In this episode, we hosted Krati Seth, Head of Global Sales Enablement at Whatfix to discuss how companies can build a sales enablement function to support sales teams and drive business impact.
With over a decade of experience across different roles, Krati is Currently the head of global sales enablement at Whatfix.
Before Whatfix, she spent 8 long years at Zycus - starting as a Business Development Associate and leaving as a Senior Sales Enablement Manager.
Krati shares that there are 3 types of companies in India - those who are aware and convinced about enablement, those who are aware but are not convinced, and those who are unaware of enablement.
She shares her insights on helping build enablement functions at Zycus and Whatfix, plus all the other companies she has consulted.
She also talks about the problems that enablement will solve and the impact it drives.
All this and more with Krati in this episode.
Connect with Krati on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kratiseth/
Visit our website - https://saassessions.com/
Connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilneurgaonkar/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sunil (00:08):
everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SAS
Sessions podcast.
today we have Pratik Sheth onthe show with us, with over a
decade of experience acrossdifferent roles.
Pratik is currently heading theglobal sales enablement at
Whatfix.
Whatfix, is my previous employerand is a leading digital
adoption platform in the globe.
before that, Krati spent eightlong years at Xycos starting as
(00:31):
a business development associateand living as a senior sales and
equipment manager there.
So hey Krati, such a pleasure tohave you on the show.
I think we have been discussing,about doing this for a while and
I know I gave a very short introabout you.
But, please tell us more aboutyour journey from, business
development associate to, youknow, head of global sales
(00:53):
enablement.
Right.
yeah.
Oh,
Krati (00:55):
happy to.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for, forbringing me here as an alien,
excited about this conversationand talking to more people about
enablement.
I think that's, that's the mostexciting part of my day.
Just educating new people about,Hey, well, this is what we do
or.
Here's how you should look atenablement.
Just to get started with, and toanswer your question.
I did start as a BD associate.
it was my first job soon aftertech.
(01:17):
I'm a computer science engineerand of course haven't used a
specker for back in college.
Sales was new to me and I thinkI was, I was understanding the
challenges firsthand when I juststarted my career in the first
year I struggled, I struggledbig time and of course there
were my managers, there werebuddies, mentors to help me
through it but there was alwaysthat feeling of I wish there was
(01:39):
one single person who could, whocould take care of that entire
piece of here's, here's how wemake you successful.
I think that was something whichwas deep rooted inside somewhere
in just, just based on thechallenges that I faced in the
first year.
Having said that, I think, Ifound my path, which is, Hey,
this is what you need to do insales.
I tried upskilling myself andyeah, it was a, it was a good
(02:02):
journey till I was with BDuntil, I was managing a team of
12 people with Zycus and it was,it was a very enriching and
great learning experience.
I think it was at around thefour year, four and a half year
mark in my career where I felt,okay, there's nothing more that
I can add to this organizationor something that I can take
away from this company in termsof learning.
That's when my, VP sales backthen, Dixit Jasani, he brought
(02:24):
up that topic of, Hey, Krati,why don't you try this?
And back then it would be calleda sales academy, by the way.
And he used to do it.
And he said, Hey, I feel you'regreat at being able to coach
your team members.
And you're doing this just foryour team.
12 team members that you have,but we have a much larger team
within sales and BD.
Do you want to give it a shot?
And just as any other person, Iwas like very skeptical about
(02:45):
it.
What if I'm not good at it?
And he gave me a safety net,which I think every individual
needs when they are tryingsomething new.
He said, give it six months,give it your best shot.
If it doesn't work for you, youcan have your old job back and
no questions asked.
And I think that was verycomforting for me.
And that was my introduction tothe world of enablement, which I
didn't know that it was calledenablement back then, but it was
(03:07):
an amazing journey.
I think just to be able tofigure out yourself and identify
where can I help thisorganization improve its own
sales performance, how peopleare, how people are talking on
the call, can I improve theirsales skills?
I think that entire journey andjust because it was so organic
and ground up, I think that was,that was the biggest revelation
in my entire career where Ifelt, okay, this is something
(03:27):
new, completely, completely new.
And it's really exciting.
So that was my introduction tosales enablement.
And that was, I think, seven,eight years ago.
Since then, that's been, thepath that I want to follow for
my career.
I'm very passionate about it.
I would love to have more andmore people, of course, join
Enablement.
And just think of it as a careeroption.
You don't go to a college andask people that, Hey, you know
(03:49):
what?
What do you want to make yourcareer?
And you will hear sales.
You will hear a lot ofmarketing.
Hey, you know what?
I want to be an engineer.
I want to get into testing.
You don't hear I want to getinto sales enablement.
And I think that's what I, Igenerally think in the years to
come, I would want to change.
I just want to educate aboutwhat it can do, what it, how,
when, how can you enter this,this line of career altogether
(04:11):
and what do you need to besuccessful?
I think that's, that's thejourney that I'm thinking of for
the next few years.
Sunil (04:17):
Nice.
I think that's a very good goal,right?
and you correctly mentioned,like, even I have not heard of
enablement that much, at leastin India where a lot of people
are choosing this as a careeroption.
And, I think like exciting timefor you because you started out
to give like a six month,timeframe and you ended up
spending more than six years nowin this.
So, turned out to be great, but,but yeah, I think in this
(04:40):
episode, we can definitely talkabout one thing you mentioned in
the start, which is like youtalk to a lot of companies about
enablement, like how do youbuild this function and what is
enablement to begin with why youshould need enablement.
whether it's an enablementprocess or it's an enabling
practice, or you have to hire afew people in that, why do you
need all of this in the firstplace?
(05:00):
Right?
So we can tackle those coupleof, questions from an India
point of view.
I also hosted, Phil Putnam, whowas the former VP of sales
enablement at Notified in asimilar session on the podcast
in last season.
But that was more from an U Sperspective.
And this is more, this episodeis going to be more from an
Indian perspective.
(05:21):
but, but yeah, let's, let'skickstart with, you know, why
start with why, right?
so why sales enablement in thefirst place?
Why do you think Indian startupswho don't have an enablement
function now should considerhaving an enablement function?
Krati (05:35):
Sure, yeah.
I'll take a step back first,which is I'll talk about the
different types of people that Iusually come across.
As you rightly mentioned, I dotalk to a lot of founders,
people who are early in their,company founding careers.
And they feel, okay, you knowwhat, what is it that I'm
missing out on?
And I really appreciate thosepeople because they are trying
to find out even if there are 10companies out there.
who have an enablement function,why do they have that?
(05:57):
So I love that curiosityabsolutely and I really enjoy
those conversations but fromthose What I have we wrote down
on is there are three types ofof people or leaders that you
would come across orprofessionals There is a good
section, we're aware of it andI'm, I'm always very happy
whenever somebody comes up andtalks about, hey, you know what,
we know of enablement, we'vebeen educating ourselves and we
(06:18):
want to know where to getstarted.
I think that is where half thejob is already done because
they've understood what is theimportance of enablement and
we'll come to that of course.
The second category belongs to,the section or rather the second
category people belong to thesection where They've never
heard of it before, so theydon't know what they're missing
out on.
They don't know why is itimportant in the company.
And to talk about the Indianmarket specifically, since not a
(06:41):
lot of companies have it, itdoesn't feel like, hey, you know
what?
I have a fear of missing outbecause everyone has that
department.
Everyone has that function and Idon't.
That's not the case withEnabled, right?
And finally, there's a thirdcategory.
that knows about it, but isconvinced this is not for them
because they have thisimpression that hey, enablement
is for enterprise organizations.
We are startups.
We can't really afford this atthis point of time and we don't
(07:04):
need it.
It's something which is notmeant for, small or medium
businesses.
It's something which is meantfor world class billion dollar
organizations, which is nottrue.
I go back to the question whichyou asked initially, which is
why sales enablement?
I think And I'll, I'll talk fromthe perspective of, I remember
when I was interviewing withWattFix and I had asked them the
same question, which is, you'rea startup, it's a new company,
(07:25):
and you're thinking aboutbringing in a sales enablement
leader.
You're thinking about bringingme into the company.
Why?
What's your thought processbehind it?
And I think that's somethingwhich stayed in my mind as well
when I, when I educated myselfmore about enablement.
I remember the response from theother side being, we're a
company which is growingextremely fast.
We have a lot of amazingproducts.
We're investing a lot of moneyinto hiring great salespeople as
(07:47):
well.
What we need help with is, canthere be a person or a
department which can cohesivelyacross the organization, make
sure that people speak the samelanguage.
We want to make sure when aWhatfix customer speaks to us in
India versus a Whatfix customerspeaks to us in the UK or in the
U S they're speaking the samelanguage and there's, there's
(08:07):
consistency in our messaging.
That messaging is createdbeautifully by product
marketing, but how do we makesure that it is adopted
completely by our salespeople?
And of course, I'm sure whenyou're listening to this, you're
thinking about why can'tsalespeople do that?
That's exactly what that thirdcategory people who know about
enablement think as well.
They think this is a salesmanager's job.
That's what they are hired for.
(08:29):
They're going to drive revenueand they're also going to coach
their employees.
And they're absolutely right inthinking that except one small
nuance, the skillset required tocoach people on sales skills is
something which is differentfrom that of.
That offer a sales manager.
I can be a person who'sbrilliant at driving revenue
through my team.
I may or may not be a person whohas amazing coaching skills and
(08:53):
it's not their fault.
These are two completelydifferent skill sets, right?
So a person or a manager who candrive revenue for you.
The second question that I wouldwant to ask them is, do you also
want that manager to be spendingtime on coaching their people
and making sure how they arepresenting the product on the
call is also accurate?
How about that person does whatthey specialize in and this
enablement department does whatthey specialize in, which is
(09:16):
creating a learning culture.
Helping people realize that,Hey, you know what, you're great
as a salesperson, but you can beeven better if you learn ABC
kind of skill sets and helpingthose sellers through it.
So for me, sales enablement, thesimple answer would be.
If you want to invest in,improving the performance of
your salespeople and you want tomake them successful in your
organization, I think enablementplays a very strong and a very
(09:38):
big role in that.
so for any founder out there, Ithink the first question they
should ask themselves is, okay,if you're a 10 people sales
team, I can understandenablement may or may not be
something which may be yourrequirement, but if you are a 50
people sales team, I think thatis the point where you should
start thinking about it, thatcan I have.
That one individual.
And I'm not saying start hugeenablement function.
You don't need it.
(09:58):
In all
Sunil (09:59):
honesty.
Krati (10:00):
All you need is that one individual who can come in,
bridge the gap between productmarketing and sales.
Make sure everyone's messagingis consistent.
Identify the gaps in the salesskills and fill up those.
So at the end of the day, you'redirectly contributing to making
sure that the sales team is, is,performing better than before.
Sunil (10:17):
Right.
No, very, very interesting,perspective that I would say.
and before we get onto the whatis enablement point of view,
right?
Since you mentioned you speakwith a lot of founders, into
three buckets, right?
People who are convinced that,okay, enablement is.
They're, they're educated and wejust don't know how to build or
what's the next step is.
There are some people who areaware of it, but they're not
(10:38):
still convinced like, okay, dowe still need it?
We are a 30 people sales team.
We can get everything donethrough the Slack, Google sheets
and all of that.
So do we still need any process,any, platforms, in that way?
We are not convinced yet.
And then the third bucket thatyou mentioned was, you know,
some people are just not aware,right?
Like what it does, forespecially talking about you
(11:00):
know, people who are aware.
And they're not implementing it.
What are some of the commonchallenges that you've seen with
founders is it because theydon't want to invest money in
it?
They are not able to find theright candidates.
They are not able to find theright tools or processes or
systems.
Like what is the common coupleof challenges that you have seen
in your conversations?
Krati (11:19):
I think the first one is just the realization of the fact
that is it even something thatwe should spend money on?
But if I keep that one aside,which is yes, they know about it
and they're willing to give it atry.
I think the top challenges wouldinclude The first one, which we
all as enablers in India gothrough, which is finding the
right talent, something that Iwas referring to in the
beginning of the conversation aswell.
there are countable 300 peoplein the entire country who
(11:41):
actually do enablement.
Of course, there are people whohave the title of enablement,
but their job role is differentfrom that of what, training and
coaching related enablementlooks like.
So I think the first challengeis where to start.
What kind of person should we,should we get into our
organization?
The second challenge that theysuffer from when they start
looking out at people is theyfind a lot of people who are
sales trainers.
(12:02):
And these are consultingorganizations, these are sales
training organizations.
And that choice is verytempting.
And I understand why it's verytempting because it doesn't feel
like a long term commitment,right?
I can bring in this organizationfor two months, for six months,
maybe for a year as well.
I still don't have to commit tothe fact that I'm going to coach
you.
I'm going to make sure you aresuccessful.
(12:23):
I don't even know whatenablement is supposed to
measure as a metric.
What am I going to tell thisperson, right?
I'm responsible.
I'm the CRO.
I'm the VP of sales.
I don't even know what should Iexpect out of this person.
So should I just get a trainingorganization?
I don't have to train thosepeople.
They do this day in day out.
So I think that can solve myproblem as well.
Sunil (12:42):
Bye.
Krati (12:43):
But partially, and the reason behind that is any
company, which is going to comein from outside is going to lose
the context, which is of yourorganization.
No, one's going to personalizetheir content for you, right?
How training companies work.
And I don't want to takeanything away from them.
They're amazing.
They're great, but they are tobe used for specialized
purposes.
For example, you want tointroduce a new sales
methodology in yourorganization.
(13:04):
They are the perfect fit for itbecause sales methodologies are
not Not personalized to the nthlevel for a company, right?
They stay the same until 70%.
30 percent is customized for thecompany and personalized for
their process, right?
But for an enablement person,you should expect 100 percent
personalization.
Customize it to the needs of thecompany and to the level where
today in this quarter, what ismy challenge versus next
(13:27):
quarter?
What is it that I want toachieve as a sales leader?
I think it all just depends uponthat.
It could be the sales leader'sgoal or it could even be the
company goals.
That today we are selling threeproducts.
Tomorrow we want to get to asuite of solutions and we want
to get into ABC New Market.
How can we even be ready forthat?
So I think that is anotherchallenge, which is, just
reiterating, the first one washiring.
The second one was getting,distracted with, can there be a
(13:50):
short term solution?
Because I don't know how totrain this person.
I don't know how to measuretheir performance.
I don't know how to guide themas well.
I think the third one is justrelated to, is this even
something, which is more on thedoubt side, I would say, is this
even something which, which I'mgoing to benefit from as an
organization?
Is there even an ROI?
Is it just another learning anddevelopment function, which I'm
(14:12):
going to bring in, Or can I justreutilize my current LND
function that I have and askthem to spend more time with my
sales team?
Wouldn't it solve the sameproblem?
Unfortunately, it won't.
Because again, LND has their ownareas of expertise, which
enablement doesn't.
The sales context is somethingthat you're going to miss out on
completely with LND.
LND can help you develop a lotof different skill sets, right
from helping you manage yourtime better to managing your
(14:34):
pipeline better.
It's only an enablement personor a sales manager who can sit
down and tell you, Hey, in thisopportunity, these were the four
ways we could have gone about itinstead of the 51 percent work
in your favor.
So I think that that specificsales related context will
always still be missing.
So those are the three that cometo the top of my mind when I
think of the question you asked.
Sunil (14:53):
Right.
I was with the GTM buddy andthey are an enablement platform,
right?
So when we used to speak with alot of people, I felt That, you
know, the impact point was more,prominent, right?
Like they were just notconfident that, they were, they
would be able to drive any sortof ROI with respect to, you
know, any investment in theenablement function right now,
(15:15):
when I say function, I am kindof want to break it down into
like three things, right?
So there's like investment inpeople, investment in the
process, and then investment inthe tool, like platform,
whatever you buy.
So.
Like obviously you can determinean ROI of a platform if it's
working or not, you can churnit, right?
Like stop using it two monthslater, whatever.
(15:35):
If you don't like the process,you might want to change it,
right?
So there are a lot of ways todo, reach the objective as long
as you know the objective.
And then the third is likepeople, as you mentioned that
now that becomes like a firstproblem that you mentioned as
well with where there are noenough.
People to hire from as well.
And plus some people who aredoing enablement, but they're
(15:57):
just doing coaching.
So that's just like one aspectand not the entire, you know,
umbrella.
Right.
So.
I mean these are like the, some,some of the things that I've
seen from my, perspective.
What, what, what do you think onthis particular I
Krati (16:10):
absolutely agree and I understand why it was harder,
when it was, when you were atGTM Buddy for G tm, buddy as
well.
And I say that why?
Because today, if people are noteven sure about having that
department or a dedicated personin that role.
Why would they want Westerntechnology related to that,
right?
So I think the Indian market'smaturity, and I wouldn't say
just India, I would say APAC ingeneral.
(16:32):
I have seen a lot of people inenablement roles in the ANZ
region, but I would saySoutheast Asia, India, I don't
see a lot of people, even inMiddle East, I don't see a lot
of people who are in theenablement function.
as opposed to, of course, if yougo on to the US, it's something
which is a full fledgedcategory.
You have those.
Prime players of, of course, theshow pads of the world, and the
high spots of the world, and theseismics of the world.
(16:54):
But again, if you look at it,it's a very finite list.
If you compare it with any othercategory, which has existed
around, it's a very, very smalllist.
And that's the reason again,going back to GTM buddy, I think
it was a great category for themto be because there are
literally three players in themarket, which are the biggest
and the largest and the meanest.
And there were very few, whichwere the up and on oncoming kind
(17:15):
of players that just becauseenablement is not something
we're just spoken about.
Unfortunately, even globally.
Sunil (17:21):
Yeah.
And this is a challenge, notonly with, I would say the
people or the talent pool andnot only the vendors, but also,
like, I don't know if you haveseen the G2 category for a sales
enablement.
It's the most crowded categorythat I've seen.
Right.
So in under sales enablement,they have platforms like your
usual platforms, like GTM buddyand high spawn and seismic
(17:44):
showpad.
Then they also have somethinglike a Clary.
They also have something likeoutreach.
They also have something likegong and they're all like, you
know, and the first is a HubSpotCRM, right.
that, that leads to, so I'm veryconfused.
Can you say that if I'm helpingsales sell better than I'm sales
(18:04):
enablement, can you say that?
Krati (18:06):
Yeah, very interesting point, actually.
And as you were taking all ofthose names, I was thinking
about it, which That's preciselyall of what enablement can one
impact and to you as well.
So when you think of the gongsof the world, enablement is the
prime user of it for coachingpurposes.
While the tool was actuallycreated for sales managers, but
(18:26):
it's being used by enablementthe most.
But yeah, you're absolutelyright in saying that I like that
quote right towards the end,which is.
At the end of the day, if youare helping people sell better,
you can actually call itenablement And I would say that
every sales manager is a salesenabler in themselves.
It's just that you do this asyour day in, day out job.
Is it something that you spend10 hours of your day on or not?
(18:47):
I think for most sales managers,it would be a part of their job
as it should.
Nothing against them, of course.
Mm-Hmm.
So, yeah, I, I agree with whatyou just said.
Sunil (18:57):
Nice.
But, I would love to, again,from your experience, you can
explain what truly enablementis.
I know, I know, like, you know,just saying, okay, if you help
sell, sell better, so is thatenablement?
Yes, it can be, it should be.
But like, what does trulyenablement will take over?
I think you already mentioned inbits and pieces that they would
take over of coaching.
(19:17):
They would make sure the salesprocess is not broken.
Then they would make sure thatthe message is unified.
They may also make sure that,the content created by the PMM
team is like used by all thesales team is getting adopted.
I know that there's like a lotof use cases, but in your
experience, according to you,like what are the top three or
five use cases that you feelthat if somebody who is starting
(19:40):
new in enablement, even as a.
career path, or even as acompany who is investing in this
function, what are some of thetop three or five things that
they can pick one?
I know there's a lot like morethan three, five, but what would
be the top three to five fix?
Krati (19:56):
Good question.
And before I answer that, I justwant to take reference of what
you just mentioned in the lastquestion, which is think of it
like that crowded G2 category,to be honest, there are a lot of
different ways that you canleverage an enablement person in
a department in yourorganization.
And it completely depends onwhat you want to achieve as a
company.
What's your goal, what's yourchallenge and your use case
(20:17):
would differ.
Having said that, The top fouror five, I would say the most
usual than the common ones,because those are common
challenges across different B2BSaaS companies would be the
first and the foremost, which isonboarding.
And I, this is out of all thedifferent organizations who
opted for enablement, this hasbeen one of the first reasons
(20:37):
why they stepped towards enablebecause they feel, Hey, you
know, we have a lot of newsalespeople coming in and the
line stops at.
If they are not successfulwithin the first three months of
the come of joining the company,our entire hiring, the time we
spent on it, the effort that weput on it, everything will, will
just shut down completely.
Right.
It's not going to make sense tous.
(20:58):
So I think onboarding is thefirst and the most common
enablement related use case,which does add a lot of value.
It's a lot of effort as well.
I would say it's the most effortintensive use case.
because you spend a lot of timein just creating those learning
paths, making sure that.
People who've joined theorganization are well enabled on
the product, on the process, onthe tools they have to use,
(21:20):
where to go if you have achallenge, how to sell that
product in the market.
All of this covered underseveral weeks of training is
what onboarding would look like.
and I know it sounds daunting,especially to a person who's a
listener, probably who'sthinking about making a career
in enablement, but it isactually very fulfilling.
And I would say the best step tostart with as well, because if
(21:41):
I'm a new enabler in a company,I would want to educate myself
as well.
How are you selling?
What are the problems?
So I think onboarding is thesafest thing to start with,
where you can still continue toadd value, but you're also
learning on the side.
So onboarding would be use casenumber one.
The second one, which of coursehas different names to it, which
I would call it as a singlebucket, would be everboarding.
(22:03):
Everboarding could be anythingwhere you're helping the sellers
once they've been onboarded intothe organization, their RAM
period is over.
And then you're working withthem to make sure that they are
more successful in what they aredoing.
I'm sure everybody who'slistening will agree to the fact
there is nothing like theperfect salesperson.
It doesn't exist, right?
Every salesperson has potentialto be able to learn more and
(22:26):
hone their skills.
It's all about sharpening youraxe.
And it's also about adapting tothe changing market needs,
adapting to the changingproduct, adapting to the
changing processes as wellwithin the company.
And again, that's whereenablement comes in.
Your competition is going tostart making new features, how
do you tackle that?
Your company has new customers,how do you use that to your
(22:47):
advantage?
All of those things which weconsider as basics, that why
would a salesperson not knowthis, are not so obvious for all
salespeople.
Everybody needs help when youcome.
Company has become complex interms of what it offers and it's
not something which is very easyto do justice to.
Sunil (23:04):
So
Krati (23:04):
yes, can be okay with, yes, my team has 60 percent
productivity overall and I'mokay with it.
Or you can dig down deeper intowhat is that middle bucket.
And I always talk about thatmiddle bucket because that is
where you can actually show alot of change.
That's where I would say themost promising results would
come out of.
Because your top bucket willalways be able to figure their
way out.
They are the people who know howto get things done and they
(23:27):
will, they will find their way.
It's always the middle bucket,which falls between 40 to 70
percent approximately.
They are the ones who need themost amount of help.
Just some amount of gentle push,right direction can actually
make them the top performers inthe team.
We've seen that happening andthat's the most rewarding
feeling for us.
so yeah, that for me would bethe second use case.
The third one is.
(23:47):
Just bringing together all theinformation that you think a
seller would need in anorganization.
And of course, I know you relatea lot to that, Sunil, because of
GTM buddy, but that's whysolutions like that also come
in.
But even if I keep thetechnology part away from it,
just creating a process whereall of what I need as a
salesperson is actuallydocumented beautifully.
(24:07):
I'm not a person who would say,Hey, you can't have an
enablement department.
If you don't have an enablementtool, you can.
It's okay to keep your processesbasic.
It's okay to, for you to usespreadsheet or SharePoint as
well.
The thought which needs to gobehind it is, can I segment all
of my content and assets, whichare present today, according to
the different sales stages, sothat I know exactly when my
(24:28):
sales person is at an A stage.
What would they need?
Can I bucket it on the basis ofthe industries?
Can I bucket it on the basis ofthe persona?
The whole idea is to make surethat your sales person can find
that information in as littleamount of time and with as
little effort as possible.
That in my opinion would be thethird and the most common use
case for anybody bringing in anenablement function.
(24:51):
And I'll pause at these threebecause in my opinion, these
three covered a huge gamut ofwhat enablement can do.
Sunil (24:58):
Makes sense.
Again, bang on, choosing thesethree options, right.
and you know, just.
like pointing on second onespecifically, you correctly
mentioned only like 20 or max25, 30 percent of people will
always hit quota or be abovethat.
Right.
And, it's like a bell curve witha lot of people in the middle.
And I think the CROs, likenumber one responsibility is To,
(25:21):
move the middle to the right, sothat more and more people
achieve, like more quota.
So, we want to know, right.
What sort of tangible impactthat enablement drives?
what an enablement functionwould be measured on?
Krati (25:34):
Sure.
again, before answering this, Iwould just want to refer back to
something we spoke about in theearly half of the conversation,
which is, Impact is actuallysomething which is spoken about
impact for enablement.
Of course, it's something whichis spoken about the most
globally, not just India.
If you're a part of a salesenablement collective, which is
like 7, 000, sales enablerstogether there as well, every
(25:57):
third conversation topic ordiscussion topic is about how
can we measure impact?
What are the metrics that welook at?
How can we prove it to ourmanagement that, Hey, you know
what?
This is the work that the teamdid because the effort is
visible, but then it's always aquestion of.
Can I silo this result to, Hey,this is what enablement did.
And before I share the metricswith you, think about it.
(26:18):
If enablers are working towardsmaking your sales organization
successful and your salespeoplesuccessful, of course, the
metrics are going to be the sameas well, which is what a sales
team is measuring.
To give you a few examples,which you can clearly think of,
this is what enablers canactually help drive.
I think the first one that comesto mind, and the most prominent
one as well, which can be gamechanging for companies is win
(26:38):
rates.
Now, a lot of companies have aprocess where they'll go back,
then look at why did we not winthis deal?
Or why did we win this deal?
Identify those reasons.
Of course, product relatedfeedback is given to the product
team.
Hey, we should incorporate thesenew things into our product.
Hey, we should incorporate a newsales process.
This is what our customers didor did not like.
But what about the aspect where.
(26:59):
We as salespeople could havedone a better job either by
positioning the product in adifferent manner, by
understanding the need of theprospect in a different manner,
by showcasing the value of ourproduct in a different manner.
There are a lot of ifs andmaybes present in that entire
long sales journey.
For a lot of companies it mayspan anywhere from As little as
(27:20):
maybe seven days to as much as12 to 14 to 18 months as well,
right?
There's some dots that can gowrong in that entire process.
So just helping the teamsanalyze their sales
opportunities, identifying thoseareas where the team needs the
most amount of help and this caneven be done for one on one
coaching.
There's one individual who's notprobably great at showing the
(27:41):
value and the ROI of theproduct.
The other person may not begreat at maybe the negotiation
related skills.
And just fixing those areas canactually substantially help move
up your win rates.
the second one that comes tomind is competitive wins,
because again, competitivebattles are the trickiest
because they are never the same.
No two competitive wins are everthe same and there's no simple
(28:03):
formula to it.
It's not like, hey, do A, B, C,D and you'll be done.
And you'll every, every time wineither an opportunity or a
competitive opportunity does notwork like that.
Sunil (28:12):
Just the
Krati (28:12):
way how you are evolving, your product is evolving as a
company, so is your competitor.
Right.
So I think competitive wins isanother place where sellers
actually need a lot of help.
They ask for it as well, becausethey, they want to make sure
they know everything aboutwhat's happening with my
competitor.
If I'm going to go ahead on withthem, I need to know everything
that I do better than them.
And as recent as maybeyesterday,
Sunil (28:33):
they
Krati (28:33):
come up with something.
Was there an annual report?
Did they sign a new customer?
Did they come up with a newfeature?
They want to know everything sothat they're better prepared
when they're going into thatcompetitive battle.
So That again, for a lot oforganizations is a very big win
because a lot of money comes infrom just those competitive wins
and a lot of brand as well,which is built.
I'll pause at the third oneactually, because again, I just
(28:55):
want to talk about the topthree.
The third one would beshortening of sales cycle.
And if you go back to thereports, if you go ahead,
Google, what are the top fivechallenges that any sales leader
is looking forward to solve?
Most of these three willactually make that list, which
includes short sales cycle aswell.
Only if I as a salesperson knewbetter how to sell this product
(29:15):
at this company.
I understand you've sold for 25years in your life.
You're genuinely a greatsalesperson.
The only part which is still newfor you is how does this
category sell?
How does this product sell?
How does this product sell inthe current macroeconomic
involvement?
All of that is something whichcan still throw you off of your
game.
And that's the other part, whichwe can actually control in a lot
(29:36):
of ways, which is you cancontrol what can potentially
happen in that opportunity.
Feeding the salesperson withhere's what happened in a
different geography outside ofyour team, but here's the
learning from it.
Here's what you should do tomake sure that you're able to
close maximum amount ofbusiness, but in the shortest
period of time.
So that's a third one that Iwould say probably.
That enablers and enablementteams can actually affect, and
(29:57):
you can measure for theirsuccess as well.
Sunil (29:59):
Nice.
Nice.
I think very interesting threepointers on measuring the impact
of enablement and rightlymentioned that like most of
these would be also.
Helping you derive how is yoursales velocity?
And how are you growing?
you know, you launched, someenablement process now and your
sales velocity or your win ratesor your sales cycle number, like
(30:24):
number of days to close a dealwas X before we launched the
process or the program.
And now like two quarters later,it's like improved.
Right.
So it's like a direct relationto, implementing a program and,
seeing results of, I think thesethree are very good metrics that
you can just measure month onmonth and see how the, how the
(30:45):
trend line is progressing.
So, that's really great.
So before we move on to, thelast section of the episode,
which is lightning round, Iwould just love to.
ask you like one thing that youwould want to share with all the
people who are just building outthe function, like one
philosophical thing that you cansay to them
Krati (31:02):
I would say you're right in thinking, can I get that
perfect person that I can startmy enablement journey with?
And I would say, yes, that'sreally important.
Having said that, Show faith inthe fact that yes, it can
actually help your organization.
And always remember there's noone way of running enablement,
right?
When we started talking, Imentioned it, which is every
company has different set ofchallenges.
(31:24):
Think of enablement as aconsultant or a person who can.
Join hands with you as the salesleader and work towards
improving the entire team.
Even if you're questioning thefact that, Hey, you know what,
how will I measure this?
How will I measure that?
I'm sure no one will say no.
If you're a sales leader to thefact that what if you got some
help, what if you got some helpfrom a person who's trying to
(31:45):
achieve the same set of goalsand why not,
Sunil (31:47):
right?
Krati (31:47):
I think that's the only thought that I would leave with
them, which is I understand thisjourney looks like something
which is new and you're unsureabout it.
Just think about the fact thatyou will have a person who's
working towards the same goals,just in a different way,
probably.
Sunil (32:00):
Right.
Right.
Awesome.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for sharing thatadvice.
And moving on to the lightninground.
I know I've asked you a lot ofquestions already.
But, you know, three more on thelightning round, not anything to
do with enablement particularly,but, yeah, let's start.
So the first one, what is theone thing that has helped you
shorten your learning curve?
Krati (32:22):
being pathetically curious, like to the level of
where I would get annoying.
and I think I, I, I never shamedmyself for it because that's the
only way that I can learn, Ithink, in all honesty, just
asking a lot of questions andconstantly thinking, what is it
that I don't know?
Of course, there's a big part ofself learning that goes out in
it as well.
But yeah, I think just buildingthat curiosity over time is
(32:43):
something which has helped me alot.
Sunil (32:45):
Nice.
Like stay hungry, stay foolish.
Krati (32:48):
Always.
Sunil (32:49):
Yeah.
And the second one.
So what do you know about yourwork now that you wish you would
have known when you firststarted?
Krati (32:56):
Interesting one.
I, I wish I knew right in thebeginning that Enablement is a
lot about trust building aswell.
It's not spoken about as much,but I think it's a very
important part of success ofenablement and that enabler as
well.
It's something which, whichoccurred to me over time on the
(33:17):
basis of my experiences.
It wasn't something that I usedto regard very highly.
And I used to think, Hey, ifyou're doing a good job, I think
it's perfectly okay.
It's not enough.
If you cannot build faith andtrust in the minds of the people
that you are enabling, if theydon't feel you can help them,
then Unfortunately, yourenablement will not land and it
will not work.
It will not show you the resultof the impact.
I think that's one thing which Ihave a very strong realization
(33:39):
of now, but did not when Istarted off.
Sunil (33:42):
Nice.
That's a interesting learning.
and the third and last one.
So what did your biggestprofessional failure teach you?
Krati (33:52):
I think my biggest professional failure taught me
the fact that.
You always invest in people.
You never invest in Every timeyou're thinking about what is it
that I can, I can put all of myheart and soul into, I've
learned that the hard way, it'salways people.
You can coach them, you can showthem, you can give them a
direction, and of course, keepit a give and take, which is you
(34:14):
have to make sure that you as aleader are also contributing to
their life.
I think that's, that's mybiggest learning of my career in
general.
Sunil (34:22):
Nice.
Nice.
That's a, interestingperspective as well.
again, thanks for sharing allthe insights with us.
I'm sure, like you have abroader view on the Indian
enablement ecosystem, at least,right?
where you have spoken with a lotof founders, you have a lot of
learnings from WattFix as well,and also a lot of learnings on.
(34:43):
how founders are takingdecisions and how they should
take decisions.
So thanks a lot for sharing allyour insights on the show.
everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the SAS
Sessions podcast.
today we have Pratik Sheth onthe show with us, with over a
decade of experience acrossdifferent roles.
Pratik is currently heading theglobal sales enablement at
Whatfix.
Whatfix, is my previous employerand is a leading digital
adoption platform in the globe.
before that, Krati spent eightlong years at Xycos starting as
(00:31):
a business development associateand living as a senior sales and
equipment manager there.
So hey Krati, such a pleasure tohave you on the show.
I think we have been discussing,about doing this for a while and
I know I gave a very short introabout you.
But, please tell us more aboutyour journey from, business
development associate to, youknow, head of global sales
(00:53):
enablement.
Right.
yeah.
Oh,
Krati (00:55):
happy to.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for, forbringing me here as an alien,
excited about this conversationand talking to more people about
enablement.
I think that's, that's the mostexciting part of my day.
Just educating new people about,Hey, well, this is what we do
or.
Here's how you should look atenablement.
Just to get started with, and toanswer your question.
I did start as a BD associate.
it was my first job soon aftertech.
(01:17):
I'm a computer science engineerand of course haven't used a
specker for back in college.
Sales was new to me and I thinkI was, I was understanding the
challenges firsthand when I juststarted my career in the first
year I struggled, I struggledbig time and of course there
were my managers, there werebuddies, mentors to help me
through it but there was alwaysthat feeling of I wish there was
(01:39):
one single person who could, whocould take care of that entire
piece of here's, here's how wemake you successful.
I think that was something whichwas deep rooted inside somewhere
in just, just based on thechallenges that I faced in the
first year.
Having said that, I think, Ifound my path, which is, Hey,
this is what you need to do insales.
I tried upskilling myself andyeah, it was a, it was a good
(02:02):
journey till I was with BDuntil, I was managing a team of
12 people with Zycus and it was,it was a very enriching and
great learning experience.
I think it was at around thefour year, four and a half year
mark in my career where I felt,okay, there's nothing more that
I can add to this organizationor something that I can take
away from this company in termsof learning.
That's when my, VP sales backthen, Dixit Jasani, he brought
(02:24):
up that topic of, Hey, Krati,why don't you try this?
And back then it would be calleda sales academy, by the way.
And he used to do it.
And he said, Hey, I feel you'regreat at being able to coach
your team members.
And you're doing this just foryour team.
12 team members that you have,but we have a much larger team
within sales and BD.
Do you want to give it a shot?
And just as any other person, Iwas like very skeptical about
(02:45):
it.
What if I'm not good at it?
And he gave me a safety net,which I think every individual
needs when they are tryingsomething new.
He said, give it six months,give it your best shot.
If it doesn't work for you, youcan have your old job back and
no questions asked.
And I think that was verycomforting for me.
And that was my introduction tothe world of enablement, which I
didn't know that it was calledenablement back then, but it was
(03:07):
an amazing journey.
I think just to be able tofigure out yourself and identify
where can I help thisorganization improve its own
sales performance, how peopleare, how people are talking on
the call, can I improve theirsales skills?
I think that entire journey andjust because it was so organic
and ground up, I think that was,that was the biggest revelation
in my entire career where Ifelt, okay, this is something
(03:27):
new, completely, completely new.
And it's really exciting.
So that was my introduction tosales enablement.
And that was, I think, seven,eight years ago.
Since then, that's been, thepath that I want to follow for
my career.
I'm very passionate about it.
I would love to have more andmore people, of course, join
Enablement.
And just think of it as a careeroption.
You don't go to a college andask people that, Hey, you know
(03:49):
what?
What do you want to make yourcareer?
And you will hear sales.
You will hear a lot ofmarketing.
Hey, you know what?
I want to be an engineer.
I want to get into testing.
You don't hear I want to getinto sales enablement.
And I think that's what I, Igenerally think in the years to
come, I would want to change.
I just want to educate aboutwhat it can do, what it, how,
when, how can you enter this,this line of career altogether
(04:11):
and what do you need to besuccessful?
I think that's, that's thejourney that I'm thinking of for
the next few years.
Sunil (04:17):
Nice.
I think that's a very good goal,right?
and you correctly mentioned,like, even I have not heard of
enablement that much, at leastin India where a lot of people
are choosing this as a careeroption.
And, I think like exciting timefor you because you started out
to give like a six month,timeframe and you ended up
spending more than six years nowin this.
So, turned out to be great, but,but yeah, I think in this
(04:40):
episode, we can definitely talkabout one thing you mentioned in
the start, which is like youtalk to a lot of companies about
enablement, like how do youbuild this function and what is
enablement to begin with why youshould need enablement.
whether it's an enablementprocess or it's an enabling
practice, or you have to hire afew people in that, why do you
need all of this in the firstplace?
(05:00):
Right?
So we can tackle those coupleof, questions from an India
point of view.
I also hosted, Phil Putnam, whowas the former VP of sales
enablement at Notified in asimilar session on the podcast
in last season.
But that was more from an U Sperspective.
And this is more, this episodeis going to be more from an
Indian perspective.
(05:21):
but, but yeah, let's, let'skickstart with, you know, why
start with why, right?
so why sales enablement in thefirst place?
Why do you think Indian startupswho don't have an enablement
function now should considerhaving an enablement function?
Krati (05:35):
Sure, yeah.
I'll take a step back first,which is I'll talk about the
different types of people that Iusually come across.
As you rightly mentioned, I dotalk to a lot of founders,
people who are early in their,company founding careers.
And they feel, okay, you knowwhat, what is it that I'm
missing out on?
And I really appreciate thosepeople because they are trying
to find out even if there are 10companies out there.
who have an enablement function,why do they have that?
(05:57):
So I love that curiosityabsolutely and I really enjoy
those conversations but fromthose What I have we wrote down
on is there are three types ofof people or leaders that you
would come across orprofessionals There is a good
section, we're aware of it andI'm, I'm always very happy
whenever somebody comes up andtalks about, hey, you know what,
we know of enablement, we'vebeen educating ourselves and we
(06:18):
want to know where to getstarted.
I think that is where half thejob is already done because
they've understood what is theimportance of enablement and
we'll come to that of course.
The second category belongs to,the section or rather the second
category people belong to thesection where They've never
heard of it before, so theydon't know what they're missing
out on.
They don't know why is itimportant in the company.
And to talk about the Indianmarket specifically, since not a
(06:41):
lot of companies have it, itdoesn't feel like, hey, you know
what?
I have a fear of missing outbecause everyone has that
department.
Everyone has that function and Idon't.
That's not the case withEnabled, right?
And finally, there's a thirdcategory.
that knows about it, but isconvinced this is not for them
because they have thisimpression that hey, enablement
is for enterprise organizations.
We are startups.
We can't really afford this atthis point of time and we don't
(07:04):
need it.
It's something which is notmeant for, small or medium
businesses.
It's something which is meantfor world class billion dollar
organizations, which is nottrue.
I go back to the question whichyou asked initially, which is
why sales enablement?
I think And I'll, I'll talk fromthe perspective of, I remember
when I was interviewing withWattFix and I had asked them the
same question, which is, you'rea startup, it's a new company,
(07:25):
and you're thinking aboutbringing in a sales enablement
leader.
You're thinking about bringingme into the company.
Why?
What's your thought processbehind it?
And I think that's somethingwhich stayed in my mind as well
when I, when I educated myselfmore about enablement.
I remember the response from theother side being, we're a
company which is growingextremely fast.
We have a lot of amazingproducts.
We're investing a lot of moneyinto hiring great salespeople as
(07:47):
well.
What we need help with is, canthere be a person or a
department which can cohesivelyacross the organization, make
sure that people speak the samelanguage.
We want to make sure when aWhatfix customer speaks to us in
India versus a Whatfix customerspeaks to us in the UK or in the
U S they're speaking the samelanguage and there's, there's
(08:07):
consistency in our messaging.
That messaging is createdbeautifully by product
marketing, but how do we makesure that it is adopted
completely by our salespeople?
And of course, I'm sure whenyou're listening to this, you're
thinking about why can'tsalespeople do that?
That's exactly what that thirdcategory people who know about
enablement think as well.
They think this is a salesmanager's job.
That's what they are hired for.
(08:29):
They're going to drive revenueand they're also going to coach
their employees.
And they're absolutely right inthinking that except one small
nuance, the skillset required tocoach people on sales skills is
something which is differentfrom that of.
That offer a sales manager.
I can be a person who'sbrilliant at driving revenue
through my team.
I may or may not be a person whohas amazing coaching skills and
(08:53):
it's not their fault.
These are two completelydifferent skill sets, right?
So a person or a manager who candrive revenue for you.
The second question that I wouldwant to ask them is, do you also
want that manager to be spendingtime on coaching their people
and making sure how they arepresenting the product on the
call is also accurate?
How about that person does whatthey specialize in and this
enablement department does whatthey specialize in, which is
(09:16):
creating a learning culture.
Helping people realize that,Hey, you know what, you're great
as a salesperson, but you can beeven better if you learn ABC
kind of skill sets and helpingthose sellers through it.
So for me, sales enablement, thesimple answer would be.
If you want to invest in,improving the performance of
your salespeople and you want tomake them successful in your
organization, I think enablementplays a very strong and a very
(09:38):
big role in that.
so for any founder out there, Ithink the first question they
should ask themselves is, okay,if you're a 10 people sales
team, I can understandenablement may or may not be
something which may be yourrequirement, but if you are a 50
people sales team, I think thatis the point where you should
start thinking about it, thatcan I have.
That one individual.
And I'm not saying start hugeenablement function.
You don't need it.
(09:58):
In all
Sunil (09:59):
honesty.
Krati (10:00):
All you need is that one individual who can come in,
bridge the gap between productmarketing and sales.
Make sure everyone's messagingis consistent.
Identify the gaps in the salesskills and fill up those.
So at the end of the day, you'redirectly contributing to making
sure that the sales team is, is,performing better than before.
Sunil (10:17):
Right.
No, very, very interesting,perspective that I would say.
and before we get onto the whatis enablement point of view,
right?
Since you mentioned you speakwith a lot of founders, into
three buckets, right?
People who are convinced that,okay, enablement is.
They're, they're educated and wejust don't know how to build or
what's the next step is.
There are some people who areaware of it, but they're not
(10:38):
still convinced like, okay, dowe still need it?
We are a 30 people sales team.
We can get everything donethrough the Slack, Google sheets
and all of that.
So do we still need any process,any, platforms, in that way?
We are not convinced yet.
And then the third bucket thatyou mentioned was, you know,
some people are just not aware,right?
Like what it does, forespecially talking about you
(11:00):
know, people who are aware.
And they're not implementing it.
What are some of the commonchallenges that you've seen with
founders is it because theydon't want to invest money in
it?
They are not able to find theright candidates.
They are not able to find theright tools or processes or
systems.
Like what is the common coupleof challenges that you have seen
in your conversations?
Krati (11:19):
I think the first one is just the realization of the fact
that is it even something thatwe should spend money on?
But if I keep that one aside,which is yes, they know about it
and they're willing to give it atry.
I think the top challenges wouldinclude The first one, which we
all as enablers in India gothrough, which is finding the
right talent, something that Iwas referring to in the
beginning of the conversation aswell.
there are countable 300 peoplein the entire country who
(11:41):
actually do enablement.
Of course, there are people whohave the title of enablement,
but their job role is differentfrom that of what, training and
coaching related enablementlooks like.
So I think the first challengeis where to start.
What kind of person should we,should we get into our
organization?
The second challenge that theysuffer from when they start
looking out at people is theyfind a lot of people who are
sales trainers.
(12:02):
And these are consultingorganizations, these are sales
training organizations.
And that choice is verytempting.
And I understand why it's verytempting because it doesn't feel
like a long term commitment,right?
I can bring in this organizationfor two months, for six months,
maybe for a year as well.
I still don't have to commit tothe fact that I'm going to coach
you.
I'm going to make sure you aresuccessful.
(12:23):
I don't even know whatenablement is supposed to
measure as a metric.
What am I going to tell thisperson, right?
I'm responsible.
I'm the CRO.
I'm the VP of sales.
I don't even know what should Iexpect out of this person.
So should I just get a trainingorganization?
I don't have to train thosepeople.
They do this day in day out.
So I think that can solve myproblem as well.
Sunil (12:42):
Bye.
Krati (12:43):
But partially, and the reason behind that is any
company, which is going to comein from outside is going to lose
the context, which is of yourorganization.
No, one's going to personalizetheir content for you, right?
How training companies work.
And I don't want to takeanything away from them.
They're amazing.
They're great, but they are tobe used for specialized
purposes.
For example, you want tointroduce a new sales
methodology in yourorganization.
(13:04):
They are the perfect fit for itbecause sales methodologies are
not Not personalized to the nthlevel for a company, right?
They stay the same until 70%.
30 percent is customized for thecompany and personalized for
their process, right?
But for an enablement person,you should expect 100 percent
personalization.
Customize it to the needs of thecompany and to the level where
today in this quarter, what ismy challenge versus next
(13:27):
quarter?
What is it that I want toachieve as a sales leader?
I think it all just depends uponthat.
It could be the sales leader'sgoal or it could even be the
company goals.
That today we are selling threeproducts.
Tomorrow we want to get to asuite of solutions and we want
to get into ABC New Market.
How can we even be ready forthat?
So I think that is anotherchallenge, which is, just
reiterating, the first one washiring.
The second one was getting,distracted with, can there be a
(13:50):
short term solution?
Because I don't know how totrain this person.
I don't know how to measuretheir performance.
I don't know how to guide themas well.
I think the third one is justrelated to, is this even
something, which is more on thedoubt side, I would say, is this
even something which, which I'mgoing to benefit from as an
organization?
Is there even an ROI?
Is it just another learning anddevelopment function, which I'm
(14:12):
going to bring in, Or can I justreutilize my current LND
function that I have and askthem to spend more time with my
sales team?
Wouldn't it solve the sameproblem?
Unfortunately, it won't.
Because again, LND has their ownareas of expertise, which
enablement doesn't.
The sales context is somethingthat you're going to miss out on
completely with LND.
LND can help you develop a lotof different skill sets, right
from helping you manage yourtime better to managing your
(14:34):
pipeline better.
It's only an enablement personor a sales manager who can sit
down and tell you, Hey, in thisopportunity, these were the four
ways we could have gone about itinstead of the 51 percent work
in your favor.
So I think that that specificsales related context will
always still be missing.
So those are the three that cometo the top of my mind when I
think of the question you asked.
Sunil (14:53):
Right.
I was with the GTM buddy andthey are an enablement platform,
right?
So when we used to speak with alot of people, I felt That, you
know, the impact point was more,prominent, right?
Like they were just notconfident that, they were, they
would be able to drive any sortof ROI with respect to, you
know, any investment in theenablement function right now,
(15:15):
when I say function, I am kindof want to break it down into
like three things, right?
So there's like investment inpeople, investment in the
process, and then investment inthe tool, like platform,
whatever you buy.
So.
Like obviously you can determinean ROI of a platform if it's
working or not, you can churnit, right?
Like stop using it two monthslater, whatever.
(15:35):
If you don't like the process,you might want to change it,
right?
So there are a lot of ways todo, reach the objective as long
as you know the objective.
And then the third is likepeople, as you mentioned that
now that becomes like a firstproblem that you mentioned as
well with where there are noenough.
People to hire from as well.
And plus some people who aredoing enablement, but they're
(15:57):
just doing coaching.
So that's just like one aspectand not the entire, you know,
umbrella.
Right.
So.
I mean these are like the, some,some of the things that I've
seen from my, perspective.
What, what, what do you think onthis particular I
Krati (16:10):
absolutely agree and I understand why it was harder,
when it was, when you were atGTM Buddy for G tm, buddy as
well.
And I say that why?
Because today, if people are noteven sure about having that
department or a dedicated personin that role.
Why would they want Westerntechnology related to that,
right?
So I think the Indian market'smaturity, and I wouldn't say
just India, I would say APAC ingeneral.
(16:32):
I have seen a lot of people inenablement roles in the ANZ
region, but I would saySoutheast Asia, India, I don't
see a lot of people, even inMiddle East, I don't see a lot
of people who are in theenablement function.
as opposed to, of course, if yougo on to the US, it's something
which is a full fledgedcategory.
You have those.
Prime players of, of course, theshow pads of the world, and the
high spots of the world, and theseismics of the world.
(16:54):
But again, if you look at it,it's a very finite list.
If you compare it with any othercategory, which has existed
around, it's a very, very smalllist.
And that's the reason again,going back to GTM buddy, I think
it was a great category for themto be because there are
literally three players in themarket, which are the biggest
and the largest and the meanest.
And there were very few, whichwere the up and on oncoming kind
(17:15):
of players that just becauseenablement is not something
we're just spoken about.
Unfortunately, even globally.
Sunil (17:21):
Yeah.
And this is a challenge, notonly with, I would say the
people or the talent pool andnot only the vendors, but also,
like, I don't know if you haveseen the G2 category for a sales
enablement.
It's the most crowded categorythat I've seen.
Right.
So in under sales enablement,they have platforms like your
usual platforms, like GTM buddyand high spawn and seismic
(17:44):
showpad.
Then they also have somethinglike a Clary.
They also have something likeoutreach.
They also have something likegong and they're all like, you
know, and the first is a HubSpotCRM, right.
that, that leads to, so I'm veryconfused.
Can you say that if I'm helpingsales sell better than I'm sales
(18:04):
enablement, can you say that?
Krati (18:06):
Yeah, very interesting point, actually.
And as you were taking all ofthose names, I was thinking
about it, which That's preciselyall of what enablement can one
impact and to you as well.
So when you think of the gongsof the world, enablement is the
prime user of it for coachingpurposes.
While the tool was actuallycreated for sales managers, but
(18:26):
it's being used by enablementthe most.
But yeah, you're absolutelyright in saying that I like that
quote right towards the end,which is.
At the end of the day, if youare helping people sell better,
you can actually call itenablement And I would say that
every sales manager is a salesenabler in themselves.
It's just that you do this asyour day in, day out job.
Is it something that you spend10 hours of your day on or not?
(18:47):
I think for most sales managers,it would be a part of their job
as it should.
Nothing against them, of course.
Mm-Hmm.
So, yeah, I, I agree with whatyou just said.
Sunil (18:57):
Nice.
But, I would love to, again,from your experience, you can
explain what truly enablementis.
I know, I know, like, you know,just saying, okay, if you help
sell, sell better, so is thatenablement?
Yes, it can be, it should be.
But like, what does trulyenablement will take over?
I think you already mentioned inbits and pieces that they would
take over of coaching.
(19:17):
They would make sure the salesprocess is not broken.
Then they would make sure thatthe message is unified.
They may also make sure that,the content created by the PMM
team is like used by all thesales team is getting adopted.
I know that there's like a lotof use cases, but in your
experience, according to you,like what are the top three or
five use cases that you feelthat if somebody who is starting
(19:40):
new in enablement, even as a.
career path, or even as acompany who is investing in this
function, what are some of thetop three or five things that
they can pick one?
I know there's a lot like morethan three, five, but what would
be the top three to five fix?
Krati (19:56):
Good question.
And before I answer that, I justwant to take reference of what
you just mentioned in the lastquestion, which is think of it
like that crowded G2 category,to be honest, there are a lot of
different ways that you canleverage an enablement person in
a department in yourorganization.
And it completely depends onwhat you want to achieve as a
company.
What's your goal, what's yourchallenge and your use case
(20:17):
would differ.
Having said that, The top fouror five, I would say the most
usual than the common ones,because those are common
challenges across different B2BSaaS companies would be the
first and the foremost, which isonboarding.
And I, this is out of all thedifferent organizations who
opted for enablement, this hasbeen one of the first reasons
(20:37):
why they stepped towards enablebecause they feel, Hey, you
know, we have a lot of newsalespeople coming in and the
line stops at.
If they are not successfulwithin the first three months of
the come of joining the company,our entire hiring, the time we
spent on it, the effort that weput on it, everything will, will
just shut down completely.
Right.
It's not going to make sense tous.
(20:58):
So I think onboarding is thefirst and the most common
enablement related use case,which does add a lot of value.
It's a lot of effort as well.
I would say it's the most effortintensive use case.
because you spend a lot of timein just creating those learning
paths, making sure that.
People who've joined theorganization are well enabled on
the product, on the process, onthe tools they have to use,
(21:20):
where to go if you have achallenge, how to sell that
product in the market.
All of this covered underseveral weeks of training is
what onboarding would look like.
and I know it sounds daunting,especially to a person who's a
listener, probably who'sthinking about making a career
in enablement, but it isactually very fulfilling.
And I would say the best step tostart with as well, because if
(21:41):
I'm a new enabler in a company,I would want to educate myself
as well.
How are you selling?
What are the problems?
So I think onboarding is thesafest thing to start with,
where you can still continue toadd value, but you're also
learning on the side.
So onboarding would be use casenumber one.
The second one, which of coursehas different names to it, which
I would call it as a singlebucket, would be everboarding.
(22:03):
Everboarding could be anythingwhere you're helping the sellers
once they've been onboarded intothe organization, their RAM
period is over.
And then you're working withthem to make sure that they are
more successful in what they aredoing.
I'm sure everybody who'slistening will agree to the fact
there is nothing like theperfect salesperson.
It doesn't exist, right?
Every salesperson has potentialto be able to learn more and
(22:26):
hone their skills.
It's all about sharpening youraxe.
And it's also about adapting tothe changing market needs,
adapting to the changingproduct, adapting to the
changing processes as wellwithin the company.
And again, that's whereenablement comes in.
Your competition is going tostart making new features, how
do you tackle that?
Your company has new customers,how do you use that to your
(22:47):
advantage?
All of those things which weconsider as basics, that why
would a salesperson not knowthis, are not so obvious for all
salespeople.
Everybody needs help when youcome.
Company has become complex interms of what it offers and it's
not something which is very easyto do justice to.
Sunil (23:04):
So
Krati (23:04):
yes, can be okay with, yes, my team has 60 percent
productivity overall and I'mokay with it.
Or you can dig down deeper intowhat is that middle bucket.
And I always talk about thatmiddle bucket because that is
where you can actually show alot of change.
That's where I would say themost promising results would
come out of.
Because your top bucket willalways be able to figure their
way out.
They are the people who know howto get things done and they
(23:27):
will, they will find their way.
It's always the middle bucket,which falls between 40 to 70
percent approximately.
They are the ones who need themost amount of help.
Just some amount of gentle push,right direction can actually
make them the top performers inthe team.
We've seen that happening andthat's the most rewarding
feeling for us.
so yeah, that for me would bethe second use case.
The third one is.
(23:47):
Just bringing together all theinformation that you think a
seller would need in anorganization.
And of course, I know you relatea lot to that, Sunil, because of
GTM buddy, but that's whysolutions like that also come
in.
But even if I keep thetechnology part away from it,
just creating a process whereall of what I need as a
salesperson is actuallydocumented beautifully.
(24:07):
I'm not a person who would say,Hey, you can't have an
enablement department.
If you don't have an enablementtool, you can.
It's okay to keep your processesbasic.
It's okay to, for you to usespreadsheet or SharePoint as
well.
The thought which needs to gobehind it is, can I segment all
of my content and assets, whichare present today, according to
the different sales stages, sothat I know exactly when my
(24:28):
sales person is at an A stage.
What would they need?
Can I bucket it on the basis ofthe industries?
Can I bucket it on the basis ofthe persona?
The whole idea is to make surethat your sales person can find
that information in as littleamount of time and with as
little effort as possible.
That in my opinion would be thethird and the most common use
case for anybody bringing in anenablement function.
(24:51):
And I'll pause at these threebecause in my opinion, these
three covered a huge gamut ofwhat enablement can do.
Sunil (24:58):
Makes sense.
Again, bang on, choosing thesethree options, right.
and you know, just.
like pointing on second onespecifically, you correctly
mentioned only like 20 or max25, 30 percent of people will
always hit quota or be abovethat.
Right.
And, it's like a bell curve witha lot of people in the middle.
And I think the CROs, likenumber one responsibility is To,
(25:21):
move the middle to the right, sothat more and more people
achieve, like more quota.
So, we want to know, right.
What sort of tangible impactthat enablement drives?
what an enablement functionwould be measured on?
Krati (25:34):
Sure.
again, before answering this, Iwould just want to refer back to
something we spoke about in theearly half of the conversation,
which is, Impact is actuallysomething which is spoken about
impact for enablement.
Of course, it's something whichis spoken about the most
globally, not just India.
If you're a part of a salesenablement collective, which is
like 7, 000, sales enablerstogether there as well, every
(25:57):
third conversation topic ordiscussion topic is about how
can we measure impact?
What are the metrics that welook at?
How can we prove it to ourmanagement that, Hey, you know
what?
This is the work that the teamdid because the effort is
visible, but then it's always aquestion of.
Can I silo this result to, Hey,this is what enablement did.
And before I share the metricswith you, think about it.
(26:18):
If enablers are working towardsmaking your sales organization
successful and your salespeoplesuccessful, of course, the
metrics are going to be the sameas well, which is what a sales
team is measuring.
To give you a few examples,which you can clearly think of,
this is what enablers canactually help drive.
I think the first one that comesto mind, and the most prominent
one as well, which can be gamechanging for companies is win
(26:38):
rates.
Now, a lot of companies have aprocess where they'll go back,
then look at why did we not winthis deal?
Or why did we win this deal?
Identify those reasons.
Of course, product relatedfeedback is given to the product
team.
Hey, we should incorporate thesenew things into our product.
Hey, we should incorporate a newsales process.
This is what our customers didor did not like.
But what about the aspect where.
(26:59):
We as salespeople could havedone a better job either by
positioning the product in adifferent manner, by
understanding the need of theprospect in a different manner,
by showcasing the value of ourproduct in a different manner.
There are a lot of ifs andmaybes present in that entire
long sales journey.
For a lot of companies it mayspan anywhere from As little as
(27:20):
maybe seven days to as much as12 to 14 to 18 months as well,
right?
There's some dots that can gowrong in that entire process.
So just helping the teamsanalyze their sales
opportunities, identifying thoseareas where the team needs the
most amount of help and this caneven be done for one on one
coaching.
There's one individual who's notprobably great at showing the
(27:41):
value and the ROI of theproduct.
The other person may not begreat at maybe the negotiation
related skills.
And just fixing those areas canactually substantially help move
up your win rates.
the second one that comes tomind is competitive wins,
because again, competitivebattles are the trickiest
because they are never the same.
No two competitive wins are everthe same and there's no simple
(28:03):
formula to it.
It's not like, hey, do A, B, C,D and you'll be done.
And you'll every, every time wineither an opportunity or a
competitive opportunity does notwork like that.
Sunil (28:12):
Just the
Krati (28:12):
way how you are evolving, your product is evolving as a
company, so is your competitor.
Right.
So I think competitive wins isanother place where sellers
actually need a lot of help.
They ask for it as well, becausethey, they want to make sure
they know everything aboutwhat's happening with my
competitor.
If I'm going to go ahead on withthem, I need to know everything
that I do better than them.
And as recent as maybeyesterday,
Sunil (28:33):
they
Krati (28:33):
come up with something.
Was there an annual report?
Did they sign a new customer?
Did they come up with a newfeature?
They want to know everything sothat they're better prepared
when they're going into thatcompetitive battle.
So That again, for a lot oforganizations is a very big win
because a lot of money comes infrom just those competitive wins
and a lot of brand as well,which is built.
I'll pause at the third oneactually, because again, I just
(28:55):
want to talk about the topthree.
The third one would beshortening of sales cycle.
And if you go back to thereports, if you go ahead,
Google, what are the top fivechallenges that any sales leader
is looking forward to solve?
Most of these three willactually make that list, which
includes short sales cycle aswell.
Only if I as a salesperson knewbetter how to sell this product
(29:15):
at this company.
I understand you've sold for 25years in your life.
You're genuinely a greatsalesperson.
The only part which is still newfor you is how does this
category sell?
How does this product sell?
How does this product sell inthe current macroeconomic
involvement?
All of that is something whichcan still throw you off of your
game.
And that's the other part, whichwe can actually control in a lot
(29:36):
of ways, which is you cancontrol what can potentially
happen in that opportunity.
Feeding the salesperson withhere's what happened in a
different geography outside ofyour team, but here's the
learning from it.
Here's what you should do tomake sure that you're able to
close maximum amount ofbusiness, but in the shortest
period of time.
So that's a third one that Iwould say probably.
That enablers and enablementteams can actually affect, and
(29:57):
you can measure for theirsuccess as well.
Sunil (29:59):
Nice.
Nice.
I think very interesting threepointers on measuring the impact
of enablement and rightlymentioned that like most of
these would be also.
Helping you derive how is yoursales velocity?
And how are you growing?
you know, you launched, someenablement process now and your
sales velocity or your win ratesor your sales cycle number, like
(30:24):
number of days to close a dealwas X before we launched the
process or the program.
And now like two quarters later,it's like improved.
Right.
So it's like a direct relationto, implementing a program and,
seeing results of, I think thesethree are very good metrics that
you can just measure month onmonth and see how the, how the
(30:45):
trend line is progressing.
So, that's really great.
So before we move on to, thelast section of the episode,
which is lightning round, Iwould just love to.
ask you like one thing that youwould want to share with all the
people who are just building outthe function, like one
philosophical thing that you cansay to them
Krati (31:02):
I would say you're right in thinking, can I get that
perfect person that I can startmy enablement journey with?
And I would say, yes, that'sreally important.
Having said that, Show faith inthe fact that yes, it can
actually help your organization.
And always remember there's noone way of running enablement,
right?
When we started talking, Imentioned it, which is every
company has different set ofchallenges.
(31:24):
Think of enablement as aconsultant or a person who can.
Join hands with you as the salesleader and work towards
improving the entire team.
Even if you're questioning thefact that, Hey, you know what,
how will I measure this?
How will I measure that?
I'm sure no one will say no.
If you're a sales leader to thefact that what if you got some
help, what if you got some helpfrom a person who's trying to
(31:45):
achieve the same set of goalsand why not,
Sunil (31:47):
right?
Krati (31:47):
I think that's the only thought that I would leave with
them, which is I understand thisjourney looks like something
which is new and you're unsureabout it.
Just think about the fact thatyou will have a person who's
working towards the same goals,just in a different way,
probably.
Sunil (32:00):
Right.
Right.
Awesome.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for sharing thatadvice.
And moving on to the lightninground.
I know I've asked you a lot ofquestions already.
But, you know, three more on thelightning round, not anything to
do with enablement particularly,but, yeah, let's start.
So the first one, what is theone thing that has helped you
shorten your learning curve?
Krati (32:22):
being pathetically curious, like to the level of
where I would get annoying.
and I think I, I, I never shamedmyself for it because that's the
only way that I can learn, Ithink, in all honesty, just
asking a lot of questions andconstantly thinking, what is it
that I don't know?
Of course, there's a big part ofself learning that goes out in
it as well.
But yeah, I think just buildingthat curiosity over time is
(32:43):
something which has helped me alot.
Sunil (32:45):
Nice.
Like stay hungry, stay foolish.
Krati (32:48):
Always.
Sunil (32:49):
Yeah.
And the second one.
So what do you know about yourwork now that you wish you would
have known when you firststarted?
Krati (32:56):
Interesting one.
I, I wish I knew right in thebeginning that Enablement is a
lot about trust building aswell.
It's not spoken about as much,but I think it's a very
important part of success ofenablement and that enabler as
well.
It's something which, whichoccurred to me over time on the
(33:17):
basis of my experiences.
It wasn't something that I usedto regard very highly.
And I used to think, Hey, ifyou're doing a good job, I think
it's perfectly okay.
It's not enough.
If you cannot build faith andtrust in the minds of the people
that you are enabling, if theydon't feel you can help them,
then Unfortunately, yourenablement will not land and it
will not work.
It will not show you the resultof the impact.
I think that's one thing which Ihave a very strong realization
(33:39):
of now, but did not when Istarted off.
Sunil (33:42):
Nice.
That's a interesting learning.
and the third and last one.
So what did your biggestprofessional failure teach you?
Krati (33:52):
I think my biggest professional failure taught me
the fact that.
You always invest in people.
You never invest in Every timeyou're thinking about what is it
that I can, I can put all of myheart and soul into, I've
learned that the hard way, it'salways people.
You can coach them, you can showthem, you can give them a
direction, and of course, keepit a give and take, which is you
(34:14):
have to make sure that you as aleader are also contributing to
their life.
I think that's, that's mybiggest learning of my career in
general.
Sunil (34:22):
Nice.
Nice.
That's a, interestingperspective as well.
again, thanks for sharing allthe insights with us.
I'm sure, like you have abroader view on the Indian
enablement ecosystem, at least,right?
where you have spoken with a lotof founders, you have a lot of
learnings from WattFix as well,and also a lot of learnings on.
(34:43):
how founders are takingdecisions and how they should
take decisions.
So thanks a lot for sharing allyour insights on the show.
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