December 5, 2023 • 29 mins
Why do sales leaders undervalue their enablement teams? With all the conversations and opinions about how to measure and demonstrate business impact are Enablement teams actually gaining credibility? Jerry Farr, founder of Sales Excellence Advisors, joined me recently and shared his unique insights on why sales leaders might still be undervaluing their enablement teams and how Enablement leaders and teams can flip that perception.
- How do sales leaders really perceive the value of Enablement?
- Do Sales leaders hesitate to include the Enablement team in C-level meetings?
- How credible are typical attempts to measure Enablement impact?
- Is there a way to measure impact that actually resonates with executives.
Jerry Pharr is a veteran sales enablement & operations leader at high-growth, tech companies. At varied companies like Outreach and Redis, he's architected and implemented a unique approach called Behavior-Centered Enablement, which is a systems-driven blueprint for delivering sales excellence at scale. He now coaches other enablement and operations orgs to improve sales performance by incorporating this framework. Jerry is one of the original founders of the Revenue Enablement Society, and is an advisor to multiple tech startups on their GTM and revenue operations strategies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society
Stories from the Trenches, whereenablement practitioners share
their real-world experiences.
Get the scoop on what'shappening inside revenue
enablement teams across theglobal RES community.
Each segment of stories fromthe trenches shares the good,
the bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
(00:23):
initiatives.
Learn what worked, what didn'twork and how obstacles were
eliminated by enablement teamsand go-to-market leadership.
Sit back, grab a cold one andjoin host Paul Butterfield,
founder of Revenue FlywheelGroup, for casual conversations
about the wide and variedprofession of revenue enablement
, where there's never aone-size-fits-all solution.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the
Revenue Enablement SocietyPodcast, Stories from the
Trenches, the only podcast, asfar as we know, that finds
practitioners from all over theworld, all sorts of backgrounds,
and brings them together totalk about the work they're
doing, the innovative thingsthat they are working on,
sometimes things that didn't goso well and what they learned
(01:11):
from it, which can be just asvaluable.
I'm excited to introduce you totoday's guest.
Many of you know him, or atleast know of him.
Welcome to the show, Jerry Farr.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Hey everyone.
Well, thank you so much.
I'm humbled and honored to behere.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So, jerry, you and I were talking for a few minutes
before the show and you're along-term enablement pro, but
you're currently working withyour own consultancy that you've
called Sales Excellence Advisor.
Maybe just take a minute andfill us in on some of the work
you're doing.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm a recovering seller.
I was an enterprise full cycleseller for about six years and
then an enablement leader forabout nine years, and last
summer I made the officialtransition to kind of hang up my
own shingle and do my own thing, and I'm on a caffeinated
(02:09):
mission to help equip enablementand operations teams to build
enablement programs that aremeasurable.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I like that.
A caffeinated mission, veryspecific Almost brings to mind.
I don't remember the BluesBrothers movie.
We're on a mission, we're on amission, we're on a mission,
we're on a mission, we're on amission.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, exactly so you're on acaffeinated mission, all right.
So, as I'm sure you know, noone gets off the show without
taking the Jimmy Kimmelchallenge.
(02:38):
For those that haven't heard usbefore, that simply means that,
through Jerry's amazing network, he has offered Jimmy Kimmel's
show because Kimmel decides toretire, and so, jerry, you can
have anybody you want on thecouch for your first episode.
Who's going to be there and why?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, I'm going to be very selfish because this
person means a lot to me, butthere are probably like four
other people out there who evenknow who this is.
There's a guy named Towns VanZandt, so he was sort of a
regionally famous musician andsongwriter in Texas through the
(03:16):
kind of 70s and 80s and he wrotea lot of songs you've probably
heard of that were recorded byother people like Willie Nelson
and that sort of thing.
But I'm just a sort of asongwriting geek and I'm just
floored every time I kind oflisten to and read his music and
he has a great life story, lotsof ups and downs and struggles
(03:40):
and addictions and that sort ofthing, and I just would love to
kind of hear him tell a story.
And my son is a fellow musician.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Oh you really.
Yeah, he's really an influence.
Yeah, as a fellow musician, Iwould watch that and I've made a
note to go to Spotify and checkhim out, because I don't know
how I have not heard of him.
Because I'm also a big musicgeek, I'm curious.
I don't know how common thelast name Van Zand is, so it's
probably a stretch, but my firstthought is I wonder if he has
any relationship to the VanZandts from Leonard Skinner.
(04:10):
Yeah, I looked into it and alsoreally good songwriters.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
As best as I can tell , the answer is no.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, okay, okay, good, then I don't need to Google
that.
Yeah, all right.
So let's get into the topictoday and this is one that I
think a lot of people are goingto benefit from or, at least,
hopefully, think of thingsdifferently, and let's start off
with the sales leaders.
How do sales leaders, ifthey're honest, perceive the
(04:39):
value of enablement?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So I love this question.
I've been really fortunate overthe years to become not just
colleagues but pretty closefriends with a lot of sales
leaders like going to dinner andhaving drinks with her friends,
and so they're willing to sharethings with me that they
probably wouldn't otherwise.
And I've had conversations withthree different sales leaders
over the years who I'm veryclose personal friends with, and
(05:03):
all of them had said somethingto the effect of Jerry, love you
, love enablement.
I like what you guys are doing,good at doing your job.
But the truth is I would nevergo to the CFO or to the
executive team and share theresults of enablement initiative
because they just, for whateverreason, they wouldn't feel
(05:24):
comfortable sharing that sort ofthing.
So I think the answer to thequestion is most sales leaders
have ambivalence.
They're ambivalent about theirnaval teams.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Let's unpack that.
There's a lot there andespecially, I think, as you said
, that they they about.
They like them as people.
I think they're doing good work, but they clearly don't see
them as Business partners in theliteral sense, right, they're
not driving business results orthey're not participating
somehow in that.
So, yeah, what have you seen orwhat have they shared with you
(06:00):
that the typical problems are?
Where's the gap?
Because my guess is thoseenablement folks probably don't
know, don't realize.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, I mean.
So I went through and I've I'vedone and failed in a lot of
ways, a lot of in many ways thatmost enable people have trying
to Draw a line between my teams,enable initiatives and then
outcomes they care about.
So I'd be banned by doing thethings that Millie, kind of
(06:28):
early in their career,enablement people do, which is
focusing on the learningoutcomes.
Look at the number of peoplewho showed up, number of people
who liked it and whether numberof people who passed the quiz or
the certification, whatever.
And what I found is that, notsurprisingly, most sales aters
don't really care about that.
I mean, they care enough tolike give you a key to when the
numbers are good, okay, nice job, but they it's not gonna affect
(06:52):
their jobs at all.
So I really care about that.
So then I later transitioned tothat thing which also a lot of
enablement leaders once are intothe role for a number of years
Try to do is do that alignmentand correlation to business
outcomes.
So the attainment, win rates,average contract value, average
sales cycle link, all thosesorts of things which the sales
leader absolutely does careabout and they're important to
(07:14):
the business.
But if you, as an enablementleader try to start making the
case that your enablementinitiative, initiative on
business value messaging or anew methodology or whatever new
thing is, you try to make thecase that that thing had an
impact on the win rates orattainment, whatever.
They're not gonna believe you.
They're gonna, you know, if notoutright laugh at you, just
(07:36):
kind of go, yeah, okay, right,and so that's the thing is.
It's not believable.
There are too many otherfactors, they think yeah, but
then that's that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's why I want to ask.
So I mean, I spent more yearsleading sales teams than I have
enablement and I've beenenablements for 11 years, I
think now, and I absolutelyagree with what you said.
As a sales leader, I would nothave cared at all.
Enablement didn't exist duringmost of my leadership career,
and and and.
So when I moved to enablement,coming straight from leading a
(08:09):
sales team, to me it was justlike, yeah, I, I don't know what
enablement is.
This is 2012, but I know what Idon't want.
I know what Didn't work, youknow, in the past for my teams.
And so Now, fast-forwarding tosomething else that you said.
So we're totally in alignmenton that.
Let's really get into thatstatement that you made just now
(08:33):
, because there's a lot ofchatter and talk In the
enablement community and andthere's one phrase that I really
think people need to stop usingI think you'll agree with this
and that is ROI.
Oh, it's ridiculous.
I mean to me.
I don't even teach sales repsuse ROI because they're going to
.
Yes, you can establish abusiness case, you can establish
a gap, you can establish impactwith real numbers of theirs,
(08:57):
but you're never going to havethe information needed to do an
ROI analysis.
So stop saying that.
And Same thing when I hearenablement people say it, it's
it's like folks that right thereis gonna sap your credibility
because there is no way you'redoing that.
Yet how often do we see thatMm-hmm in the way that people
are talking?
So help, help, help educate allof us.
(09:21):
So we're again.
We're agreement on the ROI.
Yeah, you're saying that eventhe correlation people think
they're doing may not besticking or may not be
resonating.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah.
So I've talked to some peoplein really big enterprises who
have data scientists who aredoing really sophisticated
regression analysis and Lookingat, okay, correlating impact and
that kind of thing.
And yet, okay, what I hear fromthem is that even their sales
leaders are like rolling theireyes at that.
It doesn't pass the sniff test.
(09:51):
They just don't.
It doesn't feel right to thesales leaders.
They're probably not gonnaunderstand the regression,
regression analysis anyway, butit doesn't feel right.
It feels more right to them thatthe the more likely cause of
the improvement in win rates andthat sort of thing is probably
the change in Territories orthat new product feature release
(10:12):
or the new marketing cam.
There are dozens other thingsthey would point to that are
probably much closely correlatedto impact than an enable
program.
Now you know the reason.
They think that it's probablysome psychological, sociological
thing that I don't fullyunderstand.
But what I know is I I don'tthink I've ever in my Nine years
(10:35):
in enablement, in six years asa seller, encounter the sales
leader Yep, who just wouldimmediately believe that sort of
argument that the enablementteam had that direct impact,
even correlational, on thebusiness outcomes.
So you know.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I have a theory on why you may be experiencing that
again, just my own experiencegrowing up in sales.
In sales we often have thatview of until somebody sells
something, nobody gets paid, andwhich I actually don't have a
problem with.
But but it's a very salescentric view of the world and
(11:13):
because sales is difficult,because you are digging and
mining hard for every deal, itmight be difficult mentally or
emotionally to attribute thatthat may also be happening
because of some sales training.
That's just a theory.
I have no idea.
Yeah, but I yeah.
(11:33):
I think so what should?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
we be.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, I justwant other thing and then I'll
go back to the other question.
Yeah, yeah, I think their theirpersonal experiences with sales
trainings probably haven't beengreat.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So why should I believe these other people are
having that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm sure you, like me, havesat through your fair share of
what am I doing here trainingsin your career, absolutely yeah.
Yeah, so your next questionlike so what to do then?
Yeah, so what's?
What should we be doing?
What should the name of leadersbe doing?
Because even those that feelthey've evolved in your world
(12:10):
view, your point of view,probably haven't, or at least
not the way they think they have.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
What do they do Well?
So I think if you try tomeasure, talk about learning
outcomes, they don't care.
You try to talk about businessoutcomes, they don't believe you
.
What to do?
Yep, my view is focus on themiddle ground in between and
focus on behavior change ourreps actually doing things in
real life, in interactions withprospects and customers, that
(12:39):
that show that they're doing thethings you wanted them to do,
that you're an enable programwas was focused on in Kirkpact.
In Kirkpatrick terms, this issort of like level three Okay
Evaluation are they actually?
Do you mean favors?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Some of our listeners may not be familiar enough with
Kirkpatrick to know what levelthree means.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
can you just so Kirkpatrick was probably in the
60s or 70s when he did this, notreally sure, but is it?
Adult learning theorists veryfamous, wrote a bunch of books
on how to measure the impact oftrainings and he has sort of
five different levels level one,two, three, four, five and
first one I actually don'tremember the names right now off
(13:20):
the top of my head, but thefirst one is like Did they, did
they like it?
And the next one is did theyshow mastery?
Like did they pass anassessment or quiz or something
like that.
And the third one is did theyapply it?
Actually do the things.
And eventually you get to thefifth words like ROI and that
sort of thing.
Okay, but so thanks, my view isa name what leaders are best
(13:45):
advised focusing on that, thatmiddle ground, the behavior
change, the application, becauseit is the one thing that you
both have.
It is important to the business, maybe not as important as when
rates entertainment, but it'simportant to the business and
you have a strong case that youinfluenced it.
It's attribution.
How can you get attribution foryour efforts?
(14:06):
So, and when I say behaviorchange, I'm not talking about
Did they go do that?
Take that training online, didthey go access thing in your LMS
.
What I'm saying is ininteractions with prospects and
(14:28):
customers, like customer facingthings, what they do and I think
part of the reason very fewenable or think about it this
way is it takes a knowledge base, a skill set that very few
enable people have, which is youhave to deeply understand how,
what different things arecaptureable with data, what
(14:51):
sorts of activities are capturaland how.
You have to understand what isa different tool stack you're
using and what data points arecaptured, how, where are they
stored, how can you report onthem and those sorts of things.
So simple things like everyemail sent and received, every
meeting scheduled and attendedand held, and then using
(15:14):
conversation intelligence toanalyze what happened, those
sorts of things.
If you use a tool for sendingquotes or sending proposals,
those things likely log data,log activity data somewhere.
Whatever tool you have almostguaranteed it has a way of
capturing the activity that repsare doing in their engagements
(15:35):
with prospects and customers.
So that, for me, is the way youmeasure the most direct impact
of your programs.
Whatever your goals were of theEnable initiative, let's say
reps were doing this thing, thissort of behavior that we didn't
want them to do.
We want them to do this otherthing instead.
And how can I measure the gapbetween those two things?
(15:56):
They were doing this, nowthey're doing this.
How do I measure that?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
One of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of
conversational intelligence isbecause to me it's an
unprecedented way to capturebehavior at scale.
Yeah, I mean, you've beenaround long enough to remember
the days where you are just, youknow, randomly trying to listen
to Zoom recordings or, beforethat, you know, just joining
(16:20):
calls and you just never knewwhat you're going to get.
But he certainly didn't have itany kind of analysis at scale.
So do you agree with me on that?
Is CI part of your tool bag?
Oh, 100%.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah, it's tough to do a lot of what I talk about
without that.
Yeah, okay, and honestly, eventhough sales technologies and
conversation intelligence, thosekinds of tools have been around
for seven-ish years, it's onlyin the last few years where
(16:51):
you've really been able tocapture the data I'm talking
about.
So I'll give you a kind oftactical example here.
Let's say that you work withthe leadership sales leadership
and discovered thatmulti-threading is something
that your sellers need toimprove on.
They're not multi-threadingvery well.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Okay.
No, you're talking aboutmulti-threading in their
accounts.
Yeah, in sales cycles.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In sales cycles.
Okay, you're working on a deal,are you engaging with just one
buyer or do you have lots ofbuyers involved in that
discussion?
Are you engaging with all thepeople who are involved?
Okay, so we're saying the samething.
Then, yeah, got it.
Yeah, okay, so multi-threadingthere.
And so you look at what are thereps doing or not doing.
That suggests they're notmulti-threading.
(17:37):
Well, well, the easiest thingto look at is in your CRM,
looking at the number of contactroles attached to that
opportunity.
Okay, they're not doing it.
All right, fine.
But you can also look at, let'ssay, in calls throughout that
sales cycle, is the rep endingthose calls by saying, hey, why
(17:59):
don't we invite so-and-so to thenext one, like proactively
inviting people to the next call?
And that's something you canmeasure, like the percent of
calls throughout a sales cyclethat were you asked to invite
other people.
But you can also look atthroughout a sales cycle.
Let's say you had sevenmeetings and sometimes you had
one person, sometimes you hadthree people, sometimes you had
(18:21):
seven people on the call.
What's the number of people onthe customer side who actually
spoke, actually engaged in thatcall?
That's another indicator ofmulti-threading.
Then you can do somethingsimilar, or just emails?
What's the number of people onthe customer side who actually
replied to threads during asales cycle, right?
(18:43):
So yeah, this is by no means anextensive list, but I'm just
throwing out a handful ofexamples of ways you can measure
empirically indicators ofmulti-threading in a sales cycle
.
And so, if you do that, you'vesaid, okay, here are the
behaviors that reps are doing ornot doing, and we want to.
We want them to do these otherthings Instead.
We want them to end calls bymaking recommendations to add
(19:04):
that to people.
We want them, during calls, toknow how to engage all the
people on the calls.
We want all those sorts ofthings, right?
So you do that sort ofinitiative and then, in terms of
measuring, it's I pretty muchdefined what the measurement is.
Let's look at the averagenumber of contact roles on an
opportunity and see if thatchanges over time.
Look at the average number ofcalls during a sales cycle where
(19:27):
the rep asks to invite otherpeople to next call.
Let's look at the averagenumber of people on the customer
side who actually speak duringcalls.
Let's look at the averagenumber of people who reply to
email threads during a salescycle.
Those like four differentmetrics right there and pretty
much everyone would agree thatthose maybe not an exhaustive
(19:47):
list, but a pretty good list ofindicators of multi-threading.
You can measure that.
You can create a dashboard thatshows each of those things
going up and to the right.
And if you go to your salesleader and say, hey, we agreed
that multi-threading issomething we want to get better
at, we're going to do thistraining and coaching kind of
program and here's where hereare the metrics we're going to
look at For behavior change andthen fast forward three months
(20:11):
we're going to see if thosethings have gone up and to the
right and then, three monthslater, if you see those things
going up and to the right,pretty much anyone is going to
believe that you had an impacton those, that you influenced
those four metrics going up andto the right.
Now is that thing going tochange the business, that those
four metrics are going toimprove the business?
I mean, it's not going tochange the world, but that right
(20:33):
there showing you developed aninitiative and had an
empirically measurable way toshow that you made a difference
in the behavior.
You do that three times, fivetimes, 10 times, you start to
earn the credibility that whenyou do something, reps use it
and incorporate it into theirconversations and engagements
(20:54):
with customers and eventuallypeople will not laugh at you
when you try to say that yourteam, comprehensively, over a
lot of time, had an impact onthe win rates and attainment and
those sorts of things.
So that's my point of view isyou start by on individual
initiatives focusing on behaviorchange metrics and then
(21:15):
eventually you earn theircredibility to make the case on
the business outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So what you described makes a lot of sense to me and
I do almost the same thing, butfor me and my programs, those
have been our leading indicators, because you know, but we still
looked at lagging indicators,like some of the ones you showed
(21:41):
at the beginning, and it was amix of both.
But you're saying that reallyit should be just or mostly.
What to me, are leadingindicators?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I on the enabler team, I would certainly also be
looking at changes in attainment, win rates, those sorts of
things.
But I'd be very cautious aboutpresenting to sales leadership
saying, hey, look how we improvewin rates.
I would sort of couch that interms of, hey, look at these
(22:12):
behavior change metrics that wefocused on and we all agreed
that these were important.
We moved the needle.
Look at these things going upand to the right, and before I
make the case that those thingshad an impact on these win rates
, I would like to propose to youthat you allow the enabler team
to do this other initiativefocusing on this other set of
behavior change and to kind ofmake the case.
(22:33):
Let me do these other thingsfirst because I just want to
keep earning the credibilitybefore I start making the case
on those lagging indicators.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Got it.
What about the role offrontline sales leaders in your
model, jerry?
Where do they fit in and how doyou account for their
contribution to that behaviorchange?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Love that question.
So my whole, I've said behaviorchange probably a dozen times
already and Anybody who knowsanything about drinking game now
official yeah, anybody whoknows anything about behavior
change will tell you it doesn'thappen overnight, it's not gonna
happen with a single trainingand and enable folks I'm sorry
to break it to you, but wereally don't change behavior
(23:10):
that much the way it way earlygreens is in the conversations
they have with their, theirfrontline managers, in my sort
of model, my framework, the wayit would work is we would design
this initiative around, youknow, for example, the, the
multi-threading, and we're gonnawe reps were doing this, we
want them to do this instead,and here the Dashboards we're
(23:32):
gonna use for it.
Um, then I would go try to getthe commitment from sales
leadership to say, hey, we dothis and we're focusing on these
specific behavior changemetrics.
Can I ask you to have thefrontline managers and
incorporate in their one-on-oneswith reps talking about those
particular things and Literallyshowing the dashboard that we
(23:54):
created for them in theirone-on-one, saying, hey, you're
doing great on Adding contactroles, but you're not really
ending calls by inviting otherpeople.
Next call, let's talk about that.
Something like, okay, okay andso the case I make to sales
leader is hey, we're gonna buildthis initiative and I'm Commit
to you work, we're gonna try tochange, move the needle on these
(24:16):
metrics.
But I need your commitment aswell.
I need your commitment to holdyour managers accountable for
doing okay that additionalcoaching conversations.
It doesn't have to be long, itcan be like a five minute, seven
minute thing during theirone-on-ones Over the course of,
you know, a month or two orsomething like that.
But if that, if that doesn'thappen, that reinforcement
(24:39):
directly by the manager, you'revery unlikely to be successful
at this.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Oh, I absolutely agree.
That's one of the first lessonsI learned in my transition over
to Leading.
Enablement is, you know, mybest hope was to be an
influencer, but nobody workedfor me anymore.
You know, they, they, they weregonna do it because I thought
it was a good idea, no matterhow Well it was designed.
So any pro tips on getting thefrontline sales leaders to lift
(25:07):
up their heads and Listen andcollaborate and then do what you
need them to do, because in myexperience that can be tough.
I mean, they're chasing anumber and that's always gonna
be top of mind for them totallyso.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
The way I've been successful is enable initiatives
emerge out of some need.
Someone is going to someone andsaying, hey, we need to focus
on this, whether it's meenablement leader going to sales
leader saying, hey, we'renoticing this, we'd like to do
something, or sales leadersaying, hey, me, do this, what.
In regards to how that happens,if I kind of come back to the
sales that are saying, hey,here's what we propose to do
(25:40):
about this, I Come.
One of the things I carry withme is an agreement.
We have found this problem, wewant to do this about it and we
expect to get these results andthis is what we're gonna do.
But I need you.
I need your commitment to holdyour managers accountable and to
ensure that they are.
They are going to have theseconversations during that, and
(26:00):
so I Really get like any in, notsigned, but in an email thread.
Yes, I agree, we're gonna dothat.
Not sign in blood, I'm notsigned in blood.
So get that sort of commitment.
And then you do have to make iteasy for the manager.
You have to make it easy.
Okay, so I literally create adashboard that is just for this
initiative.
You're going to this one placeand in that dashboard I'm
(26:22):
showing a leaderboard howdifferent who's doing well on
each of them.
I'm showing a benchmark.
What do we want them on each ofthese Metrics?
And I show a trend line.
You know how are thingschanging, month-over-month,
quarter-over-quarter, whateverit is.
So again that, and I give themsort of a A talk track or
(26:43):
framework when you're havingyour conversation with the, with
the rep, here are the three,four, five, however many things
like your agenda for thatmeeting and here's how you,
here's how you begin theconversation, here's how you,
you know, here's the link tothat dashboard and, by the way,
here's so what to.
Here's how to make sense ofthose metrics.
Here's what this particularmetric means and sort of in okay
(27:05):
and can translate it for theminto language that makes sense
for them.
So it is sort of Enabling themanagers to have those
conversations.
Now I try not to make a hugedeal of it.
I don't.
I don't like to think of it aslike this is our Coaching
framework or something like that.
(27:25):
I just like here's a tool foryou to use during these
conversations to make it seemsort of low-lift.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This has been, I think, a powerful episode.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
You know well, life probablyprepared you For this, but you
clearly, you know, did someother preparation as well, so we
appreciate that.
Before I let you go, would loveto have you drop some knowledge
on everyone that may or may notbe enablement related, and it's
(27:51):
that you've been given thatgift of time travel.
You can go back Anywhere inyour life, career or not, and
coach some younger version ofyourself, but you can only do it
for one topic.
What's the number one thingthat you wish you'd understood
earlier, don't?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Make a goal for what you want to be when you grow up.
Okay, if you try to set a goalfor what you're going to be when
you're up, you're going to bewrong, because you're not going
to be one thing.
You're going to be 12 things.
Your career is going to evolve.
I've had four different careers, so I just think it's an
unrealistic expectation inmodern days to think that
(28:30):
someone's going to be doing onekind of thing for the rest of
their lives.
So don't get caught up in.
Oh my God, I don't know whatI'm great at, what I'm going to
be when I grow up.
Don't worry, there are going tobe lots of things.
Just find something that you'regood at right now that someone
will pay you to do.
That's it, and then it'llchange your career.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's legal.
That's legal.
Yeah, that's legal.
Yeah, let's be really clearhere.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
You're good at it.
They'll pay you and it's legal.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's funny.
I saw a meme once about youjust reminded me of you know
that talked about if we all grewup to be the things that we
thought when we were young, theworld would be full of more
astronauts, fighter pilots andfiremen firefighters.
So there'd be a lot offirefighters out there.
Yeah, A lot of firefighters outthere and veterinarians,
absolutely.
And oh, I actually did that one.
(29:21):
Yeah, I forgot aboutveterinarian.
Okay, well, jerry, thank you.
Thank you for your time,appreciate you being here.
You're awesome.
Paul, thanks so much.
Okay, and everyone, thank youfor investing another half hour
of your time with us.
We appreciate you.
Keep listening and we'll seeyou again in two weeks.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal e societyglobal
Group.
Welcome to the Revenue Enablement Society
Stories from the Trenches, whereenablement practitioners share
their real-world experiences.
Get the scoop on what'shappening inside revenue
enablement teams across theglobal RES community.
Each segment of stories fromthe trenches shares the good,
the bad and the ugly practicesof corporate revenue enablement
(00:23):
initiatives.
Learn what worked, what didn'twork and how obstacles were
eliminated by enablement teamsand go-to-market leadership.
Sit back, grab a cold one andjoin host Paul Butterfield,
founder of Revenue FlywheelGroup, for casual conversations
about the wide and variedprofession of revenue enablement
, where there's never aone-size-fits-all solution.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the
Revenue Enablement SocietyPodcast, Stories from the
Trenches, the only podcast, asfar as we know, that finds
practitioners from all over theworld, all sorts of backgrounds,
and brings them together totalk about the work they're
doing, the innovative thingsthat they are working on,
sometimes things that didn't goso well and what they learned
(01:11):
from it, which can be just asvaluable.
I'm excited to introduce you totoday's guest.
Many of you know him, or atleast know of him.
Welcome to the show, Jerry Farr.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Hey everyone.
Well, thank you so much.
I'm humbled and honored to behere.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So, jerry, you and I were talking for a few minutes
before the show and you're along-term enablement pro, but
you're currently working withyour own consultancy that you've
called Sales Excellence Advisor.
Maybe just take a minute andfill us in on some of the work
you're doing.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm a recovering seller.
I was an enterprise full cycleseller for about six years and
then an enablement leader forabout nine years, and last
summer I made the officialtransition to kind of hang up my
own shingle and do my own thing, and I'm on a caffeinated
(02:09):
mission to help equip enablementand operations teams to build
enablement programs that aremeasurable.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
I like that.
A caffeinated mission, veryspecific Almost brings to mind.
I don't remember the BluesBrothers movie.
We're on a mission, we're on amission, we're on a mission,
we're on a mission, we're on amission.
Yeah, there you go.
Yeah, exactly so you're on acaffeinated mission, all right.
So, as I'm sure you know, noone gets off the show without
taking the Jimmy Kimmelchallenge.
(02:38):
For those that haven't heard usbefore, that simply means that,
through Jerry's amazing network, he has offered Jimmy Kimmel's
show because Kimmel decides toretire, and so, jerry, you can
have anybody you want on thecouch for your first episode.
Who's going to be there and why?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, I'm going to be very selfish because this
person means a lot to me, butthere are probably like four
other people out there who evenknow who this is.
There's a guy named Towns VanZandt, so he was sort of a
regionally famous musician andsongwriter in Texas through the
(03:16):
kind of 70s and 80s and he wrotea lot of songs you've probably
heard of that were recorded byother people like Willie Nelson
and that sort of thing.
But I'm just a sort of asongwriting geek and I'm just
floored every time I kind oflisten to and read his music and
he has a great life story, lotsof ups and downs and struggles
(03:40):
and addictions and that sort ofthing, and I just would love to
kind of hear him tell a story.
And my son is a fellow musician.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Oh you really.
Yeah, he's really an influence.
Yeah, as a fellow musician, Iwould watch that and I've made a
note to go to Spotify and checkhim out, because I don't know
how I have not heard of him.
Because I'm also a big musicgeek, I'm curious.
I don't know how common thelast name Van Zand is, so it's
probably a stretch, but my firstthought is I wonder if he has
any relationship to the VanZandts from Leonard Skinner.
(04:10):
Yeah, I looked into it and alsoreally good songwriters.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
As best as I can tell , the answer is no.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Oh, okay, okay, good, then I don't need to Google
that.
Yeah, all right.
So let's get into the topictoday and this is one that I
think a lot of people are goingto benefit from or, at least,
hopefully, think of thingsdifferently, and let's start off
with the sales leaders.
How do sales leaders, ifthey're honest, perceive the
(04:39):
value of enablement?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
So I love this question.
I've been really fortunate overthe years to become not just
colleagues but pretty closefriends with a lot of sales
leaders like going to dinner andhaving drinks with her friends,
and so they're willing to sharethings with me that they
probably wouldn't otherwise.
And I've had conversations withthree different sales leaders
over the years who I'm veryclose personal friends with, and
(05:03):
all of them had said somethingto the effect of Jerry, love you
, love enablement.
I like what you guys are doing,good at doing your job.
But the truth is I would nevergo to the CFO or to the
executive team and share theresults of enablement initiative
because they just, for whateverreason, they wouldn't feel
(05:24):
comfortable sharing that sort ofthing.
So I think the answer to thequestion is most sales leaders
have ambivalence.
They're ambivalent about theirnaval teams.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Let's unpack that.
There's a lot there andespecially, I think, as you said
, that they they about.
They like them as people.
I think they're doing good work, but they clearly don't see
them as Business partners in theliteral sense, right, they're
not driving business results orthey're not participating
somehow in that.
So, yeah, what have you seen orwhat have they shared with you
(06:00):
that the typical problems are?
Where's the gap?
Because my guess is thoseenablement folks probably don't
know, don't realize.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, I mean.
So I went through and I've I'vedone and failed in a lot of
ways, a lot of in many ways thatmost enable people have trying
to Draw a line between my teams,enable initiatives and then
outcomes they care about.
So I'd be banned by doing thethings that Millie, kind of
(06:28):
early in their career,enablement people do, which is
focusing on the learningoutcomes.
Look at the number of peoplewho showed up, number of people
who liked it and whether numberof people who passed the quiz or
the certification, whatever.
And what I found is that, notsurprisingly, most sales aters
don't really care about that.
I mean, they care enough tolike give you a key to when the
numbers are good, okay, nice job, but they it's not gonna affect
(06:52):
their jobs at all.
So I really care about that.
So then I later transitioned tothat thing which also a lot of
enablement leaders once are intothe role for a number of years
Try to do is do that alignmentand correlation to business
outcomes.
So the attainment, win rates,average contract value, average
sales cycle link, all thosesorts of things which the sales
leader absolutely does careabout and they're important to
(07:14):
the business.
But if you, as an enablementleader try to start making the
case that your enablementinitiative, initiative on
business value messaging or anew methodology or whatever new
thing is, you try to make thecase that that thing had an
impact on the win rates orattainment, whatever.
They're not gonna believe you.
They're gonna, you know, if notoutright laugh at you, just
(07:36):
kind of go, yeah, okay, right,and so that's the thing is.
It's not believable.
There are too many otherfactors, they think yeah, but
then that's that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
That's why I want to ask.
So I mean, I spent more yearsleading sales teams than I have
enablement and I've beenenablements for 11 years, I
think now, and I absolutelyagree with what you said.
As a sales leader, I would nothave cared at all.
Enablement didn't exist duringmost of my leadership career,
and and and.
So when I moved to enablement,coming straight from leading a
(08:09):
sales team, to me it was justlike, yeah, I, I don't know what
enablement is.
This is 2012, but I know what Idon't want.
I know what Didn't work, youknow, in the past for my teams.
And so Now, fast-forwarding tosomething else that you said.
So we're totally in alignmenton that.
Let's really get into thatstatement that you made just now
(08:33):
, because there's a lot ofchatter and talk In the
enablement community and andthere's one phrase that I really
think people need to stop usingI think you'll agree with this
and that is ROI.
Oh, it's ridiculous.
I mean to me.
I don't even teach sales repsuse ROI because they're going to
.
Yes, you can establish abusiness case, you can establish
a gap, you can establish impactwith real numbers of theirs,
(08:57):
but you're never going to havethe information needed to do an
ROI analysis.
So stop saying that.
And Same thing when I hearenablement people say it, it's
it's like folks that right thereis gonna sap your credibility
because there is no way you'redoing that.
Yet how often do we see thatMm-hmm in the way that people
are talking?
So help, help, help educate allof us.
(09:21):
So we're again.
We're agreement on the ROI.
Yeah, you're saying that eventhe correlation people think
they're doing may not besticking or may not be
resonating.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah.
So I've talked to some peoplein really big enterprises who
have data scientists who aredoing really sophisticated
regression analysis and Lookingat, okay, correlating impact and
that kind of thing.
And yet, okay, what I hear fromthem is that even their sales
leaders are like rolling theireyes at that.
It doesn't pass the sniff test.
(09:51):
They just don't.
It doesn't feel right to thesales leaders.
They're probably not gonnaunderstand the regression,
regression analysis anyway, butit doesn't feel right.
It feels more right to them thatthe the more likely cause of
the improvement in win rates andthat sort of thing is probably
the change in Territories orthat new product feature release
(10:12):
or the new marketing cam.
There are dozens other thingsthey would point to that are
probably much closely correlatedto impact than an enable
program.
Now you know the reason.
They think that it's probablysome psychological, sociological
thing that I don't fullyunderstand.
But what I know is I I don'tthink I've ever in my Nine years
(10:35):
in enablement, in six years asa seller, encounter the sales
leader Yep, who just wouldimmediately believe that sort of
argument that the enablementteam had that direct impact,
even correlational, on thebusiness outcomes.
So you know.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I have a theory on why you may be experiencing that
again, just my own experiencegrowing up in sales.
In sales we often have thatview of until somebody sells
something, nobody gets paid, andwhich I actually don't have a
problem with.
But but it's a very salescentric view of the world and
(11:13):
because sales is difficult,because you are digging and
mining hard for every deal, itmight be difficult mentally or
emotionally to attribute thatthat may also be happening
because of some sales training.
That's just a theory.
I have no idea.
Yeah, but I yeah.
(11:33):
I think so what should?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
we be.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, I justwant other thing and then I'll
go back to the other question.
Yeah, yeah, I think their theirpersonal experiences with sales
trainings probably haven't beengreat.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
So why should I believe these other people are
having that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I'm sure you, like me, havesat through your fair share of
what am I doing here trainingsin your career, absolutely yeah.
Yeah, so your next questionlike so what to do then?
Yeah, so what's?
What should we be doing?
What should the name of leadersbe doing?
Because even those that feelthey've evolved in your world
(12:10):
view, your point of view,probably haven't, or at least
not the way they think they have.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
What do they do Well?
So I think if you try tomeasure, talk about learning
outcomes, they don't care.
You try to talk about businessoutcomes, they don't believe you
.
What to do?
Yep, my view is focus on themiddle ground in between and
focus on behavior change ourreps actually doing things in
real life, in interactions withprospects and customers, that
(12:39):
that show that they're doing thethings you wanted them to do,
that you're an enable programwas was focused on in Kirkpact.
In Kirkpatrick terms, this issort of like level three Okay
Evaluation are they actually?
Do you mean favors?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Some of our listeners may not be familiar enough with
Kirkpatrick to know what levelthree means.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
can you just so Kirkpatrick was probably in the
60s or 70s when he did this, notreally sure, but is it?
Adult learning theorists veryfamous, wrote a bunch of books
on how to measure the impact oftrainings and he has sort of
five different levels level one,two, three, four, five and
first one I actually don'tremember the names right now off
(13:20):
the top of my head, but thefirst one is like Did they, did
they like it?
And the next one is did theyshow mastery?
Like did they pass anassessment or quiz or something
like that.
And the third one is did theyapply it?
Actually do the things.
And eventually you get to thefifth words like ROI and that
sort of thing.
Okay, but so thanks, my view isa name what leaders are best
(13:45):
advised focusing on that, thatmiddle ground, the behavior
change, the application, becauseit is the one thing that you
both have.
It is important to the business, maybe not as important as when
rates entertainment, but it'simportant to the business and
you have a strong case that youinfluenced it.
It's attribution.
How can you get attribution foryour efforts?
(14:06):
So, and when I say behaviorchange, I'm not talking about
Did they go do that?
Take that training online, didthey go access thing in your LMS
.
What I'm saying is ininteractions with prospects and
(14:28):
customers, like customer facingthings, what they do and I think
part of the reason very fewenable or think about it this
way is it takes a knowledge base, a skill set that very few
enable people have, which is youhave to deeply understand how,
what different things arecaptureable with data, what
(14:51):
sorts of activities are capturaland how.
You have to understand what isa different tool stack you're
using and what data points arecaptured, how, where are they
stored, how can you report onthem and those sorts of things.
So simple things like everyemail sent and received, every
meeting scheduled and attendedand held, and then using
(15:14):
conversation intelligence toanalyze what happened, those
sorts of things.
If you use a tool for sendingquotes or sending proposals,
those things likely log data,log activity data somewhere.
Whatever tool you have almostguaranteed it has a way of
capturing the activity that repsare doing in their engagements
(15:35):
with prospects and customers.
So that, for me, is the way youmeasure the most direct impact
of your programs.
Whatever your goals were of theEnable initiative, let's say
reps were doing this thing, thissort of behavior that we didn't
want them to do.
We want them to do this otherthing instead.
And how can I measure the gapbetween those two things?
(15:56):
They were doing this, nowthey're doing this.
How do I measure that?
Speaker 2 (15:59):
One of the reasons I'm such a huge fan of
conversational intelligence isbecause to me it's an
unprecedented way to capturebehavior at scale.
Yeah, I mean, you've beenaround long enough to remember
the days where you are just, youknow, randomly trying to listen
to Zoom recordings or, beforethat, you know, just joining
(16:20):
calls and you just never knewwhat you're going to get.
But he certainly didn't have itany kind of analysis at scale.
So do you agree with me on that?
Is CI part of your tool bag?
Oh, 100%.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Yeah, it's tough to do a lot of what I talk about
without that.
Yeah, okay, and honestly, eventhough sales technologies and
conversation intelligence, thosekinds of tools have been around
for seven-ish years, it's onlyin the last few years where
(16:51):
you've really been able tocapture the data I'm talking
about.
So I'll give you a kind oftactical example here.
Let's say that you work withthe leadership sales leadership
and discovered thatmulti-threading is something
that your sellers need toimprove on.
They're not multi-threadingvery well.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Okay.
No, you're talking aboutmulti-threading in their
accounts.
Yeah, in sales cycles.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
In sales cycles.
Okay, you're working on a deal,are you engaging with just one
buyer or do you have lots ofbuyers involved in that
discussion?
Are you engaging with all thepeople who are involved?
Okay, so we're saying the samething.
Then, yeah, got it.
Yeah, okay, so multi-threadingthere.
And so you look at what are thereps doing or not doing.
That suggests they're notmulti-threading.
(17:37):
Well, well, the easiest thingto look at is in your CRM,
looking at the number of contactroles attached to that
opportunity.
Okay, they're not doing it.
All right, fine.
But you can also look at, let'ssay, in calls throughout that
sales cycle, is the rep endingthose calls by saying, hey, why
(17:59):
don't we invite so-and-so to thenext one, like proactively
inviting people to the next call?
And that's something you canmeasure, like the percent of
calls throughout a sales cyclethat were you asked to invite
other people.
But you can also look atthroughout a sales cycle.
Let's say you had sevenmeetings and sometimes you had
one person, sometimes you hadthree people, sometimes you had
(18:21):
seven people on the call.
What's the number of people onthe customer side who actually
spoke, actually engaged in thatcall?
That's another indicator ofmulti-threading.
Then you can do somethingsimilar, or just emails?
What's the number of people onthe customer side who actually
replied to threads during asales cycle, right?
(18:43):
So yeah, this is by no means anextensive list, but I'm just
throwing out a handful ofexamples of ways you can measure
empirically indicators ofmulti-threading in a sales cycle
.
And so, if you do that, you'vesaid, okay, here are the
behaviors that reps are doing ornot doing, and we want to.
We want them to do these otherthings Instead.
We want them to end calls bymaking recommendations to add
(19:04):
that to people.
We want them, during calls, toknow how to engage all the
people on the calls.
We want all those sorts ofthings, right?
So you do that sort ofinitiative and then, in terms of
measuring, it's I pretty muchdefined what the measurement is.
Let's look at the averagenumber of contact roles on an
opportunity and see if thatchanges over time.
Look at the average number ofcalls during a sales cycle where
(19:27):
the rep asks to invite otherpeople to next call.
Let's look at the averagenumber of people on the customer
side who actually speak duringcalls.
Let's look at the averagenumber of people who reply to
email threads during a salescycle.
Those like four differentmetrics right there and pretty
much everyone would agree thatthose maybe not an exhaustive
(19:47):
list, but a pretty good list ofindicators of multi-threading.
You can measure that.
You can create a dashboard thatshows each of those things
going up and to the right.
And if you go to your salesleader and say, hey, we agreed
that multi-threading issomething we want to get better
at, we're going to do thistraining and coaching kind of
program and here's where hereare the metrics we're going to
look at For behavior change andthen fast forward three months
(20:11):
we're going to see if thosethings have gone up and to the
right and then, three monthslater, if you see those things
going up and to the right,pretty much anyone is going to
believe that you had an impacton those, that you influenced
those four metrics going up andto the right.
Now is that thing going tochange the business, that those
four metrics are going toimprove the business?
I mean, it's not going tochange the world, but that right
(20:33):
there showing you developed aninitiative and had an
empirically measurable way toshow that you made a difference
in the behavior.
You do that three times, fivetimes, 10 times, you start to
earn the credibility that whenyou do something, reps use it
and incorporate it into theirconversations and engagements
(20:54):
with customers and eventuallypeople will not laugh at you
when you try to say that yourteam, comprehensively, over a
lot of time, had an impact onthe win rates and attainment and
those sorts of things.
So that's my point of view isyou start by on individual
initiatives focusing on behaviorchange metrics and then
(21:15):
eventually you earn theircredibility to make the case on
the business outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
So what you described makes a lot of sense to me and
I do almost the same thing, butfor me and my programs, those
have been our leading indicators, because you know, but we still
looked at lagging indicators,like some of the ones you showed
(21:41):
at the beginning, and it was amix of both.
But you're saying that reallyit should be just or mostly.
What to me, are leadingindicators?
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I on the enabler team, I would certainly also be
looking at changes in attainment, win rates, those sorts of
things.
But I'd be very cautious aboutpresenting to sales leadership
saying, hey, look how we improvewin rates.
I would sort of couch that interms of, hey, look at these
(22:12):
behavior change metrics that wefocused on and we all agreed
that these were important.
We moved the needle.
Look at these things going upand to the right, and before I
make the case that those thingshad an impact on these win rates
, I would like to propose to youthat you allow the enabler team
to do this other initiativefocusing on this other set of
behavior change and to kind ofmake the case.
(22:33):
Let me do these other thingsfirst because I just want to
keep earning the credibilitybefore I start making the case
on those lagging indicators.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Got it.
What about the role offrontline sales leaders in your
model, jerry?
Where do they fit in and how doyou account for their
contribution to that behaviorchange?
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Love that question.
So my whole, I've said behaviorchange probably a dozen times
already and Anybody who knowsanything about drinking game now
official yeah, anybody whoknows anything about behavior
change will tell you it doesn'thappen overnight, it's not gonna
happen with a single trainingand and enable folks I'm sorry
to break it to you, but wereally don't change behavior
(23:10):
that much the way it way earlygreens is in the conversations
they have with their, theirfrontline managers, in my sort
of model, my framework, the wayit would work is we would design
this initiative around, youknow, for example, the, the
multi-threading, and we're gonnawe reps were doing this, we
want them to do this instead,and here the Dashboards we're
(23:32):
gonna use for it.
Um, then I would go try to getthe commitment from sales
leadership to say, hey, we dothis and we're focusing on these
specific behavior changemetrics.
Can I ask you to have thefrontline managers and
incorporate in their one-on-oneswith reps talking about those
particular things and Literallyshowing the dashboard that we
(23:54):
created for them in theirone-on-one, saying, hey, you're
doing great on Adding contactroles, but you're not really
ending calls by inviting otherpeople.
Next call, let's talk about that.
Something like, okay, okay andso the case I make to sales
leader is hey, we're gonna buildthis initiative and I'm Commit
to you work, we're gonna try tochange, move the needle on these
(24:16):
metrics.
But I need your commitment aswell.
I need your commitment to holdyour managers accountable for
doing okay that additionalcoaching conversations.
It doesn't have to be long, itcan be like a five minute, seven
minute thing during theirone-on-ones Over the course of,
you know, a month or two orsomething like that.
But if that, if that doesn'thappen, that reinforcement
(24:39):
directly by the manager, you'revery unlikely to be successful
at this.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Oh, I absolutely agree.
That's one of the first lessonsI learned in my transition over
to Leading.
Enablement is, you know, mybest hope was to be an
influencer, but nobody workedfor me anymore.
You know, they, they, they weregonna do it because I thought
it was a good idea, no matterhow Well it was designed.
So any pro tips on getting thefrontline sales leaders to lift
(25:07):
up their heads and Listen andcollaborate and then do what you
need them to do, because in myexperience that can be tough.
I mean, they're chasing anumber and that's always gonna
be top of mind for them totallyso.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
The way I've been successful is enable initiatives
emerge out of some need.
Someone is going to someone andsaying, hey, we need to focus
on this, whether it's meenablement leader going to sales
leader saying, hey, we'renoticing this, we'd like to do
something, or sales leadersaying, hey, me, do this, what.
In regards to how that happens,if I kind of come back to the
sales that are saying, hey,here's what we propose to do
(25:40):
about this, I Come.
One of the things I carry withme is an agreement.
We have found this problem, wewant to do this about it and we
expect to get these results andthis is what we're gonna do.
But I need you.
I need your commitment to holdyour managers accountable and to
ensure that they are.
They are going to have theseconversations during that, and
(26:00):
so I Really get like any in, notsigned, but in an email thread.
Yes, I agree, we're gonna dothat.
Not sign in blood, I'm notsigned in blood.
So get that sort of commitment.
And then you do have to make iteasy for the manager.
You have to make it easy.
Okay, so I literally create adashboard that is just for this
initiative.
You're going to this one placeand in that dashboard I'm
(26:22):
showing a leaderboard howdifferent who's doing well on
each of them.
I'm showing a benchmark.
What do we want them on each ofthese Metrics?
And I show a trend line.
You know how are thingschanging, month-over-month,
quarter-over-quarter, whateverit is.
So again that, and I give themsort of a A talk track or
(26:43):
framework when you're havingyour conversation with the, with
the rep, here are the three,four, five, however many things
like your agenda for thatmeeting and here's how you,
here's how you begin theconversation, here's how you,
you know, here's the link tothat dashboard and, by the way,
here's so what to.
Here's how to make sense ofthose metrics.
Here's what this particularmetric means and sort of in okay
(27:05):
and can translate it for theminto language that makes sense
for them.
So it is sort of Enabling themanagers to have those
conversations.
Now I try not to make a hugedeal of it.
I don't.
I don't like to think of it aslike this is our Coaching
framework or something like that.
(27:25):
I just like here's a tool foryou to use during these
conversations to make it seemsort of low-lift.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This has been, I think, a powerful episode.
Thank you.
Thank you for coming.
You know well, life probablyprepared you For this, but you
clearly, you know, did someother preparation as well, so we
appreciate that.
Before I let you go, would loveto have you drop some knowledge
on everyone that may or may notbe enablement related, and it's
(27:51):
that you've been given thatgift of time travel.
You can go back Anywhere inyour life, career or not, and
coach some younger version ofyourself, but you can only do it
for one topic.
What's the number one thingthat you wish you'd understood
earlier, don't?
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Make a goal for what you want to be when you grow up.
Okay, if you try to set a goalfor what you're going to be when
you're up, you're going to bewrong, because you're not going
to be one thing.
You're going to be 12 things.
Your career is going to evolve.
I've had four different careers, so I just think it's an
unrealistic expectation inmodern days to think that
(28:30):
someone's going to be doing onekind of thing for the rest of
their lives.
So don't get caught up in.
Oh my God, I don't know whatI'm great at, what I'm going to
be when I grow up.
Don't worry, there are going tobe lots of things.
Just find something that you'regood at right now that someone
will pay you to do.
That's it, and then it'llchange your career.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
That's legal.
That's legal.
Yeah, that's legal.
Yeah, let's be really clearhere.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
You're good at it.
They'll pay you and it's legal.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's funny.
I saw a meme once about youjust reminded me of you know
that talked about if we all grewup to be the things that we
thought when we were young, theworld would be full of more
astronauts, fighter pilots andfiremen firefighters.
So there'd be a lot offirefighters out there.
Yeah, A lot of firefighters outthere and veterinarians,
absolutely.
And oh, I actually did that one.
(29:21):
Yeah, I forgot aboutveterinarian.
Okay, well, jerry, thank you.
Thank you for your time,appreciate you being here.
You're awesome.
Paul, thanks so much.
Okay, and everyone, thank youfor investing another half hour
of your time with us.
We appreciate you.
Keep listening and we'll seeyou again in two weeks.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal e societyglobal
Group.
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