams know where to go, what to use, and how to apply it, everything improves. The conversations, execution, and outcomes all become streamlined. Enablement is truly about connecting people, content, and insights in a way that supports repeatable, scalable execution. When you build that structure and provide visibility, the results will follow. RR: I think that’s a perfect way to wrap us up. Build your foundation and everything kind of comes from that. I think that’s fantastic to close on, but before we do, I do want to say thank you again for joining us. I’m so glad we had the opportunity to learn from all of the impact you and the team are driving. AP: Thank you for having me. RR: 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.

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report, 2025, 29% of companies still rely on multiple disconnected GTM tools. So how can organizations leverage a unified platform to scale sales readiness and achieve GTM success? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win/Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Heather Hubner, advisor distribution and agent relations at Priority Health. Thank you so much for joining us, Heather! I’d love it if you could just start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Heather Hubner: Thanks for having me, Riley. Again, my name is Heather Hubner, and my role is a somewhat newer role in our company, but I came from the employee benefits side of the industry and then moved into sales. So I was a sales rep for several years for priority Health and that has evolved into the distribution side. Really my role is to ensure that our agent partners have a very aligned message as far as our products go, and just ensure that we are giving them the tools they need to represent our product in the field appropriately. RR: I kind of wanna double click into something you mentioned, which is that you started on the sales side of the house at Priority Health. So with that background in mind, can you walk us through some of the unique challenges that reps in the healthcare industry face, and then maybe a little bit about how enablement can help them overcome those things? HH: Yes, and I love this question. Being a sales rep in this industry—I think anyone who has worked in it understands the complexity—-is complex, it is fast paced, it’s somewhat seasonal, but we’re also learning that those seasons are no longer such. It’s just a high pace all year round. As a rep, one thing that I really learned was we have time wasters: we’re looking for a certain material that an agent wants, we’re reeducating ourselves on a product because maybe it’s something that we don’t delve into on a regular basis, we just need to reeducate ourselves as a rep. Before Highspot, so much time was spent digging around for that information and therefore less time was spent selling and building relationships and building trust with the agents. That was, that was very challenging. You know, I always thought: “Goodness, if I had everything at my fingertips, frankly, I could sell more for our company because I would be spending my time in a valuable way.” So I would say about four years ago, that’s when we first started using Highspot and it was an absolute game changer. I mean, it changed our world. We could get everything in one spot, and there was a lot of emphasis on making sure we had a source of truth. Reps know they know to go to Highspot, they can grab what they need when they need it, send it to an agent, reeducate themselves, and there isn’t any more guessing about where to look at our system, which drive, how do we find out who has the most up-to-date information. It really has been an amazing alignment tool. RR: I love that you’ve walked the walk so much so that you’re like: “I know what was hard, and I can now have the agency and also the tooling to go in and fix it.” I think that’s wonderful. And I think that’s always the goal of enablement, right? But when you have that background, you’re so much more in touch with what your reps need. So now that you’ve kind of made your way into this new role, I’d like to dig into what you’re working on now. So, what are some of those key initiatives that you’re focused on driving for the business this year? How are you hoping to decrease complexity like we just talked about for Priority Health's reps and agency partners? HH: To give you an idea of our journey so far, we started using Highspot for our reps and really went hard this year on ensuring that we had similar tools for our agents creating pages, specifically for our agents by market segment. We have created digital pages, so to speak. We call them engagement pages from an externally facing standpoint, and we have tailored the tools that those agents specifically need. This is important because, you know, if you are a small group agent, you generally don’t have all the complexities that large groups have, and therefore you don’t wanna weed through all those materials. So it really is the same principle applies, right? It’s giving them the tools they need when they need it, without having to sift through a lot of things that they don’t need. So creating very tailored pages for them has been really important. We’re going to take it a step further this year. So, to get to your actual question, we’re gonna focus on training. So when we get new agents in the field, they are the ones that we count on in order to sell our product, and oftentimes they are getting in the trenches, learning about all the carriers all at the same time. It’s a lot to digest. What we are gonna focus on is working on our training and our onboarding experience for our agent partners, and that way they can get in the field quicker with the right type of information, stay compliant with what our product actually is offering, and feel more comfortable. The hope there is truly we’re gonna sell more, more quickly, and they’re going to feel more comfortable repping our product. RR: I love the kind of internal enablement philosophies that are being extended out to the partner network—we know what you need and we want to give it to you in an easy, digestible way that is tailored to your workflow, because I’m not going to make you dig for something that you don’t even need. Keeping that in mind, I’d love to know what some of those other key building blocks for effectively equipping agents and building strong partner relationships are for you. HH: Gosh, the biggest piece is trust, right? They're building trust, um, spending time with them. Listening. Listening is the biggest piece. When agents are telling us things, we have to listen to them and act upon them. Otherwise what’s the point? The fact of the matter is in our industry—and anyone that works in health insurance knows our agent—partners are very direct. Sometimes too direct, but they’re very direct. So when they’re telling you something, they mean it and they are going to be truthful because their livelihood is also reliant upon the information we give. But I would say relationships are the strongest one. Trust, transparency. You know, being honest. If we are, you know, if an agent questions us on something, or frankly, sometimes they’ll compare us to other carriers: “Hey, this carrier does this. How come you guys can’t do that?” Be honest about it. But it really goes back to listening and forming those bonds to where they trust you. Because the more an agent trusts you, the more willing they are to say: “Hey, this group is a really good fit for your product. And I feel confident that you’re going to onboard them smoothly. I feel confident you’re going to take care of them from a customer service standpoint. And I feel confident that when there’s a problem, I’m going to call you, you’re gonna answer and you’re gonna help me solve it.” RR: So, you mentioned listening and building trust and transparency, and then using what agents are saying to kind of build your programs and how you support them. How are you kind of creating these channels to get in touch with your agents? Is it just getting on the phone and talking to people and then taking that information back to your strategy? How are you kind of creating that feedback loop? HH: So our team, I wanna give a little, um, shout out to the team a little bit. We are very unique, so we’re a newer team. There was not a distribution and training team before. We’re really working on the strategy for exactly what you said. How do we strategically get out? How do we make sure that our interactions are meaningful, and how do we enable our sales team to do the same? So what we have really come up with—and it seems to be quite successful—is we’ve created a premier partner program. What that means is we’ve got different levels, essentially of our partner groups: gold, silver, and bronze. For each one of them, we provide different levels of service, so to speak, but it’s really rewarding them for their business with us. With that, we’ve created a strategy on formal meetings. So formal meetings are when we actually go to the agency, we’re bringing our team of leaders and some of our reps, and we’re spending time with them in person and talking about our new products, some of the intricacies and nuances about what to expect, getting feedback about what they’re seeing in the industry and what they need in order to keep their clients in the space that they’re hoping to be for their employee benefits. We do that twice a year, and then we have kind of the other agency partners who we hit once a year. But on top of that, you’ve got kind of this less formal interaction, and that’s where we really come into play from an enablement standpoint. We want to make sure our sales reps have what they need when they need it. We help create some content for them so that when they are having more informal meetings—maybe they’re going to lunch, they’re going to breakfast, and they want to build a relationship, but they also want to bring some value and bring some meaningful messaging. That’s really where we’re focused. We understand that there’s different levels of that relationship building. You know, those individual reps, it’s so important that they have those relationships, but as an organization, as a whole, it’s important that we have those relationships and that vantage point in the market to where they’re saying, yeah, they have it together, they understand what we need. They are being formal when they need to be formal, but they’re being people when they need to be people. RR: That’s fantastic. I think one of my favorite things to hear about is programs that people are in the process of building and they’re so excited about. Thank you for sharing. We’ve talked a little bit about the strategy and kind of the philosophy. We’ve talked a little bit about how you’re creating feedback loops and embedding those relationships that you’re building with your partners into your programs. Could you talk to us a little bit about the role that a platform plays in kind of driving all of this for you? HH: I will be frank with you. Without the platform, this would be merely an impossible task. It is. I mean, it really would be. That was maybe the barrier in the past—having that source of truth for our materials, our education, and everything that our internal folks are using and our external folks in one place. On top of that, the tools that allow us to strategically tailor the messaging is amazing. You know, just sharing out links. The new digital pages, I’m telling you, these have been my favorite thing. We had a lot of feedback from our agency partners that it’s so hard to navigate where I get things. I mean, they were saying that to us for years and I couldn’t even disagree. I’m like: “It’s a hundred percent hard for us too, just so you know.” So this answer has been, you know, truly amazing. And then the Sales Plays: Our marketing team actually creates Sales Plays whenever we have a new product that’s going to market. Oftentimes, there are a lot of pieces of information that go along with that. We have member-facing materials, we have agent-facing materials, and then we also have things that are for our internal team only. But the Sales Plays really bring all those together so that when a salesperson is saying: “Hey, I need to learn about this product so I can go sell it right now,” it’s all in one spot for that product. Without it, I don’t know how we would do it. It feels as though our business would be so limited because the fast pace that we’re rolling out products and the fast pace of regulation changes would be very challenging to keep up with without having this platform. RR: That’s everything that we love to hear, is that the platform is helping you solve for those big problems. And it also kind of leads me to a question that I had for you, which is about how you’re driving alignment and consistency with Priority Health's strategy and message. You mentioned Sales Plays as kind of like an internal lever for keeping reps aligned, but what are your best practices for keeping agents and internal reps on message, on theme, and aligned to your strategy? HH: Really, that is our entire job as our team is to ensure what you’re saying is exactly what is happening. So we do it a few different ways as we are building what these for, what the formal agenda is going to be—which is what we formally take out to the market to each of our agency partners. At the same time we’re communicating internally to our sales reps what that’s gonna be and getting feedback from them about what it should be because they're the boots on the ground and they’re getting the calls from the agent saying: “Hey, you guys don’t have enough information on this. Tell me more about this.” That feedback loop coming to our team says: “Hey, we need to do more education in this area so that we’re aligned on the messaging.” Or if a rep says: “You know, we don’t know enough about this to go feel comfortable in the market with it,” we take that back and we know as our team, then we need to do better. And our marketing team, like I said, does a lot of that, but what we do is corral it together in a meaningful way for them. We need to do it better. I’ll be frank with you, you know, this past year has been a little bit of, you know, drinking out of a fire hose—creating new processes, creating new strategies. In terms of our communication to the market this upcoming year, we’re gonna spend a lot of time making sure that our reps have the same information as our agent partners in a more timely manner, so that there’s never a time where an agent is asking a rep something and the rep is saying “I didn’t know about that.” RR: I think it’s an endless task, right? Enablement. The business is constantly changing and so is your work too, but it does seem like, at least looking at the data that you guys are starting to drive, the impact that you’re really looking to. We’ve seen that you’ve achieved a really impressive 90% recurring usage rate in Highspot, which tells us that folks are in the platform, they’re using it regularly, and it’s part of their workflows. So what are some of your strategies for driving that adoption? How are you keeping people in the platform and excited to use it? HH: Being consistent with using this tool. So when we send out messages, we are very consistent in letting them know where they can find it, whether that’s providing the link or giving them teasers in the messaging to say learn more and then somewhat forcing them to the tool in order to learn everything they need to about it. This is a couple of things. One, you know, if they’re curious about the product, they’re gonna click in and then they’re going to potentially see what else is there, which is really great. But the fact that we’re using this really as our source of truth too for product information that’s been learned—because of the frustration of past years where they didn’t know where to go—it’s such a breath of fresh air that quite frankly, the user adoption, I don’t wanna say it’s easy, but it’s been easier because it’s been such a good problem solver. We didn’t know how we were going to solve for before we had this platform. RR: You know, you’re doing something right when just having folks land in the platform and realize “oh, this is so much better than what we had” is your main driver of adoption. That tells you you’ve built the right system, you’ve got the right structure, and you’ve built it exactly for them. So that’s fantastic. I always kind of love when I ask that adoption question, it’s like, I don’t know. They just like it and you’re like, you’ve done the right thing. That’s fantastic to hear. So, aside from that recurring usage rate that we just talked about, what other impact have you seen with the platform? HH: Yeah, I got chills when you just asked me that question actually, because there is a piece that I’m so excited about. We track the metrics, of course, of how much usage is being had on the agency side. So again, I keep speaking to this Digital Room, but that’s where we put all the large group information. And then we’ve also done the same for small groups. Seeing how much time has been spent there by our agent partners is a direct correlation of the time that doesn’t have to be spent by our reps. And in fact, I would argue even more when we first launched the pages, it was, we would look at the hours spent in there and we’re like, Ooh, three hours. Ooh, five hours. Ooh, 24 hours. And then we just started to get excited of: “man, people love this tool!” And then just getting the direct feedback from the agents too. They’re like: “This is a game changer. Heather.” I love not having to bother a rep with this information because that’s more time out of their day too, right? The agent then has to make a phone call. Or an email, which is more likely it’s adding to the multitude of emails that everybody’s getting every day. It takes that step out and creates a self-service environment that I think we all know and love. But I think that’s the most exciting piece RR: That’s so great to hear. I think that digital room example is such a masterclass in how you can bring the workflows of Highspot to an audience that maybe doesn’t live in your platform, but you can still create that consistency, that transparency, and I think definitely something to share with our audience. I’ve heard a couple of teams do that, and it always works out wonderfully, so thank you for sharing that. One last question for you: What advice would you offer to other health insurance organizations like yours that are hoping to build strong partnerships and drive consistent execution across their channels? HH: My advice would be to really listen to your agency partners. Don’t dismiss what they are saying. Also, listen to your reps. Relationships are everything—trust, transparency. When you give your agent partners or your customer, regardless of the industry, that, you build something really special. RR: Trust, transparency, good product. I think those are wonderful things to close on. Um, and I think it ties really nicely back to everything else that we’ve talked about. I do have to say before we close out completely, Heather, it has been so wonderful to chat with you. I really appreciate you taking the time to come and share a lot of really wonderful best practices, some tactical, some strategic of how to use the platform and how to run in this industry. HH: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it too. Just the opportunity to really think about what this platform has done to us has brought some, a next level of appreciation from my end. RR: Amazing. 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.

According to Forbes, sales reps spend 35.2% of their time selling and 65% of their time on literally everything else. So how can organizations cut through the noise and focus reps on the activities that matter most? Riley Rogers: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win Podcast. I’m your host, Riley Rogers. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic are Yvette Boucher, Director of Sales Enablement at CentralReach, and Chelsea Louro, Senior Manager of Sales Enablement at CentralReach. Thank you so much for joining us, both. Just to kick us off, I’d love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Yvette, would you like to kick us off? Yvette Boucher: Yeah, thanks for having us. I’m Yvette. I’ve been with Central Reach for about six years now, building out our enablement programs. We’re an AI-powered platform for autism and IDD care providers. Our end-to-end software and learning solutions help organizations deliver quality outcomes to help every client succeed. I'll pass it over to Chelsea. Chelsea Louro: Thank you. I’m Chelsea Louro, senior manager of sales enablement. I’m also approaching six years here at CentralReach. And then prior to coming to CentralReach, I was a teacher for a little over a decade. I also did teacher training and recruitment and then education sales, then that brought me here where I was in SDR, an account executive, and then also now in enablement the last three and a half years. RR: Amazing. Well, we’re super excited to have you here, especially knowing that you guys were both up for a Spark Award this year. So you are doing some really wonderful work that I’m really looking forward to digging into as we kick off. I’d love to start with you, Yvette. Let’s open with what’s difficult, what you’re up against lately. So, what are some of the core challenges to GTM success that you’re seeing, and how have those challenges kind of evolved throughout your enablement career? YB: One of the biggest challenges we’ve seen recently is just how short the timelines have become between a product announcement and when reps are expected to start selling it. We’re moving faster than ever, especially with our new AI products. That means enablement has to get the reps the right information, the right messaging, and the right training almost immediately. It’s been a constant balancing act between speed and depth. We want reps to feel confident and well prepared, but we also need to deliver that enablement in a really agile way, so they’re ready to have meaningful conversations from day one. So the pressure to move fast has definitely shaped how enablement operates today. For us, it’s not just about building training, it’s about building our systems and processes that can scale and flex with the business. RR: I think you’re certainly not alone in some of those challenges. Organizations across the board are struggling with similar things, and everyone’s kind of looking for that silver bullet. Chelsea, I wonder if you can maybe help us kind of build on this. So, from your perspective, how does an enablement platform support you and the team in addressing these challenges and helping reps focus on selling? CL: Yeah, so I’ve been in roles at other companies where there wasn’t much organization. There was no enablement platform at all. Both as a seller and a leader, I spent a lot of time trying to find the resources that I needed, and sometimes just—out of pure frustration—had to create my own. I know a lot of sales reps come across that as well. So, having a platform like Highspot gives us kind of that single source of truth so we can get all of our content guidance training all together in one platform, one workflow. Our reps aren’t spending time trying to find things and they can focus on what they really need to do, which is sell. It also helps us deliver insights back to our leadership, um, and lets us see what content and sales plays are actually driving our sales. That visibility allows us to continually refine and to make sure that the reps are supported and then focused on selling. RR: Kind of moving forward, I would love to maybe focus on some of the ways that you’re using an enablement tool. I’ve heard that you and the team are doing some really wonderful things with Sales Plays, and that’s kind of part of what earned you that Spark Award nomination. Yvette, knowing that Sales Plays are playing such a critical role in supporting some of your AI-centric product launches this year, I’d love to learn a little bit from you about what that strategy is, and how you’re using plays to streamline rep workflows. YB: We’ve really built our Plays with simplicity and speed in mind. So, the idea is that we get the right information in our reps hands as quickly as possible with who to target, what to say, and what resources they can use so they can jump straight into the action instead of digging through multiple tools or decks. When we launched our AI solutions last year, the Plays became a living guide for the team. And because the plays live right in Highspot, reps can easily pull them up in the moment. So as our products continue to evolve, the Plays evolve too. So they’ve become a go-to reference point that helps stay, keep everyone aligned and stay confident in how they’re positioning our solutions. RR: It’s funny because you know, a Sales Play is such a humble thing, but it can be so powerful if you use it right. It’s not just the strategy that I think is really impressive with what you guys are doing. Chelsea, I’ve heard that you and the team have driven a really incredible 99 again, 99% adoption rate of your Plays. So can you walk us through how you maintain such high sales play adoption? CL: I think a lot of it is just constant repetition and reinforcement. Our teams have kind of become used to our enablement and go-to-market communications, so adding in Sales Plays was just a nice easy process. Every time we roll out a new Sales Play, we emphasize the importance to them. We let the team know that any changes or updates will be made in that Sales Play. So that’s where they need to go to find their source of truth. I put out a weekly newsletter called the CR Morning Brew every Monday, and in the Brew we share new marketing content, any updates to those Sales Plays, any initiatives, things that they need to know. Then we have a live sales meeting on Tuesdays where everything that was shared in the Brew is reinforced. So again, the reps are reading it, they’re getting it in sales team channels—because I share out that Brew in every single sales team channel—and then that live, vocal repetition and just making sure that they’re paying attention and, and they know what’s happening. RR: I think one thing that’s really important that you called out there is that yes, you’ve driven really high adoption, but you also built the foundation of communication beforehand. So you had these levers in place that you could pull and be like: “You trust us. You know where we’re coming from, and now I can send you to the right places.” So, you’ve built a strategy. You’ve seen near unanimous engagement with it, but it goes further than that. Yvette, you shared that using Sales Plays during a recent product launch led you to influence over 900 opportunities. Could you walk us through how you drove those results and then how that impacted the launch outcomes? YB: I think it really came down to how we set up the Plays to begin with. Like it came down with that alignment and teamwork. So prior to the launch we worked cross-functionally with product marketing, sales leaderships and our SMEs to make sure the reps had everything they needed for messaging, positioning, and the hands-on product support, which I think was key there. They needed someone that knew that product. We also knew we would be learning in real time. So every team at CR leaned in to help them, everyone. By the time the Play that went live, we were already making edits and updates based on early feedback. Every update and change was communicated in our Morning Brew. sales team meetings, and individual team meetings, and we continued that communication and support from our SMEs, and that’s really what helped us influence those opportunities. It’s also great that it was a great product for people to have. RR: That is the kicker—it's hard to sell when you don’t have something exciting. So I’m glad that both cylinders were firing there. You guys were doing the right things and so was the product. Now, I feel like we could probably continue digging into Sales Plays, there's a lot there. Again, like I said, they're one thing that gets overlooked, but they can be really, really high impact. I would like to maybe switch gears to another win that you’ve shared with us. Chelsea, you leveraged Highspot to redesign your onboarding program, achieving a really impressive one hundred percent adoption of required training and reducing ramp time by one to two weeks. Can you walk me through what you were thinking about as you were improving this program? What impact has that has had on rep productivity, ramp time, and all of those good things? CL: Yeah, so we kind of reimagined the onboarding program to be a little bit more personalized and performance driven. Using Highspot's training module, we built out role-specific Learning Paths that kind of combine product knowledge, our Sales Plays, and then real world scenarios. We also created an onboarding homepage. So when a brand new rep first joins the team, they log into Highspot. They have an onboarding homepage that clearly links all the Learning Paths but also defines the expectations, the deliverables, and what they should expect every single week. We also hold weekly check-in meetings with all of our new hires where we can answer any questions about what they’ve learned. We have discussions, we’ll bring in SMEs and then we can do any troubleshooting. And then honestly, just using the analytics with the Learning Paths, we’ve been able to track completion and performance and we can kind of quickly identify where the reps need maybe a little bit of additional support in different areas. But yeah, I mean this all together, we’ve kind of, like you said, we’ve reduced our ramp time, one to two weeks, and we make sure just with buy-in from our leadership, that all of the sales reps are completing every single Learning Path. So we do have that hundred percent completion rate. RR: What motivated the shift in the onboarding process? Where were you, and why were you like: “It’s time”? CL: We had all of the resources, but we hadn’t had that training or coaching platform yet. So we adopted that, really rolled that out, and that was kind of the kicker to get everything together and organized and built out into those Learning Paths. So I think just adding that training and coaching platform was the kicker to really redefine what our onboarding looks like. YB: I would say that previously we had our onboarding program in another tool outside of Highspot. So it’s just—we know sales reps: They wanna find everything right away, very easily. So just putting content and introducing people “Hey, you’re gonna use Highspot for this, but in your onboarding you’re gonna be using something else” just wasn’t going to get people using it or building things out. RR: That kind of goes back to something we were talking about earlier with your established communication cadences, and so bringing everything together, that’s a great move and I love to see that it’s already having that impact on not only engagement, but on productivity. And I think one thing that’s really impressive to me is just how much data you guys are coming with—of we’ve improved ramp time, we’ve seen really high adoption, and we’ve seen high engagement. Proving enablements impact is usually really, really hard. How are you measuring the effectiveness of your programs and demonstrating their contribution to broader business goals? YB: That is such a good question and honestly it’s something that’s been a challenge for us too. Measuring the true impact of enablement isn’t always straightforward. You can track engagement completion rates, but tying that back to real business outcomes takes a lot more work. One thing that really helped us in the last year really is using the Business Outcome section of our Sales Play Scorecards. That gives us a way to look beyond the usage and see how those Plays are actually influencing the results. So it tells us a clearer story about how our enablement drives performance, and not just participation from our reps. We’re taking that a step further next year. Our team is really excited to roll out Initiative Scorecards for our programs in 2026, so that’ll let us measure the impact across the full life cycle from launch to execution so we can keep improving and show the tangible value of enablement in driving the business forward. RR: Can I ask how you’re planning to use the Initiative Scorecard? Knowing that CentralReach is in a pretty launch heavy motion right now, is it going to be for product launches? What are your goals for that? YB: You know, we’re trying to develop that right now, so as we’re thinking of 2026 planning, I want to partner with the different sales leaders here as well as my direct leader and see what are our initiatives going into 2026. So potentially Q1, Q2, we’re not sure how we’re gonna break that out yet. But really getting some pipeline generation numbers. I know we have a lot of releases happening in some of our already launched AI products, so I want to generate campaigns of this is the product of focus, how much pipeline do we want to build, and how are we gonna build it. Then we'll use that Scorecard to show here’s the content, here’s the Plays, and here’s the training, supporting the team. Then, here’s the teams using it, getting it out there, and being able to tie that back to our future opportunities. RR: Amazing. I think that’s the foundation you need, right? You can have these key motions in the business, but encapsulating it all into an agreed-upon initiative that every function is aligned with is harder than you’d think. So I like to hear that you’re starting that new planning with: “What are our initiatives?” We looked a little bit ahead there, but I’d like to kind of just take a pause at where we are. We’ve talked about a couple of wins—Sales Plays, influenced opportunities, improved onboarding programs, and better ramp time. Outside of those things, since implementing Highspot, what are some of the key results that you’ve achieved? Are there any wins or really proud achievements that you could share? Chelsea, I’ll kick it over to you first. CL: Yeah, so I mean like you mentioned, just the 99% adoption of our sales plays and our onboarding ramp time being reduced to one to two weeks. I think overall just the 900 influenced opportunities in our new AI products was a huge win for us and brought in a lot of revenue, and Yvette mentioned at the beginning, it’s really a tool that helps this industry and helps our customers. So we were really excited to see that. But overall, just our win rates have improved our deal velocity, and I think that’s just more thanks to consistent execution and messaging alignment. Overall, I think the biggest win that we’ve seen is rep confidence. Our reps feel like they know what to say. They know the value prop, they know what to do. We get less questions, which is nice because they know exactly where to find things. They know where to go, what to find, how to use it, and just how to use it to win. RR: I think that’s everything you want to hear—your reps know how to do the thing. That’s what you’re here for. So fantastic that you’re kind of achieving that and have the data to back that up. Yvette, were there any wins that you wanted to share? YB: Honestly, I think Chelsea nailed it. Like the Learning Paths and all the work we’ve been doing with our training, I think that’s been huge. Definitely noticed the ramp time reduced with our new hires. They’re more confident, and I think we also have that always continue learning and changing mentality here. So, it's meeting with Chelsea and the enablement team and always like, how do we improve this? Just adding things like Role Plays now for SDRs because we found that, hey, once we launch a training, yes they can get on, they can get opportunities very, very quickly, reduce their ramp time, but we want to improve their conversations, so let’s have additional weeks of learn of Role Play training added into their courses. Just those minor changes make a really big difference. RR: Fantastic. I love that you're kind of evolving your strategy with the product, that as new things come on board, you guys are embedding it and finding new ways to make the product work for you. And that kind of leads me to my last question very neatly, which is that we’ve talked a little bit now about Spark—and you guys were able to come and join us and see a little bit of the fun, exciting new things that are coming out—so looking ahead, based on what you saw, how do you plan to evolve your enablement strategy, especially with some of those AI features? Maybe it’s Role Play, maybe it’s other things. YB: Spark is always such an inspiring event and we love going every year and this year really showed how quickly AI is transforming the way we work. So, for us, we see AI as a huge opportunity to scale our enablement smarter. We’re exploring ways to use it to personalize a learning experience, surface more relevant content right when the reps need it, and provide managers with coaching insights to help them guide their teams more effectively. Our goal is to make enablement more proactive. So we want to anticipate what the sellers will need before they realize it themselves. So that’s where AI will come in. For us. It’s not just about speeding things up, it’s gonna be about helping our reps focus on what really drives the results. RR: I think that’s a great vision. One of the ways I’ve heard it put is that AI can allow us to do more, but what it can really allow us to do is do better. So you guys, it seems, are really leaning into that and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I know we have kind of hit the time that we have for you today, so I just wanna thank you both again for joining us. It was a really wonderful conversation and it’s been so fantastic to hear from you. CB: Thanks so much for having us.  RR: To our listeners, thank you for tuning into 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.

According to Salesforce research, 66% of sales representatives feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they use. So how can you streamline your tech stack to enhance operational efficiency and drive revenue growth?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 Serge Lobo, the Chief Revenue Officer at Loadstone. Thank you for joining us. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Serge Lobo: Thank you, Shawnna. Thanks for having me here today. What is this year today? So I’m 27 years in sales, 23 years in sales management. I used to work for multiple different known brands like Microsoft, HP, Pegasystems, Ingenico, and SAS, so that’s a famous analytics company. And now I’m chief revenue officer, so we try to get The right title for my position because nowadays in size business, the revenue comes not only from sales, but also from retention of the customers. So my role is actually to wrench all the sales processes and ensure that the customers are getting the right impact so that we managed to retain them and then ensure that they grow together with us. SS: Amazing. Well, thank you again for joining us today. Given your extensive experience in sales leadership across both large enterprises and startup organizations, I’d love to understand how does your background influence your strategy for driving global revenue growth at Loadstone? SL: I play the thinking first of all, so before making any moves, any discussion. So we need to think of what do we want to achieve here rather than just get the contract. Yeah, it’s not as simple as it used to be when you get a call and then just because you have a fascinating piece of software, someone getting excited and then just signs the contract. Not anymore. A lot of competitors, like in our space, we just made a rough calculations and we had. We counted like 14, 000 companies worldwide that are doing pretty much the same things as we do 14, 000. Yeah, that’s a lot. And, uh, the concept that I apply is that first of all, so we need to think of how we drive the process and then go after automation of that. So we need to design the processes. We need to get to build the operating model, and then we need to understand the requirements for the systems for the systems that we want to deploy and to benefit from them. And of course, well, all that. Goes through the, uh, revenue thinking. I’m a chief revenue officer. So I’m partially responsible not only for revenue, but also for spendings. Yeah. So spendings are also the key elements. So every solution that we’re using should be cost efficient for us. SS: Amazing. And I understand Lodestone recently went through a rebrand, which can bring a lot of significant changes for the sales team. What are some of your best practices for helping your teams effectively navigate this transition? SL: Well, first of all is, uh, we need to be transparent. Yeah. We need to be transparent and we need to make sure that the team buys the general idea. And then the team is ready for change. Cause as for any human being, the change is the biggest challenge. Yeah. So after five years old, so then we are really hesitant to change, which is surprising before five years, we want to try everything. You want to change everything like every day. After we are five years old. So we become really hesitant to that. That’s pretty much the major challenge that we have when we change anything in the company. We won’t change the sales process and we need to sell that first to people. And sometimes it’s, it’s not an easy task. And so we try different means of getting that to people so that they start to use that. It’s because it’s not only to make. People try to stand that, right? But it’s also like, do you use that in like everyday work? Do you use that in everyday customer discussions? Do you use that when you talk to your peers? And so that’s most difficult. And so we spend a huge amount of time now in terms of like getting them to people so that they start using that. Yeah. Cause we have people from different generations, different background, different experience. And so of course, well, they try to use the experience first. All right, so we are now in Lodestone. Okay, so what’s your product, product X, Y, Z. All right, let me try to sell that. And then we need to make sure that people are doing that in the right way. Yeah. Cause we see that there is a best practice and there’s some practices that have very little propensity to be successful. Yeah. So we need to increase that chance. We need to give people not only the automation tools, but also the methodology and the process tools so that they speak in the right way to the customers. SS: Absolutely. And as you mentioned, when these organizational changes happen, you often have to reshape the sales process. And I know that’s one of your key focuses. What challenges have you faced in optimizing sales processes and how have you overcome them? SL: Well, the first is to measure the measurement of the current status and the measurement of the target status, say in my career when they try to do the major change, so then people want to move fast. Yeah, okay So let’s move fast. Let’s change everything Let’s do it for the best But then when we try to analyze and to think on what will be a successful change. Then we need to define the target where we are today where we want to go in the future And that’s the number one thing. Then the second thing is really to get people involved into that change. And what I do usually throughout my career since my early management years, so I try to involve people, you know, so involving people into designing that process because they know about what’s going on in the field and then they know better what might work in order to do it best. Yeah. And then of course, well, if there are some good people with different experience also, but different attitude to the process. So they usually get some really good insights and really good advisors and me as a manager. So I usually facilitate that process, even though I might know the final answer. So, but I then guide people to the final answer, which is right so that they cannot escape them from deploying that and usage of those process, those ideas, those guidelines that they designed literally for themselves. SS: I think those are some great best practices now from your perspective, what is the strategic advantage of an enablement platform and helping organizations improve sales processes and really drive operational efficiency? SL: Some years ago, I heard that statement when the boss asked, what if we enable people teach them to do and they leave? And then the sales manager answers that question with another question. What if we don’t enable them? We don’t teach them and they stay. So that’s literally it. So that’s a key element of any successful sales organization to enable people, not only of the product knowledge, not only of the pricing tools, but the way you sell that, because nowadays this is not a challenge to sell something. It’s in fact, the challenge, the huge challenge is to buy, and if we analyze the customer processes, then we will find out that the process to buy something is by far more complicated than the process to sell something. And so we need now to understand and to guide our salespeople, to be the helper in that journey, for the customer to fulfill their buying intentions, to fulfill their buying process in the best way, because well, they buy it once, but we sell it like on a multiple times. And so we now. What are the intentions of the customer in the process of what will be the next step? How to justify this or that step, justify this or that number. Yeah, so all of those talking to people in numbers, talking to people in financials that requires a huge amount of routine operations and a huge amount of experience. So you need to be very comfortable to do that. Yeah, and in order to do that, you cannot do that on the fly. So you need to be enabled properly. You need to be enabled through the business cases. You need to be enabled through the rehearsals of the pitches. You need to be enabled through the templates. And of course, all of that, the combination of all those streams. So it becomes kind of the most important part of the, uh, in the company, because all the rest is just the outcomes on how good your people are trained, how good people are enabled if they’re not. There’s a very little chance that they form well and you build up the sustainable system of sales, a sustainable organization. And that’s why actually, so the first thing I did in Loadstone, when I joined the company, I asked, do we use any kind of database or knowledge base enablement system? Do we have any enabling processes for people who come to Lodestone, who come to, uh, to join our great team and, uh, make sure that we multiply our, Successful cases and best practices. And the answer was like, well, really, so yeah, we got some Google Docs, multiple slides for people trying to serve there. And, um, literally, so they, sometimes they just get drawn in those multiple artifacts and never, never came up. So that’s why we decided for a different approach. SS: Well, I love that you’re taking that and from a sales leader perspective, what role does leadership play in really fostering a culture of efficiency? SL: Let me give you an example. So for every single new employee that comes into a client facing role, I spend at least four and a half hours of my time for every single employee, not a group level, like on individual level on getting people through our operating model. How do we work on getting people known? What do we sell on getting people know? What are the major tools that I’m looking as a zero on the management? So means that We try to get our employees, our sales or client facing people, not only through the tools, but also through the cultural DNA. So what the company is, what are we doing? Well, why are we doing this? Why we don’t do that? Why we don’t push in the products? Why I didn’t need the contract without knowledge of the customers? Yeah. Because sometimes, well, there are people who come up to and say, Hey, here’s a contract. I just signed it. I said, do you have enough information about that customer? Well, who cares? Yeah, I just signed the contract. Well, I do care because, well, there’s a little chance to retain that customer in one or two years just because, well, we did the last job during the sales process. No, that’s not the DNA of the company, and we explained that right from the beginning of the employee journey in our company. SS: I love that. I love that’s part of the DNA. Now, you mentioned that automation has played a key role in helping you drive operational efficiency, such as your automated process for content governance. Can you tell us more about this process and how you’re automating sales workflows? SL: Well, the sales workflows are being automated with a solution from the company called Pipedrive. So that’s our sales automation tool. But everything aside of that, so it means the knowledge base and some parts of the customer interaction workflows, including learning and management, we are automating that with Highspot. So we’ve came across Highspot a couple of years ago. And so I found it really fascinating because I know in my previous companies we’ve had. Self enablement platforms. And that time I was like thinking, okay, so we don’t have enough resources to develop anything, which would be at least at the level of what I used to have in my previous companies. And then I came across Highspot and I was like, really? So can these guys do this and this and this? And then we came through a couple of use cases and then we understand, okay, so Highspot is a good, probably a good selection for us. And then when I understood that this is a great selection for us is that when we start talking money. Cause this was literally like the, the only provider who managed to convince me from the money standpoint, from financial standpoint, rather than the features and functions. So, and that’s still the example for, even for my salespeople, I still have that first proposal from Highspot saying, all right, so this is how the proposal should look like for, for our customers, because that speaks in terms of financials, mostly rather than features and functions. Then that impressed me a lot. And so I understood that company wise, we have pretty much similar DNA. Because we also talk to our customers, not for features and functions, but through the benefit that they may get from usage of our software. SS: Well, I have to say, you guys are doing amazing with streamlining those processes. And you’ve also driven really strong engagement from the sales team with 95 percent recurring usage and Highspot. What are some of your best practices for driving adoption of these investments that you’ve made in tools for your sales team? SL: Well, first of all, what I was impressed at the beginning is how I might use that for customer interactions. So the functionality of what they call the pitching and that transformed into creation of Digital Rooms. So that allows us to create a very personal lending. Content page for all customers. So whenever I want to share something with the customers, I make my people to share that through the pitching of the Highspot because I can definitely say whether this content was attractive or not, whether this content was read, how much time was spent in reading of that content? Because that’s very important for me. And I had a couple of times I even had some nasty customers had a situation when, you know, me personally, I was sending them the pitch and then I called them and said, hey, we spend a time, we prepared a proposal for you. Well, what do you say? He said, well, um, I read this proposal. I never saw that being opened and we don’t go, okay, all right. So I don’t want to spend the time with you just because, well, it doesn’t make sense for you. Okay. If it doesn’t make sense for you, it doesn’t make sense for us, but pitching is a very important part of custom interactions and that drove a lot of ROI for us. Because we now see that those customers who are mostly interacting with this landing pages, personal landing pages, they close the deals with us quite fast. So then the second one is, of course, for the internal knowledge base. So we found that those people who are most readers in Highspot, they are, surprise surprise, our top performers, yeah? Because in a lot of cases, you might face this situation when you just create some kind of piece of content and then you ask your people to read this, read this, listen to this, watch this, and then say, well, listen, well, I don’t have time, I have a custom meeting, I don’t have time, it’s just too long, can you just make it one page of me? And the bottom line, those who read most are the top performers. What a sequence, yeah? So that structure actually helps us to build up the sales guides to check what are the most useful pieces of information that we have in a high spot, also from to spend the time on developing or stop developing certain pieces of content at a time. SS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Those are amazing. And since implementing Highspot, do you have any business results that you can share or any wins that you can share? SL: Well, in fact, it’s really hard to measure the effectiveness of sales enablement rather than through the sales results. And so I know for sure that we increased our conversion rates by 110%. So that’s, that’s the official number from our Pipedrive. So just getting prepared for the session, I asked the CRM team, what’s the result or what do we have from numbers? And it told me, well, we have this and this and this. And I think, well, this is the highest award for me. To understand what’s the efficiency of Highspot in Loadstone. Yeah, 110 percent of onversion growth. And, we have today, I think, over 7, 000 artifacts or pieces of information that we uploaded. And we have a very, uh, a very big open rate for those pitches that, that our customers are getting from our client success managers. So that’s, we are delivering, I think while we are delivering at least month to month, that’s a different number, but this is around 200 pitches per month for us, which means that we have a lot of those personal interactive sessions. SS: Amazing. Amazing. Well, last question for you, I loved hearing about kind of your journey in terms of the rebrand and the sales process, see optimizations, but I’d love to understand as you’re kind of looking ahead as someone who is passionate about innovation and operational efficiency, how do you envision leveraging AI to further enhance your strategy for driving revenue growth? SL: Oh, that’s a buzzword today. Well, actually in content of knowledge management, AI should help people to have all information on the top of their fingers. Yeah. So whatever you ask, you need to have the concentrated answer. So, and that’s where AI can help to get known to new information. Because, well, I told you, we have 7, 000 pieces of information. How do you navigate through that? Yeah. That’s really challenging. And in fact, so so this is what we’re looking for is that a I will help us to get first of all, like a little pieces off and concentrated pieces of information to start your journey into specific area of knowledge and if you understand that, well, this specific thing is of value for me is a value for my customer, I need to get deeper. And so then depending on the depth, so AI should be helping people to get as much concentration of the information that they need in this specific level. Cause, uh, yeah, we do have this pieces of information, like 70 pages it sounds reference guide. Yeah. So then you cannot make people to read it nowadays. But then is this a valuable piece of information? Of course it is. Yes. And we have the reason why it’s 70 pages, not 50, not 30, not 20, not one. There’s a lot of valuable information, but I don’t need it at the same time all the time. Yeah. I need the piece of information which will be valuable for me right here. Right now. And so AI might be a very helpful tool in that. So that’s how I see that. So needless to say, for the international companies, you have a lot of pieces of information that should be translated into multiple languages. So that’s also the help of, uh, that’s with AI tools. You save huge amount of time now to do that completed. Yet you have like write visuals, write text, optimize text to the specific cultural languages and so on and so forth. That’s something that AI already helps us a lot, but then I see that we’re still in the beginning of the journey. SS: Yes. Yes. There’s a lot more that I think it’ll bring over the fullness of time, so I’m excited to see where it takes us. Serge, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts. SL: Thanks Shawnna! 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.

Ben Wolf is the Founder and CEO of Wolf's Edge Integrators, a leading fractional COO firm specializing in helping businesses scale efficiently. He began his entrepreneurial journey by building operations at a healthcare startup, transforming it into the largest organization of its kind in New York State within three years. Recognized as a pioneer in fractional executive leadership, Ben authored the bestselling book Fractional Leadership: Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach and hosts the Win Win Podcast. In this episode… Many business owners struggle to step away from daily operations, making it difficult to focus on long-term growth. Fractional leadership offers executive-level support without the high cost of full-time hires. But how does a fractional integrator actually help a business scale? According to operations expert Ben Wolf, a fractional integrator ensures smooth execution across all functions, allowing the owner to focus on strategy instead of daily operations. Instead of hiring a full-time executive for $250,000 or more, businesses can bring in an experienced leader part-time to drive execution, align teams, and remove operational bottlenecks. Ben explains that many companies remain stuck in trial-and-error mode for years, testing different strategies without real traction; whereas a fractional integrator brings proven systems that accelerate growth. This approach helps businesses scale efficiently without the financial burden of a full-time hire. In this episode of Financial Clarity, Hannah Smolinski and Ben Wolf, Founder and CEO of Wolf's Edge Integrators, explore the benefits of fractional leadership, the challenges of hiring experienced executives, and how business owners can create a self-sustaining company. Ben shares actionable advice on building a strong leadership team, reducing operational bottlenecks, and using a 12-month rolling budget to improve financial decision-making.

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.

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.

According to research from Salesforce, 94% of sales organizations plan to consolidate their tech stacks to boost productivity. So how can you build an efficient tech stack to support sellers and drive success for your team? 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 Harmony Johnston-Grant, the principal strategy and program lead at Medtronic. Thank you for joining us, Harmony. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Harmony Johnston-Grant: Thanks for having me today on the podcast. So yes, I’m Harmony. I’ve been at Medtronic within the diabetes organization for about six and a half years now. It’s gone very quickly. My main responsibilities are really how we drive strategy through to execution by using Enablement systems and frameworks, such as Highspot, Salesforce, and really driving that collaboration between all of our cross functions so we can quickly translate the needs of our field force and our marketing strategy into our wider programs. SS: We’re excited to have you here, Harmony. Given your experience in the life sciences industry, what are some of the unique challenges that reps in the industry face and how can enablement help overcome these? HJ: Definitely. So we need to demonstrate proven clinical outcomes of how technology can improve the standard of care. And the med-tech landscape is changing and advancing quite quickly, as well as being highly regulated. So there are a lot of differing factors by country, could be due to product availability, healthcare models, regulatory requirements. So all of these can kind of affect how we go to market. So it’s really crucial as a team that we’re agile and able to adapt to bring strategy through to execution quickly. And this is really where enablement comes in to support our teams throughout their whole journey. So looking at things like their onboarding, um, keeping up to speed with market trends, skills they need. How we enable and support them to go to market. So bringing kind of cross functional teams together to ensure the alignment and then also ensuring that our competencies and key results and metrics are really aligned to our wider strategic goals and objectives. SS: I think that is phenomenal. And you actually take a consultative approach to understanding and addressing what your reps need. I’d love to understand, how do you go about kind of gathering and incorporating rep feedback into your enablement programs? HJ: Definitely. So I’m a very big advocate for continuous improvement and I think feedback is really a crucial part of enablement. So we use a few different models and mechanisms to capture feedback. So one kind of being that we have a field advisory board. So this is where we’ve got representatives from each of our countries and regions that we consult with for any new strategies or programs. So it may be that we run pilots with them, for example, and this is a really great way to validate our insights and get that field feedback. Another couple of methods are kind of surveys to capture the wider organizational feedback. So they’re really great. For pre and post-program surveys to so you can kind of quantify how things are progressing and then also any new programs that we launch, we make sure that we’ve got that really key foundational support and feedback model in place. So we have like local champions, for example, who keep us in that close contact. So we know how things are going. And as we’ve got a lot of countries and markets, it’s really good to have that local knowledge and that well-structured cadence of feedback because what may work in one market may not work in another. I’ll actually share with you later a story about how we use kind of that consultative approach that led us to actually implement Highspot. SS: Amazing. I think that’s phenomenal advice. Now, as I mentioned in the introduction, a lot of organizations are really thinking about how to drive efficiency and effectiveness by looking at kind of the consolidation of their tech stack. And I know one of your key focus areas is the creation and management of the sales tech stack. What are some of your best practices for building an efficient tech stack that still meets the needs of your sellers? . HJ: So there’s a lot of tech on the market. It can be quite hard to keep up, but I think it kind of comes down to a few things that you really need to kind of consider. So I think one is how you can keep things as simple as possible for your team. So I’m sure many other enablement professionals have heard this. We’ve got too many feeds, too many tools, too many systems. So how can you really drive that simplicity for your end users? I think that’s really as simple as listening to the barriers, their needs. How can you bring all those features and insights into one place and embed them into their workflow or an existing system so they don’t have to swivel chair between multiple platforms. Really drive those insights into action and bring value. I think another aspect is really what’s the strategic direction of your tech stack and what are your business goals and how can you align the two. So that’s where it’s really important that you have that internal alignment and vision with all of your customers. Functional teams and IT to understand really, okay, how can we embed our business goals into our tech stack and how our systems can integrate together. And then lastly, I would say, how are you going to actually operationally support the tech stack and what does success look like? So you can have a great system, but if it’s not implemented and supported correctly, you’re going to lose a buy-in. So thinking about things like how are you going to train your teams?What doess the support model look like? And tech is constantly evolving, so how are you going to ensure that any new developments with your tech are also cascaded to those teams and everyone’s kind of kept up to date? And then how you align your success metrics with your business goals to really drive that strategy through? SS: What would you say is the unique value of having an enablement platform to support your go-to-market initiatives? HJ: Yeah, definitely. So I’ll share the story I mentioned earlier. So previously we were using two separate tools. So one was our content tool and then our CRM. And what we noticed was the adoption wasn’t really kind of trending where we expected it to be. So we initiated a deep dive process into this. And so we really use that consultative approach to look into the key trends and understand why. So for example, we ran a survey, and we really had kind of one conversation with our field boss and local marketing to really get that contextualization as to what was happening. And what we found was that conceptually, the idea of the tools was there, but the value wasn’t being realized due to certain barriers. So for example, the content tool wasn’t embedded into their workflow and their CRM. Certain countries hadn’t seen certain pieces of content and local marketing couldn’t see the visibility of what content was being used and how it was landing. So we kind of took this We took all this feedback and we worked together cross-functionally to really evaluate the tools that we were using. And we identified that we really needed a unified and integrated platform. Use across all devices, really kind of structured the cadence of content and guidance, giving us those insights back as to how things are working. So this is where Highspot came into play. So we investigated a few different tools, and validated Highspot on the pilot, again, using that kind of feedback approach. And then. So this enabled a more streamlined cadence between all of our teams, making sure we’re speaking the same language, delivering the same message consistently, and that the field force really has everything in one place within their workflow. So I’d say definitely the unique value for us being such a large organization is really having that collaboration within one unified embedded platform. SS: I love that. What are, I know one of the key GTM initiatives your team has been focusing on is also supporting the rollout of new technology. Can you tell us more about this initiative and some of the ways that you’re helping reps better execute? HJ: So earlier this year, we launched a new product across multiple countries, which packs us in multiple different things. So timings, languages, we even have free languages in certain countries. So there’s a lot to consider and a lot of different teams involved. So product, clinical, education, marketing, sales, the list goes on. So as an enablement team, we really brought everyone together and worked with all of those internal stakeholders to bring in those assets. Build a sales play. So this covered everything from strategic objectives to messaging for our external stakeholders in line with our sales methodology, bringing in together the content that the teams needed to use and how they should go to market for their respective countries. So what they needed to really do to be successful with that launch? And then I think an additional benefit of having this consolidated into really one place is that local teams were able to quickly and efficiently then adjust into the local language and add in those local dynamics as well. SS: Amazing. I love that approach. What are some of the results that you’ve seen from these efforts and do you have any early wins you can share? HJ: Yeah, definitely. So I would say actually just having everything in one place for our field force has been really beneficial. And then I would say our speed as to how we cadence information in a much more streamlined way. So for example, with that product launch sales play, that would have been multiple pieces of guidance and content from multiple teams. And now we’ve got one aligned message to support our field force and enable them to go to market. And then lastly, it’s really having that visibility on how our content and guidance is landing. So utilizing those insights to make improvements and that feedback to have that continuous, I guess, virtual cycle of insights into actions. So it’s definitely a team effort and change management but it can bring a lot of insights and value. SS: I love that. I love that. Now, on that note, we talked about how rep feedback plays a huge role in the development of your programs. On the other side, how do you leverage data to evaluate and optimize the impact of your programs? HJ: Utilizing insights for informed decision making is really embedded into our company culture and I think this really goes hand in hand with feedback because you need that contextualization to make sense of it. So, for example, we use the OKR and A3 methodology across our diabetes organization. So this ensures that we’ve got key results and success metrics for each of our strategic objectives. So we’re able to see if something isn’t progressing exactly how we expect it to. We have those regular check-ins, but then we can also deep dive into the why. So like that example I shared with you earlier. We use that data, we use those insights to understand and deep dive into why as to things that aren’t working and then adapt our approach. And I think it’s really important to have and instill this mindset of data-driven insights across your organization as measures should be designed to pull people towards your overall vision. SS: Last question for you, Harmony. As you’re looking ahead, how do you envision leveraging innovations like AI to enhance your enablement program and continue to optimize your tech stack? HJ: The potential with AI and technology is very exciting, but I think it’s also easy to get lost in all the possibilities or jump straight into solution mode. There was a Gartner podcast and they said 72 percent of sellers are overwhelmed by the number of skills required for their job. And 50 percent are overwhelmed by the amount of technology that is needed. So I think this is where it’s really key that our role as enablement is to ensure that our teams are supported and upskilled to use technology and AI. So the way that we’ve been approaching AI within our team is Really looking into those kind of specific use cases, doing some proof of concepts within our programs and using that consultative approach with our field advisory board. So we can really validate those use cases and realize the value of them. So for example, lately we’ve been looking into kind of AI sales coaching and adaptive learning, and we’ve run that by our field advisory board to really understand with them, is this going to add value. Is this going to drive that simplification? And then using those insights to shape which direction we’ll go. I think the last aspect as well is being in such a regulated industry, what’s really crucial is that AI and technology are really underpinned by trust. So using that data in an ethical and compliant way. So it’s also really important to look into those nontechnical considerations with your AI strategy as well. SS: Phenomenal advice, Harmony. And I’m excited to see what you guys do on that front. Thank you again so much for joining us on this podcast. I really appreciate the time. HJ: Thanks so much for having me. It’s been lovely. 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.

According to a report from Harvard Business Review, 70% of all change initiatives fail. So how can you design and implement an effective change management strategy to help your reps adopt change within your organization? 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 Matthew Leiggi, the senior revenue enablement manager at Rectangle Health. Thank you for joining us, Matthew. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Matthew Leiggi: Absolutely. Great to be here. and like you said, I’m the senior revenue enablement manager here at Rectangle Health. I have almost a decade of experience in sales enablement, go-to-market strategy, spanning industries such as. Healthcare, SAS Data, and FinTech. I’ve had leadership roles in organizations like Rectangle Health, where I’ve been for about four and a half years now where my work really focuses on creating scalable enablement programs that empower the sales teams to articulate value effectively and deliver meaningful results. I also have my MBA, which has helped deepen my ability to align my business objectives With impactful enablement strategies, and at Rectangle Health specifically, I’m responsible for designing and implementing these programs that drive revenue growth. And enable our sales team to succeed in complex competitive markets. SS: Well, Matthew, I’m excited to have you join us today. One thing that caught my eye on your LinkedIn profile was that you state your mission is to empower sales teams to successfully land the value of your solutions across the buyer’s journey. Can you tell us more about this philosophy and how it drives your enablement strategy at Rectangle Health? ML: Absolutely. And this philosophy really kind of centers around ensuring that every sales interaction is value-driven and customer-focused. It’s really about, from my perspective, equipping my team and the sales teams with the sales knowledge tools, and confidence to address what the buyer’s needs are at every stage. At Rectangle Health, that’s translating this into actual strategies by creating sales playbooks, and dynamic training programs, ongoing, both in and onboarding. And then creating content that’s aligned with our specific buyer personas in the healthcare industry. Also, for example, I’ve implemented programs that have emphasized consultative selling, where we know that we’re going to have a conversation that’s going to be value-based, that’s going to articulate ROI and align those solutions with the customer’s pain points. Again, depending on who I’m talking to because everybody cares about something else. Or something different than maybe that next person that you’re going to be interacting with. So your approach has to be tailored to each of those individuals. SS: Absolutely. Now, Matthew, in the last few years, Rectangle Health has had a few acquisitions. In your experience, what are some of the challenges that sales teams can face when navigating an acquisition? And how can enablement help overcome these? ML: Acquisitions can bring changes in product portfolios, processes, organizational culture, and I know sales teams can struggle with alignment and a clear understanding of what the new value propositions are, having to adapt to new technologies they might not have used before. So enablement can help bridge those gaps by providing clear messaging frameworks, updating training on the integrated offerings, and fostering collaboration through workshops and cross-functional alignment sessions. When Rectangle Health underwent these acquisitions, I facilitated post-acquisition onboarding training to ensure our teams understood what the new value propositions were, focused on operational processes and really took a handheld approach to what the changes were. So how did it used to be done in your old system or your old process? And then how’s that going to translate into what we’re doing now in our new system? And that’s going to help confidently engage. Our teams to then feel more confident in the process to then more efficiently engage. Our prospects and our customers. SS: Absolutely. I think those are some fantastic tips and tricks for our audience. Now, I know silos can often also become a common challenge after an acquisition. What are some of your best practices for breaking down those organizational silos through enablement? ML: Absolutely. And breaking down silos really starts with creating a unified vision and fostering collaboration. So for me and kind of the enablement role of that, it really kind of starts with that collaboration. I always say enablement’s kind of the third leg in a stool between sales and marketing, product, you know, kind of the rest of the organization. So cross-collaboration is always paramount and that includes hosting alignment meetings, workshops, and what have you with sales, marketing, the product teams to make sure that everybody is on the same page. We’re all aligned and understand exactly what we’re supposed to be marching towards. The second piece is having a centralized place for resources, using a platform like Highspot so that everybody knows that the knowledge and information are all in the same place, creating that single source of truth. And then having regular communications, whether it’s participating or holding our own weekly stand-ups, or cross-department meetings, to align our priorities and initiatives. These practices ensure everybody is aligned on goals. And has access to those shared resources, so everybody is marching to the same beat, saying the same things and understanding what everybody across the organization is doing to the best of their ability. SS: And the desire to break down silos and unify your teams was part of the impetus behind deciding to invest in an enablement platform, I believe, at Rectangle Health. What are some of the ways that you leverage your enablement platform to help drive alignment across your teams? ML: Enablement platforms like Hotspot are really invaluable to help drive that alignment. And at Rectangle Health, content centralization, like I said before, is really kind of number one. We’re a small company. When I first started, we only had about 100 people. Everybody was really kind of using SharePoint. And now as we brought in those acquisitions, as you can imagine, everybody has their own places for content and resources. So bringing everything together under one umbrella was really a step number one to make sure how can we even understand what exists before we can say, is this even the right content? So that centralized content to create an easily accessible repository. For those playbooks, competitive Intel training material was step number one. The second one is to track engagement. So yeah, we might have several hundred resources that came in from a bunch of different libraries or different places, but what’s actually working when we’re able to analyze what’s used and what’s most effective, we’re able to refine our content, create better content, and being able to bubble that content up to the team. Where it’s most appropriately effective because we’re able to track that engagement. And the last part is feedback loop. That goes beyond just kind of working from a content perspective. Feedback loops are critical for enablement to be successful anywhere, but taking that seller feedback directly. And for me personally, working one on one with a lot of our sales reps daily, outside of just from a content perspective, but their feedback and understanding of what they do and the struggles that they encounter. Have each day and kind of what their processes are. Taking that and working that back into our platform and our content so that everything again is aligned and is going to work from the top down. And that’s going to help foster that consistent messaging and ensure all the teams are equipped with the right tools in the right time. SS: Absolutely. Now, with any change initiative, bringing your sales team along for the journey can oftentimes be easier said than done. What advice do you have for motivating sales reps and helping them to adapt to change? ML: Yeah, change is definitely easier to navigate when sales reps see the value that it brings. Just in my short time here, we have, again, gone through a lot of these acquisitions, processes have changed, leadership teams have changed. So the number one thing is really transparency and being able to clearly communicate the why behind what the changes are and involving the reps early and often in the process. So that we get those champions coming across in our trainings or updates, whatever it may be, because our reps are wonderful, love working with all of them, but it’s always a little bit different when it’s coming from one of their peers than when it’s coming from anybody else, right? We’re not just telling you to do something. We’ve worked with your peers to be involved in the process, and they’re helping us communicate that not only is this change just happening, but why is it going to make this process or this thing better? And then kind of piggybacking on top of that is the recognition piece. So celebrating the wins and highlighting those early adopters who embraced the processes and really kind of celebrating that and then bringing that to a tailored support approach. So role-specific trainings, one on one coaching to address any of these individual challenges so that no one person feels like they’re not supported. It’s going to help create an environment where change is seen as more of an opportunity than a disruption. SS: I love that advice. I think that’s phenomenal. Now you’ve already driven really strong engagement from the sales teams with your enablement programs. You’ve achieved an 81 percent recurring usage rate with Highspot. What are some of your best practices for driving adoption? ML: Absolutely. I mean, number one is stakeholder buy-in. Being able to work with our sales leaders and other stakeholders across the business that have a say in the content that’s being created, and how our sales teams are effective every single day. So engaging with those leaders early to champion those initiatives is always kind of step number one. Number two is to have a user-friendly tool or to use something that is going to be easy to understand. De simplifying access to the resources through something like Highspot where It’s extremely easy to understand where’s our content working with the Highspot team in particular to say, well, what’s the best way to organize that content and go into, hey, here’s not just a library. I should go into this with the intention of what am I looking for and how can I easily get to what I need to find more quickly. And then the real key to success is continual ongoing reinforcement. There’s a million things that happen. Every single day where the priority is always changing. We work in healthcare. So we work with these providers that have, you know, limited resources and limited time because they have patients coming in every single day. So they can’t always just kind of sit on the phone. And our goal is to capture their attention within the first 10 to 30 seconds and get their buy-in. The exact same approach is the same with our sales team. So continually being top of mind, whether it’s through email communications, hopping on team calls, really just kind of embedding enablement into the daily workflow through some microlearning. So manager-led coaching and reinforcement have contributed to that 81%. SS: I love that. That is amazing, Matthew. Now, I know that you guys are just getting started, but do you have any early wins that you’ve experienced so far that you can share with us? ML: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve been able to help streamline our onboarding. With Highspot. So reducing the ramp time by helping to centralize the training and the resources, actually this morning, I was on with our latest group of new hires. And today was basically let’s start execution. So what that means is let’s make sure you have access to all the right tools, and systems. Process flows, everything was right in the high spot. So get them right in there so we can make sure that they have access to everything. All of our different job aides, it’s all right there. It’s all very systematic and programmatic. So we didn’t need to spend more than about half an hour making sure everything was all set up. That’s also helped improve and increase our engagement. Like you said, we have an 81 percent recurring usage, which indicates kind of strong adoption. And a lot of that has come from, again, the reinforcement constantly saying, well, have we looked in Highspot, sending links to Highspot, help themselves get to the right content instead of just maybe sending, let’s just say an example, the training video itself, helping somebody navigate their way through Highspot to get to that training content on their own. And then the other one that we found is improved message consistency. So our team has reported greater confidence in the content that they’re sending aligning. Their specific conversations with their follow-ups and pitches versus maybe just a static email template that they had before so they can actually see the engagement, be able to have more purposeful follow-ups, but also have tailoring the content and the conversation altogether to that prospect or that cross-sell customer that they’re working with. So these wins have really helped kind of validate. A platform’s impact and provide a foundation for helping us scale in the future. SS: Love it. Matthew, last question for you. The new year is right around the corner. As you look ahead, what are some of the key things you are planning to achieve next as you continue to evolve your enablement strategy? ML: It’s crazy to think that 2025 is right around the corner. So our main focus as an enablement team going into next year is to further refine our sales onboarding and providing greater support to our new hires to help decrease our ramp time. So that’s priority goal number one. Number two is to help enhance our organizational alignment. By integrating more teams and resources into Highspot. So we’ve really worked with our revenue team to anybody who’s customer-facing become aligned in terms of our content, our processes, and now our goal is to expand that out to the rest of the organization. And then for me, I would really love to expand into the use of. Kind of AI and automation and enablement, such as personalized learning pads, maybe some automated content recommendations to help really scale our reach and our impact because we have a pretty small but mighty team here at Rectangle Health and we’re continuing to expand and grow pretty significantly that we have to be able to use some different tools and be creative around how we can get to that reach because we don’t necessarily have the human resources to do that. SS: Absolutely. Matthew, thank you again so much for joining us. I really appreciate the time and the insights. ML: Thank you so much. So happy to be here and have a great time. 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.​

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Today is a special day—we're celebrating our 100th episode! For this milestone episode, we're diving into a theme at the heart of enablement: making the impossible, possible. In today's business landscape, only 28% of sellers expect to hit their quota. So how can you enable your teams to overcome the challenges of the current market to achieve consistent go-to-market success? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I'm your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. In this episode, we'll hear from nine leaders who transformed challenges into business outcomes, delivering impact against their go-to-market initiatives through enablement. From earning leadership buy-in to aligning go-to-market teams and boosting productivity, these leaders enable the impossible for their businesses. We hope their stories will inspire you to push boundaries and redefine what's possible in your organization. Driving consistent revenue growth can feel impossible when silos divide sales, marketing, enablement, and revenue operations. A unified enablement approach can break down these barriers and drive measurable impact. But how do you demonstrate the value of enablement to stakeholders and secure their long-term support? In this part, we'll hear Pam Dake, senior director of GTM enablement at Menlo Security, share her success story for gaining leadership buy-in. Pam Dake: My name is Pam Dake and I work for Menlo Security, a cybersecurity company that actually has just surpassed a hundred million ARR. One of the bigger challenges that I’ve had recently has been in aligning the executive teams in order to really, truly understand how to be impactful, leveraging the go to market motion in a way that not only lands the big deal, but also allows us to have a very productive and valuable customer relationship long term. And so for me, it’s been gaining the opportunity to have that meeting with all of these critical stakeholders, have them see value. Each and every time that you meet with them, so that they feel like they’re getting something out of that meeting where it’s actually really driving the business forward in ways that they may not have seen initially. And so for me, it’s been setting up a recurring meeting with those folks who are the most senior and executive in the company to be able to drive forward what sales needs, which actually is driven primarily from what sales needs. Really, our customers are looking for from us as a company. Be tenacious about how you’re able to make a difference with aligning their internal stakeholders and really driving forward the programs that will make a difference, not only in the short term and the long term. So as you consider the strategy that you’re building. Ensure that you have your other internal stakeholders aligned and do that in ways that create value for them so that they can see the impact. One of the things that we talked about earlier was data. Leverage the data that you have on hand. Leverage tools that provide you with that really impactful data that provide you with insight into the leading indicators that will actually drive the business longer term with the lagging ones. So the bottom line is really taking an outside in approach with what you’re doing from an enablement lens. How does this impact my customers? Therefore, how am I able to build the best programs that I can that will enable My internal stakeholders, my internal teams, in order to be successful and provide value to our customers, not only in the short term with what wins they’re able to achieve, but how they’re able to grow and develop the relationships over time. SS: You need stakeholder buy-in to break down silos and align your go-to-market teams – but why is that alignment so critical? Without it, you can't coordinate, plan, and execute the initiatives needed to drive the business outcomes that matter most. And when 90% of organizations fail to execute their strategies successfully, it clearly takes more than guesswork to achieve those outcomes. So how can you define, execute, and optimize your go-to-market initiatives to deliver unprecedented impact? In this part, we'll hear stories from enablement leaders who brought key go-to-market initiatives to life through enablement. First, let's start with a common initiative that impacts teams across the go-to-market organization: product launch. Effectively bringing a new product to market can make or break your revenue targets. We'll hear from Chris Wronski, senior program manager at Keysight, on how he helped deliver a product launch that contributed to the first revenue growth in seven years despite a tough market. Chris Wronski: My name is Chris Wronski. I’m a Senior Program Manager at Keysight Technologies, and I am the architect behind our Highspot implementation. The last couple years have been very difficult in the, across the entire industry, right? Every, many companies are talking about it, us included. If you go pull our quarterly info, you can see the last seven quarters have been very difficult for us. So what I talked about earlier, the focus on new product introductions. That’s an opportunity for us to make some hay. That’s an opportunity for a, we’ve got a brand new product, we’ve got a brand new reason to go talk to customers. Even if they have no opportunities, at least go explain to them what we’ve got, right? There might be something in there. We’ve done a lot of work around building sales plays in a way that the seller can consume it and trying to crush it down. Really, um, aggressive simplicity is what I would call it. But by building that in and giving them just a little bit of info to start the discussion in a way that we knew you could start that discussion with nearly any customer, that’s enough to get the ball rolling and let them go do their sales job. We’ve done a ton of pushing training to them. I can see that in the numbers. I can see when we do our training. I can see the following week there’s a huge spike in people going to those sales plays and looking at them and using them. And so, Last quarter we, we turned the curve, right? Turned the knee of the curve and brought back at least a little bit of growth. We were positive for the first time in seven quarters. SS: Next, let's dig into an initiative that is likely on the minds of many GTM leaders with the new year around the corner: sales kickoffs and events. Starting off a year on the right foot can provide a business with momentum that carries through the rest of the year. Brooke Cole, manager of global field readiness at Workato, shares with us how her team drove an impressive boost in NPS with their first in-person SKO events. Brooke Cole: My name is Brooke Cole, and I’ve been at Workato for almost three years. A business challenge that myself and my team have overcome that we’re really proud of is probably our first in-person SKO events that we executed earlier this year. Because of COVID and just the nature of the world, we had been unable to get together in person as a collective regional team. Really, ever. We hadn’t. We had one scheduled, and then we had to cancel it, of course. Uh, so, earlier this year, our team, we ended up doing it regionally. So, in North America, in APJ, and in EMEA, our team was tasked with putting on three different SKO events within three to four weeks. And we traveled to each one of them. And the way that we overcame that really was just a sense of teamwork and camaraderie. We built trust with one another. We had really open dialogue and communication. And we really used our skill sets and our collaboration. To put on an event that got an NPS score of 85 globally. We heard the phrase, this is the best SKO we’ve ever had. And truly, to be fair, it’s the only one we’ve ever had in person. But people left jazzed, and they left inspired, and we leveraged Highspot as a part of that. Going into this next year, this is the second year where Highspot will be our landing page for our global event that we’re having, and so it’s going to be the Know Before You Go, and we did that as a trial period last year, and it worked out really well. The traffic was great when people had questions, we were able to direct them to Highspot for that, and I think we were proud overall of just the vision that we put together. And how we executed the tools and the apps that we already had at hand in order to bring everybody together in a centralized place to give them the awareness and create excitement around the events. SS: Now, we're diving into an initiative that can have a profound impact on productivity: the sales process. Research shows that just 28% of a rep's time goes to selling, and an optimized sales process can help you streamline workflows and save time. Let's hear from Jay Livingston, head of enablement at Corporate Visions, on how his team is improving the sales process and delivering time savings as a result. Jay Livingston: I’m Jay Livingston. I lead Global Sales Enablement at Corporate Visions. I remember when I got involved in enablement, one of the things that I learned is that sellers spend an inordinate amount of time each month preparing their own content. They have a lot of goals. so we in a headquarters environment have time to sit around and think about how to improve some of these processes. Salespeople don’t, right? They’re running from call to call, always trying to be ready to meet that moment. And so one of the, one of the main challenges I’ve been focused on quite honestly for more than just the last couple of years at CVI is how do we make. Content and resources and tools and assets more purpose driven more readily available, more easily findable, and then more from a usability perspective, make it easier for, again, for those sales folks to be able to execute in those moments. And so I remember when we first rolled out Highspot here back a few months ago one of the things that, that a member of my team Eric is a VP on our team, would say, man, he’s I just, I don’t have time to do all the things that I need to do because I’m constantly getting emails or messages or slacks about, hey, where’s this and where’s this and where’s this, Highspot literally I no longer have to field any of those calls. As a matter of fact, when we were here in August, I had a chance, we were sitting around the table to share a story that just in the month, I think we had been maybe a month in at that point the amount of time that Eric has been able to get back in his day. To not have to field those annoying, it can be very annoying requests, right? Because how many times do we tell our sellers where things are, how to use them, right? And you almost wonder sometimes, are they listening, right? Are we not communicating it effectively? All of a sudden now we’re seeing literally no request for where is this? How do I use it, right? And so again, what I would say is it’s not bulletproof, right? There’s always going to be opportunities to improve. But one of the hallmarks of the way that I’ve tried to lead enablement organizations is to really have it boil down to two things. One, what is the seller’s, or what is your colleague’s ability to be able to execute in this moment? We can lean into the ability to help them get better. And two, what is their willingness? And willingness, oftentimes, is influenced by how easy something is to execute. And so if we can remove the willingness component, then we can just focus squarely on the ability. And so as we continue to move forward those are really the two things that, that we continue to evaluate ourselves by. Are we making it simple? And how are we helping folks coach or how are we coaching folks to get better and to be more effective and to utilize these amazing tools and opportunities that we all have SS: And now, let's talk about an initiative at the heart of enablement: training. When done right, sales training can drive the behavior change reps need to consistently hit their targets–but often, that can be easier said than done. Let's hear Anthony Doyle, director of sales enablement at Turnitin, explain how he revitalized training and ultimately improved seller engagement. Anthony Doyle: My name is Anthony Doyle, and I'm the director of sales and development at Turnitin. In terms of overcoming really difficult problems, the biggest problem is engagement—engagement from the sales teams, leaning into the enablement programs, spending time, and investing their time in their own development. I think that's what we've seen a real uptick on and success on in the past, maybe six to twelve months. We've seen a change in attitude. We're getting success now when launching new training programs. People are leaning into them, they're completing them, and they're giving us good feedback too, which is something that I probably never thought I would have said twelve months ago because we started investing a lot of time and building a lot of training, but then that wasn't really getting consumed. It was very difficult to get managers to even back us up and roll it out with our teams. Whereas now, when I've just presented to the go-to-market team on a go-to-market all-hands, strategy for the sales academy, there was just a lot of love in the room. A lot of people saying, ‘This is fantastic. We can't wait to see it in action and get our hands on it.’ So we had a lot of good feedback from that session. And that's really pleasing for me because it means that the strategy was the right strategy. I think the message for teams and enablement teams out there, if you are getting those challenges with engagement, is to keep at it, show value, and really drive those proof points. Get those wins regionally with teams who will engage, then present it in a very easy-to-consume way, and in a way that the teams can feel confident about engaging with. You will see the results, and the tide will turn. So that's something I'm proud of. SS: Next, let's explore an initiative that drives long-term impact—coaching. Effective coaching helps sellers apply newly acquired knowledge to maximize their performance. Let's hear from Andrea Holzwarth, VP of Sales Enablement and Customer Operations at Project Lead The Way, on how she supports ongoing coaching to help reps sharpen their skills. Andrea Holzwarth: We see a lot of value in coaching and training. We have our senior directors, our sales managers, really providing that one-to-one support for our reps out in the field. And we want them to be able to have those coaching conversations and the meeting intelligence helps with that. So we can see the calls. What is that? What’s going well? Maybe what are they struggling with? But I think a lot of times. I say this, that it’s easier to edit than it is to get started, and so having that AI feedback automatically in there it’s helpful, that’s a starting point. And then our senior directors, our sales managers can go in, provide more of that personalized coaching that they may see, but it gives them a starting point. One of the other benefits that I see with Meeting Intelligence is I just think about as a sales rep being in the field especially virtually now that we’re, all we do is meet virtually. It feels like we’re in the, we actually go to schools and districts too, but I would have loved it when I was a sales rep to just see, I think I know how I show up on camera or how I’m speaking to a customer, but, It is so helpful to go back and record and just see man, I said “um” a lot. So it helps with some of that coaching too. SS: And to close out, we asked our guests for advice on how they enable the impossible in their organizations. Here are a few tips from Suzanne Heller of Flight Centre Travel Group, Jennifer Shelley of QuidelOrtho Corporation, and Susan Kinser of Net Health Systems to help you take your enablement efforts to the next level. Suzanne Heller: Just go for it. Because we have the tools that make us successful. We have the tools to be able to measure what we’re trying to achieve. And it is okay at the end of the day to go back to the drawing board if it doesn’t work. But we won’t know that if we don’t try. And if we look at enablement 5, 10, 15 years ago, it wasn’t like what it is today. But because of the trial and errors that have, come up. Advice to anyone that is in an enablement role is just to go with your gut and deliver. And it is okay to go back and look at the data and pivot and optimize. You won’t know what’s successful unless you try it. I think my second piece of advice is buy-in. To your business, your brand, you tell a story, you bring immense value, and it’s really critical to create that brand awareness for yourself and for your team, to be able to let them know the purpose, and the deliverables, and the ROI that you bring to the business. So this would be my two. Jennifer Shelley: Not to get discouraged. Sometimes, we initially we will bring to the table things that sound outside of the box and Highspot tends to be on the cutting edge of technology. But technology can be frightening, and I think that you can get discouraged when people are, not as excited as you are about what you’re trying to accomplish with the technology that you have.  And just take your time, stay focused stay, consistent with your message and understand that it takes time for people to really understand the vision that you might have if they haven’t been exposed to all the great the great information that Highspot is providing them in terms of that cutting edge capabilities in the platform. Susan Kinser: Whether you have a seat at a table or not is to, try to get your voice heard so that you start having those conversations to understand the business outcomes that your team is looking to change, right? I think that the moment you’re able to ensure that you’re aligning any of your programs or any of your initiatives to those specific strategic initiatives that your company in a larger way is looking to achieve when you get that kind of information and you’re getting that feedback and you’re having more, and then they have that insight into the change that you’re making it just makes you more of that strategic partner and it gives you that space to continue to make that kind of success progress and success, I would say get a unified platform. Use Highspot and use the resources. And so I think what’s fun is in this ever growing enablement space, having your voice being heard only. makes the impossible more possible, right? As we start bringing things together and we start, having different ideas or having different needs, and we’re able to do things in these different ways, I would say my advice is to get connected to those business strategies, those business insights, and then get that unified platform and keep scaling. SS: As you heard from the enablement leaders we featured in this episode, nothing is impossible with the right team, tools, and processes in place. In looking to the year ahead, take stock of the challenges on the horizon and rather than looking at them as obstacles, channel them into opportunities to push the boundaries of what you once thought was impossible. Thank you for joining us for this special 100th episode of the Win Win Podcast. We'd love to hear how you are enabling the impossible—be sure to connect with us in the Highspot Spark Community to share your advice, and tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

According to research from Gartner, It can take up to 18 calls to connect with a prospective buyer. And when dealing with enterprise sales, that number can become even higher. So how do you help set your team up for success when navigating complex enterprise sales?  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 Eric Nitschke, the VP of Commercial Enablement at Corporate Visions. Thank you for joining us, Eric. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Eric Nitschke: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. My role or my background is a mix of marketing and sales enablement and leadership. So I have a lot of different things behind there and I think it’s shaped the way I’ve approached driving results for sellers and customers. Really. My background has always been in sales enablement content. So creating playbooks and websites or microsites, digital sales rooms, and different kinds of content that sellers would then use to educate themselves and be able to have better conversations. But the marketing background made me a little more aware of how content needs to be phased and directed at specific audiences. And that seems pretty, you know, common if you’re thinking about a customer marketing campaign to be role-based and set the direction toward what customer needs to do. But I think the same thing happens on the seller side, where we need to know what the seller is really trying to achieve at that stage of the sale process. So probably deeper than just my background, but I’ve been with Corporate Visions 12 years since my prior company was acquired. So I’ve actually kind of been with the two companies for actually 26 years. SS: Amazing. Well, we’re excited to have you here. And I know that one of your areas of focus is helping your teams elevate commercial conversations. I’d love to learn from you. What are some of your best practices for developing effective messaging and sales content? EN: Sure. That’s a great question. So I think a lot of companies, our clients, and lots of companies out there have a lot of great first conversations. And have trouble getting to the next one. And part of that is they haven’t gotten to the true business needs of the client. They may recognize an opportunity at the technical or at the service delivery level and it makes sense there. But when you start competing with additional budget or other initiatives that may not be competitive, but we’re all fighting for the same budget there, I think a lot of sellers don’t get to the next step because they haven’t really thought about the business value they drive. So when we talk about elevating the conversations, we always try to start and continue with where is the business value. It’s one thing to describe what your product is and what a client can do differently with it. But it really is about what it means to the company and how it’ll help them achieve business goals that really sets the hook and continues the conversation to the rest of the deciding journey. I think it’s really the biggest piece is just focusing on delivering those insights, and showing the connection to. The client needs and really just come out with being able to prove the value that you said you could up front. SS: Absolutely. Now, I know a key focus for Corporate Visions this year is enterprise selling. Can you share some of the challenges that reps can face during an enterprise sale and how you’re helping your teams kind of overcome those challenges? EN: So we’re pretty much focused exclusively on enterprise companies, but it’s gotten much harder, right? In the past few years, buyers have gotten so much smarter in the way they can research. And we’ve all seen the numbers about Buyers are 75, 80 percent of the way through the deciding journey before they even start talking to a seller. So we really need to make sure that our sellers have the ability to have conversations with multiple stakeholders. So don’t just focus on the technical, but focus on the business value that you’ll have across all those different decision-makers. Again, focusing on the economic buyers, make sure that we’re catching all the influencers and all the champions across the organization. And then the content that we develop is aligned again with where the seller is. So it’s not what we want to sell, it’s what the buyer needs to hear in order to make a decision. So all of our content, everything we have in Highspot, in our digital sales rooms, in our content management section, are all aligned with what to say, what to show, what to know to do. At different stages of the buying journey, you’re helping that customer along that deciding journey. SS: Absolutely. I love that. What would you say though, are maybe some of the key skills reps need to navigate, as you mentioned, sort of the complexities of an enterprise sale. And do you have best practices for helping to build and reinforce those amongst your reps? EN: So a lot of our research has led to the eight most important skills that are actually predictive of seller success. So having gone through more than 100, 000 buyer interviews and understanding why they bought, and why they didn’t buy. We can focus on those key eight competencies and eight skills that we know prove success. So being a creative negotiation planner, being able to articulate value, being able to align your solution with the value a customer really wants to see. These eight skills are the things that I focus most on when I create content, when I create learning courses, things we layer into the DSR to make sure that we’re at least displaying those things that a customer typically wants to see. And then when I create those things and bring them to market, again, it’s the learning, the digital sales room is so critical in being able to put the most important and most valuable content at the top. And then leave the more traditional or operational kinds of solution briefs and technical content at the bottom. SS: Got it. I think that’s fantastic. I’d love to understand from your perspective. Obviously, I’m a little biased when it comes to enablement platforms, but in your opinion, what is the strategic advantage of an enablement platform for helping to drive successful enterprise sales? EN: First is just basic integration, which sounds a little odd, but for me as the Highspot administrator, but also as the key enablement person, just being able to put things in a platform, Highspot, but having one platform for the learning, just the regular content access, and then take those messages to market through pitching or DSRs, Having it all in one place is incredibly helpful for me because I only have to upload it once and then use it many times. But also for the sellers because there’s never any doubt about where the right and new information lives. They always go to Highspot depending on the navigation or the spot overviews that we have. Very easy to find content and very simple to send it out. And then of course being able to monitor is just incredible for who looked at what and when all in one place so that I can gauge if is this the right content to be selling or are some things not working well enough and what I need to tweak. Again, it’s everything in one platform for all purposes. It’s just amazing for us. SS: I love hearing that. And prior to Highspot, I know you guys had another enablement tool. What has been the impact so far as you aim to improve enterprise selling moving to Highspot? EN: So again, I think the biggest change for us was that full integration as opposed to a great content management platform where you know where stuff is different from knowing where it is, knowing what to do with it, and being able to act on it immediately. There are plenty of content management drives and sites and platforms, but having it totally actionable and monitorable, I’m just going to make up a word, having it all in one place is the biggest thing that I’ve gotten out of our switch to Highspot. SS: Amazing. Now, you touched on digital rooms earlier as being kind of a key component to your enablement strategy, and your team has already achieved an impressive 59 percent adoption rate of sharing digital rooms with Highspot. Could you share more about how you’re using digital rooms to support enterprise selling? EN: We apply some of our other training and content that we have, and I would apply this to creating more memorable digital sales rooms. And there’s an entire process around being memorable. People will forget and just not even consider up to 90 percent of what you say or present to them. So finding the right 10 percent that you want them to remember is super key. And you do that through a couple different ways in digital sales rooms. One, you’ve got to remember that every buyer is in a different part of their journey. It needs to align with them to the point where even, are you trying to acquire a new logo. Or are you trying to expand an existing customer? Those are completely different motions that require totally different stories and skills, and they really need a different DSR to be able to just attach to those specific needs of the customer. Because if you use the wrong message, you actually push the existing client away. Another one is, again, when we talk about leaning into the biggest business value, we always put that above the scroll. They own a newspaper and put the biggest headline above the fold. We always want to make sure that when executives come to a DSR, they are instantly reminded of what value we are introducing and developing in their business and helping them achieve those large business goals. There’s also a whole set of design and imaging that I think makes things more memorable, and the Highspot DSRs are just amazing at doing that. Being able to quickly create templates that do that. So mostly when I create templates, they’re probably 80 some percent done, but they’re very purposely built so a seller can quickly come in and find the template that they want that best meets what they’re trying to do with it And it’s very quick for them to go ahead and customize that with their own client content and get it out the door In fact one DSRs we had sent out we found out that there were eight times more stakeholders involved in that deal than we realized. And it was a big RFP in this case, but we’ve used DSRs for RFPs for just one-off deals and our client success and our customers and ourselves, people are using the DSRs just to develop the business relationship over time. SS: Well, I love to hear that. So I know that partner enablement is also a huge focus for your team, especially, you know, as you’re navigating complex sales scenarios. Can you share more about your strategies for enabling and empowering your partners? EN: Sure, so we have several different partnership layers. So we have an affiliate program where independent contractors and consultants are out. Presenting CVI skills and CVI services. They basically get the same level of information our in-house sales team does because they need to have similar stories. They may not have to take the sale as deep into the designing journey as our in-house sellers might, but I still want them to have the context, the information, and know how to have those conversations so they can tee it up for one of us to come in and help them close it. We also have a number of alliance partners and marketing partners that We’re co-selling or cross selling and each looking into each other’s sets of business, whether prospects or existing customers. So we want to make sure that both sets of reps know the joint value conversation and we appear to be going to market together. Obviously we, you know, it’s our client and someone else’s prospect, so we’re helping with that. We want to show how seamlessly we work with their platforms, with their solutions, and then go to market together. And again, we make all that content available to our partners through Highspot. Maybe not to the level that our reseller partners would, but we want to be able to make sure that those partners are able to do business as if we were selling ourselves. SS: Absolutely. Last question, Eric. As you look ahead to 2025, how will your enablement strategy continue to evolve and how will Highspot help support you in that journey? EN: Wow. Great question. One of the big pieces of research we did a few years ago was what level of personalization is creepy. And it turns out, you know, we’ve all gotten the emails where. They just seem a little too familiar to me, and I’m sure they datamined my LinkedIn profile, but that’s creepy. So the right level of personalization is really at the industry level, where you have conversations about companies like yours that we work with, have these similar challenges in your industry, and here’s how we’ve been able to help solve them, let’s have a conversation. So, we pre-rate the content. Put them into pitch templates, put them into DSRs, and make it really easy for our sellers to then start pitch campaigns right within Highspot so that We know the messaging is right, and we know that the level of personalization isn’t creepy, because you really don’t want to come off creepy. And then, really going forward, we’re really looking deeper into, to more in learning development. So, building more custom courses internally. And also, those are broader, but also super, almost micro courses. Where everything I said about Digital Sales Room, I’m actually creating courses on how to do that. Industry plays. We usually go to market by industry, but let’s face it. Every industry has a different set of needs and business values. So we want to at least align with those things. So we’re creating all that custom content for our sellers. To then put into pitch campaigns. And then we’ll continue to monitor the scorecards and all the analytics functions that are in Highspot really helped me and help the rest of the product marketing team say, all right, that, that asset didn’t do what we thought it was going to do. It’s not being used. Do we need to promote it better? Do we need to rethink it? I’m getting insights that I never really had before. So we’ll continue to do that. The more data you get, right? The more insight you’ll get. We need to get our sellers continually to pitch. Fortunately, they’ve picked up on pitching and DSRs a whole lot. So we’re getting really good data that we can make the decisions on. SS: Love that, Eric. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you sharing your journey. EN: Absolutely. Happy to. We love Highspot here. 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.

According to Epsilon research, 80% of buyers report feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information encountered in the buying journey. So how can you effectively engage buyers to guide them through the journey in an effective manner? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Jason Larioni, the business development manager at Pie Insurance. Thank you for joining us, Jason. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Jason Larioni: My name is Jason Larioni. I am based in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I have been with Pie Insurance. For close to two years now started in the sales enablement role, got to build the vertical at Pie. It was really fun getting to dive in and really create what sales enablement was going to look like at Pie in the business development group. So part of that journey was leveraging Highspot and getting that up off the ground. That was really exciting and a really intense time building what all of that would look like. And then also being responsible for an entire new system and all of that change management. And just over the last few months, I’ve transitioned into a manager role, managing a team of digital account specialists here. And at Pie, I have an extensive background in training and enabling. I actually started my career as a high school English teacher. So that, you know, that drive to help people and educate and teach people and really kind of dive into what motivates people to learn and be better versions of themselves. I’ve always really loved tapping into that. I’ve taken a lot of that experience that I’ve had throughout my early career. I’ve taken that and implemented it into the role that I’m in now.  SS: Tell me more about that, Jason. As you mentioned, you’ve held a lot of different roles across the go-to-market organization. How does this experience, everything from client success to enablement to training, influence your current role as a development manager? JL: Yeah, it’s interesting you bring that up, because I actually just talked to my direct manager about this yesterday. I really feel that, even though I may have said otherwise, I really feel like I was not ready for this manager or leadership role until now. And I do attribute that to a lot of things. All of the experience that I’ve had throughout my career being in the different verticals, like you said, managing accounts as a client relationship manager, moving into the sales enablement role and wearing that hat, and I was doing sales enablement before it was even a thing or before that was a thing that people called it. So to move into that and then really. Understand what helps reps be successful and and what helps them with their go-to-market strategy and influence that. I’ve really taken that into this role and I try to come at them with that lens as I’m managing and coaching and effectively helping them understand KPIs and all of that. Where their struggles are. So it’s just, again, I’ve never really felt ready until I was able to bring all of those pieces together and have the experience that I’ve had. I’ve used that to influence the way I interact with my reps and move them forward. SS: Amazing. Now. I’d love to get your perspective now as a sales leader. What would you say is the strategic value of enablement for sales teams?  JL: The list is endless, really. It’s so critical to have resources and a path to success for your reps. When I was a client relationship manager. We didn’t have it. There was nothing. We didn’t have a content management system. We didn’t have a learning platform. We were a scrappy startup and it was all knowledge-based for the people that were there. It was all lived inside people’s brains. And when someone left, that walked out the door with them you could be losing years of experience or entire processes that no one else knew how to do. So, you know, when I got to come into Pie and help create that sales enablement strategy and what that would look like, I always kept that in the back of my mind of what I needed when I was in this role and it just, it gives the reps the ability to focus on what’s important and that is building relationships with their clients. They know then that they have the tools in their toolboxes. They don’t have to think about those things. They don’t have to. Worry about, Oh, is this piece of content that I am going to be sending out accurate or up to date, or am I saying the right thing? With the content governance and all of the pieces of the puzzle that Highspot has brought in for us specifically, it allows the reps to just focus on selling while giving them tools to help sell better and build relationships better. SS: I love that. Now, prior to Highspot, your team did leverage, I believe, another platform to try to equip your sales teams. What were some of the challenges your team faced at that time and what motivated you to change your tech stack? JL: Yeah, so Highspot is something I’ve been interested in for years. At my prior employer, I fell in love immediately the first time I was pitched on it. It’s just such a robust CMS and LMS involved or coupled with that. The driving factor was we were using Confluence, which I think a lot of organizations are using to help with their content management and it works really well for a product org, but there’s really no way to have content governance in there and I really was fitting a square peg into a round hole. For what I wanted it to do and how I wanted to segment different aspects of business development. We have different teams on here. Some information was relevant to some teams, some information was not relevant to other teams, and it didn’t allow me to get into the weeds the way that I needed to. I made it work for the beginning of the sales enablement journey, but I knew as we were scaling as an organization and as a business development group that we needed to have something more robust. We needed to have something that was going to help us with our content governance and was going to help us go to market in a different way in ways that we hadn’t before. And the biggest selling point for me was those digital sales rooms because we do have a lot of really high-priority relationships. We want that level of self-service. That we weren’t able to provide our agents before. And now with that Digital Salesroom, we can create that bespoke experience for our really great partners, our high-priority partners, the ones whose relationships are invaluable to us and we can help them be more successful with Pie. We can help build that relationship more. They know to go there to look for new things. And that was a really big selling point. And one of the things that really got us excited about bringing Highspot on board. SS: I love that. I want to dig actually into both of those points. On the governance side, your team has seen some drastic improvement. I think you guys have had a 35 percent boost in the last few months on the governance side. Can you tell us about some of the impact that an effective governance strategy has on your sales teams?  JL: Yeah, it’s been almost immediate we’ve seen the effects of it. I think with any organization that’s using Slack, there’s good and bad to using Slack and we’ve all seen it. When I first started, there were a lot of processes and documents that lived in Slack, you know, whether it was pinned to a channel. Or, you know, you’d have to go into a group channel and say, Hey, I need this done. You can never quite know if what you were doing was the right way to do it, or if that document that was pinned was the most recent document. You might have one downloaded on your desktop, or that one was pinned and you’re not sure which was the right one. And almost immediately, we saw that stop. Like, we unpinned everything from our channels, and we said, Hey, stop sending PDFs out to your partners that you’re working with. We’re going to leverage Highspot because you know that the link you’re sending is the most up-to-date version of that document. That version history was a huge piece of it too, where you could just go in and update a version of the same document and then that link doesn’t change. To answer your question more specifically, we saw Slack usage decline significantly because the reps knew and continued to know that. The documents and the information and the processes and the SOPs that they’re looking at are correct and accurate because of the governance that we’ve instilled and been able to really drive home with Highspot. SS: Amazing. And the other capability that you talked about that you felt was delivering value is Digital Rooms. I’d love to understand, how are you helping your teams better use the right content when they find it to engage clients through things like the Digital Room capabilities in Highspot?  JL: Yeah, so we started really simple. I created a template at first for them to use just a really high level. Hey, you can book a meeting here with me. Here are some successes that we’ve seen in your state. So that can help inform your decisions on what business you’re going to bring to us so that you are not wasting your time. Our general processes and procedures and how to interact with us. And from there, it became a collaborative discussion of it. Let’s try things. I would meet with one rep and they’d say, Hey, I want to download this Salesforce report and have it automatically import into an Excel sheet that’s external facing. So my agent can view it and understand, okay, you know, I submitted this business. Where’s it at in the funnel? I want to see how it spits out on the other side. And it’s giving them that real-time. And then we would come together as a group and all of those individual conversations that I had with different reps. And They would talk about this worked, this didn’t work. I want to try that. And we would then piecemeal it together and it grew into something much bigger and more robust. And it became this collaborative discussion of what was working, and what wasn’t working. And now they’ve gotten better at it than I was even able to in the beginning. And they’re doing things with their digital sales rooms that I didn’t even dream possible. So they were immediately excited about it. And I think that that was the big. The hurdle that I was worried about getting over was we had to have immediate buy-in. So that’s why I really wanted to start small with the digital rooms, and let them see the value. And then once we started sharing them with our partners, our partners started giving us feedback of, wow, this is incredible. You guys were easy to use before, but this made it even easier to use now. We just got so much positive feedback. And once they saw that and we started sharing it, it was just game on. And everybody was like, wow. I want to do this. My team then started using it in a different way for new partner onboarding and everybody just got really creative and really excited about it. And it was just, it exceeded my expectations of how we would adopt this product and it’s really exciting to see. SS: I love that. And in addition to engaging new clients with digital rooms, I think you guys are also working on expanding relationships with existing partners and agencies as you’ve touched on a few times during this conversation. What are some of the key ways you’re supporting this initiative? JL: Yeah, so that entire story I just told right there about the different ways, hey, I’m trying this, that was all current agencies. We weren’t even Using it for new agencies until a few weeks ago that came out of how we were using it with our current agency base so that was really again where I saw that gap of we’re not meeting the client’s needs the way we can be and I think I kind of shifted the direction of the The main purpose of a Digital Sales Room as like a new acquisition piece. But I saw that ability for us to use it the way that we needed to. And that’s how we started with the current agency base. But we are continuously looking at those engagement factors and seeing what’s being looked at, how often it’s being looked at, who’s using it the most and maybe why they’re using it the most. And we’re always sharing different reps of, Hey, this worked for me. This didn’t work for me. This is really what’s getting them engaged. So we’re making sure that, you know, we’re covering our bases there. SS: Love that. Now, as a sales leader, what are some of your best practices to provide coaching to your teams in order to improve performance against a lot of those key initiatives that you’re focused on driving for the business? JL: Yeah, one of the most important things for me is I really just want to foster a culture of feedback and learning. I want my reps to be able to come to me with ideas. We’re a tech-driven company, you know, we’ve got Highspot, we’re leveraging other platforms that help us automate a lot of our tasks that come out of Salesforce. And a lot of what we do using Highspot, or using Groove, or using other technology platforms, a lot of that comes from ideas from my team. So yeah. They may come to me and say, Hey, I want to engage this group of people. And we’re, we’re trying to engage at scale. And we’re trying to talk to a lot of people at once. And without that, that culture of feedback and learning and testing things out, what we’re doing wouldn’t work. And because of that, we’ve been able to be successful. We have failed. We’ve tried things that didn’t work. I’ve said, Hey guys, that didn’t work. What did we learn from that? And we’ve learned from our mistakes. And when we do something similar. We try to do it better than before and hopefully get success out of it then. But specifically my team, we’re not afraid to fail. We’re not afraid to try new things. And we’re not afraid to, a lot of my reps say, Hey, I want to try this. Can you help me? And it’s been really rewarding coming into this role and having a group that is willing to try and is okay if they fail, but is also excited to learn from those failures. SS: I love that. I think that’s a great culture to cultivate within your organization. How, Jason, do you think about leveraging data, though, to help optimize the performance of your teams? And do you have any wins you can share? JL: Yeah, data is how we make most of our decisions. Honestly, we’re very state-specific with the type of business that we do. So, trends in a state is very critical to how we go to market. So, for example, if we start to see a decline in submissions from our agency base, we’re gonna look at, okay, was it in a specific state? Was it in a specific class code? If it is in a specific state, What is happening? Where are our competitors at? Did our competitors drop prices? Did we come in high? And we try to identify trends there. And that really informed a lot of, I just previously mentioned some of the things that we want to try and identify a group of agents, right? So we may say, Hey, things have been slipping in X state a little bit. Let’s engage the agency base there and understand what’s going on. And maybe it’s just a lack of engagement. We just fell off on our engagement a little bit, but maybe there’s more to it. So. When we are doing a quote follow-up and we’re looking to understand, are you going to place this business with us or are you not, we can then get feedback on maybe it is pricing, maybe it’s something else. So that data is really critical. And we’re constantly looking at trends in states, trends in class codes to help us inform how we want to go to market and engage at scale. SS: I love that. That’s amazing. All right. Last question, Jason, as you plan for the future, how do you plan to continue to strengthen buyer engagement and drive revenue growth for your team? JL: We just want to continue to leverage these incredible platforms like Highspot. And I think we’re only scratching the surface. We’ve backfilled my old position. We’re with someone fantastic. We have an incredible sales manager and the BD side of the house now. And she is just as excited, if not more excited about Highspot than I am. So we really want to lean into what is working and how can we just continue to build on that. And like I said, we’re only scratching the surface with Highspot. We really want to continue to leverage our digital sales rooms, and leverage those sales plays. Make sure that we are building our content library. We want to continue to grow that library and really have every single SOP and process and anything that the reps could need to be successful. We want to make sure that we are giving that to them when they need it and it’s easy to find. So really just leaning into the things we’re already doing well and just doing more of it. SS: Amazing, amazing job, Jason. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time, Jason. JL: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s been great. 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.

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report 2024, those who leverage technology to power sales training are 50% more likely to improve quota attainment. So how can you enhance training efficiency and boost rep productivity with a unified platform? 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 Amanda Steiner, the director of sales enablement and training at McKesson. Thanks for joining us, Amanda. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Amanda Steiner: Thank you so much for having me. This is so exciting. So a little bit about me. I’ve been with McKesson for just under eight years now. Came into the organization initially as a part of the inside sales team. Loved it, had a great time, eventually moved out to the field and then became a people leader in the sales force. And as I was an individual contributor in this organization, I began to observe a lot of trends that were occurring even outside of my business unit that I think lent itself to opportunities for even an org of our size. To think more strategically about how we’re asking reps to spend their time in order for them to be more successful. And that was sort of the tip of the iceberg, but that drove my interest in enablement and training in general. I happen to have a background in education as far as my schooling. So I thought this was a nice cross-section of interests for me, but have since been leading our sales enablement and training organization for our pharmaceuticals division for McKesson for the last year and a half. SS: Amazing. Well, I know that you’ve also spent, I believe, the majority of your career in the healthcare industry, both in the sales and sales enablement space. Given that experience, what are some of the unique challenges that you would say reps in the healthcare industry face, and how can enablement help overcome those? AS: Healthcare is a very challenging industry. It’s ever-changing. It requires more than just a deep knowledge of the products that you’re selling in the market. It requires a well-rounded understanding of the entire healthcare ecosystem. So, From manufacturer to distributor, to provider, to patient, and all the financial and compliance considerations throughout. That means our sellers are really challenged to be, at any given time, well-informed, agile, and have excellent consultative techniques in their sales approach. So, their tools, resources, and support teams have to be able to rise to meet those challenges. So a strong enablement strategy is a must. If successfully pulled through, enablement’s going to provide the structure, governance, data insights, and innovation that you need in this kind of complex environment to keep sellers informed, marching to the beat of the same drum, and used to continuous learning Overburdening their mindshare. I know that’s a problem for a lot of us in healthcare because there is a change, not just quarterly, not just monthly, but almost daily. And we’re throwing so many things at reps that are in the position of informant to their customers and advocates to their customers as much as they are maintaining the sales relationship. So it’s very challenging, but I am super confident that enablement is the answer even for an organization of this size and complexity. SS: I could not agree more. And Mikesa, you’re responsible for helping with a lot of that continuous learning, including developing and managing the training programs. In your view, what are some of the key building blocks for an effective training program? AS: It’s such a good question. And it’s something that I hear enablers and trainers talk a lot about. But the one thing that I think we can all agree on is there is an old adage in the writing world that you should always begin with the ending in mind. And the same concept applies when you’re building a training program. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. And if you’re not painfully specific about the problems you’re looking to solve, whether it is behavioral, whether it’s tactical, or data-driven, then you’re very seldom going to be able to truly address the problem, and it will just be a superficial solution. I also really recommend having a mixture of KPIs. I think one thing that enablement and training organizations struggle with is telling the story of our impact on the org. Because we’re a nonrevenue generating organization, we have to be able at any given time to tell that story. So the best way to do that is to make sure that you are not only measuring a moment in time where you deliver training and you can look at the sales target results from that date. But you should also be measuring and observing behavioral skills, selling skills, how these things over time have changed in correlation to moments in time when you made process changes, where you implemented training, and you can tell a story around multiple KPIs. I think the last note I’ll make is don’t just check the box on evaluation. Make sure that the way you’re measuring is as targeted as what you’re measuring. So in our organization, we’ve changed our approach on this to requiring teachbacks for tactical knowledge, things like sales process, things like, do you know how to log this thing over here, rather than always defaulting to assessment style evaluation. We also require role plays and stand and delivers for selling skills and this might come as a surprise to some of the listeners, but we hadn’t previously been very intentional about our evaluation mechanism. So, don’t check the box on that. Make sure that you’re thoughtful in how you’re choosing to evaluate the work that you’re putting out into the world. To really be confident that the sales reps are going to be ready to go as soon as you’re done with that effort. SS: I think that is phenomenal advice in terms of kind of the foundational building blocks. I’m curious, what did training look like at your organization before you started leveraging Highspot and how has it evolved since then? AS: I would say that we needed a lot of help with organization of efforts and particularly With making sure that our reps were not overburdened with information in dozens of places, which is where we started. And I think what we’re still working from, as you can imagine, is that takes a lot of time in internal collaboration and intention to get to a point where your points of origin for a sales rep are greatly reduced. I would say that for McKesson, where we started was with multiple business units that operate in very siloed ways. And I think that’s still a struggle for us and a struggle that I think many of your listeners particularly large organizations can relate to. But we didn’t have a common environment for content management that integrated with the CRM that also enabled us to get real-time data on how reps were interacting with this content, consuming it, and sharing it with customers. So we just did not have any kind of closed-loop system. to justify our efforts and also form a more strategic collaborative strategy with marketing, with strategy, with operations. So I would say before Highspot, there was a lot of throwing things at the wall and hoping something stuck. Now, we’re still in the phase of building our critical infrastructure for the business around it, but I am super optimistic based on what we’ve seen already. This is going to provide a launch pad for us. That’s not only promoting our digital literacy in the sales world, especially now that we’re in a much more virtual selling environment but is also going to create the foundation for our support teams, as well as our sellers to sell more intelligently, which I know is what we’re all striving for. If you don’t have a good infrastructure, you don’t have good data. You don’t make informed decisions. SS: I love that philosophy and approach. I think that is some very sound advice on the topic of challenges. What would you say are some of the common pitfalls that organizations might encounter when they’re developing training programs and do you have any advice on how they can avoid them? AS: Yes, too quickly jumping to solutioning. I think that’s something that we all do when we’re super excited to fix a problem. The thing that gets in the way, of course, is ego. We all want to solve the problem and think based on our experience, we have the answer. So we get excited about it, but. What you’ll see, of course, is, uh, you end up in a position where you haven’t really gotten to the bottom of what are driving the surface concerns that you’ve been made aware of. And a lot of the time, You’re going to hear things like, it’s a selling skills issue. They need objection-handling workshops. They need help with our value propositioning. And sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s true that it’s a mixture of things. But my question to the listeners would be, do you have a sales methodology problem or do you have a sales process problem? And if you’re not confident in what you’re hearing and its root cause, don’t begin to solution until you get to the bottom of it. SS: I think that is phenomenal advice. And I have to admit, sometimes I feel like I’m guilty of that from time to time. So I think that’s. Amazing advice for our audience. To shift gears just a little bit. I’m curious, how do you foster a culture of continuous learning amongst your sales team and motivate them to want to enhance their skills and knowledge? If you have best practices for driving engagement in your training programs, I think our audience would also learn a lot from you on that front. AS: Yeah, you know, this is still something that we have to work on also. I like to think of it as an art, especially because the way we sell is going to and must continuously evolve. What I’ll say is That you need to meet people where they’re at. So, the best training is one that is quickly consumed and quickly applied. So, why not replicate how people are taking in information today? Um, that’s led us to radically shorten our virtual learnings, opting for mixed modalities like more video content, more job guides, and a focus on the application right away. Rather than just strictly using assessments or throwing a ton of information at people. What ends up happening is, between your information dump, between the assigned corporate HR training everybody has to do in a year, you create training fatigue and a very bad brand. You have to get people excited about training by making it bite-sized and very clear what’s in it for them. Again. So layer knowledge, don’t throw it all out there all at once. Give folks just enough to be excited and go practice right away. So they have a positive impression of learning continuously and they want to keep coming back because it’s working. I heard from a peer, and I thought this was very provocative, that training should be one part teaching. Two-part application. Especially when virtual. You need to drive that engagement. People need to feel like they’re playing an active role in the education. They’re going to remember that far more than anything you assign that may be content robust that you’re super proud of that is just going to cause fatigue and dismissiveness for them. SS: I can see, I can see that. And I like that formulaic approach for sure. When you go to evaluate the success of your training initiatives and kind of the overall sales readiness efforts within McKesson, how are you leveraging data to optimize these programs? AS: I feel like this is the golden egg question for so many sales enablement and training organizations. Data is power. But you can’t get good, reliable data without the infrastructure to collect it in the first place. We had to start doing a lot of foundational work with stakeholders to define sales processes, how we were going to use our CRM, and whether or not we needed to do a data hygiene cleanup in our CRM. But once you’ve established these foundations, you still need multiple KPIs to show trends and a narrative impact. I would use a combination of, you know, your sales target data, your CRM data from the point of training, as well as things like benchmarking surveys on skills from their leaders before and after a training is administered, and how they perform in role plays with a set rubric. Combine these things after the fact to find common trends that eliminate any doubt or suspicion that It wasn’t your work as an enablement and training org that is driving a change because there’s a healthy amount of skepticism because there’s a lot that goes into sales reps achieving their targets and their goals. So you need to be very intentional about what you’re going to measure before you even start your effort and then combine it with this multi-pronged KPI approach to be able to say. There’s undeniably a trend happening here. There was undeniably a shift in what we wanted to see from this point in time and from this effort. And that’s why you can be confident what we’re doing is making a difference. While we’re still building the critical infrastructure around the sales process and our tech stacks for our sales teams, the data we are starting to look at is not only how it’s making a difference in their day-to-day sales targets, but I think new hires, in particular, are a great data set for enablement. You can look at how quickly they’re achieving their first sales, their first closes. You can look at how quickly they’re achieving their first renewals if they’re in a retention-based role. We’re also looking at How they are consuming content in the high spot system, interacting with their customers per the CRM data, and whether or not our stronger sellers are taking this more holistic approach to engagement with their customers. And what can be learned from their approaches to make strategic changes in how we coach and form our training programs. We obviously grade or ask that they grade our training efforts once they go through the program, not just with things like CSAT, but how quickly do you feel you can apply this training right away? So, there are some soft measures as well as hard metrics that we’re working on pulling more regularly, but this is going to be an area where we’re going to have to continue to expand the KPIs we’re dipping into to make the more data-informed changes to our programs over time. SS: I love that. And I love those really concrete examples of things that folks can take advantage of from a data perspective to start to optimize their programs. I’m curious, what are some of the results that you’ve seen in your training and sales readiness efforts? And are there any key wins or notable business outcomes that you’re able to share with us? AS: So since we’ve focused on an enablement infrastructure through getting clear on our processes and our technology stacks, we’ve not only seen substantial adoption of Highspot for more than just our content management, but much more informed conversations are beginning to take place as a result of Shaping the Highspot environment around the sales strategy, the marketing collateral, the go to market approach, their sales playbooks. So we’re still doing a lot of this foundational work, but one example I can give you is a team that got very intentional about this approach last quarter in 90 days alone, increased their time in Highspot by a thousand percent over the previous quarter. And the deals lost decreased by 34%. And their CRM adoption, our CRM is Salesforce, jumped from just under 50 percent to 80 percent in one quarter. So there’s a story to be told there where you can tell it was evident for this team that they understood the core function of their role to the extent that they understood their sales process. They understood how they were going to be using their technology, and how it was going to serve them. Also, critically, that high spot became The core location for their enablement resources and strategic direction. SS: Well, it sounds like you guys have seen some early amazing results as you look ahead, what are some of your goals as you continue to develop your training and enablement strategies at McKesson? AS: Sure. Now that we’ve just about established the critical infrastructure I mentioned before, we’re really continuing to advance towards building our Digital selling literacy, I’ll call it. We are challenging ourselves to get more innovative in how we interact with customers, and how we leverage the information and resources at our disposals to create more compelling. And engaging conversations with our customers that hit more on the mark of the things that they care about. So as part of that effort, we’re developing playbooks through Highspot that will really realize all of the effort we’ve been putting into establishing it as the place for content. Our learning management system is the place where you go to use digital sales rooms and have these other ways of interacting with customers. In a more formulaic approach to saying here is What we advise for optimal results in your sales role. I think playbooks may be the pinnacle use case or a pinnacle use case of Highspot when you get to bring all of those elements together. And we’re confident that if we get it right, we’re not only going to make a huge difference in reducing reps’ administrative burden substantially because today they’re going to a million different places to get all these pieces of collateral information. Advice from our SMEs, et cetera, down to just their CRM and Highspot as their points of origin for their day-to-day. But we’re also confident that now we’re going to get apples-to-apples data amongst our sales teams to begin selling much more intelligently. We’ve never brought our different business units into a system like this to speak the same platform language in this manner. And so I’m really excited about the opportunities to bring this together. Level of information up to our very senior stakeholders to begin to show them a picture of their talent in sales in a completely new way. SS: I love that. Amanda, last question for you. What advice would you give to other healthcare organizations hoping to enhance their training efficiency and try to really boost rep productivity? AS: Be intentional about your enablement strategy within your organization. Our industries are very complex. As a result, we have a tendency to staff in silos, where gaps are initially observed, instead of taking a step back for a more strategic approach functionally. Yes, your customers and product lines may vary across the industry. Your large organization or very complex businesses, but enablement is an infrastructural and strategic approach meant to keep you agile and informed by data and empowered to make bold, innovative changes where needed. So don’t throw something at it. Ask yourself, is this a function of what enablement could carry through? If I had an infrastructure to support a need, even before a need is known. I think that’s really where I’ve seen organizations of this size and within the healthcare landscape struggle. There are so many different avenues of this business that we are trying to solve at the same time. That we end up creating these enormous silos and collaboration challenges. I know collaboration for us is something that continuously comes up in our employee opinion surveys because it is very challenging to reach across the aisle when we’ve been stood up to support very niche needs. That is still critical, but what kind of glue do we need in between these businesses to make sure that we’re agile across the business to make sure that we’re solving for this functional need and not just the niche SME expertise that yes, you must also have. SS: Amanda, phenomenal advice. Thank you so much for joining our podcast today. I really learned a lot from you. AS: Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. It’s been an honor to be on. I really appreciate it. 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.

According to a Harvard Business Review report, about 70% of change initiatives fail. So how can enablement help sales teams navigate large-scale transformations and come out stronger on the other side of change? 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 Jenna Siegel, the director of revenue enablement at InMoment. Thank you for joining us, Jenna. I would love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Jenna Siegel: Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. I made a large shift to land myself into enablement. So I came actually from an academia background, teaching at the University of Illinois Chicago, while I was working through some postgraduate work, and I quickly realized that academia wasn’t a place that I wanted to land for the long term. Which left me with this really kind of humbling experience of what do I want to do with my life. And I think like many people in enablement, I landed myself in sales. I was in various go-to-market roles, whether that be service, sales, or customer success, and I really quickly got frustrated with like, the lack of resources and education in the corporate space. And of course, as someone who came from an education and academia background, I was a constant advocate for we need resources to get everyone to speak the same language, to get everyone to understand the same processes. So after having worked in go-to-market roles for several years, I landed a role within enablement and I’ve been there ever since for about six years now. SS: Jenna, we’re really excited to have you here on the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us. I know your team recently went through an acquisition, which can often bring significant change for sales teams. What best practices did you implement to help your teams effectively navigate through this transition? JS: Absolutely. So acquisitions are so tricky to navigate and I really feel like they’re fear-inducing for everyone involved. So with my team, I was leading revenue enablement at a company called ReviewTrackers that was acquired by my current company called InMoment. So ReviewTrackers was a really small organization with a very small enablement org. InMoment was actually a much larger organization without any true dedicated revenue enablement. So for us, it was so easy to step into this expanded role of leading enablement across the entire organization with truly preconceived notions of what we thought would drive success, mainly because we knew what drove success at our small little scrappy company called ReviewTrackers. So the biggest challenge for me and for my team post the acquisition was really just to be curious. Right. We constantly are preaching this to our sales reps throughout the discovery phase. Be curious, ask a lot of questions, and really learn about them and their business. And I think we often forget to do that in enablement. We come in and we’re like, I know what drove success. I know that doing this sales methodology is going to work because look at the success it drove for my prior business. So we really had to adopt the same methodology in our transition. And this didn’t just involve meeting with the stakeholders and with senior leadership and presenting our expertise and our plans and getting their feedback, but I think the most important thing that we did was really step into meeting with the frontline folks, those that are executing on the role day to day and really learn about what are their challenges, what are their enablement desires, what do they wish they had, but Had never had because they didn’t have a revenue enablement dedicated role. So it was a new function to in the moment and we stepped in and I think it was split. Some people thought, Oh gosh, these people are going to come in and they’re going to make our lives miserable and they’re going to implement all these trainings and we’re, it’s going to pull us off the field. You know, our biggest strategy in the acquisition was driving trust and confidence across our teams before we ever were able to present a plan. SS: Well, it sounds like you guys did a phenomenal job really driving that trust and confidence across your teams. I know unifying the go-to-market teams is essential during these types of transitions. What challenges have you encountered in aligning your go-to-market teams and how did you overcome some of these challenges? JS: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest thing is we weren’t just unifying teams, we were unifying regions. So we had three separate regions that were functioning pretty independently from each other, as well as teams, whether that be sales, success, ADRs, or our account management team that were also functioning independently from one another. And one of the first things that we identified was that there was a vast amount of technology and go-to-market processes that differed across the org, especially because of the number of mergers and acquisitions that they had gone through even prior to acquiring review trackers. And I strongly believe that these fragmented technologies and processes Also aid in creating a fragmented go-to-market organization. So I’m so grateful that I sit under a really brilliant revenue operations team that I could partner with and they could partner with enablement. So we could really understand how the technologies and processes were being used and where there was room for optimization. This was really our first step in trying to figure out how we were going to unify the teams and how we were going to get everyone working. Together and in the same direction. Don’t get me wrong. All these teams were doing really brilliant work, but it was very fragmented in nature. So in doing that, we explored how can we string together the processes and the technologies to drive adoption. So for example, we’re a MEDIC shop. Post acquisition, we implemented MEDIC methodology. And I think it’s really common to introduce selling methodologies and send everyone on their merry way and just hope that it works. You know, we can implement it for sales, we can implement it for success, we can even implement it for our account management team, and I just really hope that they put it into practice. But we had the really unique opportunity to rework the systems and the processes alongside introducing some of these new methodologies. So we were able to layer in, here’s the new methodology, let’s practice it. Let’s get it, you know, we know it’s not new to the go-to market organization. Here’s how also your technology is going to hold you accountable. So this kind of set the groundwork for how we implemented our CRM system. How we set up sales stages with exit criteria, how we deploy information through the LMS system, and it can be role-specific, but the same line of thinking to all these different go-to-market organizations. How we set up Highspot, and how Highspot is organized for all of our sales reps to use, and our go-to-market orgs to use. That was our biggest thing to tackle when we thought about how we were going to unify the teams. SS: Mm. Particularly in a merger acquisition, I know sometimes employees can feel uneasy as team structures and roles and dynamics evolve. What’s your best advice on motivating teams and reps in particular to really ease them into the process of change? JS: Yeah, I think it all goes back to communication, right? We know it’s essential to get leadership alignment first. That’s number one. If leaders are aligned and bought into the changes and brought into the processes to help define the processes, we know it’s going to trickle down to their teams. But also, we wanted our frontline people to have a voice in these changes. Silos, like especially for InMoment, we’ve seen this happen, can only bring about further anxiety and defiance and actually adopting the process and burnout employees. So we created these group of tiger teams, where we brought together leaders and individual contributors, and into these teams to help us define the processes, and poke holes through our processes. And that trickled down to the greater team because they were bought in. They could be, you know, the leaders of their team. They can advocate for these processes and these systems. And that’s where we see the most amount of success and hoping that people aren’t anxious or hoping that people can process these changes. SS: Yeah, I think buy-in is absolutely critical. From your perspective, what is maybe the strategic advantage of an enablement platform when navigating change like this? JS: Yeah, that’s a great question. And I love enablement platforms. I’m a huge believer that even the smallest go-to-market org and the smallest enablement team, it’s very hard to be effective without having a platform in place. I like to split this out into two pillars why we think enablement platforms are important or how we really use it to our advantage. One is how we deploy enablement. So how we even go about deploying enablement? The second is how we track the efficacy of the changes. And the efficacy of the enablement that we’re putting out into the field. So, regarding how we deploy enablement. Our enablement org, here at InMoment, although it has grown since the acquisition, is very small and very scrappy. And we as a small team, need to be able to scale. And when I hear people say scale, my first thought is always, Oh gosh, everything’s just going to be LMS courses. Nothing’s going to be live. We’re not going to have hands-on training. And I don’t believe that to be the case. I don’t think that scaling for our team means abandoning live training or completely avoiding the face-to-face aspect of enablement. I think it’s actually quite important in this kind of blended learning environment post-COVID and post-remote teams. Deploying enablement for us means What is going to happen after we have run the initial enablement? I quote this study to like nausea with my team that 30 days post enablement, 70 percent of the content is forgotten if we don’t do any sort of follow-up. So we really like to use our systems to give those reminders, to make the content continuously reappear post enablement. So maybe it’s using Highspot to actually send content newsletters. We deployed enablement. We know these are the pieces of content that really coincide with the enablement. We send monthly enablement newsletters actually using Highspot digital rooms, which people love so that it’s, the content stays front and center. Or maybe it’s deploying an activity in our LMS system. Hey, we ran this enablement session. Here’s this quick activity or challenge that we want you to engage in. Or also maybe it’s gamifying it through our systems to make learning a little bit more fun. We recently did Highspot scavenger hunts post-enablement. We launched a new product line. We had what we call expertise exchanges where we really shared best practices amongst the team. And part of that was a Highspot scavenger hunt of like, who can find the most relevant stats related to this product and related to the value of the product and share it with the larger team. People loved it, right? It’s different. It’s not your typical sit in hour-long live sessions where we know that. 15 minutes in we’re losing people to their email and their slack or it’s not, you know, all of a sudden we’re opening up a breakout room on Zoom and we see the attendance drop 50 percent because people just don’t maybe have anxiety around that which is also understandable, but we also need to combat. So this way of gamifying it through our systems and through our enablement platforms is really important. So that’s our first pillar. Our second pillar is how can we use our enablement systems. To measure the efficacy of our efforts. We deploy surveys. I didn’t mention this yet, but Amoment is a customer experience technology platform. We’re really big on how can we understand our customer’s experience. And here in enablement, we think our customers are all the internal folks that are on the receiving end. Surveys give us really great feedback. But they only tell a portion of the story. We can get survey feedback that’s like, everything was amazing. We love this enablement session. It was fun. I learned a lot. And then a month down the road, the data is telling us a very different story. And we really try to take a holistic approach to how we understand data. So if we run an enablement session on a product launch, anytime we run a larger initiative, my enablement team, we measure various data points to really understand where it is that we need to go next. We can look at the lagging indicators, that’s like financials and deal velocity and all of that. But I think a lot of the really good information and the juicy information lives within our enablement platforms. You know, we include attendance and completion data point. There’s quite a bit that goes into the data that we’re looking at. Conversational intelligence data, how they’re actually speaking about it in our field, but enablement metrics like Highspot metrics are really important to us. Perhaps it’s that we’ve deployed this enablement. We’re seeing a huge uptick in how they’re using the content. And then the next month, it’s not unique to InMoment. We see a huge dip down and all of a sudden no one’s using it. Well, that tells us we need to resurface this in some way, shape, or form. We need to figure out how we’re going to get people talking about this again. So it really is our signal for where do we need to re-engage and where do we need to re-evaluate our strategy. SS: I love hearing that. Shifting gears a little bit, content governance has always been a big focus for you this year with 58 percent of InMoment’s content now well governed. Congratulations. How have you been able to optimize governance and what impact has this had on your team as they navigate change? JS: Yeah, I strongly feel that we had a Bigger mountain than usual to tackle when it comes to Highspot, um, particularly because my team, again, there was an absence of a revenue enablement team at InMoment for a long time, and my team acquired Highspot, and it was a tool that was launched out to the masses without any real strategy around how it was going to be maintained. So when we acquired Highspot as a team, we had a lot to tackle. One is that there was a lot of outdated content on there. I think I found content back from 2009. Which is problematic and also just unnecessary because Highspot provides the governance tools that you would need to make sure that content is refreshed. So when we had initial conversations with our go-to market team, when the acquisition happened, I said, how are you all using Highspot? The number one answer is, Oh, we don’t look in there. There’s too much outdated information. So my team started by doing a content audit. We pulled a list of all of the content that lived within Highspot, with how many views it had. We really used the data in Highspot, how many views it had, when it was last viewed, when it was last updated, when it was originally uploaded. Unfortunately, nothing had feedback owners listed on it. So we really didn’t even know who owned the content outside of original authors or whoever uploaded it originally. So we, as an enablement org, had our product marketing teams and our marketing teams go through an exercise of marking content as. It’s outdated, remove it. It’s still relevant content, but needs updating or it’s good to go and keep it as it is. In doing that, we got our content down to, I want to say about 400 to 500 pieces of content from thousands and thousands of pieces of content, which was really big. Our next step was actually working with our go-to-market teams and creating a tiger team to figure out how do we want this organized in the system. People did not know the searching functionality well enough to be able to find the information they needed. And there were no logical spots set up in the system where they could just click in and say, Oh yeah, I’m looking for a pitch doc, so I’m going to click here, or I’m looking for a blog or a gated asset, I’m going to click here. So we worked with the various different go-to-market teams, customer success, sales, ADRs, to figure out a unified way of organizing the content within a system with the relevant filters. We know our ADRs want to filter by buyer persona. That’s how they’re going to market. And that’s how they’re prospecting. But we know that our customer success folks might not want to be only filtering by buyer persona. So we created what we think are very logical spots with the appropriate filters for the appropriate teams. And then I think the most important piece of this is that every single piece of content is required to have a content owner, a feedback owner so that people know if there is an issue with the content, it’s not a giant hole in the system where you’re just stuck with this outdated pieces of content. You have someone that you can go directly to and say, hey, this isn’t up to speed. This isn’t landing in the form. Or this has a customer who’s no longer a customer and therefore we need to take it out. That was a big piece of the puzzle as well as putting expiration dates on everything. So everything has a six-month expiration date at the six-month period. The feedback owners can review the content, mark it as still applicable, or say this needs to be removed off the system to make sure that we never get into the state that we had before. And also just a big shout-out to Highspot on that one. That was a massive undertaking and a huge project which the Highspot team helped us out on a weekend when we took the system down. They were just Malcolm, our customer success rep. He was really there to help provide us with industry best practices. I don’t think we could have done it alone and in a silo. SS: Well, I love hearing about project wins like that. In a recent webinar, you actually mentioned that your team holds monthly expertise exchanges to promote peer learning. Could you share more about this practice and how you foster a culture of ongoing learning? JS: Yeah, our expertise exchanges were created because when we stepped into the role, there was a lot of silo work going on, and we knew that enablement was never going to be effective if we did a one-and-done approach. So we created a series of expertise exchanges. We’re on a monthly cadence. We get together the various teams and we really take a look at, well, what enablement did we run this month? What was our focus? And it leaks over month to month. For example, if we’re running product training, And then we’re also running a methodology. We try and blend the two together to really make it a holistic training that the enablement efforts aren’t even siloed within itself. Every month we look at what enablement we run? What data were we trying to influence? And we figure out a theme for our expertise exchanges. So, for example, one month that theme might be a product line, right, reputation management in the field. We assign them through our LMS some pre work to do prior to these expertise exchanges so everyone comes prepared. That usually is, for example, uploading a prospecting email that you sent and then post the enablement session or providing a pitch deck or a recording of a call. We try to make it things that they’re already doing. So it’s not seen as, Oh gosh, I have to go do a mock demo or I have to create a fake pitch deck. We want it to be things that they’re actually doing within the field and it shouldn’t be a lift for them. And it’s also not a lift for enablement. It’s an easy one for enablement. Enablement reviews. Those we come together as a go-to market org. And we just call upon people. Hey, I know you all have been putting this into practice, would love to hear where you’re seeing wins, where you’re not seeing wins, and really just share amongst each other. People are very eager to share their wins, which is great. So very rarely do we have to call upon people, but we also have the submissions in advance so we can take a look at them. And if we have that moment of like no one wanting to share, call out their wins for them, right? Like, hey, I saw Caroline, that you worked on this email that actually. Our outreach data shows got 40 percent reply rate to, can you talk about your email? It’s a really great way to get people to see how they’re actually putting the enablement strategy into practice in the actual field. And also we just create a library for them in Highspot as well of like, here’s the examples of when so you can easily find them and go off and do the same. If someone else is seeing success, you should absolutely adopt that and you should absolutely put it into practice yourself. SS: I think that’s fantastic advice that our entire audience can maybe even take and apply in their organizations. As you’ve expanded and evolved your enablement strategy, what key metrics would you recommend tracking to effectively drive change? JS: Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure everyone preaches this, but I really do sit under the most brilliant revenue operations team and most brilliant revenue operations organization, which is great because I have access to all the data that I could ever possibly need. And I think like many enablement leaders, I bucket our metrics into leading and lagging indicators of success. And leading and lagging indicators of influence, which I don’t think is a unique model to be using, but it’s a very effective model. So the leading is the data that myself and my enablement team, we can directly tie back to our enablement efforts. Things like attendance and completion rates and challenge scores, and even conversational intelligence trackers within our CI system. Those are really easy metrics for us to. Be able to track to start to tell part of the story. I think the lagging indicators are so important to prove our value to the larger business and to continuously show how we are aligned with whatever it is that the business is trying to focus on. And those lagging indicators are ones that we would also love to be like, yes, enablement. Had a direct influence on, but there’s other, you know, influences that come into play there. I often find that those lagging indicators are the hardest. Bits of data to get access to in the business. But as I mentioned, I have like the greatest revenue operations team. And specifically, I have a colleague on my team, a coworker, Trevor, who builds out the most brilliant lagging indicator dashboards. He even does a good job of like bringing in the leading indicators to that dashboard. And this is what we really use month over month enablement strategy. So these are things like deal velocity. These are things like the financials of like, if we’re doing enablement on a specific product line, are we seeing an uptick in the revenue that’s coming in from those product lines? Our pipeline data, even outreach data and data specific to our tools. We really deep dive into this data month over month. And we actually have like a monthly data review session where we look at our leading indicators, lagging indicators, try and drive correlation, but also. It’s not just for proving out the efficacy of our efforts. It’s really figuring out, okay, based on this data, where is it that we are going to go next? And I think when we’re looking at data, we do it in two ways. One, we have quarterly priority sessions amongst my enablement team, where we all sit down and we figure out, okay, what are the biggest like lagging indicator data drivers that we need to have influence on this quarter? What’s data telling us? Is it retention? Is it pipeline? Whatever that is. And then month over month we look a little bit more granular at the data to figure out are we actually having the impact that we need to have. From a business perspective. SS: I think those are definitely some of the key metrics as change efforts. Typically, though, they kind of progress through various stages and often require time to fully implement. How do you maintain momentum as new processes become solidified in the long term? JS: Yeah, we love to take an ever-boarding approach. So we onboarding new people. We also do it when we’re launching large-scale enablement efforts. I actually think the key to making enablement sticky is providing leaders with the resources to coach on this on an ongoing basis. We are a small team. We can’t scale to have on one conversations with everyone and figure out where it’s falling short, and where we need to make adjustments. Perhaps Mike is better than Anthony. We don’t have those resources to be able to get really granular into the people aspect of this. But the managers do and that’s their job and they want to be doing this. So we like to think about when we launch an enablement series, Look at the data first. We figure out why are we doing this enablement. Is it necessary? Are we doing this because we have our own agenda or does the data align with us? We then meet with the managers first and we actually run almost the same version of the enablement session with them with some caveats why are we running this? What’s the purpose of this? What are we going to be presenting? And then the last part of that is managers, what do we need from you post enablement? Maybe it’s that we need you to listen to one call per rep per month and provide them feedback in the system so that we can gather that data and see how this is sticking. Maybe it’s that we have created a coaching template so that you can have these conversations in your one-to-one. And by the way, upload those into one of our systems, obviously on a private basis, so that we can review those as well. We want to be able to provide the leaders with the resources that they need to help us make enablement sticky. And then we run the enablement session for their people. And then when we’re doing the expertise exchange, we also have a one-month retro with the leaders where we talk about what are you seeing in the field. What’s working? What’s not working? A very similar exchange session that we do for our. People but with managers. We want the managers to have a voice in where we go next as well. SS: I love that. Last question, Jenna. Looking ahead, how do you envision evolving your enablement strategy to keep pace with your business’s growth? JS: Yeah, absolutely. We actually just had our enablement strategy meeting for 2025 and really starting to look at the data. And actually, as of recently, my team acquired product training as well. So we now have an even better opportunity to kind of align all training across the business and make sure that we’re all working in a singular direction. Although for a lot of new teams as well too, right, we’re not just focused on revenue enablement now. We’re also focused on the technical teams from a product training perspective. So, alignment across the org and how we approach enablement. I’m also selfishly very excited about this because I get a lot of new unique perspectives from my team considering I have new folks on my team now as well who have had a different view vantage point of enablement across the org. But also I want my team to continuously get to a proactive state. And I think we can only get there by being brutally honest about our current progress and using data to drive decisions. I love what my team has done thus far in using data, but The data is one piece. We need to storytell with the data. We really need to make it make sense for everyone else within the business. And we need to make it make sense for us so that we can be proactive. We have like one rule on my team and it’s, you’re not allowed to bring an ego to work and think that your way is the best way. And during our enablement strategy meeting, I started off with everyone needing to challenge us, and challenge me as a leader. I don’t know the best way forward all the time. You all have great ideas that I have never even thought of. We all need to continue to challenge each other, use data to make data-driven decisions, and really continue to retro and think about, did this work? Was this effective? Was this not effective? All while being proactive and really, you know, scaling our team. It’s like an impossible task that we have as enablement, but I think it’s possible with the right people and with the right strategy. SS: I’m excited to see where you all go. Thank you, Jenna, so much for this. JS: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It was great. SS: And thank you to our audience 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.

Research from Sales Enablement PRO found that when sales processes and plays are structured, organizations report 19-percentage-point higher win rates. So how can you optimize the sales process through enablement? 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 Jeff Eisenberg, the director of sales enablement at IntelePeer. Thank you for joining us, Jeff. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Jeff Eisenberg: Of course, Shawnna, thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. So my name is Jeff Eisenberg. I am the Director of Sales Enablement for a mid-sized SaaS company in the communications automation space. I’ve been in sales enablement for eight years across both enterprise and mid-sized companies. And before that, I sold for 12 years. So everything I do is looked at through the lens of a salesperson. I always like to tell my sales teams that I’ll never ask them to do something that I don’t feel is beneficial to their role as I wore a sales hat for a long time. SS: I’m sure that that helps to build a lot of rapport with your team, Jeff, and I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. Now, one of your key initiatives at IntelePeer is, as I mentioned in the introduction, optimizing the sales process through enablement strategies. What challenges have you faced when it comes to streamlining sales processes in the past, and how have you overcome those challenges? JE: Adoption is always a challenge when it comes to streamlining sales processes. I would say that to overcome them, you need several things. Number one, buy-in from your sales leadership team and other stakeholders. They are the ones who are going to drive any initiative on the ground floor level with their team, so they need to have a voice in that process. Additionally, my CRO, my Chief Revenue Officer, always says – tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. In other words, repetition is key to success, so consistent reinforcement of any initiative. Going to my earlier point, they need to understand the WIFM, so what’s in it for me, so it’s important for me to be viewed as that advocate for sales. If it doesn’t make sense to their role, tell them not to roll it out. We need to demonstrate how it will benefit their role. Now, lastly, a content management tool is critical to consistent reinforcement. Now there are some pretty staggering stats that show the rapid drop in retention from any initial presentation. So that’s where a content management and LMS system play a key role. Providing the sellers with the right resources at the right time to accelerate their sales process. SS: In your experience, what would you say are the essential building blocks for creating a sales process that really effectively helps to drive business results? And how can enablement play a key role in that? JE: Well, that’s a great question. So first, I would recommend getting buying on the importance of a sales process. Now there are two great statistics that I often share to reinforce the importance of following a process. The first is that 70 percent of businesses with a standardized sales process are high performers and see a 28 percent increase in revenue compared to businesses without one. The second stat, conversely, 68 percent of salespeople do not follow the sales process at all. Now that comes directly from Harvard Business Review. Now, those are pretty scary when you think about it from that perspective, but it also demonstrates a significant opportunity for any organization to drive revenue. Now, at the end of the day, you need to go back to the beginning and either define or refine what that sales process will look like. Now a sales process is fluid, so it can change over time, but it’s essential to really lock down what that initial process is. Additionally, and this step I think is overlooked far too often, is the need to align with the buyer’s journey. That’s more essential than ever. On one hand, technology is evolving so rapidly that many buyers don’t even know a specific product or solution exists. On the other hand, a significant majority of buyers, 70%, complete most of their research before reaching out to a sales team. Meaning they’re well into their buyer’s journey before even initiating contact with a seller. Now, specifically, When we’re looking at the essential building blocks, it comes down to a few key measures. Number one is qualification criteria. So, we need to define who that ideal customer is at ICP. And this is not just basic measures such as industry, role, and job title. But where a prospect is in their buyer’s journey. So are they window shoppers or actually interested? Do they have a vested interest in the solution? Or what challenges are they trying to solve for? The second measure, the deal stages. Now it’s important to define the criteria for each stage of the sales process and the necessary measures to continue to move that sales process along. Whether it’s initial qualification, qualification of the opportunity, proposing the recommended solution, or understanding what their procurement process is. Now that’s essential for forecasting purposes. Now, then we have to look at the desired end state. Now this goes hand in hand with the deal stages. So what is the desired end state of each stage? And then more importantly, what’s the overall desired end state? Now, obviously, the overall desired end state is closing more deals. The goal has to be defined as financial in nature and has a timeline. So, for example, if my quota is X, for this current year, do the building blocks align with that goal? And then lastly, conversion rates. So, by knowing your conversion rates, not only across the sales org, but across each individual contributor, you can uncover the gaps and plan accordingly. To bring it all to summation, as sales enablement professionals, we need to initiate, we need to facilitate, and drive the creation of the sales process and then plug in all the necessary resources to align. Whether that’s sales plays, SLPs or standard operating procedures, reports, training, CRM alignment, and the list goes on and on. SS: Absolutely. And on that note, what motivated you to re-evaluate and change your enablement tech stack and how has that impacted your sales process? JE: Great question, because when I joined the organization four years ago, content was actually shared out via MS Teams, so through chat. So, we needed to actually scroll through multiple chat groups to find the relevant content. Obviously, this is exceedingly unorganized and inefficient. Additionally, there was a lot of outdated content that was saved on individuals’ hard drives, and that’s detrimental to our go-to-market strategy because it was rapidly evolving. Additionally, we had Lessonly as our LMS. So my goal when researching the various content management solutions was to partner with a company that could help us organize and optimize our content, but also simplify our tech stack. And actually, I ended up moving forward, not just with Highspot’s content management tool, but also with their LMS solution. Now, I’ll tell you, the impact has truly been a game changer for my organization. A compliment to Highspot as the tool, they’re consistently evolving it, which is great. They’re keeping up with the times. I mean, AI is critical and the new features that they’ve added are game-changers. Number two, I will say I’ve got a great customer success team behind me that’s very invested in my organization’s success. We meet every two weeks, we have consistent agenda items, and I feel they are on the same page with me. SS: Amazing. Well, that’s always helpful to get alignment on that front. And you’ve already achieved an impressive 93 percent recurring usage rate in Highspot. What are some of your best practices for driving the adoption of your enablement programs? JE: Absolutely. First off, you’re speaking my language. I love when statistics are dropped, as you can tell from some of my earlier answers, I believe they add weight to any point or position you’re trying to make. I would say Garbage in, garbage out is my motto when it comes to Highspot. So it’s essential to monitor all content that is being added to Highspot and then track for adoption because it can quickly get out of control. Buyers need to feel confident that they’re getting the right information in an efficient way or you’re quickly going to lose sponsorship. Now, we have quite a few administrators for the tool, so it’s important that everyone is on the same page in terms of What’s being added, making sure we’re swapping out old content versus just continuing to add, categorizing it correctly, creating violation rules for quality assurance, and lastly, providing a feedback mechanism for sales if the content doesn’t measure up to their expectations. Now, I have a quarterly cadence with the other administrators where we leverage the scorecards and associated reports to identify unused or outdated content to determine the next steps. So every quarter we do a deep clean to ensure content is still relevant. Additionally, we incorporate different avenues to keep relevant content front and center. So first, our Highspot homepage is tailored to provide multiple ways to promote content, whether it’s dedicated landing pages, or featured content. And additionally, we review new content on what we call a weekly sales huddle and then send it out to the sales organization. So in summation, this is how we ensure that content stays top of mind and sellers continue to see value. Which ties right back to the 93 percent continued utilization rate. SS: Amazing. And to your point about helping to guide sellers, I know plays have been a key lever for you to streamline sales processes. Can you share more about your strategy for leveraging sales plays to really support your go-to-market initiatives and continue to optimize the sales process? JE: Sure. I would say overall sales plays are great because they build the Boil it down to the most important elements of any go-to-market initiative. Sellers, need to be focused on selling. So, sales plays enable us to deploy the KISS method or keep it simple, and straightforward. Now, Highspot does a great job of providing pre-built, smart page templates broken out into know, say, show, and do, which helps break down the information into a digestible format. Ventures, easy adoption, easy utilization. Easy, fast rollout. SS: Amazing. I love that. Now, you talked a little bit about this periodically throughout the conversation, but you mentioned the importance of having data. I’d love to understand how you incorporate data into your process of refining the sales process. JE: Sure. Now, data is critical in all areas of sales enablement. It’s how we measure the impact of everything we do, whether it’s directly or indirectly. Data tells a story on overall effectiveness and then breaks it down into digestible elements to really understand where in the sales process we need additional resources and support. So for example, conversion rates significantly drop somewhere along the sales process. That gives us an opportunity to see where we are not aligned with our buyers. Is it messaging, pricing, or lack of qualification? Then those adjustments can be made accordingly. Now, we also measure the usage of the associated tech stack to really understand what’s being leveraged, where it’s being leveraged, and the value. Now, with newer sellers where the conversion rate can be premature, tech stack adoption is a great measure to ensure that the seller is really pulling all the necessary levers to be successful. Now, this provides sales leaders with an opportunity for understanding and then early intervention if necessary. So, for example, um, the pitching feature in Highspot is great because it provides visibility to open and view rates of our content. Now, that’s a great indication of buyer interest level and where the level of interest lies. Now, if pitch utilization is low, we can then determine whether it’s a training issue, an adoption issue or otherwise. SS: I love the way that you’re thinking about the optimization process and with your focus on optimizing the sales process, what specific improvements or results have you seen? And how has having a unified enablement platform contributed to those achievements? That’s JE: a great question. So yes, of course, we measure everything we do to determine the effectiveness. I can honestly say that improvements and results have been widespread across the organization. So number one, onboarding has drastically improved with using Highspot as our single source solution for content management and learning development. We have shortened our time to proficiency window significantly. We’ve decreased our time to the first deal. We’ve increased our funnel and reduced turnover. Now, from a seasoned seller perspective, we’ve seen a drastic improvement in the sales cycle, but also in deal size. So, in other words, we’re closing larger deals, and we’re closing them faster. And then lastly, I would say time optimization. Now, Highspot has enabled us to give back one of the most important resources available, and that’s time. SS: Yes, time often is equated to productivity. And so if you can give that back to your reps so they can focus on revenue, I think every business would want to know. JE: I always like to tell my sellers that at the end of the day, when you talk about revenue, I work for them. Sales enablement works for them. Because at the end of the day, they’re the ones bringing the revenue. So, that’s the way I always like to view the sales enablement role. Because at the end of the day, we need to support sales. They’re the ones signing our paychecks in a roundabout sort of way. SS: Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining us. I have one last question. If you could summarize maybe one crucial lesson learned from your experience in improving your sales process, what would it be? JE: It’s a great question. I would say seek to understand before being understood. Make sure you’re including all the stakeholders, not just sales, to get a baseline before collaborating on changes or improvements. This maximizes your chance for success. SS: I think that is fantastic advice, Jeff. Thank you again so much for joining us. JE: You’re most welcome. Thank you for your time. 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.

A survey conducted by Gartner found that 84% of marketing leaders and cross-functional partners experience ‘collaboration drag' – and those that do are 37% less likely to achieve revenue goals. So, how can you ensure your cross-collaboration efforts enable your initiatives to take flight? 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 Keith Swafford, the Senior Manager of Enablement, and Allison Gillespie, the Vice President of Marketing at O’Reilly Media. Thanks for joining us, Keith and Allison. I’d love for each of you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Keith, let’s start with you. Keith Swafford: Yeah, thank you. Great to be here. As you mentioned, Senior Sales Enablement Manager here at O’Reilly. I’ve been in sales supporting roles probably for the last 10, maybe almost 15 years. Within the last 5 or 6 years, been a part of a formal sales enablement group that we have here at O’Reilly. I originally was always more on the conference sponsorship side. That’s where I started my experience within the sales world and supporting sales. And then it’s evolved over through content marketing with what we were doing here at O’Reilly and then eventually into sales enablement.So it’s been a great journey, balancing between the marketing and sales side, and I love it. SS: Wonderful. And Alison, how about you? Allison Gillespie: Sure. So, and again, thanks for having us. Allison Gillespie. So I am the vice president of marketing in charge of kind of everything B2B related as it comes to sales support, everything from leads, trade shows, you know, demand gen thought leadership and then sales enablement. And I’ve been in B2B marketing my whole career, but sales enablement was actually a function that we started probably about five years ago at O’Reilly when we started growing. And so we built it from the ground up and we’ll probably talk about that later, but O’Reilly is an online learning platform that enterprises in any vertical subscribe to upskill and reskill their teams. And so our big focus is on tech teams, but we actually cover all areas of the organization with our product. SS: Amazing. Well, we are excited to have both of you here today. So again, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and have this conversation. Now, Allison, as a marketing leader, what are some of the key initiatives you’re focused on driving for the business? And how does your sales enablement strategy help you to do so? AG: Sure. I think like all marketing and sales functions, growth is the main goal, right? So whether that’s revenue growth, customer growth. Personal growth, that sort of thing. So our goals, what we’re measured on is very similar to what sales is measured on and that’s driving pipeline. So that’s true for the marketing team. It’s true for sales enablement team. And we have a couple of key initiatives this year that we focused on. So optimizing our tools is a big one. We have a really, what feels like a really large sales and marketing stack and a lot of different tools that do different things, some crossover between tools, but sometimes not.And so we’ve really focused this year on getting the most out of each tool. We’ve taken someone from sales enablement to be the lead on the tool, make sure, you know, we’re meeting with the vendor regularly. We’re kind of maximizing our usage. We’re using all the features and functionality that we need. And if we aren’t, you know, find out why and kind of dig into that more, develop communications and training, and make sure our sales team is actually using it in the way they should, and that it’s actually helping them in their day-to-day. So that was one. Another big one for actually our whole sales and marketing team was earlier this year, we moved to challenger methodology, which is a pretty well-known sales methodology.And that put our entire sales team through the training at the beginning of the year. And then sales enablement has really taken the lead in making sure that we’re continuing to reinforce that training, that we’re providing the content that they need, the courses, the exercises. And I think the big shift there is that. It’s shifting from feature-based selling to more teaching, right? Teaching them about what our product or our service solves. So that’s been a huge initiative and a huge undertaking. And then I’d say just the third one from a marketing perspective is optimizing our marketing channels. Figuring out, always looking at what works, what doesn’t, what creates the most pipeline, how many touches does it take, you know, all of those sorts of things that go into a B2B marketing strategy and then optimizing the ones that do and stopping the channels that don’t. And so part of that is just making sure the sales team understands like, what are these marketing channels? Where are these leads coming from? What do they need to do for outreach? And Sales enablement definitely helps in that aspect of it because they helped create the cadences and the invites and the training around it and things like that. So that’s been kind of our three big initiatives this year. SS: Amazing. And I love how enablement is really at the crux of making sure that all three of those get landed successfully with your sales team. Keith, how do you bring the sales enablement strategy to life in execution with your programs? KS: Yeah, I think there’s, I mean, three or four ways of execution, making these things come to life and kind of wanting to deliver on some of those same items that Allison just mentioned. And I always want to keep it, this is what’s worked for us. And so, the first thing that comes to my mind is, We talk about this concept of where we’re actually we are a marketing-run team Like the enablement group sits within the marketing side of the business, but we’re actually a really seller-filled Enablement team so a lot of us actually have a selling background. So either we were supporting sales We have people that come from like SDR roles that decided hey Selling directly wasn’t the best for us But like I want to do this over here and still support sales with people who come from trade show Experiences and doing the sales there. So we have found that’s been a huge win for us of being able to have, yes, marketing priorities, marketing goals. And we fit under that side of the business. But when you have individuals that are on this enablement team that has sold or have supported sales for a long time, it creates, I think, a really effective team to be able to deliver on the things that we need to kind of day in, day out the month, I might want to come to projects.The second thing that kind of comes to mind is we’re always trying to have, kind of create what are the clear priorities and visions. Specifically from sales leadership in the organization. And I need more clarity and, you know, envisioning goals beyond. These are the revenue goals that we’re trying to accomplish. These are the quotas we more of like what’s going on in the next one to two years in the sales organization that we want to see different. Right? So is that something that’s happening with the product in the branding and positioning, right? That falls to, that can fall down to us. Is there something with the skill set of our team in the next year or two that we want to see shift? If there’s something happening in the company, you know, so whatever level you wanted to look at it, what are those priorities? A 12-month, 16-month vision is really helpful beyond we’re trying to meet revenue, right? We’re trying to grow revenue. I think that’s been helpful for us. The third thing that comes to mind is making sure our sales teams and our reps actually understand the process and kind of the workflow of working with us. And enablement, you know, does a sales or a sales rep who has a specific request or a project that they would like to see delivered for themselves or for their team. Are they confident with like the process of working with us that they can step in, know when to contribute, and know when they don’t need to contribute any more to keep things streamlined? So I think having consistency or just clarity of this is how we get stuff done as sales enablement and sales or marketing and sales together, I think has been really huge. And then finally, just, we need a home base for sellers, and this is really where Highspot comes in. Do we have a spot where sellers can say, I have what I need, and I know where to find it? I think those four things have been really helpful for us in being able to execute on the things that we want to meet our goals. SS: Amazing. Now to dig into what you touched on in a few of those components, Keith and Allison, I’d love your perspective on this as well, but what would you say are some of your best practices for effectively collaborating to deliver on your marketing and enablement priorities, Keith? KS: Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is actually. Knowing and partnering with specific aspirational and talented sellers within our organization, sales, and even teams need to be able to recognize that there are certain people within the sales organization that are really good at what they do. They’re great sellers. And oftentimes other sellers want to copy their work ethic. They’re going to copy their output, right? They’re going to want to take the best things from them. And so I think a big part for us is being able to recognize those individuals. Recognize that, okay, is the output that they’re putting, is it quality? Does it align with what we want to do in enablement and within marketing? And let’s not create from scratch. Actually partner with them in the things that they’re doing. I think of a recent process where we went through and redid our trial process, or we call them content evaluations. And we looked at the data and we had.I think there was two or three reps and they were all kind of doing the same process because they learned it from one rep that it ended up being like 60 percent of deals were closed if they went through this certain type of content evaluation. And so we all looked at that. We’re like, why isn’t everyone doing this process? The data is so rich. So that’s a great example of like, we’re in enabling marketing. I’m not going to go away and feel like we’re going to magically come up with a great experience. It’s like, no, we’re going to partner with what’s working well and then scale it. And the scaling part sometimes is the tricky part, but being able to scale it in that way, I think has made it really helpful and effective for us. SS: Amazing. I love that example too, by the way. Allison, how about from your perspective? AG: I would say hands down, the key to our success is having a partnership with sales. And partnering really closely with them. So we regularly, have a rhythm of communication, right? It’s basically an open door. If you have a question, just ask, there’s a level of trust there. If leadership is behind the sales enablement team, then the wholesale organization will follow. I think each party. Sales enablement marketing and sales, all know their limits. Right. And so we lean on each other. We may say like, Hey, we want to do this thing, but we don’t exactly know how to do it. And so we’ll go to one of our sales leaders and ask them their opinion. And, and it’s very collaborative. And that to me is. What makes it all possible? Because if we were going to siloed and, and I’ve heard, and I’ve talked to colleagues who have very siloed sales and marketing teams, one hand is not talking to the other, and you just don’t have that communication and that collaboration. And to give you an example, I was on a call with a vendor one time that we were considering. Purchasing with our CRO. He was on the call and the vendor was talking about how, you know, one of the reasons we might not have good usage is because sales and marketing aren’t working in tandem and he just stopped the vendor and he said, no, no, actually we are attached at the hip with our marketing team. So that’s definitely not the issue. And it was like the biggest compliment to me and to the team because it was like, yeah, we are attached to the HIP. In many ways, we are one team working towards a common goal. So definitely that is the key to success for us, for sure. SS: Absolutely. I’m glad to hear that things are Good in terms of collaboration between sales and marketing over at O’Reilly.But what are maybe some of the challenges that marketing and enablement teams can face when trying to bring the two worlds together to support key business initiatives? And how have you guys overcome some of these challenges? Allison, I’d love to send this one back to you. AG: Sure. This is probably not unique to O’Reilly, but it’s focusing on the projects and determining what is a high priority and what’s not. And so oftentimes, you know, a sales leader will come to us and say, we need to do this thing, whatever it is. And so we immediately get working on it. It’s a high priority. We do all this work. And then it’s like something happens and the priority has shifted and the sales leader has gone quiet or, you know, we don’t hear anything about it anymore, but yet we’ve spent all this time on it. And so it’s really knowing your colleagues, right? And kind of understanding what’s happening in the business and why the attention may have moved off that project and then finding those ways to get it approved and finalized. So, you know, for example, maybe they just got busy and we know they’re busy because they’re working on a big deal or something like that. So instead of pestering them constantly, like what’s going on, what’s going on, giving them some space, coming back to them in a week or go to their counterpart and say like, you know, we’re working on this project. Is this still a priority or not? Here are the things we need. And again, like just giving them the space because we know everybody gets busy and we know for our business that priorities shift and that’s okay. And so just finding those little ways to collaborate and kind of keep the project moving as much as we can. And then if it’s not a priority anymore. And everybody agrees on that, then let’s just stop working on it and we’ll move on to the next thing. SS: Absolutely. Keith, what about from your perspective? KS: Yeah, I mean, it’s closely related, right? This idea of you want to get departments that we’re working with, and I think most enablement organizations, they’re involved with so many different teams and so many different departments within their organizations. Everyone has their own priorities, right? So, let’s Take it outside of even just sales, right? We work closely with the editorial group because the publishing background that we have, uh, we have a product group, we have a product marketing group, you have legal and finance, all that stuff like ties back to a lot of the work that we’re doing. And so the prioritization of like all those projects, and I think specifically Clear communication. Sometimes it’s been hard of being like, Hey, when you make this change over here in finance, it actually affects us over here in sales and what we’re doing in sales enablement or, Hey, in product, when you actually adjust this small item, Here within our learning platform that actually just shifted maybe about 50 conversations in the next two weeks with our sales organization. So I think that’s always been a challenge for us is like, how do we make sure there’s clear enough communication across all the teams that our sales people are the people who are actually, and it’s not even us in the enablement, our sales people are the ones who are actually having these conversations with customers and with prospects. And so when we make changes internally, How do we make sure that that gets communicated all the way down to the sales rep who is really the face of the company and being able to, you know, give reason to give explanation and really to still provide insight to our customers and prospect. Navigating that communication has always been a challenge. And it will be as the organization just grows. SS: Love that. Alright, so one thing that I really love about O’Reilly Media’s mission is that you guys really have it centered around solving challenging problems and being able to inspire what’s possible. Allison, I’d love to hear from you. What is a challenging problem that you’ve been able to solve for the business through your enablement strategy? AG: Sure. Yeah. It’s been about five years that we’ve had a sales enablement team. The one that comes to mind is onboarding. So about three to four years ago, the company started rapidly growing, which meant the sales team was rapidly hiring. At the time we just had one person on our team that was doing ad hoc onboarding, the manager would ping them and say, Oh, I have this new SDR starting. Can you do some sessions with them? Talk about this and this, but there was no, nothing was consistent. There was no formal. Plan, anything like that. And so we came together as a team as we started growing, cause we realized this was not going to scale. And we really streamlined the onboarding process. We templated it, and worked with sales leadership to say like, okay, what does sales enablement cover? What do you want to cover as their individual manager? And we took this huge chunk of work off the sales manager’s plate because, you know, at the time they were responsible for onboarding. Now it’s more of a joint effort, like sales enablement starts it. And then once we’re done, you know, we hand it back to the manager and it’s very much a collaborative process. So with that, we were able to reduce the ramp time for new reps. So what used to be, you know, six months ramp time to get them actually out there selling is now down to 60 days or less, depending on the role within 30 days, they’re already hitting the ground running and sometimes actually closing deals within that time. So we’ve seen a really good response from that. And we’ve continued to have growth. We continue to have turnover. We continue to refine the onboarding process as the business evolves. And kind of one of the biggest things that’s come out of that besides the ramp time is actually our HR team has emulated some of what we’ve done. So they’ve seen sort of like, oh, we have a process and a timeline that everybody goes through and they’ve emulated that for just the hiring process in general at O’Reilly. So that was a high compliment, I feel like for the sales enablement team in our work. SS: I love that. And being able to shave it from six months to 60 days or less to get reps to build revenue for the business. That’s amazing, Liv. So kudos and congratulations on that accomplishment. Keith, how have you leveraged your enablement platform to help solve a challenging problem for the business and inspire what’s possible for your reps?KS: I think of two ways that our enablement platform, Highspot, has been a huge help since we’ve implemented it. Highspot and its ability to really fine-tune, I think, our sales messaging and positioning have been really strategic. You know, we used to have branding messaging that I think would resonate really well with our prospects and our customers. But previously the messaging was really, you know, It was written and shared for everyone, so it could be for customer success, it could be for customer support, it could be for our frontline sales reps, right? So, we have the ability now with Highspot to really fine-tune that. So if we want to create sales plays, if we want specific courses, specific languages, if we have certain materials that need to be around, we can organize it and like distribute it in a very specific way across our groups. With way more precision and way more accuracy than we ever have.And sometimes we still needed to hit all of those groups within the same messaging and branding. But for us to have that flexibility in the ease, since there’s such a, the tooling and the, the organization of things is there, it just allows us to kind of do what we need to do from branding and positioning and messaging, and then just deliver those things. So that’s been, it’s been huge to be able to get that specific and be that organized with it. I think it’s been a huge help. And then secondly, using Highspot specifically for the analytics to see which items are critical and which are just like nice to have. That, hey, this hasn’t been touched in three months. Do we need to update this? Do we need to make a revision of this and have those conversations of is this a good resource? If it is, yes. Why isn’t it being used? Just begin to ask a lot of those really good questions. Without the report, you can’t ask good questions on specific documentation that we’ve created. So we’re always trying to ask like, what’s going to stay? What needs to grow? And like, what needs to go? Those are the areas that we want to, Always be thinking about when we’re thinking about asset creation. And I think it’s even, even coursing and training, but that was been really critical with the analysts. SS: I love hearing that. And you guys have actually seen some incredible progress recently with training and coaching. Our stats are saying that you guys are at a hundred percent of active learners. I’d love to understand what are some of your best practices for creating an engaging learning environment for reps? KS: I think the first thing that sounds maybe simple is like, you gotta make it required. That is a simple thing and I think that’s a cultural thing. We want to assume you want to show up, and do well in your role. You want to grow in your role, right? So there is this idea of like culture and of wanting to develop yourself and train yourself. So you want to make it required. There are certain things that our sales teams cannot do. In front of a customer until they work through certain training material. And they want to be doing these things. We’re not asking them to do things that are not helpful for their role. So simple thing, the first customer might make it required, make it part of your culture, that this is what we do is we learn and we get better at these certain things.Secondly, make it short. We fully believe that people shouldn’t have to, not even just sales, but all of us, most people don’t like sitting through a six-hour course on something, right? How do we make bite-size? Learning moments. And really we try to do that even with our own learning platform. And that’s really kind of come into how we develop learning and training at O’Reilly, excuse me, within our enablement team, right? I wanna make this as short as possible, so that way you feel it’s efficient, it’s helpful, but it’s also not taking you away from your work and what you need to do as a seller. So make it short. And then third, make it human anytime. That we in enablement with our training and our courses, if we can interject actually the people of enablement into the material, that’s always better.It’s always better to have a real human talking over, let’s say, a PowerPoint versus them just reading a PowerPoint that has the text, right? So anytime we can have a more human connection in the learning modules that we’re creating, it’s always better. Because we have that relationship with, with the sellers and, and what they’re doing. So if they’re also then hearing it, seeing it from us, knowing that we support them, it’s always better. So make it required, make it short, you know, make it human. SS: I love that you guys apply that filter to the way that you create enablement for your field teams. It just makes it resonate and land a lot better with your reps. AG: And I would add to the make it human is use human language. So a lot of times when we’re putting scripts together and stuff, it’s really easy to kind of fall into that marketing speak. And it’s good because we can check each other and be like, Keith will be like, Alison, people don’t talk like that. We need to humanize this. And like, what would you actually say? And so we kind of use that filter as well. Like if I was talking to my friend, What would I say? Like, how would I say this and put that human element into some of the work that we do?SS: Absolutely. So, you’ve talked a few times about how important it is to have the data to understand what’s happening and how to use that data to make optimizations to your strategy. I’d love to understand, how you go about measuring the impact of your enablement strategy. Allison, do you have any wins you might be able to share with us? AG: Sure. So we look at a variety of metrics. Of course, we look across the whole sales funnel and how are we doing? And we look at things like conversion and pipeline being created and meetings being booked. And then how are the deals moving through? Where are they slowing down? If they’re not closing, why not? If we’re losing those deals, why not? Because all of that kind of touch points typically lead back to something we can do, right, to help the sales team, especially if it’s kind of in aggregate. Like if there’s a thing that’s happening in aggregate, then that’s signed to us that like, let’s jump in there and see what we can do. So that’s the big one. That’s sort of the data-driven one. The other one, which is really hard to measure, but equally important is feedback from sales leadership. How is this actually working in the field? What is actually happening? You know, we’re seeing this, but like, what are people’s boots on the ground saying? And this sort of goes back to what, you know, Keith was mentioning earlier about even going to individual sales reps and saying like, rolled out this new thing, is it working? Like, what are customers saying? What’s your experience with it? And so getting feedback loop, I think, It’s also important to sort of measure the impact of our strategy. Of course, we use the metrics from Highspot. Like what are people looking at? What are they using? What are they not using? That actually can even be more telling than what they’re using. SS: Absolutely. Well, Keith, and Allison, this has been fantastic. I have one last question. Um, Obviously, the enablement space continues to evolve.I’d love to get a sense from each of you on sort of how you plan to leverage some of the latest innovations like AI to continue to drive impact for the business. Keith, maybe I’ll send this one to you first. KS: It is a really exciting area and at the same time. We often say at O’Reilly, when it comes to technology, that there’s a difference between what’s hype and what’s actually helpful. So I think that’s very true for Gen AI, large language models and how they can apply even for sales, sales enablement, marketing, what is actually helpful for us as an organization and us as an enablement team, what we’ve begun to explore right now, just custom GPT, right? So how do we take the great things that are happening with the different GPT models and services that we already know most of our team is, is Using, and we’re encouraging them to use, but how do we bring the data set that’s powering those GPTs behind our walls, so to speak, and actually drive change? Really unique situations and scenarios and for our sales reps. So whether that’s kind of role-play simulations that we can use in training where they can role play with like one of our potential buyers of what the, or our potential customer, what that could be like, whether that’s doing really deep account analysis, you know, Compared to the other customers that we have, let’s say a hundred within like healthcare, and we want to know what are their top five priorities in this area, in this time, we can figure that out. So exploring custom GPTs, I think is really interesting for us. Cause if we can. Streamline kind of the administrative work, our sales people. So that way they’re in meetings, right? If they’re in meetings, that is where they shine and we’re doing our best. So if we can actually output that nonmeeting time and get like a 70 to 80 percent quality, and then the reps can do the rest, that’s really huge for creating an effective organization. So that’s one area that we’re starting to explore right now.SS: I love that. And that would be extremely helpful to your point. Allison, how about you? I’d love for you to close this out on this one.KS: Sure. So I think, you know, from my point of view and I think sales and marketing both know this, but the way that people buy is changing, some of that’s being driven by technology. Some of it’s just being driven by some of the younger workforce coming in and things like that. And so things like prospects expect more personalized experiences. So trying to figure out how we use Gen AI to create Those personalizations and scale that, right? You know, we’ve got the sales team out there and so we want to have them work smarter, not harder. And so how do they leverage Gen AI for like some of that personalization work, right, or some of the research on an account so they’re not spending, you know, hours researching an account? Now they can spend minutes. And how to do we kind of package that up nicely instead of just saying like, yeah, I use chat GPT, you know, how do we package that nicely for them and show them how to use it to their advantage and really just, To get their productivity to go up and like I said, work smarter, not harder. And so I think over time, especially as more tools come out and AI is being incorporated to all of the tools that we use, so how do we use that and leverage that in our work as well? So I think over time, we’re going to see such a huge shift in not only the way people buy, but also how we as a marketing and a sales team operate. SS: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s exciting times. Well, Allison, Keith, thank you both so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time. AG: Thank you for having us. KS: Glad to be here. 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.

In today's digital age, we're inundated with a constant stream of information, making it challenging to navigate and make sense of what's important. And now, in the midst of increasingly-capable AI, the very concept of importance is coming into question. Could open source be the solution to managing our impending sensemaking crisis? In this episode of the Win-Win Podcast, we're joined by Peter Wang, a physicist, computer scientist, and founder of Anaconda, one of the most widely used open source platforms for Python development. Peter leads Anaconda's AI Incubator, which focuses on advancing core Python technologies and developing new frontiers in open-source AI and machine learning, especially in the areas of edge computing, data privacy, and decentralized computing. We dig in with Peter to discuss the history and politics of the open source movement, and the security concerns around open sourcing AI models. And we attempt to understand how open source software can enhance transparency and collaboration between players, and how these technologies can be harnessed to better navigate the complexities of our information-rich environment. Chapters: 00:00:00 - What is Open Source Software 00:10:29 - Peter's History with The Open Source Movement 00:35:06 - Security and State Interests in Open Source 00:37:16 - Open Science and The Commons of Knowledge 00:39:40 - The Central Problem of Coordination 00:43:46 - The Solutions That Markets Solve and The Problems They Create 01:04:40 - Synchronous Attention As A Scarce Resource 01:09:23 - The Liminal Act of Modelling The World 01:19:58 - Virtuality and Colorful Dystopias 01:22:03 - Is Technology Values-Neutral? 01:32:30 - Moloch Invades The Tech Stack 01:35:57 - Psychosecurity and The Dangers of Attention-Renting Software 01:42:00 - Is The Global Community Actually Excelling in Science? 01:43:51 - Our Cosmic Scale and The Instruments To Probe It 01:53:18 - The Stagnation of Physics 01:56:06 - The Civilizational Perspective on AI Safety 02:05:23 - The Benefits of Open Source To Society 02:27:26 - Will AI Accelerate A Global Security Crisis? Credits: ♾️ Hosted and Produced by Liv Boeree ♾️ Edited and Mixed by Ryan Kessler Links: ♾️ Peter's Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/pwang?lang=en⁠ ♾️ Anaconda: ⁠https://www.anaconda.com/⁠ ♾️ Peter's Blog: ⁠https://medium.com/@pwang⁠ The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins. #WinWinPodcast #Moloch #AI #Python

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report from 2024, teams that utilize data-driven training are 36% more likely to decrease ramp time. So how can you ensure your training programs are maximizing sales readiness?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 Lizzy Goldstein, the sales enablement manager at Newsela, Inc. Thank you for joining us, Lizzy. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Lizzy Goldstein: Thank you for having me, Shawnna. My name is Lizzy Goldstein, I am the director of enablement at Newsela and II started my career in education. I was a ninth-grade ELA teacher and I transitioned into tech sales where I was on the new business end for two years. Then I joined Newsela almost six years ago as a customer success manager, working with the schools and school districts that purchase our product. I moved to the enablement team about three years ago and have had a lot of success growing on this team, using both my education background and sales background to really help me navigate through this enablement experience. SS: Amazing. You touched on this a little bit around your prior experience before going into enablement and how you have a background in education—which I have so much respect for those who have been in the teaching field. Thank you for all that you did in that role. I imagine that some of that actually carries over into enablement. How does your teaching experience influence your approach to your enablement strategy? LG: I’m lucky at Newsela in that we are an education platform and so I work with a lot of former educators. Two things that are really top of mind for me when I am creating new enablement materials is outcomes and engagement. That really comes from my teaching experience. Whenever, as a teacher, you start planning a unit you first look at what are the outcomes I want my students to be able to achieve at the end of this time. You say, what do I want them to be able to do? And then everything you teach should be teaching to that outcome. If you want them to be able to identify verbs and nouns in a sentence, we make that our end goal and then we make sure that we teach verbs and nouns throughout the unit. We call that backwards planning where we start with what’s our goal and then what do we want to achieve, how are we going to get there?The way to ensure that students are taking in what you’re teaching is engagement—it has to be interesting, it has to be engaging. Otherwise, it’s going right over—if you are just speaking at a group it’s really hard for that to penetrate and for that to really resonate with your learners. Once you know what the outcomes are, then we talk about how are we going to engage these learners and make sure that the material that we share is interesting and relevant to them. SS: I love that approach. If we take a step back, tell us more about your enablement strategy at Newsela. What are some of the key go-to-market initiatives that you’re focused on supporting? LG: Last year we purchased a company called Formative, which is also in the education space and that acquisition has taken a lot of our focus over the last year. We had to onboard the formative sales reps and CSMs to teach them about the Newsela product suite and also teach them our sales process. Then, we had to look at our existing sales organization and teach them the new product that we had acquired. So, there was a lot of A to B and B to A kind of learning and we also had to discover what was our product strategy for these two unique products that also work pretty well together. How can we ensure that our go to market team understands the value of the products individually and then also the value of the products when paired together? That’s been a large focus of mine over the past year. From an industry standpoint, the education space was really impacted by COVID, and districts are still really feeling that when planning for the 2024 to 2025 school year. Especially because ESSER funds, which are federal funds, were such a large part of funding for the last two years and that ESSER funding has run out. A lot of districts are being much more picky when looking at their product suite than they ever were before because they are tens of millions of dollars in the hole compared to what they were in the previous term. So how do we educate our go-to-market team about this changing landscape? And then, continue to drive value and show our districts the value that Newsela brings to keep our product on their budget for the next year. SS: That does sound like a lot of things that enablement is trying to help make sure you are steering for the organization. What role does your enablement platform, Highspot, play in helping you land your go-to-market initiatives? LG: The word that comes to mind with Highspot for us is accountability. We consider Highspot our source of truth; every marketing collateral that we have for customers is in Highspot, a lot of our knowledge documents are in Highspot. When we talk about the changing landscape of the education field, we post podcasts. We want them to use the results about the education space, and articles about the education space in Highspot, and expect our go-to-market team to find those resources there. We really want them to use Highspot as that internal Google search—if they have a question about Newsela, Formative, or education in general, they know that they can find the answers in Highspot. We use Highspot’s analytics to ensure that our go-to-market team is investing time in those new initiatives so we can track usage of resources that we send. Let’s say we publish a podcast about the changing landscape of education. We then look to see how long our go-to-market team, individuals we also created certification tracks for our go-to-market team and shared weekly reports with managers to broadcast how much time their team was investing and made it a little competitive. Always shouted out, “Great job, Elizabeth’s team for an average of eight hours this week in Highspot learning about the new Formative platforms.” So, we use the analytics to make sure that managers and individual contributors understand that we don’t just throw it in Highspot and not look at it again. We are constantly checking in and making sure that everybody is using the resources that we spend time creating for them, and if they’re not, maybe there’s a problem with the resources, maybe they don’t actually hit the points that are necessary. Maybe we missed the mark. And so we need to know that so that we can then publish new pieces of material. So using that accountability and talking to managers, talking to individual contributors and saying, “Hey, I noticed you didn’t spend that much time listening to this podcast. Was it not helpful to you? Was it just something you didn’t have time for this week? Let me know so that we can then update our resources and make sure that they really do align to your goals.” SS: I love that. Recently, your team had a huge training initiative and I believe you created north of 30 courses. Can you tell us more about this effort and how your team brought it to life using Highspot? LG: Yeah, those 30 courses relate to our new acquisition. We had to create courses for our Newsela go-to-market team about the Formative platform, we had to create resources for the Formative team about the Newsela platform, and we had to create new resources for new products that allowed those two to work together. So, it was a lot of effort and a lot of talking to different SMEs across the organization. What was really important to us was to make sure that in six to nine months, there wasn’t really a difference between a Formative sales rep and a Newsela sales rep. We wanted to make sure that the entire go-to-market organization had the same baseline level of knowledge for our entire product suite. We knew that a person who’s more comfortable selling Formative is going to continue to sell Formative and they’re not going to sell the Newsela product suite and vice versa. So we needed to make sure there was that baseline level of comfort.We used Highspot to both educate and evaluate our sales reps. We built e-learning courses that allowed them to explore the new platforms. And then going back to that accountability, there was always an evaluation. We had formative evaluations throughout the courses and then summative evaluations at the end, to make sure that they weren’t just sitting in front of the screen without a chance to practice what they were learning. We gave them an opportunity and used our managers as reviewers to make sure that they knew where their sales reps were, they knew their comfort level, they could hear their pitches, and they could really get a sense for each one of their ICs where they were through this transition.I think keeping the managers really involved was a big part of our success because, it made enablement feel like it wasn’t some black box, that they would just get these materials and nobody would know if It was looked at. They would record videos and not sure who was reviewing it. There was really a relationship between them and their reviewer, and so I think the expectations were higher because they knew that their managers were involved. They knew that their managers really cared and that they were putting an effort into reviewing their work. So, I think that was a big part of our success was bringing in that management level. SS: What are some of your other best practices? You talked in your intro about how important it is to really engage the learner. So what are some of your best practices for creating effective training programs for your sales teams? LG: As much as I love hearing the sound of my own voice, I know that not everybody loves to hear the same person over and over again. We really try to make sure that with every enablement session, we’re bringing in different voices. We like to really vary who that is—we’ll have executive sponsorship, and we will get C-suites, and I think that really sets the tone in training sessions and to do introductions or to be a part of our videos. But then we also love to leverage our IC's. They’re experts in the field. They have great knowledge. They have great best practices. And so we love to invite IC's to be a part of our trainings as well. And I think that really, people love to hear from their peers—they love to hype up their friends. That makes a huge difference for us when somebody gets on the screen and—we are a Google Meet organization—all the emojis pop up at the bottom and everyone’s cheering, “Love that Craig is here. Good job, Craig. We love hearing from Craig.” And so that really makes a difference for us. And we know that people are engaged when they’re hearing from their peer and it’s not just me over and over again. So I’m having that top-bottom executive sponsorship, and then that bottom-up of really leveraging the IC'ss makes a big difference for us.  Another thing that we’ve done this past year that we found to be really successful is that we have a recurring cadence of enablement events. So, every two weeks we have an hour on Thursdays that is just a hold on everyone’s calendar for an enablement session. And so usually two or three weeks in advance we set the enablement event. We will pare down the invite list to make sure that it’s really relevant to that group of learners. But having that recurring cadence really makes people feel like this isn’t random. I’m not just getting this calendar invite last minute and I’m not sure if I really need to show up for it. We’ve taken time on everyone’s calendar over the year and so they expect that training every two weeks and they know. What they’re going to get out of it, and so that has also made a difference of publishing our schedule far in advance, making sure people understand that, they have dedicated time with us regularly, and that we are, really forward-thinking, that we’re not being extremely reactive and saying, “Oh, in two days we’re going to do a training on something”. But we’re respecting their calendar, we’re getting time on it early, and that’s made a big difference for us this past year. SS: I love those ideas, I think our audience can take some of those as takeaways within their own organization, so thank you. What impact have these new training courses had on your teams and do you have any early wins you can share? LG: I think that one thing that is really valuable at Newsela is that we have a lot of internal movement. You take me for example, I started on the customer success team, I moved to the enablement team, and have moved up within that organization. We really do value our internal transfers and we want to make sure as an enablement organization that we set up everyone for success. And so having that standardized baseline for our go-to-market team is really important. I said that when we merge the two Formative and Newsela organizations, we set this baseline to make sure that everyone had the same knowledge. We do the same thing with our onboarding program. So whether you’re an SDR, a CSM, a professional learning manager, you get the same baseline training and you understand our products. You understand our organization at a baseline level, and that’s created an environment where our SDRs after a year are prepared to move into other role, they don’t need to do more learning—they have this baseline standard set. They understand from an early time how our organization works and they understand where they can take their skills, so that’s been really successful. We had about eight internal transfers so far this year, all that have been successful in their roles, and have stayed in their new roles. So that’s really exciting for us. I think the other thing that our onboarding has been successful at is reducing the time to revenue. In 2023, we reduced the time to revenue for sales reps to 36 days, which was a 15-day improvement over the previous year, and that’s been huge for our organization. Nobody wants to hire someone and wait and wait for them to start generating revenue. The earlier somebody can generate revenue, the better it is for the organization, the better it is for the sales rep. Because, it’s really hard to feel like you’re not really quite ready yet. You’re told that you’re going to take calls, but you don’t feel confident so we really want to set people up early for success and, depending on their role, if they’re a sales executive, to make sure that they understand the product suite, [and] they understand the sales process. If you’re an SDR, to really get that track down early so you can start making calls and booking meetings. If you’re a CSM, to start understanding the way that our customers renew, the cyclical nature of our the industry that we’re in. And, again, we want to make sure that people feel really comfortable. Because if they feel comfortable, they feel empowered, they feel confident, and they show up differently to their job. And I think that the work that we did the past year to really stabilize our onboarding and standardize it, has made a huge difference in our organization. SS: Amazing. And you guys are seeing some incredible results, I think your overall adoption of the platform is at about 88% recurring usage. What are your best practices for driving adoption and how has this helped you improve the impact of your programs? LG: If you could just send over the 12% that aren’t recurring after this call, I’d love to see that. I think that we just expect them to use Highspot, it’s not an option at Newsela. We’re pretty vigilant about we’re only sharing content through Highspot. If I see somebody in a public channel share out a resource that’s a Google Doc, I’ll DM them and say, “Hey, does this already exist in Highspot? If it doesn’t, let’s add it and then can you edit your post to add the Highspot link instead of this Google Doc.” We did that a lot our first maybe two years of adoption with Highspot and set the expectation with everybody that if it’s not in Highspot, it didn’t happen. So now I’ve got a lot less of those kinds of messages like, “Hey, why isn’t this in Highspot?” Because that’s really the standard for us. Some organizations can fall into a pit where they aren’t quite sure what should be in Highspot and what shouldn’t be in Highspot, and maybe we overshare in Highspot, but I would rather that than have knowledge that lives outside of what we’ve told the organization is our standard knowledge base. If we tell sales reps that they can find everything that they need in Highspot, and then they find really good resources outside of Highspot, that really just degrades the trust in the platform. It degrades the trust in the enablement team, so we set a pretty high standard, and we make sure that everything is in Highspot. We also send a bi-weekly newsletter to our go-to-market team with updates from our product team, updates from our data team different marketing initiatives and any content that we share in that newsletter is hosted in Highspot. So we’re always pushing people there. Every two weeks we probably get a big spike in Highspot engagement because if there’s a product release, that’s in Highspot. If there’s a new marketing collateral, that’s in Highspot. So there’s not really an option for us, but if you do have that list of who’s not a regular user, I’d love to know. SS: Absolutely love it, Lizzy. Last question for you. What are some of the key ways you measure the impact of your enablement programs on your go-to-market initiatives, and how do you leverage Highspot to help? LG: I think that goes back to the analytics piece and really continuing to share updates regularly with our managers and our directors. Whenever we have a new initiative we have a due date for, maybe we have a new course and we want people to practice their pitch for a new product or a new release. We’ll update that group regularly on where the go-to-market team stands. We’ll break it down by role. We break it down by the manager. To really build a team. That Hey we’re looking out, we’re watching what’s going on. And that little tiny bit of public shaming. “Hey, Elizabeth, only three out of your 10 reps have finished this course so far. What’s going on?” That does help a lot. We make sure that throughout the learning that people are kept up to date on where we stand, so that it’s not on the due date they say, “Oh my gosh, we’re only 75% complete? Why didn’t you tell me?” We tell them every couple of days leading up so that they really understand where we stand and that they can talk to their individual contributors who have yet to complete the work. Usually, about three to five months after a due date, we’ll look back and say, was this actually helpful? Was the outcome that we asked of our individual contributors, did that align with what the actual goals of this initiative was? So you go back to that teaching experience and say you start with the test, then you teach things that would lead you to that, I want them to be able to identify verbs and nouns. So what did I teach that got them there? And then maybe where did I miss? I had a lot of students that are having trouble with nouns. And so I’ll look back on what we did about nouns and maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe I didn’t have the right material. Maybe I wasn’t quite checking in on students, doing formative assessments, doing quizzes, and seeing that they were struggling there and adding that extra help. So we do like to look back, [and] call it a post-mortem. We look back on what we did and say where were we successful? We call it, what are we going to continue doing? And then where do we need improvement? What do we need to do in the future? And so that’s an exercise that’s really helpful. Sometimes it can hurt a little bit because you put a lot of effort into something and then to have somebody rip it apart doesn’t feel good, but it makes you better. You look back and I think it’s a really healthy practice to look back at your work and say, where was I successful? And where can I be more successful in the future? SS: Absolutely. Lizzy, thank you so much for sharing such amazing advice and best practices for our audience today. I really appreciate the time. LG: Yeah, anytime.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.

Research from Gartner shows that 84% of sales leaders see effectively cultivating their organization’s tech stack as a key to meeting revenue targets. So how can you ensure you’re optimizing your tech stack to meet key business goals? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Jonathan, or JB Belair, the vice president of recruiting technology solutions at Osaic Wealth. Thank you for joining us, Jonathan. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Jonathan “JB” Belair: Thank you for that and thanks so much for having me on the podcast today. My name is Jonathan, or JB Belair as everyone calls me. I’m the VP of our recruiting technology here at Osaic, and Osaic is a large broker-dealer. In my specific role, I look to help our sales team better recruit financial advisors who are looking to join our firm. And just to lay that down, so everyone knows exactly what we do here. In terms of my experience and background, oh my goodness, I have been in technology longer than I like to publicly admit. Sometimes in the front end, also in the back end, and in development. But, part of my background is also being a financial advisor. I’m unique to this role because I get to talk about technology. How financial advisors can come to our firm here at Osaic, have a really great experience, but also I can rely on my experience as a financial advisor and still am a financial advisor. That’s a little bit about what I do. It’s been about 15 years now since I’ve been in this industry, fully registered as well as a broker. Also as an investment advisor myself. In addition to that, my responsibility really extends beyond that as well to help manage some of the technology that’s used in our enablement team.To ensure that our recruiting efforts are both effective and innovative for our, what we would call our clients, which are recruits looking to join the firm here. Also, I help articulate our Osaic technology story to prospective financial advisors or financial professionals. It’s the industry term we use just so they can understand what we have to offer and also so that they’re with us, which is a firm that really prioritizes having that advisor-centric technology, and tools available for them to help them service their clients grow their big book of business, and, of course, thrive. SS: JB, one of the things that caught my attention was on your LinkedIn. You mentioned that your expertise per your introduction is in harnessing technology to drive innovation. I’d love to understand from you, what are some best practices for curating an effective enablement tech stack? JB: Absolutely, that’s a great question. When it comes to enabling a tech stack—and I am full of anecdotes left and right—I tell everyone it takes a village, and it really does. But, one of the key things is making sure that it aligns with your business objectives. You want to make sure you have your goal defined, right? Ensuring that the technology that you’re looking at—in this case, Highspot—really lines up with one, our firm’s objectives. What we’re looking for in growth, and also efficiency. We have to also make sure that we have stakeholder buy-in as well as another important thing. You want to make sure that you involve those key stakeholders from across different parts of the firm to ensure that one, we have this for our use in recruiting. But, is there a cross-departmental need as well, right? Do we have other parts of our firm that could also benefit from this? So that was a note, sneaking that into later down in our podcast where we talk about why we chose Highspot, but that’s one of the pieces. I think it’s also, from a best practice, good to prioritize integration and compatibility—that’s a big one. We all know as larger firms, typically, we use our CRM tools and we have different automation tools. We want to make sure that Highspot, as I say, plays nice in the sandbox. That’s important, because if we lose your tool, then we don’t have any integrations. It’s not going to do us any good, honestly, at the end of the day. But also, some other best practices in there are making sure that you can focus on the user experience as well. It’s important to us to have tools that are intuitive and user-friendly so that we know then that adoption among employees—whether it’s our group or around the firm—will easily get on board with that. But, also, there’s training and support as well. I certainly would say that I’m a Highspot pro. Debbie DeLuca on my team is also the Highspot pro of the team, hands down. And she definitely does training with some of our other groups, that’s another piece of it. But outside of that, some of the other pieces where I make suggestions are the cost-effectiveness. What is the ROI on the tool that you’re looking for? There’s some scalability and flexibility, as well. It’s just as important that your tool is able to scale up and scale down with us, right? Because that helps when we think of things like, let’s say, future-proofing some of our tools. As we grow, we want to make sure that tools can expand. That’s an important part of the puzzle. Another couple of things that I would say, too, everyone does it: go to Yelp, go to Google, take a peek at the reviews, and see what people have to say. You can usually tell pretty quickly if people are having a good experience with the tool or if they’re not having a good experience because if there’s one thing we all do in our Reddit culture is there’s a subreddit on everything. SS: No, there definitely is, and correct me if I’m wrong, I believe you guys were using a different solution prior to Highspot. What were some of the major challenges that your team was faced with during that time? JB: There was a lack of a hub for information. We know that one of the reasons why our sales enablement team is so effective is we can have a hub for us, right? And the other platform didn’t allow us to create customized pages that could serve as centralized hubs if you will. That really makes it difficult to organize and access collateral and other information in ways that is really intuitive for the people who need to get their hands on it. In addition to that, we had limited analytics with that tool. It wasn’t built to be a sales enablement tool per se—air quote that one for those of you who can’t see me. I think it served a lot of purposes. It did some things well, but it didn’t do anything really well, and that can be an issue for us in particular. We didn’t have a great Salesforce integration with that tool—full disclosure, we use Salesforce. So that was very important for how we look at our recruits, and keep information, and how we track contacts—that was a really important part of the puzzle as well. Also, Pitch analytics. If we sent something out from the other tool, we weren’t getting anything back. It just wasn’t detailed enough, so that can also certainly hinder our effectiveness at measuring how we’re trying to engage, but also that helps us understand what’s landing and not landing well. So, that’s challenging. If you can’t understand if the Pitches are making sense to whoever you’re sending that to, that could be a problem. So those are some of the pieces, but also it just seemed a little disjointed, because we didn’t have that integration to Salesforce. Again, we use that as our CRM here, and that just made it difficult because we lost out on the integrations and that flow we want to have. Also, I would say, just the transparency across the firm. Cause we certainly work with other teams in this role and not having that ability to see, “Oh, Hey, it looks like JB sent out a Pitch on X, Y, Z.” That can be really helpful to another person having a conversation. And we didn’t have that in our system. SS: Absolutely. And so it sounds like there was a really good impetus for change. And, obviously, you all decided to partner with Highspot—thank you. Since implementing Highspot, how have you been able to overcome some of these previous challenges and really drive innovation? JB: It’s industry-leading technology, right? So you all at Highspot offered cutting-edge tech that really positioned us at the forefront of our industry. In the enablement world, if you will,  we certainly have firms that we compete against. I don’t know technically who uses Highspot, but we certainly know who does not use Highspot, I’ll tell you that. Having some advanced features and capabilities was critical to ensure that we could be in that leading technology spot, right? That’s part of our brand identity as well as our firm. We’re not trying to be the stodgy old, broker-dealer that sounds like a law firm, we want to be industry-leading with technology. We know that’s where people are going, and we’re looking to attract those types of professionals to our firm. So that kind of helps in it, but also those enhanced analytical insights that we get, that’s important, right? That was a major driver and the need for us to have more robust tools, deeper insights into our recruits, what they’re looking at, what’s landing well, what doesn’t land well, and really the analytics. Highspot helps us with that, but also it helps us stay organized, which is a great thing. So for those of you who don’t have Highspot right now, we love the search field because it actually uses AI. So when people are in there looking for collateral, they can type in a word that they’re searching for. They say, “Oh, I know that this piece had this phrase, right?” It helps connect those things together, but also those enhanced analytics, when I hit on that topic. It allowed us to open up other pieces that people didn’t know were available. So, maybe there’s someone in a different part of the business who said, “Hey, I didn’t know that we had this specific collateral piece, right?” Because maybe it doesn’t touch that group per se on a regular basis. So that helps, it creates more engagement. But also, at the end of the day, the biggest thing, of course, was the seamless integration into our ecosystem. That’s an important piece of the puzzle. If it can’t integrate with what we’re doing, we can’t get that into our CRM—which is Salesforce on our end—it just is not going to do us any good. SS: I could not agree more. JB has not been compensated for the things that he’s saying, he just really loves the platform and is using it in a phenomenal way. So, thank you for sharing that. Now, Osaic has experienced a lot of change this year, including a rebrand following a few acquisitions. What are your best practices for driving, as you call them, recruits to have a consistent experience with you all amidst all of this change? And how are you leveraging Highspot to help? JB: Absolutely, that’s a great question and an interesting one. We went through a big rebrand, so we used to be multiple firms. We brought everyone together into one Osaic, right? And Highspot has played a really important role, especially on the recruiting side of the puzzle. Because just like anything, when you hear a new brand, you need to have great collateral. You have to have the Sales Plays and other things that you can go in and Pitches that we can get out so we can talk about who we are. As much as we’d like to think that everyone knows who we are—maybe they recognize one of our old firms like Woodbury, or Royal Alliance, and those firms, maybe that was in the back of their mind. We need to make sure that we can talk about our new firm, right? Osaic, who are we? But also that helps us bridge the timeline for those people who may not be aware that we’ve been around more than two years. We’re not the nucleus of the block, we just brought the thing. Basically, we took all the pieces together to make a really nice firm from all of our other broker-dealers. We had certain strengths from different firms and we brought that all together to create and curate a great experience for financial advisors. One of the ways is really a unified voice. When we send out collateral, it's consistent and it has the right brand voice on it, which is important, especially during a rebrand. It's essential we have that in all of our communications because we want to be really consistent with that. Highspot helps us because one thing, I’ll tell you—and this is for anyone listening, whether it’s our industry or, pharmaceuticals, whoever it may be—what we didn’t want to have was people using old collateral they saved on their desktop. I’ll send them out this piece, and maybe it had our old branding. Because what does that do? It creates confusion because they’re going to say, “Wait a minute, you’re Osaic, but why are you sending me something from Advisor Group? I thought your name was Osaic.” So, it helps that just from a procedural way, because if they’re sending it from Highspot, they’re sending it from Osaic. We know it’s the most up-to-date version. Another benefit, again, I’m not paid—I do accept free coffee, and I will drink coffee all day long—is that as we update pieces on our end, it updates in Highspot itself, which is great. So we have the most current brand that’s out there. We certainly have a marketing team, we have a design team, and when they make those changes it’s uploaded to a tool that we have. And then from there, it’s updated in real-time in Highspot. So that’s important, but I think also Highspot can be used not only just as an enablement platform, but you can use it to help train as well. Remember, the cool thing is, you’ve got those Spots that you can make. And I’ll tell you a story: interestingly enough—and this is a best practice for anyone out there who wants to tune into this part of the podcast—when we originally created our Spot, we thought about it from the standpoint of ‘what we want to see in enablement', right? What is important to us? What do we want to see? It was interesting, we went to your conference out in Seattle, which was really fun—big plug for anyone who has not gone, Spark was super fun, go if you get a chance—and we had some time to sit down with Katie and Elise. Look at our spot, and speak with someone, one of your professionals there who could give us feedback and advice on our Spot. What we learned was, and I will take full responsibility for this one, the light bulb went off in 60 seconds. I’m like, oh my gosh, we created this for us to use. We didn’t create it for the end user. So, we went back to the drawing board, we refined what we did, and we learned very quickly that when it was speaking to the end user, that’s where we had the liftoff. That’s where everything started coming together because then our recruiters could go in and say, “Oh, hey, this is the spot we fit in. Here’s the information we need.” So that was one of the pieces to how I think that surprisingly through this rebrand, you can actually use Highspot for a little bit of training because we can create those pages and put those pieces there with a narrative as well to help out with that. Also, Playbooks. It’s another thing you can do in there as well to guide you through different scenarios. There are a lot of ways that you can manage a rebrand, it was so exciting. But it's, again, one of the kind of bringing these comments to a close. It’s so important that it’s consistent with what we do to drive home our brand message: who we are, what we stand for, and what the thematics of our firm are. I’ll tell you, that was the whole point of our rebrand, is making sure that people knew who we were. Without that consistency, that training, and all the other support, it wouldn’t be as successful as it’s been. SS: I love it, and thank you for the plug. I do hope you’re coming out to Spark '24 in October this year again. But, I want to talk about Plays, because you touched on it just now and you have achieved an impressive 67% adoption of Sales Plays. I’d love to understand what are your best practices for building effective Sales Plays and then how are you driving adoption of those with your teams? JB: Absolutely. So one thing that I will tell anyone—and this is whether it’s a Play or anything else you’re doing—if you can gamify the process and make it fun, people will get on board. If you can make it a challenge maybe there’s a—, and full disclosure, we have certainly run little competitions with different groups about this. Whenever it’s a game people get excited and they really get into it, so I found that has worked well. But as it comes to building effective Sales Plays, I’ve got, again, Debbie DeLuca, who’s on our team, who’s amazing. She is the absolute pro at making these Sales Plays. But, first and foremost, you have to start with a clear objective. What is your goal? Defining that goal for each of the Sales Plays, whether it’s to introduce our brand story or adoption of messaging to support a specific product or initiative we have; that’s important. You’ve got to have a clear objective as the first point. But then also along that, you need to make sure it aligns with the business strategy itself. Where does that fit into those puzzle pieces? Super important. Number one, that clear objective. Number two, I would say is understanding who your audience is, right? So we can tailor Plays to different roles and teams, because maybe the recruiting team may have a very different Play than our engagement team, or maybe one of our product, professional groups, or our retirement plan sales consulting group, right? So, it’s going to look different. It’s always important again, to remember who your audience is as you think about that. We like that Highspot allows us to really create rule-specific Plays as well. So, that means that everyone has that relevant and actionable content, right? But also have their persona focus in there as well, right? So, customize the messaging: who is it to, who is the end user? An example of that would be if I’m talking about our technology to an existing person at our firm. That message may sound different to a recruit. What voice are they looking to hear? But also, we do work with third-party recruiters as well. When we consider that, the voice is a little bit different because they’re hearing their clients. They’re our client, per se, because they contract through us. Their client is actually that end advisor. So that voice is a little bit different. So that’s certainly nice, but also leveraging the guidance, make sure it’s structured in there, what are the step-by-step pieces, right? Clear step-by-step instructions are important. Also, if you can put scenarios and use cases in there, that’s always helpful as well. And of course, it wouldn’t be Highspot if you didn’t have the ability to integrate some cool stuff—media, photos, presentations, PDFs, those kinds of things, those go a long way, right? If I give you a play and it’s just a Word doc, let’s be real—you’re losing interest in five seconds, you’re done. But, if we’ve got pictures and other things in there, that also helps to engage users, but again on top of that, it’s a support piece. I like to call it support collateral, I would say that goes in there. So we can link in pieces from our collateral library, templates, scripts, and things like that we have that make it nice. But also, in addition to that, we can go back and look at the performance, too. Are those Plays, are they hitting well with the audience, or are they not? Because if they’re not, we might have to go back and figure out, okay, if we have a 2% open rate, what are we doing wrong? What messaging isn’t getting there? And I would tell anyone, “Hey, the best thing to do is reach out to one of those people that you’re literally creating the Play for.” You may be surprised—what you think they want to hear and what they actually want to hear are two different things, but analytics help. If you have to swallow your pride from it and be like, “Okay, I thought I was right, clearly I was wrong, let me make the phone call to escrow, what do you want to hear?” Along with that, some best practices in the Plays is facilitating the collaboration. We can collaborate across teams on there, too, which is great. I know that was a short question, but a lot of details on that one. Again, I've got a great team of people that I work with and we love Highspot, obviously, so one of the best ways to use this tool, is it needs to have a feedback loop on these things, right? That’s how you can really refine it and make it great because that’s the whole purpose of us using this: to engage, educate, and do everything we do. SS: Absolutely. Now, I want to talk about the impact that this has had, and you guys have seen some really impressive increases in quota attainment and win rate. Can you tell us about some of the business impact that you’ve been able to achieve since implementing Highspot? JB: We have had—this last quarter, into this year—some of the best recruiting that we’ve had on record, which is great. Now, there are a lot of people who can take credit for that, right? There are a lot of people who contribute to that goal, but I can tell you that what we’ve noticed is you can achieve higher efficiency in what you’re doing by using Highspot. Because, now if we have recruiters or other groups throughout our firm who want to leverage the tool, they don’t have to shoot in the dark to find 50 places and find the collateral or the tools they need in their role. That helps, because there are a lot of hands in the cookie jar when it comes to bringing financial advisors over, and in my role specifically. On a regular basis, we have to work with a lot of different groups. That’s one thing that’s important. It also increases the kind of quota attainment itself, we know when people are engaging with us, and we know when they’re not because we have analytics to that. If we see someone that’s engaged, that’s a way better way for us to spend our time. Let’s talk to that recruit, let’s continue the conversation. Or, maybe we’ve had someone who opens up emails or they just look at it and glance. Maybe it’s time for a phone call, right? So a couple ways [it can help] is one, it can help us gauge is the lead cooler than we think, or is the lead warmer than we think? How do we want to take those actions? It also helps us drive higher win rates because we have those data driven insights, that’s important. I know we’ve talked about it a lot, but those advanced analytics to help our team understand what’s important to that person they’re speaking with and that’s across the firm. As an example of the recruiting side, are they interested in hearing about our wealth management offering, maybe it’s our succession and acquisition planning we have, are there services that we have that they’re really interested in? We can plug into that, have a great conversation and go from there. It does help us achieve those higher win rates, but also just from a success standpoint. We’ve seen, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. There’s a lot of people in our industry, in our market, in our model, in our — even who compete with us, but we’re seeing really great recruiting success. I think part of that is our ability to help drive consistent messaging, have those collateral, but also share why people would want to see themselves with let’s say Osaic as a firm. That takes a story, it takes collateral, it takes teams, it takes consistency. I think when you add those all up, those contribute to that. But again, the other important part as we think about that too, is that helps drive revenue. There’s that scalability factor, all those things play into that success. We’re lucky that we’ve been able to count on Highspot to be part of that. As we say, it’s not about the amount of touchdowns you get. It’s all about moving the players down the field and Highspot helps more efficiently move the players down the field, because that’s what you can control. And we know that leads to better win rates. SS: JB, last question for you. As you look to the future, how are you continuing to drive innovation through technology at Osaic and how do you plan to leverage Highspot to help? JB: Absolutely. I love tech, I could talk about it all day. But for us, as I think about ways that we’re continuing to drive that innovation, Highspot allows us to be user-centric with what we’re doing. And that’s important, whether it’s the internal user who’s using it on the inside, but also the user-centric piece on the receiving end. When we’re talking to those recruits that could be our existing clients, who would be financial advisors, and professionals who are already with us as a whole, right? Having that technology allows us to continually refine what we’re doing, and scaling up and scaling down is a big piece of that. We are lucky enough that what I would tell people, the analogy that I use when I’m talking about our story here is, there’s a lot of firms who— whether they’re larger than us or smaller than us—we all have similar capabilities, more often than not. Let’s be real, right? We all know that. You’ve got 20 different coffee shops, they all serve coffee. But, what makes us stand out? One of the things we’ve done with our technology is make sure that instead of putting things together with band-aids—I like to say fishing line, and hope it works—one of the things we did over these past few years is we ripped out the wiring, we ripped out the plumbing on the house, we did the hard work first. Part of that was also us bringing on tools like Highspot, because when we have a better technology infrastructure as a whole, these things are cool because we can scale up, we can also scale them down. The other piece to that too, as I look to drive that innovation, are those tailored experiences as well? That’s important. I’ve seen emails from some firms and it’s the exact same thing. I think to myself, how interesting would you be as the end user to get three of the same emails from three different firms? How crazy is that? We can create that tailored experience, and It also helps us show that we’re listening as well, because if you’re leaving the firm, you’re not leaving because you don’t have anything better to do with your time. There’s a reason, so let us help tailor that to your experience. But also, innovation-wise, we can really drive dynamic content as well, which is important that adapts to our users journey. Again, that could be internal or external when we use that as well. But, I think a lot of it can be summed up with one big thing: I'm looking to foster that culture of innovation, to help carry that torch across our teams and throughout the firm. I’m lucky enough that, quite literally from our CEO and our president down, they are so supportive about empowering us to create that innovation. We want to be the technology leaders in our industry, right in that broker-dealer space. So there’s a lot of things I'm really looking forward to when it comes to innovation. Those are just a couple of them on driving that innovation. But, for anyone out there, even if you don’t have Highspot now and you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Hey, we got a different tool.” Just know that tailored experience, the analytics, the ability to, scale up and scale down and all the integrations for us at Osaic, we found that is where the magic happens and that translates directly to our win rates and success in other areas. We can create a really clear dotted line from A to B, and understanding what that ROI is as important as well. As much as I can talk about——, if you ask me, I’m going to say everything is fantastic. We’re making great progress and having great wins. We’ve still got to back it up with some metrics, too, and that’s where it comes in, on the analytic side. I would just I would do all emojis hey, here’s our whole scorecard. Everything’s an emoji. But usually people want some more tangible numbers to be alongside that as well. SS: J. B., thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time. Thank you again. JB: Thanks so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure. 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.

According to a study by Gartner, 83% of heads of sales report sellers struggle to adapt to changing customer needs. So how can you build an enablement strategy that ensures you’re meeting every seller where they are?Shawnna Sumaoang: 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 Shelby Luchini, the strategic content go-to-market enablement manager for Grammarly. Thank you for joining us, Shelby. I would love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Shelbi Luchini: Awesome, thanks for having me. A little bit about me, I’ve been at Grammarly for a little over a year in our enablement org, and prior to that, I was at Outreach for about seven years. I had an awesome journey there where I started as a customer-facing rep and moved into enablement and I really love onboarding, coaching, and training reps. At Grammarly, I’ve been doing that same thing.We have an awesome enablement team here and my role is working on strategic programs that scale across our market org. So from BDRs, all the way to RCS and SC function. Anytime we’re building out programs that might have to do with discovery or new feature releases, new content for our teams, and working really closely with our product marketing partners, that’s where you’ll find me.SS: Wonderful, we are excited to have you here. As an experienced enablement leader, I’d love to start with understanding some of your key considerations for crafting an enablement strategy that really drives impact. SL: First and foremost is really making sure that we have a buy-in and a good understanding, from the leaders as to what they’re looking for as far as accomplishing goals. Standing up some strong KPIs around what we’re looking to accomplish with the program and working really closely with reps.So we have some segment enablement managers on the enablement org that I work really closely with. We partner closely with the AEs, CSMs, any roles that we’re rolling out to, to make sure that we’re getting not only the leadership and the manager perspective but rep perspective on what they’re struggling with and what the problems that we’re looking to solve with any of the enablement programs. That’s first and foremost, and then having a really strong reinforcement strategy. So one thing I’ve learned with enablement that’s super important is, trying to avoid flash-in-the-pan enablement where you might have a bunch of ad hoc requests coming through from leaders or reps and making sure that you have a strong reinforcement strategy to bolster on top of the enablement programs that you roll out. SS: You talk a lot about your experience building enablement programs from scratch, particularly on LinkedIn, which I love. What are some of your best practices for building enablement programs from the ground up to support your go-to-market initiatives? SL: It comes back to having that manager buy-in and having managers support enablement programs when you don’t have some of that reinforcement from the leaders. It’s really difficult to make sure that reps are taking trainings, or even invested in their learning and development. It comes with the culture and laying the culture and the foundation is probably where, if you don’t have that, it’s going to be really hard to stand up an enablement program from the get-go. So there’s that. I also think that building strong foundational partnerships with go-to-market teams, like product marketing, those different departments are super fundamental to the success of any enablement program. So I think manager reinforcement and the partnerships that enablement builds are really crucial to any success of building something from the ground up. And then lastly, I’ll say having a strong vision for what enablement looks like is awesome, but also having some quick wins. Putting together a strong roadmap is great in partnership with leaders and everything when you get in, and maybe a sales team isn’t super used to getting help from any sort of enablement or having resources. Having quick wins to show, hey, this team is really valuable to our organization and they’re just trying to help us learn and grow both professionally and personally. I think that’s super key to having a strong enablement program and starting from the ground up. SS: Yes, I could not agree more. It’s fantastic that you’re striking that balance between the long-term strategy and also supporting those quick wins. How does your enablement platform help you to deliver on both of those components, both your strategy and the quick wins to support your go-to-market initiatives? SL: We use Highspot as one of our enablement platforms, and it really allows us to direct the teams to a one-stop shop. So they always know that Highspot is the platform to go to after we have any sort of all-hands meeting or an enablement meeting or training, and it supports us in getting out new content. Our marketing and product marketing team does an awesome job of developing really great thought leadership and content. And we’re always. It’s, putting that in front of our teams, to support some of those ad hoc requests that might come through as well as, big strategy enablement programs like Discovery Playbooks or Persona Playbooks. And we’re always driving reps to Highspot and they never have to guess where content or enablement programs or trainings live. It’s always in that one place. SS: I love that. And I know one of Grammarly’s key initiatives this year is ensuring that you’re constantly upleveling both your new and experienced reps for discovery, especially with the c-suite persona. How are you driving this effort through your enablement programs? SL: We’re trying to weave discovery and that starts from the most basic foundational discovery playbooks. Giving reps insight into how to use insight openers and data to have compelling questions and dig in and uncover payoff and impact with their customers. But we’ve rolled out a ton of different Plays, and that includes Plays from discovery, buyer personas, as well as any new feature releases that we’re rolling out. We’re always trying to incorporate Discovery questions into that, and how can they make sure that this is just a natural part of everything? Any sort of enablement program that we roll out to just have it be muscle memory, right? We want it to be second nature as far as when they’re having those conversations with prospects and customers really leaning in and they should be sprinkling discovery into every conversation that they have. Discovery isn’t just a one moment in time or one call. It’s all always happening throughout the entire sales cycle. We want to make sure that muscle memory is really baked in and really an inherent skill for reps. SS: And you have a particular interest in utilizing Digital Rooms. How are your teams leveraging Digital Rooms to really personalize the buyer experience for some of your key personas? SL: Digital Rooms has been a really exciting thing for our teams. Just to give a little context, prior to using Highspot and Digital Rooms, our reps were sending out emails with big file attachments, it was probably getting lost in a lot of prospects inboxes, and very difficult to find information and send it out to prospects with the latest and greatest.So Digital Rooms, what I love about it is it’s allowed our reps to be themselves, it shows their personality. They’ve added pictures of themselves showing their hobbies and putting a face to the name, almost similar to like a LinkedIn, but next level, which I love. And then we also have content that’s definitely personalized to our different buyer personas. And so giving guidance on hey, here’s some information that you might send to a marketing persona or a CX buyer. So we’re really clear with our descriptions and our content of what what content might be applicable to different personas that they’re reaching out to. So it should be really easy for the reps to drag and drop content into our different Digital Room templates that we’ve created. So we have a handful of different Digital Room templates that reps can just go ahead and create, and then they’re also just making copies. They’re sharing out Digital Rooms with one another. So it’s been a really great experience and I think reps are using it across the deal cycle. Not even just to help them close deals, but after the fact, passing some of the Digital Rooms over to some of our onboarding folks, so they can continue the journey with our customers. SS: I love that. And I’d love to dig into that maybe in another podcast, cause I’m always curious about how companies are using it across the entire journey, not just pre-sales, but post-sales as well, so that’s exciting to hear. Now, you’ve also seen some really great results utilizing Sales Plays with your teams and you guys have. 92% adoption, which is amazing. What are some of your best practices for building effective sales plays that really help your teams land these go to market initiatives in the field? SL: I think one of the biggest things for our teams is just consistency; consistency and how Plays look, how they feel and the rate at which we roll out different Sales Plays, right? I think it comes back to the flash-in-the-pan enablement and trying to avoid doing some of that. But anytime we’re doing, you know a tier two or a tier three feature launch for example, there’s always an associated Play and it always includes insight into those discovery questions—what are some discovery questions you can incorporate to dig deeper, uncover pain, et cetera. But, we’ve really relied on Highspot for some of their best practices. And so we follow the know, say, show, and do method, which has been really helpful—and not even just for me, in terms of building the Plays—but I think just for reps in following, here’s what you can expect every time you see a Play. I think that’s been really helpful for them from a consistency standpoint. SS: When you’re thinking about your go-to-market initiatives, what are some of the outcomes that you have seen that might have seemed impossible to achieve, but that you’ve been able to do with your enablement efforts? SL: Prior to using Highspot, we really had no insight into, how many emails reps were sending, how the content was getting engaged with—it was really a black box. Looking at some of our results from Highspot, reps have sent over about 3,500 Digital Rooms and we’ve had Highspot since December of 2023. There’s been a lot of engagement with customers, over half of those folks that our reps sent those Digital Rooms have actually engaged with the content, which is really exciting to see. They’re sending tons of content, They’re sending Digital Rooms, and we’ve had over 1,200 opportunities contacted, and I don’t know if that would have been possible—or we wouldn’t have at least known that it would have been possible—without Highspot. We’ve influenced a significant amount of revenue with the platform. I think just the visibility into seeing what we’ve done with Highspot has been incredible. I’m really proud of the team for leaning in and really taking a Highspot under their wing, because hen I first deployed it, I was a little skeptical of getting some of those really exciting metrics and it’s been a really cool experience to see the teams really embrace it. SS: It seems like you’re seeing amazing trajectory with it, so you’re doing a fantastic job and kudos to you and the team. Last question for you, Shelbi, as you are looking ahead, how are you continuing to push the envelope on what’s possible with enablement at Grammarly? SL: One of the most exciting things that we’ve done over the last year is one, built out the enablement team. So prior to my manager Flav starting, there wasn’t any enablement and now we’re at seven folks on the enablement team, which is really exciting. I think we’ve done an amazing job of laying this out—the foundational programs, discovery, enterprise ICPs, persona, playbooks. Now, we’re really starting to get into some of the more advanced topics like building business proposals and really laying some of those next-level programs for the teams to go bigger and go sell into more of those enterprise companies.There are some really exciting things on the docket for enablement and Grammarly, and continuing to lean into some of that reinforcement. I think we’re going to be able to build on a lot of the enablement programs that we’ve already set into motion. That’s one thing that’s super exciting about enablement is, you always come back to some of those foundational things that you’ve rolled out in the past. They always continue to iterate, we always continue to partner with our product marketing teams on how do we bolster those and continue to incorporate new features into that existing messaging, et cetera. I think there’s a lot of really awesome opportunity to continue building on some of the foundational programs and starting to incorporate ROI into the conversation and uplevel the skills from that perspective. SS: I’m excited to see what you and the team do at Grammarly. Shelbi, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me. I really appreciate it.  SL: Right on. Thank you so much, really appreciate your time.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.

Research from Sales Enablement Pro found that reps are 15% more likely to understand how to navigate different sales scenarios when utilizing sales plays. So how can you ensure your sales teams are effectively equipped for success?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 John Hesseltine, the senior manager of sales enablement at Crestron Electronics. Thank you for joining us, JJ. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. John Hessaltine: Thank you for having me, Shawnna. As you said, I’m the senior manager of sales enablement at Crestron Electronics. We do a bunch of different things that make everyone’s lives easier and I’ve been here for almost six years. I previously came from another manufacturer in the professional AV space. In total, maybe 12 years total in the professional AV scene. But I’m not alone, right? I have a fantastic team of six people who all work together to create sales enablement content all within Highspot. So it’s clearly not just a job for one person, I represent the whole team here and we’re excited to be a part of this. As for like the role and what we do, like it’s been in flux for the last six years since I’ve been within sales enablement, it’s still like sales enablement still an extremely new position, we’re still trying to figure out what it means. Sales enablement folks know what it means, [but] everyone else within the company is like, “So what is it that you do?” I guess what that means is we’ve been changing what we do every so often. Every year we have new updates, roll out different strategies, and try to implement new changes to hopefully equip the sales team better around the globe for Crestron. It’s been a lot of fun and we just try to make ourselves useful for everyone. SS: I love that. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today, I appreciate it. Crestron Electronics is definitely on the cutting edge of innovation and manufacturing. What are some of the strategic initiatives that you are focused on driving for the business and how does your enablement strategy help to support these? JH: For folks that don’t know Crestron Electronics, we have almost 2,000 unique SKUs —a super wide range of products that we offer: commercial, residential, marine education, government healthcare, and hospitality. We do so much stuff [for] everyone that’s behind the scenes if you will. The way we say it is we make spaces smart, we enhance the way people live and work, and we do all that via hardware or software. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into manufacturing, but it’s really difficult to enable [for] 2,000 unique SKUs. You could do content for each one of those or each product family, but that doesn’t totally work.What our value is as a company is how we bring all of that together to create one consistent ecosystem, regardless of if you’re in the home, or if you’re in the office, or you’re in the hospital, a hotel, or a school. We bring all that together and that’s where sales enablement is key. Being able to consistently deliver a message, not just about products, but how all those products come together as a multi-layered, multifaceted approach. Creating value not just for the end user, but the IT professionals and the people that have to work with the technology on the backend every day.So, really it’s enabling our sales folks to talk about, and position our ecosystem, and leverage everything that we have to provide the best possible experience. That’s what we do when we create storylines, right? We work with a bunch of folks in different aspects of the business. We have people in vertical marketing and channel marketing, we work with the various team leads and VPs to come up with consistent strategies for their teams to leverage with all our products. A hospital is going to use the same product that potentially an enterprise is going to use, but they’re going to use them in different ways and they’re going to connect to different things. We enable folks to speak proficiently about our product and our solutions specific to the market. That’s what we’re doing and that’s how sales enablement is helping Crestron get that word out and that message out. SS: Now, you talked already about some of the unique considerations for the manufacturing industry, but how do you factor those into building an effective enablement strategy? JH: Part of the best thing about being a manufacturer, and especially when you’re techy, is you get to work with the people that build the product, engineer them, and design them. The biggest issue when working in an electronics manufacturer is translating that vision from the person that created it and making it accessible to everyone to understand not just, our customers, but also our sales team. We can do some really interesting and complex solutions for problems that our customers might face. It’s sometimes really hard to explain how we do that and what our value is in doing that. That’s one of the interesting things about being a manufacturer—you’re creating all this new stuff, and it has a place in the market, but you just have to tell the customers and tell the world what it does and how it does it.The way you do that is via your sales team. Of course, you can do marketing, you can put anything out there on the internet on the web, and make posts on LinkedIn. It's really making sure that your sales team can also articulate those advantages and they feel confident in doing it.We want to make sure that they can have conversations about the products and go a little bit in-depth when they need to. And that’s why we leverage, Sales Plays within Highspot. We can give them what to know, say, show, and do with their customers. And, it gives a really easy hopscotch approach within their sales opportunity. They go from their needs audit, or they ask questions of the customer to find out what it is that the customer is looking for. We don’t tell our sales team to go in there pushing X, Y, and Z products. We want them to sit down with the customer, understand what their needs are, and what their problems are, and have a meaningful conversation with them. Then we can start prescribing and telling them we think this would solve their issues, and here’s why. Highspot has allowed us to organize those conversations for the sales team in an easy-to-follow way. I think that from the manufacturing side, that’s difficult. Initially, without a platform like Highspot and without being able to organize all of this stuff, you would just get spec sheets, and spec sheets don’t tell a story. Some people can understand or read one, and they prefer that, and that’s fantastic. But a lot of people making purchasing decisions in our industry find a lot of value in other aspects and they don’t care to learn specifically about what the product or solution does.That’s the fun part about working for a manufacturer, we can make that story, extract from the spec sheets, and use those as data, but then create the story of how the sales team should use it and talk to the customers and show the value.SS: Now I want to focus specifically on the enablement components prior to Highspot. I believe you all were leveraging a different enablement platform to execute your strategy. What were some of the challenges you were facing during that time and what was the impetus for making a change? JH: This was before COVID, and we switched to Highspot during COVID. We switched to Highspot in early 2020 and we had already made that decision. But in December of 2019, someone who was pretty high up came walking by my desk [and said], “Hey, so and so says that the platform's not good.” And we’re like, “Oh, okay. Interesting.” And so I told my boss that, and it was “Oh, all right, we got to make a change.” It had reached the point where it was being spoken about that. What we have isn’t working and it was all the way at the top of the company. And we’re like, “Alright, we’ll make a change.”We did our due diligence, we looked and explored different options, and we landed on Highspot. It made a massive difference. We didn’t know what we were missing, we didn’t. It’s been a wild ride, we’ve been with Highspot for a little over three years at this point, and it’s been great. It’s been eye-opening and we’ve been learning so much and reiterating what we do with it. We weren’t able to get that with our previous platform and it’s been awesome also working with Highspot in large part, thanks to podcasts like this that we’re on now, where there are sales enablement pros also being a part of the journey with us as a customer.We learned so much from not just being in the platform, but from all of the content and all of the assets that Highspot as a company creates for the sales enablement industry. And that’s been extremely helpful for us to sit down and focus and not have to do our own research specifically, but listen to what you all say as pros, and it’s gone a long way to help us create a better platform for our users. SS: I do always love to hear that, so thank you. Now, talk to us about some of the challenges, though, and how you were able to overcome those challenges by leveraging Highspot to help? JH: Biggest challenge: I can’t find anything, and I don’t know where anything’s at. Our previous instance looked like a folder structure. No different than SharePoint, right? So that was the biggest hurdle, our sales team needed to find resources to use. We’ve been able to reorganize Highspot—search tags were a godsend. Being able to organize things with tags and then, guess what? The search works with tags. It just made it so easy to, you can find content. What we’re saying now—and we should have said this three years ago when we first started using Highspot—[if] you can use a mouse, you can use Highspot, it’s where you can find everything you need. Now granted, a lot of that has to do with my team of six folks who worked hard through multiple iterations, Highspot assisted with making a UI that makes sense for our users. We were able to do that, and the next thing was actually telling people how to use the content they found. Sales Plays was just like an epiphany. We didn’t have anything like a Sales Play prior to that, so we would just put assets on there. Comparison documents, compete documents, SWOT analyses, all the typical things sales say they need and marketing says you should do. We’re doing all that content, we would put it out there and announce it so people would know about it. But, only 20% of the sales team looks at the announcements we do.You can’t force their eyes like Clockwork Orange, where you just see and look at all our announcements for everything. Being able to organize it in a way that makes sense for the user has been able for us to leverage, to organize the content in a way that they see it, they find it, no matter their journey to get there, regardless if they’re clicking, or if they’re searching, or if they’re looking at one of the Sales Plays we made, right? We have the content in multiple different ways which has been super helpful. We still get calls about, “Do we have any assets about this?” Absolutely. But, those calls are super diminished. If anything, it’s great now because everyone knows that they should be looking in Highspot first.They say I didn’t find it in Highspot. We might have done something wrong, but we’re also super happy that the sales team is using Highspot to find content. It’s been great. It went from something that was, “I guess I need to look in there for something”, to the default workflow and work path for the sales team.They will look at Highspot first before they go to our website. They will look at Highspot first before they go to our marketing portal. Highspot is that single location where they go to find anything, and that’s it. There are certain things we don’t have on Highspot for a reason, and we get questions like, “Hey, why isn’t this on Highspot?” “Oh, because of this.” “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” But it’s so ingrained in them now to go check Highspot first. It’s great, we’ve been able to surface the content and organize it in ways that we weren’t able to do before, and that’s made all the difference for us. SS: And I can tell because your results are amazing. You guys have an incredible 92% adoption rate. I’d love to understand, what are some of your best practices for driving adoption with your reps? JH: It’s a name, actually. Jill, on my team, is one of the reasons that we have such great results. One of the great things about this whole sales enablement thing is people know who we are now. Our names are associated with all the content we do and one of those names is Jill, on our team. She calls every single rep, and we’re a global company, so we have people all around the globe and she calls every single one of them. From their bosses, their directors, and their VPs, and asks them, “What are you using from Highspot that is successful? What else do you need? Do you have any comments?”We have constant contact with all of our sales reps and we use Highspot as the backbone for it. “Did you see this, by the way? We just added this to Highspot and we just announced it out. Did you see this?” “Oh yeah, I’ve seen it and I had a lot of success using that with X, Y, Z customers.”We pick up the phone and call people. I know it’s a weird concept nowadays, but we literally do schedule phone calls, and Jill calls everyone in the organization and it helps us get everyone on the same page. So that’s one of the ways that we drive adoption.We call them and tell them what’s new, right? [It's] really easy to ignore an email, especially when you get multiple emails from the same source over and over again because we’re constantly churning out content for them. You can’t ignore a phone call, [and] you don’t want to ignore the phone call from Jill. It’s great though and that’s how we get a lot of uptake on the platform. SS: Communication is key, so that’s fantastic. JJ, you’ve talked about this a few times, but I’d like to actually click into it a little bit. A major part of your strategy is Sales Plays, for which you even won an Impact Award—congratulations. What are your best practices for building effective Plays? JH: The first thing we did, and maybe it’ll help others get their Play adoption up, is we make like a monthly reader’s digest for each of our market verticals. We call that the monthly message and we make that in a Sales Play format.So that is the default thing, we put everything in there. It’s not like we’re explaining everything, we just have links. It’s like a repository, a link to Plays, and it trees out from Play to Play as you go down there. We have all the sales teams default. “Oh, I’m going to look at the commercial monthly message. I’ll look at the residential monthly message.” And you can’t go wrong when you look at that because of all the content that we create. The sales enablement team, we don’t just say, I feel like making a piece of content or a Sales Play on this today. We work with the sales leaders and find out what they are really focused on—if there’s a new product, or a really big initiative.We don’t just create content for content’s sake, we make it relevant to the business, and our sales team travels a lot. If they just need to check in on, “Oh, what is it I’m supposed to be doing?” It’s in a Sales Play. It’s right on the homepage of Highspot when they log in. We have the monthly message Sales Play and that has other Sales Plays in it. They can go in, they know that they’re going to get an organized structure of, what to say about it, what our advantages are, there might be a competitive analysis in there that they can look at or leverage, and pitch out to a customer when they’re going up against a competitor like that. And it’s just become an integral part of the experience within Highspot.Yes, we have a lot of individual assets, but almost every asset is made in response to a Play. They’re all tied in there and they’re all interconnected. Plays have been a major part of our time at Highspot and we find them good to leverage. It’s a solid solution and we don’t make them too big either. SS: Absolutely. It sounds like you’ve created a really interconnected experience for them leveraging plays. How do you leverage those same sales plays to help support some of the key strategic initiatives that you’re driving for the business? JH: Like I said, we do them based on new product launches or campaigns that we’re leveraging. But the main thing is, we have a red phone all the way to the top, and we can talk to anyone. That’s one of the great things that we’re privileged to have, is we can speak with anyone. We use those Plays to say, this is what XVP is saying, this is what the mandate is, right? At the end of the day, we all have marching orders. The plays encapsulate that, right? And that’s how we get strategic initiatives accomplished. I can give you an example. Recently there was some industry news.The first thing that happened, the head of residential sales called us and said, “I need a Sales Play about this subject right now.” We created a form, he gave us a little bit of information, and we went with it from there. We worked with marketing, we created a Sales Play, it was super timely and super important. Then, what the head of sales did, he called every single rep and said, “There’s a Sales Play made. I need you to read that. There’s also a Pitch template made. I need you to pitch that to every single one of your customers.” This is not typical, but it was extremely timely. We just got handed a golden opportunity and we need to take this, our whole sales team needs to act on it immediately. Sales Plays are super vital and super important to us and as a result, we reached out to thousands of people, thousands of customers and have opened up conversations that, those doors we thought were closed. We’ve opened up conversations with those customers again, those deals, and it’s been great.So we’ve had a great response with it. It’s awesome, the sales leaders, like the head of sales, think of Highspot first when he wants to get a message out. SS: That is amazingly impactful and again, another area where you guys are seeing amazing results. You’ve driven 88% Play Adoption amongst your team, even in just the last few months. Can you tell us about some additional examples of the impact that you’ve been able to drive through plays?  JH: I can’t give you numbers specifically because as we’re talking, our Salesforce sync is happening with Highspot, which is at 30% at the moment. So we don’t have numbers associated with anything. But I can tell you, my team sees it on LinkedIn all the time, we see our content being used on social media. Of course, it’s legally approved and able to be sent externally, we market as such within Highspot. But we see our content in use, we see the messages that we write, how we write things, and what we tell our sales team to say.We see that happen and then the sales team will come back to us and say, “I had a lot of success with this. This worked so well. Can we get something else like this?” I think the proof is in the pudding, we are seeing 100% impact of what we do. It is so cool to log into LinkedIn and then see new ways that people are using our content. I can’t give you numbers, but I can tell you that it’s being used and we see it everywhere. It’s great.  SS: It sounds like it. JJ, last question for you. As you look to the year ahead, what are some trends or innovations you see that are really shaping the future of enablement in manufacturing?JH:  AI. AI is something that we’re really excited about. Everyone’s talking about Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and all of those things. I haven’t dabbled in that too much, but I’ve dabbled in a bit of the Highspot AI and how much that’s helped us. If that can translate over to creating content, that’d be awesome. As I said at the top, we have almost 2,000 unique SKUs. That’s a lot to create content for, and if we can just create little tidbits of information about something that we didn’t have before on certain SKUs, that’d be awesome and that helps a lot. I think AI is going to be a way that is going to make us more efficient, right? We’re not going to leverage AI to create new content from scratch. You have to feed it good material, but it’s just going to make our lives so much easier and so much quicker to collect the information, and put it in a standardized format that we can then bring to the finish line. As it is now, we spend hours, days, and weeks doing certain tasks. AI is going to make that easier and it allows us to be more efficient. I don’t know if AI is going to help us get more done, right? The biggest thing I learned from Highspot is it’s not always about more, but it’s also about the [quality], more importantly. We don’t want to do more Sales Plays.One of the biggest things I learned from Spark was you can only change the behavior of the sales team three times a quarter. More than that, the sales team is getting whiplash. We’re not going to use AI to create more content in that respect, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to use AI to help us focus more on creating better Plays for the sales team.AI is just going to take a load off our backs and we can focus more on what is impactful for our teams, and we think it’s Sales Plays. That’s what I’m looking forward to, I’m looking forward to more AI stuff. We're still in a trust, but verify phase with AI. I think that’s going to be a massive help to help us really concentrate on what we know is effective for our sales teams. SS: Amazing. I hope you’re joining us again at Spark ‘24 in October because I think we have a lot more innovation coming on that front. John, thank you so much for joining us today, I really appreciate the time. JH: Thank you. It was great. Thanks for having me on, I really appreciate it. 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.

According to data from Gartner, organizations that prioritize revenue enablement are 75% more likely to exceed their revenue growth targets. So how can you drive impact with an effective enablement strategy?  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 Lou Keane, the senior vice president of revenue operations at GWI. Thanks for joining us, Lou. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Lucrezia Keane: It’s great to be here. I joined GWI about 11 years ago, previous to that, I was working for another research company called Kantar. I started off as an individual contributor on the account management side and worked my way up there for the first six years. When I joined GWI 11 years ago, it was very much a startup. There were 13 people in the whole business and I joined to set up the account management team. And then grew that team from myself as a player-coach and one other rep, to having 15 account managers. We launched a customer success team as well so then high antenna customer success reps. And drove the growth of the account management, renewal, and expansion of existing accounts.By then, my role pivoted and changed a little bit. So I started looking after what we define as sales excellence, which covers everything around enablement and operations. This is at the point when we brought Highspot on board, and my role now is a little bit more focused on revenue growth. So, looking after SDRs, channel, and partnership solution partners, which are essentially our sales engineers but spanning still some enablement operations. SS: We’re so excited to have you here, Lou. You had an opportunity to work across multiple disciplines, as you mentioned in your introduction, from account management to sales excellence and revenue growth, based on this experience, what do you see as the strategic value of enablement for revenue teams? LK: Absolutely. From my perspective, the main thing about enablement is helping to improve efficiency and drive productivity. Whether it’s updating processes, creating new processes bringing on tools that enable you to automate certain tasks, driving efficiencies, or having the analytics and the background to really understand the impact of those tools and the impact on the business. Then the last bit for me is content. Having the right content for the reps, whether it’s training type of content or more of the sales collateral and sales assets. For me, enablement looks at processes, tools, and content, and to drive efficiency and productivity. SS: I couldn’t agree more. Now, thinking back before you had Highspot, what were some of the challenges your teams were facing? LK: We had a few. So, as a startup and then a scale-up, there were lots of pieces of content saved in lots of different places. We moved to Google Drive, and it was very difficult for reps to find the latest piece of content and the most appropriate for certain conversations with different types of clients. It was difficult to measure client engagement with that content. Providing a marketing team or strategic insights team with feedback on how clients were engaging and what really worked in the sales process—those are the main challenges. Then, streamline training and onboarding. It was very manager-led, done slightly differently, depending on the manager, depending on the team. So streamlining all of that was a key aspect that we needed to improve. SS: I think we all can definitely relate. And at that time, I believe you were leveraging a different enablement platform. What was the impetus for deciding to make a change and find another solution? LK: At the time we had an LMS. But I don’t think it was being used as widely, or as effectively as it needed to be. It was also because it wasn’t owned within the revenue team—adoption wasn’t great—and then we used Google Drive for managing a lot of our content, which isn’t the best place to manage content. Yeah, really fun finding a solution that helped with content management and tracking, but also coaching and training. As part of the evaluation process, we spoke to a number of different companies, including Highspot. But what really made Highspot shine compared to some of the other companies that we were evaluating was really the ability to do both of those things and do them well. We spoke to companies that were really strong in the content management part but didn’t have the coaching and training element and vice versa. So, having the combination of the two was really key for us. SS: I love that and I’m glad you did. Part of your team’s focus when bringing on Highspot was building out training programs. Why was this a key focus for your business and how did Highspot help you to build effective training? LK: It was a key focus because we were growing really rapidly. We were hiring lots of new people and realized that maybe our ramp time was a little bit slower than we wanted it to be. As I mentioned earlier training was very manager-led during isolation by different teams and different managers.Some were better at it, some weren’t as great. So really having a consolidated unified way of training the different teams, bringing them into Highspot, building out Sales Plays, building out all of the different learning paths, customizing those learning paths based on different roles or teams that they were working on.It enabled us to be a lot more effective and efficient with the training that we were building, and how that was being delivered to our reps with different types of content, in different types of formats. We brought in LinkedIn Learning videos and had our own, we mixed it up with some face-to-face sessions and some self-learning and had different quizzes. So it made it much more engaging and interactive than we had before. It also enabled reps to go back to it. So it wasn’t a kind of one-and-done type scenario, but it enabled them to, if they weren’t quite clear on something, to refer back to it. But, I think one of the key things that we’re still leveraging now—and it’s a really easy way for reps to understand new processes or products—is Sales Plays. It really helps give the rep a streamlined, really concise view of, for example, what the product is, how to speak to customers about it, what use cases it answers, how will customers be leveraging it, and really helps them in their sales journey. SS: You’ve done an amazing job. Your team has seen incredible adoption since implementing Highspot, including 88% recurring usage. What were some of your best practices for driving adoption when you first implemented the new platform? LK: We did a lot of training, and a lot of roadshows team by team to really address the needs of every individual team. There was a lot of drop-in sessions following the first launch, and we spent a lot of time showing the value of Pitches and Sales Plays and why it was a much quicker and better way of finding out more about a product. But also, with the Pitches, is sharing content with clients and prospects, understanding how those clients and prospects were engaging with those.It was so easy to show the value of things like Pitches to the sales reps because for an account manager where the contract’s coming up for renewal, they could share that through a pitch and they could see: A, has a key decision maker engaged with it? Have they shared it with anyone else? Who are they sharing it with?It gives the reps the right time to reach out to that person. Once they know they’ve had the time to consume that content, then they reach out to them, rather than it being completely blank and chasing people endlessly. So that was really helpful.We set up Spot owners to keep things up to date, that was critical. And obviously, one of the issues we had previously was that a lot of content wasn’t up to date. So having Highspot and having Spot owners who were responsible for uploading new things, and removing when things were out of date built that trust with the team as well. They know that when they go in there, they have access to the latest information, and I think we constantly share updates on new content available. Everyone across the organization has really adopted it; our CRO will constantly share links to assets that are in Highspot. So again, it’s driving that usage and that engagement with the tool as well.SS: I love that. In addition to adoption, what are some of the business outcomes you saw after implementing Highspot? LK: The first one was really about ramping faster. New joiners that were joining GWI were able to, through the different kinds of learning paths, onboard themselves a lot quicker, and had better results.We see that kind of on an ongoing basis with our SDR team, as well. They’re running faster than they ever did, hitting their targets quicker. They have better knowledge of how to engage with the customers and better knowledge about new products. So it’s not just for new reps, but also existing reps who want to upskill themselves. Being able to do that as and when they need, and not be too constrained to a training session that’s being booked in four to six weeks’ time.If there’s something new that’s already been released, they can access that content straight away. Those were the main things that we saw. The other thing was better success rates in terms of closing deals faster because of the Pitches and engaging at the right moment, I say those are the main things. SS: Fantastic. And ultimately, how have your teams overcome the challenges they previously faced and how did Highspot help? LK: One of the things is, it made it a lot easier to find the right content. We did a lot of work on filtering, but some of the developments that Highspot made by making the search functionality a lot easier and a lot more intuitive, really helped our reps and our teams find the right content a lot quicker.Being able to track engagements in general, just having a better-informed sales team through the content that’s in there. And then again, having less out-of-date content really streamlines the process, and makes sure that the right content is in the hands of the right people and the right clients.And they’re not sharing stats or information that’s 12 months out of date, because that can really impact the trust you have with a client or a prospect. SS: I love to hear that. Lou, last question for you, looking toward the future of GWI, what do you hope to achieve in the year ahead and how can Highspot help?LK: I think that so many features that Highspot has, we could actually embed a lot more and do a lot more of. One of the things that we really want to look at is how we embed Highspot content training and learning in Salesforce more. So that when reps are in Salesforce, they have that content surfacing.We’ve done a little bit of it, but it’s probably not as well organized as we’d like. We’re launching a new LMS platform and I think integrating the LMS with Highspot will be key. We’d like to do a lot more with some of the new AI features that you’ve launched and also leverage the scorecards more.So there are definitely a few features that we need to do more of. But again, it’s great to have a platform like Highspot that really helps us move forward with some of these things. SS: Thank you so much for joining us, Lou. I really appreciate it. LK: No, it’s great to be here and it’s lovely talking to you.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.

According to the State of Sales Enablement Report from 2024, 76% of executive leaders say that an enablement platform is key to improving overall sales performance. So how can an enablement platform help drive momentum at your organization?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win podcast. I’m 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 Kate Shearer, the senior manager of sales enablement at Antech Diagnostics. Thanks for joining us, Kate. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role.Katherine Shearer: Thank you for having me. My name is Kate Shearer, I’m the senior manager of sales enablement at Antech Diagnostics. We’re part of Mars Global Incorporated. I’ve been in the sales industry for about six years and in the veterinary industry for, about 15—I can’t believe it’s been that long. I oversee sales enablement for Antech Diagnostics and we’re made up of about 250 sales professionals across six or seven specialized sales role types and help with enablement for an entire organization of about 400 commercial and sales professionals. SS: I appreciate you joining us, Kate. I know that Antech Diagnostics has had a lot of momentum over the last year, including a recent acquisition. How has this growth trajectory influenced your enablement strategy?KS: It has been part and parcel of shaping our enablement strategy. Our org has just rocket launched in terms of growth, new role types, and different departments that have been introduced all in the last year. We have had to be a lot more thoughtful, purposeful, [and] strategic about how we communicate, how we use our sales tools, and how we train on them.We used to be very wild, wild west. We could roll something out and train on it, communicate it as it was happening, and we have to be a lot more planful now that we’re managing a much larger organization. [There's] a steeper learning curve culturally, just in terms of what folks need to learn new lines of business [and] new products in a new environment for them to navigate.We needed to earn trust very quickly—we had to have a single source of truth and a consistent way that we were communicating and engaging with the organization. SS: In your opinion, Kate, what is the strategic advantage of an enablement platform when navigating change like an acquisition? KS: I think the number one value that Highspot had for us during our acquisition was [it] streamlined communication and a central source of truth.There’s a quote: good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity. Highspot was absolutely that very early on in our integration and acquisition and it has remained that through the period. We probably did our company a little bit of a disservice because it was so easy.It was one of the first platforms that we integrated that we got our newly acquired company logged onto and using. So a massive amount of change management. We were able to use the platform to ensure that we had consistent, clear communication across all levels of the organization. We were able to really reduce confusion and misinformation.And as we had updates, like vital information, we were able to communicate those in real-time and have them in a repository where folks could go back and reference them. If they miss that communication when it went out initially, we’re also able to use Highspot to monitor performance and get feedback.So we were able to see our folks logging on. Are they using their sales tools? Are they going through the training modules? And we were able to understand who was engaged, who needed help, where folks were lagging behind. Or, where we needed to reassess as a company the strategic direction we were going and offer more support to our sales professionals.SS: And before you had Highspot as your enablement platform, you actually leveraged a different tool. What were some of the challenges you faced that led you to make this change? KS: So before we used Highspot, we did use another platform. Some of the challenges we had in the other platform that we were using were primarily around just ballooning of content.We were like hoarders, we wanted to keep every single thing. That made it very difficult to navigate [and] for our organization to find the content they were looking for. And then when they did find it, often it was outdated or there were duplicative versions of it, and we weren’t really sure when it was updated, or who had made it, [or] who had published it.We also didn’t have a feedback mechanism, so we would get all of these emails and questions; how did they find something, or [to]  let us know something expired. Just very manual, it was just a file folder where everything was going, and we were managing a lot of the support of it just through email and conversation, so it became pretty inefficient to manage.SS: Definitely, sounds like it. How have you been able to overcome those challenges and how have you leveraged Highspot to help? KS: So, Highspot's search feature is so good, it’s just as good as Google. I was so happy when our sales representative told us that pre-sales process, and it’s very true. So, very happy about it. The search feature we leverage heavily, as well as the ask a question—the AI feature. The more we feed Highspot, the better information we’re getting out of it, so we have good ROI the more we leverage it. Our company also loves synonyms and acronyms, we need an acronym analyst hired at Antech.The search feature has a function where you can enter synonyms and acronyms. So if I have a rep that’s searching for DOS or the directory or service list, it’s going to bring up our 2024 directory of service, which is what I know they’re looking for. So we use that heavily and we also use the expiration dates on content.Everything gets a one-year expiration date. If it’s not organically updated just through our typical commercial process, we have a force of function for folks to lay eyes on it and make sure that it’s getting looked at [and] reviewed. Typically when we do pull it up and we do have to review it, it’s getting updated. So it helps us stay accountable that the content is effective, up to date, and relevant for the sales team. SS: So you’ve seen high adoption statistics across the board, including an impressive 91% recurring usage, which earned you a nomination in the Highspot Impact Awards last year. What are some of your best practices for driving rep adoption?KS: We say this all the time in so many meetings: if it is not in Highspot, it’s not real. It’s a rumor and you don’t listen to it. So we really use Highspot as a central source of truth for our formal, legal, and approved information. We have a weekly sales bulletin that we send out every Monday to our commercial organization with all the updates from the last week, and what’s coming the week ahead.All of the call-to-action links in that link out to Highspot. So, it’s highlighting all those communications and again, using Highspot as that repository to memorialize them, but not for too long. We have that expiration date on there, so somebody is not searching it in five years and finding something that I’m going to send tomorrow. We’ve also used Highspot University to help train some of our sales professionals and get up to speed as quickly on how to use Highspot, especially for some of our new buyers. SS: I love that. And you also began leveraging Highspot for training and coaching last year, and you’re already seeing 85% active learners. What are some of your best practices for developing effective learning programs and how does Highspot help? KS: So for Highspot, we had used the training and coaching to assign pre-work ahead of our national sales meeting. We had a very big product launch focus at our sales meeting and we wanted to make sure that folks came in with some exposure. They had time to permeate on some of the information we were going to share and had time to practice. We were able to assign out pre-work and also empower some of the managers to see [the] progress of their team on their learning path. Highspot was really the right time for our acquisition. We had a company that had a different type of diagnostics, in-house diagnostics joined with ours, which is Reference Lab, which is a service-based company.Highspot was really good at bridging the knowledge gap and cross-pollinating across those groups. So as we went into that meeting everyone had their bearings on what we were learning about, and what we were talking about, and we were able to show up for the first time as a single unified company.We also use the video feature for reflection and feedback. We have some other ideas and other ways that we’re thinking about incorporating that into our training and learning process in the future. SS: Exciting. And I know another area of innovation that you started to explore in the platform is around AI. How are you leveraging AI to continue to scale efficiency amongst your teams? KS: I am such a big proponent of AI. I will sell all my information to anyone who wants it if it makes my life easier. So Highspot has done a great job with that. I love putting in content, you can hit the generate description button, and it gets 95%, if not more, accurate in the description.Saves me so much time. Previously, we would either leave them blank or put in a quick blurb about what it is. And the AI descriptions it’s able to generate are just so much more helpful and so much more informative. Especially as we’re growing so quickly and we have so many new sales professionals coming on.It helps us increase the quality of the content that we’re putting in there. We also use the ask questions feature for training and coaching. Sometimes our brains get a little tired and we’re like, what should this quiz question be? We hit the ‘ask a question' button for the coaching feature for it to give us some question ideas for the learning modules, so we hack that a little bit.When we were at our national sales meeting, we did a little bit of training on Highspot and we shared with the sales organization how to use the AI feature to write an introduction email in a pitch, for example. And every single room, every time I hit that AI button, the whole room went, “Whoa!”It was such a high, it was so nice showing them that. So it created a lot of value and a lot of stickiness so they could continue to use it in their sales process. It helps me from an administrative standpoint, [and] it helps our sales reps move a little more efficiently. Anything that’s AI—it’s turned on, I’m using it, and I love it. SS: Now, as you have expanded and evolved your enablement strategy, your team has leveraged analytics and Highspot to measure impact. How are you leveraging scorecards and reports to optimize your efforts?KS: I love this question. So we just recently launched internally with our commercial marketing team, what we’re calling the content quality program. Old habits die hard. We do still have a lot of content in Highspot, but we’re trying to be more disciplined about it, especially as we have the analytics now.So we say, even though we’re holding on to this piece, like reps really aren’t using it, we can sunset it and no one’s going to be upset. So with our content quality program, we’re using the scorecard to partner with our product managers, as well as our marketing managers to go through the data of how this is being used and how clients are engaging with it. [Then] to make decisions around if it can be consolidated into another sales tool and if it should be sunset, evolved, [or] what type of change needs to happen with the content.The analytics are extremely helpful there to go against some of our assumptions. Maybe that something’s being used a lot or a little, and really shows us the field reality of how it’s being utilized. We also have a plan to teach the sales managers how they can use the team scorecards to see how their team is performing and using Highspot.Because broadly, we have really high adoption, and then we’ll have a few pockets where there are folks who don’t use this heavily. We want to help managers have visibility into how their team uses it and see if they have any opportunities to close a learning gap. Maybe somebody needs more training or coaching, and we’re all there to help with those things, too. Just need to help make them aware, and the scorecards are helpful for that. SS: Amazing. Thank you for those examples, Kate. Last question for you. Looking ahead, how do you plan to continue to evolve your enablement strategy alongside the momentum of your business?KS: That’s a good question. It’s a big one. So, one of the things on our pipeline—as we’re looking at introducing a more formal sales methodology—we’re also going to be assessing Digital Sales Rooms a little bit closer. We think those are going to complement the direction we want to go strategically from a sales process.We also love the feature preview pane in Highspot. We live in there, we check it like once a week, and that actually inspires just the art of the possible. There’s a good way for us to get some conversations going about how we continue to evolve our strategy and not let it get stale because I think where we are right now, we’re chugging. We have a good system going, but I want to be in love with people’s problems and make sure we’re continuously talking about how we keep doing good.SS:  I love that. And that is the perfect way to conclude this podcast. Kate, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate your insight.KS: Thank you for having me, Shawnna.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.

According to research by Gartner, 50% of sellers are overwhelmed by the amount of technology required to effectively complete tasks. So how can you enable your teams with the right tools to maximize efficiency? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Kathleen Kohl, the sales enablement manager at ManpowerGroup. Thank you for joining us, Kathleen. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Kathleen Kohl: Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been working at ManpowerGroup, which is a global workforce-based solutions company for nearly 12 years. My expertise lies within sales excellence as most of my career has been spent in sales operations and enablement. Currently, I lead sales enablement at ManpowerGroup supporting all six of our lines of business, particularly our sales tech stack. What I love most about my job is collaborating with sales and marketing leadership teams, and showing them what all of our sales tools have to offer. SS: Amazing. Kathleen, we’re excited to have you on the podcast today. One of the things that I noticed, particularly on LinkedIn, is you mentioned how you work to generate opportunities for sales to win through data, tools, technology, and training. I’d love to learn more about this approach. How would you say each of these components plays a role in your enablement strategy at ManpowerGroup? KK: Everyone is talking about data, whether through AI or internal data strategies to train AI models. We teach our sellers how to use our tech stack effectively so that they can create more leads and opportunities To drive revenue for the organization.Our sales tech stack helps sellers understand their target audience and deliver their pitches uniquely and professionally making us stand out. You need to differentiate yourself from the competition these days and with the right tech stack and knowledge, you can do that, and Highspot Digital Sales Rooms have been instrumental in that approach.SS: I love to hear that. And I’d love to understand some of the key priority business initiatives that you’re focusing on supporting through your enablement strategy this year. KK: Yeah, so we are really focused on automation. That has been top of mind alongside measuring the effectiveness and usage of our sales tech stack. One of my team’s goals has been to find content in Highspot in less than five seconds. And we are doing that through tool governance, audits, and Spot policy. Additionally, we aim to increase our digital sales room usage by training our sellers and showcasing the power that DSRs or Digital Sales Rooms can punch.We’re also exploring the learning coaching platform with our rate management brand, which will help to streamline that approach. SS: That’s amazing. At ManpowerGroup, your team is responsible for enablement across, I believe, multiple unique brands. What are some of your best practices for managing all of the various stakeholders with diverse enablement needs? KK: So we have a unique opportunity, as you mentioned, and that we have visibility across all six of our brands and all of our lines of business on their sales priorities. The best practice that we know is important is to ensure we have strong relationships with our sales team. Sales leadership teams who manage our sellers across their brands. We’ve learned that building relationships with sales leadership is extremely important as they hold the power within their sales teams to implement enablement strategies that my team facilitates. SS: I want to dig back into the tools and technology aspect of your strategy. How do you leverage your enablement platform to help you execute your strategic business initiatives? KK: We utilize our tech stack throughout every aspect of the sales life cycle. A main driver is always leading our sales team back to a centralized place where they can find information and how-to’s for all of the tools. Highspot has been extremely helpful to us with this as we host all our sales kits and sales plays here which gives our sellers a prescriptive approach to what to know, say, show, and do, to create a standardized process for how we sell at ManpowerGroup. Highspot is where we communicate and drive our sellers to as a one-stop shop for information. It helps us to facilitate new marketing campaigns and enablement strategies for the field. SS: You mentioned in your intro you have a lot of experience in sales operations and enablement technology roles at ManpowerGroup, and you have a lot of expertise in curating an effective enablement tech stack. In your opinion, what is the value of having a unified platform like Highspot? KK: I would say one of the most essential aspects of Highspot is that it integrates with our CRM system and multiple other sales texts that we use. This really helps our sellers track their pitches and their effectiveness and seamlessly track that ROI.Additionally, our adoption rate at Highspot is, I would say, exceptionally high. And really, that is our central place for sales to go to, to find what they need and understand how to sell and utilize our sales kits. SS: You touched on training a little bit earlier, and I know you recently began to use the training and coaching capabilities with one of your brands, Right Management. What are your best practices for designing effective training programs and how are you planning to leverage Highspot to help? KK: Yeah. So again, relationships are essential with all of our stakeholders. For Right Management specifically, we have a strong relationship with the product owner and the sales leadership team to build the training content and implement and create adoption.It’s crucial really that we work closely with our product management team and understand what’s essential for the sales team to know. Then we can create training that can be used daily and implemented in real time. We can also measure that progress based on how sellers did in that training and then coach accordingly.SS: I love that you’re thinking about that layered approach. Another area where I think you’ve proven you are seeing a lot of success. In helping sales is with digital rooms, and you shared an example where they helped move stalled deals forward. Can you tell us more about your best practices for leveraging digital rooms and their impact on that initiative?KK: We’ve used Digital Sales Rooms throughout our business. The sales life cycle as mentioned earlier, gives our clients a unique feel for how we deliver and tailor our solutions to their needs. What’s really great about these is that we can put all of our documents related to that client and throughout the deal stages into that digital sales room for them to go back to and have an ongoing relationship built where it’s a centralized place.SS: I think that’s a fantastic way to up-level your buyer engagement and it gives you a lot of data. When it comes to data, what are some of your best practices for measuring the impact of your programs and how are you leveraging Highspot to help right now? KK: Our sellers love seeing data on Highspot, seeing if their content is being viewed, and knowing what might be most important to their clients through this engagement. So this helps our sellers to better cater to their client’s needs and offer them the best solution possible through engagement metrics. SS: Since implementing Highspot, I know that you have seen an increase in deal size, faster sales cycles, and even an increase in quota attainment. Can you tell us more about the impact you’ve achieved? KK: We’ve tracked significant enterprise wins based on a customized approach using Digital Sales Rooms. Additionally, finding content quickly is critical. Having Highspot help us navigate this and automatically archive outdated content makes it easier for sellers to find what they need. This ability to see what a client is most interested in helps us create unique solutions based on their workforce needs. SS: I have to say you are doing an amazing job there, Kathleen. Last question, looking ahead, how do you plan to continue to grow the impact of enablement on your strategic initiatives at ManpowerGroup?KK: So we have a big push on my team to increase that Digital Sales Room usage. We do a great job right now utilizing it, but it can always be better. We’ve seen a real impact through Digital Sales Rooms and a goal is to increase Q4 for our sales teams. We are also looking at the pilot for Right Management, of learning and coaching. And we want to understand how effective it will be and scale, potentially, once you see those results come through. SS: Amazing. Like I said, fantastic work at ManpowerGroup, Kathleen, and thank you so much for joining us on this podcast today.KK: Thank you for having me.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.

According to Forrester, 72% of business professionals share that improving the ability to innovate would be a higher critical priority in the year ahead. So how can enablement help you drive innovation for your business?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 Kerstin Valet, the regional director of marketing and communications at CRIF. Thank you for joining us. I would love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Kiersten Valet: Thank you, Shawnna, and I’m happy to be with you. I am Kierstin Valet from CRIF, I head the marketing and communications area for Germany, Austria, and Poland. I’m actually Austrian, I lived pretty long in Vienna and six years ago, I moved to the beautiful city of Hamburg in Germany, taking over the team. We are taking care that our clients get the best support in data, analytics, and solutions for identity, credit risk, and fraud management. In marketing communication, our task is to address the different industries with our products, make sure they know the added value, and play the whole marketing suite we have at our disposal. SS: Wonderful. I’m really excited to have you here with us as a fellow experienced marketing leader, I’d love to hear more about your strategy and priorities. What are some of the key business initiatives that you’re focused on at CRIF? KV: So you’re touching on a very important point. We started our last strategy circle back in 2020 because we are in a very dynamic market and want to make sure that we always address the right needs our customers have, and because a sustainable business model is crucial for success. As I said, the focus is identity, credit risk, and fraud management solutions. So everything that you need to reduce your payment loss, to reduce your risks in general, and to provide the right data and the right solutions to make information-based decisions on the side of our clients. SS: Absolutely. What would you say from your perspective, are some of the major challenges that marketing teams face today, especially in the financial services sector? KV: From my point of view the biggest challenge and the biggest shift that is currently going on in the marketing and communications area is becoming a profit center and going away from being just a cost center. Adding value to the business and not just beautiful pictures. This is something that I think we are at a turning point here and I see a lot of my fellow marketers in the B2B environment, especially in the financial industry that they are just at this point, which also means a different way of collaborating with sales departments and product departments. Especially as we don’t have potential products, we need to present them even more emotionally and underline the added value compared to others, in other industries. And here we are trying to put down silos to improve collaboration with sales, and marketing products, but also controlling and sharing. Also, KPIs and goals to make sure that everybody is on the same page and wants to support the goals of others. This is something that I see as one of the challenges apart from what everybody is talking about now. AI, of course, also, is something that in marketing communications is challenging us a lot. We’re trying to identify the use cases and become more productive to have time and resources for other tasks. SS: And I think the marketing and sales alignment one is uniquely situated in a way that enablement can absolutely help to remove some of those silos between those organizations. How does utilizing an enablement platform like Highspot help you overcome some of the challenges that you just chatted about? KV: First of all, it’s maybe important to understand that the topic of knowledge management. Which, maybe even on a higher level, has been part of our strategy map as one of the enablers that will make sure that everything that comes above bid, so all our strategic actions and growth levers, will become a reality or will become a success. Within this part of knowledge management and information platforms, we said we want to tackle first the heavy need of sales to have the right information, at the right time, over the right tool. And additionally, what we saw then afterward with the project of sales enablement, we were able to get down those silos because at this point, be it a sales product or marketing, we all worked in the same tool, Highspot, which we also integrated into the CRM. So, our CRM became more and more our single source of truth. It was a real success that we not only implemented now in Germany but also [will be] rolling out to Austria and probably other countries to follow. SS: Amazing. From your perspective, what is the strategic value of sales enablement, especially in the financial services industry? KV: Currently, we have the challenge to be more productive and reduce costs. With prices rising everywhere, every company has to make some changes. What we can see, thanks to Highspot and our focus on sales enablement, is first of all, for new people that are coming on board—especially in sales and in the financial services industry—we have products or solutions that are very complicated, or at least you have to explain a lot; it’s very technical. Training new people coming on board is not so easy and probably they get lost on the way because they do not know where to find what. It’s imperative that product and marketing provide a common set of knowledge and documents to train new, but also existing people even faster and sell faster. This is one of the advantages that we have now with Highspot to work on that and have a platform that is adapted for that purpose. But, on the other side, it’s also getting insights from marketing and product, how sales are using our content because I think often marketers will know a sales company, “I need very urgently a specific product sheet, a specific brochure because I know our clients want that one and the others are not good enough.”So now we can see when we produce that kind of collateral, are they used by sales? But then also by the client, how is he interacting with it? To become more productive with our resources, but also to provide the client or potential client a better experience in terms of if we see he’s not reading our documents past page. Then probably we need to shorten it or bring the most important messages in the front or vice versa. A lot of the mindset changed a little bit applying Highspot to our use cases. So it’s a continuous learning process, and we get better and better. SS: Now, within your region, the financial services industry is hyper-competitive. How do you leverage your enablement platform to help you execute your competitive strategy? KV: You’re completely right, it’s highly competitive. It’s more about taking away market shares from other information services provider, because especially with us, nearly every company, nearly every bank has already credit rating agency, how we are calling ourselves, to optimize their risk management processes. So, it’s just about taking away market share. And for that, we have to be different. We have to provide something on top. We have to create the “wow” effect. And I’m very happy that for now, at least in Germany—I hope this stays this way—none of our competitors are taking advantage of leveraging such tools like Highspot because, with the Digital Sales Rooms, we have the possibility to approach our clients in a more advanced way, in a more professional way. And, look here, you have everything that we shared along the contract negotiation phase or the customer life cycle. This is our common place where everything is. That we share information, and so on, you will find there. It’s also on this side a vehicle to create stronger customer relationships and provide this extra, which then hopefully makes the difference to decide on us and not for our competitors. SS: One area in which you have seen success with your teams is using Sales Plays for product highlights, which has led to a 16% increase in adoption recently. How do you leverage Plays to drive consistency with your team and land your initiatives? KV: We use Sales Plays to group information around a product line or a solution, which is information that has formerly been stored in different platforms in different ways. And the time to look for that has been enormous.So I completely can understand that this feature in Highspot is one of the best or most appreciated ones by our sales force because they see, okay, Sales Play, I would say CNSG or ESG solution. And they know everything in there is up to date, is structured according to sales stage, is structured by the industry that they’re approaching, so the industry of our client. It makes it very easy for them to know what to use, when, and maybe what they need to do to prepare properly for the meeting. So everything is together and makes it very easy for them to know what to do. SS: Congratulations on the fantastic adoption on that front. Now, to shift gears a little bit, you mentioned at the beginning of the discussion the importance of having that insight into the data. And I know that it is really important to you to take a data-driven marketing strategic approach. How do you leverage data to optimize your strategy, and how do you leverage Highspot to help? KV: As I said in the beginning, it was a key asset for us that Highspot could be implemented in our CRM system. We just introduced our new CRM platform some years ago and had still some trouble with adoption here. So, also thanks to Highspot, we got higher adoption in the CRM overall because suddenly our team also got value out of it and did not have only to insert data and comply with some processes. So this was the first thing. And then, because the question was about the marketing strategy we see, of course, after an event, we create a CRM campaign and sales. But also, we add the leads there. For us, it’s important to see how many leads convert into opportunities, convert into contracts, and so on. We then want to check how many contact people have been approached using, for example, Highspot, and how many [have] not. How did they react after an event, after a certain campaign to our content? How can we improve or even how can we use Digital Sales Rooms? For lead generation activities, sometimes we provide some content and use it on LinkedIn or via QR code in conferences. Okay. Please go there, but before you can approach the content, you have to leave your email address. So we use Highspot in several use cases that then support, as you said, our marketing data-driven marketing strategy. And that’s very useful when the next planning cycle comes up to know what to do and what not to repeat. A last point that is also interesting for other marketers, is you can also improve efficiency. We just had, some months ago, a new corporate identity relaunch. And as everybody knows, it’s a lot to do every collateral, every document has to be touched, has to be changed, and what did we do? Because we had already introduced Highspot, we had a look: what is currently in use? And out of, let’s say a hundred just to give you a number, probably only 40 collaterals were actually used. So what did we do? We also used it to do some spring cleaning and we adopted the new corporate guidelines and corporate image guidelines for those 40 collaterals. And we saved a lot of money because we did not have to ask the graphic designer to do the rest. So it’s a lot of time, and we saw that just in a few exceptions, sales asked us to change the design of one of the other 60 documents. So everything where you want to make a decision based on data can be supported with Highspot. Or, let’s say a lot of those decisions can be supported by Highspot if you really integrate it also in your strategy. SS: I love that, that is amazing. You touched on a few pieces of advice already, but what advice do you have for other marketing leaders in your industry who may be considering implementing enablement or an enablement platform? KV: What I saw during the decision phase with Highspot, it was crucial to have everybody on board from the beginning. What do I mean by that? It could have been worse if we as marketing, after closing everything and signing the contract [went] to sales and [said]: here, we have now the perfect solution. Please take it, please use it. I think in such a case, they would not have done anything and completely rejected it. What was very imperative from the beginning to already, in the negotiation phase, have a small group of sales with us, making the tests with us. We made sure that what we sign is also something that will be appreciated, that will solve the needs, not just the needs marketing things sales have, but actually the needs that we’ll say are really good. Then we also had support from the top. As I said, knowledge management was something that was an integral part of the strategy itself, so was also pushed by our management that for the different needs, we bring the right solution. I think having all those different entities of a company, also GDPR, IT security, et cetera, having them on board before taking the final decision. Maybe it makes the process longer, but in the end, it has proven successful. SS: That is already starting to unify and align all of the various departments that need to work together in your go-to-market motions Last question for you as you look ahead In what ways are you planning to utilize enablement to continue to evolve and innovate your marketing strategy within your organization? KV: First of all, we are looking to extend the usage of the training and development module. So we are developing specific courses, training courses, for the different parts of our sales team. This is also in close collaboration with our product management team. Then we want to further extend the usage of Digital Sales Rooms. And that those are directly sent from the opportunity entity in the CRM so that we have to connect, that we also see and can measure in cases where the clients have received, or the entity opportunity has received, a sales place or Digital Sales Rooms from our sales, if the sales cycle gets shorter or if something changes in the way the client is behaving. Overall, of course, have a look if we are more successful together with Highspot. Always also hear data-driven, how is the adoption, and what can we do better together so that we bring the best practices then also to other countries, as I said, Austria is next on the roadmap. Some, of the early adopters are already working with it and giving us good feedback and it will be a challenge or a topic of the next weeks and months to extend that even further. SS: How exciting. Again, congratulations, and thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time. KV: Thank you for inviting me, and looking forward to our next projects ahead. 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.

According to a study conducted by Gartner, 77% of sellers struggle to complete tasks efficiently. So how can you improve the way that your sellers work?Shawnna Sumaoang: Welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Ben Taft, the vice president of global sales operations at Arm. Thank you for joining us, Ben. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Ben Taft: Hi, Shawnna. Thanks for having me today. As you mentioned, I run global sales ops at Arm, and I’ve been here a little under five years. Prior to that, I had experience at both startups and Fortune 100 companies, running revenue ops, sales ops, and marketing ops. Everything in between from trying to get our first millions of dollars in revenue to billions of dollars in revenue. Looking forward to the conversation. SS: As a sales operations leader, what are some of the key initiatives that you are focused on driving for the business this year?BT: As I thought about your question there, I think two things really come to mind — and I’ll try not to be too marketing-speak or, lingo-speak on it — it does come down to business transformation as the first one. In an enablement, rev ops, and sales ops role, one of the elements is we have to find ways to bring in all of the other groups we work with. Whether it’s marketing, whether it’s the field teams, whether it is our product teams, engineering teams, or our solution experts.We’ve got to bring them together to find, a way to get that information in people’s hands as quickly as possible so that they can make use of it. The other element of that is with so much information, how do you simplify that down so you can scale it out quickly? If we rely on the legacy way of doing things and the legacy approach, whether it’s processes or the ways of working that we used to do, that’s not going to get us there.And if anything, we are trying to look at all of those legacy mindsets and say, how do we completely rethink this from end to end? Cause with so many people involved, that just elongates the overall process. So, it really comes down to how can we find better ways to transform with all of those different stakeholders. And how can we simplify it so people actually feel like this is happening a lot faster than I’m used to, and so let’s do more of this. SS: Those are some big initiatives. So from your perspective, Ben, what role does your enablement tech stack play in helping you land these initiatives? BT: One of the ways I think about it is a phrase I’m using called time to education. And this is where I’ve seen a massive improvement with some of our sales enablement, like Highspot. It gives us analytics that connects content owner’s right to deals in some cases, or right to the people that are at the front of this. If we can improve that time to education, that allows people to use that information with a lot more veracity and a lot more velocity.It comes down to the legacy approach, obviously. I’ve got something, I’ve got to get it out to the field, or I’ve got something people can find valuable, and it will help them in their conversations with customers or whoever they’re engaging with. But, if it ends up taking us months and months to get that put out there to go through review cycles, or it gets put out in a way that’s static and dormant, and it doesn’t get all the amplification or it doesn’t come across in a rich and engaging fashion, it’s like you never put it out there to begin with.If I can shorten that time to education, that becomes a huge factor. But, one of the more interesting elements of that whole thing is traditional groups that I would have to go to extract all that knowledge out and then put it back to a team and say, “Okay, take all this goodness and put it in some way that people will find engaging.” A tool like Highspot now allows for non-traditional content owners or experts to immediately put that out there. I find that some of those folks are finding that is incredible development opportunities. It’s not just PowerPoint that they have to go write and it’s not some boring brief they’ve got to write.Now they’re creating these spots they’re creating a rich set of information out there. And they’re feeling like mini developers, in a sense. It’s such an easy way to do it that the time to education dramatically decreases and suddenly it’s out there very quickly. People are consuming it and they can see it being consumed with all the analytics. In a lot of ways, it allows me to scale beyond the traditional content owner process, and you’re creating a lot of new content owners, and they’re having a lot of fun with it. SS: I love that. Now on the topic of scale, I know that you also believe in the philosophy that implementing enablement technology is key to accelerating revenue while improving operational scale. Can you tell us more about how enablement helps to drive those outcomes? BT: The way I think of it is the abundance of information doesn’t necessarily guarantee the relevance or value of each piece of that information. A really well-thought-out enablement stack changes that, right? You now have an ability to really isolate down on what they need at that particular point in time.Now that’s a bit of a cliche I know, and I said I wouldn’t do that, but it’s: what do I need right now at this point? Even though we all strove to do that, the legacy enablement stacks still didn’t really solve that problem. Somebody could search for something and imagine they’re in a library; they’re looking for that book and they see all sorts of things they can’t make use of.We now have the ability to be much more refined on that. That goes back to my earlier statement about time to education. It’s now allowing people to get it out there in a much more refined way, a much more sophisticated way. And that gets you to outcomes at a much quicker rate. And it also goes back to allowing some of those non-traditional content owners to be much more invested in that process.And when they’re much more invested and they see outcomes at a much quicker rate, their buy-in becomes, they’re like that worked completely different than my usual experience. How do I do more of that? And that changes the outcomes that we see. SS: I absolutely love that. So Ben, for our audience out there how did you go about finding the right enablement tools to help you drive these outcomes, what were maybe some of the key factors that you were considering?BT: Oh, probably nothing, groundbreaking in some of that regard. Obviously it starts with what the user experience looks like. I definitely have a philosophy, of the hub and spoke approach. I think that there are traditional platforms that act as an anchor across your business, and then you plug in sort of platforms or tools that are really purpose-built for what your field teams need at that particular time. And that starts with user experience meaning. Does that tool think the way my salespeople think in some regards? Is it set up in an intuitive fashion that is driven by people that, where they think this is how I would search or how I’d want to use this information, or this is how I’d want to present it back to my customers?And if everything, the tool or the enablement or however tools we use takes that sort of approach on it. I find that my time to get people ramped up on it dramatically decreases, and the faster I get people ramped up on it, the better. So it starts with user experience. A really high-end user experience translates to a lower ramp-up time, and that lower ramp-up time then suddenly yields better analytics.And so suddenly now you have all of these analytics about where you got it right, and maybe where you didn’t get it right, and you can quickly pivot in on the things that you didn’t get quite right. And go back to the drawing board. And then the last piece is I really want something that stands out on all my tools.I look for something that maybe is going to be a little disruptive, a little progressive, or it’s going to look not like some of the tools we’ve traditionally had. And, because I want people to go, this is different, this is cool. And I want people to have that feeling like they’ve just unwrapped something cool under the the Christmas tree or whatever. And if they get excited about it then that makes my job a lot easier. SS: One thing I think that sellers are definitely getting excited about on that note a little Christmas in July, but digital rooms are really popular amongst sellers these days. They create opportunities for sellers to really foster deeper engagement with their buyers and their customers. Can you share how you see Digital Rooms changing the traditional go-to-market motion for your sellers? BT: I’ll probably step back even in terms of just Digital Rooms in general. One aspect of enablement tools is your traditional audiences will always lap it up and adopt it. But as I look at the spectrum, you may have groups on your field teams or your marketing teams or whatever that sort of lag behind, either because of cultural norms, how they do business, different, maybe there’s language gaps, or maybe there’s just.For whatever reason, there just tends to be gaps in how they adopt things. One thing I’ve seen with Digital Rooms is some of the traditional groups that maybe haven’t adopted as quickly have actually been some of the early adopters in some cases. And I think this has to do with the fact that their relationships with their customers tend to maybe have a different, it’s different than, every region has a slightly different engagement with their customer due to how they, cultural norms or regional norms or what have you.I find that things like Digital Rooms actually allow groups to really get customized and tailored to be really bespoke in terms of how they set that up. And it goes back to something I mentioned earlier about non-traditional folks taking ownership inside of a tool, like a Highspot, and suddenly they’re building things and they’re doing things that I’m not even aware of.I have not even laid out to them and they’re pushing the envelope on the tool faster than I am. That is really cool because now I’m getting all sorts of different ideas and innovations that maybe I hadn’t thought of in the past. It’s so easy and quick for them to do it, that it allows them to get very bespoke to what they need.They’re still operating within the confines of what we’ve provided, and it allows them to, get even deeper into those engagements with their customers. I find that the biggest thing that I see of concepts like Digital Rooms, is it maybe allows some of the non-traditional user sets or non-traditional heavy users to suddenly expand their use cases.SS: I love that, it’s like a force multiplier effect. So I love that’s what’s happening with Digital Rooms at Arm. I do want to go back to something that you had just said in your response prior to that, which was around all of the information and analytics. You’ve talked a lot about how important it is to have access to that, especially vis-a-vis your enablement platform. How do you utilize data to help drive sales execution? BT: So there are two things in an approach. One is, you’ve got an enablement platform where all that information resides. But I also have deployed what I call the bar. The bar is business analytics and reporting. This is a separate sort of function, and so when you need information, you go to the bar. And you order up your drink in terms of what you want, so the bar is a group that is trying to take vast amounts of data and put it in very visual, very useful, and informative ways. There’s nothing groundbreaking about that. But when your enablement platform and your bar capabilities become almost the foundations for every informational piece that goes out to the field, or your field teams, or your marketing teams. When that becomes two anchor points, we’ve got something great we want you to learn, or we’ve got great information we want you to digest, here’s where you can find it.And by the way, it’s a really rich experience, and you’ll get all this. And by the way, here’s where you can go see information in terms of how that information is being used and how you may apply it to all, the things you’ve got going on in your space. Marrying up enablement stack plus rich analytics that has now taken root, when those are the anchor points of all of your education efforts then the rest is just, it becomes a well-oiled machine.And people know what to expect. I know where to find it, I know what I’m going to get, and I know I’m going to get what I need. And I’ve got a resource to then go track how it’s working for me. SS: Absolutely. And so to that point, how do you see enablement tools helping to improve efficiency and enable sellers to become more effective?BT: We’ve touched on some of those things. I think that enablement tools changed how users interact with that content. I used to joke that 80% of it was trying to figure out where was that specific PowerPoint. And I know that’s early 2000s in a way, I’m probably dating myself here.But you forget at the last miles, many times it’s people trying to stitch together some information. And I think a really well thought out enablement stack and some of the tools that surround that in the other parts of the sales go-to-market motion.They’ve really allowed people to get back to the work of putting together value for their customers as opposed to searching for stuff and trying to understand do they have all the right pieces and where did that go? And it used to be there, but it’s no longer there. And so enablement stacks, some of the other go-to-market motion players that really do this well.It’s allowed people to get back to—especially our sales groups—doing what they want; putting together really a rich set of value propositions that they can go back to their customers with. And it’s meaningful they do it with pace. It’s timely for what their customers are looking to see.And then it allows all of the analytics to understand how is it being consumed and did I get the right thing. And did I give them what they needed at the right time? And, by the way, if it’s a Digital Room, I did it in a way that can be very intimate with the partner so that it feels very personable to them.I think that’s changed the way people think about it. And I really think it’s become table stakes in terms of how sellers expect to have that information available and expect to be able to act with pace, that they’re able to quickly put together what their customers want in a very personable fashion.SS: That’s a really interesting segue to my next question, which is how do you see innovations like AI helping teams achieve even more efficiency? And how are you beginning to leverage AI today? BT: So like many organizations, we’re studying AI at this point, trying to understand where the right use cases are. Obviously [AI] has incredible promise. It’s going to be transformational, I absolutely believe that. But, I also think that many times RevOps groups and sales ops groups, really serve a unique purpose in an organization of being one of the true great knowledge workers inside of an organization.They’re stitching together many times marketing, products, engineering, finance, all of the executive needs, all these different things. So, AI comes into play in terms of where we see people needing to be more effective in that. We’re still early in our journey exploring that. I do think AI’s a tremendous capability to drive some different kinds of insights and help people. become much more effective in their particular execution of something. For example, I sat on a panel not too long ago and there was an individual [who] talked about some of his CSMs. This was not at my current organization, [but] he talked in terms of using AI where they are deploying where every morning a CSM might wake up and see a 15-point action plan that they were expected to execute.AI had generated and drafted that 15-point plan down to the emails, down to the invites, and down to the CRM updates. But where the CSM got better, is they were then supposed to review that action plan and make tweaks to it. So they’re not spending eight to ten hours developing all of that content and action plan.They spent 30-minutes reviewing it and making it really tailored to their customers. Now making that CSM much more effective in their job. They’re able to apply a lot more intelligence to it, a lot more personal touches to it, because the hard work is done and now they can say, “You know what, my customer X doesn’t like to receive emails on Monday because it’s just a bad day for them in terms of what they get. I’m going to re-tailor this thing for a Tuesday type of thing.” That’s tactical, but it’s a really unique example of what it does. We’re [on] our journey to find out how AI can do similar things. SS: Last question—in terms of your journey looking ahead, Ben, what are your key priorities for the future of sales operations at your organization?BT: Like I’ve done and looked at prior roles. I look at, RevOps, sales ops, and our capabilities on a scale of one to five. One might be, it’s a process or a capability that is in its infancy or still very manual or reactive, to a five, which is it’s highly predictive, it’s sophisticated.Maybe it’s that process now providing insights in advance of it happening and allowing the organization to pivot and be prepared for it. It’s delivering a different level of value to the business. One of the things that I look at is we step into that AI journey, and as we step into the next, changes in our industry, is all these tools provide new capabilities.One thing top of mind is to look at all of our existing processes and capabilities on that scale and say, “Okay, I need to reset that scale and understand: where on our sales ops capabilities do we need to go from one to five? Or, if we’re at a three, where do we need to go from three to five? So that’s where I’m going to be spending some time and focus, is how do I mature those next set of capabilities, in light of how AI will make some of those transitions possible.That maybe where it was going to take us a long time to get even from one to three, perhaps I can leapfrog that and now go from one to four, or from two to five. The old scale is broken and now my new thing is to figure out: what does that new scale look like, and how do I go measure it against what we’re currently doing.SS: I absolutely love that and I think you are looking around all the right corners, Ben. Thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciated you sharing your expertise and insights here. BT: Shawnna, for having me. It’s been a pleasure. 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.

According to research from Sales Enablement PRO, organizations leveraging enablement tools are four times more likely to effectively drive rep consistency. So how can you improve sales rep effectiveness through enablement?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Paul Wright, the vice president of sales enablement at Acosta Inc. Thank you for joining us, Paul. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Paul Wright: Absolutely. Thank you again for having me. As you mentioned, I’m the vice president of sales enablement for Acosta Group. And I’ve been in this role for a little over two years at this point. I came into this role from a subsidiary company in Acosta Group called ActionLink, where I was an account manager and had business development responsibilities, some field management responsibilities, et cetera.I had been there for about seven or eight years prior to the move over [from ActionLink]. Before that, I’d been a visual merchandising manager for a large national retail chain. I’ve been a buyer for another large retail chain. And spent the first I’ve spent several years of my career as a district manager for a large company that has an office in Arkansas.I’ll just say that, but so I’ve got a load of retail experience, and bringing that all into the corporate side of things has been a fun challenge for me to go from managing people to managing processes, content, training materials, and different things like that. SS: Paul, thank you so much for joining us today. As you mentioned in your introduction, you have a lot of experience as a retail and sales leader. How does that experience influence your approach to your enablement strategy? PW: One of the biggest helps is I know what it’s like to sell, cause I’ve done selling before. I know the challenges. I would not consider myself even to be a seller, but I had some success in selling and learning, basically bringing all of my experience in, even from down to employee relations, and becoming a creative problem solver. Learning to hear the root cause or the root problem helps me to teach sellers how to listen for the unsaid when they’re talking to a client or a prospect. I tell people all the time, that if you ask a prospect or a client, what’s your biggest pain point you’re looking to solve? The client, especially if they’re brand new to you and you don’t have a relationship established, is not going to tell you anything because everything’s roses in their world. But if you listen and ask the right questions at the right time, you’ll find their pain points and then you present them a solution in a way that they almost think it’s their idea. When it’s their idea they’re the hero of the story, and it becomes an easy transition into closing a deal. SS: Absolutely, I love that. What are some of your best practices then? I would love to share some tips and tricks with our audience for partnering with other leaders across the business like sales and marketing as you develop your enablement programs.PW: Interestingly enough, at Acosta Group, I sit on the enterprise marketing team and that’s a little different I think in a lot of organizations, there’s a separate sales operations team that generally is like a deal desk, a contract desk, and an onboarding desk, things like that. But because I sit with the marketing team on the enterprise commercial team, I’ve got direct access and consistent access to the folks who are providing the content that we’re storing on Highspot, for example.We have regular content meetings where I will bring up a point that a seller brought up to me, or they’ll bring up a point that they noticed from a piece that was more successful in a recent RFP or something like that. It becomes a collaborative process to get the right content and the best content in front of our sellers to enable them to go in confidently, knowing they’ve got what they need at their fingertips.SS: Wonderful, I think that’s a fantastic way to establish a partnership. Now, collaboration across the business plays a key role in how you designed and launched your current Highspot environment. Can you tell us about that process? PW: So I want to go back to the very beginning of Highspot at Acosta. The agreement was already in place to start a pilot when I came into the role. And we were in the final four or five weeks pre-launch where we were loading in content and things like that. And at that point in time, we were loading in what we thought sellers wanted. We were loading in huge capabilities decks and things like that.And some of our marketing leaders were at our annual leadership meeting and they actually polled some of the sellers and said, what do you really want out of Highspot? We want to know why they should outsource because we are a third-party provider of services for our companies, for professional services.And a lot of folks will say we can do it cheaper ourselves. So why should they outsource? Why should they use Acosta as their outsourcing partner? What advantage is it to do the Acosta? So our team got together and decided that we were going to create a service catalog and each service that we provide would have its own play page.And on that play page, we would answer those questions. What is this service? Why should you outsource this service? And why should you outsource with a constant for this service? And instead of a 35-slide capabilities deck, we had a three to five-slide overview of that particular solution. We also had a cell sheet added as part of the play page.So send this one-pager out to measure interest. We had a spec sheet that was internal facing that answered the views and plots behind the scenes of the service and what exactly it entails. Most solutions have a brief overview video, like a 30 to 60-second jazz reel kind of thing just to get people excited about it.Something that can be shared on social, or whatever. And then we started an on-demand training series for every solution where we get our subject matter experts on camera talking about the solution like they’re talking to a client. They will bring up in the course of this, some key listening cues, some key questions to ask, and probing questions to ask about what the solution entails, [like] what some advantages are for using Acosta for that solution, et cetera. We’ve got a user base of around 225 individuals. And with the last time I checked, which was in April, we had almost 6,000 views year-to-date of content inside of Highspot. And it was something like 17 days of view time. The challenge we’re seeing now is our users are not leveraging some of the real capabilities of Highspot.We could have stored this content in SharePoint. We could have stored this content on a team site or anywhere else we wanted to. We picked Highspot so that we could get the advantages of the engagement metrics. And so that’s our next challenge up is how do we do that? How do we get people more engaged with using Highspot to its full capacity?SS: It is always a journey of evolution and enablement I have to say, and this is a rapidly evolving space and you guys are doing quite well, given where you are at your stage in the journey. Now, as you were rolling out the platform to your sales team, do you have some best practices for driving some of that increased adoption that you were seeing amongst your sellers? PW: So I really think that the initial push of doing the Highspot Heroes was a big point of that because everybody likes to be at the top of the leaderboard, especially sellers. They’re a very competitive bunch of people. And so I think that helped drive a lot of that initial early engagement. I think another thing that we did really was we had some office hours where I would just be on a team’s call for an hour once a week.Just to answer questions and help people guide things through. I still, to this day, do a 30-minute orientation for every new user that gets added to Highspot where I walk them through the capabilities and get them acquainted with the idea of pitching at the very least. And then one of the other things, and I’ve done this for all the other parts of my job as well, is I pride myself on being accessible. So every email that I send out has a link where they can book 30 minutes with me. It’s linked to my Outlook calendar that shows them when I’m available. So they’re not overbooking or anything like that. I’m well known across the company as one of the most accessible people in support and get Teams messages all day long. “Hey, how can I find this? How can I do that?” And I really think as enablement is a support role, I think that’s critical to be accessible and approachable to your users. SS: Now, that’s fantastic. Paul, one area that I know you’re starting to see some traction with your sales team is engaging their buyers with Digital Rooms. What are some of your best practices for leveraging Digital Rooms today? PW: It goes back to when I was first brought into this position, I was informed that my role was to be the easy button for sellers. So when it comes to Digital Rooms and some more advanced features of Highspot or Salesforce or anything like that, let’s make it easy.Another term is frictionless. So we’re in the process of creating templates. We're creating this; we’ve already created a spot where we uploaded all of our client logos so that we know they’re sending ones that are right-sized, right format, and everything like that, so it looks good. I think the worst thing you could do to a client is send them their logo and it’s pixelated or stretched or something like that.So we’re creating that to make it easy so they can find that as they’re putting their Digital Room together to send creating some verbiage templates for a cold call or a landing page for a trade show. Or, we use Digital Rooms for a lot of different things. I’ve even used them.For event registration pages in the past. And so the more our people see them, the more they want to use them. And the more they want to use them, the more ideas we come up with for making them easier to use. SS: I love it and hose are some creative ideas, even some that I may apply with my own team right after this. Now, another way you’re evolving your buyer engagement efforts is through a relatively new capability in Highspot, Autodocs. What are some of the ways your teams have just started to leverage these? PW: We are truly in the early days of Autodocs. In fact, the senior director for brand and I sat in on the webinar last week and we were messaging each other back and forth on Teams during the whole thing and she was like, “This is speaking to my soul. I feel like I’ve been seen.” So we are, right now, putting together a pilot program for Autodocs for our users. It’s still taking shape, we’re identifying a small group of people to roll it out to first. And these would be the folks that are our most active pitchers right now.So we see them as early adopters. And so we will put together one or two Autodocs that are our highest profile services that are most frequently accessed and pitched and get this pilot group up and running. And if you ask me this question in say 60 days, I think I’ll have a lot more information to provide to you, but we are truly building that runway while the plane’s going down. SS: Oh, absolutely. You gotta start small, but once you get those pilot users leveraging it and loving it, I hope that it does take off. So we’ll circle back in a few weeks and check in on you on that front. Now, I know buyer engagement isn’t the only part of your strategy that’s been evolving, and you’ve been driving innovation through your use of AI or artificial intelligence. How are you utilizing AI in your enablement programs? PW: So we have all the AI features available in Highspot right now turned on for our users. I’m a firm believer of letting AI do the things it can do so that I can do the things it can’t. And the thing that it can do is it can craft an email message that introduces a document. What it can’t do is make sure it’s using my voice. So I can go in and edit that message then to sound like me and not sound like a machine. I’m a big believer in the co-pilot program from Microsoft. As a company, we’re piloting that this year in a small group of users, and I’m part of that.And some of the other hats that I wear at my job, I’ve used that to write flows for Salesforce. And take what would have taken me four, five, or six hours to figure out, [it takes] 15 minutes to enter the prompt, get step-by-step instructions, and have a working flow. Once again, let it do the things it can do, and let me focus on what it can’t.That’s going to be my approach for AI for as long as I can see it because it's such a powerful tool that we’re, truly, as a society, just scratching the surface [of] what it can do. SS: Well said, well said. Now, Paul, I have to give you credit. You have driven some fantastic results at Acosta. And I know that you guys have even seen through a lot of your amazing enablement programs and initiatives a correlation to an increase in quota attainment and win rates. How, from your perspective, has your enablement approach impacted these results, and how have you leveraged Highspot to help?PW: I don’t want to take all the credit for it, but sales enablement was a new position at Acosta when I came in two years ago. So prior to that, the sellers had been on their own. One of the areas we saw was they were keeping track of their pipeline, as an example, on Notepads, in OneNote, or somewhere that was not consolidated. No visibility whatsoever. Every little micro team had their own SharePoint site. There was no version control on content or anything. When we started loading in those big capabilities, we noticed logos that were two generations old and just cringe stuff. Nobody was doing it intentionally or with malintent, there was just nobody herding the cats.  The biggest thing that I can take credit for is when I take a step into a role, I own the role. And my role was to get CRM usage up. So we went from having a virtually non-existent Salesforce pipeline to today, we have a robust pipeline that if we only got realistic win rate numbers on, we would be winning, and we have improved our attainment in our quota attainment and win rate.And Highspot has really been a part of that. Our EVP of business development is one of our loudest champions. He wants all content that goes to a prospect or a client to come out of Highspo. He said, “No more of this. If you want to download it because you’re worried about presenting it in a place with spotty internet, that’s fine. But when you download it, it gets used one time. And then you consider that version is old from then on. You get your content out of Highspot for every new pitch, [and] every new presentation.” That has been critical. Our marketing team is small but mighty and they have some of the most intense brand guidelines, and I say that in a good way. They are fantastic stewards of our brand and they do a great job of spotting when something becomes outdated. We do regular audits of our content to make sure that we don’t have information that’s three years old in there still. And one of the ways we’re doing that is we’re taking that on-demand training that I mentioned earlier to the next level.I’ve got a project manager helping me and we’re putting together a three-tier accreditation for each of our sales solutions. And tier one is that on-demand video with some questions for understanding. Tier two takes all of our sales content, pulls out nuggets and key points, and puts it into an interactive module using Rise Articulate.And then there’s a quiz for understanding level three is a scenario based on where they are. We did one for our Amazon services where they’re giving pictures from Amazon listings and they are to call out what’s wrong with them and they’re to call out what’s right with them and things like that. And at the end of this, they get a social shareable image that says “I’m accredited in full-service Amazon”, for example.And so we’re leveraging Highspot for all of that, as both our repository for where to go to get the training and the source of our content, so that we’re teaching on the same content that they’re pitching. SS: Paul, last question for you. As you look ahead, how do you plan to continue to evolve your enablement strategy at Acosta?PW: Daily evolution. I have a personal mantra: get 1% better every single day. In the finance world, there’s the rule of 72 that says whatever your interest rate divides into 72 by is how quickly you’ll see a double return. A 1% improvement means that you will be 100% better in 72 days.It doesn’t mean you’d be perfect, it doesn’t mean you’d be an expert, you’ll be a hundred percent better than your starting point. So I am constantly on the lookout for webinars that increase my knowledge and understanding of enablement and what is out there to help people. And we’re looking at doing more of a drip-type campaign with Highspot like we did in the early days and some retraining and reintroducing of these features because honestly, the the methodology and the features have changed pretty significantly in the last two years in Highspot themselves.And if our sellers are intimidated because it’s called something different, then I need to take that intimidation away. And help them make it easy for them to see that a Digital Room is as easy as anything they’ve done in the past. I continue to look out as well for ways that AI can be brought into the whole deal.In my Salesforce platform, I’m looking to add in opportunity measurement, or grading, and different things like that to help our sellers see from the beginning when they’ve got something good. To continue to go after what’s good and maybe let the other stuff go by the wayside. Focus on what’s winnable, what’s achievable, and what’s impactful to the business.SS: I love that approach, and a very interesting statistical approach to improvement. Thank you so much for joining us today, Paul. I appreciate the time.PW: Thank you for having me.SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win Podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

According to Gartner, 60% of sales reps lack relevant learning opportunities. So how can you provide consistent training and coaching with a unified platform?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 Felix McCabe, the head of global enablement execution at Dropbox. Thank you for joining us, Felix. I would love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Felix McCabe: Shawnna, thank you for having us today. I started my career in sales, so I have a lot of empathy for the sales force. My career trajectory has taken me through different avenues from marketing to commercial to where I sit now in enablement. I have a unique perspective on the whole sales process and the different components and parts supporting our sales team. So as I transitioned into enablement at Dropbox, what I do today is lead the execution arm of our enablement team, helping to upskill the level of our sellers at Dropbox. SS: I love that, it sounds like you are the perfect guest to talk about skilling up your sales teams. And I know on LinkedIn you mentioned that you like to push the boundaries of seller development from onboarding to productivity to mastery. And that is a key focus for you. As an enablement leader, what does streamlining the path to mastery look like? FM: From where I sit I think about the seller life cycle, like you said, from onboarding, to ramp, to starting to become productive, to ultimately becoming a master in that role. That starts with onboarding and equipping the sales professionals with the right sales skills they need to really be able to sell in today’s market. You layer on top of that product knowledge and any specific sales process nuances we have. Then you’ve got to check that learning, test the delivery, and ultimately sign off and certify and say this salesperson is field-ready. But development can’t really stop there. It takes continuous practice and that comes in the form of coaching, and that’s what’s required as we move closer to mastery. I’m not saying we’re fully there yet at Dropbox, but it’s certainly the ambition we have to put those right pieces in place to accelerate that journey through the seller life cycle. SS: So tell us a little bit about the value of training and coaching in this. How do you build effective training and coaching programs to help sellers achieve mastery? FM: The training is only as good as the reinforcement that happens afterward. Because how many times have we seen a seller go through, tick the box, “I’m certified”, but then they struggle to articulate your value prop in the market or something like that? The challenge for frontline managers is often that there’s not enough time to coach each rep effectively, especially if I’m managing a team of six or eight reps.But the functionality that we now have with Highspot – thank you – has given us the ability to scale that learning with the ability for managers to really jump in on the platform and be able to coach in a more async and time-effective way. From an admin perspective in my world, I’m able to ensure that coaching is happening and we’ve seen that ramp up since we’ve started to implement this process. The next step for us is to see how AI can accelerate that. SS: Absolutely. Now, from your perspective, what is the strategic value of a unified enablement platform when it comes to ensuring sellers are ready and building that path to mastery? FM: We’ve heard a lot about Zoom fatigue over the last few years, especially since the pandemic, but for a seller, it’s tool fatigue. There are so many places to go to do different parts of the process, and that’s just annoying. It’s in my way, and at the end of the day, I’ve got a clock above my head and a target on my back. I’m trying to get that job done anyway, so it’s confusing, and it slows down the sales process.But what we now have with you and Highspot, there’s a way of bringing some of those elements together so that our sellers are moving closer to a single source of growth. For me, I love the idea that I can go to one place. I can learn about my products as a new seller through courses and learning paths.But then, as an experienced seller, I’ve got a place to go and refer back to. If I’m on a customer call or preparing for a big meeting, I have an evergreen or always-on space where I can get that information that’s key and critical. SS: And Felix, you’ve actually leveraged Highspot at a previous enterprise organization as well as Dropbox, and based on that experience, what are some of your best practices for effectively implementing and really driving adoption among your sellers, particularly as you mentioned, while there is all this tool fatigue? FM: My various experiences at GlobalTelco, Vodafone – shout out to the guys there – and actually a lady at Highspot, Laura, who implemented that at Vodafone, and who introduced us to the platform, and I used it as a rep. That’s why when the opportunity came up, I put my hand up and said, “I know this can be a lot better than what we were doing with the platform at Dropbox.” In terms of best practices, I’ve borrowed from some of that experience, but I’ve also learned from other enablement practitioners, like Manny, who I met in Seattle last year at your Spark conference.I’ll shout out here to Donnie Miller over at American Woodmark. I know he was on this podcast too, but he gave me a tour of their instance of Highspot, and that gave me a lot of food for thought as I came back and started to relaunch the platform. So in terms of adoption and helping us get there, number one: it’s making things easy to find. It’s as much about curation as it is creation because you can have a lot of stuff in there. I like to use the analogy that we’re the gallery, and we work with the publishers as the artist and we help them curate the best assets and showcase what our reps need to know. Then it’s about building good governance around the platform to make sure it’s always good content and stuff that’s outdated is getting out of there.Quality is something we struggled with and now we’re getting a lot better at. And investing time in bite-sized learning, to show how you can get the best out of the platform. That’s a value add and a key tidbit that we got from our Highspot CSM, Kelly, so shout out to her as well.SS: You talked about how important it is to really make sure that Highspot is seen as a platform, that trusted source, and you guys have seen a lot of success by implementing a lot of these processes that you just talked us through, including great governance, you guys have actually achieved a 29% increase in adoption of Highspot over the last few months. How do you gain trust with your sellers when launching new programs or initiatives? FM: It starts with trust, and that's key for adoption and ensuring that what we’re doing is value-add for our stakeholders. Not only the sales reps themselves, but also sales leadership and not making sure we’re adding to a priority list, but we’re part of the priority list, supporting that and partnering with content publishers. In our case, that’s a lot of our product marketing team to ensure the quality of what’s being produced as well as ourselves in terms of the learning that we’re creating is supported by those assets and then bringing it to sales in a consistent.We’ve done that a lot using the Sales Play object in Highspot, that’s been helpful, both from a curation point of view, but also from an admin point of view, because we’ve got dashboards now be able to show how those plays are being engaged with, from a content consumption point of view, as well as a learning certification point of view.And, another recommendation we’ve taken from Highspot is leveraging your messaging framework of what to know, what to say, what to show, and what to do. And just simplifying that messaging for reps has been, a game changer. SS: Now, in terms of strategic initiatives, because you mentioned the product marketing team is one of your key partners. I know one of your key focuses this year is driving a new product launch. Can you tell us more about this initiative and what you’re aiming to achieve? FM: We launched a new product last year, which we call Dropbox Replay. It’s a video image collaboration tool, enabling things like frame anchoring and commenting, and works with a lot of the main video editing tools out there like Adobe and DaVinci.It’s got many use cases, not just the media space, but construction space. We’ve even seen some interesting use cases from sports teams that we partner with. From an enabler perspective, it’s about us ensuring that our sellers are knowledgeable about this product, its functionality, and then how it’s supporting our customers to be more productive. So that’s where it starts with Replay. SS: Absolutely. What are some of the key ways that you’re leveraging Highspot to help support the product launches for your teams? FM: I’ll talk a bit about the Replay launch again because what we’ve done is we started by creating a three-module learning path. Our sellers can learn about the product and test their knowledge using the knowledge checks and the video submission capability that’s in there. I think that’s really cool because we’ve tried to be creative with that type of knowledge check and the video submission. What we’ve done is create scenarios where we will have reps pitching against objections that they might get from a customer, as well as creating a scenario where they need to demo the product.So that’s both two different use cases for that same piece of functionality within our learning paths and that’s been great. Alongside that, we’ve created an evergreen space around Dropbox, we Play products, so we’ve got our pitch decks in there, discovery questions, case studies, competitive information, we’ve even got video content from some of the reps, some of their colleagues who’ve been successful selling the product and what value they were able to bring to their customers.  So that’s where we’ve got to so far, but we’re still looking forward and we’re looking at now how we can leverage Highspot’s API, create a new flow of data so we can start tracking more of this line correlation from content, consumption training certification into pipeline generation and ultimately revenue, right? So we’re starting to build that out now with the help of the Highspot technical account team. SS: How do you measure the impact of your efforts on your strategic initiatives and do you have any wins you can share? FM: We’ve been on a journey from a data perspective here. As I just mentioned, we’re looking at automating some of the processes we’ve had through your API and data lake extension, but until now it’s been very manual. Last year, for example, we took our global AE team, roughly about 50, 60 sellers, and we looked at their performance across five or six criteria: performance versus target closed business, those kinds of things, and we created an aggregated score.We did the same in terms of engagement and things that would highlight engagement, like content consumed had they completed training, et cetera. What we were able to find by creating this aggregated score was that the reps who were doing more of the right things – they were highly engaged, consuming the content in Highspot, and taking the courses that we’d built – were outperforming others significantly. I think the stat we have is between 48 to 57 percentage points higher attainment versus target than those who weren’t engaged, so that’s huge for us to be able to quantify that influence over revenue. Going forward, the plan is to automate a lot of this and we’ll be looking to leverage the API, but also the Scorecards you’ve built into the platform.SS: And that is an amazing win, congratulations to you and the team at Dropbox. Last question for you, Felix, you have a strong vision for your enablement strategy. How do you plan to evolve your strategy in the next year? And how do you plan to leverage Highspot to help you innovate? FM: I always like to joke that we’re never in a fair fight in enablement. We’re typically outnumbered 50 reps to one of us. In that world, it’s all about being scalable, repeatable, and measurable. A couple of things that we’re looking to do is continue to invest in building more of our spaces within Highspot in those Spots. We’re bringing on other partners within the business, like our rev ops team, and deal desk, they’re all looking for their own spaces. So we’re bringing more of the sales process and organization into Highspot to continue that ambition of being a single source of truth. We’re on to your front-line lead coaching program, so bring all our front-line managers through a coaching program and Highspot will play a big part of that with specific manager-based plays and using the Scorecards again here.And then we’re hopefully going to accelerate a lot of what we’re doing with the AI functionality that you guys have brought to market recently. For me specifically looking at AI feedback within those learning modules, I think that’s going to be a big piece for us.SS: Exciting. Felix, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate the time. FM: Thanks for having us.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.

A study conducted by Gartner found 62% of sellers who lost a virtual deal believed it would have been won if conducted in person. So how can you ensure rep confidence in today’s digital sales landscape?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Cara Holt, the director of sales enablement at Learning A-Z. Thank you for joining us, Cara, I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Cara Holt: I have been in education for 20-plus years, which is scary to say in some form. So I started as a kindergarten teacher and then quickly started leading teams around my third year. I was a curriculum leader, then an instructional coach, and then I was eventually assistant principal before I stepped out. I came into the world of ed tech not really knowing what it was, but I knew that professional learning and training was definitely a passion of mine. And so I went into training teachers first. And then because of where I was and the product that I was selling or representing, I realized that our sales team didn’t know how to position something. And so that’s how I say I accidentally fell into sales enablement. It really wasn’t like a thing or a term that I’d heard before.And so that was about five years ago now. And so started working with sales teams, started building Materials for them, job aids, training materials, and then really started building certification courses. And what does that mean? And what does training look like? And so training just exploded from there.Built my way up into the enablement space – I lead an amazing team here at Learning A to Z. We all collaborate cross-functionally. Sales enablement is a big cross-functional collaborator. And so we all have those different functions and we lead an amazing sales team here that helps educators. That’s really what our goal is, just to provide them with the materials and resources that really make their life easier. SS: As someone with two elementary school children, I have to say, I think you’re a saint for all that you have done in your earlier career. And I love that path that you followed from your career standpoint to lead you to enablement, that is amazing. And it aligns with something that I had seen on your LinkedIn profile because you shared that your passion is sales empowerment. How does this influence your approach to your enablement strategy? CH: Yeah, so it’s so funny because the term sales empowerer really came from when I got here to Learning A-Z. They had sales enablement before, but really it was sales ops. I had to work to really redefine who we were. One of the things that I did when I was introducing myself to my reps was I would say, “I’m really here to help empower you to do your job, whether that means tools, whether that means training, or certifications, all of those things, that’s what I’m here to do.”One of my reps spoke up and she was like, “So really what you’re saying is you’re a sales empowerer.” Yes, that’s exactly what I am. And so we just took that and read with it, I was like, that’s amazing. That’s who I want to be. I don’t want to be sales enablement, now I want to be a sales empowerer and I really want to empower them to feel confident. Like our solution – we know that our solution is there to help students and teachers and I want them to be able to position that and be able to speak to that and feel really comfortable when they’re in front of our customers, that really buyer-centric lens.That’s really what I say, that goes back to that cross-functionality. We work with all the different teams. We’re really here to help empower our reps. And what does that mean? And it’s tools like Highspot that help do that. SS: On the note around enablement platforms, before implementing Highspot, you noted that 80% of your reps really struggled to locate content when they needed it. What impact did that have on your sales team’s confidence? CH: When I came to Learning A-Z it was really important to me to not come in like a wrecking ball. They had an enablement function but we knew we were doing things differently. And so I started performing a gap analysis, really what were the areas that were missing and how could I come in and help to solve problems for them and really empower them in all those places. And one of the places that really stuck out to me at the beginning was that 80% of my reps didn’t have confidence in finding the material. We had a platform that was really like digital asset management – there was no real structure, there were no analytics behind it, there were no Digital Sales Rooms. So they were really, pulling materials. One of our head of sales had pulled an iteration of a playbook that was seven iterations old, and that is not a good look. And what are they printing? What are they sharing? And I know as an administrator, or past administrator, when you hand me papers in this digital world, they’re going to get lost on my desk. I’m not going to be able to go back and look at them or find them. And then you have no idea if I really reviewed it, like what that meant for me. And so I had come from a company that had Highspot and I had some knowledge, but the thing is, I didn’t want to come in saying Highspot is the solution, right? You don’t know. You’re at a new place, you want to give them the time. I did my due diligence and I spent time, speaking to their many different platforms that have that similar function. One of our sister companies uses Highspot as well and so at the end of the day that’s who’s showing through as the right solution for us as well. SS: I love that. So I know that that analysis you did was definitely part of the impetus for deciding to invest in an enablement platform, and I know that you helped lead the evaluation for the right platform. As you said, you wanted to make sure it was the right fit for the organization that you’re at currently. So what made you ultimately decide to partner with Highspot again? CH: I spoke to lots of different platforms and people – great people – and met great solutions along the way, just not maybe the right solution for us. The thing that really stood out is Highspot has amazing people, they really do. Going back to, these are people that are going to partner with you and stick with you through your implementation journey. And I had seen that support before. And so I knew I had that to count on. Also, Highspot’s a leader in their field, really it’s the top. And when I was thinking of what platform are we going to get, that was really important to me that we had an innovative platform that was going to take our feedback and really make those changes to the best benefit of their customers.I knew it was user-friendly. That was something that was really important to me because our team was going to be building Highspot from scratch, and doing the content mitigation from our other platforms. So all of those pieces, taking all of those pieces into consideration, Highspot just kept coming up to the top for me, and that was something that I was working with our head of sales at the time, our senior vice president, now the president of our company. He was in it with me, and we were going to all these different demos and he had one in his mind that he really wanted. And so it was through that I was even able to help him change his mind and see the benefits that Highspot could bring to our table. SS: Since you launched last November, you have already seen some amazing results – you guys are driving 93% recurring usage. Can you tell us about some of the impact that this has had on sales confidence now?  CH: So we haven’t relaunched our survey yet, we wanted to give time for implementation. However, the one thing that we noticed right off the bat is when we came to our all sales meetings and people were sharing content, or product marketing was sharing. My team had a back channel joke where it was like Highspot, Highspot, Highspot – every time they said it, we’d put like a cheer in our chat. We just knew that they were loving it, all teams were loving it and they were creating different things. And it’s been fun to even see how marketing has created some plays for different campaigns and different pieces that we’ve been able to take and have big wins for. So being able to see our sales reps are now taking the ownership of leading some of our trainings of things that they’ve learned and sharing best practices, and really seeing that grow has been a huge win for us. And just hearing, like I said, every meeting with “Highspot, Highspot, Highspot”, “Make sure you go here, you’ve done this”, we have a place where they can share their wins – and that’s been a lot of their wins is being able to share a Pitch or being able to share a Digital Sales Room. And so hearing that and knowing okay, we’ve made an impact in this space, has been really rewarding for our team. SS: Now, as important as it is to have a single source of truth for your reps, it’s also important that you pair that with a really robust governance strategy. How are you focusing on improving content governance and how is that also helping to drive sales confidence? CH: It’s still something that I’m really trying to work on, it’s still one of our grow areas because when we initially mitigated from our first platform, we just took everything over. And so now we’re sitting here and that’s the one number I would like to see come up is that content governance because now we’re able to use the analytics that we’re getting from sales to feel like, what are they actually using, what things are just sitting here and not being utilized? We have made a beautiful platform where everything is really nicely organized and they can go to specific Spots for each one of our products because we have a really robust product portfolio. Everything is organized and there for them, and I think that has impacted their confidence in a positive way. But now we can use those analytics, we launched in November, we have those months behind us. So now we can actually start looking at what’s being utilized, how it’s being utilized, what’s winning. And I report that out to senior leadership on a monthly basis. What is our top content? What are they using? And how does that affect our win rates? And being able to see that has an impact on both marketing and sales. SS: Absolutely. Now, you’ve touched on it a little bit already. But I know a key way that you focus on empowering your teams is the use of Digital Rooms. What are some of the key ways that you’re leveraging Digital Rooms with your teams today? CH: Digital Rooms was one of our favorite features that we were going to get because, like I said, as an assistant, principal when you hand me papers it’s going to get lost on my desk. But now in this digital world, I can open that up, I can go back to it, I can share it. It provides all those opportunities because I know that there’s a statistic out there that says now most sales are being done online, and so it empowers our reps in that way to have the analytics and see the Digital Rooms. We actually had a rep just recently share how she’s customizing it per month and putting the top five things you should see this month, and honing in on the things that are happening in the product, the campaigns, the webinars that we may be releasing and really customizing her Digital Room in that way to share it with customers. To not just be a Pitch, but a tool that’s really partnering with them long-term, and sharing with them new things that were coming out and really being that lifelong partner, and not just trying to get that sale.That’s really who we are as an education company. And seeing that, and seeing how they’ve been utilizing those Digital Rooms has been probably one of the most exciting things. And building more templates for them so that they have those pieces, and then sharing templates that are landing really well in the market, and then being able to share that and have those pieces has been really beneficial to them. SS: Amazing. And how are you also then leveraging Digital Rooms to gather insights on what’s working and what’s not both for your sales team as well as your buyers? CH: Being able to have those analytics, really we were driving blind before, we didn’t know. And so now being able to pull those analytics that’s on the coordinator on my team works with me and we really review that. So that we know what to report out to sales, we know what to report out to marketing on what’s landing with customers. What's resonating with them? What can we make sure that we provide more of? So having all of those pieces and really being able to use that data and be data-driven in that way, it’s something that we never had before. So it’s really opened up a whole new avenue for us as far as the strategy goes and being able to share those analytics. SS: I love that. And you guys are seeing just absolutely. Amazing impact. You guys have seen some fantastic success with over 400k in closed won revenue in the first few months, and 10 million in open opportunities associated with Highspot. How did you drive these results? CH: I think that having that connection to our CRM and being able to see analytics like that has been huge. I think to be able to drive those results really started with a strong implementation. We actually started with a different coordinator leading the implementation efforts. He actually went on to a new adventure, super happy for him, but that meant that there was going to be a transition in that position, but we never lost traction. That implementation of Highspot was super important to us and making sure that they had the training that they need as the enablement team, they had the pieces that they need to really feel confident in the platform. So that when they were sharing, when they were pitching, that it was having an impact. And so that’s where I think, and we also paired it with some certifications and different trainings that were happening. And so with that came sharing new decks, sharing new scripts, and being able to see how they’re utilized and like what they’re sharing in those Digital Rooms based on the certifications of their trainings that we’ve just had has really made an impact for my team, but for sales to see what is impacting our market. SS: Fantastic. Cara, last question for you, I really appreciate all of the insights that you’ve shared. How are you continuing to build on the momentum that you’ve achieved so far to continue to help drive a lot of this business impact? And how are you planning on leveraging Highspot to help? CH: Highspot has amazing webinars. They have this new thing called Learning Circles where we can learn from other enablers. I’ve reached out to other enablers that are in the ed-tech space to hear, “What are you doing? What’s working?” I think instead of seeing them as competitors, but seeing them as collaborators is an important part of that strategy when you’re implementing a new tool to see hey, how are you doing this and how can I learn from you? Utilizing the chat features and the different things I can reach out to other people that are Highspot users, I think is really important. We want to make sure that this is something that continues to be sticky, that it continues to have a high recurring usage.We’ve seen such an impact already. We just want to make sure that now we’re leveraging best rep strategies. We’re allowing them to share big wins, that we’re highlighting those in our all-sales meetings. That we’re bringing that to the surface, that we’re really looking at that content, driving that engagement, utilizing those plays to be that one-stop shop to help them learn different strategies or different campaigns that we’re sharing.Really utilizing all of those pieces and driving usage and growth in the future I think is really going down to now that we’ve implemented it, now that we’re starting to see, now let’s go back and analyze the data and where can we take it to the next level. Because that’s really what I want to see. I want to see us be able to take it to that next level and really share best practices. Not just within in-house, but with other enablers as well. SS: I love that. And you participating in this is absolutely a fantastic first step in sharing it with other enablers. So thank you again, Cara, so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. CH: Yeah, of course. It was great being here today. 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.

According to a study by McKinsey, organizations outperform their peers by 85 percent when prioritizing customer insights. So how can you leverage data and insights to drive strategic growth?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 Graham Killian, the senior director of global revenue operations at Talogy. Thank you for joining us, Graham. I would love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Graham Kilian: Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here and looking forward to our chat today. I’ve been working in the go-to-market strategy and enablement space for about 12 years, starting out mostly in an integrated marketing capacity, doing a little bit of everything to drive business for a few different startups. And then that’s where I began with Talogy almost eight years ago where I’ve been incredibly fortunate and I’m very thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to learn, grow, and innovate as the company has grown rapidly and expanded across the globe. And, really reflecting on my experience for our conversation today, I actually found it really interesting how closely Highspot is tied to my career journey, going from a marketing generalist supporting a very small sales team in Indiana to now leading a global revenue operations team that supports hundreds of people within our go-to-market teams in over 20 countries worldwide.And, I say it’s interesting because Highspot came into my view through your team actually doing a very good job of practicing what they preach from the first touchpoint with one of your sales development reps sending me some thought leadership content about the rise of RevOps and the importance of sales enablement. And that was right around the time that my current boss – who’s now the VP of global revenue operations – was the vice president of sales, and I was in product marketing and we both started talking about how this was really a need for our organization.And, through the thought leadership content that your team was sending me, and as I began to engage with your sales reps, that content really started to become the foundation for essentially my thesis for what RevOps could be for Talogy and really what helped me make my business case to become a department of one to start RevOps. And so that was three years ago. In that time, we’ve now built out the team, we’ve restructured, I think the global RevOps team now is about 14 people. And it’s crazy, here we are today. SS: We’re glad that you’re here with us, Graham. Now, as mentioned in the introduction, gaining better insight into what works for your sales team was one of the key reasons why you initially implemented an enablement platform. How does Highspot help you take a data-driven approach to your enablement strategy? GK: Really it helps us in multiple ways. We look to ultimately use data to help us make more informed business decisions, right? There’s a lot of data across the business. There’s a lot of content, especially for a business like us. We’re the product of 16 acquisitions 16 different companies being brought together, a lot of different departments that have a different piece, whether it’s part of creating the actual sales-enabled content or creating guidance that goes into it and then ultimately actually having some firm data when it comes to what works and what doesn’t, so that we can better prioritize where we put our resources, where we allocate those resources. We’ve really used the data that we can gain from Highspot to be more strategic and more pragmatic in how we approach sales enablement, we’ve used it to really improve the experience that we can deliver to our clients. So some of the data that we really look at when we’re considering the effectiveness of tools like Highspot is feedback from our clients. So we run a win-loss interview program. Something that our product marketing team heads up and, before Highspot, we were seeing data coming in through those interviews telling us, really pointing to some of the typical symptoms of silo syndrome – the things that you can expect when you take 16 different companies that all have multiple departments and you put them together. And it was causing friction in the sales process and the customer experience, causing that pain that at times would cause buyers to not choose to buy from us, even if they liked the solution. And we’ve been able to leverage that feedback into what we do, and now we’re leveraging that feedback to validate that what we have done is actually working. SS: I love to hear that. And how has this data-driven approach helped you scale your enablement strategy across your global teams? GK: From the time that we really started looking at Highspot – and we’ve tried to seek feedback from our teams – so leveraging data on the very front end to understand what teams' needs were. So through surveys, through focus groups and interviews, really trying to put some hard data behind what our challenges are as a company globally, as well as then also understanding kind of the nuances that come with running a global business operating in ten different regions where there are cultural differences that may impact the way you sell and what’s really effective in your local market. We’ve done a lot of work on the front end to make sure that we’re understanding that from our teams, and we’re also collecting feedback now that we have rolled this out to our global teams after we’ve implemented and we’ve had some time with them actually using it getting that feedback from them to see what’s working. How is it improving efficiency and effectiveness across the business, and ultimately, how are we solving for the classic problems that all of the businesses like us have? Which is content is difficult to find across the business. It’s siloed in a ton of different areas, it lacks visibility. So there’s a lot of great content out there that people could be using but they don’t know where to find it when they need it – that just in time surfacing of the content that you really need. And then also, very importantly, is that content lacks guidance. How do you actually use that content to be effective in the sales process, position yourself as an expert as you’re selling, and really build the trust that it takes? When you’re not in commodity goods, we are solution providers. And so solution selling takes another level of that really good guidance where you can put the context and the content together and really create an effective influential experience. SS: Now, Graham, I know global expansion has been a key strategic initiative for your business. What are some of the challenges businesses might face though, when trying to expand globally? GK: Yeah, there really are a wide variety of challenges that you run into. So we are a global business, as I mentioned, we acquired 16 companies across the globe, so we’re in over 20 different countries. So with that comes a wide variety of different stakeholders, so scalability becomes incredibly important when you’re a lean mean enablement team, and you need to be able to support a very broad range of stakeholders with varying needs. For instance, every week we have sales enablement content in ten different languages to be able to support our teams in their local markets. So being able to make sense of that, being able to make sure that, your local teams have access to the content they need, but that you don’t create noise for your other sales teams that really don’t need to see content in Dutch, for instance. Very rarely does our America’s team need to see that content. And so being able to create a curated sales enablement experience becomes very important when you’re dealing with the challenges of there’s a lot of content to begin with and then you multiply that by language needs, it becomes exponentially greater to harness all of that content and really centralize it into one place. For instance, we also have a lot of different siloed repositories where this content exists. Coming from different companies, from different departments, we have over 20 different content repositories aggregated into Highspot. So when you think about organizational change and trying to create efficiency it can be really a challenge to try to get folks who have maybe been doing things a certain way for a long time to change what they’re doing. It can be a big lift to try to consolidate 20 different SharePoints into one. But with a tool like Highspot, we don’t have to disrupt what people are used to manage content behind the scenes and allows us to aggregate everything into one central place for our consumers – our salespeople, our go-to-market teams – to really drive the efficiency for them without having to create a huge project to consolidate everything on the back end. So that’s been really beneficial.Dealing with, you know, the cultural differences and being able to account for those things is certainly something you deal with at a global scale. And so being able to create resources at the global level for scalability purposes, but then also being able to support those teams with localization, which is really where we moved the needle in sales and in our local markets is really important. At times we might use Sales Plays to launch something globally, but then work with our teams to figure out where we might need to localize those things – where we need to make sure that we’re providing content pricing in their local denominations and their local currencies – and that becomes really important.And then the last thing I think I’ll mention, which is probably one of the biggest challenges, is driving consistency and standardization, right? And that goes hand in hand with scalability. It’s very hard to scale what you’re doing from a sales enablement and sales training standpoint when you have eight to 10 different sales teams and they’re all used to doing things in different ways. And there really isn’t a whole lot of consistency in how sales enablement and training have been delivered historically. Really using Highspot as our conduit for this we’ve been able to start that process of standardizing the way that we frame our actual sales enablement and our training, the way that we deliver it to our teams and then the way that we actually analyze it by now having data. It’s very difficult to understand the effectiveness of a program when you don’t really have data in the first place. And so going back to the first question about how we’re leveraging data, really understanding. How our global teams are accessing and using content has become incredibly valuable, and that’s one of the things that we’re most excited about as we build more data about what our internal teams are viewing and ultimately what they’re sending to our clients and how they’re using content to influence the sales process. Very exciting stuff and only something that’s possible with a tool like this when you’re dealing with global scale like we are. SS: I’m sure a lot of companies can relate with that. Graham, you have seen some fantastic results since implementing Highspot, including a 95 percent increase in rep confidence and a significant increase in efficiency. What are the key components of your strategy that led to these results? GK: I think the answer to your question really lies in the close collaboration that really needs to happen in order to be successful with implementing something like Highspot. The whole goal of Highspot is to solve the challenges that your team is facing and also be able to bring together cross-functional teams, demolish those silos, [and] break down the sales barriers that there often are. And a lot of times that means being able to collaborate more closely with cross-functional teams than you typically do. And a lot of what we were able to do, as I mentioned earlier, was collaborate with our sales teams on the front end to really understand what their needs were, collaborate with the content owners and the guidance owners to understand what their needs and their challenges were when trying to deliver that content to our sales teams, and then really be able to use Highspot to bring that together and to be the solution to many of those challenges. And really nailing those things down with the sales team on the front end allowed us to be very focused in what we prioritize when we created Highspot and in the design of Highspot and ultimately, I think that’s what has led to reps being more confident that they have the latest and greatest at their fingertips at all times. And a lot of it also goes back to that visibility as they at least now feel like they have visibility into everything. And they also know that they have the team –  this cross-functional collaborative team of content owners across the business – that are focused on maintaining that repository for them and ensuring that it is truly, accessible. A single source of truth for the organization. SS: Now, you’ve touched on it, but a major driver behind your success are Sales Plays. What are some of your best practices for utilizing plays, and how has this helped drive impact? GK: Yeah, sales plays are great, they really are. They are something that really brings more simplicity and cohesion to things that can often feel nebulous and complex and even disjointed when you’re bringing together all of the different puzzle pieces across the business from different departments that it takes to actually create a complete comprehensive sales enablement package for your team. So Sales Plays are great with that, they really helped foster that collaboration with cross-functional teams involved in both the content and the guidance creation and help bring it all together in one place. I really love the simplicity of Highspot’s best practice framework of what to know, say, show, and do. And that is really something that we have adopted now as a framework for enablement as a business. So when I work with our consulting team or our product team, we talk about, which assets fit into which of those know, say, show, and do categories. And then we bring that all together into a Sales Play that’s organized in that way. And it’s just so simple that it makes sense to our teams. And so we actually just used that framework for collaboration on a very large global initiative. We just launched a new solution, our in-view leadership solution suite earlier this year, which was a huge cross-functional effort across the globe. A ton of work from a ton of teams went into it. And to make sense of all of that, to deliver it to our go-to-market teams in a way that isn’t overwhelming, is a challenge. And we used a global Sales Play to be able to bring together all of that content and context into one place. And that is how we launched it internally. We launched it through a Sales Play that was in our internal webinars as we were explaining what the solution was. We were also helping our teams understand where they can find the resources that they need. So much of this, like if you sit people down in a 1-hour webinar and give them a bunch of information, they’re going to retain a very small portion of that. So the main thing we try to train our teams on is where they can find those resources when they need that just-in-time ability to surface the content you need to be the expert in real-time when you’re having a conversation with your client and avoid the ever dreaded, “I’ll get back to you with that.” Even when it’s something that’s a seemingly simple answer, it can kill a sales process. And so Sales Plays are really good about making sure a salesperson has clear, curated guidance from end-to-end of everything that they need in a given selling situation. And it also helps because they know that there’s one place they need to go to find everything. And if they can’t find it, there’s usually guidance there to tell them either it’s coming, or who they can go to for help with that. So it’s a really comprehensive way of enabling a team, but also giving them a narrow segmented focus of where they’re selling and not allowing them to get lost in the noise of other solutions in the process. So we’ve actually expanded the use of Highspot globally right before that launch so that we could get that Sales Play out to everybody. And it’s really been, we’ve had great feedback, fantastic feedback from our in-market teams. And the early results and the feedback we’ve seen leads me to say that it’s really been one of the most successful product launches in my time at Talogy.SS: I love that. And I’d love that one of the areas that you’re expanding into, or you’re in the process of expanding into, is around Pitching and Digital Rooms. How are you planning to leverage Pitch capabilities in the year ahead to continue building momentum with your teams? GK: So Pitching is an awesome feature, it really is, and something that our salespeople have often dreamed of and didn’t think was possible. And so, there’s been a lot of early excitement from the sales teams that have gotten it. We’ve had great results with early adoption of pitching just because our sales teams love the abundantly professional deliverables that you can send to your client. And making that sales process easier, of course, avoiding a ton of emails and attachments and trying to send a client, whether it’s a recording of a call, or if it’s a pitch deck, that’s maybe too large and you can’t even send it via email. It solves a lot of just the basic problems that our teams have. And so that’s where driving the adoption of it hasn’t really been too much of a challenge. It is something that is change management, it’s different behavior than a lot of salespeople were used to. But once you can train them on it and get them more comfortable with it, they really love the capabilities of what they can do. And we’ve seen a lot of this adoption of Pitching when it comes to how we present proposals and RFPs. If there isn’t a restriction on how the RFP can be delivered to the client, we build out a nice branded Digital Room, we host the actual proposal document with all of the requirements as well as any of the supplemental materials they might need, sometimes we add a personalized video. And it really personalizes the buying experience and we do believe that’s going to lead to more wins, right? At this point, our teams are really excited about what they’ve been able to deliver and then the insights that they get when they send it. One of the things that will drive salespeople and sales leaders crazy is once you’ve sent that email, what happens? I spent all this time putting together the perfect pitch, did they even look at it? That’s one of the questions that’s always burning in your mind.Our SDR team uses it for prospecting, a great way to use Pitching capability. So when you’ve sent several emails to targeted prospects and you’re trying to prioritize, who do you follow up with when no one’s actually responded to you? Leveraging those Pitch analytics that just pop up to the top to say that so and so just viewed this piece of content, it just signals that’s a timely time to reach out. And so we really leverage it in that way as well, just to help prioritize where our salespeople spend their time every day, making sure that they are reaching out to people that might be warm, or maybe you did send a proposal several months ago and that client has gone silent. And then you see something pop up in your email, a notification that they’ve re-engaged. That’s a good time to maybe reach out and see if they need anything. And so we’ve had some really good experience now and some good success stories from salespeople who have had that exact thing happen and made that reach out and the buyers like, “Oh, that’s actually great time that you’ve reached out, we’re actually ready to move forward in the decision-making process.” So it’s a great tool. SS: Last question for you, Graham. How do you plan to leverage innovation and enablement like AI to continue to expand globally and engage your clients at scale in the year ahead?GK: The rise of AI is certainly something that everyone has their eyes on. Highspot is really proving to be a leader in this space, and so I’ve been reading a lot of the thought leadership content, attending a lot of the webinars to stay up on what the options are, and trying to understand really what’s going be the best fit for our business. Where do we start with implementing some of these AI-enabled features, and then what can we maybe grow into over time, ’cause I think that’s always important. Implementing newer technologies, especially with things that are really on the cutting edge like AI. Some of the features in Highspot that I see immediate utility for are things like Instant Answers. So, being able to go to the search bar – intuitively type in a question that would normally go in an email to one of our consultants or someone in our R&D team – being able to just plug that into the search bar with a question mark, and then actually returning an answer that’s based upon.Our content that’s in our system, I think is really important, right? When there are tools like ChatGPT out there, where you could have salespeople going and trying to ask a question and getting an answer back and not knowing if it’s factually accurate, I love the fact that our team can go into Highspot, ask a question at least about our content, about what we do as service providers, and be able to get an answer that’s just based upon the content that we have at Highspot is incredible. It’ll lead to a lot of time savings. I think it’ll lead to some just natural upskilling of our team. When they have a quick question, they can get a quick answer. So it almost becomes like a knowledge check in that way. And then there are some additional exciting features that I know Highspot has, like AI knowledge checks, like AI coaching that are all things we hope to take advantage of in the long run. I think other features where AI and where these innovations can help us go back to what, you know, I talked about earlier being so critical, which is really helping our sales team when the sales process is so nuanced, [and] when there is such a vast pool of content that our sales team can use to position themselves as experts in the sales process. Using tools that can help them surface the right content at the right time is so critical. And so tools like Highspot and being able to actually recommend the content to salespeople, depending upon where they’re at in the sales process, depending upon certain attributes that they’re tracking related to an opportunity in Salesforce is really powerful stuff when it comes to helping your sales team efficiently get to what they need. And then being able to effectively use it with their client to influence the buying decision. SS: Graham, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your insights. GK: Thank you very much. It was my pleasure. 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.

Marcus chats with Liv Boeree, one of the most successful female poker players of all time. Liv is the only woman to have won both a European Poker Tour event and a World Series of Poker bracelet, and has amassed tournament winnings of over $3.5m dollars over her career. They talk about what makes a world-class poker player, whether poker skills are born of nature or nurture, and the experience of being a woman in a majority male-dominated game and how to exploit that fact. Liv was a cofounder of Raising for Effective Giving, which educated poker players about the ideas of giving effectively and managed to raise over $14m for top charities over its lifetime. This idea of creating win-win scenarios is a persistent theme in Liv's life, so much so that she is now hosting her own podcast called Win-Win with Liv Boeree, and has given two TED talks on the main stage, the latest of which is specifically focused on the win-win mindset and its potential to counteract Moloch traps and races to the bottom. Follow Liv on:Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/@LivBoereeTwitter/X at: https://twitter.com/Liv_BoereeInstagram at: https://www.instagram.com/liv_boeree/ 

A Gartner study found that organizations prioritizing revenue enablement see a 41 percent increase in revenue attainment per seller. So how can you build an enablement strategy that drives results?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 Anthony Doyle, the director of sales enablement at Turnitin. Thanks for joining us, Anthony. I’d love for you to tell us all about yourself, your background, and your role. Anthony Doyle: Sure thing. Thanks for having me, Shawnna. My name is Anthony Doyle, I’m the director of sales and development as Shawnna said, at Turnitin.A little bit about myself, I started my career back around 1998 working in the education sector, building interactive multimedia learning materials for education. I started out on the tool side of the game and really building materials and building learning programs for UK institutions.And that was at the time when the VLE space, the virtual learning environment space had just started being created. So I was working on some of the early prototypes and software development for those types of systems. That led me to a sales role for around nine years, and that’s where I really learned my sales craft and my different selling methodologies. I think of solution selling, Milleheim, and those types of frameworks.Through that career, I built a massive knowledge of sales and marketing and went on to lead sales and marketing organizations at various ed tech companies. And what I found at those companies I was doing a lot of enablement. Before enablement was a thing and before it was coined as a type, a term, or a category, I was naturally developing sales teams, developing sales processes, selling systems, and things like that.So that led me to a bit of a consulting career, working with organizations to develop their sales and marketing practices. And then a couple of years ago, I decided I really wanted to get into a long-term role and join an organization where I could have a good tenure with, and be part of something from a longevity perspective, rather than going in and fixing and putting things in and then putting it in the hands of somebody else, to really see the long term development.I’ve been familiar with Turnitin since probably the late nineties. So when Turnitin was first founded, I’ve seen Turnitin grow up as a company and mature. So it was good to join them and get on the other side of that. And now I lead the sales and development practice here at Turnitin, which is part of the RevOps organization here. SS: Anthony, as you mentioned, you have extensive experience in enablement and you also have a very clear vision for your enablement strategy at Turnitin. What are the core components of your strategy and what are the key strategic initiatives you’re focused on driving this year through enablement? AD: It’s first important to say that when I joined the organization around just under three years ago, this strategy wasn’t what I led with initially. I led by really trying to figure out where the organization was at, what the goals of the org were, and figuring out some of the kind of key gaps initially that we needed to put in place in order then to be able to develop a strategy for the long term. So we focused initially on some of the competency development and a competency framework around what we wanted to really be driving in terms of our sales process and the skills underneath that. And then at the beginning of this year, I got together with my team ahead of the sales kickoff to really develop the sales and neighborhood strategy that would take us from 2024 through to 2026. And where we’ve landed with that, is we’ve got three pillars in the strategy. The first of those is: align and engage. And that pillar is around really aligning with the different sales regions, the different sales leaders, and, factoring in their regional intricacies and figuring out where their teams are at. And engaging those teams in a dialogue for development, for increasing all the key metrics and KPIs that you would expect. And then really moving into the next pillar, that’s around educating and inspiring, so it’s: educate and inspire. And that area is really around developing the training programs that will be inspiring sellers to engage and to develop their skill sets. The aim of, obviously, to develop the sales practice. The next pillar underneath that is: elevate and impact. And that’s really where the rubber meets the road, right? It’s about. impacting results and elevating the practice to a world-class sales level. So when I was hired, the MO was to develop a world-class selling organization that other people in the ed tech industry would recognize and want to be part of and want to come here because of the way that we do sell and the level of practice that we have.So that last pillar is about getting us there. Now, some of the initiatives, obviously that come under that, there’s many initiatives that we have. Some of those range from, at the align and engage level, just having a regional management cadence, so having a regular cadence. We restructured our sales enablement team to have a regional sales enablement manager in each one of our three key regions.And what we’re really looking to do is have that regular cadence with the first-line managers to understand what’s going on, and get coverage on where the sellers are at from a competency perspective and a sales capabilities rating. And then see what, we can drive programmatically down from that. Then we feed that into the next pillar, which is obviously, the education-focused pillar, the educate and inspire, where we’ll be looking to drive tailored training programs and we’ll be driving that through Highspot. And then obviously as we get to elevating the practice and driving impact, some of the things that we’re exploring there in terms of initiative is looking at Meeting Intelligence to figure out, where there’s coaching opportunity and where we can really drive that elevation of practice.SS: Amazing, and I love how you really centered them around those three core principles. How does your enablement platform, Highspot, help play a role in effectively executing your enablement strategy and supporting your strategic initiatives? AD: It’s a great question. First of all, you need, a place to be able to gravitate around and a place to be able to drive content, and programmatic training. We need somewhere to put that, and we need somewhere to drive that as well. So Highspot is pretty much our sales enablement hub. It’s where all of our content to do with messaging [lives], it’s where we do all of our onboarding, so when somebody first joins us, and we’re developing as part of the strategy role-based onboarding pathways.At the moment, we’ve got quite a generic onboarding pathway. So, we’re developing more personalized onboarding routes, depending on the role that you take within the org, and all of that first engagement starts with Highspot. And then the ever-boarding, things like sales systems training product messaging.Plays and we’re going to be looking at development sales kits as well. And we have got a strong partnership with our product marketing team and they develop well-built sales plays for our product motions. So a lot of that, all of that has to be housed somewhere, and it should be in one place, and it should be somewhere where you can understand how that’s being leveraged, and what impact that’s making. If we think about elevation and driving impact, we want to be able to know what’s working, and what’s not working. And if these motions and the training that we’re delivering is being consumed, how is that impacting on results?We look at correlations between where people are exhibiting certain behaviors, pitching more regularly, involving certain pieces of content within the sales cycle in Highspot, and how that’s driving back-to-end results. SS: Now, you mentioned the importance of driving regional alignment. How does this defined enablement strategy help you drive that alignment to execute against your strategic initiatives?AD: I think this is the key component really. What we found over the first two years when I joined the org being more transparency we weren’t seeing the traction we wanted with the adoption of some of the programs we’re developing. We built out a competency framework with really high-quality training that existed under that, we built customized frameworks for lead qualification.We have a framework called Nitro, and we felt the need to do that because of a lot of qualifications LMX, put things like budget – if you think of band – budget is at the top. You think of Adam, authority at the top. Whereas in our sector when we’re selling, the need is the key thing, right? You've got to have need at the top of the cycle.So we developed resources like that. As much as we try to drive awareness and adoption of those things, we weren’t really seeing it at a macro level. What we quickly recognized is, it was missing that regional engagement piece.We had to align, we had to figure out what the challenges were in the regions and then eat our own dog food, really, in terms of, if we’re trying to push a problem-based selling approach. Really, we should take the same approach ourselves as enablement and figure out what’s going on and diagnose before we start prescribing things like nitro and, sprints, prospecting frameworks, and things like this. And certain training, we should try and figure out first, where are the sellers are, and what’s their biggest opportunity to improve. And even if they’re really high-performing sales teams, it’s like any sport, right? You can be the world’s heavyweight champion of the world, right? Of boxing, but you know where you want to develop muscle and you want to develop strength or, refine certain techniques.But you can probably talk to that very quickly if you’re engaged and say, “Hey, if you’re going to coach me for two hours, Muhammad Ali, and bring him back this is what I want you to work with me on.” So that’s the approach we’ve now been taking, and we think it’s crucial to get the alignment.Because then when we’re asking those questions to the first line managers and they’re saying this is where I want your help. When we offer that help we’re going to get the adoption. We’re going to get the engagement because they’ve asked for it. SS: I love that notion of elevate and inspire. How do you think about that when structuring your coaching programs, especially across regions and how can real-world coaching help drive consistent execution of your strategic initiatives around the world? AD: So one of the first things we did, one of the first things I did when I joined the org is redevelop the sales process. We merged about two or three separate organizations together and they all had slightly different sales processes. So what we said is really what we feel is important is breaking down the sales process and looking at what are the capabilities that sellers need to really craft, and work on to be successful in any buy-in journey. So we now have is we have ten core sales competencies or sales capabilities that are mapped under our sales process. So what we’ve done is develop material around them, developed job aids, a pre-discovery planning worksheet, a vision engineering worksheet, and things like that.Frameworks for mitigating objections using things like layer, and another approach is mid labels and mirroring and techniques like that, psychological selling techniques, and negotiation techniques. And we’ve developed assets around these things. So what we’re effectively doing when we’re aligning with the regions is talking to the regional manager about what they’re seeing in results where they’re seeing the average pipeline velocities and the kind of metrics around pipeline health.We’ve got that presented now in dashboards. We’ve got a fantastic BI team here, so they’ve looked at a lot of depth on the pipeline, and our regional sales managers can have that dialogue with the sales manager in the region and say, “Hey, based on this, what capabilities do you think we can further develop in your teams?”And then what we’re doing from there is building a programmatic approach to that. So instead of just doing a training and saying, we’re done, we’re actually building a four-week program or a six-week program around that, and we’re layering in different training, driving bespoke activities and workshop activities and different fun ways of engaging the teams.And then we’re driving that and we’re rolling that out through Highspot on a learning path, and then we’re seeing how the teams that we’re engaging on Zoom, to get like feedback and where you’re struggling. How have you applied this over the last four weeks? What are you finding?What’s not working, what’s working? We’re getting that kind of tribal knowledge culture moving across the teams. And that we feel is the right approach. SS: Now we’ve touched on this a bit, but, as we’ve been talking about this, you have helped to globalize your Highspot instance and you’re seeing amazing impact, I think you guys are at 86% adoption. Can you tell us more about this effort and how it has helped to keep your teams aligned across regions? AD: When we first deployed Highspot, what we did was we took quite a wide approach to it. And obviously, we’ve got many different regions. We’ve got teams in Asia, and we’ve got many different languages that are spoken.We’ve got teams whose primary language is Japanese, so we’ve got content that’s translated into Japanese. We’ve got folks in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Spain, in Mexico, we’ve got people in the Philippines, in all over the world, Australia, et cetera. Now, when you think about collateral and marketing material, and when you start translating that, what we’ve done and a mistake we made, to be honest, is we put that all centrally in one kind of like product by product, we had different Spots in Highspot.  But what happened is that quickly became overwhelming for people because when they were searching or when they were trying to service content, they were finding lots of content that wasn’t applicable to them. It was in Japanese and their clients don’t speak Japanese.And, obviously, once people were leaning into that content and some of the teams are leaning in and using it, that was bubbling to the top in some of the lists and on the smart pages and things like on the Spot overviews. So what we did is we restructured Highspot to take more of an approach where our core, primary language content, that’s American English or British English is in a central spot, and then we created regional spots.We used the group feature of Highspot to collect all these teams into groups so that they only had access to the materials and the regions that mattered to them. And that helped a lot because it meant that content was easily found. It was more applicable. They also had their own spaces where regional marketing teams could start driving certain motions and specific. Materials that are right and relevant to those regions. So that helped in just thinking more thoughtfully around the process of structuring Highspot in the way that’s going to best serve the sellers.  And then I think the key thing is a partnership with product marketing. So in enablement, we don’t own the messaging. We don’t own how we message our products. How we necessarily train the products as well into the market, but we’re a key partner in building some of those programs. And I have a learning developer who’s fantastic, her name is Ren Narciso, an absolutely amazing learning designer and developer. And she develops a lot of our product training, but she’s not an expert in each product, right? And I’m not an expert in the product. So, that partnership with product marketing is absolutely key. And we started working with them to leverage frameworks like PIC: problem, impact, root cause – different frameworks to really think about how we position our products.And they have done a fantastic job of developing materials and assets. Without that partnership, I think it’s very difficult for enablement to drive that value. I think we work in proxy in some instances, and we work to support those teams to help them craft a very valuable experience in Highspot.I think that’s probably why we’re seeing some of the adoption we are, it’s because people like the product market and really leaning in and being a very strong internal advocate for the use of Highspot. They even do things like building out like how-tos in Highspot. Here’s how you use digital rooms and good practices around it.So even though you think shouldn’t an admin be doing that? Actually, because those people are really building out these assets, they want to see them utilized effectively. So they’re leaning in and they’ve got the enthusiasm and the willingness to even push more tutorials and things out to sellers.SS: Now you touched on the importance of learning programs and the key role it plays in really driving that consistent execution. What are your best practices for designing effective learning programs and how do you leverage Highspot to help? AD: So I think you’ve got to go right down to what’s the intended outcome, right? When you’re looking at a learning sort of program, you’ve got to think about what are we trying to drive in terms of the learning outcomes. So our learning specialist, she really does look at that level when she’s developing these modules. She thinks okay, what are the intended learning outcomes?So there’s like a training docket for each one of the courses we build. And the key thing that’s in mind there is what are the key learning outcomes we’re looking to drive. And then we back into that, right? We make sure we’ve got the coverage on the resources. We make sure we’ve got the situational knowledge and the subject matter experts feeding that in.We try to drive things like interactivity and drive curiosity too. We just try to make it fun, and engaging, but we’re very purposeful and we don’t we don’t put it. A fun exercise in there just for the sake of it. We make sure that it’s driving towards a learning outcome. SS: Now, in addition to enabling your internal teams, I believe Turnitin also leverages Highspot to enable your customers through programs like customer onboarding. How is your company helping to ensure customers have a great onboarding experience and how is Highspot helping with this? AD: In terms of our customers who we sell to or we’re onboarding, when I started enablement, the enablement team was actually within the customer experience part of the organization. I reported to the chief customer officer but we moved into sales under the revenue, the chief revenue officer as when that new member of the exec team was hired. But we’ve still got quite strong connections with the CE org and we have fantastic members of that team in terms of who do the onboarding. What we find the onboarding team utilizes Highspot for, I know a number of the consultants use it to actually provide the glue to the onboarding experience and now they’re using the Digital Sales Rooms to put materials in there and send that to customers and have them go through the onboarding experience, and they can update the resources at the right point in time. Things like the help guides and such things, different resources, links to our help center, and presentations that they’ve delivered on the virtual sessions or in-person sessions if they’re doing in-person onboarding. So, a lot of the use we see with the onboarding team is more around that level. SS: I love that Turnitin is really on the cutting edge here because you guys are creating a consistent experience for your customers by really leveraging Highspot from the moment they’re a prospective customer all the way through their customer experience with you. Do you have any wins from that team that you can share? AD: I think what they’re saying, what they’ve said to me is when they said, “Look, we need this.” It was like, we get really good feedback on that. And it’s like a valuable resource. It was something they were unwilling to give up, it was providing real identifiable value. I think as we scale and as we deploy new products as well into the market, there has to be scalable ways of onboarding. And I know we’ve been leaning in really heavily on digital onboarding. So this provides another way to, to provide not just the training, but the resources that then help nurture and bring customers to a high level of initial deployment and success. What I’m keen to understand is how that’s going and looking into how can we even support that team more, and provide them with the connectivity back into Highspot. Now I know this is a really hot topic at the moment, cause I see on the community side, there’s lots of discussion around it, right? People are curious around, I wonder if this is something we can do. And I’ve covered a bit in a couple of those chats, but I think it is a really important area as we think about Digital Sales Rooms. Not just Digital Sales Rooms, but digital engagement spaces where actually post-sale, you can keep nurturing that customer. If we want to use the kind of HubSpot terminology to delight. We want to delight the customer, we want to bring them in and some of that experience they’ve had throughout the sales process, they can then continue to have into implementation. SS: Shifting back to impact, you have defined success metrics for each of your key initiatives. What are the core business metrics you focus on impacting through enablement? AD: Yeah, so it’s probably not really too dissimilar to most people, right? We have time to revenue, like what the average sales cycle looks like from net new, or to an upsell or a cross-sell initiative. The sort of that where that falls into sales cycle length, of course, what’s the content usage and performance looking like of the material we are putting in Highspot, is it getting utilized? We’re starting to really lean into that in a governance project that we’re working on. It’s a core docketed project in our PMO office, our project management office. And we’re looking at really figuring out where’s the content performing, where’s it not. Things like the closing ratio, things like sales process consistency too, that’s an issue in every sales organization. But then, and that kind of goes down with DRINTS and we’ve got training we’re developing and deploying on that, so we want to see that improve because we’re driving initiatives in Highspot using training programs in there to try and improve forecastability and things like that. So obviously you’ve got win-loss rate, I don’t think that’s a huge issue for us, what is more of an issue to us is it probably wasn’t an opportunity in the first place. The process wasn’t adhered to that cleverly and we’ve got to get more robust around that. So all the kind of call metrics you would expect, size of the deal, velocity through the stages, those types of things.So we have a lot of those already mapped out into our Tableau dashboard and we are tracking those. And what we did very roughly last year is when we deployed that dashboard, we looked at about an eight-month period, and we looked at just a simple metric of who has been through the training programs and completed them versus who hasn’t across a number of different product trainings and sales capability trainings, and how are those metrics aligning?And every single one of the KPIs was positively trending for the people who were completing the learning programs versus those who weren’t. Which is probably not surprising, but it was good to actually prove out and see in the data.  SS: Fantastic. Last question for you, Anthony. A big aspect of your enablement strategy is also that it serves as a roadmap for your future vision, which for Turnitin includes leveraging innovation like AI. How are you beginning to leverage AI in your strategy? And how do you plan to continue to evolve that? AD: Yeah, so this is a great question. So we’re currently just piloting and trying out the Meeting Intelligence tool at Highspot. So one of the reasons we wanted to do that, there’s a couple of reasons really.One, it’s to understand and try and figure out the behaviors, and are the capabilities getting put into practice and how consistent is that happening. But the other thing is around really trying to drive those coaching opportunities as well. But what we found is we had Gong actually in place a number of years ago, and we had about four and a half thousand recordings in that platform, sales meetings, four and a half thousand sales meetings. But when we looked at making a decision on whether we were going to continue with that tool or not, what we’ll find is nobody was reviewing them.Nobody was actually doing anything about them. There was no top-down push for people to do it, but also there was no bottom-up real kind of drive or even asks from teams to get that commentary and get that coaching and that reinforcement. So in terms of coaching, it’s a really big challenge. And when Highspot was looking at developing this tool, actually spoke with some of your product managers and tried to input into some of the early thinking around how you would implement a tool like this in Highspot.And this is one of the things I rose in that conversation and I raised in that conversation and what I was delighted to see is the introduction of an AI in terms of setting a rubric around what you expect in these types. So take a discovery meeting, for example, and be able to set a rubric around what a good discovery meeting looks like.What are the capabilities you expect? What are the outcomes you expect to see from that discovery meeting? How do you expect the rep to manage the meeting and be able to capture that? And then if you ingest that meeting at the Meeting Intelligence, I have an algorithm that can understand that and score that.So I was delighted to see that as part of the product when you initially launched it, and we’re really keen to test that out because we have this concept as one of our initiatives around quality assurance and being able to drop in on a quarterly basis lessons in Highspot on a pathway.Where sellers are asked to go and identify their top discovery meeting or identify a sample of discovery meetings. And we want those to be run through the algorithm, run through that rubric. And then we want managers to be able to get some quick feedback immediately and be able to try it again if they want and put another discovery meeting in there.Maybe, two weeks later, have another discovery meeting, try it out, and then get more feedback. But, then on a kind of summative basis, maybe once every quarter, once, twice a year maybe, be able to drop that in and across all of our capabilities. The key meetings for discovery and for vision, establishing a buy-in vision.We generally have other meetings to present and demo so how are the reps demoing? We want that to go through the system and be stored. And then we want managers hopefully to go in there, review the AI feedback, give their own feedback, give a grade, give a result. And build that as a quality assurance piece to the practice.So that’s how we’re hoping to leverage some of that technology, but we haven’t really got there yet. We’ve got the model in place, and we want to try it out and see where it gets to because what we know is it’s very difficult to engage managers in that coaching dialogue, but we feel if we can give them a bit of a crutch or a bit of a lead in with some suggestions and this is where to look, we think we can get there much easier.SS: Thank you, Anthony. I greatly appreciate your time and your insights. AD: No problem. Happy to share. 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.

A study conducted by Sales Enablement Pro found that 37% of leaders consider increasing revenue while minimizing costs for their employees to be one of their greatest challenges. So how can you maximize the impact of your investments while building your sales tech stack?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 Tiffany Jones, the vice president of sales strategy and field operations at HackerOne. Thank you for joining us, Tiffany. I would love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role.Tiffany Jones: Thank you for having me. I’m Tiffany Jones, I am at HackerOne. I lead strategy operations and the enablement team at HackerOne. But I’ve been in the space for almost 15 years now. Before HackerOne, I was at DocuSign leading operations there from a hundred million through IPO to well over a billion in revenue. SS: I am excited to have you here today and you obviously have extensive experience as a leader in go-to-market strategy and operations. Based on that experience, can you tell us about some of the challenges facing go-to-market teams today? TJ: Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges that we face from a go-to-market team perspective is how we think about growth in this new economy. Pre-COVID it was a pretty standard path that we were growing quarter over quarter, year over year. COVID had a ton of disruptions to that process. There were some big ups for some companies and some big downs for others. Really in the tech SaaS space, there was a lot of ups. And so right now, from a go-to-market perspective, we’re all just struggling to figure out, like, how do you repeat that year-over-year growth and get back to that same equilibrium. SS: Absolutely. And tell us about the role of revenue operations in this current landscape. How can RevOps teams help organizations really overcome some of these new challenges that we’re seeing, particularly in the growth sector? TJ: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think a lot of times the revenue operations part of the organization gets swept under the rug when it comes to thinking about the solutions for this, but, in my experience, we're front and center, and we play a role in how we think about the teams being organized and how they’re incentivized and building out those structures so that we can get back to that growth level, as well as with the tech stack that’s necessary, and the sales process that goes along with that to amp up the productivity of the sales team so we can get well-oiled machines with the right people in seat in the right roles to achieve those results. SS: I love that. And I think, as you stated, a key focus for a lot of operations leaders is really driving sales productivity. What are some of the key ways that RevOps can help businesses really optimize sales productivity? TJ: Yeah, the one that always comes to mind is systems. But there are a number of things for me that really help optimize productivity. There’s the territory design that you end up deploying in your organization. There’s the sales process that you ask each of your individual sellers within your organization to go through. And then there’s the tech staff that they actually operate in for that sales process. Aligning all three of those things that you have, when you say productivity, you’re not just talking about squeezing as many dollars out of an individual person as humanly possible and treating people more like machines every day, but really like how do you optimize their experience as sellers so that you’re asking them to do what’s most beneficial for not only themselves, but the company with the right tools at the right time, like really optimizing their experience? I find it to be really, really important. SS: Absolutely. And, obviously one of our core audiences is enablement and sales productivity is absolutely top of mind for many enablement leaders as well. In your opinion, how can revenue operations and enablement partner together to improve sales productivity?TJ: I think it all really starts with the sales process, thinking through what you actually want your sales team to do on a day-to-day basis, like the way that you want them to interact with customers, with other people internally, and with your tools in Sprint Center, and that’s something that the operations and enablement teams need to partner on in order for that to be something that you roll out and the sales team adopts, because you need it to not only work from a theoretical perspective, but you need the backend architecture of those systems to work together to deliver that experience for them to operate in.I have the benefit in my current role of Managing both an enablement team and operations team. And it’s been amazing this quarter as we put together our key projects for the year to see how those are intertwined from a process go-to-market systems perspective and the sales process that we want to layer on top of that and how those project plans really are on top of each other. It’s not, A waterfall effect where someone’s working on this and the next team takes it over. They very much are partnered hand in hand to deliver an optimized solution for the sales team. SS: And you talked a lot about the process component but there’s also a lot of kind of joint shared ownership around the tech stack. I think that’s a really critical area of partnership between enablement and revenue operations. They, I, At least in my experience, are often trying to make sure that they’re building and optimizing that for their go-to-market teams. What are some of the key components from your perspective of an effective tech stack in today’s sales landscape?TJ: Oh, it’s a difficult question. I feel like the landscape is ever-changing right now. There’s so much consolidation going on that there’s a constant evaluation, at least in my team, from my perspective of: are we using the right tools for the right purposes? I think when we talk about evaluating the tech stack, it’s not all a consolidation game.I don’t think the end goal is to get to one or two systems that limit the number of clicks or logins they have, but essentially using the best of every product in a way that makes sense from a systems architecture perspective. And I keep saying architecture because I think it’s such an important part of when you have a successful sales system running. So, how are you clicking through to some of your tools? Are you doing it out of a home base or are you asking people to go back into a single sign-on tool and navigate between different tabs at different points in the day? I think you get the enablement aspect, which is here are the best of these tools.Here’s how I want you to send emails, or to record calls, or to follow up on, and send out material to your end customers. But without the operations team, those can become very siloed events. And you need that operations team in the background, thinking about how they tie all of that information and data together so that the sales team is experiencing a much more optimized way that they’re working with the tools SS: Absolutely. And this might lead to. Lead into the next question a little bit, but I’d love to understand, what are some of your best practices for evaluating solutions to identify the right ones that also support your overarching go-to-market strategy? TJ: Yeah, in a perfect world, I would love to do an RFP on everything that we want to do and take a broad swath look at what’s really out there in the market.It’s rarely what happens. Sometimes we try to pull back and do a little bit of that, but from a best practice perspective, whenever we’re presented with a need for something, I ask two questions. The first one is, do I have an existing tool that solves this and at what level does it solve it? And does that solution meet my sellers where they’re at and what they’re trying to do? And the second question is so important. It’s very easy to answer the first one. Again, there’s a lot of consolidation going on in the tech stack world for sales, and so you probably have a tool that does whatever your team is asking to go look at right now. But is it meeting the sellers where they’re at?Is it in the space that they want to do that activity at? Does it fit into that sales process flow appropriately? And I think that key part of the evaluation really helps to build an optimal text stack for everyone to use. And so it might be that they need to do that while they’re sitting inside of their CRM.And so because that’s where they’re always doing it, it makes sense to have something that either is embedded there or is a tool that the CRM already offers, but perhaps it doesn’t matter. They’re doing it on their phone or one-off or in Slack or Teams. And meeting them where they’re at, I think, is the, is a really important aspect of making sure that you have a toolset that your team is actually using.SS: Oh, absolutely. And how does an enablement platform like Highspot strategically fit into your sales tech stack? TJ: For us, it’s a central point of information, right? We’re using it to collect information, distribute information, both internally as well as externally, as well as using the learning module to test that information.So it’s very much an information hub for us. We use it to again, leak out to other tools that we have or bring things from those tools in as that central point. But we need that, repository is the wrong word because it’s so much more than that, but we need that centralized point.For a long time, CRM was supposed to be that centralized point. And that was where the industry was really going from a tech perspective. But it’s just not where our salespeople are. The CRM is an afterthought of filling in information. So more and more we’re finding. That pane of glass that’s more like Highspot where the information itself is where our salespeople want to be. And that’s where we see it as part of our tech stack today. SS: I love that. How do you measure the impact of your technology investments on your strategic business initiatives?  TJ: The measurement one is always so tricky for me. I don’t have a great answer for that because it’s not as simple when I buy tech stack pieces, there’s always an ROI calculator everyone has and they look at, and they show me all the metrics of the time saved by my sales team and or like I’ll remove this tool and so on overall cheaper costs and all of those are true and they’re a good way to measure.That’s the ROI that we’re getting and it’s great for talking with my procurement team on. But the reality of the measurement is how much is my team in it. How much are they actually using it? How many logins are they doing? How many edits are they making in the tool? Are they doing it because I’m forcing them into it?Because I put a mandatory course in? Or are they doing it because it’s where they want to be? And again, a great example is more and more for our culture at HackerOne, Slack is where everyone wants to be. And so I know that if I put things in that medium, that I’ll have a higher use of it. And that’s what I mean when evaluating, like, where people are at.I’m only going to get the ROI on that tool that I’m buying if someone’s using it. And I know that they’re using it if it’s integrated in Slack because that’s where they’re at every day. And so that usage is really what’s the most important metric for me when thinking about, am I buying, or are you? Do I have usable tools on the system?SS: Absolutely. And that’s definitely a common thread that we’ve heard when we talk to other operations leaders, for sure. Last question for you, Tiffany, how do you think technology innovations like AI will continue to impact the sales landscape? And do you have any advice for other leaders on how to keep pace with these innovations?TJ: AI might be the death of me and my role sooner rather than later. It’s interesting. Everyone has a copilot, everyone is using AI, there are some that are quick in front of it, and some are better than others, but it’s just the reality of every tool that we’re using, and 90 percent of the emails that I get on tech stack related things are around how this AI is going to make my team so much smarter, they’re going to spend less time doing research, they’re going to have these really personable emails that are sent out. The reality is if everyone’s using the same AI tools for the same things, they’re not like envelope emails are going to start to look the same. And it might work for a little bit, but it’s not going to be, it’s not gonna be the long-term benefit we see of AI. And so when I think about AI and how it’s popping up in all of our tool sets, what I’m really focused on is what each tool's AI does for my sales team and through, again, similar to Tech Stack, like how do I want them using it? At what point in the sales process is that the. The well-thought-through AI has the best advice or information to help support them. And being really intentional about which AIs they’re using at what point in time. And still pushing them to have that personable impact on what they’re doing. If it’s sending an email let it write some of that for you. But then don’t absolve them of doing the work of the research and double checking. Because I think that’s where it’s going to start to fail a lot of companies and a lot of leaders where they rely too heavily on it. Insult. I think in the next two years, people are going to have an operations team, like a full-time Co-pilot management role, or analyst role, just to make sure you’re curating those Co-pilots to not conflict with each other and to have the right answers. I think advice for other leaders outside of maybe getting in front of a role like that open is to be thoughtful about why is your team using that AI component. What value is it giving them at that point in time? And do you have another AI somewhere else that you have to think about? Is it going to give conflicting information or could someone use them differently? Or two different roles use them and end up in a spot where you’re now, at odds with each other within your own organization. So I do think you have to start to look at those AIs as almost their own tech stack within the tech stack and be really thoughtful about your approach. SS: Very interesting and amazing advice for our audience. Tiffany, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciated it.TJ: Yeah, this was great. Thank you so much. 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.

According to research from Forrester, 77% of marketing leaders report that buyers expect more personalized interactions. So how can you align your marketing strategy with the ever-changing buyer’s journey?Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win Win Podcast. I’m 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 Eric Andrews, the vice president of growth marketing at TriNet. Thank you for joining Eric, I’d love for you to tell us all about yourself, your background, and your role. Eric Andrews: Thanks for having me, it's nice to be here. I’ve been working in marketing for about 30 years, mostly on the client side. I’ve been at Trinet now for about two and a half years and I lead growth marketing, which, for us, includes digital marketing, demand generation, marketing enablement, and customer marketing. I’m a firm believer in the strong connection between demand and growth enablement because, we spend a lot of money trying to generate demand, and I think we’re sub-optimizing those investments if we’re not providing the content and tools to sales to help them progress and close the leads that we’re generating for them. SS: Fantastic. We are excited to have you here with us, Eric. Again, thank you so much for joining, and you have a unique role because you oversee both customer marketing and enablement. So from your perspective, what is the value of uniting these into one department and one strategy? EA: It’s also a really interesting fit, and they go together well for a couple of reasons. First, we work with customers to support new sales through the creation of case studies, customer videos, referrals, as well as references. Being able to work with the customers to sign them up to be referrals or to make referrals or be references is really important. And then second, I think enablement can support the upsell work that we do with CRMs to ensure that they have the right messaging and tools to support that motion. SS: Amazing, and as you mentioned, as a marketing and enablement leader, one of your key focuses is aligning with the buyer journey to improve engagement. Why is this a key focus for your team in the current landscape? EA: We all know that buyers are increasingly delaying engaging with sellers until they’re deeper into the buying process. That means more of the buying process, or the journey is covered by marketing. Our goal is to try to meet prospects where they are and then provide the content and tools and experiences they need to keep them moving down the buying path. And that doesn’t stop, once they meet with sales, right? We want to continue to provide relevant information to prospects either directly or through the salesperson right through that entire process. SS: It is absolutely critical. And this desire to drive better engagement is one of the key factors that led you to implement Highspot. How can an enablement platform help you streamline the buyer’s journey? EA: It happens in a couple of ways. First, Highspot has helped us organize and curate our enablement so that sales reps can find the content they need. And they can share it quickly, right? It’s all about trying to take time out of the buying process and make it as simple as possible for our prospects.So for us, we built a very consistent portfolio of content across our verticals and our personas, and that means that reps increasingly know exactly where to go to get the information they need and can respond to buyer questions and buyer requests really quickly. And then second Digital Sales Rooms, using Digital Sales Rooms to share all that content means that the buying team has just one place to go for everything they need.And if you’ve ever been involved in procuring some sort of a solution, it’s really helpful when all of that content is in one place as opposed to having to open up, dozens of emails and click through links to see, to find that one asset that you were looking for. So we think the digital sales room is another way that we’re just streamlining the process and making it easier for our prospects to, come to a decision. SS: Now, to better align with the buyer’s journey, you actually reimagined your content strategy. It recently drove an improvement in content governance. Can you tell us more about your content strategy and its impact on the buyer’s journey? EA: Our content strategy is built on a couple of premises. First is quality over quantity, right? Marketers, we tend to measure success by the pound, right? I must be doing a good job. Look at all the assets I created. We developed a bill of materials that includes only about a dozen assets. And that would be for each of our go-to-market motions, right?But it’s a dozen assets. They’re mapped to the buyer’s and seller’s journey. Our goal is not It’s not to grow those assets, but rather to make sure that bond is of the highest possible quality, that it’s up to date, and that it’s 100 percent complete for every product, every vertical, and every persona.The second premise is around consistency. Within our bills and materials, we ensure consistency of messaging, value propositions, and voice. That sounds obvious, but when you have different people and different teams creating content, it’s not a given that the messaging is going to be consistent across All of the assets that you’re providing to sales.And we also strive for consistency across those bills of materials. So for example, every bill of material has a battle card. All our battle cards are structured in the exact same way. So if you want to know how to handle objections, it’s always on page two of the battle card. In fact, it’s always the lower right-hand corner.I think that consistency plays an important part in both helping sellers on board faster, but also giving them the confidence that they can find the answer to a question that a prospect is asking. They can find it quickly. It’s not, “I think I can find that.” They know exactly where to go to get the answer because it’s so consistent.And then the last thing is we try to be more data-driven than anecdotally driven. I think if you work in enablement, everybody’s, gotten the call from the seller in Columbus who says all the sellers need this one asset. I’m telling you, everybody needs it.And you’re like, okay, great. You build it. And then you find out the only person who used it is the guy in Columbus. So, if an asset in our bomb isn’t working, we will swap it out. Our goal is to make sure with a limited set of assets, each one is successful, but we really do try to measure success based on utilization, not based on any sort of anecdotal information. SS: You’ve mentioned that digital rooms have been a game changer for your reps, and you’ve been able to drive an increase in buyer engagement using digital rooms. What are some of your best practices for leveraging these digital rooms? EA: I think probably two, three, three things, we want every opportunity that is engaged with sales to have a Digital Sales Room. It should be at the deal level and everyone involved in that deal should be invited to that room. Second, all assets that are shared should be available in that room. And by the way, that can include conversations, if you’re using Gong or other conversation recording tools for the prospect, we want that digital sales room to be the place to go for all of the content associated with that deal.And then finally, once the deal is won ownership of that deal room should be moved to the onboarding team, and that way, they can minimize the amount of repeat discovery they have to do with the client. It’s really making sure that the deal room stays right through the life of the client. SS: We’ve talked a lot about buyer engagement, and I know some of the other key business metrics you focus on are improving win rate and time to close. What are some of the key ways you measure your impact on those metrics, and how do you leverage Highspot to help? EA: We absolutely, Look at revenue or, ACV we go annual contract value is an important measure from a marketing standpoint, but with respect to enablement in the high spot we’re looking at win rate.We’re also looking at time to close and trying to speed up we strongly believe that having really high-quality, consistent content tools that are easily accessible by reps and easily shared with prospects is going to have an impact on both win rates and time to close. Measuring that is challenging, right?We look at a number of things. We look at the Make sure the number of reps that are on Highspot and how frequently they’re visiting. The content utilization, both internally and externally. The number of deals Digital Sales Rooms connected. And we look at all of that against win rates and time to close.And I think going forward, there’s a real opportunity here to start to correlate specific assets at specific points in the buyer journey and how they impact outcomes, and that’s a big data, AI, machine learning kind of exercise that I think, successful companies are increasingly investing in and are going to, it’s going to make a big difference. SS: Amazing traction on that front. What are some of the key results you’ve been able to achieve since implementing Highspot? And do you have any recent wins you can share? EA: Sure. I can’t get into numbers, but the one thing I will share is that I think Highspot is really helping to speed up the onboarding process for our sellers and getting them to full productivity more quickly.And again, I think it goes back to what we’ve already talked about. A single place to go for high-quality curated content that’s organized in a way that’s easy to find, that’s consistent, so that you know where to go to get answers. And I think we’re seeing that’s really helping our reps get up to speed quickly.  SS: Very cool, Eric. Thank you. Last question for you, as you continue to evolve your strategy, how are you planning to leverage innovation in AI to grow the impact of your efforts? EA: Yeah I’m super excited about some of the AI that Highspot is building into the platform. Two areas that I’m really excited about are The real-time coaching I think that’s going to be absolutely incredibly helpful in helping our sellers just in the moment, be able to. Course correct, if you will, or optimize the time that they’re spending with a prospect. The second is, I talked about it a little bit earlier, which is this notion of understanding the next best action based on, looking across all the opportunities and all the content, being able to surface, in real-time for a rep, share this asset now, I think also, and again, it, it’s all about trying to serve the prospect better to help them along their buying journey. And anything we can do to serve them better, I think is going to help in the end. SS: Eric, thank you so much. I really greatly appreciate your time.  EA: Good. Thank you.  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.

In a study conducted by Sales Enablement Pro, organizations where training is led by enablement teams see a six percentage point increase in customer retention. So how can you maximize the impact of your training programs?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 Sofia Arroyo, the revenue enablement programs lead at Clari. Thank you for joining us, Sofia. I’d love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role. Sofia Arroyo: Thanks so much for having me, Shawnna, I'm excited to be here. My name is Sofia Arroyo and I have been in enablement for over six years. I started as a sales rep as an account executive and transitioned into enablement, and have never looked back. So I’m based in the San Francisco Bay area and very excited to talk today. SS: We’re excited to have you here. I know you recently joined the Clari team, and as you mentioned in your introduction, you bring a lot of frontline sales experience with you. How does your experience as a frontline seller guide your approach to enablement? SA: Yeah, for me the biggest thing is understanding and emphasizing the “what’s in it for me” and “why does this matter?” So often enablement, in a good way, is very sought after. People want to learn, people want to teach others, and get in front of sales teams overall. But, really answering the question: what’s in it for me as a seller? Why does this matter? How is it going to help me sell more, and have better conversations with customers?That has helped me in my own experience deliver great enablement overall. A second part of this is giving focused learning. So, delivering focused learning and reducing the noise that often hits sales teams. I remember as a seller myself, feeling overwhelmed because we had so many meetings all the time. There were tons of people coming to talk to us and thinking, “Man, what would I have wanted or what do I wish I had when I was a seller?”, and taking that focus and applying it to enablement overall. So really emphasizing, again, what’s in it for me and what do we want sellers to be able to do has helped me deliver impactful enablement programs at the companies I’ve worked for. SS: Absolutely, it sounds like you really know what it’s like to walk in their shoes, and I expect that is especially helpful on this front. Now, I noticed something on your LinkedIn profile, and it mentions that you aim to promote a learning culture. I would love to understand, how do you foster a culture of learning amongst reps, especially with your background as a seller? SA: I would say two ways. The first is, again, making things very relevant. When I think back to being a seller, as I mentioned, I was eager to learn and I wanted to talk to other people who were seeing success, and at the top of the leaderboards. And so I knew at that time, but I really wanted to think about, okay, what do I want to see as a learner? And who do I want to talk to? So, a lot of that is how we make enablement and training relevant to learners and sellers to really make sure they see why it’s impactful. And then that creates that learning culture overall. So really, “Hey, I’m hungry to learn because I know it will directly impact my book of business, and it’s going to directly impact how I talk to prospects and customers, and I’m going to see success from it overall.”The second thing is peer-to-peer learning. One of the things we don’t always emphasize in enablement is the importance of actually teaching others when we learn something. It’s that defining moment of, “We’ve actually really effortlessly implemented a new learning or behavior change when we can teach other people something.” So leveraging peer-to-peer learning to create that culture of learning from, not just folks like myself and enablement, but people who want to hear from other folks like themselves, and making sure you can connect others to people who are experiencing exactly what they are on a day-to-day basis is a great way to promote that culture of learning internally. SS: I love that you’re driving that. And your team implemented Highspot’s training and coaching capabilities. How does having a unified enablement platform help you deliver more effective learning programs? SA: I will have to give a shout-out to the strategic enablement framework overall that we’ve talked about at Highspot and we’ve talked about internally here at Clari and at the companies I’ve worked at.It’s that consistent execution piece. Training and coaching is something we all know is necessary, but it’s about implementing it in the workflow of our reps and in our learners. Having one platform where people can go to not only get the resources, and content they need to be successful, but then have access to coaching opportunities in mere real-time or when they need it makes for that flywheel of the equip, train, and coach to work effectively. It’s the only way that we can make sure that we are capturing the right behaviors and promoting the right outcomes within our organization by having a single pane of glass that we can look at when it comes to implementing enablement programs overall.SS: Now, you mentioned earlier that you focus on designing outcome-based learning. What are some of your best practices for helping reps put learning into action and how do you leverage Highspot to help? SA: First and foremost, it’s meeting reps where they are. I can’t tell you the number of times, and I think part of enablement is also learning from mistakes. No one’s perfect, I’ve tried, and there’s a trial and error piece of what I’ve done and my success as well. But I think one of the biggest things I’ve heard from reps is, “Oh man, I have to keep going to all these different tools or systems to access what I need to be successful. I’m not really sure how it applies to my book of business, or what I’m doing on a daily basis.”So, the first thing is meeting reps where they are and really making sure that you are designing enablement that again meets them in their workflow but also applies what they need to be doing on a daily basis. So if we do something on prospecting, we’re talking about, “Hey, we’re going to talk about how we prospect.”It’s not just a 30-minute webinar on how we prospect. Death by PowerPoint is never fun, but it’s actually, “Great. Let’s pull up an account list. Take your account list. We’re going to walk through those personas that we’re targeting and best practices for that.” So, make it action-oriented when we can.That is the benefit of the remote, virtual learning and training that we can do, is utilizing break rooms in Zoom to make it, again, action-oriented, then hit those outcomes that we’ve identified at the beginning. The other thing here is making sure that we clearly define what outcomes are at the beginning and having that conversation up front, not just with sellers, but also with our cross-functional stakeholders and partners as well.So whenever someone comes to me and says, we want to train on this, we want to enable the field. It is, “Great. What do we want our sellers to be able to do? And how do we make sure the enablement matches that to make sure that we are hitting those outcomes?” And lastly, it’s about repetition. We have to move away from the one-and-done enablement, but really push ourselves as enablement leaders and as enablement professionals, as well as our cross-functional stakeholders, to say, “Great, you want to train on this now. What do we do in two weeks from now? In a month from now, next quarter, to reinforce that learning?” So I think making sure that we’re constantly tying back to those outcomes. We’re utilizing things like Highspot to look at what assets are being leveraged. We’re taking analytics into account to really measure the success of our programs, not just in one moment, but also over a longer period of time as well. SS: That is fantastic. And you’ve been so thoughtful in the way that you’ve designed this that I imagine you want to make sure that your reps are taking full advantage of these and really adopting the training. What are your best practices for driving adoption of your learning programs amongst your reps? SA: I feel like a little bit of a broken record, but I will say making it relevant. I think that paired with peer-to-peer learning, as I mentioned before, it’s been really helpful for us. Really making sure that we have voices from the field. I think one of the key learnings I had early on in my enablement career was just taking enablement and working on it in a silo and delivering it without getting input from the field, from sellers, and from leadership. One of the ways that we’ve seen the most success from driving adoption is not just taking a top-down approach from having directors or our CRO talk about the importance of enablement, but actually having peers and other sellers talk about, “Hey, this was really impactful for me. I was able to close this deal because of X, Y, Z.”So I think one thing is again, making it relevant, utilizing voices from the field, not being afraid to get other people involved in that way, to make sure that we can really have the biggest impact possible. The other thing I think is really supporting managers. And I think that’s something that Highspot allows us to do differently, is making sure that we are training the trainer in some cases, but also just giving them the tools and insight they need and make that readily accessible to them so that they can then drive adoption within their own teams. So, I think it’s a combination of making it relevant, but also setting our managers, our frontline managers up for success to be able to support their teams on a more individual basis as well. SS: I love those best practices and it’s clearly paying off. You guys have had tremendous progress on this front. I think Clari is at an 81% active learner rate with an 11% increase in just the last couple of months, so absolutely amazing, and a testament to the work you and the team are doing there. On that particular topic, I’d love to understand how do you measure your progress and use metrics to really optimize your results in your programs? SA: Yeah. So first and foremost, it’s really centered around rep productivity and that starts with: can reps find what they need? And when they do find content or assets, are they leveraging them in ways that drive pipeline? The other way that we measure progress is by looking at true metrics, top-of-funnel metrics, so pipeline generation, looking at deal velocity, really connecting back to those, the key metrics that are fundamental and really crucial to healthy sales teams overall.And I think being able to connect enablement back to those true sales metrics is a key part of how we measure progress. It’s not just about are people learning? Are they actually attending learnings, but are we actually seeing pipeline being impacted? Are we driving more pipeline? Are we talking to the right people, really making sure that we are leveraging metrics and KPIs, as well as just looking at the data at every single turn to make sure that we are seeing true impact from the programs that we are delivering overall? SS: How does high adoption of your enablement programs help you drive the business outcomes that you aim to achieve? And do you have any wins you can share? SA: Yeah, the biggest win so far that was really exciting was following our sales kickoff. So we launched a new solution, sales motion at our kickoff this year and following RKO, we made sure to actually create post work within Highspot. So we created a learning path and leveraging some of the things I mentioned earlier, getting frontline managers involved, making it relevant, bringing in those voices from the field. We really saw high adoption and almost excitement to finish those courses, because it was very impactful for our reps and actually drove better conversations with the people they were trying to sell to. So that was a big one for us. And what we’ve been able to see is from our call intelligence platform, from the Highspot analytics within the learning path as well. And just, anecdotal feedback as well is that we are actually seeing deals move through the pipeline faster. We’re seeing more impactful discovery being made with our prospects and customers. And we’re actually seeing increased deal size as well. So one of the big parts of our solution sales motion was, how do we really provide and talk about value versus just focusing on product features and functions to sell the full platform of Clari, and we’re actually seeing our reps being able to have more of those conversations, which is very exciting.When you have high adoption, when you create that culture of learning, you actually see that impact the business directly. And it’s a really exciting time for us overall. And we’re excited to see what happens for the rest of the year. SS: Amazing. And very tangible, concrete business results there, so fantastic work. Last question for you, as you look to the future at Clari, how do you plan to leverage innovation like AI capabilities to continue to optimize your learning programs? SA: AI is the hot topic these days for sure and we’re knee-deep in it as well here at Clari. I think for me, what’s really exciting and what I start to think about is imagining a world where we could deliver hyper-personalized and effective training in the workflow of our sellers, leveraging AI, and being able to align training with an individual’s past performance. What if we could leverage AI, and I’m imagining a world pretty soon, I feel like, where we could take what we’ve learned, individuals past performances, look at what their strengths are, look at what their growth areas are, and then create a hyper-personalized enablement program for them. I think that’s the tough part and the answer that we’re all looking for now is how do we create enablement programs that are personalized at scale, right? We can’t do one-to-one coaching all the time, that’s where leveraging frontline managers is so important. I think AI is going to give us the opportunity to analyze the data based on where are reps struggling. Are there certain points within a deal where, whether it’s stage three or stage four, or at the close, where they need extra help? And when we see those triggers, can we then push them content they can then review and learn again in their workflow? I think those are the things where while AI is again, such a hot topic right now, it’s really exciting to think about ways in which we can really impact, not just people’s lives, but also their ability to be successful in role, and to have that overall. So we’re excited to see that. I know Highspot’s doing a lot on the AI front too, in terms of coaching. I think coaching is what everyone is asking for. That’s the number one request from our reps right now is, “Give me more coaching.”And I think that it’s really exciting to see, to think about how we can leverage AI to support our team, not just again, in terms of being successful from a seller side, but also impacting retention. Imagine what it would do if you could in real time, have someone coach you on what you could do better and implement that the next day, right? It’s that real-time impact that I think will not only have an impact on the growth of the business but also keeping sales teams happy, keeping people happy where they want to be at a company and stay there for a long time. You’re very excited to see where AI goes and definitely think about it on a daily basis.SS: I love that, Sofia. And I have to say, I think you might have a crystal ball, not that I can confirm or deny the Highspot roadmap, but you are definitely onto something there. So thank you again so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your insights. SA: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to building an even stronger partnership with you all. 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.

Is it possible to solve ocean pollution by turning the packaging industry into a closed-loop economy? Wes Carter thinks so. Wes is the Founder of a New Earth Project and President of Atlantic Packaging, on a personal mission to stop the significant pollution the packaging industry causes. In this episode we hear what it would take to close the loop on the economy via new types of biodegradable materials that could replace plastic and other common pollutants. We also discuss which types of recycling work, and which are rubbish. And of course, in true Win-Win Podcast style, we hear about what it would take to change the game so that companies (and their customers) are properly incentivized to account for the true environmental costs of the production and consumption. Chapters: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:02:35 - Wes's Story & the Packaging Industry 00:10:07 - Circular Economies 00:24:30 - Potential Solutions 00:31:11 - How to Align Incentives? 00:46:22 - Are Consumers Responsible? 00:51:41 - A New Earth Project 00:58:06 - Psychedelic Experiences 01:08:38 - Carbon Offsets 01:13:30 - Are Shareholders bad for the environment? 01:23:14 - Amazon's Progress 01:27:38 - Advice to Young Entrepreneurs Links: ♾️ A New Earth Project https://anewearthproject.com/ ♾️ Atlantic Packaging https://www.atlanticpkg.com/ ♾️ Breaking Open the Head by Daniel Pinchbeck https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... ♾️ A Journey to a New Earth Series https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detai... The Win-Win Podcast: Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins. Watch the previous episode with Ocean Cleanup Founder Boyan Slat here: https://youtu.be/QEYbLN-LC5k?si=XaV2j... Credits: ♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree ♾️ Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei ♾️ Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt

According to a Gartner study, about 40% of businesses have implemented a formal coaching culture for their reps. So how can a unified platform help drive a coaching culture within your organization?To watch the video of this episode, visit our YouTube channel here.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 Bernie Borges, the vice president of global content marketing, Blake Graves, director of sales enablement, and Chris O’Connell, the director of global sales operations from iQor.Thank you for joining us, Bernie, Blake, and Chris. I would love for each of you to tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, and your role. Bernie, let’s start with you.Bernie Borges: Sure. Thank you, Shawnna, thanks for having us. I’m Bernie Borges, vice president of global content marketing at iQor and I’ve been in content marketing for the better part of the last 20-plus years in B2B. I had my own agency for a while, and joined iQor about three years ago, really focused on driving the brand awareness for iQor in the marketplace. It’s a very competitive marketplace and producing content that can really help to amplify the brand as well as provide content that the sales team can leverage in their day-to-day selling efforts. Everything from starting conversations through the whole buyer’s journey all the way down through closing. So that’s my role and a little bit about my background. Blake Graves: Yep. Thanks again for having us too. So yes, Blake Graves, director of sales enablement at iQor, been with iQor for almost eight years now. So I’ve got to see a lot of transformation at the company.Really cool stuff that we’re doing with sales and marketing. My area covers sales readiness, that training aspect, and what new things are we doing from a technology perspective. Just bringing that to the sales team and this is how we should pitch it and This is the information you need to empower you or better inform your selling practices.And of course, along with that comes the tech stack like Highspot or anything else that we’re using to enable sales from a prospect’s perspective. Highspot is an exciting new tool for us and we’re ready to start closing some deals quickly. SS: Wonderful. And Chris, last but not least, tell us a little bit about yourself. Chris O’Connell: I am Chris O’Connell. I’m the director of global sales operations. So I’m responsible for our CRM instance and working with our sales team to help them. And I’m really excited about the Highspot opportunity. This helps us get better information about how our content is being consumed, how it’s being deployed, which things are resonating and perhaps how they’re helping us win more business. SS: Wonderful. Well, thank you three for joining us. Now to start, tell us about some of the challenges that your teams are facing prior to Highspot. What was the impetus for deciding to invest in a unified enablement platform? Bernie, if I could start with you, that’d be great.  BB: Sure. So, the content marketing role at iQor is only about three years old at the time that we’re recording this. And so over the past three years, we’ve been able to produce a fair amount of content that we put out into the marketplace.And along the way, we’ve made a strong attempt to have the sales team embrace the content, use the content, and then of course, enable them to help them get into more deals, more conversations, and close more deals. What’s been missing though, is a couple of things that I think the three of us will speak to in this conversation.  One is an intelligent platform that allows us to organize the content intelligently and make it easily accessible to them, and then also be able to track how the content is being used, who’s using it, and how it’s being used. What’s the contribution to pipeline and what’s the contribution to deals won as well as deals lost, that’ll help us not only measure the impact of the content, but also feed us information that we can use to drive our strategy going forward.So we know what content to produce more of. As well as what content we should either stop or scale back producing based on the data and how it’s used.BG: I’m going to add to that if that’s okay. The biggest challenge for me was, and this is no offense to Microsoft at all, but we have been a very SharePoint-focused type of company for, organizing content and building, what you guys call Smart Pages. So we’re we’re attempting to do that kind of effort within something that’s a little bit more static environment. And that was very challenging because one, there’s a heavy lift on my team from the design to thoughtfully trying to lay out pages. It’s like building websites, basically is how I would compare that to. And over time, content’s going to get stale. We’re not, it might not be being refreshed enough. It’s not easy to find. That’s another big piece of that is, it’s not easy or intuitive. And that was a big challenge for us.And Highspot is changing that entire landscape for us, because it’s a little bit more intuitive and the intelligence built in. SS: And Chris, let’s hear from you on this front. CO: Yeah. So, I think for me I really like the notion of providing content to the salespeople – the right kind of content – at the right time where they’re not having to hunt around and find it. And, with the integration with the CRM, Like Salesforce, depending on which stage the deal is in we’re able to surface content that would be helpful for them to deploy, and know when it’s being used and, again, what kind of results we’re getting from that. But I like the way that your product allows us to pre-package a play or a type of content delivery that we’re going to share with a prospective leader, or client.And so we’re really excited for, as we roll this out, how we’re going to see these wins and be able to track them and tie them back to the actual opportunities they’re working on. SS: Thank you for giving us a little bit of that grounding context. Now, as leaders in your organization, we’d love to hear your perspective on the value of an enablement platform for your areas of expertise. Bernie, if we could start with you. What does the impact of a unified enablement platform have on your role as a marketing leader?BB: Shawnna, I really look at it holistically. I don’t look at it just from the lens of my focus in content marketing. I look at it holistically, and what I mean by that is now I view our tech stack to be comprised three pillars, right? A three-legged stool: you’ve got CRM. Of course, you have to have CRM. We’ve got marketing automation, and now we have a sales enablement platform or revenue enabling platform, depending on what vernacular you prefer. But I think that rounds out our tech stack. Because now we have the ability, as we’ve been discussing here, to organize the content in an intelligent way using intelligence built into the platform, as well as – we haven’t gotten to yet, and I’m sure Blake will get to this – the ability to empower salespeople to utilize that content in ways that I’ll let Blake comment on that because that’s a very exciting element. But the point I’m driving at is that we’ve rounded out our tech stack, right? CRM, marketing automation, and now a sales enablement platform. Now we’ve got everything we need to deploy and measure the impact of content. BG: Exactly. And it’s obviously my cue to piggyback off of that because it’s a really good point. I think that the Digital Sales Room is also going to be a big piece of this for the sales team. And I mean that because it gives the sales team an opportunity to tailor and personalize the experience for their end user, the prospect. That is something that we’ve been missing for a while, too. We personalize our messaging and emails and LinkedIn outreach is whatever that sequence looks like. But, when it comes to building an environment where I can take my prospect and say, these are the things I feel are relevant to you, whether it’s your industry, your role the challenges that you’re having, and it looks like your environment, this is your logo.And I think that’s a really sweet touch. But, the sales team also, the three of us continue to talk about this when we’re meeting internally. And I say this out of a lot of respect, the sales team everywhere in every industry, any company are very special people. They’re wired very differently than the rest of us and we like that, we embrace that, because that’s what makes them, so successful and in selling, and we have to cater to that. We have to curate our tech stack and how we roll these things out very carefully because once the salesperson says this doesn’t work for me, you’ve almost lost them, and it’s hard to get them to come back. And with Highspot, because of that intelligence that’s built-in, and because the three of us are thoughtfully curating the internal experience, this is going to be so much more of an easier lift for the sales team to adopt. And from a sales enablement perspective that’s a huge deal.SS:  Blake, how about you as an enablement leader? How do you envision leveraging Highspot’s unified enablement platform to help bring your enablement strategy to life at iQor? BG: I gave a preview of that answer a minute ago, because this going back to the Digital Sales Room, video is certainly a high-value piece of content and our sales team historically, that’s not really been something we leverage as far as like recording themselves to present something and sending it off to a prospect. But, we’re excited to say that’s something that we’re going to be introducing to the sales team, because we know that it’s going to add that extra layer of personalization, something special. And I think that’s been a gap in the strategy all along is just that hyper-personalization of content to your prospect.And just that digital sales from experience. Again, you have this nice curated environment thats, “I made this thoughtfully for you because I know what your challenges are.” And I know that these are the pieces that I need for you to read and inform yourself about iQor. So I think that’s a big piece.Another, part of that strategy is I will always go back to sales, readiness, and that training piece. This will make it a lot easier to build that library of having our SMEs internally, having their videos and what they’re recording on all the updates they’re doing to our tech stacks, to the processes, whatever would make the selling journey a lot easier. I think that’s going to be a really powerful piece too.SS: Thank you, Blake. And Chris, again, last but not least, as a sales operation leader, how will a unified enablement platform help you drive sales productivity? CO: I look at it from a couple of different ways. The first is whenever we hire a new sales rep, they don’t often have some of that tribal knowledge of what’s possible or where things are located.So organizing it in an easy-to-find place and making it easy to deploy helps us get our new reps up to speed faster. One of the other things that really struck me is I always like to learn about sales by how we’re being sold to, and one of my favorite stories about sourcing this product for us was a story with Bernie.Bernie had looked at this product before, they had shared a digital sales room with him, he had a renewed interest and went back in to look, and this tripwire sort of functionality that your product has alerted the sales rep to contact Bernie and say, “Hey, what’s up?” And so that’s one of the cool things I was looking for is, boy, I want to trip wire like that for our team.When somebody renews interest to get back in front of them to know when it’s that time, it’s having that secret weapon out there of how. This thing lets us know when it’s time to re-engage, right? Or somebody is doing research again. I think that’s really a fantastic opportunity for us.SS: Thank you for sharing each of your unique perspectives. I’d love to understand how you all partnered together to build a business case for the investment in an enablement solution. And do you have any best practices for gaining buy-in?  BB: Sure. So, there are a few things that came into play in the internal buy-in and decision process. One is the fact that we have been producing a lot of content over the last three years, as I said, but with little ability to really measure the impact on sales. We’ve also, and Blake can elaborate on this, but we’ve also made a bigger investment in sales enablement. And again, Blake can elaborate on that.And then from the CRM side and sales operations side, I think that investment has been in place for a while. So getting back to these three pillars that I’ve alluded to a few times. It was really just the right timing, and as Chris said we revisited this after looking at it maybe a year prior and it was the right timing, there’s investments that are being made in the sales organization in general, as well as marketing. So, it was just the right time, and we really drove it through the head of marketing, senior vice president of marketing really bought off on the concept. He works very closely with his counterpart, executive vice president of sales.They’re really, tied at the hip, so to speak. And senior vice president of marketing said, yes, let’s go do the evaluation, and let’s select someone to partner with. And we went through the evaluation process. And elected to partner with Highspot and the EVP of sales at that point, but just signed off on it because he just needed an executive summary and he was in, so it was an elaborate process.Your team did a great job, but it was that internal buy-in where things really came together from a timing standpoint that really got us there. BG: Yes. And I’ll add to that. Of course, the very beginning, it all starts with what our personal challenges are, which I listed out for Bernie and Chris, too. And because we are making, we’re expanding that investment in sales enablement some of the biggest feedback is data. We need more data, like what’s working? What’s not working? That’s a broad use, but specifically, as it relates to Highspot, what content is working? What seems to be grabbing people’s attention? What seems to be the most popular thing that the sales team is using? Stuff like that, and attributing that to an open opportunity in Salesforce, which is huge.So there was that need to be checked off. And the second thing, of course, is just how can we make this so much easier for the sales team to consume and use what we’re making available to them content-wise. And so these were no-brainers and that’s when the evaluation started and, of course, again as Bernie said, you guys nailed it in that demo period. It always helps when you can select a few people on the sales team, reliable ones who embrace new platforms, who are hungry to test something new. And get their buy-in as well by getting their hands dirty. And that was helpful for us too.SS: That is some fantastic advice. And I know one of the key reasons you decided to invest in Highspot was to deliver coaching with meeting intelligence capabilities. In your opinion, what is the value of coaching in today’s sales landscape? Blake, I’d love to hear from you.BG: I think we can all agree, and Bernie had shared a Gartner, crazy little mind map of what the buyer’s journey looks like today specifically in B2B. And B2B has always been a little bit more complex, in my opinion, than B2C. I’ve been in B2B for, at least twelve years now. It’s getting harder to understand when the right time is to strike when a prospect is researching you, or researching the topic that’s related to your industry and your intent signals. And that’s relevant to your question because when we think about coaching, we have a wonderful team that’s senior. They’ve been selling for many years, so there’s a lot of experience here. But that changing landscape, we have generations coming in now that have decisions in this buying process that see things a whole lot differently, especially when technology is at play and just listening to how they’re selling us, listening to what’s not being said, even I think that’s a key piece right there, is what are they not talking about all these calls? That might be that linchpin that turning point in that sales journey. And I think that’s going to be a really interesting piece of the puzzle that I’m excited about, trying to solve. SS: Thank you, Blake. Chris, what are maybe some of the key results or business metrics you’re aiming to achieve with a dedicated coaching program? And how do you plan to leverage Highspot to help deliver these results?  CO: Following up on what Blake said, is it’s very difficult for us post COVID now. If you look at the three of us, we’re all working from our home offices today. And so our sellers are now challenged because they don’t typically go in and present to a boardroom full of people anymore. And so, what we’re really looking to gain and some of the things we’re looking to measure is the engagement of the buyers and which ones play their different decision-making roles, but getting them engaged with the content that we’re sharing and seeing if they are showing up and are consuming the content. How long are they watching the videos? How long have they dug into the presentation slides? Are they engaged? Are there any hidden buyer influences that may have shown up in a conference room, but now they’re in the back scenes. Maybe they didn’t attend the Zoom call, but they did consume some of the content, right? So identifying who those other buying influences are I think it’s going to be something I’m really keen to look for and see how those results are going to start showing us more about the selling environment that we’re in today.SS: In your opinion, what is the value of having one unified solution to equip, train, and coach your teams rather than multiple separate siloed tools, Chris? CO: The most important part is just ease of use and single point of consumption. If we have to jump to a learning management system and we have to jump back to the CRM system by using your tool integrated with Salesforce, then they don’t have to jump from those three different places. And so I think there’s a big advantage to try to simplify their selling tool set to accomplish what they need to accomplish and save manual steps, right?They’re not finding a presentation, putting it into an email, and then sharing it, and then we don’t know if it gets delivered. We don’t know if it gets viewed. And so just bringing that information full circle where the salespeople can utilize and understand it better, right? SS: Couldn’t agree more. What advice do you have for other teams considering implementing a unified enablement platform like Highspot? Blake, I’d love to hear from you.BG: It’s a good question. There’s a lot of good advice, but I think if I could think about one thing that I know we did right, and I mentioned this earlier, actually, it’s important that your biggest customer internally, which is going to be for us, our sales team is going to have some buy-in here.Otherwise, this is not going to work exactly how you would imagine and mapped out. So for us, to understand how they consume content, and taking that user experience approach, user experience has a whole lot of, there’s a lot of schools of thought there and how they navigate a website, how they navigate or select things on a page.Things like that, and I think that was very helpful in our evaluation phase with Highspot. We selected, like I said, a few people to join us in the demo environment, takes a week, I think maybe even two weeks to interact with the content that you see there, and share it out. We gave them a very basic overview, and the rest of it really was left up to them to figure out, and it’s not how we rolled it out, of course, it’s just, that’s more of, let me see how you engage with this first, because I want to see how intuitive this is from your perspective because that will inform how we train you on it, and how we need to build out the different Spots.So, that is the biggest advice is to think about your end user. I know we say this all the time in marketing and every company, everybody’s going to say that, but you really need to do it. Don’t just say it, do it, take a few people, take not just the ones who are quick to adopt technology, but take The ones who are also a little slow to adopt as well, because there’s a lot of value there and what they’re going to say because you want everybody to adopt this. So that’s the biggest piece right there. SS: Now, as you look to the future, what are the key business initiatives you’re aiming to drive at I Corps this year? And how do you plan to leverage Highspot to help? I’d love to hear from each of you.BB: Sure. So, again, from my perspective since I’m focused on producing content, I’m really looking forward to enjoying the benefit of having content that can find our salespeople. So in the past, we were dependent on an environment where the content library was very static, as Blake said, so it was challenging for them to find the content.So now, in the Highspot environment, because of the built-in intelligence, the content’s going to be able to find them. That’s going to inform us how the content is being used. It’s also going to surface for them content that they have not previously used because it was difficult to find. They didn’t even, in some cases, didn’t know what they didn’t know.They didn’t know what to look for. But now with built-in intelligence, it’s going to be able to surface the content to them in a very structured, organized, practical way, a pragmatic way. So I’m really looking forward to getting more value from all the content that we’ve been investing in and will continue to invest in for both marketing value and sales value.BG: Agree. And I’m gonna go ahead and piggyback off of him again. I haven’t mentioned this yet, that obviously, the biggest piece for me would also be the data aspect. There’s a need for us to understand just a variety of different perspectives.One, what’s specifically working and what’s not working from our content strategy. And really who on the team is really spending a lot of time and these platforms because I want to know the ones who are not. And I want to be able to understand what’s going on. Is there a block? Is there something we don’t understand? Is it something that’s uncomfortable? That’s a very important piece. And that’s part of an ongoing strategy for me. And then I think, step one is just, as Bernie was saying, we had a very static environment where all this stuff lived.Now we’re bringing this into an intelligent, intuitive environment and what I look forward to seeing is how we can now thoughtfully build out content that’s meant for different stages of the funnel. And I think that’s going to be key with Highspot is helping us understand, okay we might need to spend a little bit more time expanding our middle-of-the-funnel type of content. This seems to be a sweet spot. So that'll be very interesting.CO: That’s something that we really thought about when we selected this product. And as I said earlier, with the selling environment we’re not able to get all of the decision makers together. And so measuring how engaged they are and what we’re able to accomplish by sharing content, sharing the right content at the right time, I think is going to be something that’s really going to be key as we take that data and what that data is telling us and servicing, the right things at the right time for the salesperson is one of the things that we’re really hoping to accomplish this year to increase sales win rates and to increase the sell-through or the success rate. And by doing that and even cross-selling, a lot of times we’ll be presenting to somebody specifically at an organization about a certain solution. And we offer a lot of other things as an organization. And so having some cross-selling opportunity with a Digital Sales Room, or making sure that we can surface some other content that they’re interested in, or knowing what to share and when to share it, I think will be a real game changer for our current sales reps.SS: Bernie, Blake, Chris, thank you all so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time and your insights. CO: Thank you BG: Thank you. 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.

Ben Wolf speaks to entrepreneurial business owners with teams of 10-150 people. He is founder and CEO of the largest fractional (part-time) COO firm, Wolf's Edge Integrators. Some call Ben the "godfather" of Fractional Leadership because, as leaders of their clients' management teams, Ben and his team coach, manage, and hire all leadership roles, both full-time and fractional. He wrote the bestselling first book on his industry, Fractional Leadership: Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach, and is host of the popular Win Win Podcast. Connect with Ben Website - https://wolfsedgeintegrators.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminwolf/ Connect with David Public Website: www.davidihill.com Real Estate University: www.realestateuniversity.club  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidihill/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidihill 20-Minute call: https://www.davidihill.com/strategycall   FACEBOOK COMMUNITY Please follow and join my Group- https://www.facebook.com/groups/ptmastery/

Ben Wolf: Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach Ben Wolf is the founder and CEO of the world's largest fractional COO firm, Wolf's Edge Integrators (www.WolfsEdgeIntegrators.com). He wrote the bestselling first book on his industry, “Fractional Leadership: Landing Executive Talent You Thought Was Out of Reach,” and is host of the popular Win Win Podcast. Welcome to the Conscious Millionaire Show for entrepreneurs, who want to achieve high sales and positively impact humanity! Join host, JV Crum III, as he goes inside the minds of conscious guests such as Millionaire Entrepreneurs and World-Class Business Experts. Like this Podcast? Get every episode delivered to you free!  Subscribe in iTunes Download Your Free Money-Making Gift Now... "Born to Make Millions" Hypnotic Audio - Click Here Now! Please help spread the word. Subscribing and leaving a review helps others find our podcast. Thanks so much! Inc Magazine "Top 13 Business Podcasts." Conscious Millionaire Network has over 3,800 episodes that have been heard by over 100 million in 190 countries.