March 5, 2024 • 31 mins
How do you balance the potential of AI to impact revenue generation, sort through the hype and be strategic in your deployment of AI? Join me as I sit down with Dayna Williams, and we peel back the layers of AI's role in the future of sales and delve into the intricate dance between leveraging cutting-edge tools and staying true to the timeless principles of sound business practices.
We tackle the challenges faced by sales teams and explore how they can navigate the pressures of consistent performance while adopting a disciplined approach to innovation.
Dayna shares her seasoned perspective on avoiding the pitfalls of jumping onto the latest tech trends without a game plan.
Some of the actionable insights she shares in this episode:
- What's missing from the hype and the headlines?
- Elements of a readiness plan or blueprint
- Where and how to begin
Dayna Williams is the author of "The Diligence Fix" which explores what happens when we strive for revenue growth. Her ideas come from advising sales leaders in the areas of internal communication, integrated training, change methodology and making customer feedback actionable. Dayna is also an experienced content and conference producer who lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and five rescue dogs.
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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
(00:24):
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 (00:47):
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Revenue EnablementSociety podcast, stories from
the trenches the only podcastthat I know of that gathers
practitioners and analysts fromall over the world to talk about
the innovative and new waysthat they're doing things and
accomplishing things, the thingsthat are happening in our
industry.
And sometimes we talk aboutthings that didn't go very well,
(01:08):
because there's a lot thatcould be learned from that too.
So I'm excited to get right toour guest this time and
introduce you to Dana Williams.
Dana is the author of theDiligence Fix and, Dana, why
don't you take a minute andintroduce yourself a little bit
more to the audience?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Great thanks, paul.
Yeah, so I'm Dana Williams and,as you mentioned, I authored a
book called the Diligence Fix,and it really is designed to
start a conversation around howour striving for more revenue
stresses and can compromise oursales organization, and I really
was inspired to write it as aresult of talking and
interacting with sales leadersover the last 20 years, where
(01:44):
I've had a career as a whitelabel consultant for a number of
the major sales enablementorganizations in our country,
and so I start the conversationin the book and then my website,
thediligencefixcom, we continueto drill down on those ideas.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right, thank you.
Before we get into and I'mexcited, I'll show everybody I
actually saw Dana present at anAI conference.
I guess it's been a month or amonth and a half ago now, and so
we're going to talk about someof what she brought there.
But before we get too serious,we got to do the Jimmy Kimmel
Challenge.
So, dana, you know the drillJimmy retires later this year.
(02:18):
You get offered his show.
You can have anybody you wanton the couch the first night.
Who did you bring, or who willyou bring, and why?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Love the question, so I'm choosing Steve Carell,
because who knows those types ofshows better than Mr Carell?
He is always a crowd pleaserand at this point I think I'm
looking for some sort ofdefinitive information around a
office reunion.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Is that a thing?
Is there an actual chance ofthat?
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I think they hint, they tease, but up to this point
I think everybody's been busywith other projects.
But you never know.
I could be the spark that getseverybody together.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I think the best part of an officer unit is going to
see it's the action figure.
Yeah, action figure physiquegym.
I mean look at what JohnKrasinski has done since the
office.
Right, jack Ryan 13 hours.
I mean the guy looks like anaction hero now.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Well, I don't know if you saw him host the SNL show,
but one of the SNL actors in theaudience stood up and was like
laughing because he goes.
Oh, you're not Jim Jim Soft.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah right, Exactly yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
It's not quite his character.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
One of the and there were not very many.
The only cool things I'll putthat way that came out of COVID
and lockdown were the human,that seeing humans really step
up and I was so impressed.
Do you remember his show, theGood News?
What was it called?
The Good News Show, I think so,or a little Good News, just a
(03:57):
YouTube show that he startedputting together with Emily just
looking for positive humaninterest stories around the
world of people helping eachother during lockdown, and it
was amazing and he made no moneyfrom it that I could tell.
It was just he just saw a needand he filled it.
I always loved that, so he'ssomebody I would love to
interview someday, justpartially for that.
(04:19):
It was like what motivated youto do that and it was just
really cool.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And if you're in the mood for a sassier side, he did
a nice little series of lipsyncing with Anna Kendrick and
Cass what.
Google him, yeah, for lipsyncing, and it'll rock your way
, oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Okay, well, I'd go for Jack Ryan reunion too, but I
think I think Reacher has takenJack Ryan's throne on Amazon,
so we're digressing badly.
But that's what's fun aboutthis.
We can talk about whatever wewant, but let's talk about what
we came to talk about.
So, again, I saw you talk onnot just AI, so whole conference
(04:58):
was AI.
But to me, what stood out aboutyour session was the fact that
and I'm going to probably notsummarize it as well as you
would, but it's like, yes, ai,amazing, all these cool things,
etc.
But slow down, kids, and thinklet's think about this, right,
let's not rush into it.
You need a framework.
(05:19):
So I don't want to give awaytoo much, but that's why I've
been excited to talk about this,because I don't think enough
people at least the podcaststuff I list you are talking
about that.
So you know everyone is buzzingabout AI.
It is, it is the shiny objectnow for quite some time, but I
don't think that's going tochange.
So, in your experience or view,dana, what's missing from the
(05:40):
hype in the headlines?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, so I think when leaders get excited and when I
speak of sales leaders, I'mtalking, you know, cros, heads
of Sales and so forth and Idistinguish that from our
friends in sales enablement, whoare often the voice of reason
in the room.
You know, these are folks thathave what you mentioned shiny
objects syndrome and they getsucked into the hype.
(06:05):
They get excited and the ideais let's just bring these tools
into the organization like magic.
It's going to help us scale andaccelerate and, sadly, possibly
eliminate an FTE or somethingalong those lines realize
effective and efficient costsavings.
Well, that's great, but what'smissing from the conversation is
(06:25):
everything behind it that'snecessary for you to fully
realize the investment thatyou're making.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
When I hear people talk about AI, the word
transformation almost is alwaysin the same paragraph of, not
the same sentence that peopleseem so excited about that.
But the time that I've spentwith AI and I've used some of it
it's not something you can just.
It's not a turnkey situation.
So how should be people bethinking about that right as far
(06:52):
as if it's not do?
If you agree that it's not plugand play, what are the
potential downsides if we're notgetting ready and not being
thoughtful?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah.
So I think it's like anythingelse, whether it is a platform,
maybe like a non-a I platform,but a platform whether it's a
training curriculum or nowinclude something along the
lines of the I when we make thedecision to sign and bring these
solutions into the organization, it becomes somebody or
somebody's Third full time jobto implement so and so is going
(07:26):
to own it.
And the problem is and I kind ofalluded to this in my book is
that every time you make thatdecision, you're adding more
weight To your organizationalcar, and just because you don't
see it and live it every day asa leader, it doesn't mean it's
not weighing down the car.
And the more that it becomessomebody's third, fourth, fifth
(07:47):
job and they're fighting throughthe level of effort and the
roadblocks and the obstacles andthe missteps to implement a
solution like a I or anythingelse effectively, you are
eroding your productivity.
It's like death by a thousandcuts.
We tend to know thisintuitively because we live it
every day.
(08:07):
More often, the people who aretapped to make it our fourth job
, yeah, but leadership losesvisibility, and so I think one
of the things that's missingright now is a very simple
question what is it going totake for us to implement this
well and if we can visualize andsort of quantify the level of
effort, that's gonna be acounterweight to all the sizzle
(08:32):
and razzle dazzle that peopleget excited about in terms of a
solution and bring into theorganization.
It's gonna counterweight that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
You work with a lot of sales organizations, sales
leaders.
Let's start with them.
What are you seeing, as you'retalking to them about a?
I and interacting with them?
I'm sure they're all askingabout it at least.
So what's going on out there?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah.
So what I what I'm seeing isthat people are adopting it sort
of From a point solutionperspective.
So think about the goodequivalent is you know, I spent
a lot of time in the assessmentworld, so using sales
assessments to Assume determinethe level of sales talent you
would hire into the organization.
So the reason why that's such aBig segment, such a profitable
(09:17):
segment, is because it's reallyeasy for people.
They want to hire better andthey have to implement one
solution along a multi stepprocess when it comes to hiring.
It's easy for them to wraptheir head around that.
I'm seeing the same right now inmost organizations.
I'm not talking about like theforward thinking, like service
now that's transformingeverything.
I'm talking your average sortof rank and file sales
(09:40):
organization Is looking atsomething that might save them
time.
A good example would be sort ofthese solutions where they're
powered by chat, g2p and there'slike an exoskeleton over it and
maybe it saves you time writinga tailored email or it helps
marketing improve the output ofblocks something that they can.
(10:00):
There's a very defined startand end point and they can
easily slide it into the workthat they do and it is truly
plug and play.
Okay every month that goes by.
Solutions on the AI universeare going way beyond plug and
play and that you use the wordtransformation.
That's what they're promisingto do.
Right where we're gonna getinto trouble.
(10:21):
Okay I'm gonna get into troublewhen we move outside of the
very simple point solutionadoption and we reach for the
rafters to bring in somethingtruly transformational before
we're ready and we have not hadthe implementation conversation.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Do you see the same Challenge maybe is the best word
that we see with a lot of othernew tech that's come on the
scene.
Let's just say conversationalintelligence, which I'm a huge
fan of, but it was the same sortof thing when it was first
really getting big is just,everybody wanted to rush out and
get it.
But I've worked with someclients where it was horribly
(10:56):
deployed.
I mean a just I won't go intothe details here, but just like
wow, do you realize that you'renot getting anything out of this
?
Spend all this money.
Do you see that?
Or do you think that's the sortof risk that we're looking at
now with a?
Is people just rushing out,putting a bunch of stuff in
place?
He said they think maybethey're gonna be able to replace
(11:18):
headcount, but in fact itsounds like they're almost
creating more work for somebody,if not another headcount I
think so.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Now, while they may well organizations, may, you
know privately think that withsome time, a and I powered
solution could replaceheadcounting, both of them, most
of them know today that isn'tsomething that's gonna happen
right away, but I think, ifwe're honest with each other,
it's in the back of their mind,right?
How can I operate a leanerhybrid?
You know, I human driven salesorganization?
(11:47):
Listen, it's an importantquestion and I don't think it's
one that people shouldn't beevaluating.
But as it stands today, because, again, what I'm seeing, what
the people that I work withthere are bringing in more point
solutions.
The point solutions work,depending on how you define work
, outcome-driven, depending onwhat your outcomes are.
(12:10):
I mean, I've used some of thesesolutions myself and, as
somebody who prides myself ongreat writing, I'm horrified by
some of the stuff that has spitout.
I find myself half the timewhen you're writing everything
from scratch just because yourreputation precedes you.
You can't sound like a robotwrote it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I was going to say.
The other thing I know is achat GPT because I use it as a
starter.
It's kind of like kindling forme.
I'll let it generate somethingand then it gets me past
writer's block.
But it just seems like andmaybe it's the prompts I'm using
, but it tends to be veryverbose and use a lot more words
than necessary.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And I think about the implications, and this may be a
little rabbit trail, but it'sinteresting because our friends
in marketing are directlyresponsible in some cases for
the quality of leads that comeour way.
I find that if everybody's outthere rushing to saturate with
even more content but it's notoriginally produced, it's like
this weird hybrid.
(13:12):
Can you imagine some of theworkarounds we're going to have
to do to grab attention as AIcontinues to saturate the
airwaves with more noise, AIdriven noise?
I think that's somethingprobably people aren't talking
about either, just some of theunique problems that it's
creating.
But just your question before,in terms of people dropping the
(13:35):
ball in implementation, it's sopoint solution driven.
Right now for mostorganizations, it's sort of hard
to ruin the deployment, but Ithink we're a hairpin length
away from that changing andthat's why our conversation is
really timely.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Okay, I agree.
Yeah, I mean, the noise isalready starting to be.
I was reading an article justthis week about this concept of
AI influencers and to me thatdoesn't even make sense.
An influencer is somebody whohas a unique point of view,
who's developed a brand,developed a voice and worked
hard at it, and if it's just AI,it's nobody's voice, but anyway
(14:13):
.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So if I think about this because I think this has
sales implications if you wantto just indulge me for two
seconds here.
When you think about this newworld, right, you have apps AI
driven apps that will take apicture of you sitting on a park
bench and transform it so thatyou have this gorgeous, you know
headshot that you can use onLinkedIn or wherever you have AI
(14:36):
writing resumes.
You have AI that is reallycreating this.
I think potential crisis reallyaround deception, where people
are going to have to learnwhat's real and what isn't,
because if I bring this personon and they used an AI you know
for their headshot, their resume, their project sample.
(14:57):
How do I know that this talentright?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Or is there any talent?
Yeah, you're right, is it?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And do we care anymore as leaders?
Because if we're going todepend solely on AI, then are we
only expecting the humancomponent to do almost like a
sniper or an elite special force?
Are we expecting them to dosomething very narrow, extremely
well?
And then what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
That's again probably the opposite of what people are
hoping for when they bring in.
You don't want a bunch morespecialists, you need people
that can do more than anythingmore than they used to be able
to do?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, Analyzing it, serving up your emails,
nurturing the customer and theearly prospect in the earliest
parts of the funnel Right.
Then you're going to getdropped in to the action as a
salesperson to something alreadyin progress, and one of the
things I talk about in theDiligence Fix is this idea of
(15:57):
situational intelligence.
You have to have mastery sothat when you're dropped into
that, it's this seamlessexperience for the prospect.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Because they're going from non-human to human
interaction, which could begreat, and they don't want to
feel like that, do you?
Want to feel like you buysomething.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Do you want?
To feel like you've beennurtured by AI.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so what do we do?
You talked about a framework ormaybe readiness plan.
Talk to me about that.
What does that look like?
Maybe describe the elements ofit or help people understand.
What should they be?
How should they be thinkingabout that framework?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I should say yeah, so exactly, I think we throw good
questions out there and we frameproblems, but we don't want to
leave people there.
So, for me, when I look atreadiness whether the goal is to
bring in AI, whether the goalis to reach for higher tiers of
revenue the bottom line isyou're looking to stretch your
existing organization to reachnew goals, and so if that's what
(16:57):
you're trying to do as a salesleader, what I'm just going to
sound like a broken record, butthis is the silver bullet.
One of the things you have todo is make sure you have a very
clear, defined, visualized notjust documented, but visualized
sales process.
Because if you do and we'retalking plugging in the
(17:17):
evidentiary outcomes, the roles,the responsibilities and so
forth and you have to leadaccording to the process and you
have to recognize behaviorsthat align with the process and
provide consequences when peopledisregard it.
Because if you have that, thatbecomes your game plan in terms
of running an organization whereyou can decide at this
(17:39):
particular stage that we'vedefined.
We will be plugging in this AIsolution to drive this outcome.
It's going to be owned by thisperson or this role and, as a
result, we need to up this typeof training.
We need to provide additionalsupports and tools for this
(17:59):
person using this tool toaccomplish this outcome.
If you don't have that, thenyou're not plugging something in
strategically with a definedoutcome.
You're really taking the throatagainst the wall and see what
it does approach, and maybethat's okay if that's the type
of organization that you run,but what you risk is continuing
to add Unless you interact withcustomers, nobody wants to.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
nobody, no prospect wants to feel like you're
throwing things at the wall tosee what sticks.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I mean, I agree with you, but I work with so many
organizations or let me say, Idon't always work with them
because they don't always thinkthey need help but I interact
with leaders that think thattheir product is so damn good
that doesn't matter that theycan do anything and the customer
is going to buy it, and we'rejust heading into a marketplace
with unforeseen challenges andpressures where that's not going
(18:47):
to be good enough.
And so the ones that want totake growth at AI, human
hybridization, they want to takethese next gen initiatives
seriously.
It's going to come back to theprocess.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
That's an interesting statement to me, because AI is
seen as this new shiny, it'sgoing to revolutionize every
which which I'm not saying, it'snot those things, but people.
Yet what I also hear you sayingis the basics of sound business
practices still haven't changed.
Yes, it's all those things, butyou still have to be smart
(19:20):
business from a planningstandpoint, from a like I say
what are the outcomes?
Who's going to own it?
What is what a success looklike, all of all of those things
.
The other thing that'sinteresting you mentioned is the
fact that that theirorganization that think the
product will sell itself, andand I mean I go back to Jeff
Moore's Crossing the Chasm book,which which is still one of my
(19:41):
favorites, because in SAS I'veseen it play out time and time
again he was just a little aheadof the curve and figured in or
defining it, and I think a lotof those organizations haven't
hit that chasm yet either, when,if you are new enough and you
are different enough, yourproduct does kind of sell itself
, but only to that very smallmarket segment that's really
good at creating their ownvision of outcomes.
(20:03):
You know they don't need asalesperson to do it, they can
do it.
But again, going back to Moore'sresearch, that's no more than
20% of your TAM.
And so once you've gone throughthat group, that's where you
start to see a lot of companies,especially tech companies,
start to flame out because theydon't know.
At that point they thinkthey've got the greatest sales
and marketing organization inthe world and all they did have,
(20:25):
but it was just a great product.
Now they're selling to skepticsand laggards and pragmatists I
can't remember all the words heuses and it's a different game.
And so I'm listening to you andI just find that fascinating.
It's like, okay, yes, ai knew,cool, all of that.
Yet fundamentals have notchanged.
No, they haven't.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So one of the things that I'm really spending my time
this year working on with salesleaders and again it starts as
a conversation and then, if theydesire any sort of support for
do it yourself or whatever I'mmore than happy to do that.
But we tend to exactly like yousaid when things are going well
, we're really casual about thefundamentals of running a sales
(21:03):
organization, including training.
Then we hit a revenue crisispoint where we've addressed that
first.
20% or any number of thingshave shifted.
Competition has come in, we hita crisis point, or maybe the
board has come in and levied 20%growth on us.
Who knows what it is.
But we hit a crisis point andthen, all of a sudden, that's
(21:23):
when people start reaching fortraining, ai tools, data
supports and so forth.
They pile the cart,implementation gets done in a
subpar way, if at all, and then,before you know it, they're out
there going back out to marketto say, well, those things
didn't work, what else wouldwork?
It comes in a group of people'sfull-time job to indulge this
(21:46):
hamster wheel of effectivenessinitiatives, and that's exactly
what you don't need when you'rereaching a crisis point, and so
one of the things I'm focusingon this year are some of those
fundamental disciplines that Iwant leaders to focus on, beyond
just simply training or tools,and so for me, these are getting
(22:06):
very, very tight around how youcommunicate.
So, if you think about howmarketing has this very
strategic, repetitive way ofcommunicating with prospects,
sales leaders don't do that withsales teams.
They tend to say things once ortwice, maybe at a kickoff, this
is kickoff season, maybe at akickoff, but then it gets buried
in a deck and they move on.
(22:27):
But if it was so important tointroduce it, a kickoff, and put
it in your deck or at a QBR,why are we not repeating it and
having a strategic way ofpushing that out to the sales
force?
Because sales people tend toremember only what you just told
them yesterday, and so that'sone of the disciplines that I
want to help people develop intheir organization.
And there's a couple of others,like integrated training, change
(22:49):
methodology and customerfeedback loops.
So those are the four.
But certainly communication isa nice sort of counterweight to
always piling on more plug andplay type solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So we probably have two types of listeners right now
.
The first are those that reallyhaven't taken the plunge.
Maybe they've dipped their toein the AI world a little bit,
but there may be the easy ones.
For the next question I'm goingto ask, which is where should
they start?
You're sharing a lot of greatinformation, but I could see
somebody sitting there saying,okay, I don't want to make the
mistakes Dana's talking about, Idon't want us to get into that
(23:23):
place.
But where do they start?
Got a couple of concrete stepsfor them.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I think two or three Yep.
So number one sit down and haveand this can't just be sales
enablement doing this andrunning sales leadership sort of
do what they do.
It has to be a series ofmeetings where we sit down and
we agree on the current stateand you might have to negotiate
what the current state is.
But I think the number onething is do we have a fully
(23:50):
documented, fully visualizedsales process?
And if we do, how would wegrade ourselves on a scale of
like ABCD on our ability toadhere to this?
Let's just be honest, becausecheating the system does nobody
any good.
So that's kind of number one.
Number two if we don't have it,if we grade ourselves like a B
minus a, c, a, d, what is itgoing to take to get to a B plus
(24:13):
or an A?
And then can we put anaccelerated 60 to 90 day plan in
place where it doesn't crushsomebody's productivity but we
kind of share a little bit ofthe load to get it up to snuff?
And then, what sort ofcommunication can sales
leadership put behind this newlystrengthened process so that
the organization understands?
(24:35):
We may have been loosey gooseywith this in the past, but we
are going.
Our future is riding on ourability to implement this and
we're going to do it.
So I think that's number oneand then number two.
I think that we look when wehave that same kind of aligned
conversation around the last twoor three solutions we've
brought into the organizationand we grade ourselves how well
(24:59):
did we implement it?
Was it on time?
Did it add too much weight tothe cart?
Did we achieve the outcomesthat we wanted you?
have an honest conversationabout that and then going
forward, I think we say toourselves before we sign for an
AI or any type of other solution, we're going to have a meeting
(25:19):
of the minds around level ofeffort for implementation and if
it's going to crush somebody orsomebody's, then we have to
think twice whether or not webring it in.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Okay, so the other group that's probably listening
right now and this may be alittle more challenging are
people that have already gonedown the road you described and
they're just starting to realizethat maybe this isn't working
the way we thought, or maybethey're recognizing some of the
things you're talking about isoh my gosh, we're already
dealing with that.
Any advice for those that, likeI said, maybe did rush in a
(25:51):
little prematurely and now needto fix that how should what
should they do?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Well, I'll give something.
I'll give a bit of advice.
That may be unpopular, but Itry to put it out there as an
option for people.
Give them permission to atleast consider the option.
And that is what about cuttingyour losses?
I mean, at a certain point youmay have invested in something,
but a lot of times you haven'tsigned a lifetime contract with
one of these solutions.
(26:19):
Maybe you're three or sixmonths in and it just is not.
It's not meeting expectationsor people aren't using it the
way they need to and it's goingto require way too much training
to get them ready.
Maybe have an exploratoryconversation around number one,
pumping the brakes on continuingto sort of roll the boulder
(26:39):
uphill.
But number two, like what wouldit cost our organization if we
just sort of readjustedpriorities and de-prioritized
this?
You know, I think that's sortof the first thing.
I don't think we have to becompelled unless there's a good
reason to be compelled, but Idon't think we have to be stuck
with something that just isn'tworking.
So I think that's number oneand we learn from it.
(27:02):
Right, I want to alwaysdocument the lessons learned so
that we have a better.
So one of the other disciplinesI was mentioning to you, change
methodology, and this is havinga way of evaluating in an
objective way what we bring intoour organization.
So, to help you know supportchange methodology within your
own organization.
What lessons learned could wegather from this sort of swing
(27:25):
and a miss, to make sure that wedon't do it again?
So that's sort of my thing.
Now.
If that's not an option for you, then I always say scale it
back.
You know, if you've rolled itout to an entire team of 10, can
you work with one or two peopleto kind of perfect?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
the process.
That's a good point, right,yeah, and it grabbed it and have
actually been doing what youwere hoping with it.
Because, again, that's just howthey're wired they're good at
visualizing and just without aton of direction, you know doing
it.
So you're right.
So refine it maybe it's theright word with those people
that are already finding success, and then how do you bottle?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
then figure how you bottle that and take it back to
the rest of the, to the rest ofthe team, and really Paul, the
number one reason why peopledon't start the conversations at
the front end aroundimplementation concerns or lack
of strong process or hey, it'snot working.
Should we cut our losses orshould we descale is really fear
(28:24):
.
I mean, people don't bringthese things up because they're
afraid of being perceived as afailure, you know, or being part
of a failed initiative, andthey don't want that tag on them
and I understand that.
But you're going to pay theprice for that, you know, a
thousand times over in personalstress and, frankly, you're
(28:45):
probably still attached to itanyway, even if you try to
distance yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So you may as well.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Get in front of it and sort of lead from the front
on, acknowledging like, hey, wecan't take this on just yet,
we're not ready.
And these are the consequencesif we do or we took this out.
It didn't meet expectations, wewere eager but weren't ready.
Here's what I suggest is thenext.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I like that Eager but not ready.
Probably a lot of that.
Probably a lot of that, allright.
So our time is just about up.
This has been a really funconversation, but before I let
you go, I want to give you achance to just drop some life
knowledge on us all.
Is that all right?
Of course, all right.
So you've been given the giftof time travel, with a couple of
(29:27):
restrictions.
One the only person you cantalk to when you go back in time
is some younger version ofyourself, and you don't want to
screw up the space timecontinuum, right, so you can
talk to yourself.
And number two you can onlycoach yourself on one topic or
in one area.
So what is that thing that youreally wish you'd understood
earlier in life, that youunderstand now?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, I would say it's sort of a mindset topic,
Paul, I would say that I tendedto, as a sort of a type A
personality, I tended to takeeverything so seriously and
absorb stress and get all woundup about.
You know, sometimes it waslegitimate things, but other
times it was like goofy or sillyand nevertheless it didn't
matter.
It was everything registered asstress and what I would tell
(30:12):
myself is hey, listen, like thething that is stressing you out
now, is it going to matter sixmonths from now?
Is it going to matter threemonths from now?
Is it even going to be in theback of your mind?
And nine times out of 10, theanswer is no, and so I think the
lesson there is that you knowtime circumstances, they resolve
themselves, and so, while weneed to take our work seriously,
(30:34):
we need to modulate sort of theextent we allow ourselves to
become overwhelmed by stressbecause we're not working at our
most effective, best when we'reoperating from sort of a stress
slash, burnout perspective.
So that's what I would tellmyself if.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I come back in time.
That is really good advice.
Well, thank you again, dana.
Thank you for taking the timewith us and your thought
leadership on this topic.
If a folks, one who reach outand connect with you one on one,
is LinkedIn the best way, or isthere a better way?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah, I'd love to be connected on LinkedIn, or you
can email me directly at DanaD-A-Y-N-A at thediligencefixcom.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Okay, sounds good.
Thank you for your time andthank you to everyone else who's
invested another half hour orso of your time with us.
We couldn't do this, wewouldn't do this if it weren't
for all of you.
So stay safe, stay warm, and wewill see you in another two
weeks.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal.
That's REsocietyglobal.
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
(00:24):
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 (00:47):
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Revenue EnablementSociety podcast, stories from
the trenches the only podcastthat I know of that gathers
practitioners and analysts fromall over the world to talk about
the innovative and new waysthat they're doing things and
accomplishing things, the thingsthat are happening in our
industry.
And sometimes we talk aboutthings that didn't go very well,
(01:08):
because there's a lot thatcould be learned from that too.
So I'm excited to get right toour guest this time and
introduce you to Dana Williams.
Dana is the author of theDiligence Fix and, Dana, why
don't you take a minute andintroduce yourself a little bit
more to the audience?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Great thanks, paul.
Yeah, so I'm Dana Williams and,as you mentioned, I authored a
book called the Diligence Fix,and it really is designed to
start a conversation around howour striving for more revenue
stresses and can compromise oursales organization, and I really
was inspired to write it as aresult of talking and
interacting with sales leadersover the last 20 years, where
(01:44):
I've had a career as a whitelabel consultant for a number of
the major sales enablementorganizations in our country,
and so I start the conversationin the book and then my website,
thediligencefixcom, we continueto drill down on those ideas.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right, thank you.
Before we get into and I'mexcited, I'll show everybody I
actually saw Dana present at anAI conference.
I guess it's been a month or amonth and a half ago now, and so
we're going to talk about someof what she brought there.
But before we get too serious,we got to do the Jimmy Kimmel
Challenge.
So, dana, you know the drillJimmy retires later this year.
(02:18):
You get offered his show.
You can have anybody you wanton the couch the first night.
Who did you bring, or who willyou bring, and why?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Love the question, so I'm choosing Steve Carell,
because who knows those types ofshows better than Mr Carell?
He is always a crowd pleaserand at this point I think I'm
looking for some sort ofdefinitive information around a
office reunion.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Is that a thing?
Is there an actual chance ofthat?
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I think they hint, they tease, but up to this point
I think everybody's been busywith other projects.
But you never know.
I could be the spark that getseverybody together.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I think the best part of an officer unit is going to
see it's the action figure.
Yeah, action figure physiquegym.
I mean look at what JohnKrasinski has done since the
office.
Right, jack Ryan 13 hours.
I mean the guy looks like anaction hero now.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Well, I don't know if you saw him host the SNL show,
but one of the SNL actors in theaudience stood up and was like
laughing because he goes.
Oh, you're not Jim Jim Soft.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah right, Exactly yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
It's not quite his character.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
One of the and there were not very many.
The only cool things I'll putthat way that came out of COVID
and lockdown were the human,that seeing humans really step
up and I was so impressed.
Do you remember his show, theGood News?
What was it called?
The Good News Show, I think so,or a little Good News, just a
(03:57):
YouTube show that he startedputting together with Emily just
looking for positive humaninterest stories around the
world of people helping eachother during lockdown, and it
was amazing and he made no moneyfrom it that I could tell.
It was just he just saw a needand he filled it.
I always loved that, so he'ssomebody I would love to
interview someday, justpartially for that.
(04:19):
It was like what motivated youto do that and it was just
really cool.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
And if you're in the mood for a sassier side, he did
a nice little series of lipsyncing with Anna Kendrick and
Cass what.
Google him, yeah, for lipsyncing, and it'll rock your way
, oh, wow.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Okay, well, I'd go for Jack Ryan reunion too, but I
think I think Reacher has takenJack Ryan's throne on Amazon,
so we're digressing badly.
But that's what's fun aboutthis.
We can talk about whatever wewant, but let's talk about what
we came to talk about.
So, again, I saw you talk onnot just AI, so whole conference
(04:58):
was AI.
But to me, what stood out aboutyour session was the fact that
and I'm going to probably notsummarize it as well as you
would, but it's like, yes, ai,amazing, all these cool things,
etc.
But slow down, kids, and thinklet's think about this, right,
let's not rush into it.
You need a framework.
(05:19):
So I don't want to give awaytoo much, but that's why I've
been excited to talk about this,because I don't think enough
people at least the podcaststuff I list you are talking
about that.
So you know everyone is buzzingabout AI.
It is, it is the shiny objectnow for quite some time, but I
don't think that's going tochange.
So, in your experience or view,dana, what's missing from the
(05:40):
hype in the headlines?
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Yeah, so I think when leaders get excited and when I
speak of sales leaders, I'mtalking, you know, cros, heads
of Sales and so forth and Idistinguish that from our
friends in sales enablement, whoare often the voice of reason
in the room.
You know, these are folks thathave what you mentioned shiny
objects syndrome and they getsucked into the hype.
(06:05):
They get excited and the ideais let's just bring these tools
into the organization like magic.
It's going to help us scale andaccelerate and, sadly, possibly
eliminate an FTE or somethingalong those lines realize
effective and efficient costsavings.
Well, that's great, but what'smissing from the conversation is
(06:25):
everything behind it that'snecessary for you to fully
realize the investment thatyou're making.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
When I hear people talk about AI, the word
transformation almost is alwaysin the same paragraph of, not
the same sentence that peopleseem so excited about that.
But the time that I've spentwith AI and I've used some of it
it's not something you can just.
It's not a turnkey situation.
So how should be people bethinking about that right as far
(06:52):
as if it's not do?
If you agree that it's not plugand play, what are the
potential downsides if we're notgetting ready and not being
thoughtful?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah.
So I think it's like anythingelse, whether it is a platform,
maybe like a non-a I platform,but a platform whether it's a
training curriculum or nowinclude something along the
lines of the I when we make thedecision to sign and bring these
solutions into the organization, it becomes somebody or
somebody's Third full time jobto implement so and so is going
(07:26):
to own it.
And the problem is and I kind ofalluded to this in my book is
that every time you make thatdecision, you're adding more
weight To your organizationalcar, and just because you don't
see it and live it every day asa leader, it doesn't mean it's
not weighing down the car.
And the more that it becomessomebody's third, fourth, fifth
(07:47):
job and they're fighting throughthe level of effort and the
roadblocks and the obstacles andthe missteps to implement a
solution like a I or anythingelse effectively, you are
eroding your productivity.
It's like death by a thousandcuts.
We tend to know thisintuitively because we live it
every day.
(08:07):
More often, the people who aretapped to make it our fourth job
, yeah, but leadership losesvisibility, and so I think one
of the things that's missingright now is a very simple
question what is it going totake for us to implement this
well and if we can visualize andsort of quantify the level of
effort, that's gonna be acounterweight to all the sizzle
(08:32):
and razzle dazzle that peopleget excited about in terms of a
solution and bring into theorganization.
It's gonna counterweight that.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
You work with a lot of sales organizations, sales
leaders.
Let's start with them.
What are you seeing, as you'retalking to them about a?
I and interacting with them?
I'm sure they're all askingabout it at least.
So what's going on out there?
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah.
So what I what I'm seeing isthat people are adopting it sort
of From a point solutionperspective.
So think about the goodequivalent is you know, I spent
a lot of time in the assessmentworld, so using sales
assessments to Assume determinethe level of sales talent you
would hire into the organization.
So the reason why that's such aBig segment, such a profitable
(09:17):
segment, is because it's reallyeasy for people.
They want to hire better andthey have to implement one
solution along a multi stepprocess when it comes to hiring.
It's easy for them to wraptheir head around that.
I'm seeing the same right now inmost organizations.
I'm not talking about like theforward thinking, like service
now that's transformingeverything.
I'm talking your average sortof rank and file sales
(09:40):
organization Is looking atsomething that might save them
time.
A good example would be sort ofthese solutions where they're
powered by chat, g2p and there'slike an exoskeleton over it and
maybe it saves you time writinga tailored email or it helps
marketing improve the output ofblocks something that they can.
(10:00):
There's a very defined startand end point and they can
easily slide it into the workthat they do and it is truly
plug and play.
Okay every month that goes by.
Solutions on the AI universeare going way beyond plug and
play and that you use the wordtransformation.
That's what they're promisingto do.
Right where we're gonna getinto trouble.
(10:21):
Okay I'm gonna get into troublewhen we move outside of the
very simple point solutionadoption and we reach for the
rafters to bring in somethingtruly transformational before
we're ready and we have not hadthe implementation conversation.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Do you see the same Challenge maybe is the best word
that we see with a lot of othernew tech that's come on the
scene.
Let's just say conversationalintelligence, which I'm a huge
fan of, but it was the same sortof thing when it was first
really getting big is just,everybody wanted to rush out and
get it.
But I've worked with someclients where it was horribly
(10:56):
deployed.
I mean a just I won't go intothe details here, but just like
wow, do you realize that you'renot getting anything out of this
?
Spend all this money.
Do you see that?
Or do you think that's the sortof risk that we're looking at
now with a?
Is people just rushing out,putting a bunch of stuff in
place?
He said they think maybethey're gonna be able to replace
(11:18):
headcount, but in fact itsounds like they're almost
creating more work for somebody,if not another headcount I
think so.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Now, while they may well organizations, may, you
know privately think that withsome time, a and I powered
solution could replaceheadcounting, both of them, most
of them know today that isn'tsomething that's gonna happen
right away, but I think, ifwe're honest with each other,
it's in the back of their mind,right?
How can I operate a leanerhybrid?
You know, I human driven salesorganization?
(11:47):
Listen, it's an importantquestion and I don't think it's
one that people shouldn't beevaluating.
But as it stands today, because, again, what I'm seeing, what
the people that I work withthere are bringing in more point
solutions.
The point solutions work,depending on how you define work
, outcome-driven, depending onwhat your outcomes are.
(12:10):
I mean, I've used some of thesesolutions myself and, as
somebody who prides myself ongreat writing, I'm horrified by
some of the stuff that has spitout.
I find myself half the timewhen you're writing everything
from scratch just because yourreputation precedes you.
You can't sound like a robotwrote it.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
I was going to say.
The other thing I know is achat GPT because I use it as a
starter.
It's kind of like kindling forme.
I'll let it generate somethingand then it gets me past
writer's block.
But it just seems like andmaybe it's the prompts I'm using
, but it tends to be veryverbose and use a lot more words
than necessary.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And I think about the implications, and this may be a
little rabbit trail, but it'sinteresting because our friends
in marketing are directlyresponsible in some cases for
the quality of leads that comeour way.
I find that if everybody's outthere rushing to saturate with
even more content but it's notoriginally produced, it's like
this weird hybrid.
(13:12):
Can you imagine some of theworkarounds we're going to have
to do to grab attention as AIcontinues to saturate the
airwaves with more noise, AIdriven noise?
I think that's somethingprobably people aren't talking
about either, just some of theunique problems that it's
creating.
But just your question before,in terms of people dropping the
(13:35):
ball in implementation, it's sopoint solution driven.
Right now for mostorganizations, it's sort of hard
to ruin the deployment, but Ithink we're a hairpin length
away from that changing andthat's why our conversation is
really timely.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Okay, I agree.
Yeah, I mean, the noise isalready starting to be.
I was reading an article justthis week about this concept of
AI influencers and to me thatdoesn't even make sense.
An influencer is somebody whohas a unique point of view,
who's developed a brand,developed a voice and worked
hard at it, and if it's just AI,it's nobody's voice, but anyway
(14:13):
.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
So if I think about this because I think this has
sales implications if you wantto just indulge me for two
seconds here.
When you think about this newworld, right, you have apps AI
driven apps that will take apicture of you sitting on a park
bench and transform it so thatyou have this gorgeous, you know
headshot that you can use onLinkedIn or wherever you have AI
(14:36):
writing resumes.
You have AI that is reallycreating this.
I think potential crisis reallyaround deception, where people
are going to have to learnwhat's real and what isn't,
because if I bring this personon and they used an AI you know
for their headshot, their resume, their project sample.
(14:57):
How do I know that this talentright?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Or is there any talent?
Yeah, you're right, is it?
Speaker 3 (15:03):
And do we care anymore as leaders?
Because if we're going todepend solely on AI, then are we
only expecting the humancomponent to do almost like a
sniper or an elite special force?
Are we expecting them to dosomething very narrow, extremely
well?
And then what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (15:23):
That's again probably the opposite of what people are
hoping for when they bring in.
You don't want a bunch morespecialists, you need people
that can do more than anythingmore than they used to be able
to do?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, Analyzing it, serving up your emails,
nurturing the customer and theearly prospect in the earliest
parts of the funnel Right.
Then you're going to getdropped in to the action as a
salesperson to something alreadyin progress, and one of the
things I talk about in theDiligence Fix is this idea of
(15:57):
situational intelligence.
You have to have mastery sothat when you're dropped into
that, it's this seamlessexperience for the prospect.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Because they're going from non-human to human
interaction, which could begreat, and they don't want to
feel like that, do you?
Want to feel like you buysomething.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Do you want?
To feel like you've beennurtured by AI.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so what do we do?
You talked about a framework ormaybe readiness plan.
Talk to me about that.
What does that look like?
Maybe describe the elements ofit or help people understand.
What should they be?
How should they be thinkingabout that framework?
Speaker 3 (16:33):
I should say yeah, so exactly, I think we throw good
questions out there and we frameproblems, but we don't want to
leave people there.
So, for me, when I look atreadiness whether the goal is to
bring in AI, whether the goalis to reach for higher tiers of
revenue the bottom line isyou're looking to stretch your
existing organization to reachnew goals, and so if that's what
(16:57):
you're trying to do as a salesleader, what I'm just going to
sound like a broken record, butthis is the silver bullet.
One of the things you have todo is make sure you have a very
clear, defined, visualized notjust documented, but visualized
sales process.
Because if you do and we'retalking plugging in the
(17:17):
evidentiary outcomes, the roles,the responsibilities and so
forth and you have to leadaccording to the process and you
have to recognize behaviorsthat align with the process and
provide consequences when peopledisregard it.
Because if you have that, thatbecomes your game plan in terms
of running an organization whereyou can decide at this
(17:39):
particular stage that we'vedefined.
We will be plugging in this AIsolution to drive this outcome.
It's going to be owned by thisperson or this role and, as a
result, we need to up this typeof training.
We need to provide additionalsupports and tools for this
(17:59):
person using this tool toaccomplish this outcome.
If you don't have that, thenyou're not plugging something in
strategically with a definedoutcome.
You're really taking the throatagainst the wall and see what
it does approach, and maybethat's okay if that's the type
of organization that you run,but what you risk is continuing
to add Unless you interact withcustomers, nobody wants to.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
nobody, no prospect wants to feel like you're
throwing things at the wall tosee what sticks.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I mean, I agree with you, but I work with so many
organizations or let me say, Idon't always work with them
because they don't always thinkthey need help but I interact
with leaders that think thattheir product is so damn good
that doesn't matter that theycan do anything and the customer
is going to buy it, and we'rejust heading into a marketplace
with unforeseen challenges andpressures where that's not going
(18:47):
to be good enough.
And so the ones that want totake growth at AI, human
hybridization, they want to takethese next gen initiatives
seriously.
It's going to come back to theprocess.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
That's an interesting statement to me, because AI is
seen as this new shiny, it'sgoing to revolutionize every
which which I'm not saying, it'snot those things, but people.
Yet what I also hear you sayingis the basics of sound business
practices still haven't changed.
Yes, it's all those things, butyou still have to be smart
(19:20):
business from a planningstandpoint, from a like I say
what are the outcomes?
Who's going to own it?
What is what a success looklike, all of all of those things
.
The other thing that'sinteresting you mentioned is the
fact that that theirorganization that think the
product will sell itself, andand I mean I go back to Jeff
Moore's Crossing the Chasm book,which which is still one of my
(19:41):
favorites, because in SAS I'veseen it play out time and time
again he was just a little aheadof the curve and figured in or
defining it, and I think a lotof those organizations haven't
hit that chasm yet either, when,if you are new enough and you
are different enough, yourproduct does kind of sell itself
, but only to that very smallmarket segment that's really
good at creating their ownvision of outcomes.
(20:03):
You know they don't need asalesperson to do it, they can
do it.
But again, going back to Moore'sresearch, that's no more than
20% of your TAM.
And so once you've gone throughthat group, that's where you
start to see a lot of companies,especially tech companies,
start to flame out because theydon't know.
At that point they thinkthey've got the greatest sales
and marketing organization inthe world and all they did have,
(20:25):
but it was just a great product.
Now they're selling to skepticsand laggards and pragmatists I
can't remember all the words heuses and it's a different game.
And so I'm listening to you andI just find that fascinating.
It's like, okay, yes, ai knew,cool, all of that.
Yet fundamentals have notchanged.
No, they haven't.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
So one of the things that I'm really spending my time
this year working on with salesleaders and again it starts as
a conversation and then, if theydesire any sort of support for
do it yourself or whatever I'mmore than happy to do that.
But we tend to exactly like yousaid when things are going well
, we're really casual about thefundamentals of running a sales
(21:03):
organization, including training.
Then we hit a revenue crisispoint where we've addressed that
first.
20% or any number of thingshave shifted.
Competition has come in, we hita crisis point, or maybe the
board has come in and levied 20%growth on us.
Who knows what it is.
But we hit a crisis point andthen, all of a sudden, that's
(21:23):
when people start reaching fortraining, ai tools, data
supports and so forth.
They pile the cart,implementation gets done in a
subpar way, if at all, and then,before you know it, they're out
there going back out to marketto say, well, those things
didn't work, what else wouldwork?
It comes in a group of people'sfull-time job to indulge this
(21:46):
hamster wheel of effectivenessinitiatives, and that's exactly
what you don't need when you'rereaching a crisis point, and so
one of the things I'm focusingon this year are some of those
fundamental disciplines that Iwant leaders to focus on, beyond
just simply training or tools,and so for me, these are getting
(22:06):
very, very tight around how youcommunicate.
So, if you think about howmarketing has this very
strategic, repetitive way ofcommunicating with prospects,
sales leaders don't do that withsales teams.
They tend to say things once ortwice, maybe at a kickoff, this
is kickoff season, maybe at akickoff, but then it gets buried
in a deck and they move on.
(22:27):
But if it was so important tointroduce it, a kickoff, and put
it in your deck or at a QBR,why are we not repeating it and
having a strategic way ofpushing that out to the sales
force?
Because sales people tend toremember only what you just told
them yesterday, and so that'sone of the disciplines that I
want to help people develop intheir organization.
And there's a couple of others,like integrated training, change
(22:49):
methodology and customerfeedback loops.
So those are the four.
But certainly communication isa nice sort of counterweight to
always piling on more plug andplay type solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
So we probably have two types of listeners right now
.
The first are those that reallyhaven't taken the plunge.
Maybe they've dipped their toein the AI world a little bit,
but there may be the easy ones.
For the next question I'm goingto ask, which is where should
they start?
You're sharing a lot of greatinformation, but I could see
somebody sitting there saying,okay, I don't want to make the
mistakes Dana's talking about, Idon't want us to get into that
(23:23):
place.
But where do they start?
Got a couple of concrete stepsfor them.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I think two or three Yep.
So number one sit down and haveand this can't just be sales
enablement doing this andrunning sales leadership sort of
do what they do.
It has to be a series ofmeetings where we sit down and
we agree on the current stateand you might have to negotiate
what the current state is.
But I think the number onething is do we have a fully
(23:50):
documented, fully visualizedsales process?
And if we do, how would wegrade ourselves on a scale of
like ABCD on our ability toadhere to this?
Let's just be honest, becausecheating the system does nobody
any good.
So that's kind of number one.
Number two if we don't have it,if we grade ourselves like a B
minus a, c, a, d, what is itgoing to take to get to a B plus
(24:13):
or an A?
And then can we put anaccelerated 60 to 90 day plan in
place where it doesn't crushsomebody's productivity but we
kind of share a little bit ofthe load to get it up to snuff?
And then, what sort ofcommunication can sales
leadership put behind this newlystrengthened process so that
the organization understands?
(24:35):
We may have been loosey gooseywith this in the past, but we
are going.
Our future is riding on ourability to implement this and
we're going to do it.
So I think that's number oneand then number two.
I think that we look when wehave that same kind of aligned
conversation around the last twoor three solutions we've
brought into the organizationand we grade ourselves how well
(24:59):
did we implement it?
Was it on time?
Did it add too much weight tothe cart?
Did we achieve the outcomesthat we wanted you?
have an honest conversationabout that and then going
forward, I think we say toourselves before we sign for an
AI or any type of other solution, we're going to have a meeting
(25:19):
of the minds around level ofeffort for implementation and if
it's going to crush somebody orsomebody's, then we have to
think twice whether or not webring it in.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Okay, so the other group that's probably listening
right now and this may be alittle more challenging are
people that have already gonedown the road you described and
they're just starting to realizethat maybe this isn't working
the way we thought, or maybethey're recognizing some of the
things you're talking about isoh my gosh, we're already
dealing with that.
Any advice for those that, likeI said, maybe did rush in a
(25:51):
little prematurely and now needto fix that how should what
should they do?
Speaker 3 (25:59):
Well, I'll give something.
I'll give a bit of advice.
That may be unpopular, but Itry to put it out there as an
option for people.
Give them permission to atleast consider the option.
And that is what about cuttingyour losses?
I mean, at a certain point youmay have invested in something,
but a lot of times you haven'tsigned a lifetime contract with
one of these solutions.
(26:19):
Maybe you're three or sixmonths in and it just is not.
It's not meeting expectationsor people aren't using it the
way they need to and it's goingto require way too much training
to get them ready.
Maybe have an exploratoryconversation around number one,
pumping the brakes on continuingto sort of roll the boulder
(26:39):
uphill.
But number two, like what wouldit cost our organization if we
just sort of readjustedpriorities and de-prioritized
this?
You know, I think that's sortof the first thing.
I don't think we have to becompelled unless there's a good
reason to be compelled, but Idon't think we have to be stuck
with something that just isn'tworking.
So I think that's number oneand we learn from it.
(27:02):
Right, I want to alwaysdocument the lessons learned so
that we have a better.
So one of the other disciplinesI was mentioning to you, change
methodology, and this is havinga way of evaluating in an
objective way what we bring intoour organization.
So, to help you know supportchange methodology within your
own organization.
What lessons learned could wegather from this sort of swing
(27:25):
and a miss, to make sure that wedon't do it again?
So that's sort of my thing.
Now.
If that's not an option for you, then I always say scale it
back.
You know, if you've rolled itout to an entire team of 10, can
you work with one or two peopleto kind of perfect?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
the process.
That's a good point, right,yeah, and it grabbed it and have
actually been doing what youwere hoping with it.
Because, again, that's just howthey're wired they're good at
visualizing and just without aton of direction, you know doing
it.
So you're right.
So refine it maybe it's theright word with those people
that are already finding success, and then how do you bottle?
Speaker 3 (28:03):
then figure how you bottle that and take it back to
the rest of the, to the rest ofthe team, and really Paul, the
number one reason why peopledon't start the conversations at
the front end aroundimplementation concerns or lack
of strong process or hey, it'snot working.
Should we cut our losses orshould we descale is really fear
(28:24):
.
I mean, people don't bringthese things up because they're
afraid of being perceived as afailure, you know, or being part
of a failed initiative, andthey don't want that tag on them
and I understand that.
But you're going to pay theprice for that, you know, a
thousand times over in personalstress and, frankly, you're
(28:45):
probably still attached to itanyway, even if you try to
distance yourself.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
So you may as well.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Get in front of it and sort of lead from the front
on, acknowledging like, hey, wecan't take this on just yet,
we're not ready.
And these are the consequencesif we do or we took this out.
It didn't meet expectations, wewere eager but weren't ready.
Here's what I suggest is thenext.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I like that Eager but not ready.
Probably a lot of that.
Probably a lot of that, allright.
So our time is just about up.
This has been a really funconversation, but before I let
you go, I want to give you achance to just drop some life
knowledge on us all.
Is that all right?
Of course, all right.
So you've been given the giftof time travel, with a couple of
(29:27):
restrictions.
One the only person you cantalk to when you go back in time
is some younger version ofyourself, and you don't want to
screw up the space timecontinuum, right, so you can
talk to yourself.
And number two you can onlycoach yourself on one topic or
in one area.
So what is that thing that youreally wish you'd understood
earlier in life, that youunderstand now?
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Yeah, I would say it's sort of a mindset topic,
Paul, I would say that I tendedto, as a sort of a type A
personality, I tended to takeeverything so seriously and
absorb stress and get all woundup about.
You know, sometimes it waslegitimate things, but other
times it was like goofy or sillyand nevertheless it didn't
matter.
It was everything registered asstress and what I would tell
(30:12):
myself is hey, listen, like thething that is stressing you out
now, is it going to matter sixmonths from now?
Is it going to matter threemonths from now?
Is it even going to be in theback of your mind?
And nine times out of 10, theanswer is no, and so I think the
lesson there is that you knowtime circumstances, they resolve
themselves, and so, while weneed to take our work seriously,
(30:34):
we need to modulate sort of theextent we allow ourselves to
become overwhelmed by stressbecause we're not working at our
most effective, best when we'reoperating from sort of a stress
slash, burnout perspective.
So that's what I would tellmyself if.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
I come back in time.
That is really good advice.
Well, thank you again, dana.
Thank you for taking the timewith us and your thought
leadership on this topic.
If a folks, one who reach outand connect with you one on one,
is LinkedIn the best way, or isthere a better way?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah, I'd love to be connected on LinkedIn, or you
can email me directly at DanaD-A-Y-N-A at thediligencefixcom.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Okay, sounds good.
Thank you for your time andthank you to everyone else who's
invested another half hour orso of your time with us.
We couldn't do this, wewouldn't do this if it weren't
for all of you.
So stay safe, stay warm, and wewill see you in another two
weeks.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Thanks for joining this episode of Stories from the
Trenches.
For more revenue enablementresources, be sure to join the
Revenue Enablement Society atresocietyglobal.
That's REsocietyglobal.
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